Make Your Own LED Grow Light to Grow Plants All Year

During the winter it is hard or even impossible for most people to grow plants. You will most likely have to grow indoors. Inside often does not give plants enough light in the winter to grow. However there are ways that you can continue your garden even during the harshest and coldest of winters.

The secret to growing plants in the winter and even growing plants better then ever in the spring is to use grow lights to grow your plants. You may have heard about grow lights because they are often used in growing marijuana. However you can use a grow light to grow all plants not just the illegal ones.

There area couple different kinds of grow lights that you can get. One kind uses a special and expensive bulb that will fit into a regular light socket. these special bulbs are expensive and use lots of electricity. There is another alternative that is more energy efficient and much cheaper and that is to use LED lights. It is these led lights that we will be looking at making.

Plants only need light in the red 660nm light spectrum and the blue 460nm light range. So it is best to buy LEDs that are in this light range. Any red or blue LED light will work though just not as effectively. Blue is only needed at certain times such as during blooming so you do not need as many blue lights.

You will need some LED lights, either a PCB, or wire, and either a battery or a power source, and possibly a resistor. If you know how to solder you can use the PCB otherwise you will need to wire by hand. Using batteries will be the easiest option but will use up batteries. If you have no experience with electronics though batteries are safer and your best bet. You should use caution when working with electronics but the power we will be using is mostly DC unless you use a power source and the power is very low but caution should still be used.

You will want to wire some LEDs together and connect them to a battery. Or if you have a power source you will want to connect them to the cables from the power source. Depending on how many LEDs you use and the power output you may need to put a resistor in front of the LEDs. You can easily find a resistor calculator online and fill in the number blanks such as number of LEDs and power to find what resistor you will need. A simple one or two light LED light could simply use a single 1.5 volt battery like AAA.

Now that you have your grow light you can turn it on at night and grow your plants. Typically plants will be able to get 12-16 hours of growth in a day but need to rest the rest of the day. You should be able to grow better plants indoors in the winter with a grow light then outdoors in spring if you have enough light.