LED CFL Coco Vs Soil

[Perfect Sun LED]

Okay, so I am doing a few things here. First, I am using a 4x4x7 tent, brand lighthouse. It's a strong durable tent I bought on Ebay for like $130.

I will be doing three plants in soil and three in coco, two under LED, 4 under CFL, hopefully replacing the cfls with a 400watt HPS.

Equipment

FloraKleen, for when I do flushes every two weeks.

Plastic tray's to catch runoff $2.50 each at the local hydro store.

Smart Pots 3 gal, about $3 a piece, using six of them.

Lights: Right now using a 900 watt DIY CFL hood. 12,600 lumes at 1 foot away, so I guess that increases at 6 inches away, but I am unsure if that is correct.

300 watt LED, plus two 200watt splash CFLs.

Nutrients: Floragrow, florabloom, floramicro, florablend, and botanicare's Calmax plus, mainly for the coco pots.
Extreme Gardening Mykos Drops.

Medium/soil: For the three soil pots; FoxFarm Ocean Forest mixed with FoxFarm Light Warrior. I mixed both bags together. The light warrior is used to make the soil more airy and more drainable. I added one cup of fine, dolomite lime.

Coco; bitanicare Cocogro mixed with 10% Rocks growing medium and 1 cup of fine, dolomite lime. The lime is to help the PH. I was going to use 10% hydroton, but the rocks were cheaper and pretty much do the same thing.

Floramite to prevent spidermites, and hopefully help kill powdery Mildew. I will be getting some SNS 244 for PM.

I have 1x1 inch x 4 foot pieces of wood laying across the trays so that the pots get air under them. Two pieces of wood across 3 trays, like railroad tracks. I will try to get a picture of that if anyone is interested.

PLANTS: 2x Northern Lights, 2X White Widow, 1X Lucy, 1X Mendicino Purple.

Right now the plants are still in their 1gal pots. I will be transplanting after I treat plants with SNS and Floramite because some show signs of PM. The others might have it but not showing signs yet. This is because I bought the clones from a dispensary. So much better to grow your own clones. Oh well. I was in a rush. These are 4 to 6 weeks old, and so saves me time.

I will be placing 3 plants in the soil and three in the coco. At the bottom of each smart pot, I will place 1inch of rocks. At the top of the coco pots, I will use a layer of coco coir cubes to keep flies away. I decided to use the cubes instead of sand, because sand stops more nuts from flowing and gets salt build up easier. It also doesn't breath as well as the cubes.

Before transplanting, I will flush the soil in the 1gal pots. First, I am letting them dry out. Then I will gently shake off as much soil as possible. Then I will flush three of them and place them into the 3gal smart pots. The other three, I will place into a 30 gal tote full of PH 6.0 water. I will lighting move them around to remove as much excess soil as possible, then place them in the coco smart pots.

Before I place them in their new mediums, I will rip open one of the mykos drops/bags and sprinkle the mykos all over the hole in the soil. This bacteria helps roots.

Watering Schedule

Soil:, First watering, just tap water, perhaps PH'd a bit to 6.8, probably not needed as soil balances itself out. I might let the tap water sit out over night to evaporate chlorine.

After a week or two, I will start adding nuts, unless they tell me they need them sooner. Reason is, the soil has at least a weeks worth of nutrients. I will pretty much follow the same feeding as soil, but not ph's to 6.0.

Coco: Ph water 6.0 with added nutrients, very low at first. I am not sure if I am going to even veg at all, but if so, I will feed with a bit of floragrow + rapid start + Floramicro + calmax, all at 1/4th strength. For the bloom, I will change floragrow with florabloom.

I will be using florablend during bloom only. The reason is because I don't care for plants to get super huge during veg. I prefer to keep my plants short. But used during flowering to get bigger better buds.
I think that covers it for now. Thanks for watching.

I will get more pictures of the plants before I transplant.

In the next post, I will also talk more about my tent, fans, and general set up with pics.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Okay, so quick update. I got my last clone. It is a Mendocino Purp, and it came in hydroton, being a hydro clone, so yay. I transplanted it into the 3gal coco smart pot as you can see the top left pic. It looks to be a healthy clone, but for purple stem. The way the purple stem is growing, I am pretty sure it is not the strain. The roots look healthy, so I doubt it is the start of root rot, one of the main causes of purple stem.

That pretty much leaves some sort of toxic build up, so here is how I transplanted it.

First I pour all the hydroton out. It was grown in a big rockwool cube, so I had to leave that part. I then flushed the hell out of it, using more than 3 times the amount of water the rockwool could hold. I used a whole gallon in fact. In the gallon, I used 1tsp of florakleen. I didn't bother phing it. After I flushed it, I transplanted it into the coco. Then I watered it well with one gallon of water, 1/8 tsp rapid start, and 1/2 tsp florablend, ph 5.9. I just used lemon juice to lower ph this time.

I forgot to put the mykos in there, so I will just dig a hole and sprinkle them next to the root ball. They should work their way in there.

I will wait for her to dry before I feed her with actual nuts, which will be 1/4.

I still need to transplant the rest of the plants.

So the top middle picture is of the railroads I was talking about. This gives the under sides of the bots lots of air. I haven't added the coir cubes to the top of the coco yet for the top left plant, but about to.

Top right photo shoes one of the Northern Lights. They are the most bushy and healthy of the bunch.

Bottom left, White Widows, the ones that had powedery mildew on the lower leaves. I paid $30 a piece of these? You have to prepay, and this is what shows up. I will never buy clones from that grower again. What crap. So now I am buying a sulfur burner for $20. It is a candle kind. I also sprayed them with some copper stuff from the hydro store. He said you can still burn sulfur after applying it.

The next pic is of my power plugs and timers. They are all off the ground by 6 inches in case water leaks. Never have plugs on the ground.

The next two pics are of fans. The big fan is just a standard houe fan that I have hanging up, point down toward the plants. There is another fan on the ground facing up, causing a cross breeze.

The two fans in the ten holes are DIY inline fans. I will be replacing them with actual inline fans, however from amazon or ebay or home depot.

I will be replacing the cfl lamp hood with a 400 watt hps for sure.

 

[H-factor]

Are going to hava a divider for the two lights

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

No, it's not really a true test. I will be replacing the cfl lamp with a 400 watt hps once it arrives in about a week. Fingers crossed.

I am actually curious to see what happens with the buds that are in the middle, that will receive both hps and led, splashes thereof.

Thanks for stopping by.

Quick update: I transplanted all of the plants. I will post pictures and explain my process for anyone that might be interested at some point. I like to fully document stuff when I do it.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Here are images, read in order from left to right, top to bottom.

First, I want to say what I should have done differently. I should have completely wet the coco with Ph water 6.0, then checked the ph an hour later, then an hour later, etc, then if it was different, to run more ph 6.0 water until it is close to 6.0 and remains that way.

Okay, so here is what I did, and it felt like toturing the plant, so I decided to transplant the rest of the soil clones to soil. The difference with the coco transplant is that I used a 18 gallon tote, and filled it with tap water, luke warm. I placed the soil root ball all the way under the water. I gentle neaded and swished it around for about 30 minutes until I got most of the soil off. (It is doing well so far, so that is good.)

1. I put rocks, growing medium in the smart pot.
2. I placed some coco premixed with lime and rocks (growing medium). I let this sit for 48 hours with lime mixed in before using it.
3. I pulled the plant from it's 1 gal pot, while really dry so it came out easily.
4. I placed it in the smart pot, then put soil around it; however, I forgot to put the mykos in, so I pulled the plant out, left the hole created by the plant, then added mykos and placed the plant back inside the new pot.
5. Then I put 1/8 teaspoon root start into a gallon of water, plus 1/2 tsp florablend, and 1/4 tsp calmag, but in the coco I put 1/2 cal mag because coco needs more of that.
6. I watered it with the whole gallon, and let some water drip through the smart pot *bag* which seemed to take forever. Then I placed it on the railroad tracks in the tent.

What I should have done with every transplant is wet the medium very well first, and ph a few times until it remains stable. The Mendocino Purp was a hydroponic clone, so it was easy to transplant to coco. In fact, I should have transplated it into corse rockwool. That is what my next White Widow autos will be seeded and grown in.

I really do not recommend going from soil to coco as it puts the roots through what seems like torture to get most of the soil off. If you don't get most of the soil off, then you will run into ph issues.

So that is it for now. I will get some photos to show how the ladies are looking after being transplanted. They were transplanted two days ago. So if they were going to show signs of not liking the transplant, it should be now or tomorrow.

Notice that I didn't water them with any actual nutes, florabloom or grow, and only a small amount of root start and florablend. It is really easy to nute burn plants, so I start off with basically water. I don't water until the pots are super light, and after they are super light, I watch for the leaves to droop just a bit, if I can catch it. Sometimes, I wait too long, and the leaves start to really droop and wilt a bit. But they bounce right back after 30 minutes to 3 hours.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Oh, yeah, I placed coir cubes on the top of the soil and coco, but not on top of all soil. I just wanted to see if it makes watering soil easier. Oh, also, while I prepare my water, I leave an air hose in it, with a small airstone attached to the end. This way the water is full of oxygen.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Well flushing the mendo purp got rid of the purple stem, but then a few days later it came back, and I haven't even fed it nuts. I tried flushing it again, while it is in the 3gal coco pot, but that didn't take away the purple this time. I am now baffled. I doubt root rot has set in as there are no other signs of that. Leaves look healthy.

I will upload a pic once I can take one. I am burning sulphur right now, so I can't. The tent is mostly keeping the vapor inside, as I cannot smell sulphur throughout the house. I can smell it a bit in the room the tent is in.

 

[H-factor]

The purp stems could be sign of the genetics of the plant

 

[TrillSmoker]

Where did you get your LED lights if you dont mind a noooob asking?

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

h-factor, I am open to that as a possibility. I've never grown mendocino purp, so I am unsure if that is the case. I know low temps can cause it too, and if so, it usually doesn't go away.

But if it were genetics, I don't see why it went away for a few days after I flushed with florakleen.

Here is an update photo of the mendo purp in question.

The photo on the left is a few days after I first treated the purple stem, which used to look like the picture on the right before treatment. Florakleem flush removed it. But then a few days later it returned. The picture on the right is a few days after the second flush. It got more purple in those three days. In the pic on the right, the leaves look a bit purple do to the LED. They are green, though, just as green as in the pic on the left. They look healthy.

My thoughts are it is caused from being to cold. We had some really cold nights, and my temp in the tent dropped to 67-70. So now I have a little heater in there kicking on when temp goes below 75. I've been keeing it between 75-80. This will also help kill the powdery mildew.

The reason I figured it must be temps, is because some of the other plants started to show lines of purple in the stems and leaf stems. I know it is not nuts because I haven't fed them nuts yet. I've flushed them.

One more thought. The soil was pretty cold too, like 62.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Trill, I got that LED light off of ebay from ledgrowlightmanufactorer. They are a top of the line manufactoring company in China. So far, the light has preformed very well. We will see how well it does as this grow goes on.

 

[WizHigh]

Hey LEDRF I'm subbed! you hit the purple stem right on the nose
Glad to see everything is up and running oh and I was about to order from that LED company also. I still am. I think I'm going to pick up 2-3 of them. 3 year warranty and hey send you spare parts if something happens.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

I meant to type manufacturer.

Wiz, I look forward to seeing how the LEDs work for you. Are you going to use them exclusively or as secondary light?

UPDATE: I've kept my tent temps at about 77-80. Still no difference in the stems.

 

[WizHigh]

I meant to type manufacturer.

Wiz, I look forward to seeing how the LEDs work for you. Are you going to use them exclusively or as secondary light?

UPDATE: I've kept my tent temps at about 77-80. Still no difference in the stems.

Im going with another LED company so it will take some time to purchase becasue the price is kinda high. But life time warranty is the selling bonus. LED 600w = 1000w HID. So im going for that. I shall have it on my next journal indeed

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Wiz, awesome. Are they also on ebay? If you don't mind saying where I could check them out. [

UPDATE. There is a difference in the mendo stems now. They are looking a bit more greenish, but I think the purple might never go away now of caused by the cold. No problem there. She looks super healthy. I figure as long as she looks good, then I will ignore the purple. Some purpling in the stems is normal for this plant, and lots of purple leaves toward the end of flowering.

The first treatment of sulphur burning has helped the plants. They look much healthier. I fed them all yesterday with 700ppm as well. Flora micro, florablend, cal-mag+, root start, floragrow. I add and mix to the water in that order.

 

[WizHigh]

Look up Fero LED 600w.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Oh, yeah, I think Mr. BlueGoo used them in his test. I've watched a few of his videos.

 

[WizHigh]

A member here is using them. He has like 5 of them on moving racks. They run pretty good can't wait to get mine.

 

[Cultivator]

hi mate, purple stems dont necassarily mean its cos of cold. It could be a mg def, only slight but watch for red veining on leaves, then u'll know for sure. if u have red veining dont flip til u have it fixed. Some strains are just naturally red. My greenhouse seeds A.M.S has red stems and i get the best yields u can imagine per sq foot. if new growth and leaves look healthy and symetrical dont worry mate.

 

[Perfect Sun LED]

Whoa, are you looking to get the af-600? $1500 for one light is a huge difference in price.