Natural vs. Artificial Lighting for Plants

Human beings have been growing their own fruits and vegetables since the beginning of time and for generations there was never any question about sunlight. Thanks to LED grow lights systems, people of all ages and races can grow plants inside, all year long and avoid the harmful effects of weather, pests and vermin that come from growing plants outside.

Is gardening with artificial lights worth it? This article will break down the positives and negatives of each form of gardening.

Sunlight

Besides just being a huge ball of fire in the sky that heats our planet, the sun is also responsible for a plants growth thanks to the color spectrum that plants receive from the sun’s rays. When you break sunlight up into a prism you will see that it has a wide variety of colors including red, yellow, orange and green. These colors are important for plants to grow from seedlings and to eventually start producing flowers then fruit or some other type of yield.

Besides being excellent for plants, the sun also is also necessary or humans and helps our bodies to produce vitamin D which help us systems to fight cancer and stay healthy.

Artificial Light

Plants can be grown indoors with great success and have been mass produced by scientists and companies indoors for generations but any type of plant or crop that’s grown inside won’t have the same characteristic as plant that’s grown outside unless it’s subjected to more light or given synthetic substances to help it produce the same look as a plant that was grown outside.

Recent scientific studies have shown that fruits and vegetables that were grown indoors typically were larger than their counterparts that were grown outdoors but they lacked familiar characteristics like color or taste. Science has found a way around this problem by injecting plants that are grown indoors with hormones to get them to produce normally or subjecting them to more LED light.