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RE: Cannabis chronicals #13, the indoor plant update
Not much of anything, and metal halide isn't in the right spectrum either..
For flowering a HPS is required or a top of the line new led..
Perhaps this is just a mother tho?
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Stretching is not an issue, just my observation based on a few years around Mendo growers, bunch books and articles, and two ops on my own, one in aero and one hydro. Sativa will stretch, indica will bunch, so it's only an issue depending on the variety, anything over 5-6 inches in between nodes (not internodes-nodes) I'd consider stretching.
They have mh bulbs that you flower under, with more red spectrum. Mh And HID aren't the bulbs, only what powers the bulbs, the bulbs will determine the spectrum, not the blasts. Yes, hid will produce more lumes/watt and mh generally come with blue spectrum bulbs but during flowering (not only) you need both lumes and good spectrum, though you can compromise spectrum Vs lumes if you have a mh. You can cut the light to 12h a day and it will start flowering after 1-2 days.. I wouldn't be surprised if the yield is impacted substantially by not having the right spectrum and enough lumes.
Mendocino eh ? 707 ! I grew in redwood Valley for years myself..
Yeah I was generalising on the lights, usually MH are OK for veg, whereas high impact discharge are usually going to be the go to ballast to power high pressure sodium lights.
Heat being an issue I Always opted for T5 or cfl for veg and hps for flower without much concern about giving them blue green light as its only a 8-11 weeks flowering and 3-4 months total indoor anyway.
Stretching will be an issue during transition and the first stages of flowering though as all plants tend to have vigorous growth at this stage regardless of strain.
I've tried dual lights mh and hps and basically a bit of everything over decades and I don't see any reason to fool with mh from my experience..
Indoor is a compromise and I'd rather enjoy outdoor any day even if it doesn't test as well because you can't replace the full spectrum of a dynamic sun over seasons. It makes the bud more holistic or something intangible IMHO.. Looks nice but indoor bud is meh for me, good for consistency and sales etc but it's missing that je ne sais quoi..
http://ursalighting.com/effect-green-light-plants/
Interesting conversation!
I do believe the plant is stretching a bit, it wants to grow right up into the bulb. I'm probably going to take most of the big water leaves off the plant in the next day or 2. As for a flowering bulb, hopefully they make flourescent bulbs for that with more red spectrum, I can't afford to buy a HPS light system, and a large enough LED array is also pretty expensive. I'll have to go to the local hydroponics store and see what kind of lighting they have in stock for flowering that I can afford.
I doubt that I can cut the light back to 12 hours for the plant right now, our daylight lasts too long this time of year, and I don't have a place to put the plant where there's no windows.
I bought a mh light that they use in warehouses / stores 400w for 30 bucks on Craigslist, just needed a plug. Look on there, there's also Facebook Marketplace and the buy&sell groups in your area, maybe offerup/5miles and if you know how to haggle you can usually find really nice things for cheap. Before all of that you need to crop it, and I would take maybe a quarter of the big leafs off a day, some from the top and mid.
That's a good idea about cropping it in stages instead of all at once. I'll have to do that.
I have a 400 watt metal halide light and ballast that works, but I don't want to use it in the room where the plant is, it generates so much heat that I would have to set up some kind of ventilation system to get rid of it. If I had a dedicated grow room, I could set all of that stuff up, but the room that the plant is in is also used for other things.
I'd try to find a better space for it, right now your plant looks really good, maybe make a little privacy fence against a house back where no one can easily walk up and try to peek behind/over, or in a window that faces the sun, honestly the best way to grow it is as cheaply as possible (preferably trying to not kill it with care) but also you want to maximize the yield, wouldn't skimp on light, or nutrients because that plant looks ready to start stacking, they can produce given plenty light and good soil/media/nutes but you wouldn't know it until you can see exactly how much, of course depending on the strain. If you're worried about it smelling and not wanting to draw unneeded attention I'd make a space in a spare bathroom and hook up a cheap 450 cfm squirrel cage fan to the 4 inch toilet pipe. Empty closet that you can hook up a good vent to or a used grow tent, those things look nice.
I've only grown vegetables under mh, starts were liking it. I've grown hps both times with the cheapo plain Phillips bulbs and the last time I had the advantage of running the big 1000 bulb literally right on top of the plant, I had made a Plexiglas cylinder by bending Plexiglas I got from home depot for less than 20, put it in the oven at 230F and then bending it around 4 inch pvc pipe. I glued the seam with goop glue and finished it by putting a donut cap at end through which the beveled/small end of the bulb was sticking out all the way. The bulb was slightly smaller in Dia. than the cylinder so it slid in no problem and the cylinders were only 12 inches long (95%sure on that dimension) and the bulb would stick out like I said through the end, glued together with more goop. At the other end the same thing, made a donut cap with a 4 in holesaw than a 3 inch one through the 4 inch piece and I ran water with a small pump through irrigation tubing that was hooked up to one inlet and one to an outlet on the cylinder and I had a 35 gal reservoir for 2 lights with the cooling element of a small 5k btu ac unit I got from the pawn shop for 40 bucks sitting in the water keeping it to 65f, plus the flow switch which turned the lights on when water was circulating, if the pump or hoses failed it would shut the lights down. The buds were very dense and I had supercroped the plants under chicken wire to get the full advantage of the lights. It was a low pressure very cheap to build aero system, it was about a quarter or a third the price of dirt. The biggest problem for indoor I'd say is heat, I didn't have any problems with that once I took out the primary heat source. I loved Mendo, Ukiah is probably the weed growing capital of the world, and Mendo the number one county in the world, and I agree with you, to me growing under lights is so silly compared to free sunlight, the weather there is perfect, not humid (<50%) and not too hot.