I made the mistake to search on youtube for some houseplant related issues and the mighty algorithm decided to bombard me with plant related content, which I submissively watched.
So in the last days I have spend some time repotting my plants with selfmade substrate, bought some new plants and pots.
But of course I have no idea if they are any good. The third link has the most potential, but I am missing some blue light there?
The problem is, when you search for “grow light” online, you get all the junkies with their 240W modules which I don’t need nor want to have. I need some small modules, 5-20W, 12V or 24V with resistors so I can dim them with PWM easily. I don’t want to expand my electricity bill more than necessary…
Does any of you have some recommendations on that?
I live in Switzerland, so links to Amazon US are of no use
I’ll be interested in seeing the reccomendations, feels Iike this winter has been particularly gloomy in the UK and I was looking for a lighting solution for houseplants and also to get some seeds germinated early for planting out in the garden.
These are lm301b, even higher efficacy, in the range of 190-200lm/w, depending how hard you drive them. Depending of what kind of plants you are growing you might want additional red spectrum for flowering plants.
That’s a cool looking pendant. Does it support UV and near IR? My best growlights were some square panels with UV and IR, resulting in a purplish glow, but damn if the pepper plants weren’t happy.
@L4M4 if I could make a recommendation, use a fan on low setting to simulate a light breeze, it’ll help the stalks/trunks grow a little stronger, and the root system will get deeper/broader. Did you happen to unbundle the roots when transplanting?
And cutting, yes.
I don’t have many plants, mostly ZZ and succulents/cactae because they survive how I treat them.
The biggest thing I learned was, that the earth I was using is for outside, not inside, and that I have to use something like Perlite to get more air to the roots. Also I didn’t know that too large pots are actually bad for the plant.
Those shown panels are not what I need, I don’t want to grow something in a dark room, I just want to supply a little extra light where needed.
I already have 3 of those big square panels, and one small one that runs on 12V. All of them I bought like 8 years ago. The big ones use 60-80v drivers, and I can’t find dimmable replacements, so I just won’t use them.
I would probably rund those linear 24v/25w panels at 5-8w each for 4h a day or something like that, just a little extra.
Most growlights are either for USB or for undimmable CC drivers, so these for 24V CV are wonderful because all I need is a cheap PWM dimmer to get them to where I want them to be.
To use this thread as some sort of “”“review”“” thread…
I like these. I have plenty of USB power supüplies laying around, so powering these is no big deal. It won’t be ultra efficient, but I don’t chase that anyway.
The panels are 26x10cm
One resistor per 2 LEDs, the red ones in the middle habe different resistor values than the white ones.
I would wish for some cold white LEDs on these, to push out a little more blue light. Maybe I will change a couple of the warm white LEDs with blue or cold white ones.
Not that I know anything about plant lighting, but that’s what I found out, a little bit more blue light would be better.
Then I will have enough for everything I was thinking about, so it will end there.
Edit: I did switch out 16 of the warm white LEDs with cold white ones and I have some blue LEDs on order. I will put probably 2 or 4 blue LEDs on these modules.
