Another observation on
LED Lighting
LED lighting for my
violets in South Florida I have found to be equal if not superior to
flourescent lighting.
Let me state that I am
certainly not a lighting engineer, but have degrees in biology and ornamental
horticulture. I have been in the nursery
business since 1962 and grown plants since I was 6 or 7.
I have grown violets
under both flourescent and LED lighting for a little over 3 years, and
certainly not an expert. We grow not
for show but for our garden center and internet sales. The following are facts and observations I have made.
There are a number of
types of LED. I use mostly 48"
aquarium lights with red, white, green and blue bulbs. They have 3 rows of parallel lights in the
unit Interestingly, I have some with only blue and white, and see little
difference if any in growth habit. With
LED lighting being able to support coral growth in aquairums, I feel the technology
there is certainly enough to support African violet growth.
Although I really have
no interest in growing for show, I am sure LED grown plants from us would
certainly qualify for blue ribbon status, and if time and effort were taken to produce a best in show, I would
guess our LED produced plants would win out over our flourescents.
Long time,
experienced, best in show winning growers have necessarily started with
flourescents and have learned to grow under them. So they have little need to fix what is not
broken, but I bet in the near future with new hobbyists coming on, the majority
of best in shows will be from LED fixtures and flourescent lighting will take a
distant back seat.
To be fair, we have
only one Flora-cart unit with flourescent bulbs, and these bulbs are older than
a year probably 3 to 5 years. I find
that although the plants appear the same from casual observation to our LED lit
violets (over 100 strips) the root
system is superior on the LED lit ones.
About half of our LED
lighted violets receive some natural sunlight.
The other half are strictly LED.
Timers go off during periods of
bright sunlight during the afternoon when they receive good light from the sun,
and then set to come back on in late afternoon and into the evening. The ones not benefitting from natural light
get between 12 and 14 hours of LED light.
Members of our local
violet club are amazed at the growth, size of leaves and plants, as well as
quantity and size of flowers we are growing.
Our miniature and semi
miniatures are almost
always covered in blooms.
Although LED plant
lights are a bit more expensive t(48"ones are between $45 and $70) than
flourescents, they rapidly pay for themselves in electricity and cost of
flourescent bulb and ballast replacement.
With well over 100 light strips in total, I see no difference in our
electric bill. In fact it has gone down
since replacing our pool pump with a variable speed pump, all the while adding
more lights.
They produce little to
no heat, a plus when air conditioning is needed almost year round in South
Florida.
They are light weight
and super easy for an individual to
mount on stands, using only plastic
pull ties.
They are much more
attractive than bulky flourescents.
Many more LED lights
can be plugged into an individual circuit, as compared with flourescent.
There are no bulbs to
change and danger of breakage is non existent.
In a recent article
mentioning the LED lighting at Bird Tropicals in Kansas city, I observed the
same phenomenon but with a different conclusion. We went early to Mr. Bird's establishment ,
which is conducted in a cave. My main
interest for years has been orchids, but could not imagine he could compete
with South Florida orchid growers. I
could really not imagine he would have much, and mainly wanted to go to see his
Pembroke Welsh Corgies. He has 2 Corgies and we had 10 at the time, now down to
7. Corgie people have a special bond
and we were old friends by the time the big African violet group arrived.
Walking into the cave
I was spell bound with the varieties he was able to grow under LED lighting and
in Kansas no less! (Hope I am allowed to say this as I was born in Kansas and
grew up in Oklahoma.) I know first hand
how much harder it is to grow plants in the Plains as compared to South
Florida. Not only did he have many
species, I had never heard of but genera beyond my knowledge. He had even received a prestigious FCC award
on an orchid, something given out only rarely.
I was awed at his collection.
Trying to photograph
it was another story. I got the same
result as Mr. Lipson's photo in the March - April 2017 issue of AVSA. I played around with the white balance on my
Cannon T3I with little improvement. I
asked several other photographers in the group but they too were having the
same result. My conclusion is the
information the cameras were receiving are a photographic issue and not a
lighting issue as his plants were beautiful.
I see this same
phenomenon in trying to take pictures of LED lit plants on stands with my own
set up. Having little patience to
manipulate the camera settings, I simply take the plants out from under the LED
and photograph under natural lighting which my camera has settings for. The pictures are radically different. It is simply the way the camera is set to
read the type of light. I do not think
most cameras have a white balance setting for LED, and this has nothing to do
with use of LED in plant growth.
In short I love LED
and the African violet plants it produces.
At least give it a try.
But be sure and get
the ones that are for plants or aquariums. There are many more choices than
with flourescent. I see where some big
growers in California are switching to LED.
The technology is here but will
ineveitably be ever changing.