Adjustawings HELLION Mixed Spectrum Room

[butler]

Greetings you beauties. This diary follows two consecutive grows in my basement from start to finish. It’s all said and done as I type this, so you can get to see the whole thing without interruption. First, some basic facts about my grow:

Me: Hobbyist, growing 25+ years, but on and off.
Room Style: Ventilated, with some AC — a sort of hybrid. 8” Hyper Fan input, 10” Hyper Fan output. Phresh 10” carbon filter.
CO2 Supplementation: None
Canopy: 6.58 M2 (71 sq.ft)
Ceiling height: 220 cm
Propagation: Grodan A-OK starter plugs
Fabric pots (5 – 10 gal, 20 – 40L). High porosity soilless mix (Vermipro)
Irrigation: Drippers. Run to waste.
Water source: Reverse Osmosis
Base Nutrition: Shogun CalMag, Hydro A+B, PK 13/14
Additives: Mr Danks Special Boost Secret (used throughout)
Flush period: 10 – 14 days
Lighting: Propagation: SANLight S4W, Early Veg: 2 X SANLight Q6W, Later Veg: 2 X Adjustawings HELLION 600/750W DE HPS, 2 X Adjustawings HELLION 630W DE-CMH

Grow #1
Objective: Produce high quality flower and fine stock for new mother plant; compare some new varieties with older ones; try growing CBD dominant flower for the first time. To this end, I grew a bunch of varieties from seed, selected 12 of the healthies seedlings, took cuttings from them, then flowered them off. Plants were kept deliberately a little smaller and well spaced-out so I could properly evaluate them.

Varieties I tried:

Mandarin Sunset by Ethos Genetics, Denver, CO. (Feminized)
Pillow Factory by Ethos Genetics, Denver, CO. (Feminized)
Zweet Inzanity by Ethos Genetics, Denver, CO. (Feminized)
Blue Dream by Humboldt Seed Co., Humboldt, California (Feminized)
Candida (CD1) by Medical Marijuana Genetics, Canada. (Feminized)

Grow #2
Objective: Fill the space with the keeper/s from Grow #1 (selected for productive power and quality). Selected phenotypes:

Pillow Factory #1 (PF1)
Blue Dream #3 (BD3)
Blue Dream #5 (BD5)




August 17 2018. Germination. The Blue Dream seed packet was the oldest, bought at Spannabis in 2015 but, despite being stored at room temperature for three years, all the seeds came up. Germination rate was 60% for Mandarin Sunset, 80% for Zweet Inzanity and 100% for Candida.

Propagation media: 1” Grodan A-OK starter blocks. Pre-soaked in RO water + CalMag, 0.15 mS. I was impressed at how the SANLight S4W kept things relatively cool in my propagation tent (1.2M x 0.6M), despite the high summer temperatures outside.



September 5th 2018. Transplant seedlings into nursery pots filled with a 50/50 mix of Vermipro and coco coir. I supplement the Vermipro with coco coir because I find it’s too fast draining a mix for small pots / young plants which can quickly lead to toxicities. Adding coco coir increases my margin for error at this early stage! 24 hour photoperiod.

Plants seem a little pale. I’m concerned that the combination of the LEDs and high humidity in my propagator aren’t driving enough transpiration, so I hope that transplanting and hardening up will help to get them rockin’ and rollin’.






September 16th 2018. Selected the best 12 seedlings for transplant into 8L plastic pots. 2 X SANLight Q6Ws lighting them up. Feeding plants cal/mag, standard veg A+B, and Mr Danks SBS – target EC 1.2 mS. Daytime temps around 27C. Nighttime temps 22C. Photoperiod 18/6.
I’m impressed with how squat the plants remain under the LEDs.

 

[butler]

September 23rd, 2018. Plants starting to crowd the clone box now. They seem happier and appear to be transpiring more, but it’s definitely time to move them into more space.









September 30th, 2018. My twelve selected seedlings are now finally basking under 2 X 315W Ceramic Metal Halide lamps housed in Small Adjustawings Defender reflectors. Now they’re looking a bit lost inside a 3M x 1M BudBox AW grow tent.



These are second generation CMH lamps and I’m excited to give them a first try. The blurb says they have a better / fuller spectrum than the first wave of CMH lamps (tweaked for horticultural applications rather than appropriated from the retail sector) and the plants seem to go into overdrive after just a few days.



I took cuttings from all the seedlings after they reached around six weeks*— I will keep these going during flowering for potential mother plants / keepers.

 

[butler]

September 30th, 2018. My twelve selected seedlings are now finally basking under 2 X 315W Ceramic Metal Halide lamps housed in Small Adjustawings Defender reflectors. Now they’re looking a bit lost inside a 3M x 1M BudBox AW grow tent.



These are second generation CMH lamps and I’m excited to give them a first try. The blurb says they have a better / fuller spectrum than the first wave of CMH lamps (tweaked for horticultural applications rather than appropriated from the retail sector) and the plants seem to go into overdrive after just a few days.

 

[butler]

The small Defender wings are set to their narrowest setting to drive deep penetration from a distance (keeping radiant heat to a minimum) — both lamps are 4K colour spectrum and are around 50 - 60 cm from the tops of the plants.



Trying out the flowering room for size. I will install a leach tray — the plants won't be just sat on the floor like this.



Here's my first glimpse of all the flowering lights switched on. There's a 4K 630W DE-CMH top left, top right is a 2K 600W DE-HPS, bottom left is another 2K 600W DE-HPS, and bottom right is a 3K 630W DE-CMH. All housed in medium Defender Adjustawings and on narrow setting — around 75 cm from the tops of the plants right now.



Low frequency square wave e-ballasts to drive the 630W DE-CMH lamps.

 

[butler]

Some of my mates asked me why I went for the white DEfender wings. Truth is—it's what came in the box! I do have some large Avengers reflectors around (PVD aluminium) and wondered if I could save money by installing a DE lamp connector into one of these. However, after some digging it turns out that the titanium oxide white coating of the DEfenders is the optimal solution. PVD tends to "collect" radiant emissions towards the edge of the footprint, leading to hotspots in the crossover. DEfenders can apparently deal with the intensity of the DE lamps much better, and they definitely seem to spread the intensity evenly.



These plants are already flipped*—*I know they look small but I didn't want to grow monsters on this round and crowd my room. I really wanted to give each of the 12 plants a good chance to express itself.



Each fixture covers around 1.2 x 1.4 in my room. The optimum footprint is 1m x 1.5m.



The leach tray is very rudimentary — just some UV resistant plastic roofing. It's slightly higher at the back and runs to a gutter at the front leading to my floor drain. (Run to waste)



My two hedges! Six plants in each. Five gallon (19L) fabric pots.

 

[butler]

Now these 630W DE-CMH lamps are interesting puppies. For the first fifty or so hours they make a funny whistling noise during operation — like a high pitched tone — sometimes like a canary screaming! At first I found it quite disconcerting. Is the lamp okay? I checked with a friend who knows a lot about lamps (he's a lighting engineer) and he tells me that it's quite common for DE-CMH lamps to do this and that, after fifty hours "bedding in", the whistling should stop. It certainly reduced in volume but it's still just discernible.

The intensity and colour rendition is incredible — the plants look really lush — especially under the 4K — but that might just be a trick of the eye because its making the greens so damn green!






Some lights off shots...






Hedge rows filling out nicely. We're still in the first / second week of flower.

 

[butler]

Just some general shots of my girls.



All wings are not on medium setting as the plants make their way through transition. Distance from canopy is around 55 cm. I love the way the DE-HPS and DE-CMH are mixing spectrums so deeply, thanks to the proximity of the lamps to the canopy.






The white ducting you can see poking out from the bottom left corner of this photo is sucking air from my AC wall unit and blowing it into the canopy. It's not the most efficient room — I'm also ventilating — but it does help me to keep temperatures down to around 25 / 26C. Without the AC I'm hitting 28C as it's still hot in these parts during the month of September.

 

[butler]

Can't seem to find a way to edit old posts — and fix the autocorrect typo from the last post (very frustrating!) - it should say, ALL WINGS ARE ON MEDIUM SETTING.

 

[butler]

Now we're making our way towards Day 20 of flower.









Here's a look at the 4K 630W DE-CMH lamp during operation.

 

[Rab.C]

hi butler your setup is excellent i have just got an adjustAwing 315cmh for my 3ft x 3ft tent
any ideas how far you could put 315cmh away from 4ins tall seedlings.i plan on running 2x 315cmh when my new tent gets here

 

[butler]

I don't have anything to compare it to but the stems sure are getting girthy quickly. Mr Danks?









For me this leaf is saying "That's quite enough food, thank you!" — the shiny sheen on the dark green leaf, and just the beginnings of tip burn on the margins. I checked my run-off and it was a little high — (input nutrient: 1.8 mS, run-off 2.5 mS) which tells me my irrigations aren't frequent enough. I move from two to three irrigations per day and hang around so I can gauge the amount of run-off. I water through with 1.2 mS (my go to when things go awry) and get the run off down to 1.8 in no time...

 

[butler]

End of week three going into week four.



I snapped some pics with an HPS lens filter to try and get some better quality pics for y'all.



Soft mesh netting definitely helping to keep the canopy at bay. Starting to wonder whether the flowers will even make it to the second tier of netting. Well ... I did tell myself not to over-veg on this run ....

 

[butler]

Week four into week 5 and we're starting to see some nice stacking on some plants.



The stems are gnarly and thick AF!






I don't do much / if any defoliation on the canopy — I rely more on stretching plants out using netting and bushing them out with a bit of pruning.



That said, things are starting to get a little bit dense! I clean up the bottoms of the plants pretty brutally.

 

[butler]

Well—it appears I've hit my upload limit (gallery is full!???) so I can't show you any more until I get that fixed — ******?



Here are cuttings from all the 12 original girls, starting to crowd out the clone box. I hope I can keep these happy until I work out which ones are going to be the keepers for round 2!



Meanwhile, the flowers start to fill out ....



In the corner here is a very sativa dominant instance of Candida CD1 — a sprawling beast of a plant with so many (small) heads. Looks like its going to be a resin monster — and smells like burnt marmite! Hmmm — not sure what I think about that...

 

[butler]

Well guys and girls — that's all I can post for now. I can't wait to upload the harvest pics from this first run, then show you which girls I chose to keep — and then you can see the room properly filled for the second run. Hope you enjoyed the show so far. Peace! Butler.

 

[butler]

Hey Rab. Thanks for being my first commenter! I would set your wings to narrow, use the Super Spreader and take it easy on them — 60 cm from the canopy. They'll get the intensity (thanks to the narrow wing setting) but without the heat.

 

[Rab.C]

hi butler i think adjustAwing said there 315cmh small defender dosent use the spreader
but i will try 60cms and see how they do Thanks Rab

 

[butler]

hi butler i think adjustAwing said there 315cmh small defender dosent use the spreader
but i will try 60cms and see how they do Thanks Rab

You're right — no spreaders in the pack*—*but I used a spare one It's just a bit intense in my Clonebox (120 x 60 x 125 cm) without one!

 

[DARKSIDER]

Count me in butler when I saw mr danks it got my attention I thought it was Bradley Danks member on here you meant, but when I read it noticed it was not either way im in good luck.

 

[Rab.C]

cheers butler i will order one now