Does marijuana grow better in sunlight or artificial grow light?
The sunlight is full and free, providing everything the plants need. The blue spectrum promotes healthy leaf growth, while the red spectrum promotes flowering and fruiting. Sunlight has an ideal wavelength balance for plant growth and flowering. Of course, artificial grow lights can also be used to help your plants. Artificial grow light cannot reproduce the exact hue of light (wavelength) beneficial to plants; Therefore, sunlight is more conducive to the growth of plants. In fact, most plant grow lights provide the same amount of energy as the sun does in just 6 hours in as long as 13 hours! On the other hand, artificial grow light is a great way to supplement sunlight, especially in winter or when there is insufficient light. Although sunlight can provide sufficient light, it can also harm indoor plants when it is too strong.
in fact; Plants especially like red and blue because both of them are very important to plant growth. However, many artificial grow light sources provide green and yellow light, which is insufficient for plants. Some grow lamps emit only red or blue light, with no variable combination.
Does marijuana grow better in sunlight or artificial grow light? In today’s cannabis cultivation, both cultivation methods have space, and both types of lighting can provide excellent results. In general, sunlight is the first choice for better cannabis plant growth.
Marijuana needs plenty of sunlight or artificial radiation to thrive – it is not a shade loving plant. It absorbs light and grows rapidly. Cannabis plants need to produce certain types of chlorophyll at different stages of cannabis growth. Chlorophyll is a compound that helps convert light into energy that stimulates plant growth. The energy they generate helps plants absorb water, nutrients and carbon dioxide from the environment to promote the normal growth of roots, leaves and buds.
Sunlight, in particular, contains the full spectrum wavelength of each chlorophyll. At the vegetative stage of the plant, blue wavelengths help stimulate leaf growth. During its flowering period, the red wavelength promotes the generation of buds.
Plants with insufficient light may feel stressed and begin to show negative signs. For example, plants may begin to turn yellow. In addition, its leaves may begin to fall off, or the growth of its leaves or buds may slow down.
Nature is irreplaceable. Because cannabis plants can receive 10 to 12 hours of direct sunlight every day during flowering, they absorb a lot of solar energy. Sunlight is also more advantageous than artificial lighting in operating costs, because it is free.
The sun provides plants with natural full spectrum illumination that artificial light attempts to mimic. The solar radiation that plants depend on is ultraviolet (UV) illumination, which is a combination of UVA and UVB rays.
Especially in outdoor cannabis cultivation. the grower must consider the season, because the sunlight will increase or decrease according to the time of the year. In summer, daylight is longer, while in winter, natural light is not available. This adverse effect of natural sunlight prevents growers from growing all year round.
Plants use longer UVA rays and benefit most from them. The plant lamp well reproduces the full spectrum illumination of indoor plants. Although it is difficult to improve nature, it is much easier to control growth lamps than outdoor sunlight. Plants grown indoors with plant growth lamps must rely on artificial full spectrum lighting. The most common grow lamp types used for this purpose are compact fluorescent lamps (CFL grow lights), high intensity discharge (HID grow lights), such as high pressure sodium (HPS grow lights) and metal halide (MH grow lights) bulbs, and light emitting diode (LED grow lights) lamps.
Compact fluorescent lamps are an affordable, easy-to-use and popular alternative to the more expensive hid and LED grow lamps. In addition, CFL lamps are very suitable for small space gardens, which are cooler than other options, and do not need much ventilation to maintain the optimal temperature of the garden.
However, CFL grow lamp is not fully applicable to the whole life cycle of the plant. Typically, they emit a large number of blue wavelengths. This is good during vegetative growth. They do not provide enough red hues during flowering.
Although the purchase cost of LED grow lights is higher than that of other plant grow lamps, the manufacturing improvement has led to a decrease in the price. Although they are initially more expensive, LEDs have a longer service life and consume less power, so they are less expensive to use during their service life than other bulbs.
In addition, LED lights operate colder than their alternatives and are safer to use on cannabis plants because they are not as hot as other bulbs. In addition, due to its cooling capacity, the LED does not require much ventilation consideration. These factors have led to the growing popularity of LED lights.
One of the biggest advantages of using artificial grow light is the ability to grow marijuana all year round. Unlike outdoor cannabis cultivation, growers do not rely on changing seasons. Artificial grow light can provide full spectrum illumination even in the darkest and coldest months. One of the advantages of plant growth lamp and indoor growth environment is that growers can control various factors in their artificial environment. It can not only control the intensity and distance of light, but also control the temperature and humidity. Indoor growers can also provide supplemental carbon dioxide, which is impractical and ineffective outdoors.
However, in an indoor growing environment, you must consider the light intensity of cannabis plants. Lighting requirements depend on the growth stage of the plant. During the plant growth stage, cannabis plants need at least 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness every day. During flowering, plants need at least 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness every day.