LED and BUD QUALITY

[Ca++]

I agree. The point is it seems like you can gain 10% in par efficiency going one way, while the other way, optimizing plant response in the form of light utilization (g of harvest per umol of dli) can also gain 10-15% in yield. The study is pages behind ill see if i can dig it out, it also showed other benefits (significant higher terps, improvements in smell/flavour profiles, bringing back volatile smells) of going for a more horticentric approach.
Also, in the very end, of all the growers i know and see online (big time comercial is almost never around here): noone seems completely watt limited, more so space limited. If you want to bring your yearly results up (total crop values; yield, cycle time and quality)and have a hard time doing so with standard HE lights it may be better to go spec for 40w per square foot or even higher (you never have to use those extra watts if you dont want and need) and take a little extra yield + the other benefits.

Not asking telling anyone to stop believing efficiency is a good thing, it obviously is but there is more to it. What do you say to the home grower that grows his own smoke but want higher quality: do you think he prefers his 300w light for his 3x3 with great yields and decent quality or a 350w light with same to bigger yield, great smells and quality in the end after cure, plants looking happier and easier to grow all the way thru grow? Im betting there is a place in the market at least for this type of thinking. People really seems to like to stop growing mids and grow like a boss. No offense to your grow, it looks point. Also, I mean youre own mixed grow with hps and leds seems to indicate that you were wanting more and found a way? I hope to show that there is yet another way.
My gear is in development and hopefully growing after xmas. I hope to get at least one local grower on as a tester for this not to be one mouth shouting but to have some more support, enough at least for peeps to have a look at it. I also got my own "grow guru" onboard as a tester: hes got over 30 years of growing and breeding experience with the best setup and results ive seen or heard of. Keeps the original genetics of Delicatessen seed bank which he contributed with: his genetics are just 4 generations from mexico/himalaya etc. He generally keeps of the forums nowadays but his promised me at least something in terms of growlog for this.

Im really keen to see how that one pans out cause it would a very good side by side situation.

The way im going is for strips but i might do some boards later, should drop into standard qb heat sinks. Thats just dropping in a board into your system, not a whole as expensive grow setup. But all i good time

The link could be useful. It had my attention. I hear talk of plant specific light, and wonder what non-specific light is. I'm with Bugbee on this, where more is more. However if there is a special 10% recipe, that holds true for all our plants, I will have 10% more of it please. If that is possible
Our yield per watt is about the same, though I'm using 25% more watts, if LED alone. We (in the UK) can't get done for watts (yet) it's legally about plant count and size. Which is why I look at things like interlighting, to work the plants we have, harder. It's space constraints, rather than power constraints.

Just out in interest, I'm going to work it out. You have 400w a meter, using 0.4kwh, 12 times a day, 365 a year. 1750kwh with that kind of usage. Lets say you could save 10% of that, 175kwh cost's about £50 here. For perhaps 7 years, that 10% better 400w light, could save £350. The more usual ~600w light, might see saving of £500. These savings could pay to replace themselves. That's an important turning point in pricing. Where extra expenditure on a light, gives saving that make it's replacement free. It's like a 'bag for life'

 

[Orange's Greenhouse]

If anyone has some suggestions for a super quality 8-9 week strain to try next I'd be very happy.

Wappa by Paradise is a good staple. It has nothing particularly special about it, in the very best sense.
Good weed that is kinda normal but very high quality. Cultivation is also nice with mold resistance, stout stature but a bit leafier than other modern lines.

 

[Orange's Greenhouse]

I hear talk of plant specific light, and wonder what non-specific light is.

Human centric lighting would be another application.
High cri, diffuse and a colour (temperature) that complements whatever is shown. Picking the right colour can turn a bland food display into something special.

 

[Rocket Soul]

The link could be useful. It had my attention. I hear talk of plant specific light, and wonder what non-specific light is. I'm with Bugbee on this, where more is more. However if there is a special 10% recipe, that holds true for all our plants, I will have 10% more of it please. If that is possible
Our yield per watt is about the same, though I'm using 25% more watts, if LED alone. We (in the UK) can't get done for watts (yet) it's legally about plant count and size. Which is why I look at things like interlighting, to work the plants we have, harder. It's space constraints, rather than power constraints.

Just out in interest, I'm going to work it out. You have 400w a meter, using 0.4kwh, 12 times a day, 365 a year. 1750kwh with that kind of usage. Lets say you could save 10% of that, 175kwh cost's about £50 here. For perhaps 7 years, that 10% better 400w light, could save £350. The more usual ~600w light, might see saving of £500. These savings could pay to replace themselves. That's an important turning point in pricing. Where extra expenditure on a light, gives saving that make it's replacement free. It's like a 'bag for life'

Ill see if i can dig it out, its been posted here in this thread. Something about not clicking on links, lol but not so complicated. White with added 640 and 660 in massive amounts, compared very well with same white with the same amount of 660. And other different grow spectrums, one standard but green supplemented and one extra wide. Dual red peak was stand out everywhere. Plant specific: there are all sorts of interesting action spectrums in litterature, most of them having some type of peak in reactivity: chloro peaks, both on blue and red side, transpiration phytochromes etc. by putting a diode there youre basicly telling the plant that this is a lovely situation to grow in and the plant reacts to this, how? Well depends. But especially the chlorophyll needs to be mentioned its not something that is either or, they need to work together to conplete one cycle, otherwise you only have half the photosynthesis. Depending on what light the plant will rebalance the chlorophyll a and b, is this good for the plant, will it make adapting to life and light easier? Hard to think so...

I think bugbee makes a misstake by thinking all red,green blue is the same to the plant. All his research is on red is by means of white + 660. Is there a reason to think that this is all that the plant will react to, total reds?. Thats based on old science that was "colored" by technology at the time: rgb leds, which got people thinking in terms of human eye colors rather than what makes sense for a plant. If that is what was used to be studied and basis of further research then its easy to fall into this trap, of course if you study with rgb leds your find red,blue and green reactions and not combination reactions (like emmerson did). And if you think spectrum doesnt matter very much at all then all and simply test the same ones over and over, which from scientific point of view is good and systematic, then the only big factor left is intensity. Remember that sicence dont prove negatives only falsify untrue statements. Bugbee has only proved that intensity matters which is kinda obvious. He can only say that the spectrums i tried did not change the dial enough to be statistically significant. He cannot say that about spectrum in general which is the misread most people do. All he leaves to the spectrum side of things is "further research is needed" which i believ is a cop out. "Further research is needed cause i didnt bother with researching chlorophyll a an b properly, not on the red side nor on the blue side" would be better but hey that wouldnt really sounds so snappy would it?

And im fully with you, turn up intensity to 11, carpet your grow with up to 1200par. And set up a horti spectrum spending 10ish % more watts and compare it to a "bugbee" based spectrum (basicly 4000-5000k + 660) and see what you like best for yourself and what you yield and how you like the smoke and smells.
The 10ish percent is approximate and based on how i would work this out but not the same as in the study, i like a different aolution with a bit more blue and different way to get there. The others who do something similar is black dog led but theyve only recently got their efficiency up to +2.

In the end im not after more yield i want the whole damn thing to be great in every possible way, including you as a grower seeing it next to 4 or different leds going "there she goes" everytime you look at that one cannopy you feel in your bones is the best one.

Ill go for that study,
Here we go

Frontiers | The role of red and white light in optimizing growth and accumulation of plant specialized metabolites at two light intensities in medical cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.)

The cultivation of medical cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) is expanding in controlled environments, driven by evolving governmental regulations for healthcare ...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[greyfader]

The sun isn't really a single point of light. Most of the sun's rays that hit the earth are – to all intents – parallel They are not "strictly" parallel, but when you measure the distances involved – coupled by the fact the sun is 100x the diameter of the earth and all of its surface emits lights – they might as well be.

The shadows and oblique angles cast by a HID inside a grow room are much higher than the light that reaches an outdoor plant.

The other thing most people forget is that sunlight is – for the most part – side-lighting. It's almost never directly overheard – it traces an arc on the horizon – and while the top of the plant gets lit, so does the side facing the sun.

an excellent description of how sunlight hits unobstructed plants in the field. it also illustrates that, even in places where the daily light integral is in the 60-70 mols range, the same leaves are not getting the full brunt of it all day long.

it is an everchanging, very dynamic, delivery of light being spread out over a long time frame and being delivered to multiple small receptors that independently contribute to the production of synthate.

add the effects of constantly changing leaf blade angle due to wind and i get an image of leaves as little pulsing factories of energy all throwing the energy into the fire totally at random.

contrast this with indoors where we get leaves in relatively fixed positions receiving light from relatively fixed sources.

i think this may go to help explain "light bleaching" that we see indoors. that we never see outdoors.

i don't think the 'bleaching" is from heat. i think it's because the light-harvesting apparatus is receiving more light than the plant can chemically process.

in other words, the chlorophyll production can't keep up with the light being delivered. and without chlorophyll, we lose pigmentation.

 

[zachrockbadenof]

Yes, flowering at around 27C and finishing off under aircon at around 18-20C. I'm not doing it, but a friend of mine is with lights and clones provided by me and the results have been good. He cures at that lower temperature and it usually takes 2-3 weeks for the plants to fully dry. We also keep our finished produce in the fridge at 4C. It makes a big difference.

Sorry for the Instagram photos, but I don't keep photos on my computer. You can see everything here if you wish: https://www.instagram.com/growlightsaustralia/

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well done...

 

[greyfader]

Even for a die hard coco dtw grower the ppk design can give some benefits:
We tried to build a tailpipe into one of our standard pots, to see how much water retention we could remove by eliminating the perched water table. It would retain about 2/3ds of the water compared to the no tailpipe pot. The idea is that either increased watering frequency or increased pot size would increase our yield. Still have to test it out but pretty sure we got a project for the future.

the physical act of watering causes an exchange of gasses in the root zone, like a piston in a motor. refreshing the gas status with each event. it also corrects nutrient and ph status. it disrupts the moisture retention curve allowing greater utilization of pot space, creating a larger root mass in the same size pot.

the moisture retention curve is graded by gravity. after an irrigation event has occurred and the excess has been drained, it is drier at the top and wetter at the bottom.

more frequent events keep the moisture more evenly distributed in the pot.

now, if i could just get you to keep the bottom of the tailpiece constantly immersed in the solution in a reservoir below each plant that is recirculating through a central reservoir that continuously homogenizes the solution, refreshes the nutrients, and corrects ph on every pass, you will have built the plant turbocharger known as the ppk.

the immersed tailpiece functions as a two-lane road. it not only drains the excess after each pulse it also begins back-feeding the pot between events because of the capillary rise potential of the medium.

this, in turn, helps to keep the moisture in the pot more evenly distributed for a longer time frame.

 

[bloyd]

the physical act of watering causes an exchange of gasses in the root zone, like a piston in a motor. refreshing the gas status with each event. it also corrects nutrient and ph status. it disrupts the moisture retention curve allowing greater utilization of pot space, creating a larger root mass in the same size pot.

the moisture retention curve is graded by gravity. after an irrigation event has occurred and the excess has been drained, it is drier at the top and wetter at the bottom.

more frequent events keep the moisture more evenly distributed in the pot.

now, if i could just get you to keep the bottom of the tailpiece constantly immersed in the solution in a reservoir below each plant that is recirculating through a central reservoir that continuously homogenizes the solution, refreshes the nutrients, and corrects ph on every pass, you will have built the plant turbocharger known as the ppk.

the immersed tailpiece functions as a two-lane road. it not only drains the excess after each pulse it also begins back-feeding the pot between events because of the capillary rise potential of the medium.

this, in turn, helps to keep the moisture in the pot more evenly distributed for a longer time frame.

I set up another ppk for a struggling grower friend months back. Lack of training may get him, but the Burmese has small flowers and strong branches so he may pull it off. I need to get back to ppk!

 

[Rocket Soul]

Wappa by Paradise is a good staple. It has nothing particularly special about it, in the very best sense.
Good weed that is kinda normal but very high quality. Cultivation is also nice with mold resistance, stout stature but a b

the physical act of watering causes an exchange of gasses in the root zone, like a piston in a motor. refreshing the gas status with each event. it also corrects nutrient and ph status. it disrupts the moisture retention curve allowing greater utilization of pot space, creating a larger root mass in the same size pot.

the moisture retention curve is graded by gravity. after an irrigation event has occurred and the excess has been drained, it is drier at the top and wetter at the bottom.

more frequent events keep the moisture more evenly distributed in the pot.

now, if i could just get you to keep the bottom of the tailpiece constantly immersed in the solution in a reservoir below each plant that is recirculating through a central reservoir that continuously homogenizes the solution, refreshes the nutrients, and corrects ph on every pass, you will have built the plant turbocharger known as the ppk.

the immersed tailpiece functions as a two-lane road. it not only drains the excess after each pulse it also begins back-feeding the pot between events because of the capillary rise potential of the medium.

this, in turn, helps to keep the moisture in the pot more evenly distributed for a longer time frame.

Preaching to the choir but baby steps, im not with final say and recirculating seems scary to my partner, especially without assured watersupply. We depend on rain which is a tricky situation in Spain, but some how everytime it gets really critical somehow i gets solved in the last moment by acts of God and it rains for 3 weeks straight. The final adoption of drought laws was followed by rain for several weeks nationwide and all reservoir filled. Its as if God was watching us toil everyday smiling at us knowingly, only to in the last moment go "i got you, bro " and sort us out. World cup games are guessed by a precognitive octopuss? Check, and you can bet youre ass we will win (we did, and i was certain we would as soon as i heard: what type of country would this happen to but Spain? We are the mother and birthplace of surrealism)

God is laughing, but hes laughing with us and not at us, and has a special place in his heart for us. I cant explain or understand it in any other way.

Also, recirculating means new nutes likely, no captain jacks around here. Baby steps instead of a bridge too far.

 

[PlastikeRubba]

I think bugbee makes a misstake by thinking

Bruce Bugbee doesn't even believe in organic fertilizer. I know the average pothead refers to ions as salts, and believes organic salts break down into ions, but Bruce Bugbee doesn't even smoke the shit, what's his excuse? Sponsorship by chemical companies makes lab coated boomers tell lies. I bet he recommends Camel cigs also.

My research: Light spectrum regulates nutrient uptake and both volatile and non volatile metabolite expression. Seasonal light change means better quality and yield.

Bugboi: We feed crap nutes to crap cbd plants bred in Crapville USA, under crap lights, and hey, buy my crappy light meter.

Google says I'm talking about a "passive plant killer" and no one reading this knows what the hell I'm talking about, until I draw a diagram.

 

[Prawn Connery]

View attachment 19084680

Bruce Bugbee doesn't even believe in organic fertilizer. I know the average pothead refers to ions as salts, and believes organic salts break down into ions, but Bruce Bugbee doesn't even smoke the shit, what's his excuse? Sponsorship by chemical companies makes lab coated boomers tell lies. I bet he recommends Camel cigs also.

My research: Light spectrum regulates nutrient uptake and both volatile and non volatile metabolite expression. Seasonal light change means better quality and yield.

Bugboi: We feed crap nutes to crap cbd plants bred in Crapville USA, under crap lights, and hey, buy my crappy light meter.

Ah, someone else who states the obvious. Didn't Bugbee also give us blurples through his NASA research that focussed on red and blue? I guess at the time they were also the most efficient diodes, but to think for the longest time many people believed plants were green because they didn't need green light . . .

 

[Prawn Connery]

an excellent description of how sunlight hits unobstructed plants in the field. it also illustrates that, even in places where the daily light integral is in the 60-70 mols range, the same leaves are not getting the full brunt of it all day long.

it is an everchanging, very dynamic, delivery of light being spread out over a long time frame and being delivered to multiple small receptors that independently contribute to the production of synthate.

add the effects of constantly changing leaf blade angle due to wind and i get an image of leaves as little pulsing factories of energy all throwing the energy into the fire totally at random.

contrast this with indoors where we get leaves in relatively fixed positions receiving light from relatively fixed sources.

i think this may go to help explain "light bleaching" that we see indoors. that we never see outdoors.

i don't think the 'bleaching" is from heat. i think it's because the light-harvesting apparatus is receiving more light than the plant can chemically process.

in other words, the chlorophyll production can't keep up with the light being delivered. and without chlorophyll, we lose pigmentation.

Ironically, this is one area I think Bugbee might be on the right track. Plants have pigment plasticity, but saturation of certain wavelengths could account for the build-up of photon-converted heat (thermal energy). If a photon isn't absorbed or reflected, then it will eventually end up as heat.

Another feature of sunlight is that it changes colour throughout the day, season and weather events, so plant chloroplasts get hit with different ratios of of wavelengths all the time. UV vs Far Red light is a good example of each taking turn for the plant to absorb, but also the average RGB ratios, from red to blue and back again.

 

[Prawn Connery]

Wappa by Paradise is a good staple. It has nothing particularly special about it, in the very best sense.
Good weed that is kinda normal but very high quality. Cultivation is also nice with mold resistance, stout stature but a bit leafier than other modern lines.

I concur. We made a selection from 10x females and ran that clone for over 12 years until it was finally lost. It was one of the most reliable strains we ever grew. Almost impossible to kill. Good mold resistance, easy to trim (our pheno wasn't very leafy), great yields and a really nice sativa-hybrid high with a sweet skunky taste. Just a good alround plant for beginner growers and advanced.

 

[Orange's Greenhouse]

Ah, someone else who states the obvious. Didn't Bugbee also give us blurples through his NASA research that focussed on red and blue? I guess at the time they were also the most efficient diodes, but to think for the longest time many people believed plants were green because they didn't need green light . . .

The reasoning for blurple is different. Red is the most efficient, because it has the highest activity in the mccree curve, red light is the most efficient in umol/J and red diodes were the most efficient electrically at that time.
But exclusivly red light is not producing healthy plants. So they added just enough blue light to produce healthy plants at the highest efficiency (umol/J) possible.
Then they did more research and it became apparent that white light is more efficient at growing plants (at the same light level) and the fixtures are cheaper.

Science is slow. Give it 10 more years to finish far red fundamentals and they will turn to green, cyan or violett.

 

[Koondense]

The sun isn't really a single point of light. Most of the sun's rays that hit the earth are – to all intents – parallel They are not "strictly" parallel, but when you measure the distances involved – coupled by the fact the sun is 100x the diameter of the earth and all of its surface emits lights – they might as well be.

The shadows and oblique angles cast by a HID inside a grow room are much higher than the light that reaches an outdoor plant.

The other thing most people forget is that sunlight is – for the most part – side-lighting. It's almost never directly overheard – it traces an arc on the horizon – and while the top of the plant gets lit, so does the side facing the sun.

That's all true and just confirms how different things can be in considering the factors when growing indoors.
Light type, positioning, spectrum...so much more than just picking a side, like we see this HPS vs LED tribalism.
Everything matters.

Cheers

 

[Prawn Connery]

The reasoning for blurple is different. Red is the most efficient, because it has the highest activity in the mccree curve, red light is the most efficient in umol/J and red diodes were the most efficient electrically at that time.
But exclusivly red light is not producing healthy plants. So they added just enough blue light to produce healthy plants at the highest efficiency (umol/J) possible.
Then they did more research and it became apparent that white light is more efficient at growing plants (at the same light level) and the fixtures are cheaper.

Science is slow. Give it 10 more years to finish far red fundamentals and they will turn to green, cyan or violett.

Yes, I realise that. NASA at the time were trying to figure out the most efficient (in terms of energy) way to grow plants in outer space, where solar power diminishes the further you get from the sun. Blurples represented the best bang for buck in terms of the energy input-output equation vis-a-vie photosynthesis. At least at the time. Green diodes still aren't efficient and white phosphors were in their infancy.

 

[Rocket Soul]

I concur. We made a selection from 10x females and ran that clone for over 12 years until it was finally lost. It was one of the most reliable strains we ever grew. Almost impossible to kill. Good mold resistance, easy to trim (our pheno wasn't very leafy), great yields and a really nice sativa-hybrid high with a sweet skunky taste. Just a good alround plant for beginner growers and advanced.

Wappa is texting spelling for guapa, in spanish, meaning Gorgeous or Beautiful (fem/girl). Ive heard nothing but good about it but i never see it in the smoke clubs. This maybe something to try out...
Im glad to see you back posting

 

[Scfarmer]

One thing I have been experimenting with is putting my light panels on an angle to give more light to the sides, less loss on the walls and a greater canopy penetration. It's worked quite well.
I must have deleted the picture of my twin panels on the angle but I found this one. Bit of a Mish mash of what I had left over + some old 4000k panels

 

[Rocket Soul]

The reasoning for blurple is different. Red is the most efficient, because it has the highest activity in the mccree curve, red light is the most efficient in umol/J and red diodes were the most efficient electrically at that time.
But exclusivly red light is not producing healthy plants. So they added just enough blue light to produce healthy plants at the highest efficiency (umol/J) possible.
Then they did more research and it became apparent that white light is more efficient at growing plants (at the same light level) and the fixtures are cheaper.

Science is slow. Give it 10 more years to finish far red fundamentals and they will turn to green, cyan or violett.

Why wait? Im in the "do your own research" camp even if it sometimes leads to "jewish space lasers" for some cringe so hard when i hear that phrase but its true. None of the research is completely outside our grasps now with how diodes have been moving in efficiency, but the further we push the harder it will be to find differences between different light conditions. The last small decimals of improvement may just be that growers need to do by themselves. A traditional experiment is not always the best way of gaining knowledge and definitely not the conditions for growing well: as an experimenter youre not allowed to react and interfere in the same way as you would do in a grow.
A better setup for this may be a continuously developing grow op with different lights over different trays; adding/subtracting every grow reset, until you find what youre after. And really i doubt there is one final solution but a few: we keep some lights around as "control" - just white light and have lights with more emphasis on density and flower response as it seems like they are somewhat opposed in action. By experience we know which cut will work better under what light; getting a all around solution for growing.
The GLA strips of Prawn Connery is in there and damn hard to beat but we have a few that comes in too close to see a winner yet.

 

[Orange's Greenhouse]

Ive heard nothing but good about it but i never see it in the smoke clubs.

Make a selection and honor your "work" by branding it. Alternatively you can cross it with your current favorite cut and claim the F1 name for having "worked it extensively". In any case your competitors can't easily figure out what you have.
I don't think there's much honesty when it comes to names.

Why wait?

Because shit's expensive. I don't doubt that you understand what you are doing but doing multiple, replicated, studies, with different cultivars but also plant species looking at different aspects of growth, disease resistance and quality/sensory percetions is beyond your capabilities.
That takes research grants.