Grand Daddy Purple - SCROG Secret Jardin DR60

[Highashell]

Just watered the 3 flowering plants with 1 gallon of glacier water. They were needing to get a little flush from the full gallon of week 4 nutrients from about 3 days ago. The male plant finally opened up a few pollen sacks inside the tent so I should have a lot of seeds coming.

 

[Highashell]

2-20

 

[Highashell]

The male flowers finally opened and dropped pollen inside the tent. I collected a little on a plastic spoon and pollinated as many tops on the GDP and Strawberry as I could until pollen ran out. Wasn't a lot of pollen left by the time I get to them hanging open. The leaf underneath had caught some of the pollen and I rubbed it on nearby pistils. One of the buds has a male flower stuck on it, if you look closely you can see it in the picture. I have since taken it off there.

 

[CronicHempHog]

that whole tent all the females will have seeds

 

[Highashell]

More seeds the merrier, so I will never have to complain about wanting or needing seeds again!

that whole tent all the females will have seeds

 

[Highashell]

I have removed the male plant from the flowering tent, and so I have officially pollinated the plants during week four of flowering.

 

[Highashell]

It was probably a little late pollinating after week 3 but oh well. I have been reading that seed making can cause the leaves to turn yellow right away because the plant sucks all the nutrients out of the soil. Something about them also needing more nitrogen and a more balanced diet during flower when seed making. While these plants are making seeds, their clones are vegging and so I'll have only have to wait about less than 2 months to start flowering those.

 

[CronicHempHog]

youll still get some seeds at the end im sure
Happy Sativaday Higha

 

[Highashell]

So I'm eyeballing a 600 watt quantum ballast than can do 600/400/300 watts on 100/75/50% power. So I am going to run at 300 watts and was wondering would it be better to run a 400 watt bulb at 75% power, or a 600 watt bulb at 50% power? The 400 watt bulbs 50,000 initial lumens is almost half of a 600 watt bulb that has around 90,000 initial lumens. So assuming that the lumens scale for each watt, then 75% of 50,000 = 37,500 and half of 90,000 is 45,000. Well the 600 watt bulb at 50% power is 7500 lumens more powerful. At 75% power the 600 watt bulb is 60,000 lumens vs 50,000 lumens for a 400 watt bulb at 100% power. Math lesson over.

Quantum ballasts any good?

 

[Teldren]

Word of warning. My friend just cooked a brand new 1000 watt Solis Tek. He dimmed the 1000 to 600. Solis Tek said that you should never dim a bulb but should instead buy the bulb for what watt you want to dim it to. He also talked to alot of dudes at the grow store and they said the same thing. You will trash the bulb dimming it and potentially cook your ballast. I would check/call manufacturer to be sure.

 

[BudBGrowin]

For safety concerns you should technically only run a 600w bulb in a 600w ballast even if dimmed. If you run a lower rated bulb and for some reason you delivered all 600w your ballast was capable of to a 400w bulb or so you will blow that nice light out.

The color spectrum will shift slightly on dimmed bulbs, the more dimmed the more they shift.

As for the life of the bulb, I do not see how it would be reduced by running it at a dimmed level. The hardest thing on a bulbs filament is the initial firing of the lamp, which is done in increments to "warm it up". This is essentially a pre programmed dimming on digital ballasts and it is done to make it easier on the bulb. I could be out of the ball park on this one though.

What it really comes down to is what do you care most about, safety or the light spectrum your plants are getting?

 

[Highashell]

So what I think I am seeing is that just because the ballast is dimmable, doesn't mean that the bulb is dimmable. Should I be worried to run a 250 watt bulb in a 250/400 watt ballast then? It was advised against, but I don't see a 250 watt ballast.

 

[BudBGrowin]

Have you gotten a specific ballast yet?

 

[Highashell]

I am shopping online for it right now, but I'm waiting to make a decision, taking suggestions.

Have you gotten a specific ballast yet?

 

[BudBGrowin]

Ok so from what I am gathering you want to run around 250w in this tent right now, but would like to be able to get a 600w ballast so in the future you can expand, so you were thinking dimmable?

 

[BudBGrowin]

I have a Lumatek and it works great. My buddy runs one too and he also has never had a problem.

 

[Highashell]

Yeah I want to run 250. But the ballasts have super lumens on the lumatek, will that blow up a 250 watt bulb? I would run a 400 watt bulb in there since that is what I have now, but I can get a 250 bulb for the 250 setting. I would want to make sure not to blow it up on the wrong setting. I just wanna know how that super lumens works. Is it giving it more wattage and over driving the lamp, or just changing the spectrum somehow to make it brighter without more power somehow. The thought of an exploding bulb inside of a grow tent...

 

[Highashell]

I've decided against the 600 watt and stick to a 400 watt dimmable ballast. I was thinking to have the ability to expand in the future, ya. The no name ballast I have now gives off a ton of radio interference and needs to go asap.

 

[Highashell]

Lumatek 400/250 watt with the super lumens, gonna get that one.

 

[BudBGrowin]

I would run with a 400w bulb.

Where are you noticing the interference?