The sun is obviously the best natural light possible for your garden, but for those in climates where outdoor gardens are not feasible, what are your best options for creating adequate lighting in your garden?
As you may already know, sunlight is the most beneficial factor in growing your plants or vegetables. The chlorophyll in plants is the primary source of energy in the photosynthesis process. Sunlight provides the proper range on the color spectrum that plants need to thrive. Removing this element slows down a plants ability to reproduce along with the ability to grow. In certain areas throughout the world, outside gardens cannot thrive and survive extreme weather fluctuations, causing the need for indoor gardens.
A common debate for those tending to indoor gardens is what are the most effective sources of indoor lighting that mimics the lighting from the sun. There have been recent developments and garden lighting advancements that have led to the release of indoor artificial garden lighting that seems to be just as effective, if not more effective then natural sunlight.
Although mother nature always has a scheme, a map, to why it functions the way it does, man made products are always invented, designed to speed up the process. Humans are inpatient creatures that always feel the need to tweak with things until they can get a better outcome! A popular advancement in lighting technology is LED grow garden lighting. This development combines all of the benefits of other artificial lighting such as fluorescent lighting and HID lighting, while removing the disadvantages. It also speeds up to the growth of plants by producing light on the color spectrum in a rate that can be photosynthesized similar to sunlight. With this creation, scientists have removed all the guess work in planting and growing gardens for research, commercial or strictly personal purposes.
Fluorescent lighting has been labeled as the most economical artificial lighting used in plant growth, while offering a wide spectrum of visible and invisible light that is essential to a plants growth. This combined with the fact that fluorescent lighting emanates a very low amount of heat, causing no damage to the plant. There are two ends of the spectrum in gardening – blue and red. The blue light benefits the vegetative growth, whereas red benefits blooming plants such as flowers. Because fluorescent lights primarily emanate the blue end of the spectrum, they will show better results in vegetable gardens.
HID lighting is high intensity grow lights, offering benefits to plants indoors. It produces quite a bit more light than fluorescent and incandescent bulbs, however, it uses over 100 times more power to do so. While there is more light produced by these products, only 35% of the light is actually beneficial to the plant. Along with this, they produce a high amount of heat, which requires ventilation and air conditioning in your gardening facility.
An LED grow light may seem to cost quite a bit more, but when you factor in the decreased cost of electricity and disposal you are ultimately saving money over the fluorescent and HID lighting products. Combining the low heat quality of fluorescent garden lighting, along with the high intensity spectrum range, LED lighting can actually speed a plants growth faster than natural light, using the appropriate lighting a plant needs from the spectrum. So the debate has ended, natural lighting or artificial lighting, it is ultimately up to you!
