LED christmas light grow box

[Anny]

Has anyone tried anything like this before?

http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/01/cheap-led-light-and-grow-box.html


I am really interested in trying it.

Would normal LED lights provide enough light for growing plants?

I don't have any sunny windows to grow plants indoors and I don't want to use a bunch of electricity to grow my seedling either, do you think it's work a try?

 

[Nifty]

I'm not convinced. I'd like to do more research into the light spectrum emitted by the LEDs and the requirements of the plants.

BTW, LEDs still aren't as efficient as fluorescent lamps (but they are getting there). LEDs are more robust than fluorescents and way more efficient than incandescent.

 

[cheapvegetablegardner]

Biggest disadvantage of LEDs is price, greatest advantage is controlling wavelength which has good scientific evidence to support. If you really want full spectrum there is always white LEDs which looking at a spectrograph is pretty similar to blue LEDs anyway. For the right price you can get a good working setup that can rival HIDs but for $400-500 and 90 watts of power usage. You can do the work yourself and probably get the cost down to $200-300 but at 90 watts ROI can be a while compared to fluorescents. I personally use CFLs for my bigger grow box though the LEDs work pretty well for the small space for my small seedlings.

Link to Computerized CFL grow box: http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/01/fully-automated-computerized-grow-box.html

 

[DrakeMaiden]

I like that the LED grow box is self-contained . . . now, if you can make them stackable, that would be awesome! I wonder if just drilling a few holes near the top would allow sufficient air flow without letting too much humidity out?

Following one of the links that cheapvegtablegardener gave at the bottom of his update #2 page, after looking around a little I found a chart that seems to show that most of the light absorbed by plants is either blue or red -- which makes sense, because chlorophyl is green, which it seems to me means that plants reflect green light (don't absorb it). Been a while since I've read up on these things.