Talk me out of buying LEDs for Veg

[AeroKing]

Well, I've been trying to decide whether to use LEDs or high end T5s for my new veg box.

I think I've decided to use 2 x 45w GlowPanel LEDs per unit to cover roughly 2.5' x 3' of veg, starting from clones, leaving the box as about 12" lollypops.
(If I have to, I could add a couple T5 strip lights later)

A lot of posters agree that LEDs seem to be ok for Veging.
Some say they are completely worhtless.
Some say that you'd need 1 of these 45w for each sq ft for veg.

Can anybody tell me about their real-life LED experiences?

 

[SpruceZeus]

I have no experience with LEDS, but i happen to know that they cost about 10 times what an equal coverage area of florescent light does. So unless they are ten times as efficient they're probably not worth it yet.
If you can find anyone with LEDs in their grow room that perform better than HO floros or a small HID then by all means do it. Ive just never seen it.
Save your money for necessary purchases, rather than blowing your load on unproven tech.

 

[AeroKing]

I have no experience with LEDS, but i happen to know that they cost about 10 times what an equal coverage area of florescent light does. So unless they are ten times as efficient they're probably not worth it yet.
If you can find anyone with LEDs in their grow room that perform better than HO floros or a small HID then by all means do it. Ive just never seen it.
Save your money for necessary purchases, rather than blowing your load on unproven tech.

Thank You for your input. +rep
My issue is slightly more complicated than I've let on. You can see the whole scenario here.

See, the T5s that I'd be buying are these high end Tek-lights that are pretty expensive, but they fit my grow area.

I don't need them to outperform the T5s, I just don't want stretch or crappy under-growth.

The power savings is very compelling.

My biggest concern right now, is that two of these 45w lamps won't cover the area that I need them to (2.5' x 3')...

 

[Brick Top]

There is no grow lighting better than LED’s on the market today IF you buy enough of them and IF you know how to use them. They produce 100% PAR light and they use an extremely small amount of electricity and they put off very little heat. They are very durable and far less prone to damage and a QUALITY LED has a life expectancy of roughly eleven years.

Where there are problems is that they are expensive, very expensive for QUALITY manufactured LED’s. You cannot bargain shop for LED’s and end up with the QUALITY that you will need. Instead you will end up with something close to being junk and you will be unhappy and ANOTHER person who starts a thread saying LED’s are junk.

To use them properly you need many of them and to position them all around your plants. You will need then to be directly above and you will need them to be positioned around your plants and to do it the best you will need then positioned among/in between your plants.

When growing short types of plants, like many vegetables and house plants a single panel of LED’s directly above them will be enough but when growing pot plants they grow tall enough, even just in veg, that LED’s will not give enough light penetration so you need to add more around and in between your plants to get maximum growth, that is unless you are growing Lowryder or some dwarf strain.

You also have to make sure that if you are only using them for vegging that you do not buy LED’s that have mixed veg and flowering light spectrums and only buy LED’s with the light spectrum for vegging or else you will get additional unwanted and unneeded stem growth, as in height and not in thickness/diameter.

If you want to go LED then research them very thoroughly and find the highest quality LED’s available and then pay an arm and a leg for them and you will be very happy that you bought them. Your budget may not be very happy but you will be and your plants will be too. If you are not prepared or able to do that forget about LED's until their prices drop considerably.


I have never used LED’s so I cannot speak from experience but I followed a grow thread a few years back on another herb site where a member went all LED’s. He bought the highest quality LED’s made and his results were beyond just being fantastic. But he paid a great deal of money to get those results.

In his case he had money to burn so it didn’t matter to him that he had to pay so much for his lighting. He also claimed that he figured out all costs involved, including costs for a ventilation system t ohandle HID lighting heat and its operating and upkeep costs, along with the initial cost of HID lighting, which in his case was his second option, and the costs of running it and its upkeep over the period of time the LED’s he purchased were claimed to be able to last and still put out the same amount of usable light/PAR light and that in the end he would be way ahead.

He also added that without his electricity bills going up much at all and without his home having hot spots that could be spotted by LEO using heat sensing guns/equipment and because of the very low amount of light the LED’s put off regardless of them running much or all of the night it was not as if some neighbor or someone else might get curious why there are bright lights on in one certain room and always between the same hours regardless of him being home or not or asleep or not or whatever that it reduced his risk of drawing unwanted and being caught and arrested. So to him all the way around LED’s were the one and only way to go.

 

[Brick Top]

Save your money for necessary purchases, rather than blowing your load on unproven tech.

The technology is anything but unproven. NASA has been growing plants both here on earth and in space for years and has had great success. Yes they are not pot plants but LED’s have way more than been proven to be the very best grow lighting that is available.

The main problem is they are cost prohibitive for most people to be able to buy quality LED’s and to buy enough of them to use them optimally and anything less than doing that is a waste of money.

 

[AeroKing]

Well, thank you for that. You've done an excellent job of making my decision even harder +rep. So, are you saying that you don't believe these panels to be adequate for my situation?

 

[Brick Top]

Well, thank you for that. You've done an excellent job of making my decision even harder +rep. So, are you saying that you don't believe these panels to be adequate for my situation?

I have no idea what your budget can handle or how large of an area you would need to cover with lighting or what strains you would grow and how tall you would grow them while in veg so I cannot decide if LED’s are right or wrong for you. That is something you need to decide on your own BUT if you think you can buy one panel of LED’s and hang them above your plants for vegging unless it is a small area and you will only be growing Lowryder or dwarf strains then the single panel you are likely considering will not make you happy.

Even though you can keep LED’s practically touching the tops of your plants without having a heat problem the lack of light penetration will likely be a problem once you get past about a foot tall unless you have/add additional LED’s or some other form of grow lights.

To attain optimal conditions for growing pot plants, even in veg, unless they are ONLY very short strains or unless you are only going to veg for a short period of time, you need to have enough light panels directly above to cover all your plants because you will not get side light/reflective light and you would need to ring your plants with LED’s like ‘light bars’ attacked to what may be called portable posts, something like a 4X4 cut to length with a square bottom of plywood for a base, and to do it perfect you would need more of the same with ‘light bars’ on all four sides of the portable posts to place then in between your plants.

Much less than that will leave you unhappy with LED’s.

If you were only going to use them say for clones to get started and to then grow a little and then move them to some other form of grow lighting for your full veg then I would say by all means buy the LED panel, as long as it is one of HIGH QUALITY, and you will love it but for more than just that be prepared to by many LED lights or various shapes/designs and pay a ton for them if you want to be happy with your growth in the end and just say damn the budget, full speed ahead.

If you cannot do that then do what so many other people are doing and that is wait until LED grow lighting drops in price like plasma screen TV’s have and then buy a ton of them and go at it.

 

[AeroKing]

I have no idea what your budget can handle or how large of an area you would need to cover with lighting or what strains you would grow and how tall you would grow them while in veg so I cannot decide if LED’s are right or wrong for you. That is something you need to decide on your own

If it was that easy, I wouldn't be bugging you about it, would I?

I think I've decided to use 2 x 45w GlowPanel LEDs per unit to cover roughly 2.5' x 3' of veg, starting from clones, leaving the box as about 12" lollypops.

They are heading off to HPS land after this box.
They are not intended to ever reach more than 12" in this box.

 

[SpruceZeus]

The technology is anything but unproven. NASA has been growing plants both here on earth and in space for years and has had great success. Yes they are not pot plants but LED’s have way more than been proven to be the very best grow lighting that is available.

The main problem is they are cost prohibitive for most people to be able to buy quality LED’s and to buy enough of them to use them optimally and anything less than doing that is a waste of money.

I should have been more specific.
I'm well aware of all the wonderous achievements attached to LEDS and quite sure that one day they will be a viable alternative to the proven and accepted workhorses of the modern grow room.
The fact of the matter is, and you said it yourself. The good stuff is still prohibitively expensive, and so far, with a couple exceptions i'm sure. Noone is using LEDS for marijuana horticulture with success that is equal to or better than what can be done with HIDS and HO floros.
If you have some links to successful LED marijuana grow journals, i would appreciate it. Because other than in hightimes (who are notorious for pushing inferior products for big ad buyers) I've never seen anyone be anything but disappointed in the results.
Sure we can talk about ideal spectrums, and heat, and power consumption. But to me, all that really matters are results, and until i see some, i cant possibly buy into this craze.
Call me a dinosaur if you like, but personally, i'm gonna stick with what works.
Theres a laserdisc player in my garage that says wait until it catches on and the good ones go down in price.

 

[AeroKing]

I'm still very concerned that these lamps simply will not provide enough penetration to keep the mid canopy happy.

Now, thanks to Brick Top, I'm also concerned that there is far too much Red spectrum and not enough blue to provide the tight internode length that I'd like.