Yo, what up growers! It’s your boy Dan here, and today we’re gonna talk about all the technical stuff you need to know when it comes to grow lights for your cannabis plants. You might have seen a bunch of letters and numbers on the side of your grow light packaging and been like, “What the hell is this?” Well, don’t worry, my dudes, I got you covered. In this article, we’re gonna break down all those terms like LUX, PAR, PPF, PPFD, and lumens and explain what they mean for you and your dank buds.
First things first, let’s talk about why light is so important for your plants. Photosynthesis, baby! This is the process where plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to make energy while releasing oxygen as a byproduct. This happens in chloroplasts within the plant cell that contain chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color and it absorbs red and blue light from the visible spectrum while reflecting green. Red light is mainly used during flowering while blue light is super important for seedling and vegetative stages.
Now that we got some science out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of measuring light for growing cannabis. We got foot-candles, lux, lumens, PAR, PPF, PPFD…damn! How do we keep track of all this? Well, we’ll break it down for ya.
Foot-candles measure light intensity but not at the source. It measures how bright an area is being illuminated. Lux measures how much light is received by a surface but does it in square meters instead of square feet. One foot-candle equals 10.76 lux so if you need to compare the two just remember that. Lumens measure how much visible light is emitted by a source regardless of the surface.
PAR stands for photosynthetic active radiation and describes wavelengths of light within the visible range of 400-700nm that plants need for photosynthesis. PPF measures PAR as the number of photosynthetic photons released from a source per second. PPFD measures PAR delivered to a specific area per second.
When it comes to growing cannabis, we’d recommend concentrating on the measures most important for plant growth – PAR, PPF and PPFD – because these figures will tell you how much light your plants are receiving and actually using as opposed to other information that doesn’t matter as much.
Daily Light Integral (DLI) is the total number of photosynthetically active photons that land on a square meter over 24 hours. For fruit or vegetable-bearing crops (like cannabis), they require between 20-40 moles of light per day with 40 being optimal.
So there you have it, my fellow growers! It might seem confusing at first but once you get the hang of it you’ll be able to select the perfect grow lights for your cannabis plants with ease. Remember to pay attention to PAR, PPF and PPFD as these are the most important figures for your plants’ growth and development.
And don’t forget to check out ILGM for some dank strains on sale right now! Peace out!
