Fluorescent Grow Lights - Review Fluorescent Grow Light Options

Grow lights are a great tool to help kick off your garden in the spring, or to keep your garden going year round. There are quite a few choices in grow lights, ranging from the high tech LED grow lights and the High Intensity lights to the traditional incandescent grow lights. Let’s take a look at the most popular option for the home gardener - fluorescent grow lights.

A good rule of thumb for the size of your grow lights is to use about 25 watts of lighting for every square foot of garden. That assumes that the grow light is the primary source of lighting. If you are supplementing natural sunlight then you may get by with less than that, but you may also decide to use more to encourage more growth.

One of the problems with a lot of lighting is the heat generated by the lights. In practical terms, while some types of lighting are touted to save energy, for the home gardener the energy cost is not as significant as the heat saved by higher efficiency lighting. This is why incandescent lights are usually only used for spot lighting, and fluorescent grow lights have found favor with the home gardener.

Since none of these lights can match the sun for light intensity, the most critical aspect of using a grow light is to make sure the lighting matches the plants needs, and to position the light as close as feasible to the garden area. It is this requirement that drives the particular choice of lights for the home gardener. Light diminishes approximately with the square of the distance for a single bulb, which means that if your double the distance to the plant, you only get 1/4 the light, so keeping it close is important.

Tabletop Grow Light $129.00 Store: Gardener’s Supply Company EarthLED GrowLED - 5 Watt LED Grow Light $34.99 Store: GoGreenSolar.com Grow Light and Replacement Bulb $29.95 Store: Henry Fields Seed and Nursery Co. Sun System HPS 150W Grow Light Fixture - Complete With Lamp Included: J $78.25 Store: Kalyx.com Hydrofarm 2ft Jump Start Grow Light System $55.19 Store: UnbeatableSale, Inc. Hydrofarm 2 ft Jump Start Fluorescent Grow Light System $45.28 Store: Buy.com Hydrofarm FLC0125D Fluorescent Grow Light System $110.44 Store: Buy.com Sun System 8 High Wattage Fluorescent Grow Lamp Fixture: J $89.95 Store: Kalyx.com Fluorescent Lamp: Verilux 48” T-8 Fluorescent Grow Lamp F32 T8 Sun - 32Watt - 6280K: J $16.15 Store: Kalyx.com

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Compact Fluorescent Grow Lights

For just a single plant, a simple light fixture can often be put into service as a grow light, with a compact fluorescent bulb doing the chore. They are also used in conjunction with specialized reflectors to create some of the smaller fixtures used as grow lights. Note that while many of the compact fluorescent bulbs used for room lighting purposes are often well under 20 watts, those compact units used as grow lights are often much larger, for example Hydrofarm markets some 95 and 200 watt compact fluorescent bulbs.

Fluorescent Grow Light Fixtures

A typical grow light setup for the garage or the basement is to use a fixture that is similar to a standard fluorescent fixture, using 2 or more forty inch grow light bulbs. Many use a high output lamp, (for example the T5 lamps from Hydrofarm are high output lamps) that make a big difference in the growth rates you will see on your indoor plants.

Some fixtures are sized to sit on a table, using smaller lights like a 24 inch bulb, like the Hydrofarm Jump Start units. Others are built as complete standalone units, complete with shelving to hold the plants being grown.

With either of these units, be sure to get one with an adjustable height for the fixture, to allow for plant growth and still keeping the light as close as possible to the plants. Without that you will be frustrated.

If you are interested in some user feedback on these units, click through on the Amazon link to the unit you’re interested in and see what the Amazon user feedback has to say.