I can’t decide if I love or hate the design of this grow light. But I do love the fact that growing plants indoors is becoming trendy and mainstream!

I know that urban gardening is a massive trend. And that LED grown plants are a massive trend. But, comon! We all know that if you want plants to grow you can’t use GREEN lights!

This street installation is clearly some sort of artistic message about vertical gardens, urban landscape, and some other very esoteric themes. The type of esoteric themes that can be expressed by sticking leaves and LED lights in plastic to-go containers. I have to say, I’d rather see this guy spend his time, say, actually planting real plants? I’d love to know what you think…. Hot or Not?

[via makezine]

One of the things I hope to accomplish with the launch of this blog is to spread the word about innovative products and companies in the gardening industry.  And so we will begin our series of featured products with Grow Revolution Horticultural Lighting. Their products seem to fall into the fantasy grow room category, but after a question and answer session with them, I learned that they actually SAVE you tons of cash on overhead, so click on their savings calculator to see how much! I am posting a great photo of their lights in action, and an excerpt from our Q&A. For more outstanding information about what I personally believe is the future of indoor growing, click here to read the entire interview.

At the trade show in San Francisco I was able to check out your products. The light set up I was most impressed with was the T1 Smart Bar. I was told they produce as much light, if not more, than a standard 1000 watt bulb, and they are specifically designed for growing hydroponically. How were you able to develop this product?

The SmartBar is sold as a kit of two bars is the equivalent to a 1000 watt HPS. The wattage equivalency was established by Agriculture Canada in lettuce tests comparing our lights to HPS lights.

Theoreme Innovation began in 2004 with the research of two engineers in Montreal whose goal was to develop truly leading edge grow lights for the commercial grow industry. Since founding the company at that time they and their team have spent significant time and effort (and money) in the fundamental research required to achieve the necessary mixture of spectrums to promote full plant growth and flowering. This has meant a great deal of basic agronomy and engineering research to deliver products that deliver real results.

There are many manufacturers of LEDs and the differences between each LED can be quite substantial. Theoreme has tested all of them and continues to do so in order to be at the leading edge of this technology. However, Theoreme is not just a lighting company. At base it is a company whose focus is on plant science and aiding growers to grow more efficiently.

What sets Theoreme Innovation apart from other sellers, resellers and distributors of LED grow lights is that their products are the result of a lot of basic research and engineering rather than just trying to quickly repackage technology and products that others have made. From the start, Theoreme’s founders were committed to doing the basic research to develop a long run vision and solutions for the grow industry.

The SmartBar is the best example of this approach – the low height of the light and the water cooling are not the result of technical requirements but rather the lamp is the result of an analysis of what commercial growers needed.

With the capital cost of greenhouses and grow spaces being around 30% of the cost of commercial grow production, Theoreme decided that a key goal was to allow growers to grow on multiple vertical levels thus cutting that 30% figure dramatically. In one commercial grow operation where this light is used, the grower has increased production fourfold in the same space. The means that the 30% is maybe something like 7.5%. That is a huge capital savings for the grower which can be translated onto bottom line savings.

The water cooling is a result of growers needing to evacuate all heat from greenhouses and grow spaces in warm periods. In cold periods, this heat production can be more usefully directed around plants because research has shown that this is the most efficient use of the energy in the whole grow process compared with just letting the heat escape from the light into the greenhouse and be circulated around.

To learn more about LED lights, check out Grow Revolution, their peers at Greenpinelane.com and read the rest of the interview here.