Gavita Pro 1700e Gen2 LED Grow Light VS Grower’s Choice ROI-E680 LED Grow Light Reviews 2021

When it comes to indoor farming, it’s totally a different ball-game particularly in the lighting department. Which is why grow lights come into the picture.

Are you new to full spectrum LED grow lights? If so, you can’t miss out on these “enlightening” tips. In this post, we’ll explain everything you need to know before buying LED grow lights.

HOW LED GROW LIGHTS WORK？

If LED lights for growing are new to you, or if you’re thinking of making the switch from high-pressure sodium (HPS) or HID grow lamps, here’s a quick rundown of how they work. Plants need red light to help with photosynthesis. It’s this light waveband that encourages plants to grow long stems, big leaves, and it can help with germination and flowering.

Also important are blue lights. These help with stems and leaves, but if there’s too much blue light, it can inhibit the growth. Plants grown indoors need a bit of blue light, which also helps with the leaf thickness and the amount of chlorophyll the plant contains.

Green light is usually considered less important, but a little bit added to the necessary reds and blues can help with photosynthesis.

Finally, white light isn’t necessary. You can achieve a white light with a an RGB (red, green, blue) blend of lights, but test results have shown it isn’t needed. And because indoor plants don’t need much green, you’ll notice most LED lights for growing have a purplish glow to them.

What Features Should You Look For In LED Lights?

If you’re convinced LED grow lights are right for you, then you’re probably wondering how to choose the right brand. To help you on your quest, let’s run through a few significant features.

Just because most LED grow lights are easy to set up doesn’t mean you can’t run into problems. Here are two of the most common issues people have with LEDs and how to fix them.

Don’t Burn Your Buds – Avoiding Light Burn

Yes, LED grow lights are less intense than HIDs, but that doesn’t mean they can’t burn your buds. Many COB LEDs can be just as bright as high-grade HIDs.

Unfortunately, there’s no optimal distance for every LED light. Figuring out what works best for your buds requires daily monitoring and experimentation. Always inspect your flowers for warning signs of light burn, which includes yellow fan leaves, brown-edged leaves, and bleach-white buds.

In general, you should keep your LED grow lights at least 18” away from your plants during the flowering stage. During all other stages of development, you might need to keep your LED lights between 20 – 30” away for optimal growth.

Watch Out For Overwatering

One mistake that experienced cannabis growers make when using LED lights is overwatering their plants. Usually, this is an issue for growers who are transitioning to LEDs after using HIDs.

Since HID lights are so intense, they dry out the soil much faster than LED light setups. To avoid potentially overwatering your plants, please check the soil instead of blindly following a pre-determined schedule.

Gavita Pro 1700e LED

Pros:

• GC-3K full phase spectrum light

• Working life of up to 54,000 hours

• 3-year warranty

• Can be used with Growers Choice Master Controller for large scale grows

• IP65 Waterproof Rating

Cons:

• You’ll need to dish out extra cash for the Master Controller

Grower’s Choice ROI-E680

Pros:

• Affordable

• Effective design in a small package

• 2-year warranty

Cons:

• Not waterproof rated

• 240V power cord is sold separately

What are the light requirements of plants?

• We all know that plants need light, right? In kindergarten we all put our seed in a dixie cup and place it in the windowsill. Add the other magical ingredient – water – and up comes the sprout, always moving towards the light.
  
  Plants seem to instinctively “know” that without sunlight their growth will be stunted.
  
  You can’t just use any light you find, however.
  
  We’ve already covered some of the differences in the lighting options available to indoor gardeners, but how do we know which is better? First we need to know what makes light helpful to a plant in the first place. There are three factors that have substantial impact on how the light a plant receives will affect its growth. These factors are:

• Light Quantity – Historically, light quality has been expressed in units called lumens. While useful to scientific research on light affecting human sight, the term did not accurately account for measuring the photon particles of light coming into contact with a plant. Botanists and horticulturists now prefer to use Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD); an explicit measurement used to calculate the number of photons hitting a given surface – per sq. meter, per second.
  
  A second term of value to plant science is the Daily Light Integral, which is simply a measurement that includes the photon density (PPFD) and the number of hours that a plant spends exposed to that rate of photon contact. Generally speaking, more light is required for flowering than for vegetativce growth.

• Light Quality – As I mentioned earlier, not just any ‘ol light will do. We need special kinds of lights to grow plants. Why? When we talk about quality of light, particularly as plants determine it, we are really referring to spectrum – or color. All plants have photoreceptors that are triggered by photons of their respective spectrum entering the plant’s system. When taking light quality under consideration in your own project, ensure that your lights are either full-spectrum or that you have separate lamps to account for the spectrum of light needed at the different stages of growth.

• Photoperiod (Light Duration) – The photoperiod is simply the amount of time the plants spend in the light or the dark. It can get a bit more complicated than that, however, as these light/dark cycles can be controlled to manipulate growth of indoor gardens. A popular example is found in applying large doses of light for 18-20 hours/day throughout the vegetative stage, then cutting the light down to ~12 hours or so to trigger the flowering stage. This is known as photoperiodism and is used to optimize growth and yields.

Final thoughts

No matter your skill level, LED grow lights offer indoor cultivators a plethora of positives. Not only are these lights eco-friendly, but they can also produce seriously sticky buds without draining your electricity bill. As long as you follow the suggested tips listed above, you should have no problem using best LED grow lights on your ganja growing adventures.