Wow... great thread I just finished reading all of it... (ok, i skipped over some of the bitching) and i am impressed... I am one who is always looking for ways to improve my garden, my hobby, and my smoke
UVB was the next step.. I got one of the reptile lights 10.0 - CFL from a pet store to test it out... I am in the last 3 weeks of a dutch passion blueberry grow under a screen... i have kindof limited space to play with so i try to do it as big as i can with what i have... so far the plants have been growing completely under 2K enhanced spectrum HPS (hortilux) with no UVB... I'm adding the bulb in the last 3 weeks because i figure it cant hurt... and with everything in this thread that i've been reading, i probably just have a couple more days before these plants react to it and start making more trichs. (although they are beautifully covered now - i can only hope fore more!) I looked up the amount of uva and uvb that is coming from my 26W CFL bulb, and its not much - but when you mount the same bulb in an aluminum reflector (aluminum is apparently very good at reflecting uvb rays) it can reach out to about 4 ft and stay at uv index of at least 2... but up by 12" its about at uv index 10. since if have the screen, all my buds are at the same height so i am trying to make it hit them all... and i change the position of the light every time i go in there... I'm running the UVB for 10 hrs of the 12 that the lights are on. I am worried about my exposure to the uvb though - if you are within a couple inches of the bulb, the exposure is hundreds of times stronger than anywhere on earth... for my next run i'm looking at getting the growtronix setup to run my grow show with a pc (
Growtronix, Greenhouse Controller and Grow Room Computer Automation System), then i can control it from anywhere - including my phone... one of the advantages of this would be that you can make it so when the door to the grow opens, the UV will immediately shut off... i'm not doing this so much for the single CFL thats in there now... but i want to get the flouro tubes... they have much more even distribution of uvb light... (at the surface there is no super strong uv - they are more constant and i believe they last longer) another thing that i wasnt sure about is providing uvb when the plants are in veg state - i dont think it hurts them - but i would be afraid that it might slow them down from getting to flower... what would be wrong with adding the uvb only in the flower stage. it is supposed to be the catalyst (arguably) that ups the trichome production - why would you want that in veg? wouldnt you want it to focus on making more growth during that cycle, you know - so you have more plant to work with during flower? also, i dont think that the plant communicates anything to the seed about the amount of UV radiation that it is receiving... (i cant remember who thought that it might, that happens) BUT, i think you could prove this by looking at the root system... when the seed starts, it basicly has to choose between 2 different kinds of root systems it wants to use... there are hydro roots and soil roots... you will not have very good luck removing a plant from a DWC hydro system and planting it in soil, due to the root system, likewise, it would expect you cant take a big soil plant and drop it into a DWC system and expect it to live. (DWC = roots constantly suspended in oxygen-rich nute solution). anyways, to the point of the issue... if you get a DWC plant to make seeds... it doesnt tell those seeds "get ready for a shit load of water" because its in a DWC... the sees from that plant can grow in either type of system, and can still choose either type of root system - i suspect it works the same way with the UVB exposure... sorry thats so long...i type like a court stenographer