Testing HLG's far red light

InTheValley said:

Your a freakin wizard RandomBlame, this is exactly why, A- I use a Far-red (730nm) Puck all day, B- why I see great growth and trich developement?ala?frost under 600 PAR, as Ive stated a few times recently. I have buds that get like 100 PAR, and are sooooooo frosty.

Emerson+500PAR+Perfect VPD+Mag+CO2=HOLY GOODNESS.

as far as SAS, Wouldnt that be thrown out the window with just a single plant? Heard thats why its good to plant cover plants in your pots, because THOSE would take the SAS thus reducing the chance for it to have any effect on the main plant.

I personally love the stretch, especially with COBs, and scrogs.

I use just the small far-red puck, in a 3.5x3.5 area and works just fine.

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I'm not sure I've fully understand what you mean. SAS is caused when plants a shaded by other plants and it cause the plant to stretch out to keep up with their neighbors. They fight for the light!
With intense white light and a reversed red : far-red ratio the plants would stretch out like crazy, internodes with 8-10", much bigger but brighter leaves with longer petioles, less nodes and skinny branching, fluffy elongated colas and at least 50% loss in final yield.
But you need a lot far-red because you need more far- than deep-red to cause SAS.
Try it with a single plant in veg and give her 15-20w coolwhite and 10w far-red. Is an extreme example but you can study how the plant reacts. Within 2 days you'll see the first alterations.
Pro gardeners use this effect for their roses, tulips and other plants to elongate the stems. They also use EoD treatments..

I've seen users using a lot far-red while the plants stretch out. It can be useful for small low stretching indikas. When the stretch is done they reduce far-red to a "normal level" (less than red). This way the lower buds get more light and in the end it helps to get better yields.
For me farred, deepred, blue light and also UV allows me to communicate with the plants and tell them what to do.

Randomblame said:

I'm not sure I've fully understand what you mean. SAS is caused when plants a shaded by other plants and it cause the plant to stretch out to keep up with their neighbors. They fight for the light!
With intense white light and a reversed red : far-red ratio the plants would stretch out like crazy, internodes with 8-10", much bigger but brighter leaves with longer petioles, less nodes and skinny branching, fluffy elongated colas and at least 50% loss in final yield.
But you need a lot far-red because you need more far- than deep-red to cause SAS.
Try it with a single plant in veg and give her 15-20w coolwhite and 10w far-red. Is an extreme example but you can study how the plant reacts. Within 2 days you'll see the first alterations.
Pro gardeners use this effect for their roses, tulips and other plants to elongate the stems. They also use EoD treatments..

I've seen users using a lot far-red while the plants stretch out. It can be useful for small low stretching indikas. When the stretch is done they reduce far-red to a "normal level" (less than red). This way the lower buds get more light and in the end it helps to get better yields.
For me farred, deepred, blue light and also UV allows me to communicate with the plants and tell them what to do.

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I still keep turning over and over in my head whether to buy 2 of those 2' fixtures and 2 pureuv agromax bulbs.

Try it finally out, bro!
You need it only for one fu.... hour per day(eg. 4x 15mins) and it adds almost nothing to your electricity bill(0,048kwh/day). 2 24w bulbs, a 2x 24w ballast and 2 pairs of bulb sockets are ~60-70$ and for the reflectors I would just use 0,8mm alu flashing, 4x 22" each, maybe another 10 bucks and such bulbs last 1500h(80%) and can be used for up to 5000h because you still get 50% of the initial output which is still 2,5 times more like a brand new reptile bulb would deliver. Instead of 1h use it simply for 2h to get the same amount(dose) UVB. Still below 0,1kwh/day!
This means they literally last forever..

Randomblame said:

I'm not sure I've fully understand what you mean. SAS is caused when plants a shaded by other plants and it cause the plant to stretch out to keep up with their neighbors. They fight for the light!
With intense white light and a reversed red : far-red ratio the plants would stretch out like crazy, internodes with 8-10", much bigger but brighter leaves with longer petioles, less nodes and skinny branching, fluffy elongated colas and at least 50% loss in final yield.

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ooooooooooooooooooo,ok, i see...

Well guys I finished harvesting the tester plant today. I chopped at day 56 (end of week . Trichomes are all cloudy with a mix of dr pepper sprayed on them. A few trichomes are amber maybe 10%. The flowering time I found for this plant is about 9-10 weeks.
Theres a few white pistils and some brown hairs havent receded but the trichomes are ok. I dont have a way of putting trichome photos on here. Im about to harvest another plant in the rotation as well. Ill post back later.

Next up testing the far red is Sundae Driver (flowering time 60-70 days). Lets see how many days the far red reduces that too.
Ive noticed that if you put plants way small in the flower room they can triple to quadruple because of the far red (at 5 min from day 1 of flower). So, im going to let this sundae maybe double in size and when I put it in the flower room with the far red it will grow BIG. Ill post my results weekly now (when I put it in flower) and youll see what im talking about.
Also got this baby in the house to try with the far red. Cant find the flowering times on this one.

Day 1 of far red for the sundae driver.
So I have the far red on 5 minutes after lights out. Ive seen with all the other plants (when put in flower) is that they triple or quadruple in size. This plant should fill all the empty space you see.
I do find it odd that the party cup plant, I started 12/12 with far red, did not blow up bigger than it should have.
I will post back results at the end of week 1.

Randomblame said:

Think on CRI80 vs. CRI90... CRI90 is up to a week faster and most of the time without loss in yield even though it has less PAR.

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How do you know this?

Through experience and different comparision tests.
@Rahz has testet lots of different spectrums in the past and found out 3k/CRI90 yields almost the same like 3k/CRI80 but finished up to a week earlier.
@The Dawg found out the same using CRI90 and there are more threads about CRI90. Seems the doubled amount of far-red is what makes the difference.
Additional far-red has a few effects. It switch for instance the phytochromes activated thru deep-red back to its inactive state, it helps to even out the activity of photosynthesis system I and II, it helps increasing the leaf temps and together with deep-red it drives the Emerson effect.

When using it for instance for ~5mins after lights off you can imedeately switch the activated phytochromes back to its inactive state to put the plants faster in night mode. Without far-red that takes up to 2h and in this two hours happens no growth. So by using far-red you can make use of this 2 hours. Lets take a 60 days strain... 60 x 2h are 120h or 5 days and you can expect the strain would finish in only 55 days.

In nature or better in natural sun light you find high amounts of deep- AND far-red in the same time that means the phytochromes are permanently switched from its active to its inactive state, on and off, on and off.
Indoors with CRI80 white there is almost no far-red which means over the day all phytochromes are turned on but they only switch back to off at night. This has also negative effects on the balance of PS-I and PS-II.
The good thing is indoors we need far less far-red compared to sun light. CRI90 has "only" twice as much far-red like CRI80 but it already makes a huge difference. Indeed it would be counter productive to use the same amount of far-red you find in sunlight. The highest shortening effect you'll find when using CRI90 + far-red EoD treatments(end of day). Usually around a week depending on flowering times of a specific strain. With a 12 week haze it can be up to 10days and with a 7 week indika its maybe only 5 days left.

I'll add a few pdf's about far-red and the effects it has on plant growth. There are also useful videos about far-red on youtube, from plant doc Hernandez for instance.

In short ...

I am running from seed to harvest around 4000 umol/s of FR. For Emerson and EoD. Which should be upper end. But right now my tent is full with autos. However, what can I expect? I didn't notice any SAS, nor bigger plants/leaves. But this is hard to tell with autos, so you can tell me what is expected with photo plants with that setup.

Because I have only 5 diodes of FR driven at 500mA, maybe plants don't receive all of photons because of distance from diodes to plants? In a 4x4 tent I placed them in each 2x2 center/corner and one in the middle of the tent.

KonopCh said:

I am running from seed to harvest around 4000 umol/s of FR. For Emerson and EoD. Which should be upper end. But right now my tent is full with autos. However, what can I expect? I didn't notice any SAS, nor bigger plants/leaves. But this is hard to tell with autos, so you can tell me what is expected with photo plants with that setup.

Because I have only 5 diodes of FR driven at 500mA, maybe plants don't receive all of photons because of distance from diodes to plants? In a 4x4 tent I placed them in each 2x2 center/corner and one in the middle of the tent.

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More than enough for EoD at least.

Airwalker16 said:

More than enough for EoD at least.

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Yea, I mention that.

KonopCh said:

I am running from seed to harvest around 4000 umol/s of FR. For Emerson and EoD. Which should be upper end. But right now my tent is full with autos. However, what can I expect? I didn't notice any SAS, nor bigger plants/leaves. But this is hard to tell with autos, so you can tell me what is expected with photo plants with that setup.

Click to expand...

Thats what ive discovered too. Im in a party cup challenge and I started a seedling under 12/12 (11hrs 55min main light on and 5min of far red), from day 1, and I expected the plant to grow really big with the far red. Nope. All the other plants that are in my veg tent get 24 hours of light. When they get big enough I put them in the flower tent with far red. These plants like I stated before triple to quadruple in size. All of my plants are photos.
I used to grow autos and I remember reading in the far red thread that it should work but the person who tried the far red said that he started the treatments when the plants started to flower, not since seed. He said he did reduce the flowering time by a 5-10 days too. As to why they didnt grow bigger, I have no idea.
I dont plan on growing autos soon so im not much of help to you.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3
Day 4

Day 5

Day6

Day 7

That’s only week one into flower. See how they blow up in size. Maybe it’s too much far red at 5 min. I can’t change it because of the comp I’m in so for now it’s a little experimenting.

Frank Cannon said:

Where and how much for the controller?

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Thegermling said:

I dont have that information sorry. These are to test out.

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I think it is from this (sold out) kit, but I guess Thegermling knew this.
https://horticulturelightinggroup.com/collections/all/products/flowering-initator-development-kit

I am a total noob about this, so perhaps it is utter nonsense, but this looks a bit the same.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DC-12V-Timing-Board-Timer-Electronics-Circuit-Time-Delay-Switch-Trigger-Digital-Relay-Module-Car-Buzzer/32980210903.html?spm=2114.search0604.3.1.34f15be8Xt1pRk&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10843_319_10059_10884_317_10887_10696_321_322_453_10084_454_10083_10103_10618_10304_10307_10820_10301_10821_537_536,searchweb201603_54,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb-0&algo_pvid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb

Keesje said:

I think it is from this (sold out) kit, but I guess Thegermling knew this.
https://horticulturelightinggroup.com/collections/all/products/flowering-initator-development-kit

I am a total noob about this, so perhaps it is utter nonsense, but this looks a bit the same.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DC-12V-Timing-Board-Timer-Electronics-Circuit-Time-Delay-Switch-Trigger-Digital-Relay-Module-Car-Buzzer/32980210903.html?spm=2114.search0604.3.1.34f15be8Xt1pRk&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10843_319_10059_10884_317_10887_10696_321_322_453_10084_454_10083_10103_10618_10304_10307_10820_10301_10821_537_536,searchweb201603_54,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb-0&algo_pvid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb

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So is that basically just a short interval timer?

Keesje said:

I think it is from this (sold out) kit, but I guess Thegermling knew this.
https://horticulturelightinggroup.com/collections/all/products/flowering-initator-development-kit

I am a total noob about this, so perhaps it is utter nonsense, but this looks a bit the same.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DC-12V-Timing-Board-Timer-Electronics-Circuit-Time-Delay-Switch-Trigger-Digital-Relay-Module-Car-Buzzer/32980210903.html?spm=2114.search0604.3.1.34f15be8Xt1pRk&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10065_10068_10843_319_10059_10884_317_10887_10696_321_322_453_10084_454_10083_10103_10618_10304_10307_10820_10301_10821_537_536,searchweb201603_54,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb-0&algo_pvid=1c595da2-3a6c-4b77-9a74-29dd73239dfb

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I wouldnt even know if that circuit board would work to be honest as I dont know squat about circuit boards like that haha. I suggest asking HLG about it. Theyll help you out.

For me it could be as well a board to start WW3.
I have no clue. I like plug & play.

But the board on the site op HLG that belongs to the kit is the same one as in the pic of Thegermling.
I guess that is what they sended him, but it is sold out for now.

The device on Aliexpress looks similar and as I understand you can connect it to a sensor.
But if it is the same...? No clue.

Keesje said:

But the board on the site op HLG that belongs to the kit is the same one as in the pic of Thegermling.
I guess that is what they sended him, but it is sold out for now.

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Yes they sent me the kit and told me if I would post the results and I gave them my word I would. Ive been looking to get another kit but theyve been sold out for awhile. When I have time ill ask HLG where I can buy another one of those timers that came with the kit.