Hey Everyone,
I've been a gardener for almost 20 years now, producing my own food etc. I have a degree in Science and Botany. I get about 3 months of growing season where I am from and the rest of the time is spent indoors. As of now, my current favortie nutrients to us hydroponically are CANNA and FloraNova with micro nutrients CaMg+, Earth Juice Microblast, and Dynagrow Si. I have completed many successful grows using ebb and flow, drip irrigation, organic soil and fine mist aeroponic methods. All of my plants are started under T5 HO lights which I have been experimenting using different bulb/spectra. After, they are transferred either outside in Spring/Summer or transferred to my HID area to produce. I am sick of the huge $$ bills that come in every month from the HID lights. The cost and also the quality of growth has brought me back to LEDs now.

Years ago when LEDs hit the market I thought it was a joke, but now I am seeing the real science behind it. I've seen a few journals done (none of which have been for growing food as of yet) and have seen some intriguing results. I would like to do a side by side comparison growing some rainbow swiss chard (my favorite) and a variety of cherry tomato that I've been growing for the last 4 years. If it turns out that LEDs can grow my food better than the CFLs and HIDs then I am sold.

I would also be very pleased to do away with having to dispose of the 1000w mercury filled bulbs after they are done.
Hope to see more users join this forum and also see some good results from the lights soon.
Peace,
Sage

Hi Sage and welcome

Glad to have you here with us. With your education and back ground I am sure you will have a wealth of knowledge to share with members such as myself. I already started my journal and pretty soon will be all up and running, hoping early december.

Looking forward to you all sharing this experience with me. If you like what you see from my results, then I would suggest looking into LED lights from growstealthled.com. They even have a chance to save some money by doing comparisons, also their cost of lights are very low compared to other companies which offer lesser products.

I guess until then wait and enjoy, since I will be updating on a weekly basis once everything is going.

Take care all.

LED is certainly better than CFL but the comparison to HID really depends on many factors. We also have an ongoing debate regarding the cost/benefit analysis of HID vs LED, feel free to join in!