Thai's Blooper Reel

moses wellfleet said:

Thailer I was wondering what your latest thoughts on LEDs are, you ready to try them yet?

What interests me is improved terps. You know the story about HID lamps frying the terps. Quite few reports around of growers getting sweeter more fragrant terps from LED.

Click to expand...

my thoughts about LEDs. oh my that is a can of worms that never seems to be popular with LED owners. i should first state that i am older and don't like change or technology so i am a bit biased.

how do i put this? when i am scrolling through social media feed and i see a killer plant all frosty catching my eye, i have found they're using CMH or some sort of HID lighting. there is a company that is making this new generation water cooled LED light and growers are paying up the butt for and the company shows off the plants grown under their lights. people post oh how nice they look but i don't see it whatsoever. the trichomes are not there. i mean they are but i see plant matter still. i want to see all trichomes. they gave a set to capulator who compared it to some cmh and 1k DE and the plants looked awful but similar to everything else the company shared. cap called it "leafy trichless hemp" and i have to agree.

so now i am actually looking for supplemental lighting for my 1kDE and i was considering LED because it has less heat and right now i am topping out the room at 78 in summer and right now in winter it is pretty cold in there actually. i am adjusting the ventiliation right now because the hottest the room gets is 70 and the intake isn't kicking on and RH is ridunkulous. my point is that now everyone is saying that you have to keep the room temp in the low 80's JUST for the LED lights to work?! wtf is that all about? first people say they're great because the led lowers room temps for those suffering with hot summers and it is due to this better environment that LED lights are amazing.....now it is we discovered that the room needs to be really warm for the lights to work optimally?

its all marketing and hocus pocus.

The tuned spectrum LEDs save on energy by not producing parts of the light spectrum which aren't biologically active. If you're growing under the sun then that biologically inactive part of the spectrum is still present and its impacting the plant and causing evaporation & transpiration and making nutrient laden moisture soak up through the root system to replace all the moisture lost to evaporation caused by the biologically inactive part of the spectrum, which isn't present under LEDs. As a result, if you're growing under LEDs you have to do something extra to get the plant to evaporate extra moisture through the foliage so it can draw up more nutrition through the roots and make enough green stuff to keep the foliage looking healthy.
Thats is my current working theory on the pale foliage under LEDs issue, take it with a grain of salt, I really don't know much about growing indoors, the one closet full of pot plants that I'm currently growing under a 300w LED disco lamp is my first indoor grow in years and it happened by accident. I like growing outside, everything works out naturally there, if something is going wrong its usually bugs or fungus you can see and fix easily rather than mysterious invisible nutrient balance issues that you have to stab in the dark at.
Higher heat and fans are what I'm trying right now to fix my LED difficulties, but I have also considered coloring in the pale leaf tips with a green magic marker or just ignoring them and hoping that spring starts soon and that the squirrels stop digging for acorns near my outdoor sprouts.
I'm only getting the problem with pale leaf tips in the core section of my closet grow where the lights are brightest. I set up the canopy to be as low as possible in the center and taller around edges, but I didn't make the center part low enough so thats where the pale foliage is.

so you're saying that the high heat helps the plant uptake nutrients faster by making them transpire harder and without the extra heat, the plant can not uptake the amount of fertilizer it needs to handle high intensity lighting?

yeah my room is pretty cold for a good portion of the year and i literally use the heat from my double ended hps to keep the room from getting too cold. i could add another one and i think i could get some good temps but then in summer my problem switches up even when i grow at night but its not for a long as i'd suffer with cold temps. i was thinking about adding a second DE and then in summer maybe just running one of them or seeing if dialing them down in watts would be just as good.

i spent a while talking about the LEDS and would it be a good option, actually trying to be open towards the idea and i just don't want to deal with lights that can bleach out my plants and every round i am adjusting them. i have friends who are dealing with this on every round and i just don't have time to nurse plants back to health or even risk losing strains i hold dear. with HID lights, if you follow instructions on how far away from the plants to keep them, they work really well and theres now down time for nursing plants.

i think though in a few years the LED lights will probably have all their kinks worked out and maybe more dialed in. then after they accomplish that, i will wait till the price is as affordable as a HID system which i am buying for around $150-200. then and only then, i'll probably sit down and talk about a total conversion.

thailer said:

so you're saying that the high heat helps the plant uptake nutrients faster by making them transpire harder and without the extra heat, the plant can not uptake the amount of fertilizer it needs to handle high intensity lighting?

Click to expand...

Thats exactly what has been found. As far as light bleaching and having to adjust alot to dial in, most if not all of the new generation of leds have dimmers now so as far as im concerned you can set them to a desired height and then just play with the dimmer.

sounds like its not a good fit for my climate here then because i'd have to pay for heaters during lights on and i am only willing to pay to heat during lights off. i expect the light to warm up the grow enough to kick on the vents. the other room works pretty good but the bigger room needs a second 1k DE or i need to buy a couple LED lights which sounds like i'll be paying a huge amount of money for the lights and i have to pay to heat the room too. maybe if i lived in a warmer area.

I had a few plants in my LED closet grow wilt from underwatering and I didn't recognize what was going on because I'd never seen a plant wilt that slowly before. It took two or three days of them slowly leaning over before I decided to give them some water to see that that would correct the problem.
Someone in another thread said they were trying watering in epsom salt for the pale foliage issue, but I didn't see if it worked out yet.

thailer said:

so you're saying that the high heat helps the plant uptake nutrients faster by making them transpire harder and without the extra heat, the plant can not uptake the amount of fertilizer it needs to handle high intensity lighting?

Click to expand...

So I wonder if LED will go well with Co2 Enrichment that also requires higher temps to make the plants work harder. I guess common sense dictates the that if you combine the two then temps will need to go still higher by a couple degrees?

i am not sure because i haven't read much about adding CO2. years ago a guy bought a CO2 meter and tested his living soil beds to see how much they were releasing and i don't recall the exact number but it was fairly high and almost what is seen with supplementation. so if you're soil is banging, i bet CO2 is in there already doing it's thing.

just testing how to post pictures the best lol

orange apricot mac is just loaded with bud sites! i keep pluckng leaves off her to bring in light but i feel like i'm fighting a lost cause. lol This cut is the one used in the Oregon Growers Cannabis Cup competition for the "grow master" which is where everyone grows the same cut and competes for who is best. she stinks like oranges in veg really heavy and her naturally growth is just like a bush. i didn't do any topping or pruning except to take 7 cuts before i put her in bloom and all those were from lower branches. this cut is banging hot fun but she is super leafy and time consuming to defoliate. i might do it if the yield is awesome tho as a monocrop room.

So i didn't keep a cut of this because i don't think it would work out in the room ran with everything else. its a 1992 sensi seed jack herer that has been kept alive for decades and the buds tasted like lemon lime soda but more heavy on the pine than lemon. like a cleaner type smell. i put it in the corner in a shitty spot but today i took a plant out and was able to get more light on here. i think she will come around.

not my best round of mac1 but certainly not the worst lol

north cascade cut of jelly breath stinks like gas or breath but not anything sweet or jelly like. she rocks outdoors in the PNW with high PM resistance and can grow without being light depped. she doesn't have a lot of leaves for trimming and buds are dense but small. super frosty nugs and everyone who grows her outdoors asks for cuts next season. i really hate to cut her down but i am doing this new project and to keep within plant count and not over extend my room's space, i am supposed to cull her but i haven't been able to. its tough.

Awesome thread Thailer! Working my way thru it.....about 16 pages so far.

the last plant i posted i pulled out to harvest but decided i'd let her ride a couple more days and then i just didn't do anything. its still out there and its been ten days???? wow, feels like 5. guess i should go cut her down. lol

my clones for the next round are growing super slow and i'm just happy they're alive from the cold start they got. i just can't keep this room warm enough without adding heaters. i don't think i have enough plants to fill the whole room up. i am loving the yield of the orange apricot mac but the work to defoliate is beyond what i want to deal with on a large scale. so i called up my friend who is gonna give me back my old skunkmasterflex cut of gmo because i can use small plants and it triples in size during stretch and has huge huge knockers. even with the longer bloom time at 12/12 light, the growth of stretch and huge yield make up for other plants which would need more veg at 24/7 or 20/4 light.

does anyone have an opinion on this? i'm just a one light medical grower wanting to learn more production. like whats your best tip for someone looking to level up?

I read one of the other LED growers say he got his best per watt yield with Glue, but I forget who it was.

I would probably prefer the gmo from that standpoint....shorter veg / longer bloom. Is the yield close between the two?

i am not sure if the yield is close but i think we will find out PLUS it takes nothing to make the GMO cut herm with viable pollen soooo maybe we can knock up some GMO bx??

well....i ended up getting some mites. i dunno if it was from the new clone which appears to be mite free yet struggling still, but the mites are all over the orange apricot mac. mac1 and jelly breath seem to not be infected yet but i added a heater and within a week i had spider mites. i've had the gmo bx since january 15th or so, but the room has been pretty cold so not gonna point the finger of blame except at myself.

i am gonna cull these once i have some fresh new cuts from a friend. those will go in the garage in the room that should be clean. as far as i know, it seems to be localized to this new veg bedroom i setup. i guess i can just go back to having two rooms instead of having a veg and two bloom rooms. i don't have a place to dry weed at still so that plant is still upright and frozen in the garage. every where is too cold and i'd love to buy space heaters but at what point to you think that you're fighting mother nature and maybe theres got to be a more agreeable solution? its a very small house wood heat only so i have been thinking about this for weeks. i don't see how i can make this any bigger than what i have now. i was drying where i was vegging.

if i kept the two rooms i have and went back to the same setup but focused instead on increasing GPW instead of square footage, i guess i could do pretty decent. i got another person who is interested after smoking with them the other night. people are finally asking for bigger stuff and i am just sitting over here still eating at the big kids table during the holidays. just a frustrating place to get to watch the big guys do well financially growing stuff that is just as good as mine and sometimes not even. i have a couple things to improve on and am open to suggestions particularly in training plants for bigger yields. i see a bunch of people plucking a ton of leaves off their plants and i prefer aesthetically pleasing to the eye a bushier full girl and love the natural christmas tree shape of seedlings. i've always grown plants i like to enjoy looking at but i also now want to quelch financial worries so i am gonna find the best middle ground for me. thanks for reading my ramblings. i hope to read this later on and look back fondly.

damn mites, dealt with them a couple years ago. wasn’t fun but there are worse pests.