[Chilly Willy]

I never felt more alive! Coming back to this forum today showed me what I have been missing these past years. People here caring, staying in touch as you discover new things in this science, I even remember everyone wishing each other merry christmas on the day before. So I first wanted to remind my old, and new friends here how good it feels to be here.

I wanted to talk about the leaves response to the direction of the sun like seen in real life outdoors but accomplishing this indoors without light tracking. I feel that as close as we can get to mimicking the real situation the better the results will be. Having light reach the plant from different angles has to be a big bonus, and I did this by alternating HPS and MH using fixed position hoods just above the plants. Since the light bulbs were both located in each hood (26 x 22), the distance was never too great as to loose the full intensity of the sun on the canopy.

Having an area of 9ft. x 4ft., the placement of the three sun-system 7 hoods would reach down into the canopy about 12in.; which means I had to grab the clones and skip the vegetive stage as so the plants would not want to grow too tall. The 38 plants looked like rows seen in an outdoor farmer's crop, primarily growing concentrated on the tops instead of root and foliage mass.

The heliotropism was accomplished when the morning MH lights turned off after six hours from sunrise, and this is when the intense sun came out using the HPS for the last 6 hours of the day. I am not sure how much of a role heliotropism played in this grow, there were so many other details like introducing co2 at such a high level that it allowed me to run the room at a tropical temp (82 degrees instead of 78), having fans on timers so they would delay and let the co2 fall in the air towards the canopy, using soil that was cured under a tarp avoiding chemicals that normally are used to correct the ph, and the amount of time used in the cure. So I wanted to single out this one topic about how plants chase the sun as the day moves on, and how we can do this today using newer equipment.

The sun-system 7 is no longer available since it has been 15 years from that time. Since the bulbs under the 26 x 22 hood were staggered underneath the foil reflector, could it be possible to find a similar hood today? Maybe using lesser expensive equipment which are just plain simple smaller hoods, fixed above the canopy and placed close to one another which may also accomplish the same goal. I want to use equivalent of 400 watt bulbs and similar spectrums of light found in these older MH, and HPS bulbs. The height of the canopy will not exceed approx 18 inches, and the width, and length of this canopy will be different today as opposed to my last situation. A little smaller in length and width, approx six feet long, and a little over two and half feet wide.

I have pictures to show you from my last structure what I used to grow back in 2006, click on my bio to see the pictures (or I can just put the pictures here for you). There has to be an efficient way to accomplish what I am trying to achieve, and I wanted to hear any feed back my new and old friends will have on this situation. I am outdated by about 15 years, so I want to know what I have missed since new equipment has come out (both concerning newer spectrum lighting, and heliotropism).

This is my first topic for a thread since coming back here to icmag, so let me add some pictures that will get you as excited. These are our my first pictures and were really only intended to show what materials I was using; the set up was not used exactly as shown. My first grow with that equipment was situated on a 4ft. x 8 ft. piece of plywood, manually fed using the Botanical chart of nutrients, organic peat moss from a horticultural farm from the West Coast (kinda cool getting soil shipped to me), Rand 7" Air Cone pots, two Botanicare 4ft. x 4ft. trays with a single 1ft. x 4ft. Botanical tray in the middle of the two; allowing four more plants (totaling 38). A CAP Co2 Generator was placed at the end of this structure higher towards to the top near the ceiling, and fans alternated using CAP timers. When it was cold outside, I used a humidifier to keep things right indoors.

A small greenhouse was used to keep the 38 clones inside, using a meter to measure the amount of humidity, a spray bottle with water did the rest. Clones were placed in organic plugs from the same supplier of the peat moss I used. The plugs held tight around the stalks of the clones and had a 100 percent success rate during the three years of my experimentation. Harvesting was done approx 7 to 8 weeks after the clones were placed under the full spectrum lighting, this depended on when I uprooted them since often I picked at different times depending on which kind of head high I was looking to achieve (using a microscope to verify the color of the trichosomes). A crawl space dehumidifier was placed under the uprooted plants hanging from the ceiling as they dried for a day or so then placed inside quart size jars so they would cure for at least a couple of months.

I wanted to see what you guys thought about my methods back then, and what you would do different today. Man, I stayed up all night checking out old threads on this forum when we I use to hang out here. I had to call in at work and tell them I was sick, I guess what I am saying is I am all excited all over again like this is my first time. Thanks for welcoming me back! Can not wait to give a smoke report of this "one hit wonder". And what is so cool, is I grew it!!!! Here are the pics I promised...



CW

[Phaeton]

If I dug back far enough I could find my threads on a circular grow operation with the surround lights (eight 6 tubes x 32 watts) on four timers so the light worked its way from one side to the other during the day. Overhead was 800 watts CMH.

Then I tried ten 400 watt overhead with the rims of the reflectors all touching one another

It is similar still, only with a combo of LED and CMH overhead and LED on the side. The plants are turned by hand twice a day, this actually turned out to be the easiest method to effectively get symmetrical growth, the heliotropism. With light coming in from every direction already it did not affect the plant much by merely altering the intensity of the lights in a particular direction. Either the plant or the light had to actually move for the plant to alter growth patterns.

At least that is what happened with me and my non standard garden.
Seventeen years of continual record keeping and testing and I lost two months of this year's crop to bad lighting.

A note, 24/0 Far Red enhancement does protect against light leaks but also swaps ALL bud growth to leaf growth and will continue in that mode for at least three months without slowing. The plants were under 5600 watts 12/12 overhead full spectrum the entire three months. Behind on electric bill now.

I started gardening about the time you stopped. I have gone through four major changes in lighting during that time.

HID to CMH to Blurple LED to sidelighting to full spectrum LED combined with CMH, Far Red, and UVB all on their own timers and plants on rotating bases.

Retired and this keeps my idle hands occupied. Actual physical labor is no longer an option, but indoor gardening is custom made for old folks with heart problems.

I try something new every single crop, it even comes out good sometimes.

Welcome back, I like your attitude.

[Chilly Willy]

Phaeton - really nice to meet you! I agree with this being a very healthy hobby, all the science, clean scrubbed air, foliage, and the hope of buds at the end of the trail make this one exciting science project. Before I dove into it I researched the heck out of it, not from this forum or popular books, but everywhere else. Then I bought all the equipment before starting because it would suck that I ran out of money when needing "that" piece of equipment. having good attitude is where it is at, and that is probably what I was commenting on when I said I met so many friends here that made me feel like I belonged.

I ad figured the lighting had changed over the years, pretty much the rest of the details elsewhere are all the same (substrate, nutrients, basic genetics, technique). But I wanted to try to do it the exact same way because I know it worked, and changing the lighting frequency sounds good but I have not used them.

Moving the plants around and turning them is not something I would want to do because the natal effect of the sun making the leaves tilt is healthy, and yes it also covers more of the plant with sun but that is not the reason why I was wanting to do it. Think of the wasted energy and stress of the plant always being placed in a different position when you turn it.

I was using magnetic ballasts that had both MH & HPS all in the same ballast with two ballasts built into one ballast enclosure and the timers were set for 6 hours on each one, on each ballast of the three different light fixtures that had two different lights in each hood. So what I am trying to find is a similar situation or design one myself using a small hood for each different light of these six bulbs. This helped out with electricity too, my bill was only about 60 bucks more, and my ac did not run all the time because I set the thermostat to 82 instead of 78 due to running so much Co2.

I like that you kept records, and I was wondering if a person cancels their membership here back 15 years ago if that grow documentation I made available here was still here? I found some pictures, so not everything gets deleted, and that is where those pics in my album came from. I was hoping to do what I did before but this time around spend less on the equipment, thus be even more efficient. I did not use air ducting for my hoods, I just let them run in the open space of the room and all my calculations for Co2 and my scuba were based on the entire square footage of the whole apartment. It was nice, I smoked cigarettes and you could not even smell that in the area either.

I try not to experiment with new techniques unless I made a mistake like trying to grow clones that I vexed for too long. Later I learned to just skip this phase and it produced wonderfully consistent results. When I did mess up with the height it was fun to alter the plants with screens and weave them in but it was too much work, and the results gave a much smaller yield. The camera loved taking pictures of those screens though, it looked cool set into the structure before I placed the plants back in the trays.

Should I look for used equipment like on eBay? It would be nice to get some more sun system 7 fixtures, and bulbs. I looked at Bontaincare and did notice trays that were any longer the size I had, I am interested in having 4ft. and what it it 8 inched wide (or some thing lie that. This way I can manipulate their position in my situation I don't have room for 4 x 4 trays any longer (it is more like a little over two and half feet by six feet. Or do you think I should use the current magnetic ballasts that are available and use ceramic 315 watt bulbs. Do you have any experience with these ceramic 315 bulbs. And are they available in both HPS and MH?

Phaeton - what stable genetics have you been using over this time. That is the other area I need to cover so I can get this show going again. I wanted to get some AK48 again, and something else while I am in the store.

CW

[kelly1376]

The dual lamp reflectors I see out now are all much bigger. Here are a couple examples:

https://growershouse.com/hydrofarm-8...ith-dual-lamps

https://growershouse.com/nanolux-de-...re-1200w-600x2

Edit: I take that back I did find one very similar to what you had:

https://www.alldayhydro.com/store/ind...reflector.html

ballast: https://www.amazon.com/Nanolux-Digit.../dp/B00OQHZ82S

[ReikoX]

I've been thinking of a similar idea using LEDs. Basically using the Samsung strips like the quantum boards on 1" profile heat sinks. These strips would make a half circle above the plants. Using an Arduino and some relays, they could simulate the "sun" traveling through the "sky" with a single driver. You could even use the 3000K for "sunrise" and "sunset" and higher Kelvin for "noon".

[Chilly Willy]

Kelly1376 - Okay, it is challenging (make me think harder) when becoming friends with you, I can not thank you enough for that. I am going to post the information here along with some pictures and data from their sties so we all can see.

First I want to reiterate what heliotropism is for all the people who are not aware of this concept. It is listed in wikipedia if you all want to look further into the term but basically it is this: As the sun moves from east to west across the sky, the leaves actually follow it like little solar panels. Having the plant move like this must accomplish more than just getting the most out of the sun.One aspect is that as the sun rises the light frequency is different than around three on the after noon when it is at it's peak in frequency, and heat. Then as the sun sets it once again gives us a lower freq. and cooler temp. Maybe the plant is warming up as the day begins and then after a hard day in the sun it cools down kinda like in an exercise routine. The leaves as they move will allow the light to penetrate deeper into the canopy since one leaf has moved out of the way from in front of another. I noticed with two small oak trees in my backyard that the trees never touched one another as they were planted too close and I could see the leaves perform this heliotropism which initially gave me the idea to get the sun system 7 and stager the lights and also use different frequencies. My set up started with MH for a cool start, and the day ended with the warner HPS (6 hours each). Now this is a lot of ballasts, but the set up covered more area because of all the hoods and staggered light bulbs (which have to be staggered in order to cover the plants with both different bulbs).

I want to make sure other growers are not misunderstanding us here and think we are just trying to get light on the sides of the plant. The light will only penetrate so far into the canopy if you want the full 100% intensity of the sun (I have these charts in my gallery if you want to copy them). The flowers below this sun thermocline will not perform as well as the tops which is our primary focus. Really what we are doing here is getting maximum solar collection of the suns whole day and done in the same way as outdoors; except we get to see the results in two months (hehehehe). Let me upload those picture of this equipment. The sun system 7 equipment is already on my album if you want to take a look (the system 7 is 26 x 22 x 7)(external ballasts).

CW

I wanted to add something we were taught in school about the human body. Eustress is called the "good stress" of the human body and includes physical stressors (for example gravity). You here about gravity when astronauts go into space and the lack of gravity has all sorts of implications. here on this forum we talk about about bad stress, and how plants do not perform as well, and it can even cause the plant to change sex and produce seeds thinking it is the last plant on Earth thus needing to multiply so it's species survives. So "good stress" must be an overlooked topic, and maybe by accident we apply these principles but what if we were to more dial in on them and use their advantages.

Movement of the body influences circulation, even helps remove unwanted built up properties in the fluid so it will heal sooner. So the plant expereincing heliotropism with this movement may make nutrients spread throughout the plant better, and what this plant does with these nutrients after receiving them may also be more beneficial and distributed better. Or simply, the things we take for granite like good stress as seen with the example of gravity is required in order to replicate indoors what is happening outdoors naturally.

Stress which is artificially replicated, another example would be wind. If our fans are not blowing all the time and are on timers, especially if these timers are always changed and set to different intervals, and different lengths of how long they are turned on, or turned off; then this "good stress" would be something that we take fro granite in the outdoors yet forget about when we grow indoors.

Maybe even the stress of the nutrients not being consistent would be a good stress and make the plant search for food, not just in the roots but within the whole plant's body. Now doing this too much or too long would be bad and that would be seen in a plant that has more root mass than foliage mass above ground. Another example is aeroponics where the plant gets too much nutrients all the time and the root mass becomes very large as compared to the size of plant above this feeding tube. That is why I decided not to aeroponics and grow instead using hydroponics. here, gravity pulls the nutrients down through the column of the soil bathing the roots as it falls, and while it does it also lulls Co2 down the soil column and bathes the plant as well. That is why over watering is the sure fire way to kill any plant, the plant never gets to breathe.

But, what are we all missing here when we talk about these things above. If we don't know yet all the details maybe it would be wise to play it save and try to just mimic what happens outdoors even not knowing all the benefits. The is why I do not use substrates other than soil. Coco fibers as a substrate sounds good on one level, but already we know the ph is wrong, and in adding chemicals to correct this makes this plant no longer organic (natural). Even when using soil, most companies who sell it add chemicals even though it has a label calling it organic and this is a big problem at the grocery store (everyone is lying). Soil or peat moss should get it's ph naturally, and by not doing that causes problems.

Having your fans run all the time is also a stress, if you wanted to let Co2 fall with it's heaver weight than air, and fall into the canopy then your fans will prevent this by blowing it away, not letting it sit long enough to be naturally absorbed. So putting your fans on timers like we talked about earlier in our conversation not only creates stress like seen in gravity, it also lets nutrients from the air be taken in.

Even pests, and I know I will get some flack for this when saying it. But even the presence of posts may stress the plant in a good way, making it stronger, making chemicals in it's structure to activate to fight this stress may be a good thing; hence it is present in the outdoors. So I think we want to avoid too sterile an environment. Having things go wrong is natural in populations of people and populations of plants. Please don't go out and get cones from a friend who brought them to you from another house, or grown outdoors; I don't want people to believe that causing problems is a thing you want to to do that much. But I am trying to make a int that I think we are trying to make things too perfect when we grow. maybe letting your plants starve once and watch the leaves go limp before feeding again may just be a good thing!

CW

[Chilly Willy]

Hello, this is Chilly Willy with some exciting news. I was reading the Wikipedia page again and noticed something exciting. Heliotropism is not just the movement of leaves as the sun moves across the sky, Wikipedia says both the leaves and flowers change their position as this phenomena occurs.

[Chilly Willy]

Kelly1376 gave links above where you may find all the following equipment we are about to talk about, just click on his links so you may find out more. But I wanted to show everyone a few pictures, and some details that I found interesting.



Purchasing this piece of equipment allows you to remotely place the ballast, and then you can stager the light hoods where they are not lined up (unlike how it is interlay assembled). This will increase your footprint, and make for a lighter weight mounting of the hood. But you must purchase the 15 foot cords separate. You would not want to stager then too far cater-corner from each other, just somewhat so that you still get the intensity inside the canopy. This staggering will increase the heliotropism effect further than just mounting the lights as they are sold assembled.

The chart they supplied shows you an idea the reach of each light, just keep in mind that this is not the correct chart for what it is we are doing here. When you have more than the single purchase of this equipment, and buy multiple units then you may imagine just the MH portions of each purchased light aiming at the canopy for the the first half of the day which in my case is six hours. These MH lights will then turn off after the six hours and the HPS lights will all come on; thus the different position of the changed lights will make the leaves and flowers move towards them. This chart shows all the lights on at one time and that is a misrepresentation of what we are trying to achieve here. I guess a simple way to say how it should be: imagine one blue area of the chart on, then it turns off and an orange one come on, thus notching the different angle between the this two examples.

By alternating lights, as opposed to running all of them at one time, we become very efficient in supplying adequate light, different frequencies, and better over all coverage thus a larger footprint. As mentioned before, if you go a step further and remove the ballast from the hoods and stager the hoods in a somewhat slight cater-corner fashion this further achieves what we have already accomplished.

Lighting has come a long ways since 2006 when I was first processing this concept while using the sun-system 7. I see you can actually set the size of the intensity by dimming the bulbs. In my case growing lollipops in crop rows, I will be suing the 450W setting, which will give me 12 inches into the canopy where I am focused on primarily interested in growing the buds.

The size and distance of each hood and it's proximity of each other when mounted will be almost exactly what I used as a footprint when I did this before, having consistent results in each grow during those three years. The grow was documented here in 2006 and 2007 and if any of you find this information please let me know. It's hard to forget this stuff, so having that information is no big deal. I am looking forward to doing it again and using newer equipment. I may be wrong, but the bulbs today are not much better than back then; I think I read it is a ten percent difference.

I see this system does not use fans in the hoods, so I will need to do my calculations for the entire living space and not just the growth area. I have a question though for you guys who know about the newer equipment. Do I still need to use light timers for each ballast on each and every one, or can I purchase the module that can be bought outside the initial purchase so that a computer will turn them on and off during these six hour cycles?

I wanted to note that the last picture above although it shows why staggering lights cater-corner improves our idea, that particular system does not allow the same kind of flexibility as the system with the other three pictures. But it is a perfect example of mixing the lights, the lights being slightly apart from each other, and also slightly cater-corner. Which all adds up to making the plants move as they are feed light, yet not too far away from the light that they have to reach and become stretched in the stems.

[Chilly Willy]

ReikoX - Hey, it is awkward getting started here posting again, I think you noticed my excitement and mistakes on that thread the other day; sorry.

can you post some more about what you mentioned above. Pictures would be great, along with your thoughts on how this would better move the plant so it captures the full effect of the sun. I am new to the newer equipment, so can you begin by explaining what LED does differently to the plants, and it's other features and benefits. I am sure it is not as loud as a magnetic ballast, it may be lighter in weight and cost. What kind of heat does it produce? It's really nice to meet you, and look forward to talking further with you as I grow. Pun intended. Thanks for you good input here.

[ReikoX]

No worries about any misunderstanding. Tone never comes through in text.

LED is different than HPS in two major ways. The first major difference is LED is directional lighting. A HID bulb gives off light in all directions, this is why we use hoods with reflectors. A LED gives off light in one direction, usually around 120°, this usually eliminates the reflector. The second major difference is LED can be more efficient. A HID bulb produces a certain number of photons and the rest is released as radiant heat. A LED produces more photons and less heat for the watts used.

LED changes fast and right now the Samsung reel LED are all the rage. These are available in several spectrums from "cool" (like MH) to "warm" (like HPS). You have probably seen the cheaper version of these in big box stores. These LED are usually mounted to a heat sink like a computer processor. For this design they would be mounted on a 40" length of 1" wide extruded heat sink. I was thinking seven or eight of them, but haven't done the research on wattage yet. Each one would run the length of the 4x4 footprint. They would be angled in an arc above the plants. As you can see in the sketch below, turning the lights on will change the angle of the lights.



The final piece to this puzzle is the control of the lighting. Like an HID uses a ballast, LED uses a driver. Now we could use multiple drivers and timers, but that gets expensive fast! So, instead we can use an Ardunio microcontroller to control our lighting. Similar to a flip/flop, we can use relays to swap which strip is getting power. With a dimmable driver, the possibilities are endless. For example a lower power for the first and last hours.

This probably wouldn't cost TOO much more than HID hoods and ballasts. The heatsinks are reasonable at around $10 each plus shipping. The LED strips are about $25 each plus shipping. A good dimmable driver can be had for around $70 plus shipping. Finally the Ardunio and relays would run you another $25 or so. So for the 8 strip option we are looking at around $350-$400.

Unfortunately this design is NOT plug and play. It requires a good bit of DIY as well as programming the microcontroller.

*Edit* a quick look and I realized these strips are roughly 35 watts each, so for the 4x4 area we would probably want 16 strips and running them four at a time. Still with double the strips it's still only around $650-$700.