How much longer should i veg?

[Fishmon]

I haven’t checked PH at all during this grow, As I’ve been avoiding runoff, but I will check next watering. Also water only so far.

In regards to measuring soil PH;
When I first started out I was using liquid salt based nutes, naturally I have experienced the whole “omg my runoff is out of range, let me flush it into correction w water that will offset the PH imbalance.”

during that point in my growing career, I reached out to a real GOAT on this forums @Renfro. And he was explaining how checking soil ph through runoff is inadequate. And the only real way to do it is using a soil probe, which I’m not trying to spend a couple hundred on right now.

True about accuracy of testing runoff. However, imho, it can be a useful indication of conditions in the root zone. In my ph issue, I actually reached out to fox farms and they emailed me instructions for a 1:1 and a 5:1 soil slurry test with acceptable ph ranges to expect. Outside these ranges conditioning would be required to bring medium back in line. In my case, I tested some remaining mix from the bag and the results also showed unacceptabably low ph. During the subsequent flushing to raise ph and lower nutrient accumulation, I learned another hard lesson and that was that nitrogen is one of the easiest elements to release in a flush situation. Hence I then had N deficiency so then had to up the N as well. It seems every lesson I've learned has been the hard way and the majority self inflicted. Yeah, fox farms should have better QC of their potting mix but it taught me to slurry test every mix before using. Sorry to be so windy and hope you find the root of unhappiness in your (slightly) droopy one.

 

[GanjaGreg.]

That’s an interesting approach to training! I’ve never seen anyone try to achieve that many “tops” that way. It looks like you topped at the 3rd but kept the first and second? That’s not how I would do it but it looks cool for sure. Thanks for tuning in

 

[GanjaGreg.]

I believe it’s just poor watering practices as I’m trying to get this soil moisture level dialed in since it’s different from a soilless mixture with bottled nutes. Thanks for the input the long wind is appreciated

 

[DOCTORDOOB]

750 watts - would love to have that in my 2" x 4'

Spider - oh, yeh, I see the orange end caps. Spider came out with the 7000 enhanced about two years ago and that light has a really nice PPFD map. Is that the light you have?

(checks the Spider site)

Yeh, a big motha'. That light will really crank out the photons so tread carefully. I found their recommendations here and they're erring on the side of caution - from a yield perspective, max yield comes from getting as much light on the plant as it can handle. Manufacturers will "never" tell you that because there's nothing but risk in saying that - you'll get a good crop at 700µmol (their recommendation for veg) but, if they tell growers to crank it to 1k and they get light burn, Spider will never hear the end of it. That's my theory about it; I don't have any particular knowledge about it but I know that companies that want to stay out of trouble will understate rather than overstate.

Re, a phone app - only if you can calibrate it against a known source. I tested Photone back when it was called Korona and it failed. I tested it again a couple of years ago and it was 16% high. I use an Apogee but I also have owned a couple of Uni-T lux meters. If you can dial in your phone+software and if you want to schlep your phone in a tent and if you don't mind putting on the kludgy little sunshade that Photone requires when using iOS, you can save $27. And then you'll have to recal when you get a new phone.

If you can't tell I don't think much of phone+software, I'm having a bad keyboard day.

A phone+ software can be spot on or it can be very wrong. In contrast, the $32 Uni-T ships with a 5%± variance and, the way I put it, it's as inaccurate as an Apogee so it will work very, very well for the vast majority of growers. I've attached a document I wrote about converting lux to PPFD. Most lights can use 0.015 and looking at the spectrum for the SE7000, that should do well but 0.0147 might be more accurate since there's a fair amount of blue in the spectrum. Either will get you close enough to start.

Lacking a meter, if you're at 80% power, a hang height of 12" should give you about 720-1020µmol, based on the numbers in their non-CO2 flower recommendation. That's a jump from where you are now so I'd be inclined to start at 16", check the plants, drop to 14", check the plants, etc.

That's the key - we can toss around numbers but it the leaves start to taco or turn side ways so they're turning vertical to the light, then you've gone past their max.

HTH.

When I was trying to buy new lights I looked up videos on YouTube and the main growers on YouTube had videos of the testing of most of these lights. You don't even need a app. You can go watch the videos they move the meter around and show the strength difference between the center of the tent and light and the edges of the tent, and the different wattage outputs for different light heights, even how much power they actually pull from the wall. Most of the lights were from companies constantly sending them free lights to try on their channel and the grower I watched was actually impressed with how much watts this one light was putting out for such a cheap light so I ordered it and it work great! One of the guys was named justintime2grow and the other was Mr grow it I think..

 

[Delps8]

When I was trying to buy new lights I looked up videos on YouTube and the main growers on YouTube had videos of the testing of most of these lights. You don't even need a app. You can go watch the videos they move the meter around and show the strength difference between the center of the tent and light and the edges of the tent, and the different wattage outputs for different light heights, even how much power they actually pull from the wall. Most of the lights were from companies constantly sending them free lights to try on their channel and the grower I watched was actually impressed with how much watts this one light was putting out for such a cheap light so I ordered it and it work great! One of the guys was named justintime2grow and the other was Mr grow it I think..

Good to hear. I've seen vids by those YT personalities and I'm glad that you found a light that you're happy with.