How Metal Halide Grow Lights can Help Your Indoor Garden
If you are wondering what type of light source you should use for your indoor plants, there are some good reasons to consider metal halide grow lights. These particular bulbs have given gardeners great results over the years, especially working with plants over 24” in height.The reason these particular grow lights are good for larger plants is that larger plants require a more powerful light source than a typical incandescent or fluorescent bulb. Combined with appropriate temperature and air circulation, metal halide bulbs have been shown to produce fantastic results. These bulbs help growers maintain better control over the size of their plants and help promote photosynthesis.
Typically used on construction sites, stadiums and parking lots, Metal Halide lamps produce a very high intensity light, which is very bright. With this kind of intensity in a garden environment, your larger plants could really flourish.
Because of this level of brightness, a gardener needs to take care as to not place the lamp to close to the plants. Usually placing the lamp about ten inches away from the plant will suffice. A thermometer should also be used to measure and monitor the heat emitted from the bulb.
Be careful not to use metal halide grow lights to early in the growing phase of your plants. In the early stages of growth, your plants are developing their strength to support flowers or fruit. Using a high intensity bulb to early may allow your plants to grow faster, but they may not be strong enough when it comes to bearing fruit or flowers.
When considering any light source for indoor gardening, one should take a look at where the light produced by a light source falls on the electromagnetic color spectrum. Blue light is said to be best at growing leafy plants, whereas red or orange light are better at growing flowers.
Metal Halide bulbs have a rating of 80 on the color-rendering index. This index has a rating from zero to one hundred. Eighty is a very good rating and gives an indication of the quality of light produced by MH bulbs.
In an ideal situation, indoor gardening lamps will give off light that is the color temperature of sunlight, or 6500 degrees Kelvin. Grow lights are rated based on their correlated color temperature. A typical Metal Halide bulb will range from 3000 Kelvin (yellow), to 20,000 Kelvin (blue) on the correlated color spectrum.
What are the components of a Metal Halide Bulb?
An arc tube made of quartz, alumina, or aluminum oxide
Glass Bulb
Metal Base
Noble Gas, Mercury Vapor, and metals that produce the light
Tungsten electrodes connected to the arc tube
Ballast, which controls the current flowing through the arc tube
Connection to power
Heat is generated through the metal halide ballast, which should be placed outside the gardening room if at all possible.
Some final thought on the metal halide bulb:
Bulb Life: typically about 12,00 hours
Available wattage for these bulbs: 150, 175, 250, 400, 600, 1000, 1100
Recyclability: Metal Halide bulbs and ballasts can be recycled at specialty recycling centers.
I hope this helps you in your efforts to grow plants you can brag about!
GLASS (ZX SPECTRUM)
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