Thanks for the advice. I plan to LST the whole way through to harvest. Like I said I am using t8's so unless I get a coupe more ballasts to stick between the plants, the lower leaves wont get enough light with out LST. I also plan on Super Cropping the branches onces the plants get to be about a foot tall
I haven't added any nutes to the soil yet. No heat problems, no humidity problems, I did see a couple of gnats 2 weeks ago, but I haven't seen anymore, no other pests, the waters ph is fine. Here are a couple pics. They just got watered not that long ago, so they are looking a little droopy.
The lights aren't as low as they look in the pics. The lights are about 2-3 inches above the plant tops, depending on the plant.
Edit: It isn't over water. I wait until the leafs all droop a little and the pot is light before I add any water, then I add enough water that it starts to drain out the bottom. They are currently in 3gal pots. Plenty of perlite in the soil (the soil is a mixture of MG Organics and Sta-Green Moisture Max)
I know people are going to say it has to do with the MG soil, but I know it doesn't. The MG soil was only added recently and they actually started growing better once I added the MG.
Im not concerned with how my plants look as long as they are healthy. Thanks for your concerns but the area I am in doesn't have a huge selection of places to get soil, let a lone "good" soil. My wifes uncle has been growing for 10+ years now and he uses MG Organic Soil and his plants look good, smoke good, taste good and get you nice and high. I do take other peoples opinions into consideration, but I have to go with the results I see. Btw, it's not just MG soil. It's actually 2 different soils mixed together. The MG was only added recently when I transfered them from 3qt pots to 3 gal pots. Since then they have actually started growing a lot better, not only in height, but stem thickness, branch thickness and over all size.
Your plants might be 4 weeks old, but you have also flowered them, mine are still in veg. Thanks for the pics though for comparison.
4 weeks not MG
You have some very nice looking plants, and your system definitely works. Wish I could run something that big, no space for it at the moment.
Sounds good man, looks like you know what you're doing.
Haha not sure if I'm misunderstanding your sentence or something, but a T-8 fixture that is the same wattage as an equal CFL fixture will have the same amperage at a given voltages. 100w CFL = 100w T-8 = 100w HPS (not in yield but in power draw when excluding ballasts). And for the CFL equivalent number that is in comparison to incandescent lighting. I'd like to see you yield more with 100w of incandescent than with 100w of CFL. I mix different spectrum CFLS, seems to work better for me than using only one or the other. While LED does use wavelength, CFL goes off of kelvin scale, same as HPS/MH and fluoro tubes.
I am gonna wait until they are about a foot tall. Or I might put them in 12/12 to get them to flower and then switch them back to 24/0 schedule. Or I might just make a plastic sleeve for a single branch on each plant and leave it on 12 hours and off 12 hours to get that one branch to sex before I start to really flower them. I don't know if the sleeve idea will work, but someone on another thread suggested it to me. What are your takes on it?
There are a few things your argument is missing. Lumens are calculated at a distance of 1m from the bulb. From everything I've read 12 inches for 600hps is too close especially when you are growing several foot tall plants the light is further away, so to be fair let's use 400hps at 50k lumens and the benefit its 1m away so the plants get even 50k. Now let's take 200w feliz 6500k gives 10k lumens, and the light can be 12" or closer but give hps benefit, so to correct the lumens projected onto scrogged at that distance you take the 1/r^2 because lumens are in meters we use 12" approx .3048m... 1/(.3048^2) * 10000 gives the lumenosity which comes to 10.54 * 10000 = 105400 lumens dead center below the light. If you want you can do the math to calculate worst case given recommended grow area is 2.5ft by 2.5ft....pythagorean theorem to get distance to corners and apply same formula. I welcome anyone who can improve my math but I am cs major and taken physics with calc series should know my stuff lol
No worries man, I enjoy debating these things as I always learn something new. I apologize for the miscommunication. I'm not trying to say that a 100w hps will produce the same amount of light as a 100w cfl, just that on a kill-a-watt they will both run around the same. As far as the 500w cfls vs 500w hps/mh, everything else that either of you has running will have a much larger impact on your bill than the grow lights. The initial hike in amperage when starting the cfls is partly due to the type of ballast in them. A capacitor in the ballast takes a larger startup power than the bulb would need, but provides cleaner power to the bulb once running. Better hps/mh ballasts have built in capacitors as well, but one without this will run a much higher draw than otherwise. This could help to explain at least in part the discrepancy. Yes, I agree that it is more complicated than how I explained it, but for our purposes there is no need to go into other details. As far as cfls being self ballasted, there are both incorporated and unincorporated ballast cfls, but for our uses only the incorporated ones (self ballasted) are of any interest.
Haha it's not a light war man, we're just discussing different systems. Everybody learns from different information sources, so conflicts in views arise. Yes a 400 should be fine for veg, just be careful not to veg the plants too much or they may outgrow the ideal coverage of your light in flower.
Here's a link I just found that gives a pretty good description of all the different terms [http://www.theledlight.com/lumens.html] , thank you for the insight of measuring at one meter, I was wrong on that count. Haha ag major here, I had my share of physics and calc classes, but they were a couple years ago.
your right but your wrong too, Lumes are worked into a 1 foot square footcandle then into the 1 square meter
Shall we see how deeply we can delve into this? Wanna do spectrum as concerns only kelvin rating or wavelength as well? This thread has been entirely derailed haha.
