LED and BUD QUALITY

[Rocket Soul]

was it ever an issue that the sun was the best source of light???

Just cause its the best weve tried doesnt mean its the best that can be had. There is a roughness (or maybe fiberyness, if thats even a word) to outdoor grown bud that people dont seem to like. I dont mind it as long as the smoke is great.
And im not convinced i like greenhouse grown bud as much as some of the more deluxe indoor grown bud. The prices on the market also speak against this being as simplistic as sun=best.

But its seems clear to me that standard HE spectrum, 4K+ 660, does not always given you great results. Good, but not great.

I tinker a lot supplementing white led with monos and i have had varied results, mostly good but ive had a lot of problems improving quality of HE spectrum. UVA/UVB/Far red hasnt really changed the dial on quality. I think its down to too much green. But with less green in my base white ive seen good improvements adding reds, uva and far red.
Ymmv

 

[Deleted member 539861]

Any evidence that LED is better than HPS or HPS is better than LED? Has anyone actually had bud tested for THC and terpenes???

Yes, I have tested for thc and terpenes in all the environments now, over this summer season, with clean genetics...Nothing beats the sun. [...]

So, what's the results? And which LEDs did you use?

We were using nanolux LED bars, the LEDs were the best from the indoors, but the summer sun killed it...a few % higher THC and higher terps...and a way more extreme environment too..so just shows you, shows me, theres more to it all..

Err*, I appreciate you answered my question but you know in a 209 pages long thread about LED and bud quality with like a dozen literally epic wars on what's better, HPS or LED, with people losing their nerves and their accounts over it....if you finally ran an A/B test between HPS and LED would you mind sharing a little more details than just "yeah a few percentage more thc and terps but guess what, nothing beats the sun"?

I mean are these test results top secret for some reason?

It's not that I don't know natural sunlight is unbeatable (commonplace actually) or that I doubt that LED can grow really nice bud, I have convinced myself long ago even with cheap hardware store screw in LEDs....but couldn't these test results plus info on the exact test setup shed some light on the one exact question that this whole thread is about?

 

[Charles Dankens]

 

[Deleted member 539861]

My guess is willful ignorance

Hasn't this guy been banned long ago?

And btw he was talking trichome shape which I think is rather genetically determined, I have seen trichome stalks with small / no heads under both HPS and LED

 

[Charles Dankens]

Err*, I appreciate you answered my question but you know in a 209 pages long thread about LED and bud quality with like a dozen literally epic wars on what's better, HPS or LED, with people losing their nerves and their accounts over it....if you finally ran an A/B test between HPS and LED would you mind sharing a little more details than just "yeah a few percentage more thc and terps but guess what, nothing beats the sun"?

I mean are these test results top secret for some reason?

It's not that I don't know natural sunlight is unbeatable (commonplace actually) or that I doubt that LED can grow really nice bud, I have convinced myself long ago even with cheap hardware store screw in LEDs....but couldn't these test results plus info on the exact test setup shed some light on the one exact question that this whole thread is about?

 

[Charles Dankens]

Hasn't this guy been banned long ago?

And btw he was talking trichome shape which I think is rather genetically determined, I have seen trichome stalks with small / no heads under both HPS and LED

Moaning JA, Are you the assistant apprentice moderator trainee?

 

[Deleted member 539861]

Hasn't this guy been banned long ago?

And btw he was talking trichome shape which I think is rather genetically determined, I have seen trichome stalks with small / no bulbs under both HPS and LED

Huh?
Nice song but am I missing the point here? Is that some cryptic answer to my question?

 

[Deleted member 539861]

Moaning JA, Are you the assistant apprentice moderator trainee?

I swear I have absolutely no fking clue what you are talking about. If you at least told me who or what JA is I could tell you if I am that or not

 

[Brother Nature]

It would be interesting to see comparative lab results on the same clone grown under top bin leds and top of the line hps. So far that does seem to be missing from this thread. My money is on them not being different enough for 99% of people to notice. I have a sour clone drying that I did this with, one led one cmh, but I am not in a legal place so can’t get proper lab results but will share my observations once the cmh stuff is dry.

**Just realised this isn't the HPS vs LED thread...

 

[Ca++]

The environment under the sun is somewhat different. The heat that comes with it, gives a greater temperature differential between the buds, and pretty much anywhere in the shade. Heat the LED grower, may try to emulate by warming the air that the whole plant gets.
The HPS does that heat thing, but with a spectrum that nobody actually wants to emulate.
Mixing HPS and LED, isn't uncommon, it seems. I do it myself. When temps are low, I see a huge difference between sending power into the less efficient HPS for radiant heat, or the same excess power into heaters.
I'm just indoor though, and heating the air, is heating my rootzone. Increasing water use, along with things in to. Not just the loss of oxygen. It's a quantifiable change.

 

[greyfader]

Yes, I have tested for thc and terpenes in all the environments now, over this summer season, with clean genetics...Nothing beats the sun. results were in descending order...Good Sun>Sun with HPS>Led>HPS. LED and HPS were in sealed climate controlled rooms with over 1100ppfd at canopy. Good sun was in low tech greenhouses, Sun with HPS in high tech houses that get less sun than the low tech houses. Our summer sun is over 3000ppfd at midday, so even through diffused plastic its over 1600ppfd of diffused lighting with no inverse square drop off..Can't compete with that shit..LOL.

don't you mean 2000 ppfd at mid day? i don't know of any place on earth that gets spot readings of 3000 ppfd.

my par meter pegs at 2000 ppfd for a reason.

"For example, full sunlight is 108,000 Lux or 2000 µmol m-2 s-1 (108,000 ∗ 0.0185)."

taken from Apogee Instruments, the instrument company owned by dr bugbee.

if you are getting these readings, may i ask where on the planet you got them and what instrument did you use to measure them?

everyone already knows the sun is the greatest light source, what we are supposed to be talking about is indoor growing using artificial light.

many people do not have the option of growing their own medicine outdoors in full sunlight. that is why indoor growing exists.

this thread is also not about a competition between indoor light sources.

thc and terpene synthesis can be enhanced indoors using spectrum and nutrient manipulation, perhaps by 10-15%, according to dr nirit bernstein of the university of tel aviv.



and

 

[Rocket Soul]

thc and terpene synthesis can be enhanced indoors using spectrum and nutrient manipulation, perhaps by 10-15%, according to dr nirit bernstein of the university of tel aviv.



and

Hey Delta

Is that 10-15% increase in total yield or increase concentration? As in thc goes from 20% to 22-23%? Or total thc extracted goes from say 20g to 22-23?

Or actually pushing thc concentration from 20% to 30-35%?

If talking thc concentration i think its somewhat underestimated. @Prawn Connery made a fair few tests with better results (unless my memory fails me) of his boards compared to a few other light sources.

 

[greyfader]

Hey Delta

Is that 10-15% increase in total yield or increase concentration? As in thc goes from 20% to 22-23%? Or total thc extracted goes from say 20g to 22-23?

Or actually pushing thc concentration from 20% to 30-35%?

If talking thc concentration i think its somewhat underestimated. @Prawn Connery made a fair few tests with better results (unless my memory fails me) of his boards compared to a few other light sources.

howdy, it would be as an increase in overall cannabinoid yield per mass rather than an increase in mass from 20 to 23 %, but i'm going by memory averaging several papers combined, not an exact figure.

i would love to see any more information on the subject if anyone has any.

i mention this because several folks on this thread have indicated they believe that cannabinoid and terp production is genetically imprinted and can't be altered.

i think the genetic thc and terpene potential of each plant is cast in stone but we are not meeting that potential in most cases.

blue light and some UV enhance the production of these parameters but usually at the expense of total yield.

by using a blue-weighted spectrum throughout the vegetative and stretching phases, then switching to a heavily red-weighted spectrum that also contains portions of not only red but dark red, far-red, and some infrared you can get flower expansion and greater gross weight.

if this were all we did this could be considered dilution by mass.

but i think that by switching back to the blue weighted spectrum after flower mass building occurs, say the last 2-3 weeks we can have both mass and potency.

in my last experimental grow, i used 5000k only up until near the end of stretch at 3 weeks and then switched to all 2700k plus incandescent and got a noticeable increase in mass and very nice potency.

in the next grow using the same genetic, i intend to use the spectrum the same way but switch back to 5000k after flower bulking to finiish.

so on a 10 week strain it would look something like this;

5000k for all of veg and the first 3 weeks of flower, 2700k plus incandescent for 4-5 weeks and then 5000k for the finish.

during the last grow the mass building slowed by the end of week 7 but i finished with the red-weighted spectrum.

and produced this plant, which was heavy and potent but i think i can do better.

here is the same plant at the end of week 6 of flowering, notice that most plant mass building has already occurred by the end of week 6. you can see the incandescent bulbs mixed in with the 2700k.

i have already shown these pics earlier in this same thread so if you have seen them before i apologise, but i wanted to discuss this subject again.

i've included the combined graph of a 2700k LED and an incandescent overlaid. this combination of spectrum produced the plant mass you see above. i did not get this increase in mass using 5000k and 2700k only. the addition of the incandescent caused this expansion.

also, looking at the finished plant pics you see where i starved them the last two weeks.

i dumped the reservoir and refilled with plain ph adjusted water.

in the past people have called this "flushing", but you cannot flush nutrients out of a plant. you can starve it and cause it to use up internal stores of elements.

i didn't do this to improve flavor as i don't believe it works to improve flavor.

according to dr bernstein and some others this starving includes the starving of nitrogen and she thinks this also enhances cannabinoids and terpenes.

so now we actually have a real reason to starve our plants at the end.

 

[Deleted member 539861]

i think the genetic thc and terpene potential of each plant is cast in stone but we are not meeting that potential in most cases.






View attachment 19009725

Sure it comes down to a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Genes determine the maximum possible expression of a quantitative trait such as thc and terpene content, bud mass, body height, IQ or whatever, and environmental factors determine how much of that potential is actually realized. The light source does not just determine spectrum but has an impact on other environmental factors such as ambient temperature, leaf surface temperature, transpiration rate, nutrient uptake, metabolization and therefore thc/ terpene synthesis rate, and thc/ terpene evaporation rate and they all affect quality.

I can also imagine that some terpenes are being synthesized at a higher rate at different temperatures and definitely they volatitilize at different temps and that might be a reason for some phenotypes seeming to perform better under LED, some better under HPS, because the terpenes etc that are characteristic for their smell and taste are synthesized at a higher rate and/or retained better (though that could be compensated by taking measures tonincrease/decrease temps, then).

My LED grows are significantly cooler on the average than my HPS grows were and I like that. My anecdotal experience says the optimum temps are around 22 celsius but then I never had the chance to do side by sides which is one reason why I am so keen to see those.

Plus the fact I can reach g/w ratios similar to or better than a 600w HPS grow with 20 watt screw ins, scalable from 20w and North of that.

Are these screw ins in your pic Osram Superstar e27 20.5 watts by chance? If so, how many runs do you use them.before you replace them?

And by incandescent you mean those regular bulbs that we used before LED and fluorescents and in which ratio do you use them? Sorry if you have already gone into this earlier.

Btw what you're saying about starving thebplants to "enhance" thc and terpenes, if you mean by that increase their production during the last days/ weeks of flower, that would definitely have an effect on the taste of the end product? The more terpenes the less harsh/ plant matter -like the smoke would be?

 

[I Care]

I dont have tests but seen (and smellt) enough to be convinced: direct high summer sun beats the shit out of every other growlight. And even further if you have a bit of elevation. And obviously proper summer, like in Spain.

Favorite weed ever was Blue Haze grown by my buddy at 800m height, i got some bud (maybe 100g) of the bottom buds that he just left for an extra two weeks after main harvest. That shit blew my mind, i gave some to friends and they were jonesing like a meth-head afterwards asking for more.
Strongest stuff was also outdoor, elite cut of Glue trap, full face melt and silence for two hours over about 10 peeps, nobody said a word, so stoney.

Though if i buy outdoor weed at the club it’s never the same; my guess is lower uv due to greenhouse glass/plastic. Not sure. But if you made your tests in greenhouses i urge you to take a crack direct sun.

I think I finally understand light deprivation, I thought it was a way to have an early yield, or beat the weather on long flowering strains. Didn’t think the intensity being greater to yield more greasy buds until I read this.

howdy, it would be as an increase in overall cannabinoid yield per mass rather than an increase in mass from 20 to 23 %, but i'm going by memory averaging several papers combined, not an exact figure.

i would love to see any more information on the subject if anyone has any.

i mention this because several folks on this thread have indicated they believe that cannabinoid and terp production is genetically imprinted and can't be altered.

i think the genetic thc and terpene potential of each plant is cast in stone but we are not meeting that potential in most cases.

blue light and some UV enhance the production of these parameters but usually at the expense of total yield.

by using a blue-weighted spectrum throughout the vegetative and stretching phases, then switching to a heavily red-weighted spectrum that also contains portions of not only red but dark red, far-red, and some infrared you can get flower expansion and greater gross weight.

if this were all we did this could be considered dilution by mass.

but i think that by switching back to the blue weighted spectrum after flower mass building occurs, say the last 2-3 weeks we can have both mass and potency.

in my last experimental grow, i used 5000k only up until near the end of stretch at 3 weeks and then switched to all 2700k plus incandescent and got a noticeable increase in mass and very nice potency.

in the next grow using the same genetic, i intend to use the spectrum the same way but switch back to 5000k after flower bulking to finiish.

so on a 10 week strain it would look something like this;

5000k for all of veg and the first 3 weeks of flower, 2700k plus incandescent for 4-5 weeks and then 5000k for the finish.

during the last grow the mass building slowed by the end of week 7 but i finished with the red-weighted spectrum.

and produced this plant, which was heavy and potent but i think i can do better.

View attachment 19009720 View attachment 19009722 View attachment 19009724

here is the same plant at the end of week 6 of flowering, notice that most plant mass building has already occurred by the end of week 6. you can see the incandescent bulbs mixed in with the 2700k.


View attachment 19009725

i have already shown these pics earlier in this same thread so if you have seen them before i apologise, but i wanted to discuss this subject again.

i've included the combined graph of a 2700k LED and an incandescent overlaid. this combination of spectrum produced the plant mass you see above. i did not get this increase in mass using 5000k and 2700k only. the addition of the incandescent caused this expansion.

also, looking at the finished plant pics you see where i starved them the last two weeks.

i dumped the reservoir and refilled with plain ph adjusted water.

in the past people have called this "flushing", but you cannot flush nutrients out of a plant. you can starve it and cause it to use up internal stores of elements.

i didn't do this to improve flavor as i don't believe it works to improve flavor.

according to dr bernstein and some others this starving includes the starving of nitrogen and she thinks this also enhances cannabinoids and terpenes.

so now we actually have a real reason to starve our plants at the end.

If you live in California, you could just walk out of a store with all the materials to make this… without paying… nobody is going to stop you.

was it ever an issue that the sun was the best source of light???

The sun is out there where a team of plant predators are

 

[I Care]

was it ever an issue that the sun was the best source of light???

That thing also is unreliable. It never stays in one place. Sometimes it even hides from the rain.

 

[maryjaneismyfre]

Greyfader, the light meters used were apogee MQ-500 meters, the one that I have here maxes out at 2000, and I've had someone elses here two years back maybe in midsummer and that was maxing out at 3000 as far as I can remember, I may remember wrong, but either way its helluva light here..The light here in summer is REAL LOL...or unreal rather LOL...I've got priva sensors outside measuring w/m2 of sunlight power, I'll go see what we crank out in mid summer, then you can compare that to an indoor setup LOL...The meters max out at that at like 10am to 2pm actually, I can't measure the ppfd at midday. Reading online they now read up to 4000ppfd so I'm guessing they have improved them over time? Our one we have had here for over 3 years, not a new model. I'm not at liberty to share work documents on public forums unfortunately, to the other guy..

OK, looked at historical data on the Priva, in mid summer we max out at around 1100w/m2 of sunlight energy, and on a clear day it gets up to almost 1200w/m2...so now put that amount of light per m2..thats how bright it is here in mid summer..unreal!

 

[I Care]

Anywhere there’s been a wild fire from sun would be a great sativa bank. I think Canada has prime territory for the sun grown if you have private access to a new clearing.

 

[hyposomniac]

Just cause its the best weve tried doesnt mean its the best that can be had. There is a roughness (or maybe fiberyness, if thats even a word) to outdoor grown bud that people dont seem to like. I dont mind it as long as the smoke is great.
And im not convinced i like greenhouse grown bud as much as some of the more deluxe indoor grown bud. The prices on the market also speak against this being as simplistic as sun=best.

But its seems clear to me that standard HE spectrum, 4K+ 660, does not always given you great results. Good, but not great.

I tinker a lot supplementing white led with monos and i have had varied results, mostly good but ive had a lot of problems improving quality of HE spectrum. UVA/UVB/Far red hasnt really changed the dial on quality. I think its down to too much green. But with less green in my base white ive seen good improvements adding reds, uva and far red.
Ymmv

A company called mammoth lighting is pushing extra green.. i think they might have some data somewhere.. fwiw

 

[I Care]

I think the thing that drives us all is air quality you can achieve with LED lighting. I don’t think you can get the same quality outdoors if you’re not somewhere that dodges contaminants. Like living on a glacier somewhere. What do they do with those super yachts? Anchors away!