LED only growing

Hey,

My first grow attempt. Couldnt afford traditional route so experimented with this LED idea. Bought a blue+red LED panel from ebay for 60 bucks(type '225 led grow' into ebay to see my yoke.

I have no temp control, humidity or ventilation. My set up consists of the panel 30cm x 30cm, a power adapter as its an american device, a plug timer & a tin foiled DHL jumbo box. MUHAHA

I will invest next in a wine fermenting pad to heat the soil. And eventually i may invest in an acrylic custom made box(worked in a plastics factory so will get at material cost), to be airtight for humidity and co2 when i start with that. the panel itself is a little hard to hang so will need a jig to support custom made. a few hurdles so far.

But...

The reason I've tried LED first is cost, its very cheap to run, will cost 4 dollars for 2 months of power, after checking power supply usage costs, it is very cool to the touch, so no heat what so ever from the light itself( so no heat signature) which is nice.

So far i have 3 plants growing from seed. My biggest broke soil 15 days ago and is 4'' tall with the 5th and 6th leaves starting to emerge today.

Has anyone experimented with LED yet here?

So far so good. I am also grow 10 tomato's from seed under the one light as well as a tray of sunflowers for the woman friend. These will be put out when the frost season stops or when the main plants are too big to support other plants under the light. None of the plants have had any other light source for 2 weeks and are growing healthy green. i've read LED panels make plants grow black, but so far not true for me.

Youtube has a few video's on the subject. Type LED grow into search bar for examples. Thus far my own experiments yield positive results.

As this is my first growing attempt I'm expecting novice-hood to account for penalties in results, but such results are far in the future so I have time to accustom my knowledge.

Any advice/similar knowledge is very appreciated.

MonkeyBoy

https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/40849-36-watts-led-grow-action-new-post.html

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/45296-full-led-grow-room-aeroponic.html

These guys have. I ordered 4 of those panels and 4 red 168 count led spotlights. They should be here in the next couple days

https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/50143-my-first-grow-room.html

Theres someone else with LEDs

I am using the same thing as you, a 225 led panel from ebay. I've found that if you use a cheap 15w fluorescent with it, you will do better than LED standalone. I guess it completes the spectrum of light usage by the plants, although at first all I used was LED. It works standalone, dont get me wrong but I think it works better the other way.

Hey Monkeyboy! I tried to PM you but it wouldn't let me.. What's up with that?

I am embarking on the same setup so just wondering how your results are going. Im supplementing with 3 40watt CFL`s

The LED by itself is ok, but for seeds and tiny plants you have to place it really close to the tops. like 5-6 inches away if not less. the bulbs never burn the leaf even touching them for hours on end. The LED itself makes no heat so you definitely need the CFL's added somewhere along the side. I'm going to experiment with adding 2 100watt CFL's to the grow box, one a third of the way up, the second, two 3rds of the way up and the LED coming from the top. This I reckon is enough for flowering, although If i had this set up from the beginning it would have grown much fast with that little bit of extra heat. The best thing about the LED is its power consumption. For 2 months of near constant use it cost less than 10 buck in power costs. Baby plants don't seem to grow so well like it would under a HPS. I've seen the difference between the same age of 2 plants germinated from the same week under different lights. The HPS was over a foot tall by 5 weeks while the LED was under 2 inches so its definitely the heat that does the business. I have a plant at nearly 3 foot now just under the LED alone. Originally under HPS for first 5 weeks, but it grows well under it now i@ve swapped over. I've heard the LED's only come into their own after the plant is reasonably big to start with. I am noticing even though the grow chamber is completely Mylar'd up to the tits, the bottom of the leaves just don't get any light from the LED by its self.

If you can, buy the BLUE only LED. Its easier it seems to get red spectrum from other sources than the blues. The blues are your friend. I've heard the lower temperature of growing produces more content, heat denatures it or something. And it hermies apparently a lot more when exposed to a lot of heat. I have no worry of this hopefully as the plant is from Feminized seeds. The LED's are definitely worth checking out. But not to be used by them self, as they take along time to grow compared to conventinal means.


Any questions feel free to buzz.