hush's micro LED grow - Sadhu

[hush]

I decided it was time to try out LEDs!

Space is about 17" x 19" and around 4 feet tall. Plant is Sadhu by Mandala Seeds. Lighting is a full-spectrum 135w LED fixture by Apollo Horticulture, that probably only uses around 100 actual watts. They are 3 watt diodes. This is a coco hempy bucket, volume is something like 2 gallons. Feeding with Maxibloom.

I think that's all the pertinent stuff. This is my first time using LEDs so I'll be updating often. Feel free to tag along if you'd like!

 

[FunkBomb]

Cool experiment, good luck.

-Funk

 

[Bueno Time]

Ill watch this one.

Been thinking about playing with LEDs a little myself.

 

[Keif]

This will be fun!

 

[blynx]

Nice bushy plant in there. You planning on any kind of training?

 

[hush]

Thanks, and I'm not sure, lol.

This is my sadhu mother plant, which I'm about to take cuttings of, to replace her in the mother cab. Since she was so bushy and well-rooted, I decided to flower her out! What I don't know is how much I'll need to train her. I expect I'll have to do at least some minor LST to keep the branches at the same height. But there are a LOT of branches that are about to shoot up on this plant! So I have to wait until they do and see what I'm working with first. She gave me LOTS of cuttings in her time as a mom.

 

[hush]

I thought about it, then I went ahead and spread out all the growth tips with a little LST last night. Just to keep things tidy.

 

[hush]

Starting to see visible growth:

I need to come up with a convenient way of taking pictures in this cab without the purple hue. I think I'm going to install a small CFL in here to turn on just when taking pictures.

 

[kb19]

looking nice, to sort the hue i'd add some cfls for some side lighting, my also help for budding although ive not seen a large amount of led/cfl mixes

 

[hush]

Bushing out nicely:

 

[Keif]

Damn! That thing is low and wide. Good work.

 

[hush]

Things seem to have slowed down a bit in here... Not sure why, unless i stressed the plant with the lst.. Anyway, she still looks good, but not much has happened worth taking pictures of.

I wonder if these LEDs are deficient in the blue spectrum? I'll have to keep my eyes on this one...

 

[hush]

I see growth now, but it's still a little slow for my liking. Pics from tonight:

 

[blynx]

She's looking good.

I think you're seeing slow initial vegging because it's was a mother plant with some woodier stems. I've found the woodier stems don't really flower/grow well, but once new growth starts happening off that old woody growth, that's when you'll see her start to take off.

 

[hush]

I think you're right, and what inspired me to mention that bit about maybe stressing her with the LST was the fact that, because her stem and branches are so woody, I noticed that some of the branches were not very flexible, and I had to really coax them into place. So yes, I do think you hit the nail on the head. Finally though, I'm seeing actual new grow tips coming off the tree trunk.

This is also the first time in a long time I've flowered out a mother plant!

 

[blynx]

Yep concentrate on how the new growth looks overall. Don't be surprised if some of the really old stuff dies off. It happens in most of the CFL runs I do where I start off with really old, tall, woody plants. The old stuff either dies or produces crappy larf. It's all the new growth that produces the good bud.

 

[hush]

Pics from today:

 

[xil]

That is some beautiful lst, keep it up!

Hopefully led's will not dissapoint you

 

[hush]

I lowered the light to about 12 inches above the plant. Just in case the slow growth was due to insufficient light. If bleaching occurs I'll raise it accordingly. But man, this has been like watching grass grow in here. I am only finally seeing more upward growth today:

So hopefully it was just that my light was too high up. I was erring on the side of caution before, but I need to rule out insufficient lighting as the problem. Otherwise, the plant looks extremely healthy...

 

[hush]

Whoa! Lowering the light didn't cause bleaching... It caused portions of the plant to flop over. At least, that's what I'm guessing... It's the only thing I changed before this happened. Anyway, I raised the light a little bit, not as high as it was before, and I'll see if the plant perks up again.