Plant Grow Lights: the High Pressure Sodium Light

If you garden in an indoor setting, some of the most important pieces of equipment you will need are proper grow lights. These lamps will ideally mimic as closely as possible natural sunlight for optimal plant growth and development. One popular choice with growers is the high pressure sodium light.

The high pressure sodium light, which are often called HPS lamps or HPS lights, are favored by indoor gardeners who are growing plants that they wish to grow fruits or flowers. The HPS lamps give off light in the red and orange color spectrums, and plants need this light spectrum in order to bring on fruiting and flowering. If seedlings were being grown, they would prefer a blue light spectrum, which helps plants to produce vegetation, necessary at the early growing stages but less beneficial when the plants reach maturity.

HPS lights last a long time, even as long as two years. They cost less to run than incandescent grow lamps do as well. They produce six times the amount of light as an incandescent bulb does using the same watt of consumed energy to do so.

HPS lamps will need to be used in conjunction with other indoor gardening equipment. This will typically include a ballast. A ballast is used to control the electrical current flow to the light bulb. Because HPS lamps tend to run at a high temperature, some type of a cooling system will need to be in place. These are often used together with reflectors, which help to increase the spread of the light to a larger area of growing surface.

A High Pressure Sodium light can also be combined with a metal halide light bulb, which emits light in the blue spectrum. If these two bulbs are placed in the same reflector, they can produce all the light that a plant needs to grow from infancy to maturity.

In addition to the high pressure sodium light, many growers are turning to the LED grow light for indoor garden lighting. An LED grow light runs cool, eliminating the need for cooling systems, and they are very light in weight, an important consideration when the light fixtures must be hung and the height adjusted above growing plants. They also use the least amount of energy of any of the HID grow lights to run, making them economical to use in a greenhouse setting, where several lights must be purchased and used.

All of these grow lights are available online from grow light merchants.