Spider Farmer SE1000W Dimmable Full Spectrum CO2 LED Grow Light VS Grower's Choice ROI-E900 LED Grow Light

 Getting yourself a vegetable garden is a great way to protect your family from food shortages. Talk to any vegetable grower or amateur gardener and they’ll tell you that the biggest challenge in growing a garden comes from managing the stages of seedling development.

Most novice gardeners fail at this stage, causing the stress on the plant to delay growth. If you want to start your vegetable garden like a pro, you need the best seedling grow lights. Grow lights mimic the sun’s rays in a specific spectrum, giving your seedlings the optimal spectrum they need to grow quickly.

With growing areas expected to change with the upcoming Great Solar Minimum, seedling grow lights can help you get an early start to the growing season. As a result, you harvest more each year, increasing your food reserves.

In this review, we take a look at the best seedling grow lights and recommend the top products for your indoor garden.

How many watts per square foot are LED grow lights?

LED growers report that by increasing the strength of their fixtures, they have been able to achieve similar yields on plants as small as 18 inches, and if they are placed closer together or even lower, the power is about 66 watts per square foot. More space with 36 watt hours per square foot!

LED grow lights have much lower wattage per square foot than HID lighting systems. For example, a 1000W MH lamp can use up to 200–400 watts and produce about 60,000 lumens, while an LED fixture of the same size might produce 40–200 lumens but only use about 20 watts! Using LEDs in your grow space uses 80 times less energy than using MHs.

Spider Farmer SE1000W Dimmable Full Spectrum CO2 LED Grow Light

Features:

Spider Farmer LED Grow Lights feature a uniquely designed extension of 10 to provide more even and complete canopy coverage, especially in exterior growing areas. With 3710 SAMSUNG LM301B diodes, the SE1000W Led Grow Light consumes 1000 watts at 2955 umol/s, achieving an impressive PPE of 2.9 umol/J, covering a high yield full cycle growth of 4'x4'. The dimmer knob is ideal for growers to adjust light intensity for different growth stages. The SE1000W grow light comes with a detachable driver and long power cord to reduce ambient heat in the grow space and extend its lifespan. The LED diodes are coated with water repellent, so there is no need to worry about wet environment.

Grower’s Choice ROI-E900 LED Grow Light

Features:

This Grower’s Choice LED grow light boosts up to 1,000 watts of supercharged photon output. Using Growers Choice’s proven PAR formula, the ROI-E900 utilizes our unique PAR formula and 3k full-phase spectral radiance into a 4'x5' growing space, producing tremendous light output and canopy coverage. Designed to accommodate commercial growers with wider tables or trays, the ROI-E900 offers the greatest potential for extended coverage, penetration and premium yields. The ROI-E900 will give you more power and more flowers!

How to Choose the Best Full-Spectrum Grow Lights?

Purchasing grow lights is not always a walk in the park. If you want more information on growth light specifications, you’ve come to the right place. The following buying guide covers everything you need to know before you set out to find grow lights for your operation.

Light Strength
Before you can begin shopping, you will need to know your target growth light intensity.

Consider the Light’s PPF Rating
The PPF, or photosynthetic photon flux, is the number of light photons that are produced by a light fixture each second. PPF is measured using a PAR, or photosynthetic active radiation, meter. The measurement is then expressed in umols per square meter per second. An ideal PPF rating ranges from 400 to 700 nanometers.

Check the PAR Findings
PAR, or photosynthetic active radiation, is the wavelength of light within the visible range. This figure starts at 400 nanometers and ends at 700 nanometers. Your target PAR depends on the type of plants you are growing as well as the distance of your lights from your plants.

Common vegetables, including tomatoes and lettuce, require 400 to 500 umols/m2/sec. Meanwhile, the recommended PAR level for plants is 300 to 400 umols/m2/sec.

Few plants require more than 1,000 µmols/m2/sec of PAR. In most cases, a light that offers 500 to 1,000 umols should be sufficient. You can usually get away with lower PAR ranges during early growth stages. Meanwhile, more powerful PAR ranges are needed during flower and fruiting.

Analyze the PPFD
PPFD, or photosynthetic photon flux, is a unit of measurement used to describe light intensity in a specific area. Or, in other words, it is the amount of light that falls on the PAR region of your growing area every second. As we already know, plants need 500 to 1,000 umols of PAR per square foot per second.

PPFD is sometimes confused with PPF. However, PPFD is the amount of light that actually impacts plants. Whereas, PPF is the amount of light produced by a fixture.

Spectrum
Light spectrum is yet another key factor concept that you need to understand before you select the right grow light. A qualifying light needs to offer a full spectrum of light colors to promote photosynthesis (chlorophyll absorption). Most growing experts recommend a full-spectrum fixture that offers a ratio of blue and red light as well as some UB and far-right radiation (photomorphogenesis. This spectrum usually covers the full photosynthetically active radiation range (PAR) or 400 to 700 nanometers.

Virtually every stage of the plant life cycle is dependent on targeted light wavelengths. This includes fruiting potential, flowering yield, vegetation growth, root growth, harvest characteristics, and harvest yield.

Blue light, which also falls within the 100 to 400-nanometer range, can determine the vegetation development, root development, and flower development of plants grown indoors. Meanwhile, red light (600 to 700 nanometers) improves plants’ photosynthesis and biomass. The UV wavelength, which ranges from 100 to 400 nanometers, is responsible for flavor and photosynthesis.

Most plants come with a recommended blue to red ratio. For example, lettuce fairs best with a 35:65 blue to red ratio. Meanwhile, tomatoes turn out best when they are exposed to a 5:1 ratio of red and blue.

Some growers think of light spectrum ratios as an element of plant design. When you understand the impact of light spectrum ratios on your plants, you can easily make changes to determine the outcome of your harvests.

Wattage
One of a grow light’s most important performance specs happens to be power consumption. This is the amount of wattage that your fixture draws from the outlet. The diodes that are built into LED lights are capable of producing intense light with small amounts of electricity.

Of course, wattage is also used to measure the amount of power that a fixture produces. Oftentimes, a manufacturer’s reported light output is higher than its reported wattage draw. When it comes to LEDs, there is often an exaggerated difference between these numbers. For example, the KingLED Reflector Series LED Grow Light mentioned above is described as having a 3,000-watt output and a 615-watt draw.

While you might be eager to save a buck on your electricity bill, LED lights with low electricity consumption are not always as promising as they appear. Oftentimes the lower power equates to lower production. If your fixture isn’t capable of producing enough PPFD, then it’s not going to help grow plants efficiently.

Most growers like to have a good idea of how many watts of electricity they’re using per square foot of grow space. This helps them to calculate their overall electricity expenditure. A draw of 20 to 50 watts per square foot is standard. You can use this calculator to determine how many watts of power your lights will use per square foot.

Conclusion

There are many types of grow lights, and which one is best for you depends on the types of plants you choose to grow indoors. Which of the best LED grow lights has caught your attention? Please share your comments below.