ELEMENT LED Grow Light, Kirton Farm

Kirton Farm Nurseries Ltd, home of The Hairy Pot Plant Co., is a wholesale nursery in Winchester, Hampshire. Established in 1984, the team grows herbs and herbaceous perennials as sustainably as possible, using peat-free compost and their own brand of ‘hairy’ coir pots that go straight into the ground without leaving any waste plastic behind. Kirton supplies more than half a million plugs a year to growers across the UK. They run a specialist propagation unit and an on-site laboratory growth room, an environment that lets them develop high-quality stock to pot on, and supply growers who need large volumes of specific varieties. The team is committed to growing the business sustainably. Reducing the carbon footprint of the operation is core to that effort: new technology, careful usage monitoring, optimised heat and lighting programmes, additional insulation, and continuous staff awareness all play their part. Kirton approached INDO in 2019 to look at replacing their existing 400W HPS (High-Pressure Sodium) installation. The nursery propagates plants year-round in their growth laboratory and weaning tunnels, where supplementary lighting extends day length and the growing season. Kirton had already started moving from HPS to LED three years earlier, with an alternative LED system in the growth laboratory and propagation beds. After hearing first-hand recommendations from peers in the industry about the INDO ELEMENT, the team decided in 2019 to trial the ELEMENT in place of extending the existing setup. Client objectives

1. A better all-round light spectrum, closer to sunlight than HPS
2. More white light, so staff can work comfortably in the area for long periods
3. A more even spread of light across the production beds
4. Lower energy costs

Derek Taylor, Nursery Director at Kirton, said:

When I first thought about extending our lighting area in our prop unit, we’d already got some LED lights in which worked pretty well so were thinking we’d just extend the area with the same lights but in fact, we heard from another grower that had used INDO Lighting who said how good it was, that it was good value and potentially longer lasting than the older LED units that we had. In the year we’ve had so far, we’ve definitely had better growth overall and a more even light output over the whole bed. Overall we’ve found the whole INDO package very easy to work with, pretty idiot-proof really. The INDO ELEMENT units just do the job: easy to install, easy to run, cheap to run, the plants like it. We were able to see a clear difference in the plants and the whole team much prefer working under them too. I’d be happy to recommend the INDO lighting system, certainly for the prop work that we’ve done with it; it’s really good, the plant quality has been fantastic, lovely and easy to work under compared with the original LED system. The plants have grown really well, it’s good value for money and we are hoping the life of the system will be fairly stress-free and a lot longer than the old system was.