You shouldn’t use red light spectrums (Red LEDs, or HPS bulbs) during the vegetative phase of growth if possible. The red light may encourage male plant growth, whereas intense blue light will encourage your seedlings to grow as female plants. What Distance From Grow Lights When Starting Seeds? This HLG 260 watt B-Spec grow light is manufactured specifically for vegetative growth, with a 3500 kelvin spectrum plus 470nm blue LED diodes. To keep a mother plant you need to keep it in 18-24hr light but 18hr is preferable as different processes happen within the plant in the dark period that are helpful for good plant growth. Don’t be scared by the word DIY – there’s no soldering required! Only a screwdriver and wire strippers (or scissors). One person described the light as “fun and easy to put together,” in addition to saying they’re very happy with this vegetative phase grow light.

From looking at the spectrum chart you can see it has a high amount of blue, yellow, green, orange, and not much red. This light spectrum was specifically designed for vegetative growth. The ideal environment for keeping a mother plant in is the same as you would have for vegetative growth a temperature range of 18-27Cis fine with the difference between the high and low temps being no more than 5C ideally (eg 25-28C lights on 20-23C lights off). Humidity is important to keep an eye on as if using CDM or halide bulbs or indeed sodiums the humidity will be much lower than under LED or flourescent lighting. It needs to be 60-70%RH ideally and to keep these high levels a small humidifier such as a Mist Maker 3 or Ram ultrasonic humidifier will keep your humidity high and your mother beautiful!The grow light is dimmable as well. All you need is a screwdriver to adjust the dimmer located under the rubber plug on the driver. If you need to light a large grow space for vegetative growth, consider the Scynce LED Raging Kale 2. This grow light has the same blue spectrum, but covers 6×5 feet for seedling growth, or 3×4 feet for vegetative growth. This doesn’t mean a full spectrum grow light can’t start seeds. A grow light that emits full spectrum light can start seeds, but only the blue portion of the spectrum will be absorbed by the seedlings. The B-Spec version of the HLG 300L model pictured above has a spectrum and LEDs specially geared towards plant growth in the vegetative phase. In other words this is a full blue/white spectrum grow light for seedlings and mother plants. Growers may decide to buy a dedicated grow light for the seedling and vegetative phases if their current grow light doesn’t emit enough blue spectrum – the spectrum that’s critical to the vegetative phase.

Mother plants are generally kept for a long time some growers refresh them every 6 months or yearly with a cutting from the same plant that becomes the next mother, others keep the same mother plant for much longer. For this reason the most popular media for keeping a mother in is a good quality potting soil, its forgiving nature lends well to it being lower maintenance and is more suitable than coco or hydro for keeping plants long term. A great Soil for this is Biobizz All-mix, or Ecothrive super soil. Your pot size for a mother plant depends on the size of mother you want to keep which depends on the amount of cuttings you want to take at once but generally speaking a 10-20l final pot size is ideal for this. In reality it’s not the distance from the plants that matters. It’s the intensity of light measured at the leaves ( read more about light intensity here).

track.title

Foliar feeding – foliar feeds (sprays) are a great way of getting useful nutrients directly into the plants leaves and can really help with keeping a successful mother plant. Always foliar feed in either low light levels or ideally just as your light cycle is about to end so the intense light doesn’t burn the wet and they have the full dark period to allow them to soak up the nutrients and dry off. Recommended foliar feeds include Vitalink Foliar and Plant Magic Evolution. There's a timer function, so you can choose to turn it on or off for four hours, eight hours or 12 hours. You can also dim the lights if you don't want them quite as bright. Since they're LED lights, you don't need to worry about excessive heat, so they can be decently close to your plants. Plus, they have excellent energy efficiency. There are 70 red LEDs and 10 white LEDs: The idea is to simulate sunlight at noon, when it's at its brightest and provides the most light. Since most of the lights are red, they're great for budding and flowering. Distance - on the whole LED grow lights should be positioned about 12 inches away from plants, but the distance will depend upon the wattage of the bulb, the type of plant and it’s light intensity requirement, and the ambient light in the room. This is where a light meter will be useful using the lux measurement as a guide.