Luke OReilly
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My name is Luke OReilly, I am a grower and also sell Apollo LED grow lights. My parents grew weed to pay for their property and many people around me have also made a living at growing marijuana. I have seen countless HPS grow ops and have been impressed. My story of testing and finding the best grow lights on the market is below.
Once the first harvest was done, I decided to setup a room for bedding plants too. So back to the internet I went, where my search lead me to discover another online retailer offering the latest LED technology, 3 watt LED's and 11 spectrum color ratio. I had to have one!!! After doing a little looking around the site, I found a beautiful 180 watt unit that I ordered and cost $610 to get it here from the states. My new 180 watt LED grow light worked like a charm, my bedding plants went from seeds to 6" tall young plants in 3 weeks. The young plants went out to the green house and the 180 watt light went into the indoor garden between the two 350 watt units that I had bought earlier.
Upon taking an interest in indoor gardening, I prepared to setup my small vegetable garden in a spare room. I took to the internet to learn more about this exciting and productive hobby. What I found were many wonderful products that are designed specifically for indoor gardening. The most intriguing of all of these amazing products were these new LED grow lights. They seem to be the answer to the issue of heat produced by traditional HID grow lights. They also use about 45% of the electricity to produce more usable light for the plants while covering the same area.
I researched online many for weeks before deciding on the LED grow light I wanted to use. It was a 350 watt model that used 1 watt LED's with a 5 spectrum color ratio, the cost was $1350 to get this light from the US. The results I saw under that light blew my mind! I had never seen such explosive growth before. The way my garden grew under this new LED technology was so impressive that I ordered another of the same lights right away.
Once the first harvest was done, I decided to setup a room for bedding plants too. So back to the internet I went, where my search lead me to discover another online retailer offering the latest LED technology, 3 watt LED's and 11 spectrum color ratio. I had to have one!!! After doing a little looking around the site, I found a beautiful 180 watt unit that I ordered and cost $610 to get it here from the states. My new 180 watt LED grow light worked like a charm, my bedding plants went from seeds to 6" tall young plants in 3 weeks. The young plants went out to the green house and the 180 watt light went into the indoor garden between the two 350 watt units that I had bought earlier.
What I saw next was slightly confusing to me at first. After only a few days of having that 180 watt light in the room, the plants started growing straight in the direction of the new 180 watt light. They appeared to almost completely ignore the 350 watt lights, very much favouring the light coming from this new 180 watt light that used 3 watt LED's. After seeing this I felt compelled to find out why the plants have a preference for the light coming from the smaller unit. My research involved reading online and talking with reps from the manufactures of LED grow lights as well as students as students at UBC Vancouver. What I found was that the intensity of the 3 watt LED's make a big difference in the amount of light made available to the plant for photosynthesis. The other reason that my plants grew for the 180 watt light over the 350 watt lights surprised me. The manufacture had built in ultra violet light as one of the five spectrum's, they claimed they had done research indicating that plants would receive a boost during the vegetative growth phase with this UV light. All of my research had indicated that UV light is harmful to plants and that even in natural sunlight they use energy just to protect themselves from the harmful UV light of the sun.
Along the way I met a manufacture sales rep that explained to me were the competition is going wrong and how they manufacture LED lights, compared to the LED grow lights manufactured by the company he works for. He went over all of the technical aspects of LED grow lights, from wavelengths of light and spectrum's that produce high rates of photosynthesis, to the actual power consumed by a "3 watt" LED. He told me that most LED grow lights on the market that claim to be "3 watt", actually use lower voltage and current that results in less light. The lights I sell use high power "3 watt" LED's. Although the actual power consumption is only 2.29 watts per LED they are called "3 watt" LED's. The trouble with this is that many LED grow lights that are sold as "3 watt" use less expensive, low wattage LED's. The actual power consumption of these lower grade LED's can be anywhere from 1.82 - 2.02 watts, they still perform much better then the 1 watt predecessors so people think that they must have a "3 watt" light. In fact the only time a user might start to wonder about the true power of the LED's used to make their light is if they were to buy another LED light that uses true high power "3 watt" LED's (remember still only 2.29 watts). This is exactly what I did when the factory rep told me about the different power "3 watt" LED's.
I finished my next harvest about the same time that my new high power 3 watt LED grow light arrived. I was very excited as it used the color spectrum I had designed based on countless hours of research. I was eager to start growing and testing. First thing I did was take 4 clones from my mother plant. These clones were rooted under the 180 watt unit that I had before. I will take the time to mention that this 180 watt light uses 90 LED's and works amazing for all stages of plant growth. When the young tomato plants were ready for transplant, they went into the same hydroponics unit and received all the same conditions but one. Two plants got the 180 watt light and the other two plants grew under the new 209 watt light. Again I will mention that both lights are sold as "3 watt" LED grow lights, and both have 90 LED's. Notice though how one light is 180 watt, and the other is 209 watt. This makes a huge difference in the growth of the plants. Five days after transplanting my four test plants, I saw that all four were growing phenomenally. However, upon closer inspection I started to notice that the two plants under the 180 watt light looked like they were just not as happy as the plants under the 209 watt light. As more time passed the difference between the effects of the two lights became much more pronounced. All four plants still looked extremely healthy but now the two plants under the 209 watt light were about 50% larger then the two plants under the 180 watt light and the two under the 180 watt light had started to grow towards the 209 watt light. In the end the two plants under the 209 watt light produced double the tomatoes of the other two plants, and the tomatoes grew bigger, tasted better and actually seemed to not spoil as quickly.
After seeing the amazing results of LED grow technology and experiencing the incredible energy savings for myself is when I took the steps necessary to found CosmicGrowth.ca This company was created to educate people about LED grow lights and to take the risk out of trying a widely unproven technology. I believe in fair pricing and honourable business practices. I am doing this so that other people can discover the same joy of indoor gardening that I have. My goal is to provide this technology to Canadians at reasonable pricing, so that perhaps one day in the future everyone will grow their very own food in the comfort of home and feel the pride of producing produce that is healthy for their family.
Luke OReilly
