First Grow In Over 20 Years! Northern Lights Under 600W LED

[Homer Simpson]

I could not edit the post but I want to correct myself because this photo was not of my nine day old Northern Lights fem auto like I said in yesterday's post instead it was my 13-day-old CBDutch Treat fem. Sorry about the confusion.

 

[AngryBird]

No problem. It is a cutie never the less.

 

[Dutchman1990]

Nice job so far homer! Excellent start, all the babies are looking great!

You got a good group here already and I’ll jump in where I can if yea don’t mind! Hope all is well!

 

[Homer Simpson]

Nice job so far homer! Excellent start, all the babies are looking great!

You got a good group here already and I’ll jump in where I can if yea don’t mind! Hope all is well!

Hello Dutchmen! Thank you very much for the positive comments. Yes my babies do seem to be looking good all thanks to the great group I have helping me but the more the merrier so welcome aboard and feel free to comment anytime.

 

[Homer Simpson]

The girls are really looking healthy and growing pretty good and I haven’t watered them in almost a week. The 750 mL containers feel almost the same weight as one that I filled up with dry soil to use to compare with. So should I water now or should I actually wait for the leaves to start wilting a bit so I know it is really dry. I just wonder if I wait for wilting does that mean that the plant is so dehydrated that my roots will start to shrivel up and die or is it good to let it get that dry for root growth?

 

[Pennywise]

I've never run soil but if I remember right, you want it to be dry down to your first buckle

 

[Dutchman1990]

The knuckle technique works and what you’ve done with an empty pot is also a good technique. If your planted pots feel almost as light as your dry test pot and it’s dry up to you lr first knuckle ... then I would water.

 

[nivek]

heya friend,, my opinion with watering,, a fav topic of mine lately,,

watering is a skill, for sure,, with solo cups at least,, the weight alone will tell you when to water,,

key is,,, getting to know when the cup is bone dry, as in,, time to water

only one way to do that,, let it get bone dry,, carefully,, not to the point of wilting to the ground,, nope,,, that is why care is needed,, no one said this stuff is easy, to me anyway

let it dry right out, then, this is a key in my house,, water a bit on top then put the cup in a shallow bowl and water from the bottom, till it sucks up lots of water,, then tip the cup and drain away excess for a sec or two

the roots are goinn down there so there must be water down there,, but never saturate the soil and not drain it

cheers

 

[Homer Simpson]

I've never run soil but if I remember right, you want it to be dry down to your first buckle

The knuckle technique works and what you’ve done with an empty pot is also a good technique. If your planted pots feel almost as light as your dry test pot and it’s dry up to you lr first knuckle ... then I would water.

Thanks alot guys!! I am off to get my watering can!!!

 

[nivek]

overwatering is the easiest and number one grower problem,, and i might even see some evidence of overwatering in your plants,, the lower leaves,, saggy kinda at the ends,, a sure sign,, tho not saying yours is,, just sayin overwatering looks like that, kinda

 

[Homer Simpson]

only one way to do that,, let it get bone dry,, carefully,, not to the point of wilting to the ground,, nope,,, that is why care is needed,, no one said this stuff is easy, to me anyway

Hmmm…. The plot thickens. I was all ready to water when your posts came up recommending to let it get bone dry which I don’t think it is yet. So far I have zero wilting and although I know they are frowned upon I did use a water meter and the dial did move but not out of the dry zone so there isn’t much but there is some water there. So when you say not to let it wilt to the ground I assume then that you would wait for some wilting because I would think that would be the best way to tell that the soil really is dry and the plant can’t find any more moisture? So would you wait until there is some wilting and that tells you it really is bone dry?

overwatering is the easiest and number one grower problem,, and i might even see some evidence of overwatering in your plants,, the lower leaves,, saggy kinda at the ends,, a sure sign,, tho not saying yours is,, just sayin overwatering looks like that, kinda

And yes I confess to being guilty of overwatering until a week ago because I just wasn’t aware of the necessity to let the plant really dry out to develop root growth until then but I haven’t watered since so this is my first watering in almost a full week. So yes I may have some signs of too much watering from previous to this week.

 

[nivek]

truth be told,, letting baby plants wilt at all is not a good idea, imo, tho i kinda suggested it,, i shoulda stopped at suggesting to know the dry weight of a cup-a-soil

the filling a cup with dry soil,, a good idea,, and perhaps carry that around for a week or so,, take it to bed,, get to know it real well

but let it dry, real good between waterings,, crucial

 

[Homer Simpson]

truth be told,, letting baby plants wilt at all is not a good idea, imo, tho i kinda suggested it,, i shoulda stopped at suggesting to know the dry weight of a cup-a-soil

the filling a cup with dry soil,, a good idea,, and perhaps carry that around for a week or so,, take it to bed,, get to know it real well

but let it dry, real good between waterings,, crucial

Thanks a lot nivek for clarifying about baby plants wilting. Since I think they are almost bone dry and about to wilt I think I will water now then.

I never imagined part of growing would be taking a cup of soil to bed but like you say no one has said to me either that this stuff was easy! Thanks again for the info.

 

[Gazoo]

truth be told,, letting baby plants wilt at all is not a good idea, imo, tho i kinda suggested it,, i shoulda stopped at suggesting to know the dry weight of a cup-a-soil

the filling a cup with dry soil,, a good idea,, and perhaps carry that around for a week or so,, take it to bed,, get to know it real well

but let it dry, real good between waterings,, crucial

This last run I used a postal scale to weight/Check and record the weight each day. It made a big
difference in my understanding of WHAT a DRY pot feels like Not only that I could see paterns
and was able to find almost exactly the sweet spot at just before wilt. Did not loose a leaf until
many weeks in.

 

[Homer Simpson]

This last run I used a postal scale to weight/Check and record the weight each day. It made a big
difference in my understanding of WHAT a DRY pot feels like Not only that I could see paterns
and was able to find almost exactly the sweet spot at just before wilt. Did not loose a leaf until
many weeks in.

I know Gazoo I saw that in your thread and I thought it was absolutely brilliant to actually weigh your pots to really determine when they were dry. I really love that extremely accurate scientific approach but I just cannot justify spending that kind of money on such a precise scale. I really love the idea though and think it probably is the best method I have seen.

 

[Gazoo]

I know Gazoo I saw that in your thread and I thought it was absolutely brilliant to actually weigh your pots to really determine when they were dry. I really love that extremely accurate scientific approach but I just cannot justify spending that kind of money on such a delicate scale. I really love the idea though and think it probably is the best method I have seen.

Just wanted to plant that seed in case you see a free/cheap scale in your travels.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Just wanted to plant that seed in case you see a free/cheap scale in your travels.

Thanks for planting the seed; I will keep my eye open for a cheap/free one.

 

[Jazz Cabbage]

A plant or even a tree search for the sun in nature that is both science and having studied the difference, also common sense.

We all know that the apical meristem will send down auxins that will diffuse to the dark side and stop the light side growing so that the plant bends towards the light, there's no argument there. If you put a dope seedling in a pot under a 2700K incandescent light bulb it will grow tall and spindly before falling over and dying. That's not what we want we want the plant to grow healthy and stretch.

Now as for the science of plants searching for the light, the 'science' that I've seen is that when a plant is under a canopy from other plants, the light will hit the other plants first and what filters through the leave is infrared wavelengths. This 'tells' the plant, i.e. is the signal for the plant to grow taller and get above the canopy.

This is the reason that many LEDs have 730nm wavelength LED. They don't throw off any light and they always have to tell you not to worry, they are not broken LED, it's just at the non visible part of the spectrum. That's the science.

All moving the light away does is give you less photons, but the photons you do get are the very same photons it would have got if the light was brighter, just less of them. Same effect would happen if you dimmed the light. So if you want dimmer light you're better off using a dimmer switch as it's the same effect as moving it further away, but would be cheaper. Moving the light away gives a better spread, that's the only real reason, unless too much heat is hitting the plant, OR, if you have super powerful lights, because anything over 1200 micro moles cannot be used without supplemental carbon dioxide, you'll just get leaf bleaching. But moving the lights further away, will not cause normal growth stretch.

I have 100%White 100%Blue and 100%Red, during late growth and I just knock the blue down to 50% in the week before the expected stretch. If you want stretchy plants give them more red, which makes sense because even though Red light has less energy than blue light, the plants make better use of the Red. They make the least use of green, only 25% as efficient as red, this is why "full spectrum" while light with heavy green, can give you a good par because green is in the PAR range but it's not as useful, as either the red or blue so a light with a lower par but a better spectrum can have a better PAR for all practical purposes. White LED's are the cheapest.

If I was not getting the stretch I wanted, then I'd look at the lights, if they didn't have 730mn I'd buy just that wavelength from ebay and make my own.

 

[Elvin]

I know Gazoo I saw that in your thread and I thought it was absolutely brilliant to actually weigh your pots to really determine when they were dry. I really love that extremely accurate scientific approach but I just cannot justify spending that kind of money on such a precise scale. I really love the idea though and think it probably is the best method I have seen.

Fleabay has electronic postal scales for under $10 delivered, but personally, I don't even use mine; a finger shoved into the dirt suffices and as long as your pots/soil drain well (I use fabric and FFOF), you have a rough idea what they weigh when dry when lifting and they are on wire racks, you shouldn't need to worry about waterlogging them.

 

[Homer Simpson]

I was sad today to see that one of my girls is a little bit droopy and doesn’t look as happy as she did. I was reading that plants can droop when they are over watered but I didn’t think you could overwater with coco. I didn’t water her for almost a week until the container seemed completely dry then I watered about two days ago from the outside slowly over about a half an hour in stages until I got a little bit of runoff out of the drain holes.

I thought that would be what she would like but I also noticed that there are roots coming out of the drain holes so I’m thinking she needs to be transplanted and maybe that is causing the droop?

I started germination on the 12th so it is almost 3 weeks old so I would think it is ready for transplanting?