How to make cannabis seedlings grow rapidly in LED grow lights?

LED Grow Lights
LED’s are the new kids on the block. The technology has come very far in a short amount of time. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have even talked about LED grow lights but now it’s all that I use.
LED suppliers have claimed for a long time that their LED systems provided bigger better buds and yields while using half the electricity of HIP lighting. Until recently this was not true. People have been sold low quality LED lights and were told they would grow better plants and it was just not the case for several years.
Tutorial: How to grow cannabis indoors using LED grow lights
Marijuana Grows Indoors with LEDs
Welcome to our online class about growing cannabis indoors with LEDs. If you are here it’s because you are looking for a simple guide that will walk you through the steps of a successful first grow. How exciting for you because everything you are going to need to know can be found in this article. The information on how to grow weed indoors provided will bring you from a newbie all the way to a successful grower.
You may have heard or might think that growing marijuana indoors is a difficult process but this online course will bring you up to speed one step at a time until you have the confidence to grow. Anyone can grow cannabis it only requires the will to learn, a few minutes a day to watch over and maintain your cannabis plants and some space for your grow.
Cannabis has many slangs; weed, pot, marijuana, bud, ganja and many more. These refer to the dried and cured buds of a female cannabis plant. Cannabis plants grow all over the world in many different climates. Female cannabis plants produce famous flowers that you think of when you think of weed.
The flowers of these female cannabis plants contain the potent ingredients that people are looking for; THC and CBD. It is these flowers that are harvested, dried and cured to produce usable marijuana. The cured buds are used to smoke, vaporize and consume via edibles.
Ten years ago, when I first started my cannabis journey it was difficult to locate quality buds anywhere. We are talking about the days of low quality, seed-filled weed that barely had any medicinal quality yet alone barely got you high. Since it was hard to find quality cannabis I looked towards growing my own. That’s when I started learning how to grow weed indoors using LED grow lights.
LED Grow Lights
LED’s are the new kids on the block. The technology has come very far in a short amount of time. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have even talked about LED grow lights but now it’s all that I use.
LED suppliers have claimed for a long time that their LED systems provided bigger better buds and yields while using half the electricity of HIP lighting. Until recently this was not true. People have been sold low quality LED lights and were told they would grow better plants and it was just not the case for several years. Now people are still selling junk LED grow light kits that are worthless but many companies have cracked the nut and developed LED grow light kits that do produce like any HIP system.
I would strongly encourage the new grower to invest in new LED technology as it is easy to work with and will cost much less to produce your plants over time.
Pros of LED lights
Cutting Edge & Custom Spectrum – LED grow light technology has arrived! You can now grow plants from seedling to flower with one light; with the flip of a switch, your light bands can be altered to provide the best light for vegetative and flowering stages.
Stealth – LEDs are the perfect lighting system for growing indoors and especially good for growing in tents. These lights require very little room above your plants leaving much more height in your grow space for your plant to stretch out. The low heat generated by LEDs generally won’t need to be vented out of your grow space like and HID would.
Options for low heat, low electricity– A LED panel doesn’t produce much heat or use much electricity
Wide Spectrum LEDs that provide more color spectrums that cannabis plants use
50,000 to 100,000 hours life
Growroom heat levels are totally different with LED
A 600W HPS bulb wastes around 450W (75%) of the electrical energy producing heat. A good quality LED light with a 400W power draw would produce around 200W of heat despite having the same productivity as a 600W HPS grow lights. So the best LED’s only produce about half the heat of an HPS.
For some growers that will allow a significant simplification of the grow room, such as no air conditioning in hot climates. Other growers will be able to turn down air extraction rates or use smaller extraction fans.
Traditionally many cannabis growers fight grow room temperatures, their grow rooms or grow tent usually running 3 or 4ºC above the optimum point. With LED grow rooms run naturally at a cooler optimum temperature.
Why waste electrical energy to create excess heat from HPS lights only to have to pay a second time to remove the heat. Growing cannabis with LED is a better solution.
Growing cannabis with LED
Plant bleaching
LED power levels have been increasing significantly over recent years, and at the same time so have the LED efficiencies. Early LED’s would convert 15% of electrical energy to light energy, now the best LEDs convert over 50% of electrical energy into light and that figure is rising.
When light levels are too intense the tips of the plants are bleached, they look white instead of green. This can be a sign to raise the LED lights higher, or to tie down the tallest branches of your plants.

Achieving the correct hanging distance
These days LED is very powerful and hanging distance will play a large role in the performance. The most common mistake when growing cannabis with LED is that the lights hang a little bit too close to their plants, especially seedlings which can suffer stress if the light is too intense for the first couple of weeks.
One easy solution is to keep seedlings in the tent corner (which may have lower intensity light compared to the tent centre), or just to raise the light and allow the plant to ‘grow into’ the more intense light as it stretches later.
How Much Light Do Cannabis Seeds Need?
Cannabis seeds need no light when they are germinating. In fact, they require an absence of light. All of the methods below call for darkness.
Once they have sprouted, they will need a lot of light—18 hours a day, to be exact (though you could even give them 24 hours of light per day).
Best LED Grow Lights For Starting Seeds
The best LED grow light for seedlings is the ECO FARM 47W LED GROW LIGHT . It was especially designed for seedlings, clones and vegging, with a separate "clone" mode for clones and seedlings. The main drawback is that it is made to cover a 2 by 4 foot area. If you only have a few seedlings, this light will be overkill.
LED bars are the best LED lights for seed starting when you don’t have enough seedlings to fill a 2 by 4 foot area. These bars from ECO FARM are a great choice. They are inexpensive and give off enough light to get your plants through the seedling stage in no time.
How Long From Seedling To Vegetative
It usually takes from 10 to 15 days for seedlings to transition to vegetative growth, but it is difficult to give an exact timeline. It just varies so much from one strain to the next and from one growing environment to the next.