Hydroponic gardening has more success depending on the grow light system you implement. The type of grow bulb you choose will depend on the crops you wish to grow, but one thing is certain: you will need a ballast to run your lighting system. Commercial growers and home indoor gardening enthusiasts alike enjoy the superior performance offered by digital ballasts, outranking any other grow light solution available for indoor gardening on the market today.

The ballast has a primary job of controlling the flow of electricity to the grow lamp. Without this limiting factor in place, rampant electrical current would cause the grow bulb to explode. The ballast functions to ignite the light in the grow lamp, and to keep the grow lamp continuously producing light. Within an electrical ballast, you will find microprocessor components and electronic circuitry. Some are built with light dimming capabilities as well. Digital ballasts are built to work with specific grow lights, so you will need to match the digital ballast to the wattage and type of grow bulb you wish to use.

Digital ballasts provide far greater energy savings and light output than you would get from a magnetic ballast. While the older magnetic ballasts took a long time to start the grow bulb, digital ballasts ensure a quick start up for your grow lights, and they run cooler than the magnetic units. Unlike magnetic ballasts, digital ballasts will quickly detect if there is a problem with a grow bulb or a faulty wire in the grow lighting system and turn the unit off, making for a safer operating system. To increase the life of the grow lamp, a digital ballast uses a soft start model to ignite the grow bulb, rather than flowing a large amount of power to the grow lamp to start it, and then reducing the current to the correct running level. When magnetic ballasts get older, they often become noisy, which is not true of silent-running digital ballasts. When using magnetic ballasts, over time your grow light will give off less light, but with a digital ballast your grow light produces more lumens because the electrical current is sent in a highly controlled digital manner, leveling the flow, and the more consistent energy supply helps the grow bulb run more efficiently, with a side effect of increasing the grow bulb's life.

Certain types of plants require specific kinds of light. Tomatoes, for example, grow best under HID lights, because they provide a full-color spectrum of light for the plant's growth and fruit production. Strawberries, and flowering plants such as orchids, produce more fruits and flowers when grown under a grow light in the red/orange light spectrum. Seedlings require light in the blue spectrum for growth. Both full-spectrum and specific color tone and temperature lights run at maximum efficiency with digital ballasts.

Hydroponics Articles

Information on Hydroponics

1. The basic types of grow lights
2. Benefits of Deep Water Culture - hydroponic system
3. Using aeroponics in your indoor garden
4. The different types of Hydroponics
5. The digital ballast lighting solution
6. Hydroponics Systems Overview
7. Hydroponics Basics
8. LED Grow Lights
9. Plant Nutrients
10. Deep Water Culture
11. Seed Starting
12. The Power of LED Grow Lights
13. Indoor Gardening

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