The right light for a scrog
- Thread starter Feng Shui
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PrairiePoet
Well-Known Member
Small SCROG grows do well with CFL's. I've run 3 85 watt CFL's in SCROG and it did very well.
Though now I've upgraded to 2 150 watt HPS units. The grow I'm in now will be the first full grow using the HPS's. It is looking like it will be my biggest harvest yet, as long as no problems surface.
So, I would agree HID is not needed for a good grow. But the more light the better.
Though now I've upgraded to 2 150 watt HPS units. The grow I'm in now will be the first full grow using the HPS's. It is looking like it will be my biggest harvest yet, as long as no problems surface.
So, I would agree HID is not needed for a good grow. But the more light the better.
HID works fine for scrog. Instead of putting its more powerful penetration to work to reach deep into the plant, you put its more powerful penetration to work creating larger buds above the screen. Which is the same thing, I guess.
Plant below screen, screen, HID above it. Light remains stationary while you train the plant under (at) the screen. Don't have to raise the light until the buds start growing up through the screen. Principle is the same? The gap between the top of the plant and the bottom of the light is just somewhat larger (depending on your air-cooling setup if you use one).
In a "perfect" HID scrog, you might design your screen so that it is lowest in the center directly below the bulb and slopes upward slightly towards the edges in order to approximate the same light-intensity - but it is not necessary unless you're chasing yield. The greater intensity/penetrative ability of the HID allows for some amount of "fudge factor."
Yes, the scrog concept was created, AfaIK, to work with lower-intensity "flat-plane" light setups such as 400 watts' worth of 4' flourescent bulbs packed into a small area (ofttimes with two identical setups one on top of the other due to the lower height required). Many small buds making up a "carpet" of bud. With HID lighting, you get many large(r) buds, lol.
Scrog should work great with (good quality) LED panels that manage to hit the sweet-spot between tight focus for penetration and wider focus for footprint size - I'd think it would be a great idea to add a light-mover (set to a short travel-distance) if the LED is strong and the scrog is well-mantained.
I'd expect that the growing method could be used with just about any type of light-source to good effect, with the possible exception of CFLs; it's harder to "map" a flat plane with a quantity of smaller point-source lights. Still, it can - and has, obviously - be done. (But I'd rather have a tube setup, even the old-school type, both because the illumination characteristics would be better suited and because the tubes tend to have a higher level of efficiency.)
Scrog requires maintenance. Often daily. It also requires either some degree of familarity with the strain(s) being grown or some amount of good luck for best results when one is trying to end up with that perfectly filled but not overcrowded canopy at harvest time. If you are the type of person that finds this style of growing to be an enjoyable pastime rather than a stressful PitA, then you'll find that you can generally figure out how to incorporate a given light into your garden.
There is no reason that the scrog concept couldn't be used outside under the sun, although one would have to have a good grasp of timing. Penetration is of course much higher, so the bud canopy would tend to be larger. Probably... much larger (in a perfect world).
Plant below screen, screen, HID above it. Light remains stationary while you train the plant under (at) the screen. Don't have to raise the light until the buds start growing up through the screen. Principle is the same? The gap between the top of the plant and the bottom of the light is just somewhat larger (depending on your air-cooling setup if you use one).
In a "perfect" HID scrog, you might design your screen so that it is lowest in the center directly below the bulb and slopes upward slightly towards the edges in order to approximate the same light-intensity - but it is not necessary unless you're chasing yield. The greater intensity/penetrative ability of the HID allows for some amount of "fudge factor."
Yes, the scrog concept was created, AfaIK, to work with lower-intensity "flat-plane" light setups such as 400 watts' worth of 4' flourescent bulbs packed into a small area (ofttimes with two identical setups one on top of the other due to the lower height required). Many small buds making up a "carpet" of bud. With HID lighting, you get many large(r) buds, lol.
Scrog should work great with (good quality) LED panels that manage to hit the sweet-spot between tight focus for penetration and wider focus for footprint size - I'd think it would be a great idea to add a light-mover (set to a short travel-distance) if the LED is strong and the scrog is well-mantained.
I'd expect that the growing method could be used with just about any type of light-source to good effect, with the possible exception of CFLs; it's harder to "map" a flat plane with a quantity of smaller point-source lights. Still, it can - and has, obviously - be done. (But I'd rather have a tube setup, even the old-school type, both because the illumination characteristics would be better suited and because the tubes tend to have a higher level of efficiency.)
Scrog requires maintenance. Often daily. It also requires either some degree of familarity with the strain(s) being grown or some amount of good luck for best results when one is trying to end up with that perfectly filled but not overcrowded canopy at harvest time. If you are the type of person that finds this style of growing to be an enjoyable pastime rather than a stressful PitA, then you'll find that you can generally figure out how to incorporate a given light into your garden.
There is no reason that the scrog concept couldn't be used outside under the sun, although one would have to have a good grasp of timing. Penetration is of course much higher, so the bud canopy would tend to be larger. Probably... much larger (in a perfect world).
PrairiePoet
Well-Known Member
Very well put, thank you TS.
GrowGSL
New Member
When someone asks me how they can get them most from there LED light I always tell them scrog.
The HID well it's really hot, and depending on your setup you may have to keep it at a distance which really cuts the intensity, so your dealing with alot of heat and waste.
The CFL well I do think this method will work, but not as good as LED's Again these are a little bit hotter than LED's but have a much lower intensity and you must keep the bulbs very close to your canopy to insure you getting the proclaimed intensity.
Now Quality LED, they are much more intense then cfl and give a smaller more saturated footprint then HID, plus there nice n cool. Above your screen your plants will grow alot of buds standing up and below the screen will still have some lil buddies forming right down to the base.
LED's + Scrog =
The HID well it's really hot, and depending on your setup you may have to keep it at a distance which really cuts the intensity, so your dealing with alot of heat and waste.
The CFL well I do think this method will work, but not as good as LED's Again these are a little bit hotter than LED's but have a much lower intensity and you must keep the bulbs very close to your canopy to insure you getting the proclaimed intensity.
Now Quality LED, they are much more intense then cfl and give a smaller more saturated footprint then HID, plus there nice n cool. Above your screen your plants will grow alot of buds standing up and below the screen will still have some lil buddies forming right down to the base.
LED's + Scrog =
Have you done any experiments utilizing one of your panels with a LightRail (they can, I believe, be set for short distances too) over a scrog setup? I am currently thinking that the combination would provide the best real-world results for an LED profile, but at this point it is admittedly mostly guesswork on my part.
I had 430-watt HPS (actual 430-watt C&C ballasts) setups in air-cooled hoods almost (where has the time gone, lol?) 20 years ago over "Porta-Scrogs" - which, at 8 square feet, weren't very - and the buds happily grew right to the lenses if I wasn't there to raise the lights.
But a few years later I tried the same thing with one 430-watt HPS that I wasn't cooling and returned from a weekend away to find that the buds had tried doing the same thing (no lens) and gotten <COUGH> crunchy.
So it depends much on the setup. A good lens and fan make a world of difference. But then again, that lens cuts, what... something like 9% of the usable illumination from the bulb? Life really is a trade-off, I guess. A good LED panel costs an arm, a leg, and both testicles - but you drop a few expenses right off the bat, your maintenance expenses drop (depending of course on the quality/longevity of the components), and your monthly ones drop as well - if not by reducing the light wattage, at least by reducing or removing the electricity used on light-venting and/or air conditioning.
CFLs, while they do have their place and as mentioned will work, just aren't inherently suited for a scrog because you've got a point light source and a plane "field." Your LEDs (and everyone else's) are a flat-panel/plane(*) light source - for practical purposes? - and so it would seem to be a win/win.
When judged on an even playing field (requiring more CFL watts than HID ones), I'm pretty sure that CFLs are a bit hotter than an efficient HPS as well at least in a confined area. Might be different if the grower goes to the trouble of separating the ballasts from the actual CFL tubes, but hardly any do - and I say "might" because of the efficiency hit and the whole "electricity = light + heat" thing.
Which causes me to wonder if you have panels available with the power supplies remoted to add the ability to remove their (possibly small) heat sources from the GR?
And that can be a vicious circle for some: CFLs aren't as strong, but you can place them closely around the plants to help compensate. But then, by harvest time, the grower has slowly added CFLs until the plants look like Christmas trees, lol, and what started out as a few CFLs ends up being 700-1000 watts of CFLs and the monthly electric bill has grown to an amount larger than what would have been used by a good HID (or LED) with only the same - or worse, less - yield that the other lights would have produced. Small initial investment but the investment never seems to end. The grower might contemplate purchasing a strong light, but that's a chunk of change so he/she just buys still more CFLs. Or he/she does purchase the light and is left with a drawer full of CFLs, sockets, adaptors, and plugs because unlike a used HID or LED, there's not much market for used CFL stuff.
But I seem to be rambling off-topic. Apologies to the OP.
(*)Assuming the LED designer has played around enough with computer simulations and real-world experimentation to have dialed in not only the wavelengths, but the wattages/outputs and perhaps even the degree spread of each since the various wavelengths seem to have differing penetration (etc.) characteristics - and it seems like a light that was designed to have all its wavelengths "hitting" the expected sweet-spot with the same kick (or, alternatively, the same kick that sunlight produces on a Summer day?).
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GrowGSL
New Member
Yah, np.
TourturedSoul That was a good read!
TourturedSoul That was a good read!
