Crunky's DIY stealth dresser, homemade LED light(VEG)

Update time:

first the plants that were all started under my LED light, they were planted in dirt and put in a plant room with lots of windows, even with subzero temps they started flowering:
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Now here's cocoa:
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In about 12 hours I will post more pics of cocoa(going to give her a good feeding since I haven't in a while, just straight distilled water)

your grow is seriously inspiring. I read all three of your threads. I'm currently scheming to make my own led panel. What would you think would be the best way to go about making a 600w led grow light panel (using red and blue coupled). I plan to use it as well as my 1k mh light, my friend did this and it literally f**ed the grow uppp (in an amazing way). I want to make 2 600w. what is your opinion on that? I have an insanely big walk in closet which i'm turning into the grow room. I want to put the cheaper panels to line portions of the walls, but i want two 600w lights; one on each side of my 1k (though i may switch to a 600w mh just for power usage purposes and i hate the heat from my 1k)

Thanks for the kind words

In all honesty unless you have very deep pockets and don't care about yield as much as quality, I would stick with the HID lighting. If you have a large volume you're trying to illuminate, LEDs will be extremely hard to cover that area. For example, the 1w LEDs I'm looking at right now(some of the best in the world atm) only cover about 4 inches of plant surface. Due to the way LEDs work, they really aren't cost effective to cover a large area. Personally, if I had your space I would have some sort of SCRoG or SoG going. I'd have 400w hps, 600 mh, 400w hps. That's just what I would do.

The thing about LEDs is that they must be positioned close to the plants to get any sort of positive affect from it. This creates a couple of problems. With such a large room, positioning LEDs around 4 or 5 plants would be a task, and you'd likely need +50w of LEDs per plant to notice affects on top of your HID lighting. Another thing people don't realize too much is that blue light controls internode spacing, root development, stem elongation, and photoperiodism. Blue has a fairly decent penetrating power because it isn't absorbed as quickly as red light. The true challenge is placing them so it stacks the internodes really close together(more internodes more dense bud). Also, on the flip side, red is absorbed quickly but has very little penetrating power. This means that you'll need lots of red LEDs per plant, and they must be positioned close as well.

In such a large space such as yours, looking into any kind of LED setup would be pointless in my opinion. You're going to spend thousands in LEDs alone to cover that space. With the HID lighting you could add CO2 and A/C for the cost of the LED setup+HID. Adding the MH in between the 2 hps will give your spectrum a boost and also help to stack the internodes. I assume this would create both the quality and quantity most desire, but I can't say for certain as I have never used HID lighting.

If you don't mind me asking, what strains are you working with? Method of growing, soil, hydro, etc? Plant limits? Desired weight, etc? Knowing this could make all the difference. If you're going for quality over quantity, LEDs may be what you're looking for. If you're looking for quantity I would go with the hps/mh/hps setup.

Another option you could look at: is having 1 plant under a 300w LED panel and see how that turns out, along with whatever else you do with the room. This would allow you to see how LEDs perform compared to HID, and will not cost an arm and a leg(x2 600w panels).

If you have any more questions feel free to ask!

-crunk

Time for an update:
I just want to say, this is by far the most stacked plant I have ever seen or grown. It's odd to think that it's 95% Sativa(or so they say, I'm not convinced until I see it flower).

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Another update, just because I got my SD card for my new camera. Thought I'd show the haircut I gave this little lady, I also broke her stem some more, hopefully this slows her down a little bit. She's almost too hard to handle with my space at this point, haha. Hoping with the reduction of about a thick handful of leaves, and the crack in her stem that maybe she'll slow down in the next couple days to repair.
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I'm actually pretty curious how the main stem is going to heal up, it's still pretty exposed. May also try and take like 5-10 clones off it. There's 10 main offshoots off the main stem, but each offshoot has multiple clone sites. Will post pics if I do decide to clone in the next couple days.

So excited! The little chocolopes that I had to give away cause they grew too fast, they were put near a window and despite being in very low temps due to winter, they have started flowering! This strain is supposedly an indoor only strain, but it seems to love the sun. I also want to mention that where they're located they do not get hardly any direct light from the sun, as our winters are mostly cloudy. Even so they're pushing out tons of pistils!
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Cocoa without flash:
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With flash:
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Root stump thingy (notice how large it is- 2 inch net cup):
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Have plans to take clones and start flowering, so maybe in a couple of weeks I can get my flowering setup going, we'll see.

Trying to get everything going for vegging/clones/flowering. Thus I had to move cocoa, here she is in her new home. I also wanna say that I will be adding reflective tape to the walls to make things easier for the plant.
Before taking her out:
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Kinda thought this was amusing:
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After:
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Still need to get around to the foil tape, cloning process, and also my flowering design..

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Found I had a bunch of tape left so I'll likely do the bottom of the cab as well as the bucket she's in, just for the visual aspect haha.

Clones outta be coming too once she grows some more and I figure out how I wanna do this whole thing.

Chocolopes enjoyin some rays:
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Here we got my chocolope, Cocoa, in all her glory:
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Fog cloner waiting to be loaded up: (need to figure out something for the slightly higher temps and high humidity)
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Cloned her and this is how they're doin:
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Here's the momma after taking about 10 clones off:
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I think my clones may be trying to flower but I'm not too sure haha. I'm just hopin my ghetto little invention works.

I'm also trying to sprout a destroyer bean, I managed to get 1 from the pick and mix seeds on attitude, it has been the quickest germinating seed I've started at the moment, but I fear my little seed isn't going to make it. From what I understand sativas take a long time to break soil, but I'm scared cause it's all sold out now, and it looks like it's stalled. I can't be sure if the tap root is growing without uprooting it and I would rather not stress it anymore than I have to. I just don't want it to die on me, a heavy sativa is something I really desire to grow out, and this would insure having a nice mother with good genetics. Here's a couple pics of the little seedling:
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Update: It seems the destroyer bean turned out to be no good real shame as I was really eager to see more of the equatorial sativa side of mary jane. When I put the little bean into the soil I know the soil had the perfect amount of moisture, air, and temp. It just never took off, it's like the tap root stopped after the seed husk split open. I'm fairly certain I did mess up something though, so I'm just going to cut my losses for now and run with the chocolope.

Also, my clones eventually withered and died, although I think they would have taken off had I not removed the plastic bag and tried the misting method. With 15% RH in the room, the clones simply have to have some sort of humidity dome, the only problem I'm running into is that plastic bags damage the clones, and I'm not sure what else to use. So I may take some more clones and try the bag again, but we'll see how that goes.

Here's some pictures:
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Look at how the mature shoot has growth coming off 3 sides of the stem, pretty cool I must say, I bet this will come in handy with clones.

just found your thread today and I'm interested because I was thinking on getting a 250w LED blackstar for my grow but it was just a thought. your mom looks like a giant tree!! lol! do you think your clone problems was due to the fogger? also +rep for being a DIY grower

Thanks, DIY is my specialty it adds so much more to the 'fun' of growing.

As to the cloner, no I'm sure if I let 'em do their thing they would have rooted, most of the clones had a couple root bumps on them, and 1 clone may have had 1 root, which I likely damaged. The only problem was I took the humidity away from them so they wilted and died. I will be taking more clones today.

As to the 250w LED panel, what's your coverage area and what kind of yield are you looking for? I keep looking at the prices of LED panels vs MH/HPS, and I'm starting to lean towards the HID lighting. LEDs are just too expensive at the moment. Maybe in 5-10 years they'll get them all worked out, and possibly they'll wise up and start using LEDs as side lighting as well. From what I see, LED panels do work, just nowhere near a vertical setup that can be had with HID bulbs.

Took some clones, these are slightly smaller than the last batch. My hope is the smaller clones will root faster, we'll see.

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My little Afrodite seed, poking up real nice:View attachment 1426083

When you say white is better than red/blue do you mean for vegging or all the time? I want to build a panel for flowering and was going to use 2 red and 2 far red for every 1 white LED. Would it be a mistake to have all my blue light coming from white leds?

Yes it would hazi, typically most pure blue LEDs are more efficient because nearly all of the good white LEDs have a blue diode with a phosphor coating, so white LEDs will always be less efficient in terms of blue light. With the blue diode there's no phosphor to slow down or alter the light coming from the LED chip. I learned this after posting all the stuff about white LEDs.

As for the red, I would run red(630) and deep red(660), far red(735) promotes stem elongation if it's not kept in check by deep red. The 630nm red will be easier to find than 660 of 735 but it's plenty more efficient so you could use that on its own if you wanted.

Update time:
Took like 20 branches off, she was growing too much for me so I trimmed her up a ton.
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I absolutely love how the stem is growing bark now, I officially got myself a tree

Made an account just to view this thread in all it glory. Awesome job, man. You really seem to know what you're talking about.


Just a passing thought came to mind about an LED panel as I'm presently stuck with a restricted space. If I use my warm white CFLs and use LEDs for supplementary lighting, would the range of lighting be beneficial enough to warrant DIY'ing one of my own?

+rep for epic experimental grow.

Yah this thread has been epic,you need to make a how to thread on how to make those beast LED's you made.