Poor lightning for seed breading.

I have a kind of a strange question i can't find the answer for when googeling.


So... I have this lights I use to veg my guerilla op. (6500k, 20w(≈118w), 1850 lumen, LED) x 2
They work like a charm for vegging.

But now I got to thinking I might want to make some seeds for next year, a couple of small AF plants.
Just curious if I could still use thees lights. I mean it's not going to yield me any real quality bud, but I don't really care about the bud, but I do care for the quality of the seeds.
Will I get less seeds or bad seeds using them LEDs i got?

I could of course go and get me some proper lights, but unless I have to....

Sorry if wrong forum, mod move if necessary.
Cheers

I don't see why not. Like you said, you wouldn't end up with a bumper crop, but it would certainly work for a small amount of seed. Plenty of folks flower with the same lights they use for veg. The only thing I'd look out for is stretch. LEDs have great penetration, but you might think about doing some LST to help them get as much light as they can from your bulbs.

Edit: it occurs to me that with low light, you might find it takes longer for the seed to mature. General consensus is 4-6 weeks for good seed, but you might want to pull a few to check at 6 and let them go another couple weeks if necessary.

First off 20 watts of LED is not = to 118 watts of HID lighting. You probably could do it but low light levels will cause some stress.

Probably be best to flower them straight from mature clones so you ain't trying to flower 3 foot plants under 40 watts of light. Proper lighting would be ideal obviously, but you can get away with it if you can keep the plants happy.

djimb said:

I don't see why not. Like you said, you wouldn't end up with a bumper crop, but it would certainly work for a small amount of seed. Plenty of folks flower with the same lights they use for veg. The only thing I'd look out for is stretch. LEDs have great penetration, but you might think about doing some LST to help them get as much light as they can from your bulbs.

Edit: it occurs to me that with low light, you might find it takes longer for the seed to mature. General consensus is 4-6 weeks for good seed, but you might want to pull a few to check at 6 and let them go another couple weeks if necessary.

Click to expand...

Thanks mate

CaptainDankness said:

First off 20 watts of LED is not = to 118 watts of HID lighting. You probably could do it but low light levels will cause some stress.

Probably be best to flower them straight from mature clones so you ain't trying to flower 3 foot plants under 40 watts of light. Proper lighting would be ideal obviously, but you can get away with it if you can keep the plants happy.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the watt calculation confuses me, so I just wrote what's on the box.
And I'm doing autos so cloning's not really an option.

You have to consider twos steps in the process : pollination and seed production.


Pollination : When your females are ready (depend on the quality/quantity/speed delta than you aim), thick bracts, you put them with a male allready producing pollen (to don't use the first grains shot). This operation don't need a high density, pollen is a "weak fruit" and you aim for the maximum viable grain of pollen possible. A high density create more air exchange with water and can "cook" your grains : they hate water, they hate hot temp, they hate UV-(A&B), they hate the PH of our skin ... and so on. And you don't want to use only the biggest grains, but all.


Seed production : All the flowers are allready hard inside and rounded, bracts are thin. You want to use at maximum the photosynthesis to give a counterpart to the massive efforts they give. A good density and a decent penetration of the light will give you a good average calibration and will permit to your females to last more before they give up then start to die (stopping to "eat" on EC meter, stopping to use 100% a normal watering, leafs start to have chlorosis/yellowing on decent level of N/P ...).


Aiming optimal conditions for these twos steps is not necessary to make seeds, but like the temp/hygro ratio with STS, it make a big difference on long term with the quality of offspring.

seeds dont need much light, it will be fine

just reproduced some oldtimers haze seeds under a t5 im about 10 weeks into pollination and from what i can see theres some good seeds but also a lot of ones that look good but also crack, so maybe some stronger light would help

youngbuck1986 said:

just reproduced some oldtimers haze seeds under a t5 im about 10 weeks into pollination and from what i can see theres some good seeds but also a lot of ones that look good but also crack, so maybe some stronger light would help

Click to expand...

What do you mean they look good, but also crack? Like they just have a thin shell?