Dvillefarmer's First Grow

[Light Addict]

Different watt does not mean diff spectrum.

 

[dvillefarmer]

Alright good to know. Now that I have been running roughly 24 hours on my new light, I have noticed an increase in temperatures. My bathroom fan is showing its limitations I think. The light is about 12 " away and maintaining 85 degrees. But I am worried abut stretching. So now I am contemplating in a vortex fan. But what do I focus on pushing air into the room or into the light fixture?

 

[Light Addict]

Niether its false economy. Just get one normal household cfl per girl and you can place em half inch away stopping stretch and not needing a big fan going. Check some of the pics a the beginning of my Tutt journal below. I use cheap household everytime for veg.

 

[dvillefarmer]

Only cfl per plant? That seems so little. I'm not challenging it because I am still new to this. But isn't more light better

 

[KingJohnC]

the more light you can provide to your plants while still keeping the grow area reasonably cool the better.

 

[dvillefarmer]

well I feel like I have my lighting and nutrients on the right path. Could someone school me on ventilation or point me in the right direction. I am looking for a fan for my grow room. I am trying to see if there is a rule of thumb per cubic feet. Is there a ratio of intake to exhaust? Also how much do I ventilate the lighting systems?

 

[dvillefarmer]

Another thing I cant find a guide for dummies on, is how to tell the maturity of your plant be counting leaves. Ill post a pic of my plant but could someone break it down for me. I am trying to figure out when to top the plant and start lst

 

[dvillefarmer]

Sorry for the rapid posts but I am doing alot of planning tonight. For the ventilation system., would you recommend a passive exhaust, passive intake or forced induction on both ends?

 

[KingJohnC]

for a rule of thumb you want whatever size of grow area your using to exchange the air every 5 minutes. you need at least 160 CFM for a cooltube to operate. I would recommend an active exhaust and a passive intake, if needed an other inline fan can be added to the intake.

 

[Light Addict]

Topping and LST is a personal thing when to do it. I personally normally top after sixth node, although on my present girl I waited till eighth node and now have got my hands full as she's getting very busy. LST depends again on what style you want to go for. Most people bend their girl at the main stem and train along the top of soil horizontally. To do this method you start whilst she is still small and your stem is supple enough to handle bend.
I use a different style of training/LST. I start just as early but train branches instead of main stem. Check my journal if your interested in my technique. It does use more vertical space slightly but works well on a small number of plants.
So do a bit of research and pick your path and have fun!

 

[dvillefarmer]

Well its been awhile since I posted and I ran into some trouble. I went to start lst training and noticed that my jumping straight into a 5 gallon bucket came back to bite me in the ass. I didn't have an adequate root base. So I carefully dug it out and transplanted it into a smaller container. But then it started going downhill quick. It shows signs of being overwatered but also some leaves are just dying. This only happened after the transplant. So I am assuming most of it is stress on the plant and also being overwatered. But here are some pictures of the progress over the last week

 

[dvillefarmer]

As you see i trimmed one branch that was just too far gone. But what about the other two lower branches? Should I go ahead and trim them as well? What about cutting them right behind the leaves and and splitting that branch. Do you think it would branch off two additional branches?

 

[KingJohnC]

I would not trim your plant any more until it stabilizes itself.

 

[Light Addict]

Yep agreed with KingJohnC let her bounce back before anymore is done.

 

[dvillefarmer]

Ill leave her alone for now. I did add two 300 watt cfl's to my light in replace of 4 of the 100 watt's. I looked at them and saw the re cool white with a 2700 kelvin. Will this hinder the plant? Should I have gone with a higher kelvin? Because that was all home depot had

 

[dvillefarmer]

I have been rethinking my light more and more here lately. I have always read that the broader the spectrum the better. Then i turn around and read that 6500 kelvin is better veg and 2700 is better for flowering. I want to stick with cfls because of cost efficiency and heat. But really money isnt the main pushing force on this.

So my first question is can you achieve the same yield off cfls as you can hps or MH?

If not will the mixture of 2700 and 6500 kelvin do the trick with possibly the addition of leds as a booster?

And finally if I have room for 6 bulbs would it be better to run 6 6500 kelvin bulbs for veg and 6 2700 bulbs for flowering or run a mixture of them through the whole process?

If cfls and leds will have the same yield then I would like to go that route.. Yes the initial investment would be more but the overall maintenance would be lower and light degradation wouldn't be as much of an issue. Also you could feasibly run the same light from veg through flowering right?

All I ask if you have input on any light let there be proof to back it up. Not just because you googled it and read it on a forum. I'm interested in hearing from people who have seen or experimented with mixing up the lighting set up

 

[Light Addict]

Ok buddy I use mixed cfls for my veg period. If you check the beginning of my tutt grow youl see I train my girl. This also alows me to cocoon her in cfls, youll see in some pics I have her completely surrounded. This could help boost cfl only yeild if used throughout. LED is definately the way forward me thinks. Im going to be building my own led panels in new year. Might cost me the same as buying the first time round but ill know it inside out and be able to personalize it to my needs. Check out utube for self built lights.
Everyone will have different opinions, its what you can tailor to your space and needs. You wont get the dense bud structure off cfls, hps is great for that but LEDs are supposed to rival if not better the yeild and density. If you get he right light for YOUR grow!

 

[dvillefarmer]

I think I will play around with it and see. I like the cfl and led combo. I think I actually managed to get cfl's too close to my plant. I checked on it after work and the temp never got over 85 but it seems like it might had burned the first nodes. This is definitely a learning curve

 

[KingJohnC]

Compact Florescent Lights and LED lights can not equal the Lumen output and efficiency to plants as much High Intensity Discharge lights can such as a Metal Halide or High Pressure Sodium light bulb can. this is reflected in gram per watt efficiency and harvest size.

 

[dvillefarmer]

Could someone direct me to a link on an hid lighting system for dummies? Like how to use a ballast if i buy a fixture can i use an hps and mh bulb in the same fixture and same ballast?