Avoid These Mistakes While Using LED Grow Lights

LED grow lights are extraordinary - they provide you with a light spectrum that is very similar to the sunlight. It’s a must for everyone who is thinking about cultivating indoor plants. However, if you’re thinking about having them, you need to be smart about it, as LED grow lights require a little bit different approach. In this article, you’ll learn about the five most common mistakes that people make when they are using high output LED grow lights.

Overwatering

If you still have a traditional lighting system, check something out. When the light is on for a more extended period of time, put your hands close to the bulb. The temperature there is much higher. LED grow lights are cooler than all the other light sources, and therefore your plants will evaporate less.

Once you order LED lights, for example, from the Renovator Store and install them, you will see the difference right away. Plenty of people don’t take it into consideration, and they end up overwatering their crops. Needless to say, it has terrible consequences on the plants. Remember - LED lights are equal to less evaporation, so you should reduce the amount of water. In order to avoid waterlogging, make sure to adjust the watering frequency appropriately. Good thing, though, is the fact that you’ll be able to reduce energy consumption and save money on water. It’s a double win!

Inappropriate light-dark ratio

Once people install LED grow lights, they tend to increase the time of lighting. It’s something strange and unnatural, and you have to know that it’s a mistake. Your goal is to provide an ideal copy of outdoor conditions. We get that it is tempting to turn on the light for a more extended period of time (especially when bills are much lower), but remember not to do it. Darkness is equally as important for proper plant growth, as the light.

Keep in mind that recreating seasonal transitions will significantly help - during the summer months, plants need more light, and during the winter months, when they would get less light anyways, you can slightly reduce the lighting time. Your goal should be to reproduce outdoor conditions that plants would usually have. When you do that, you’ll provide them with the best possible growing conditions.

Ignoring plant species and plant growth cycle and light spectrum correlation

Always make sure that the light’s spectrum is correctly adjusted to the plant species and growth cycle. Most LED light users don’t bother to fix the light spectrum, maybe because they don’t even suspect that crops could use small modifications. When you start your indoor cultivation project, make sure to avoid this mistake. The studies confirmed the positive aspect of spectral tuning on plants, so make good use of this knowledge.

Setting lights at the wrong distance

This is one of the most commonly made mistakes. It doesn’t matter if lights are too far or too close to your plants. In both cases, it’s a dangerous mistake that can potentially even kill your cultivation, if you don’t react quickly enough. To avoid such a danger, make sure that you put the lights at around 15 inches distance. It’s optimal value, and you can be sure that the light will be helping the plants instead of killing them.

Not paying attention to the plant design

Although this issue we cover at the very end, it’s something that you should consider even before starting the indoor cultivation project. Putting too few or too many plants under each light will make it difficult for plants to grow. Before anything else, make sure to know what the desired light-to-plant ratio is, and make sure that you stick to it. Once you know how much light you need, you will know how many plants you can grow. When there are too many plants under each light, you risk that some of them will be in shadow, which will make it hard for them to grow.

The mistakes that we covered above are kind of tricky. It’s easy to overlook all of them, as they are not very obvious. Make sure to avoid making all of these mistakes - they will slow you down and irritate you. Contrary to popular belief, growing plants is not an easy thing to do - you have to be patient, but also you have to know what exactly you should do, and what things you must avoid.