Everything A Beginner Needs to Know About Grow Lights

hmm [Music] [Music] what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi gardener channel i know all of you are going to love this one because we're going to be talking about grow lights today and specifically when it comes to answering questions and concerns that all of you have shown in the comments section of either our youtube video uh facebook message facebook comment section instagram comment section or instagram message or an email it's just insane how many times we get asked about grow lights it's absolutely insane and you know there's a lot of information out there and it's one of those things that you know if you do enough digging you're going to find the answer but there's a lot of conflicting information as well and i really want to break this down just the way that i have experienced it and answer some of these these big questions to hopefully put your mind at ease when it comes to using grow lights indoors because grow lights can make or break your gardening season if you invest a good amount of money into grow lights they can cost a lot but they also you know if you use them the wrong way they don't work any better than a small grow light like this that was just a starter grow light kit for 35 bucks so you really it's all depends on how you use it that dictates your success because that's one of the biggest questions people ask is how much should i spend on a grow light well you should spend as much as you have in your budget and as much as you need what you don't want to do is you don't want to make this one grow light grow all of your seedling starts it's just impossible and yet i see it all the time where this one grow light you know it might be stationed like this and it's got plants all the way out to here even though there's only light stopping right about here you can't go past and you can't get more out of a grow light than what it can give and so you have to know the limitations of your grow light first and foremost the second thing that you need to know is compact versus led we get asked all the time luke i see you're growing with leds in your grow room but i'm using a compact fluorescent should i make the change or luke i don't know what i should buy compact fluorescent or led which one well there's a couple things to take into consideration number one is cost how much money do you have to put out to shell out to get some grow lights i can tell you for a fact i use and i still i used and i still use today compact fluorescents these are t5s they're very reliable they come in a high output high output bulb that is great for growing plants and they're fairly inexpensive when it comes to leds you can get the ones like the ones we have they're about 700 bucks a piece they're going to last a long time they're going to put out a lot of light they're going to cover a lot of area but they might not be in everyone's budget we got them kind of as a trial gift they were not purchased by us and had i had to purchase them i probably would not have shelled out that much money for them yet i'm just not i'm not in the need for a 700 grow light i'm not growing other things as many of you have alluded to no i'm not growing those so therefore i don't really have a need for two thousand dollars in grow lights i just don't but um so you get that you kind of get that that comparison that you know the leds are far more effective and they are far more capable of putting out a ton of light than a compact fluorescent is they're just more efficient because the bulbs are smaller they're light emitting diodes rather than a tube that then is filled with a gas that that illuminates the other thing that i get asked is how safe are compact fluorescents compact fluorescents are very safe but they do break i've dropped one thank goodness it didn't break but if you do break if you know if you do happen to drop it from any any length of distance they can shatter and when they do shatter they do have gas inside that gas can be harmful but it's all in how you treat things i mean i've had in my lifetime probably 30 or 40 different grow lights and never once have i broken a bulb it's not to say it won't happen it's not to say it doesn't happen all the time to people you know all the time but it's never happened to me and that's because i'm not doing a lot of fiddling i typically keep things in one place and i treat things with care i just i'm just patient with my stuff and i'm not in a rush and that can lead to mistakes if you're in a rush so i've never broken a light and therefore they're perfectly fine for me and then the you know the next thing that i want to cover before i get into some grow light specifics is um when it comes to the you know the type of light a lot of times people they want to get like a shop light we got these shop lights that are all over the place here and we're even using shop lights to grow our micro greens but people want to get shop lights because they see those having compact fluorescents compact fluorescents are not all made equal you see this light here this is produced by fairy morse this was in our seed starting our seed starting beginners kit this one ran us about 35 bucks and it is a t5 bulb those shop lights are t8s and t8s are really big they are really inefficient and they're not very bright i look at three things all i look at is how much wattage they use because that can gauge how expensive those lights are to run i look at the color of the lights that stands for the that stands for the the temperature the color temperature you hear this a lot color temperature is rated in what's called kelvin and kelvin is what color the light is in reference to a temperature and so if you look at uh what we what we need in a grow light for seedlings they need around 6 500 kelvin that's 6500 k you can see them on every single light in fact you can see them right here this is 6400 kelvin and this bulb uses 24 watts the kelvin corresponds to a color and 6400 kelvin corresponds to more of a blue light a daylight white you want to simulate daylight as much as possible because the seedlings are needing to create energy to grow you don't want them to be stretching for light and often that's what happens when you go with a light that is like like a warm light or you know something that would be used in households a lot a lot of your daylight white bulbs are grow light specific they're very bright and they're very blue which is why most people don't put them in their house and that's why i suggest replacing if you do get a shop light replace them with some good quality grow light tubes and you'll be far better off when you look at a grow light you want it to produce what's called lumens lumens are how much light the light will give off the more lumens it gives off the more growable energy it has the amount of lumens that you have is directly proportionate to how far away your lights can be from your plant this is the final question that i want to address because i don't want to overload everyone and i think this really is the final bit of information that you need to get growing anything else is just it's just not necessary and so the final thing that i want to summarize is lumens are directly proportionate to how far away the light needs to be from the plant i can't tell you how many times i see someone stick a light bulb you know a compact fluorescent light bulb up in their ceiling 20 feet away from their plants and then they start their seedlings literally 20 feet away and they say well i've got a compact fluorescent bulb and it's on my plants my plants are looking leggier than stretch armstrong what do i do well you can't do that because your light is not strong enough it's not putting out nearly enough lumens your lumens like i said are directly proportionate to how far away you can have them from the plant these lights here are super super powerful we're talking 13 15 000 lumens in upwards of 30 000 lumens on these bigger ones the small ones put out 13 to 15 000 these put up to 30 000 lumens this is insane i mean that's absolutely incredible these put out the same amount of light as our big t5 setups do and that's why i can have these plants so far away from the light because the amount of lumens is corresponding to the amount of growable energy the plants can uptake since the leaves need light to form energy and the light spreads throughout the room that's why the room is illuminated from these lights because light is being wasted on bouncing off the walls and going elsewhere it's not all being focused directly on these plants meaning you have to you do have to understand that if you have a weaker light it needs to be closer to the plants the closer it is means the less light is going to be spread throughout the room these lights here can be this far because of how bright they are i could not have that same luxury with this small light here this small light i would have to have adjustable and i would have to have it within three to five inches of the top of these plants because that this because the fact that this light right here is only 500 lumens 500 to maybe a thousand lumens at most these lights are thirty thousand these lights are one thousand that means i can have this light 30 times further from my plants than this light here and you can always make sure you can always do a test i always say do a test don't just immediately start your entire garden for the first time if you're trying a light for the first time try it on one seedling make sure that seedling grows stress-free is not stretching like stretch armstrong looking for the light and if it isn't and it's growing nice and stocky then you have a recipe that you can build off of and remember wattage correlates to cost of the light nothing else and when it comes to the color the color of the light make sure it's a cool color like a blue color and that's going to focus on green energy your green growth which is uh what creates the energy for the plant the lumens is how bright the light is and how far away the light can be from your plants and with that being said it doesn't matter if you go with led or compact fluorescent or metal haloid or high pressure sodium whatever it is just get growing i can't tell you how encouraging it is to get plants growing and it gets you through the winter the winter blues it gets your garden started early and it is a great way to get your garden off to a great start so i hope you all enjoy it i hope you learned something new don't over complicate this and just remember that you can go with whatever you want just make sure that you make it work for your setting don't try to make some don't try to retrofit something and make it not work or you make it work when it really can't it's all about what you can do within within its limitations so with that being said hope you guys enjoyed hope you learned something new and as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 871,990

Keywords: cfl growlight, you know, migardener, led bulb, beginner, Premiere_Elements_2018, grow light, growing, tutorial, seedling, everything, cfl, beginning, led, led growlight

Id: nMXu38leU4k

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 23 2019