Light is essential to plant and herb growth. Growing indoors requires providing your plants with light similar to what they would get outdoors in the sun.
Fluorescent Grow Light
Grow lights are extremely important for any indoor gardening system. The sun provides a great deal of light to plants growing outdoors and replicating that effect indoors can be difficult. When planning your indoor lighting system the important thing to consider is the light spectrum frequency of the bulbs you use. The light spectrum is a measure of the wavelength of light. Different wavelengths of light have different effects on a plants growth and so careful consideration must be used to choose what types of lighting you want to use and when.
Lighting can use a tremendous amount of energy and create a great deal of heat. To counteract these problems special lights have been developed to be extremely efficient; able provide plants with the energy they need to grow and flourish while using a fraction of the energy as normal bulbs. The main light bulb types are fluorescent grow lights, HID lights which includes high pressure sodium lights and metal halide lights, and led grow lights. Growers use these types of lights either alone or in combination.
Fluorescent Grow Lights
Standard fluorescent lights can be used to grow indoors and however several special types have been developed that provide more light and are more effective for indoor gardening. High output fluorescent lights produce double the light as standard lights and compact fluorescent lights produce light similarly to that of larger lamps but are smaller and can be used in confined spaces.
High Pressure Sodium Lights
High pressure sodium produce light in the yellow range of the spectrum. They are most effective when used for the vegetative stage of growth.
Metal Halide Lights
Metal halide lamps emit light on the higher end of the spectrum and are most often used for the growth stage of plant development.
LED Grow Lights
LED lights have undergone several recent improvements and are now being used as grow lamps. New designs are cheap. bright, and can be tuned to emit specific wavelengths of light needed by plants.