Yes I just noticed that yesterday!! Awesome!
I'm thinking a 4 footer would be perfect for my setup. I have a pair of 300w (one mars 180w real draw, and one ledlightseller/galaxy drawing 165w). I will be adding another galaxy/ledlightseller 165w, or a dirt genius 100w.(another light with IR and UV)
It's not really IR (Infrared is 850nm and more) that you want to supplement. The wavelength is too long for the leaf to use it, all it can do is raise the temperature. The benefits come from Photo Red (660nm) and Far Red (730nm).
For your far red supplementation you can get the best possible bang for your buck with a Growmau5 Far Red Puck.
They're on Amazon for a little less than $40. Or you can get a DIY kit or a photo/far red strip from RapidLED.
Running Photo Red and Far Red together during lights on will boost your growth rates and yields in a big way, I'd make it a priority even more than supplementing UV! Here's some science to back this up if you're interested, happy growing:smoking:
Flower Initiation:
Flower Initiation is awesome for photos, but it probably won't make a difference with autos. For photoperiods, flowering is triggered by a pigment called phytochrome. It has an active state(Pfr) and an inactive state(Pr). In the dark it takes about two hours for all the phytochrome to switch from its active form (Pfr) to its inactive form (Pr). When it all stays inactive (Pr) for 10 to 12 hours every night the plant goes into flower.
If you give the plant
730nm far red for 15 minutes after lights out, all the phyotochrome switches to its inactive state in
15 minutes instead of two hours, effectively lengthening your dark period and speeding up the flowering process. This shit really works! I've seen it with my own two eyes, check out my IG
@blacksailfarm. Especially during the
stretch phase, photoperiod plants will go through this phase in 1 week instead of 2. Since the dark cycle doesn't effect flowering for autos you probably won't get the same results.
If you want to try flower initiation you can get a 7 Watt (you don't need much!) growmau5 far red puck for less than $40 at Rapid LED, it's plug & play and it'll cover a 3'x3'.
The Emerson Effect:
Photosynthesis is a two step process. Chlorophyll A absorbs
~660nm red light into an electron, does its thing, then passes the electron off to Chlorophyll B. Chlorophyll B absorbs
~730nm far red light into the same electron, then finishes off the cycle:
Emerson figured out that since the two systems work together,
when you give the plant 660nm + 730nm together you get almost twice the results!
