Seedhunting

What kind of light do you use?

Just nature

I have to orientate me this year if Led is good enough already as grow-light
and maybe the price get more reasonable
Do you know other alternatives ?
best not consuming giant amounts of energy

Roland

So far I have only used Fluorescent T12s (old fashioned kind) and slightly better T8; I  would really like to get high output T5 (not regular cheap T5 under kitchen cabinet lights) but they are expensive,  though a friend told you me you can get them much cheaper if you do not buy the full set-up with reflectors, but then you need to build/prepare your area with your own reflectors/reflective surfaces, or you are wasting your light; these give much higher light (more like full sun, unlike regular fluorescents) for reasonable electrical consumption..

I'd also like to try LED, but I want to experiment with regular LED sold as household light-- the ones sold for plants are supposed to be more efficient, so they have no white light- only blue and/or red- so its very ugly, it may work for growing plants ( may work, the extravagant claims made by the sellers of these lights are controversial) but you cannot see the plants at all properly under them.. I think if I used them, I would put some regular lights between them, so that when I want to look at the plants, I could turn off the coloured lights for proper viewing! Household LEDs are regular white light, and of course not as powerful, but I would like to experiment with them-- maybe they would be good just to supplement weak natural light, and very inexpensive for electricity!

Of course, you can get regular flourescent lights (T12,T8,T5, etc.) in soft white, cool white, daylight,etc., or so they are called.  Of these, the higher Kelvin rating is better for plants (3300K-3500K).  I don't know the K rating on grow lights.

Depends on the plants, too-- some seem to respond better to warmer light, some to cooler... cacti and succulents, for example, are often grown under all cool lights, seems to be less etiolation...