1/9/11

A Second Great LED -4 (end of semester)


The end of the semester means I must end my experiment, but I hope to take stem cuttings of the tomato plants and try out a new clone bucket from HTGSupply.com with this LED and Grow tent.
 This UFO LED is a great light. Plants have good vegetative growth and the flowering response is great with this light, in fact the only thing I can say is better with the T-5 is that the tomato plants were much shorter and sturdy stemmed under the T-5 than the LED.  The plants in the grow tent picture above were growing much like tomato plants outdoors under the sun; they had grown tall and needed to be staked or in tomato cages. This normal growth occured with only 90 watts of electricity.  The Coleus and basil and rosemary in the  tent also showed the same 'normal' growth I would expect outside in sunlight.  All tomato plants under the UFO  have many small tomato's and many more flowers forming as well as the good upward vegetative growth.  
Please compare the grow tent picture above with the post of the first day of this test one month ago to see what this LED can do
My conclusion: I still think an HPS is the single best light to use if you only use one light and a fluorescent light is still my best choice for vegetative growth of say seedlings or cuttings or small plants but even a high output fluorescent can not compete with the 2 watt bulb Tri-Band LED from HTGSupply.com when it comes to flowering.  If you are growing spinach or basil or some other leafy plant you may want to stick with the T-5 vs. an LED but if you are interested in flowering or even flowering and vegetative growth you should seriously consider a LED with Tri-Band technology!  My next test I hope to compare a Tri-Band LED to HID's... stay tuned.

Good Growing,
Dr. E.R. Myers

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