Grow Lighting 101
What Is The Most Significant Factor Affecting Cannabis Cultivation?
Nov
We get it. Growing cannabis can be tricky. From seedling to flowering, cultivating cannabis requires great efforts of nurturing – from watering to regulating air to lighting to receive a healthy batch during harvest season.
When it comes to cannabis cultivation, numerous factors impact the plant’s health, growth, and shelf life. Here are the crucial elements that are necessary for cultivating cannabis:
All plants require Water to grow. Cannabis primarily relies on water to transport nutrients from the root system to the leaves; it also regulates the temperature of the crop and cools it down when needed. Improper watering due to overwatering and underwatering may lead to discoloration and nutrient burns.
Appropriate Air and Humidity is also necessary. Like all plants, Cannabis requires a sufficient supply of carbon dioxide to photosynthesize and generate energy. In indoor environments, proper ventilation help mimics the natural conditions of air circulation, which is critical in promoting and enhancing plant yields. Having a powerful and reliable ventilation system for greenhouse cultivators will be highly beneficial because is a major contributor to crop health.
Having stable Humidity in the environment is also essential for plant growth. While there may be some evaporation from the soil moisture, additional manual water replenishment by spraying and using humidifiers may be needed to ensure a stable, humid condition for the plants to thrive. If the surroundings are too damp, mold growth will cause bud rotting, destroying the entire crop. If the environment gets too dry, it will lead to water loss and plant stagnation, ultimately leading to plant death.
When the Temperature gets too cold or too warm, the plant will grow slower than usual because it diverts its energy on withstanding the unsuitable temperature. Avoid having a cold environment for growing cannabis because it will prolong root growth and inhibit water absorption.
Lastly and MOST IMPORTANTLY, Lighting is a monumental factor in determining the success of cannabis growth. The presence of light is key to photosynthesis, and all aspects of lighting must be carefully monitored since it directly impacts growth, development, coloration, plant health, and shelf life after harvest. There are three fundamental elements of lighting: light duration, light quantity, and light quality.
First, having a constant “photoperiod,” or a lighting interval in a 24-hour period, is crucial in establishing the light and dark periods for the cannabis’ internal biological clock. Since cannabis is considered a “short-day plant,” it requires less frequent exposure to light during its flowing season than the growth season. In the growth stage it should be kept under at least 18 hours of grow light, and during the flowering stage, growers should change the lighting duration to about 12 hours.
CALIVE’s DRAGON LED Grow Light 760W, along with the CALIVE LED Grow Light Intelligent Control Module, provides a powerful system for keeping time and automatically turning the light on and off to simulate the recommended hours of sunshine. Furthermore, DRAGON also offers uniform illumination, therefore supplying a consistent light intensity, which significantly influences the photosynthesis processes of cannabis plants. Both blue light and red light are required for photosynthesis. The shorter wavelengths of blue light provide energy for photosynthesis and cell differentiations; it is most demanded in Cannabis’ growing stage. The longer wavelengths of red light are necessary for the growth of stems and for promoting and speeding up the flowering process.
The superiority of CALIVE’s DRAGON in providing both the red and blue spectrum is exemplified in a controlled experiment comparing the effects of GAVITA’s 1930 LED Grow Light 760W and CALIVE’s DRAGON LED Grow Light 760W. GAVITA’s 1930 (a competitive product by another grow light brand with similar features to CALIVE’s DRAGON) is tested against CALIVE’s DRAGON by assigning each grow light unit to an individual square of cannabis seedlings. Both lights are equally spaced from the plants, turned on for the same duration each day, and placed under the same settings. After a month, the plants under DRAGON proved taller, with more lush leaves than the crops under GAVITA’s grow light. As the cannabis transitioned from the growth stage to the flowering stage, the advantage moved more towards CALIVE’s DRAGON due to its extra red LEDs. DRAGON’s additional red diodes contributed to large, healthier, and more vibrant buds during the flowering stage, resulting in a higher yield and more successful harvest.
As demonstrated in the experiment, DRAGON is an excellent choice for installation or retrofitting in indoor greenhouse cannabis cultivators because of their extra red LEDs feature and economical pricing (compared to GAVITA 1930). Using DRAGON has been proven to avoid leaf yellowing due to light burns. DRAGON’s powerful yet nourishing light ensures the healthiest cannabis harvests.