grow lights on trial
Plant Selection
Documentation
As the gardening community gains
more experience with alternative
lighting options, people discover
plants have their own lighting
preferences. Some growers tell me
certain plants prefer LEDs, while
other plants grow larger under HIDs.
The specific varieties of plants selected
for grow light trials can influence
the outcome. A proper trial would
include multiple plants and different
genotypes within a plant family before
a winner is declared.
One of the most important and
often overlooked parts of conducting
any type of trial is documenting
everything you do. This critical step
allows others to fully understand
how and why the trial was conducted
in the first place. The experimental
procedures you develop should be
complete enough so someone else can
reproduce the experiment. Make sure
to include the small stuff, like feeding
formulas, room temperatures and pest
management. This is often where the
best information hides. All assumptions
should be clearly spelled out.
Personnel Selection
Who will run the side-by-side trial?
Few members of the indoor gardening
community have enough experience
(yet!) gardening under both LEDs and
HIDs to properly construct and run a
trial. Finding someone with enough
LED experience and no bias is key to
a successful comparison trial, but that
person could be hard to come by.
Goals
One of the most important things
to do is document the goals of the
experiment. When comparing LEDs to
HIDs, what are you trying to discover?
Which one grows more harvestable
weight? Which one grows higher quality plants? Which one is more efficient
One of the most important and often
overlooked parts of conducting
any type of trial is documenting
everything you do.
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Maximum Yield USA | April 2015
in regards to total watts used? There
are many factors that can be tested.
Make sure your goals are clearly
defined and are addressed by the
methods used during your trial so your
work will have merit.
Repetition
Whatever you do, don’t fall into the
trap of thinking that one harvest from
one side-by-side trial permits you to
declare a winner. The experiment
needs to be repeated over multiple
growth cycles before you can consider
it a complete trial. Be sure to test
the influence of the grow spaces
themselves. Switch the sides each light
occupies between runs and note any
variances in results. There could be
unknown external influences, and
changing sides can help rule them out.
My final thought on side-by-side LED
vs. HID grow light trials is this: why
bother? With all the variables that
need to be controlled and tweaked
in one side’s favor, what’s the point?
Gardening, both indoors and out,
is highly personalized. What works
for one gardener might not work for
another, even if they are growing in the
same garden. As for me, I’ve decided
to stick with what 1,000 W can grow,
and keep it easy. Let’s get over wanting
the side-by-side trials, and focus more
on seeing what we can do with the least
amount of watts possible.