hey,
I guess wer're at week 4 now..
I only cut 2 clones from the critical and 2 from the blue dreams.. should have gone with smaller net pots and do some more clones for more selection...
Well that is why it took so long,
the blue dreams really get off now.. while only being under fluoro's.. they want to grow FAST;)
but both critical mass clones took forever to root, one rooted 2 weeks ago, and is now recovering fast, the other one was rooting maybe one week ago and barely made it, also some white mold got the weakest on the stemI think...
I'll treat them with baking soda spray the next days.
for now they are still in the cloner while I prepare my room and lamp.
I want the criticals to be in the game 100% ,
currently I am in the process of upgrading my light, adding some far red leds, and 3500k lm301B's
,
I will plug the far reds on a separate timer, to switch these on one hour before lights go on and before lights off ... still have to read some stuff about it.
As I understand it, this emulates the dusk and dawn period, which signals the plants to wake up faster, way better than just blasting them with 500W , cause man,
as a human I can relate to it, it is basically the same as somebody turning your room lights on when youre almost asleep or woke or something:)
I think the emmerson effect is only due to 660nm far red, 730nm is for faster sleep and fast wake-up,
so they can use all the powerfull light from the beginning.
leaving far red on the whole day cycle would make them stretch too much.
Dr. Bruce Bugbee has some nice videos about that. basically far red signals shadow, cause far red penetrates even through dense trees, so plants like cannabis are shadow avoiding plants. and they will stretch too much if you leave far red on all day. I guess far red could also be beneficial when the stretch is over.
I should be able to give them a 13.5 hr light cycle during flower due to the far red supplement light,(like outdoor plants that flower at 14 hours.. so they should be able to suck up more light per day this way.
some stuff about my light upgrade;
I could not save my 600w HPS, so I got my hands on 200 more LM301B's, as I realized that my driver had some power left,
I figured why not use that, instead of buying another board from china, and additional driver for it.
My lamp consists of 2x 240W c2100 drivers, max voltage 115v, I got 2 boards wired in series per 240W driver, and my 2x 120W per driver boards only sucked up 190W this way, and about 2x 43V @ 2200 amp max.
this limited the max power. to 195W per driver.
so that was a limitation , I did not care though, cause with my 2x4 could only take 330W max without burning the plants...
now I will basically build a 4.5x5 at least, so I realized, why not use the extra 50W each driver can supply by using the full 115v
I got 2 more boards with 100 LEDs each, that have a voltage of about 20V each, which would result in 116V per driver, which would be about 1V over max voltage.. but I guess it will work if the driver does not overheat... lol..
tested this, and with the additionall 100 LEDs per board, each driver draws 250W from the wall...
instead of 600W hps and 380W led how I planned this grow, I now have 500W LED power, running each LED at 0.4W (which is lower than standart Kingbrites, I think they overdrive their LEDs to 0.5W or so.. every light manufacturer does this I think...
It is basically a bit more efficient than a standart samsung light, plus I have the 27W far red addon on it too.
that is the perfect light to me. consisting of 1000x lm301h, 200x lm301B, 16x epistar 600nm deep red, @ 500W, and 10x samsung 730nm chips @27W
with the longer day period, this will be equivalent to about 10% more light, per day, so it will be like a5x5 with about 550W or so:)
I plan to put the 3 purple kush's in soil, and make them get some Horizontal light to do a partial "vertical" grow within that tent. basically letting one side of the tent grow up higher than the scrog- RDWC part wich will fill 4.5x5...
I also will attach the 200 additional LEDs on a adjustable hinge, to be able to have some sideways lumen output for the purple kushs:)
I may work on a light rail too, if I can invest some more cash, but man.. $$ add up quickly.