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HPS and MH light, I hope I made finally made the right call


 
 
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Old 04-02-2011, 04:20 PM
cable24601 cable24601 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2011
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Default HPS and MH light, I hope I made finally made the right call

At about 9 weeks in to this experiment I am a little disappointed by the results that I am seeing. Don't get me wrong, I have some great growth from my lettuce and dill but everything else is growing at a snails pace. In fact my tomatoes look like they have stopped growing all together. So what is the problem? I had a long conversation with the owner of my local hydroponics store and he thinks that I just don't have the amount of light needed to grow anything more than small leafy plants. As many of you know my goal is to grow all of the fruits and vegetables that my family's needs. In the last few weeks I have looked in to the expansion of my hydrofarm and knew that lighting would play a big roll.

The big question know is what to do about it. I chose led in the start do to the low power cost and heat. I then added on T8 florescent to the project to grow out some seedlings. Here are some of my impressions so far.

The 2 13 watt LED red blue panels have been above 4 4 inch dirt pots full of herbs. These have done a nice job of keeping me supplied with chives, oregano, and chives. The 4th pot is rosemary but not much action there. I am happy with these lights but wonder if I would get more from T5 HO.

The 1 240 watt LED 7 band panel only seem to cover a 1 foot by 2 foot square and once the plants got to 18 inchs high they started to die off near the bottoms. This thing will grow but I would need quite a few to work for what I want. If they did work as advertised this could have been a different story.

This bring me to high pressure sodium and metal halide. In the start I was against this type of system. I was thinking high power bills, heat and the cops stopping by to raid my tomatoes however when I look at it now I think alot of this is a misconception. Yes hps will be more power but not much and the heat will be more but that is nothing better ventilation can't deal with. As for the cops I would have to expand to using about 6 600 watt lights before I may get a visit and then I will make some BLTs for their troubles. Even then if I had to buy 4 more 240 watt LED panels to cover my grow area, all the above problems would be a factor anyhow. I wonder if there would even be much of a difference at that point.

I the end this project is an experiment and I do feel like I have some good results. So I will try HPS and MH to see the results and as always let you know what happens.

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