So, What causes the buds to be airy and not dense and solid

And yes, I realize that depends on the strain. However, on my first grow I had 4 different plants, grown indoors in a tent, under ProGrow 400 LED. All the plants have airy buds. THC is pretty good on all of them, but just not as dense of a bud as I'd like. Grown in soil, with BigBloom nutrients.

Is it the light density? I just bought a SolarStorm 400, with 5 Watt LEDs, definitely that will be a great improvement on the light. I just read on a different thread about keeping temps down in the 60's, but that seems counter to what I have read about growing....

About a million different things, lol.

Heat number 1, Lighting, Something Stressed the plant, not enough nutes, to many nutes,

The only time that it is okay to have high temps is if you are running a sealed room with CO2 pumping. I keep my temps in the 70's

xstreamrider said:

I just read on a different thread about keeping temps down in the 60's, but that seems counter to what I have read about growing....

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With LED one should keep the grow room a little bit on the warm side compared to typical HID so don't get talked into keeping it in the 60's. Now you can go down into the 60's during lights out but lights-on I prefer more around 80.

I'll try lower temps for the next grow. My wife gave me Ed Rosenthal's "Marijuana Growers Handbook" for Christmas, and it seemed his thoughts were that temps should be up in the high 80's, have to re-read that section.

Anyways, looking forward to the new grow with the SolarStorm. 5W LED, with quite the light output vs. the Progrow 400. Power draw is about 4x higher with the Solarstorm (using KillaWatt meter), but obviously should be worth it.

High heat can cause plants to stretch and grow airy buds. It's the temperature within the canopy, just below the lights, that matters most. Stomata tend to close up at temperatures above 86F, without higher concentrations of CO2 or excellent ventilation. And speaking of ventilation, ensure that is adequate as well if not supplementing.

60 is too cool for indoors, although not necessarily detrimental (any cooler than this may lead to P lockout and purple plants). Between 72-82 is just about perfect. Along with increasing your lighting make sure the plants are getting enough nutrients, especially potassium which is often limited.

IMHO, a Sat or Sat dom will have fluffier less dense buds than an Indica or Indica dom. Here's a pic of 2 different phenos of my Sat/Indica Hybrid. YOu can see the differencethe indica dom had far denser bud than the sat dom.

Thanks for the reply! will keep the temps down; I grow indoors in the winter in New England, so not a problem, particularly since I'm using LEDs. Thanks also for not getting into the sideways debate about "LED's versus MH/HID".....

Both look really nice, but in fairness, you grew the sat in a lot smaller pot. That aside, you are correct

Cold weather does pose a problem for leds. In veg, mid 80s is very good, flower ~ high 60s- low 70s.

You will likely need to add a heater. I sometimes break out my old water bed heater, which has a thermostat controller

The ProGrow was most likely the problem

Jack Harer said:

IMHO, a Sat or Sat dom will have fluffier less dense buds than an Indica or Indica dom. Here's a pic of 2 different phenos of my Sat/Indica Hybrid. YOu can see the differenceView attachment 2832888the indica dom had far denser bud than the sat dom.

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What about outdoor temps? I've noticed that this year outdoors temps in my area were very high and so far all my strains have very tight/dense buds. Maybe outdoors, temps aren't as much of a factor concerning dense buds? I think that in general good genetics/strains and just a fairly heathly grow routine will determine whether you get the air buds or not. Somebody with more knowledge than myself should have better feedback. Anybody have better answers about growing dense buds outdoors? I'm very interested.

IME led lights work way better with hydro or coco i tripled my yeild after switching from soil. That's based on my environment also.