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Urban gardening is a growing trend in many places across the country. As people become more and more concerned about where their food actually comes from, the idea of growing most of it themselves is increasingly attractive. The ability to grow their plants indoors with LED grow lights makes the prospect of urban gardening attainable even for people in large cities where plots of arable land are impossible to find.LED grow lights work better than other types of grow lights for several reasons.

First, it is easier to tailor the wavelength emission of LED grow lights, so there is a great range of times when the bulbs can be used. Second, LED lights in general need much less electricity to create the same light output, so they can decrease electric costs by large amounts when used exclusively. Lastly, LED grow lights don’t produce as much heat as other grow bulbs, which means they can be placed much closer to the plants without burning them. Having the lights as close as possible to the plants will focus the light better and help the plants grow faster. The reduced heat from the grow lights will also mean that your plants will emit less water vapor, which means you will have to water them less frequently.

The easiest way to use grow lights of any kind is to choose bulbs with a wavelength output that closely mimics the sun. Since all plants grow only with the light of the sun in the wild, this method is a guaranteed way for you to give your plants the light they need. The same bulbs can be used for your garden’s entire life cycle, so it isn’t ever necessary to change bulbs when they aren’t burnt out. However, if you want to encourage faster and more even growth with more fruit production, one of the simplest ways to do so is to tailor your lighting to each plant’s needs.

Natural sunlight contains the entire spectrum of colors, which means it contains the whole spectrum of visible light waves. Most plants actually require different wavelengths during the course of their maturation, something that even many experienced gardeners do not know. Many plants require more light in the blue spectrum when they are just sprouting, while they need more wavelengths in the red spectrum during the flowering stage. By providing blue grow lights while your seeds germinate and start to grow and then switching to red grow lights during the later stage, you can usually get healthier plants with more leaf production.

In addition, sometimes plants that originate from different parts of the world also may grow better with different lighting. We get our seasons and climate regions not because of our distance from the sun relative to the equator, as many people might think. The radius of the earth is such a small measurement in comparison with our overall distance from the sun, so it really doesn’t change much. Instead, it is the atmosphere that is responsible for our seasons and the extreme differences between regions near the equator and the poles. Around the equator, the sun’s light is passing through the atmosphere at almost a ninety-degree angle, making the distance the light waves must travel through the atmosphere as short as possible.

Near the poles, the light waves enter the atmosphere at an angle closer to twenty degrees, which means that they have to pass through many more miles of atmosphere before they reach the surface. Every mile of atmosphere makes the light weaker and smaller, so the more atmosphere, the colder the climate will be. As the earth tilts on its axis as it circles the sun, it changes the degrees at which sunlight passes through the atmosphere for the regions between the equator and the poles, creating the fairly wide variation in summer and winter temperatures. Plants have evolved to grow best in their native regions, which means you will get the best growth if you are aware of how much light output, warmth, and “daylight” time each of your plants needs.