Let’s continue the discussion of our growing from seed gear! Lighting is a super important topic! There’s lots of options out there, so let’s talk about our favorites and the choices we’ve made.
Put simply, light from a window sill is not sufficient to grow quality garden starts. Supplemental lighting is crucial as this is what prevents “legginess” and helps to create nice, compact garden starts.
In our opinion, LED is the only option worth considering these days. The electrical efficiency and zero need to replace bulbs are far superior to both compact fluorescent and definitely incandescent lighting. There used to be a huge cost difference between LED and other tech, but these days that difference is negligible.
Philosophically, you can go with less numbers of higher power lights, or many quantities of lower power lights to cover an area. We favor high power lights, mostly because it’s both cheaper and electrically easier to wire up. We also find it uses less power over a given area, too.
Our favorite lighting these days are called quantum board LED’s. These won’t win any prize for beauty, it’s basically LED’s and a power supply strapped to an aluminum heat sink. They come in a variety of sizes, with our preference being 100 watt versions that easily cover a 3 foot by 3 foot area with plant drenching light.
As for brands, we use and like the HLG-100 series from Horticulture Lighting Group. They’re a US company with US based assembly, helping us keep things as “local as possible.” But, there’s other brands and other origins of manufacture, too, that will largely be similar in result.
The drawback to high power lighting is that they are not compatible with shelf based growing systems. They produce so much light that they must be at least a couple feet away from your plant’s tips.
Some out there will say that you don’t “need” high power lighting for seedlings. That’s usually said by people who haven’t tried it. Having used both, we like the professional quality, super compact and strong garden starts we get from high quality lighting. And herein is how we get there!
