Indoor Bonsai under LED lights.

funckdren wrote:Thought some of you might be interested to see these light boxes I built in my living room. They are not LEDs, but I've had good success with these miniature 12W T4 fluorescent tubes. Even with four tubes going it's still relatively low light, so you really only can get away with a low-light tolerant tree like Schefflera. They live in there all year round under 2 x 3000K tubes and 2 x 4100K tubes. I also wired up two computer fans to circulate some air for 15 minutes every two hours.

The first picture also shows one of my dwarf jades that I put under 6 tubes. That tree lives outside during warm months, but tolerates the lower light conditions fairly well.

Very very Nice! And that's a really good Jade tree you have there!

Would love it if you could show some more photos of it, and the other Jade trees aswell!

Waiting for my LEDs to return from reflow soldering I am just wondering, why Sanlight M 30's are so efficient for bonsai. They are so "redish" in terms of a spectrum, that should be much less useful for pure vegetative grow that for example Onyx Veg (which has not proven to be efficient as yet for bonsai growing).

For me that is critical now as I haven't soldered my LEDs yet and I am considering exchanging two cool white LEDs (in 10 total per panel) with 2 warm white LEDs (so I would have 8 cool white and 2 warm white LEDs per panel). That would make my panel "a little bit" more "redish" as well. Do you think that it is worth trying?

BTW one photo of the progress (had very little time past weeks, but all is ready for LED soldering, holes are drilled and threaded, a mirror-like panel is ready, power supply is ready).

" />

Best regards,
Marcin

I found the following spectrum chart for "vegmaster" mode for Solarstorm panel.



Best,
Marcin

Dreamcast wrote:Thanks, but I saw that specsheet already, what i mean is there is no "spectrum curve", this makes it easier to see how balanced the spectrum is.

Another thing that came to mind when looking at pictures of the Solarstorm is that the UV lights are tubes, you could change those for White tubes with the same Watts, this will give you a more white spectrum and ad more useful light for your trees.

Regarding if the SANlight M30 being available in the US, you would have to order them directly overseas from SANlight if interested and that would not be cheap in shipping, its a very good and proven LED, but IMO its not worth the high final costs involved to get them to the US.
In your case there are other lights like the ONYX for example, but who knows, maybe the SolarStorm will prove to be a very good light once your trees get use to the new spectrum.

Marcin,
I know for a fact first handed that pure +6000K LED lights work well for Bonsai, the ApacheTech units i have are pure 6200K and they work great!
Ok, ApacheTech use Nichia chips with lower K Temps compared to the 6500K Cree XM-L2 you have (and ONYX uses), but there is no dramatically big difference in either K temp or spectrum of these chips so they should perform quite the same Watt for Watt.
What i saw specific under the ApacheTech's cooler spectrum was a tad smaller leaves and a little tighter internode growth, but i experienced the growth to be slower then under the warmer spectrum of the M30's, but both spectrum's work well.
From experience i would say that the warmer spectrum of the M30's works better for trees still in early development and in need of strong fast growth, and cooler spectrum like that of the ApacheTech is the best for trees in the later refinement phase in need of very compact growth, but both works well overall for indoor Bonsai IMO.

I think its a great idea to swap 2 cool white for warm whites, it will give you a more full white spectrum, and more closely replicating the action spectra can never be a bad thing.

kensei wrote:I found the following spectrum chart for "vegmaster" mode for Solarstorm panel.



Best,
Marcin

Marcin, thanks for that!

Funckdren,
The SolarStorm looks to have a rather good spectrum balance between R&B in veg mode, with +6000K white tubes added instead of the UV it should fill in the "green" gap in that spectrum quite nicely.

Or...or I could make one panel 6/4 (6 cool and 4 warm) and the second panel all cool white LEDs... Then I could experiment which one is "better" or which one and when is "better"

Hmmm...tough decision. For the moment I have jade and ficus. I think jade doesn't care too much how warm the light is All it needs is just a lot of light. But ficus looks much more sensitive to the lighting conditions. I am planning to introduce LED's light gradually for the ficus. I guess, that making the light more "dispersed" is a good thing either (everywhere I read that ficus doesn't like direct sunlight). Maybe your foil tent Dreamcast provides a little bit of light dispersion from M30...and that is also the reason why funckdren had the leaves dropped?

Best regards,
Marcin

Dreamcast wrote:Marcin,
I know for a fact first handed that pure +6000K LED lights work well for Bonsai, the ApacheTech units i have are pure 6200K and they work great!
Ok, ApacheTech use Nichia chips with lower K Temps compared to the 6500K Cree XM-L2 you have (and ONYX uses), but there is no dramatically big difference in either K temp or spectrum of these chips so they should perform quite the same Watt for Watt.
What i saw specific under the ApacheTech's cooler spectrum was a tad smaller leaves and a little tighter internode growth, but i experienced the growth to be slower then under the warmer spectrum of the M30's, but both spectrum's work well.
From experience i would say that the warmer spectrum of the M30's works better for trees still in early development and in need of strong fast growth, and cooler spectrum like that of the ApacheTech is the best for trees in the later refinement phase in need of very compact growth, but both works well overall for indoor Bonsai IMO.

I think its a great idea to swap 2 cool white for warm whites, it will give you a more full white spectrum, and more closely replicating the action spectra can never be a bad thing.

kensei wrote:Or...or I could make one panel 6/4 (6 cool and 4 warm) and the second panel all cool white LEDs... Then I could experiment which one is "better" or which one and when is "better"

Hmmm...tough decision. For the moment I have jade and ficus. I think jade doesn't care too much how warm the light is All it needs is just a lot of light. But ficus looks much more sensitive to the lighting conditions. I am planning to introduce LED's light gradually for the ficus. I guess, that making the light more "dispersed" is a good thing either (everywhere I read that ficus doesn't like direct sunlight). Maybe your foil tent Dreamcast provides a little bit of light dispersion from M30...and that is also the reason why funckdren had the leaves dropped?

Best regards,
Marcin

That's a great idea! all in the name of Indoor Bonsai Science!

Sure, the plastic of the propagators i use in my current setup block and disperse some of the light from the M30's, but in my experience Ficus love light, the more the better!
The only time i have seen "light overdose" on ficus was when branches grew just inches from the lights in my former Growtent setup, and then the leaves just turned yellow.. nothing falling of.. or maybe they did not have time to fall of, was rather quick to cut those branches back.

But after looking at what both Yvonne and Funckdren have experienced, then i would absolutely say that gradually introducing higher intensity lights to ones indoor garden can be very important to reduce all chances of major stress, especially with ficus species.

I have found in some Bonsai book, that light adaptation process for trees like ficus should be done in the pace of additional half and hour a day. That would mean that going from zero to 10 hours LED should take c.a. 3 weeks. Looks reasonably safe...

Best,
Marcin

Dreamcast wrote:
But after looking at what both Yvonne and Funckdren have experienced, then i would absolutely say that gradually introducing higher intensity lights to ones indoor garden can be very important to reduce all chances of major stress, especially with ficus species.

kensei wrote:I have found in some Bonsai book, that light adaptation process for trees like ficus should be done in the pace of additional half and hour a day. That would mean that going from zero to 10 hours LED should take c.a. 3 weeks. Looks reasonably safe...

Best,
Marcin

Dreamcast wrote:
But after looking at what both Yvonne and Funckdren have experienced, then i would absolutely say that gradually introducing higher intensity lights to ones indoor garden can be very important to reduce all chances of major stress, especially with ficus species.

That's how to do when gradually letting ones indoor trees get use to sunlight and outdoor conditions, this will logically also work well to introduce an artificial light source as a support light for trees living indoors on a windowsill getting light all day, this is like your setup, right?

But for a indoor garden without any natural sunlight this method will off course not work at all, the trees would get light starved very fast after only a few days..
When introducing a new light in such a setup its ~16 hours of lights on, then hanging the light high above the trees and then gradually lowering a little every other day.

Or if one have very limited headroom in the indoor garden then a dimmer on the lights will works just as good, but not many commercial LED grow lights have integrated dimmers, and i am not sure how easy it is to modify lights with it either...

A good all round Bonsai LED would be a commercial quality LED light sporting a good spectrum, both digital dimming and timer functions build in to it, much like the functions of my little DIY light from LEDgroupbuy, a lovely little piece of light tech.

Ok, so panels are ready. As you can see I choose to go 6 cool/ 4 warm option for one of the panels - the left one on the picture (the second one is full 10 cool LEDs). One panel consumes about 87-88 Watts which gives something like 78W light power. All LEDs are CREE XM-L2 high bin (cool ones are U3, warm ones are T5) so running at 2,4 A should still give a lot of light (I cannot really tell as I was switching them on and off all day long and now I can hardly see anything ).

Now it's time for some testing.







Best regards,
Marcin

Hi,

Frankly, I don't really like bonsai that can't stay out in the winter, but I have this ficus "Natascha' that I bought years ago and that I just can't manage to kill. It stays outside as soon as the temps are above 4-5° C at night, and I take it inside when they get below that when the winter comes.

It's a rather freaky weather these days, 14°C this morning, 20°C in the afternoon, so it's staying a bit longer outside. I can ship it abroad: make an offer if you're interested.

kensei wrote:Ok, so panels are ready. As you can see I choose to go 6 cool/ 4 warm option for one of the panels - the left one on the picture (the second one is full 10 cool LEDs). One panel consumes about 87-88 Watts which gives something like 78W light power. All LEDs are CREE XM-L2 high bin (cool ones are U3, warm ones are T5) so running at 2,4 A should still give a lot of light (I cannot really tell as I was switching them on and off all day long and now I can hardly see anything ).

Now it's time for some testing.







Best regards,
Marcin

Now that's 2 clean, stylish and powerful DIY LED lights! very nice parts and well built, Congratulations, Marcin!

Will be very interesting to hear how they work for you, and if you will be able to see any difference in growth under each panel.

AlainK wrote:Hi,

Frankly, I don't really like bonsai that can't stay out in the winter, but I have this ficus "Natascha' that I bought years ago and that I just can't manage to kill. It stays outside as soon as the temps are above 4-5° C at night, and I take it inside when they get below that when the winter comes.

It's a rather freaky weather these days, 14°C this morning, 20°C in the afternoon, so it's staying a bit longer outside. I can ship it abroad: make an offer if you're interested.

I respect your feelings towards indoor Bonsai, and can somehow somewhat agree with you a little, its kinda madness.
Regarding your tree, its hard to tell by 2 photos but looks to be a pretty nice ficus, due to my current economic situation i am not really looking to add another tree to my indoor collection at this time.
But if you really want to get rid of it then i can offer you a symbolic sum of money + shipping cost, and most important, a good new home for "Natascha".

That's a very impressive, elegant looking light panel Marcin! Looks totally pro. Do you mind if I ask how much money (and time) you spent building them? And somehow I missed it along the way -- did you do the soldering yourself?

I'm curious because I ended up bailing on the SolarStorm and decided to dive in with 2 x Veg Onyx panels. $800 later, I'm very impressed with how much bright, white light I'm getting, but I do kick myself slightly when I see something like Marcin put together.

I also got inspired by Ryan's set-up and built mylar covered walls around my trees to get the light bouncing around. I've uploaded some pictures. The first picture is the SolarStorm 440W which, you can see, is so red. It's also now for sale!

Then are some pics of the Veg Onyx. Everything is so bright, the pictures are a little blown out. Sorry about that. The close-up shot is my two willow leaf figs that have been struggling under metal halide and the red SolarStorm. I'll let you know if they do better under the Veg Onyx.

SOLARSTORM 440W


VEG ONYX

Funckdren,

Well, in terms of cost I have to be honest:
1. To buy Onyx Veg I would have to add significant amount of cash for shipment, customs and VAT (c.a. extra 25%)
2. If you know all the dos and don'ts you can build panels like mine as the cost specified below, but to learn how to build it the right way could be costly (details below as well).

Cost of basic materials are as follows (all data per panel):
LEDs - 76 USD
heat sink - 15 USD
power supply - 20 USD
reflecting sheet with laser cut holes - 10 USD
wires, plug, screws etc. roughly - 20 USD

Total cost per panel should be something about 140 USD, but....

Those are only 78W panels (unlike Onyx Veg which is 240W or so). I have very small trees so I hope that would be sufficient for some time, but for such nice trees like yours you would have to either build several panels like mine or make a bigger one (I could not find bigger heat sink by the way).

Time to build is "several evenings", you could easily reduce it by buying solder less LEDs and/or gluing LEDs instead of mounting them with tiny bolts (I wanted to be able to change LEDs if needed).

Lessons learned (very, very costly...good education has to be costly I guess ):
Do not buy LEDs and mounting plates for them separately. Do not believe YouTube videos that it is easy to reflow solder LED emitter to the heat sink pad...it is not easy, you can easily overheat the pad that starts to crack (the top layer cracks), change color etc. I have a few LEDs done by myself and had not used them (I treat them as spare parts ).

Do not test your panel with just touching power supply wires to the whole series soldered chain of LEDs if you have constant current power supply. I have burnt 4 LEDs like this. I read that once you do it the voltage jumps immediately to the level that destroys LEDs...and yes, I read it BEFORE I started to solder my panels....I have just forgotten all that stuff

Do not try to drill stainless steel by yourself, just have it laser cut (I destroyed two sheets of stainless steel trying to drill the holes...fortunately they are very cheap - 2 USD each).

Be sure to lubricate the drill and threader well as aluminum heat sinks are very "sticky" and you will brake a drill easily. I new it from my previous projects, but still a part of one drill (1.6mm diameter one) has been left in one of my heat sinks

Be sure to have the drill perfectly vertical (use vertical drilling machine and position the heat sink properly not to bend a drill).

I have not used any fan because the heat sink just above the LED (in between the cooling ribs) is max. 53 Celsius degrees hot. Not bad I guess.

When soldering wires to the LED pads use bigger soldering iron (the small one will be cooled down immediately and soldering will be a night mare).

Would I do it again? Tough question ... I haven't got enough vertical space to hang Onyx Veg above my plants and I don't like the reddish light of Sanlight M30 for example that is why I wanted to have panels that I could hang just above the plants not 1 meter above. I have small plants as I said and huge additional costs of bringing panels like Onyx Veg to Poland. That is why it was reasonable to build panels by myself (you can scale the power of LEDs while designing your panel). I added a reflective stainless steel sheet over my LEDs that works great. It keeps the plant cool (reflects the heat from the heat sink away from the plant, isolating the heat sink from the plant a little bit). I haven't put lenses on LEDs as well to avoid the need of hanging the panel high above the plant.

So the answer is "probably yes" I would built it again if my conditions (like size of my plants and place I store them) haven't changed. Otherwise I would probably go with commercial products.

Best regards,
Marcin

P.S. I put to the test my panel by growing a bean seed for my daughter's school experiment. One bean was under the panel one on the windowsill. The effect: the bean under the panel developed leaves one day faster and grew 4 times shorter, before leaves shoot out. That suggests that white LED light really supports short internodes.

funckdren wrote:That's a very impressive, elegant looking light panel Marcin! Looks totally pro. Do you mind if I ask how much money (and time) you spent building them? And somehow I missed it along the way -- did you do the soldering yourself?

I'm curious because I ended up bailing on the SolarStorm and decided to dive in with 2 x Veg Onyx panels. $800 later, I'm very impressed with how much bright, white light I'm getting, but I do kick myself slightly when I see something like Marcin put together.

Marcin, that's very good information and advice for those thinking of going DIY!

And again, beautiful panels!

Funckdren, very nice and clean setup! the ONYX lights really makes a BIG BIG difference!

Great that we now have 2 member using the Veg ONYX and also Marcin using the same CREE chips in his DIY panels, this is perfect so we can really see how well XM-L2 chip based lights with a +6000K spectrum works for indoor Bonsai.

Thank you guys for sharing your setups and experiences with LEDs in this thread, please continue in this fashion and this thread will be (maybe it already is?) the Nr:1 place for info on LED for Bonsai.

Ha ha,But,

what about those of us that use refrigerators to grow temperates, that can handle 90 to 80 deg.F weather by day ?
Laters
Khaimraj

Funckdren,

One more question (or maybe I missed something): Why are you willing to sell the SolarStorm? Do you think that Onyx Veg is much better (do you have any observation on that)?

Best regards,
Marcin

funckdren wrote: The first picture is the SolarStorm 440W which, you can see, is so red. It's also now for sale!

Marcin,

Thanks for posting all the gory details about building your light panel. It's very impressive what you went through and what you emerged with, and I'm sure your second build would go so much better! After reading through all of your trial and error, I concluded it's probably better for me to just throw money at my situation and buy commercial lights. Your DIY solutions will help someone, though, I'm certain.

I am selling the SolarStorm based on some admittedly limited assumptions. I read on Ryan's blog that he was getting rid of his "pink Mars 2 LEDS" in favor of the Veg Onyx lights. He said his ficus trees did not do well last winter under the more red lights. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but when I saw my own willow leaf figs looking unhealthy and dropping leaves after just a month under my reddish SolarStorm, I decided to cut my losses and go with a cooler white LED like the Veg Onyx.

Just to give you an example of what Dreamcast wrote about the effect light color has on the plant. Below please find two photos of the bean-bonsai (or just bean ), one was growing on the windowsill, the second (two of them actually) under my panel (the cool and warm white LED mix). The higher is of course the one form the windowsill, the shorter from under the LED panel. I can add that the one from under the panel opened leaves 3-4 days earlier that the second one (it even started to open second pair of leaves), stalks are much, much longer when grown in sunlight (not so much desired effect when growing bonsai). Basing on that I could support that more reddish light translates to longer branches, more blueish (like cool white) translates to shorter branches and, I guess, faster leaves development.




Sorry for experimenting on beans instead of bonsai, beans just grow faster

Best regards,
Marcin

The thing with the Mars 2 lights is that they were great for promoting figs on my Ficus. They fruited like I've never seen before. I just got little to no growth. After a few months under these Onyx lights, I am starting to see new growth on a couple of my trees, which is awesome.

Very interesting experiment, Marcin. I'm surprised by the radical difference in height, and yes, I'd take the LED results for bonsai any day. Thanks for posting.

That's good news, Ryan! Following in your wake, I also bought a pair of Veg Onyx lights for my three dwarf jade trees, a pair of willow leaf figs, and a green island fig. My willow leaf figs seem to still be struggling right now with the transition from outdoors to indoors under the Veg Onyx, dropping leaves, etc...but I'm hoping they will adjust over the next few weeks.

Three questions, and forgive me if this info is posted elsewhere:

1. Do you keep your trees under LED's all year round?

2. How high off the canopy are your Veg Onyx lights?

3. I seem to recall you were concerned at some point about fungus and decided against a grow tent. Are you doing anything to promote more humidity?

For context: I only put my trees under artificial light during the winters here in Boston. I've tried metal halide, a reddish California LightWorks LED panel that I've sold, and now the Veg Onyx. My jades do pretty well, but my figs seem to really just survive (not thrive) until they go back outside during spring, summer, fall, when they dramatically spring back to life. I'm trying to change that and keep them happy year round. Thanks for any input...

funckdren wrote:
Three questions, and forgive me if this info is posted elsewhere:

1. Do you keep your trees under LED's all year round?

2. How high off the canopy are your Veg Onyx lights?

3. I seem to recall you were concerned at some point about fungus and decided against a grow tent. Are you doing anything to promote more humidity?

1. No. In the summer I move them outdoors and they stay out there until the beginning or middle of September.

2. They're about 2 feet above the canopies of the trees. I'd move them up a tad more if I could, but the trees are pretty tall and it's difficult to move the lights higher up.

3. I was concerned about fungus and mold, but I'm reconsidering. I don't do anything to promote humidity, so it's pretty low. I'd love to use a tent or some sort of something, but just haven't gotten around to it just yet.

Thanks for the quick reply. Do any of your willow leaf figs show signs of stress when you bring them in from outdoors? Mine are still dropping a few leaves almost every day...exactly what happened under metal halide last winter.

Also, are there other opinions from anyone else about distance of LED lights from the canopy? I'm finding manufacturer recommendations that range from 8" to 30". Pretty big range.