LED Christmas light grow box – Update #2
Jan 18, 2009 LEDs, cheap, cucumbers, indoor grow box, indoor seed starting, wondersoil
I noticed some of my daisies were getting a little leggy so added 60 more LEDs (red) to my LED grow box. This time I was a little less calculated about positioning but still fee like I got a decent pattern going. I also decreased the drill size and didn’t even need to use the hot glue gun.
As you can see from the pictures below the plants (cucumbers, onions, cilantro, purple coneflowers) have a dark green complexion and are less leggy compared to the results I would get from my window sill. The cucumber plants after two weeks have grown up enough to move into the LEDs grow box’s big brother.
Related posts:
January 19th, 2009 at 7:40 AM
What’s the ratio of red to blue LEDs you’re using?
January 19th, 2009 at 8:43 AM
Currently it is 50% white LEDs, 50% red LEDs, couldn’t find any blue Christmas lights after Christmas. If you look at spectrograph of the white LEDs it does provide a good full spectrum with high intensity in blue spectrum. I have a great post that explains the color spectrum of various LEDs with pictures and much more detail. I would prefer to make it 80/20 blue to red (need to buy 100 blue LEDs) since in my case I am using this to only grow seedlings and want to encourage short stalky growth. Though should be the opposite if you want to grow mature plants.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:40 PM
Shawn, this is seriously cool stuff! Now, I wonder if I can still find any led light sets anywhere???
January 28th, 2009 at 1:47 PM
I’ve been finding the lights online. They’re not as cheap as they probably were in the stores right after christmas, but at least we can still buy them… check out buy.com in particular.
February 4th, 2009 at 10:25 AM
Nice job. Really cheap and clean.I am really interested in this and I have some doubts. These Xmas lights usually blink is this ok to growing plants ??? Is there any calcs to be made, like if I have a 250 HPS bulb and want to change to LEDs how many LEDs would I need. Is there a correct positioning of the RED and BLUE LEDs on the surface ???Regards,Soons
February 5th, 2009 at 7:21 PM
Soons, normally having the lights blink are optional (provide a special bulb to switch out to cause them to blink) in my case they didn’t blink by default.The magic formula for Red/Blue seems to be from 8-9 reds to 1 blue requiring a little extra blue during the earlier stages of growth. One site I like is GreenPineLane he has done plenty of experiments with various homemade and commercially available lights and provided lots of photos and observations. The best part is he is not selling anything so results are not skewed by the products he doesn’t sell. As for replacing your 250 watt HPS from the results I have seen at the site above and others seems most people have had luck with 90-100 watts to replace their HPS which saves some money on electricity but the $400-500 price tag on a unit that big can be considerable to your wallet.
February 7th, 2009 at 2:54 AM
CheapVegGardener,Thank you for the answer. The most interesting fact to me is that LEDs don’t put out heat. Where I live can get pretty hot sometimes. and the 250 wattage is just a wild guess, as it seems to be difficult to find lower wattage around here.The GeenPineLane is really something, really nice job the guy does.Regards,Soons
March 4th, 2009 at 2:04 PM
I’m very interesting to your experiments!I have built a chip selfmade grow LED lights to promote indoor growth. In the near future i want to start some new experiments. I published in my blog instructions to buil the grow light and I’m collecting some links where you can buy online chip led with the right specifics. Here’s the link:http://www.actionmutant.net/en/coltivazione/piante-carnivore/led-per-coltivare-piante-bassi-consumi-ed-alta-efficienza/
March 4th, 2009 at 2:06 PM
I’m very interesting to your experiments!I have built a chip selfmade grow LED lights to promote indoor growth. In the near future i want to start some new experiments. I published in my blog instructions to buil the grow light and I’m collecting some links where you can buy online chip led with the right specifics.Here’s the link:http://www.actionmutant.net/en/coltivazione/piante-carnivore/led-per-coltivare-piante-bassi-consumi-ed-alta-efficienza/
March 11th, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Very awesome project. As I live in Michigan (particularly the Saginaw metro area) I fin it is easiest to get my LED Lights from Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. It’s about 20 minutes away and is about as awesome as some of your projects. You can also find LED lights on their website at http://www.bronners.com.(And its not a product plug, I just like Bronners. And they [via twitter and the Bronners newsletter] mentioned this project. Finally, a way to use my LED’s so that they won’t last forever.
February 23rd, 2010 at 7:37 PM
I read about this website in Birds and Blooms mag. I love it! As soon as I seen the LED grow box I had to make my own (before I read all the direction) So I made mine with 100 reg. clear lights, 100 blue LED and 100 red LED. Do you think this is to many light? Should I change the ratio? please help P.S. Thank you for such a great website.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:21 AM
Unfortunately, Christmas LED lights aren’t all that efficient or bright. The blue LEDs will fool the plants into believing there’s enough light so they aren’t leggy. They won’t grow that fast, and the LEDs will consume more power than a good compact fluorescent light (CFL) (for the same amount of light). Get yourself a good light meter to see just how (lack) of power this system has, or use a control group with a CFL or the sun to see the difference.
I’ve used the UFO blue/red grow lights, and while they are very bright, as much as half a sun according to the light meter I have, the sunlight still works way better.
Also check wikipedia’s page on light efficiency — the only other thing to consider here is some LEDs can be pointed right at the plants, which helps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy