We have covered the different types of lighting setup for your grow room in a separate video.
Here we want to concentrate on the importance of light itself.
As with water, all plants need light to grow. They use light during the process of photosynthesis, to metabolize water and carbon dioxide in the air, to help them grow.
With cannabis plants, as a replication of nature, you should have a period during the day when the lights are on, and a period at nighttime when there is darkness.
Believe it or not, plants also need to rest and ‘have a nap’ as they can’t grow 24 hours a day, they just become worn out and struggle.
However, where cannabis plants are concerned, they also respond better to certain of the seven spectrums that make up light - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, depending on the growth stage.
Photosynthesis is optimum when using red light and the same spectrum which for which flowering can thrive, while ultimately green light is optimum for the weeks before flowering.
Blue light encourages steady growth, resulting in a strong stem and healthy leaves. If you use red light too soon, the plant will become straggly and unwieldy, a bit like having your own triffid!
Once your plants have entered the vegetative stage, ideally you want to provide a minimum of 250 watts of light per square metre, but 1000 watts is ideal.
Where you need to be careful is that some lights can generate considerable heat to produce 1000 wats of light, so LED lights could be a good choice.
Additionally, certain LED light setups allow you to regulate the amount of red, blue and green light.
So, once you want to encourage flowering, switching to blue light, then finally red light will get the best results.
Additionally, having previously used 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness, this should be staged down to 12 hours of each, at which point bud production will be at its optimum.
Lets us know which colour spectrum's you use in the comment section below.
