Definition - What does Grow Light mean?
A grow light or lamp is an electric lamp that functions as an artificial source of light to stimulate growth in plants. Grow lights achieve this by emitting electromagnetic radiation in the visible light spectrum that simulates sunlight for photosynthesis.
Grow lights or lamps are useful in indoor gardens where there is insufficient sunlight or no natural light at all to stimulate growth.
A grow light or lamp is also known as a plant light.
MaximumYield explains Grow Light
Grow lights or lamps are used when there is not enough sunlight to stimulate plants to grow naturally. This could be due to insufficient outdoor space for a garden, lack of sunlight in winter or other reasons.
Grow lights work in one of two ways. They may be designed to give plants a broad light spectrum that simulates the sun, or they may have a more tailored light spectrum that is designed to cultivate certain plants.
Depending on the type of grow light or lamp, a range of colors is used to mimic specific outdoor conditions, including the sun’s light, color and temperature. A grow light or lamp may be used to cultivate plants when they would otherwise be out of season, so that growers may have a year-round crop. They may also be adjusted and may vary in intensity depending on a given plant’s stage of cultivation.
Plants have different photoperiods (reactions based on time and intensity of light) at different stages of cultivation, and a grow light can be used to imitate sunlight to stimulate those photoperiods and increase the plant's yield of fruits and vegetables.
Grow lights have been effectively used for plant growth since 1868, when a Russian botanist first began experimenting with the use of artificial light to grow plants. Today, a number of different grow lights or lamps are on the market, including high intensity discharge (HID) lights, metal-halide lights, high-pressure sodium lights, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and others.