Growing plants requires diligent efforts to give them the correct amount of water and sunlight. Moving a garden indoors and using LED grow lights can help create an environment conducive to effective growth, especially when following these essential tips for placing LED grow lights.
Using Reflective Walls
There is a precise science to determining how far apart your LED grow lights should be from your plants. Little tweaks may significantly impact whether your plants get the amount of light necessary for optimal growth.
Using reflective surfaces may significantly alter the overall effectiveness of grow lights. With reflective walls, you won’t have to worry about the plants losing too much light. Grow rooms and grow tents with reflecting walls allow for increased light intensity by moving the lights to higher locations without sacrificing yield.
If your walls are very reflective, you will get better results by mounting your LEDs higher up rather than lower down. Light from the reflecting walls spreads evenly throughout the plant and penetrates farther into the canopy, leading to more consistent harvests.
In addition to using reflecting walls, it is frequently more efficient to place the lights higher. This means that there is overlap between several lights in bigger grows when there are numerous lights in the same space. The light will be able to enter the canopy of each plant from several directions, leading to increased production.
Know the Stages
The optimal location for LED lights varies depending on the three stages of development—seedling, vegetive, and flowering.
Seedling
Seedlings must have their LED grow lights positioned higher to protect the soil from drying out. It’s tempting for producers to blast young plants with powerful lights to speed up their development, but this does more harm than good until the plants are well established. Seedlings are too delicate at this stage and need special care. As plants get older, they need more light to stimulate photosynthesis.
Vegetative
Plants thrive in bright conditions during their vegetative phases, developing and rapidly expanding through photosynthesis. Moving LED grow lights closer increases their intensity. For a profitable and consistent harvest, sturdy roots and stems are essential.
During the vegetative stage, higher light intensities stimulate development, but keep a careful eye on your plants to ensure they don’t suffer from too much or too little light.
Flowering
The flowering phase of a plant’s life cycle is the pinnacle of its development, a period of rapid fruit production and new stem growth. To achieve this, progressively move the LED grow lights higher until they are no longer over the plant canopy. Keep a watchful eye on the separation, considering the plant or crop’s ideal height and blooming conditions.
All Grown Up
Plants’ requirements change as they mature. When plants have finished growing their leaves, they begin the blooming stage. Existing plants have all the conditions they need for continued success. Place your LED grow lights 16–36 inches above the plant canopy during blooming. Inching the grow light near the plants to enhance photosynthesis might boost its intensity. Grow lights may promote lush, spreading plant growth near the canopy.
When deciding how far apart your LEDs should be, you need also think about the grow lamp’s power output, which is often proportional to the wattage of the light source.
Remember these essential LED grow light placement tips when starting indoor farming. Stylighting will provide you with elite plant lights that ensure the three stages of growth go swimmingly.