The last light arrived today and it is now installed.
A quick word about LED lighting. I see a lot of comparisons around that try to compare certain LED units to HID lamps. For instance, these two have been compared to as 600w by marketers. They use fancy formulas and try use values like lumen, watt, dissipation, etc. You can skip past all of the hoopla, what does matter is that these LED lights and panels put off ONLY the wavelengths used by plants for photosynthesis A & B and 3rd band for blends. That is why it is hard to compare what they can do against their HID counterparts; which produce a lot of light that is wasted at the expense of added heat and a much higher power bill. I have nearly 360w of usable light! It's possible to get by with less, but I want to see some results.
My overheads are 120w each of pure light that the plants can use. The back panels total 112 watts. I'm not a lighting expert by any means. I consider these lights an investment that will keep paying me back. I'd like to do a scrog on my first LED grow, but I'm concerned about what if's in case I have to remove a hermy. I may do it anyway. For a net I'm going to suspend a Christmas net light set of green bulbs from springs hooked to the walls. I'll scrog with the net and plug it in if I need light in my flower room during "lights out".
I changed the wiring just a bit, I can now turn off the upper back lighting for when I'm starting a new cycle of little gals that don't reach that high yet.
LIFE Update
The seedlings are looking great. I'm actually using a bit of a wick system to water them. I have a bed of pebbles in the bottom of the plant tray. The cups with drain holes are resting on top. I add water to about 1/2" above the rocks and the cups can absorb water from the bottom. I'm doing this to establish deep roots quickly. I also fed them Big Bloom two days ago the same way. Big Bloom was watered down to about half recommended strength.
I'll post 1 week old pics this weekend. The Bubbleicious feminized seeds were placed in peat pellet pellets just 5 days ago. The seedlings are already germinated and the peat pellets planted into an amended soil of MG, Perlite and worm castings, in 9 oz Solo cups. I used small cups to allow the roots to find water near bottom and stretch. The cup allows about a 4" tap root before these will be transplanted into larger containers.
The pictures depict my set up for a Sea of Green grow, however since I'm just getting started with 5 seeds, of which only 4 germed, I will be scrogging for a bigger yield. The best looking scrogger will have some cuttings removed to clone. I want to use the SOG method, but I'm also concerned about plant count. This closet should easily allow scrogging of three healthy females in 3 gallon pots each. If the LEDs work as I've seen them do, we'll have a lot of bud to harvest in the upper room, as the nursery below is vegging the next potential flowers.
Sorry for the long write up, I'm excited. We have 4 great looking seedlings with purple stems and nice luscious green tops. The plants are about 2 and 1/2" tall and are on 24 hour lights, which are 4 x 4' 65000k cool white Plus fluorescents. I had 41000k bulbs originally, but they looked like they were warm even though it said cool.... it seemed reddish to me.
I'll be switching to 20/4 light cycle after first week after hardening the seedlings to encourage some node stretching. LOL.... Not to worry, we want these to stretch a bit for scrogging. This will also make watering and feeding easier than SOG soil set up.
Comments, questions, suggestions are welcome. Please don't use this thread to denounce LED lighting or stir up debates. Just sub the thread, kick back and watch what these lights do.
In the pictures you'll see I used cheap dog choker chains suspended from swiveling swag hooks. Swiveling swag is key. It allows easy adjustment of lights to get them aligned quickly.
