led seedling growing very slowly

12 years ago

We started these seedlings 5-7 weeks ago under LED lights on our growing shelf in the basement.

These are the LED's here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360308426772&viewitem=

They have been getting 16 hours a day under the LED lights, but are only this big. My mother started her seedlings at the same time in her bay window and they are 2-3 times the size of ours. Hers are also a little leggy. She started hers in the small starter trays,.. where as we made much larger newspaper pots to start them. Can this have something to do with it?

Some of the plants are very sturdy, while others like the brocolli wont stand on its own. Do you guys things that it might have something to do with the color of the LED's.

My bulbs all started really strong and grew very quickly under the LED's.

I feel like my plants should be much bigger by now.

http://www.fire-logs.com/ebay/plants1.jpg

http://www.fire-logs.com/ebay/plants2.JPG

Comments (3)

wordwiz
12 years ago
You get what you pay for. Sorry about being blunt, but you bought a piece of crap. Sixteen watts??? Mostly red and orange, neither which are good for seedlings, unless you like really leggy plants that will fall over on their side if you breathe hard in front of them. Can you send it back?

There are good, even close to great LED panels available. But if they are not rated at 90 watts or greater, stay away from them. Even some 90 watts are still a POS. But sellers hype them as being perfect for plants and some unwary people believe them.

You could have spent about $30 on shop lights and provided much better artificial lighting for your seedlings.

Mike
tinabanana
Original Author
12 years ago
well I posted to find out what my problem was, so Im glad someone responded with the problem.

so the led are not powerful enough? that sux.

the strange thing is that there is quite a bit of stuff that is doing well, like cucumber, zucchini, water melon, all my bulb flowers. growing strong and fast.

other stuff is doing ok, tomato, some flowers. growing strong but very slowly.

other stuff is doing badly like brocoli, asparagus, salad. growing leggy and falling over.

i guess we'll have to rethink our plan. our plan was to use these lights to start our seeds and then keep growing a few things inside year round.
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capoman
12 years ago
16 Watts is not enough, however a 90-120W panel will actually be too strong for plants at that phase. Put young seedlings like that under T5 HO lights, then put them under a larger LED when they get more mature.

Personally, I use a combination of LED and 6500K T5's. LED is in center and T5's are on the outside. I put young plants on the outside under the T5's then move towards the LED as they mature. This seems to work well for me. It will cost you a few dollars for this set up, but I think 16W LEDs are pretty useless for any purpose. You need panels with at least 1W LEDs for efficiency.