Garland Grow Light Garden Review

I bought one a few days ago and upon unpacking the box I was not impressed and I was even less impressed when I started assembling it. The reflector inside the hood is made from thick white paper card which surprised me. Even more serious was the top of the T shaped mains cable which was too long and needed to be bent into a U shape to fit onto the flourescent tube ballast. Garland already know about it because that's exactly what the assembly illustration says to do. Why don't they just make it shorter? At first the first ballast popped out of the retaining clips when the second ballast was pushed on to their retaining clip but I wrapped some garden tie around the cable to maintain the shape and then all was ok. The hood is also stiff to raise and lower and probably needs two people and four hands.

So not perfect by any means but it's seems to be working with some sick African Violets which look like they're recovering from the winter low light and temperature after only a couple of days. The engine in the system is two full spectrum 60cm T5 HO fluorescent tubes with electronic flicker-free ballast which should give around 4,000 lumens which is pretty good for the area covered.

Now I've recovered from my initial assessment I'm pretty much satisfied with it and it fills a dark corner which is otherwise useless. List price is £95 but I paid £64 on Amazon UK.

 

Whilst that's disappointing "flat white" is a good reflector (better than the likes of kitchen foil, for example), and paying the extra for something like Mylar is probably not justified - the only people who I know who go to those extremes are using their grow-lamps to grow Weed!

 

No, the T5 tubes only get slightly warm. I was surprised due to the reflective power of white paper. I expected something a little bit shiny akin to reflective fabric.

 

I have posted a review as I always do when I buy something. 3 reviews there at the moment including mine