Pro Grow LED Run #1, Super Cali Haze, Onyx, Blackbriar, and Blue Diesel

[Red1966]

Its all about the taste and getting that grab on the front of my brain that comes from homegrown. The onyx is the pictures that only show a single nug. It yielded 20.5g most of which was gifted to friends and fam. The smoke was tops even though the yield kinda sucked, very spicy. See pic of the onyx bowl I smoked before I wrote this.

Black Briar pics are the hanging buds. I managed to bleach the top of the top nug cause I had her too close to the leds, but other than that it turned out (haven't smoked it going by looks) almost equal in avg hid yield but the buds were way frostier than usual. Pistils also grew out further before retreating back into the buds.

Next crop will be much improved not that I've more or less figured out how to run these leds. The nute uptake is a bit slower. Don't know of thats because they don't run hot like hid or if it has anything to do with spectrums. Bought grow bags at my local hydro shop and was also given a free sample of gravity nutes which will be added to the next crop. Grow bags are better for led than the pots I'm using now, smaller in diameter but same capacity allowing to better use the directional nature of the lights.

Also, even though I've defended and advocated its use before - fuck some miracle grow. I picked up some Fox Farms Ocean while I was getting the pots.

MI-5, Sweet Carmel Cream, Santa, & Smurf Berry will be the next four autos I grow. I wish I knew how to make fem seeds of the auto I bred, just hate growing male plants when I only have a small garden.

We'll see about the super cali haze. I've got the house to myself this weekend and can finally get around to transplanting. It hasn't responded to what I suspected would be appropriate nutes and flushing.

To get feminized seeds, just don't harvest your girls. Eventually, some will hermy and pollinate themselves and the others. The resulting seeds will be "feminized" seeds. Don't use the seeds from the girl that hermied, the offspring will be more likely to hermie, and sooner, than the others. Cloning would be more efficient, tho. I'm watching your grow with interest.

 

[hydrofarm2011]

You get four times harvests if you use LED grow lights , do anybody know which LED grow light is the best for marijuana growing ?

 

[Red1966]

that was part of the reason for switching to led. If I did happen to leave the extra bedroom unlocked and my 3 year old happened to get in there and touch a lit hid bulb that would have been seriously bad news. I'm pretty sure it would melt the skin off your hands.

Air cooled hoods, man. Mine are barely warm to the touch! By the way, you're lucky your three year old didn't DRINK your nutes. Lock the door!!!!!! Sorry for the rant, I lost a two year old son. That's someplace you don't want to go.

 

[hoss12781]

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[FONT=&quot]In terms of cloning - you can't clone an auto due to its short life cycle, but will try the fem seeds plan with my next batch. I want to get some good sensi off these girls. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Hydro Farm - I really like my Pro-Grows from www.hydroponicshut.com As stated earlier I would personally only put 2 plants max under each PG 180, although the website says you can fit 3. They are highly efficient full spectrum leds. I like them better than my Grow LED Hydro unit which costs much more retail. Since those are the only two major led players I have experience with that's all I can provide in terms of first hand experience. That, and letting you know the cheap-o 90w ufos that are all over Ebay are really only good for side lighting. If you can pick one up on the cheap, cool, use it for that. If you want a quality led grow invest in a reputable panel for top lighting. I would also say get more quality smaller wattage (180-250) panels as opposed to one monster 500w panel. This allows for a more modular set up where you can move lights around to make sure each plant is getting maximum exposure. It will wind up costing about the same. Just my experience so far. One solid piece of advice would be to not to listen to people spouting off about different led brands on this site unless they have a journal backing it up. A lot of people love to talk shit about this technology without having really used it.[/FONT]

 

[hoss12781]

Air cooled hoods, man. Mine are barely warm to the touch! By the way, you're lucky your three year old didn't DRINK your nutes. Lock the door!!!!!! Sorry for the rant, I lost a two year old son. That's someplace you don't want to go.

For sure, my spare bedroom is now dead bolted in addition to the lock already on the door. After this grow all future grows will take place in a mylar tent, in the double locked bedroom, with an additional lock on the tent door. All nutes are now hidden well out of reach and curiosity.

I had air cooled hoods on my 400 units, but they still threw out a shit ton of heat. They weren't wired into an exhaust system. It was when I started looking at exhaust fans, venting, ect and that I started taking a serious look at leds. I'm glad I did exhaustive research and found a brand that is working very well for me.

 

[StonedGuru]

Hey Hoss how are the babies?

 

[hoss12781]

its almost showtime. The caramel is still the king with flowers everywhere. The Santa has formed some quality nuggets as well but the node spacing left a little to be desired. The Smurfberry is rocking very hard, although she would appear to be a week or so behind the Santa and Caramel. The MI-5 is pidly, but forming solid nugs, probably will get a half o off her. The other three will be at least oz yielders, the carmel and the smurf def closer to 2 oz. This judgement based on past experience with autos. Should have at least a quarter pound comprised of four different kinds of funk in about 4 weeks or so. Good bud porn coming this weekend if my g-d internet at home is working by then (killing time at the office right now). The interenet at my house went down cause a squirell chewed through the cable which allowed water to rot the line. Fuckin squirells man.

 

[StonedGuru]

Lol fucking terrorist squirrels! Looking forward to seeing them, they sound promising man!

 

[hoss12781]

Five weeks old as of today and these pictures. The flower development is really starting to take off. Although the Smurfberry is behind the others in terms of maturity I think it will be a great yielder. So will the Caramel (largest of the four pictured). All but the Smurf got a tad bleached on the tops and some on the sides from having the leds too close. The problem with bleaching is it occurs after you've already done the damage so its kind of bitch to catch but, this being my second led run I think I'm getting the hang of it. Gallons in the pics to give perspective. I imagine myself being stoned to the tits sometime in late Sept/early Oct.

Note the set up on the lights. This is my argument for more smaller wattage panels being better simply for a modular set up. The MI-5 was such a small pheno I can put the 100w GLH on tilt and have it effectively cover the MI-5 and provide a bunch of quality side lighting for the Carmel. When the first one is ready I will plant a new bean under and old floro and move more lights in on the remaining to maximize coverage. You just can't do that with only one large panel. For reference I've probably spent about a grand, maybe a little less on this entire set up.

 

[StonedGuru]

Niceeee your gonna have a hell of a collection and a heavy good yield-they have grown at some speed under those ufos, plus is that a simba toy second pic in man? Lion king is the shit!

 

[hoss12781]

Busted, it is Simba. You know Disney is re-releasing that in 3D. My son told me I had to sleep with Simba to keep me safe. After I put him to bed last night I put the garden to bed and left Simba to guard the plants.

 

[StonedGuru]

Lol that is a paragraph I will remember for the rest of my life- Your son sounds amazing, your a lucky guy! With the plants I mean Im actually gonna go see that, feeo baked but yeah I loved Lion king when I was a kid

 

[hoss12781]

As we are nearing the home stretch on this run I have, as of today, switched all my pro-grows to flowering only spectrum. The flowers are beefing up and I expect these to be done in approx 2-3 weeks, probably closer to 3 weeks. I dig the switchable spectrums, although people have said "you're turning half your lights off ... blah .. blah .. blah". IMO this is no different than swtiching from MH to HPS. If the spectrum isn't what the plants desire during that stage of their lives then why bother.

Kinda sucks that I am muddling things a bit by having 290w of mixed spectrum leds still in the mix. I am considering flipping the GLH 100w ufo and my quad and dual band 90 watters on Ebay to pick up another PG. The UFOs are honestly shit, the GLH is pretty good - way better than your average led light - but in my opinion uses too many diodes in the blue spectrum to suit my garden's needs. I will continue the rest of this grow with the lights I already own in place and look to possibly go all Pro Grow led when the next run is ready to roll. May hang onto the GLH just to sprout babies. We shall see.

 

[BlazedMonkey]

Very nice grow sir!
So my understanding is you prefer PG over GLH?

 

[hoss12781]

Very nice grow sir!
So my understanding is you prefer PG over GLH? And that you use the "veg" spectrum until the last two weeks then switch to "flowering"???

Thanks Monkey. I use the veg only spectrum for the first two weeks of growth, these are all autos so I'm dealing with about 7-8 weeks total grow time. After the first two weeks I introduce the flowering spectrum (full illumination veg and flower turned on, on the PGs). As we are nearing week 6 I have switched to flowering only on the Pro-Grows. It worked well for the flowering development on my last run.

Yes, given the choice I prefer the Pro-Grows to Grow LED Hydro. Don't get me wrong, they are both very well made products, but I think the GLH is too heavy on the veg side of the spectrum. I'll take a picture to illustrate when I update this weekend. It is probably 60% blues and wide kelvin temp diodes. The only reason I picked up lights that were not Hydro Hut was I either bought them before I found Hydro Hut or found a stupid cheap deal on ebay. Like I said above when this run is over I am strongly considering going all Hydro Hut. I want to be able to have spectrum control over all my leds as I've seen how the plants respond.

If everything continues the way its going now I'll probably send the powers that be over there (hydro hut) a link to this journal and see if they want to kick me a freebie or heavy discount. Here's to wishful thinking!

 

[BlazedMonkey]

Good luck on getting a freebie
And thanks for the tips, have you noticed the price dropping on these at all or do you anticipate newer or cheaper versions on the near future???

 

[hoss12781]

I honestly don't know. Call Ben and ask him, he's the owner of hydro hut. I can tell you to search ebay. Every so often he'll place over stock, usually the 2011 180 unit, or refurbished Pro-Grow 140s and 250s (2010 models that have a full 3w flowering chipset but only a 1w veg chipset) for sale there and you can snag good deals. I got a 250 for $240 bucks that way. Got one of my 180s for $235.
If past behavior is any indication of future behavior I'd wager he'll have something new for 2012 but it will probably be expensive (and worth it).

 

[BlazedMonkey]

Cool thanks for the info!

Whats the heat like from the 180 PG light? Compared to roughly the same wattage CFLs and HIDs ?

 

[hoss12781]

way less heat, almost zero. This was the main appeal for me, that and the decreased power consumption. You can't put the plants super close to the light though, even though they don't produce much heat, the intensity of the diodes will bleach the pigment out of your plants. You'll notice on my last pics that I had them a bit too close for about a week on this run and leached a bit of the color off the tops. Doesn't really affect taste or quality as long as it isn't severe bleaching. It kind of looks like a N def, but upon closer inspection it isn't, the lower branches maintained their full color and health. It's a totally different game than hid or cfl, but one that has a quick learning curve. I'm getting the hang of when to move the lights up.

The difference in temps compared to my old set up was pretty dramatic. My spare bedroom closet used to get close to 100F if not more, now its running in the low 70s, same as the rest of my house. Gotta keep leds with 3w diodes at least 7-8 inches away in flower, 10 in veg. The 2w diode 90w ufo and 1w diode 90w ufo can be put much closer to the plants (4-5 inches).

 

[BlazedMonkey]

Thanks so much for the info! You Irish and Stoney all have great grows that are proving LEDs (at least to me)

Keep up the good growing sir!