Lumatek air cooled ballast and bluelab ph pen, must haves for all growers

Posted by adairsawyer on September 26th, 2013

You might think that hydroponics can be a very cost effective method of growing. You are not mistaking. It is. You are making a mistake, however, if you think that a bare bones set up will yield you excellent results. It won’t. Plants need an ideal environment to give you a biggest possible harvest, and while hydroponics typically offers a better environment than soil to most plants, you can still screw it up pretty bad. If you go to the Internet for hydroponics related knowledge, you will inevitably meet people whose opinion on the subject matter is that you can grow anything perfectly with a just a bucket of water and some minerals. Most likely, they are wrong, as many plants are very sensitive to their conditions, and might not even get to the flowering stage if you don’t keep them in a correct environment. Less likely is that they are right in their sphere of growing, as many hydroponic gardeners prefer to work with plants that are very undemanding and can thrive in the harshest conditions. If you are looking to grow plants such as tomatoes, however, you will need a much more effective set up to provide you with a good harvest.

First of all, your growing environment must have the correct pH for the plants. For that, you will need a bluelab ph pen. Maybe you have heard somewhere that just a pH test paper is enough, and meters like bluelab ph pen require significant financial investments, as well as a great deal of your time being spent calibrating and servicing the device. Nothing can be further from the truth. For a typical grower a bluelab ph pen will bring back more than its money worth. A pH meter such as the bluelab ph pen will give you a result that is as accurate as a more expensive meter for a fraction of the cost. While it’s undeniable that a liquid pH test or pH test papers are much cheaper, over time the costs of using them will accumulate. Furthermore, you won’t be able to get an accurate reading with them, and your pH level will be far from ideal. A bluelab ph pen, on the other hand, has to be bought just once, is very reliable, and even offers temperature compensation for added accuracy.

Second, a very overlooked part of hydroponics is having a correct light. Only a device like a lumatek air cooled ballast can offer you the light quality you need, and save your time, effort, and potentially money on jury rigging a similar system. A lumatek air cooled ballast will offer you several very useful options. First of all, it can run several types of lamps, including HPS lamps. This means that with a lumatek air cooled ballast you will get the best possible results for both vegetative and flowering stages of your plants. Furthermore, a lumatek air cooled ballast comes with its own ventilation system, allowing you to save on fans and air ducts. Finally, lumatek air cooled ballasts offer technology which prevents breakers from tripping during start-up even when there are several lamps installed.

There is a set of tools necessary for every profession, and all growers should have a lumated air cooled ballast and a bluelab ph pen for optimal plant growing.