8 days after my original post, and 5 days into managing the PPM and PH in my reservoirs daily. Things seem to progressing as normal. Good news/bad news situation for next week: Good news: my trip to ATL has been cancelled so I will be home all week (now flying out Friday-Sunday for some R&R). Bad news is the trip was cancelled because of Hurricane Irma.
In any case, a couple pics from today. First one is just a bright pink overview of my entire grow to compare against earlier bright pink overview pics (I think I posted one in this thread):
No question the buds are growing. On the one plant I have that appears to be maturing a little bit faster than the others, most of the buds have new white pistils and growth today:
I didn’t take the time to turn my fans off so that pic is a tad blurry, but you get the idea. I’ll check trichomes later just to see what they look like. I’m very excited to see what happens over the next 2-3 weeks.
I am wondering what I should do with my light. Right now, I have the light as high as I can put it in the tent (it’s hanging off of the wires and hooks it came with directly from the top cross beam in my tent). I’ve had it that way pretty much since I switched to flowering. I raised it because I wanted to make sure I was spreading light to all corners of the tent. I assumed (probably incorrectly) that because it’s a 1500w LED that would be okay.
Now I am wondering if I should have had it lower this whole time. I would say the tops of my tallest branches are probably around 3’ away from the light, but I haven’t measured it… I’ll do that later today when I check the reservoirs.
I am considering getting a second identical light for my next grow; with two lights I could lower them and still have a good footprint of light. The question is… with my King 1500w LED how far from my plants should it be? 2 feet? And if I lower it, what will that do to the buds on the outer edges of the tent? At this point I’m assuming it’s too late to worry about and I should just keep doing what I’m doing… I’m more curious about the next grow. But if I can make this grow better please advise!
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Dimension: 40021360mm (15.75x8.39x2.37inches)
Power:1500w(150pcs*10w)
LED Type: Epistar LEDs
Full spectrum for vegetative and flowering stage: 410nm, 430~440nm, 450~475nm, 620~630nm, 650~670nm, White, IR(730nm)
(It is hard to see clearly by eyes, very dim.Please don’t think they are not working. Instead, it plays an very important role in the flowering and fruiting stages of plants.)
Coverage Area: about 4 x 5.6 ft(The lighting area and the height are changeable according to different plants and environments.)
Lifespan: >50,000hours
Worldwide Voltage: 85v-265v
Working Frequency: 50~60Hz
Modular Power Cord(Available in US, UK, EU, AU,JP)
Using tips
Lighting Time setup: Vegetative Stage: 12-14 hours on; Flowering Stage: 9-12 hours on. Fruiting Stage: 7- 8 hours on
Suggest distance above plants: 2-3.5ft.
Tips for increasing lifespan: please let the light have a rest for about 20mins after 7-8hours working.
Attention
Do not use the lights in dripping water or anywhere where they will get wet, water and electricity can be a dangerous mixture.
The working environment is -20~40℃,45%RH~90%RH.
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Here’s a chart for LED lights, it’s for equivalent watt, so if your LED light is 300W follow the chart for it, it’s not made for actual or real draw and it’s an approximation, that clarify, here it is :
120 W to 180W ~1.5 feet
180W to 300W ~2.0 feet
300W to 600W ~2.5 feet
600W to 1200W ~3.0 feet
1200W to 2000W ~3.5 feet
Hoping that’s helping as many as fellow growers possible (Originally posted by @Niala )
These are just general numbers. Good places to start!
Trichomes appear to be clouding up, but like most first time growers I have zero clue on cloudy versus clear so I’m going to be all about how many amber trichomes I see to determine if I harvest or not.
This starts the second full week with my PPMs at 900-950. I’m trying to keep the PH around 5.8 (5.7-5.9) as usual. With a combination of dehumidifiers I was able to get the humidity in my tent down to 45%, but my temps are a tad on the high side. Midday with lights on it was up to 86F one day). I’m keeping an eye on it. Yesterday it was between 72-82F. Here is the latest pic of the bud from my first post:
yep too clear still you want them to be mostly cloudy and have around a week of flushing with plain water and don’t water on the last day let it dry out and chop it. Helps drying it a bit quicker naturally. Forcing it to dry faster isn’t a good idea and generally you want it to dry out over 4-7 days but the longer and slower it dry it is usually better
Doing good though and you got some good plants ready soon!
On to day 53 of flower. Checking trichomes regularly (first time growing so I’m just trying to get as much knowledge about what’s going on day to day as possible). Here’s day 52:
Day 54 of flower. Things seem to progressing smoothly at this point. I topped off all my reservoirs yesterday - I was really surprised how much water each plant drank in two days. In fact, I have one plant whose reservoir was nearly empty. The other 5 I filled up with PH’d water (no nutes) and those reservoirs are all at 5.7-5.9 with 800-900 PPM. The one that drank a lot I refilled with 5.8/900 water. I’ll have to keep an eye on that one this week. At least I assume it drank that much water and I didn’t just forget to fill it back up when I changed them out on Sunday… I’m 99% confident I did in fact fill it up.
I’ll glance at it today before the lights go out and see what’s what.
EDIT
Adding pictures from today. First picture is of the same bud that I have been posting since I started this thread. Second picture shows a more general view of my tent. As you know from my earlier posts, I have six plants in there. But the plants in the back left and back right of my tent have essentially drowned out the back middle plant. Because I didn’t manage my space well in terms of bushiness, I have one plant that is not producing as well as the other ones (not that the other ones are going to win any awards but still). It’s also clear to me that my light was too far away during the stretch now (it was probably clear to me before, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know). As you can see, the colas are way stretched out. My next grow I will experiment more with the lighting.
Now that I am almost finished with my first ever attempt at growing anything and at using hydroponics, I would echo everyone else’s advice to first time growers to just grow one or two plants. You learn a lot about how the plants actually grow by doing it. I’m sure I’ll learn even more this second grow. I personally didn’t find the hydroponic stuff that difficult to learn and understand, and I prefer the idea of having complete control over what’s being fed my plants. Soil confuses me more. So I wouldn’t shy a first time grower away from hydroponics personally.
Looking good! A couple of observations: don’t forget to deduct some time between flipping and actual flower. The common interval is 2 weeks. If you add that in you aren’t as far along, which matches the pictures better.
As long as your plants are putting out white pistils they are actively adding bud mass. Your final two weeks will see an incredible increase - - possibly double the size - - so you don’t want to miss out on that.
Your trichomes are clear. When they turn, you’ll know it.
It’s like this giant light bulb went off in my head. Thank you! I am going to harvest based on trichomes and had assumed the flowering period was from the day I switched to 12/12, so I was looking at somewhere around Sept 25. But based on what you are saying it is more likely to be around Oct 8. Good to know - I definitely don’t want to harvest them before they are ready. This is probably the most stressful part of the whole grow for me so far.
I went back and looked through the timestamps on the photos of my phone, and the first pic I have with flowers starting is August 10th. I wasn’t taking pics every single day then so I don’t know if I saw any signs of flowering earlier than that. From now on I’ll count the days like this: 54/40. Based on trichomes, we’ll see which number we come closer to.
Yeah, that’s not a bad idea based on the data you have. I was looking for signs of flower when I flipped them and saw full transition in 7 days so that’s what I used. But the time line is a guideline.
And yes: those last few weeks are really tough. I would wager money that you harvest too soon (because we ALL did hahaha!)
Good morning on Day 55/41 of flower. Everything humming along in the tent the past couple of days. I topped off water this morning - had to raise PH in every reservoir. Before I added water they were all ~5PH and 1K PPM. I corrected to 5.7-5.9 and have the PPMs back at 900.
Temps are getting a little higher than I’d like in my tent. I’m seeing highs of 86-88 degrees in the late afternoon after the lights have been on awhile. My intake and exhaust fans are both 240cfm. I ordered a couple of 440cfm fans to see if I can increase ventilation and bring the temp closer to the ambient temp in my basement.
I am going to be out of town over the weekend so won’t be updating until Monday.
Here’s a pic of my “Hey lets throw as many plants as I can fit buckets into the tent and see what happens” grow from this morning:
It’s entirely possible and probably even likely that one plant could be ready before or after others. So make sure to take a look at all of them, and then do whatever is needed from there. If you think one is ready, or needs to go longer than the others, you’re probably right.
As I believe @fever stated, the 524 ųmols is a measure of photosynthetic active radiation. In everyday terms, it’s a measure of the wavelengths of light your plant converts to energy for photosynthesis.
524 isn’t a bad number, but you have to keep in mind that’s measured directly below the light. It will be considerably less as you get further from the light source. 600-1000 ųmols is a good target for flowering stage. You really don’t want to get over 1000 unless you’re supplementing co2. Unfortunately, like you stated, lowering the light will decrease the footprint. In order to max the flowering capabilities of that light, in a full 4x4, you would probably want about 4 of them and run them about 18". It’s just a guess, but I would expect that to provide a good even canopy reading between 700-900 ųmols.
Not sure if that’s what you were expecting, but probably what it would take to maximize yeild. If nothing else, adding 1 more would definitely help.
You’ll be happy to know that I added a second light last week. Should make my next grow with just two plants one I can experiment on. Since things seem to be going okay right now I’m not messing with them at all. But next grow I am going to definitely try and dial the lighting in more. I can’t imagine how I would deal with the heat if I had 4 of them in there… of course winter is coming and that might not be an issue in the winter.
Well… before I left for the weekend I was checking trichomes and shut off the fans in my tent. I forgot to turn them back on. When I got home last night the whole house reeked like weed.
Anyway I changed all the water this morning. The plants drank a ton in 3 days! I’m still seeing new growth on the buds but I have one plant that has slowed down (the same one I have discussed before).
I have one plant that stretched way more than the others:
Day 60/46 since switching to 12/12. Topped off the plants this morning. I had to move them around yesterday so I could get into the tent and replace the exhaust fan - in the process I ended up culling some low, weak looking branches from the one plant I moved out of the way. I’m going to dry up the small buds that were on them and give them a test in a few days. I did check trichomes as well:
