300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

[Two Tokes]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

No smoke report yet, but the scissor hash is just *excellent*. It expands a lot and the first hit I took had me coughing for a few minutes, but after that it just tastes really good and has me feeling just fine .

Understatments. Always understatements.

 

[MJ Crescendo]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

In my GLH 240 grow I did notice that the last leg of trimming took me longer because I had to decifer between what small, trich coated leaves to keep on the buds. I decided to leave the majority of them and now that the buds are dry these leaves look great and I'm glad that I left them. It's interesting to note that these sugar leaves are common under buds grown with these LEDs. Not a bad thing imo, but seems to be significant. I'm glad that you kept everything even as possible and trimmed all buds the same. My very sharp trimming scissors did give me this sense of 'velvet' when trimming things up. My fingers were like super glue after I finished trimming and I was even able to use a razor to scrap significant amounts of 'finger hash' due to the stickiness. Its cool to know that you had the same issue and that the HID buds did not have this trait during trimming. Both buds look gorgeous in the last photos. It would be really interesting to have a bud from each tent sent to the lab for testing, but that's a little over the top, I bet that cannaboid contents slightly differ due to the different types of lighting, but it's hard to say which would be better. It definitely looks like both types of lighting can compete pretty well against each other, but so far this comparison has me pretty happy with my future in LED growing. These specific nanonmeters of light seem to really cater to these plants and produce great bud.

 

[j4s2u0]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Holy crap SettingSun!!!
Gorgeous pictures as always dude!
The plants all look fucking amazing,even better then I though they would...
Its funny because in the begining they were kinda going back and forth as to which look better etc,then up till a couple weeks ago the hid lights were kicking ass and taking names,but I must say the led's look to have gotten realy fat cause they look great now!
Both led and hid look amazing,not sure which I would pic as far as looks alone,but get them all dried ect so we can see them dried and ready to go,and the smoke report would be a great read also,cant wait....great job dude and +rep!!!

 

[Planter]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

GOOD JOB SS !!
both plants/buds look great. thanks for doin the comparison!!

 

[IrishBoy]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

its a win win all those buds look crazy good. the amazing part to me is you just mixed a few TRF's and got some frosty ass buds. i just wonder if you added some molasses or sucanat how they would have looked? i will have to say DM purple mixed with OC+ seems to be a good combo. I wonder how each plant will burn ash wise? if one group will be cleaner then the other?

Great Job Buddy. know you see why i stick to these leds and got rid of my HID.lol.. they treat me real good.

 

[Nine Leafer]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Excellent work SS!

I also believe that this is a testament to what was earlier being touching on, care/environment vs nutes. Understanding that the CRFs clearly do a great job, the fact remains there are many more additives(nutes) that could have introduced during this grow. But instead more concentration of care was taken and the result is clear. Nature surely knows how to produce great products with proper environmental conditions.

The lighting "race" is interesting. The LED light produced both the heaviest(286g) and the lightest(201g) plant with an average of 244.25Gs/plant. Whereas the HID light produced an average of 232.25Gs/plant. A 12g difference, this is looking very close so far.


It will be interesting to see, if one side has more water content then the other resulting in much different dried weights and of course, overall smoke/taste/quality.

 

[ProblemChild]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

very Nice outcome SS!! cant wait to see the final results!

 

[Doc Bud]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

And that's how it's done, folks.
A Master at work.

If we could just get him to stop doing all these crazy damned experiments and set up about 4000 watts of light and grow 40-50 plants....

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

By cutting the tips of the fan leaves back you will decrease the leaf mass which the clone needs to support at the time it has no roots. This will keep the plant from wilting and will help the plant concentrate its energy on root production instead of trying to survive.

Sorry about the double post. The first one did'nt show up at first so I rewrote it again in a simpler form.

thanks bro, and no problem, and I concur .

 

[tbrad]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Setting sun, fantastic journal!

What is your secret for keeping them so short and stumpy?
And the medium is really 80% perlite/20% soil?

And watering by hand right?

Very nice journal.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

WOW! I pick the right moment for a stroll around 420!

Those are some wonderful looking naked plants.

To busy drooling to try and make any comparisons.

WOW!

thank you TT!

Wow, that led did some deep pennytratin'

The Spectra 300 performed like a champ on this grow. I'm looking forward to using it for future grows.

Heck, they are all bud!

For a sativa-dominant strain, they really stayed short and compact. That's the shape I'm striving to produce, so couldn't be happier.

thanks NCDude!

Absolutely beautiful SS. I am envious.

thank you molotov!

Understatments. Always understatements.

thanks TT!

GOOD JOB SS !!
both plants/buds look great. thanks for doin the comparison!!

you're welcome staffy, thank you!

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

In my GLH 240 grow I did notice that the last leg of trimming took me longer because I had to decifer between what small, trich coated leaves to keep on the buds. I decided to leave the majority of them and now that the buds are dry these leaves look great and I'm glad that I left them. It's interesting to note that these sugar leaves are common under buds grown with these LEDs. Not a bad thing imo, but seems to be significant. I'm glad that you kept everything even as possible and trimmed all buds the same. My very sharp trimming scissors did give me this sense of 'velvet' when trimming things up. My fingers were like super glue after I finished trimming and I was even able to use a razor to scrap significant amounts of 'finger hash' due to the stickiness. Its cool to know that you had the same issue and that the HID buds did not have this trait during trimming. Both buds look gorgeous in the last photos. It would be really interesting to have a bud from each tent sent to the lab for testing, but that's a little over the top, I bet that cannaboid contents slightly differ due to the different types of lighting, but it's hard to say which would be better. It definitely looks like both types of lighting can compete pretty well against each other, but so far this comparison has me pretty happy with my future in LED growing. These specific nanonmeters of light seem to really cater to these plants and produce great bud.

It would be extremely interesting to have a lab analyze the buds, and I don't think it's over the top at all, but I have no idea what's involved or the expense.

This comparison makes me feel a lot more positive about current and future LED technology.

Glad our observations correlate.

thanks MJ!

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Holy crap SettingSun!!!
Gorgeous pictures as always dude!
The plants all look fucking amazing,even better then I though they would...
Its funny because in the begining they were kinda going back and forth as to which look better etc,then up till a couple weeks ago the hid lights were kicking ass and taking names,but I must say the led's look to have gotten realy fat cause they look great now!
Both led and hid look amazing,not sure which I would pic as far as looks alone,but get them all dried ect so we can see them dried and ready to go,and the smoke report would be a great read also,cant wait....great job dude and +rep!!!

Both sets of plants really responded to me cranking up the temp a few degrees to 76F or so. That's when the buds in both tents really swelled, but it's been pretty close and back and forth all through the grow, as you say.

Can't wait to smoke samples from both tents

thank you j4!

 

[Marley15]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Simply amazing work SS.






Marley

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

its a win win all those buds look crazy good. the amazing part to me is you just mixed a few TRF's and got some frosty ass buds. i just wonder if you added some molasses or sucanat how they would have looked? i will have to say DM purple mixed with OC+ seems to be a good combo. I wonder how each plant will burn ash wise? if one group will be cleaner then the other?

Great Job Buddy. know you see why i stick to these leds and got rid of my HID.lol.. they treat me real good.

thanks Irish, it's been a great grow buddy .

the CRF's worked great again for me in another medium, so I'll keep using them.

I'm curious about whether other supplements would improve things, so I'll probably be giving a plant here or there something on top of the CRF and see how it goes.

The buds are smelling good. I jarred the HID buds last night, and the LED buds will take 2-3 more days to dry before I jar them.

I'm stoked about how well the Spectra performed!

If I had another one, I'd be running them in both tents, that's how much I like it.

It's helping me to produce plants that have the shape I want; short, stocky, stacked, and with a minimum of stick showing when they finish.

It vegges plants to the shape I want, and seems to produce less stretch in flowering also.

Couldn't be happier with my Spectra!

 

[IrishBoy]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

thanks Irish, it's been a great grow buddy .

the CRF's worked great again for me in another medium, so I'll keep using them.

I'm curious about whether other supplements would improve things, so I'll probably be giving a plant here or there something on top of the CRF and see how it goes.

The buds are smelling good. I jarred the HID buds last night, and the LED buds will take 2-3 more days to dry before I jar them.

I'm stoked about how well the Spectra performed!

If I had another one, I'd be running them in both tents, that's how much I like it.

It's helping me to produce plants that have the shape I want; short, stocky, stacked, and with a minimum of stick showing when they finish.

It vegges plants to the shape I want, and seems to produce less stretch in flowering also.

Couldn't be happier with my Spectra!

ya thats a good idea maybe each grow test something different with the TFS's and same strain so you know what works and whats snake oil.

i would agree bro the GLH lights kick ass, i still have a hards time believing that theirs a led light that can actually grow bad ass plants.

 

[dogsnova]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Irish you wouldn't believe how many people I talk to laugh about LED's... Then they smoke some of my med's and I say, Yeah that's under LED's...

But of course I then have to explain to them.. It's not just any LED unit...LOL

The 300w GLH spectra ROCKS...

Great finish SS....

 

[IrishBoy]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Irish you wouldn't believe how many people I talk to laugh about LED's... Then they smoke some of my med's and I say, Yeah that's under LED's...

But of course I then have to explain to them.. It's not just any LED unit...LOL

The 300w GLH spectra ROCKS...

Great finish SS....

i love when that happens.

 

[hydronewbie]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Truly spectacular consumer report. No hype, drama, B.S. or salesmanship. Fantastic results from both light systems. Looking forward to the bean count and number crunching. Please consider a cost average analysis wherein the LED, based on your production numbers, compares with the HID in terms of capital investment over time.
I don't expect to be anything other than a closet grower, but more serious growers, patients and collectives who produce meds will benefit greatly from the work you have done here. It seems reasonable that such groups may invest a few thousand dollars in similar equipment to produce a stable, high quality product on a regular basis.

Many thanks for all this hard work, fastidious organization and accurate record keeping.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Excellent work SS!

I also believe that this is a testament to what was earlier being touching on, care/environment vs nutes. Understanding that the CRFs clearly do a great job, the fact remains there are many more additives(nutes) that could have introduced during this grow. But instead more concentration of care was taken and the result is clear. Nature surely knows how to produce great products with proper environmental conditions.

That's what I'm seeing also. These CRF's are very advanced products, yet they sell for a fraction of typical bottled nutes, they won't burn your plants, and they reduce labor, so I'm down with that.

One common finding in several articles I've read comparing different ways of using CRF's is that the largest plants were grown by supplementing with a liquid fertilizer every second or third watering, so that's an option, but that's the nice thing, it's an "option". The plants on this grow just got CRF's and a couple of waterings with kelp extract, and they developed just fine.

You can "just add water" and grow nice plants, or you can supplement them also. I'd keep total ppm's in mind however, as even though the CRF's run at relatively low ppm levels, things will add up, especially if your grow room temps are high.

There are some other quality time-release ferts that you can mix into your soil such as Fox Farms Marine Cuisine, which makes me hungry just typin' it, lol.

The lighting "race" is interesting. The LED light produced both the heaviest(286g) and the lightest(201g) plant with an average of 244.25Gs/plant. Whereas the HID light produced an average of 232.25Gs/plant. A 12g difference, this is looking very close so far.

The clones were genetically identical, but not as uniform as I had hoped. That's mostly because I rescued those 8 clones from a mom that was dying of stem rot, which is quite romantic when you think about it, but I took as many cuts as I could and two of them were small and disadvantaged.

The runt clones are the two in the back right corner of each tent. I split them up, and put one in each tent, thinking that I would cull at least one plant from each tent, but then decided to grow all of them out.

The runt in the HID tent is HID 1 and went 211g, and the runt in the LED tent was LED 4, and went 201g, so we don't even have to throw them out of the lineup to compare yields, which is cool.

It will be interesting to see, if one side has more water content then the other resulting in much different dried weights and of course, overall smoke/taste/quality.

I could have staggered their watering schedules prior to harvest to keep both groups at the same level of moisture, but I just didn't think about it.

Dry weights can be more accurate and consistent if you use a fixed percentage to estimate yield, such as 25% of wet weight, but since I'm using small hygrometers inside the jars to directly measure the moisture content in the buds, I get good consistency that way.

thank you Nine Leafer