Indoor bonsai lighting with LEDs?

Could you use LEDs to grow your bonsai in a closet or something over the winter? I don't know how many it would take but they wouldn't give off much heat either for the amount of light they produced.

to expensive to buy enough to make enough light. If you have a closet just get cheap 48" fluorescent shop lights.

If you are going to set up a light garden in a tight space like a closet, you will need to remove the ballasts from the fluorescent lamps and wire them outside the closet. While fluorescent tubes themselves give off very little heat, the ballasts produce heat, & inside a closet will become too warm. Also plan on having a couple of fans. Small "muffin" fans from the electronics store are ideal.
Iris

grow type leds are fairly expensive to buy but incredibly cheap to run - you can grow quite well under them - i've used the 30cm square purple and red tiles to grow water plants in the front room! and also used proper grow led clusters of 6500k 'sunlight' bulbs with similar results.

leds do suffer with very low output of useable light though, so you need loads, and they have a direct tiny beam rather than a spread (so you need loads close together). A low energy 6500-6700k sunlight simple lightbulb - not a normal room light spectrum -2700k - will do you far better - a cupboard will need good ventilation though, even with minimal heat produced from the lights the damp will produce mould

A broad spectrum of light is really important to my growing circumstances.

Can anyone tell me how the spectrum of light compares between LED and Fluorescent? Is it any broader or stronger in important ranges?

Thanks!

Like the rest have said, you can get the right spectrum and even the right output with led but to do so generally requires a lot of them, or a larger grow light set up which at this point is still very expensive. If you are handy you can save some money buying the parts and building your own set up, I used to do this for my salt water aquarium builds but even then you are only saving 20-30% and it takes a great deal of time. T5 bulbs are my personal favorite for my indoor growing, they are much cheaper, are more energy efficient than the T8 and T12 bulbs and give off much less heat, however they are not as efficient or cool as Led so take that in to account

There have great strides in the quaility of LEDs. Many saltwater aquarist now prefer them over metal halide. The quaility of light compared to the amount of power used. Also the light quaility doesn't diminish like floraescent bulbs. The biggest thing aquarist like is there is only minimal heat gained from the bulbs or ballast. I have only seen them on friends tanks and the spectrum is awsome and also you can adjust the spectrum of the light to any color. Google it is very interesting!

Mitch

Also look into HO and VHO T5 bulbs. You can get them from any hydroponic store. One thing is that the brighter they get the hotter they run.

LEDs have come a long way, but I wouldn't invest in them just yet, they are still evolving so fast, you'll wish you'd waited. I've been using these CFL's with really good results, not just for trees, but I do a lot of veg seed growing, these are nice and compact, would work in a small space, reasonably cool.
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