aphrodisia
Well-Known Member
Happy new year everyone ! well as happy as the bloody politicians will allow it to be for everybody else anyway. This is my first grow in 2014. I have been eyeing LEDs for a long time and finally got myself a Vipar V300 IR LED growlight, actual draw of 180w. Due to circumstances I was forced to mothball my 400w MH/HPS combo and I have been growing with a 250w HPS for the past couple of years. It does the job but I havent really been happy with my yields under the 250w HPS which is why I decided to try this LED figuring the yield cant be any worse than under a 250w HPS and I might end up being nicely surprised. Anyway here are the specs :
2 x Sannies Herijuana
2 x Purple Kush
Light is vipar v300 IR LED
grown in soil in 10 litre pots
I suspect people who have used LED grow lights and had bad results with them were maybe trying to use them in the same way you would use a MH/HPS setup, but LEDs dont work like that I have found. The first thing I noticed as soon as I plugged in my LED that was going to be a problem was lack of heat. I know most people moan about temps in their grow room/cabinet etc., but marijuana does need a certain amount of heat to grow optimally, especially in winter and I saw this was going to be a problem. After thinking about it for a couple of days I hit upon a solution and got one of these from ebay :
Its a 45w tube heater which I then fixed inside my persy growbox :
Hopefully this will keep my temps from falling below 60 F . I just leave it switched on all the time. I germed 2 herijuana and 2 purle kush seeds under the 250w HPS (for the heat) and once they popped I switched over to the vipar LED. Here is a pic of them with the lights off at 15 days :
the 2 on the left are the herijuanas and the 2 on the right are the purple kushes. 
People always say as well that LEDs dont have any penetrating power but this is totally false. They have (at least the high powered ones) so much penetrating power that if you hang your light less than 24" from the top of your plants your plants will show hardly any vertical growth. They will just sort of get bushier and bushier and all growth will be horizontal. This is because the plants dont have to stretch to receive the essential light they need like they do under HPS lamps. I have to admitt this had me scratching my head somewhat for some time until I was lucky enough to come across this information on the internet and I then raised my LED up to about 3 feet over the canopy.
I have to say that so far I have been well impressed by these lights. You can practically see the plants growing on a daily basis ! I hope the lights perform as well for flowering as they do for veg :
day 22 
day 23 
day 24 
day 26 
day 26
One other thing about growing with LEDs, because the grow cabinet temperatures are so down water doesnt evaporate as quickly as under HIDs so the plants end up using a fraction of the water they would use under a MH or HPS light. So go careful with the watering. I will be posting regular updates on this thread until harvest. Does anybody else have any experience of using this particular LED or LEDs in general ? I will be interested in hearing from them. I think I will veg these for one more week and then switch to 12/12 and see how it goes. I will try and post updates weekly. Bye for now.
2 x Sannies Herijuana
2 x Purple Kush
Light is vipar v300 IR LED
grown in soil in 10 litre pots
I suspect people who have used LED grow lights and had bad results with them were maybe trying to use them in the same way you would use a MH/HPS setup, but LEDs dont work like that I have found. The first thing I noticed as soon as I plugged in my LED that was going to be a problem was lack of heat. I know most people moan about temps in their grow room/cabinet etc., but marijuana does need a certain amount of heat to grow optimally, especially in winter and I saw this was going to be a problem. After thinking about it for a couple of days I hit upon a solution and got one of these from ebay :
Its a 45w tube heater which I then fixed inside my persy growbox :
Hopefully this will keep my temps from falling below 60 F . I just leave it switched on all the time. I germed 2 herijuana and 2 purle kush seeds under the 250w HPS (for the heat) and once they popped I switched over to the vipar LED. Here is a pic of them with the lights off at 15 days :
the 2 on the left are the herijuanas and the 2 on the right are the purple kushes. People always say as well that LEDs dont have any penetrating power but this is totally false. They have (at least the high powered ones) so much penetrating power that if you hang your light less than 24" from the top of your plants your plants will show hardly any vertical growth. They will just sort of get bushier and bushier and all growth will be horizontal. This is because the plants dont have to stretch to receive the essential light they need like they do under HPS lamps. I have to admitt this had me scratching my head somewhat for some time until I was lucky enough to come across this information on the internet and I then raised my LED up to about 3 feet over the canopy.
I have to say that so far I have been well impressed by these lights. You can practically see the plants growing on a daily basis ! I hope the lights perform as well for flowering as they do for veg :
day 22 day 23 day 24 day 26 day 26One other thing about growing with LEDs, because the grow cabinet temperatures are so down water doesnt evaporate as quickly as under HIDs so the plants end up using a fraction of the water they would use under a MH or HPS light. So go careful with the watering. I will be posting regular updates on this thread until harvest. Does anybody else have any experience of using this particular LED or LEDs in general ? I will be interested in hearing from them. I think I will veg these for one more week and then switch to 12/12 and see how it goes. I will try and post updates weekly. Bye for now.
).
