Beginner LED soil organic

[hearda_hadda]

Documenting a small indoor organic grow with LEDs by a beginner. will be documenting here as my primary diary for myself as much as everyone else. thanks for viewing and thanks for all feedback.

I have a guidance councilor "regular fucking horticulturalist" whose principals I am currently following and hope to continue: organic, least intervention, respect for all plants, close observation with the plant and its life cycle, au natural; infestations, etc should be prevented and observed in the earliest stages and remedied with only a few items, otherwise start over. i really hope to continue this!
mentor does not have experience with LED.

I am growing in soil and am trying my best to not supplement/amend except for minimally in early flower.

the plan is to have three large 7-10 gal plants in a 5'x5' flowering space.

Growing in a few tents in a garage. tent setup is flexible with a 5x5 for flower and a 5x9 for propagating, veg. my family doesn't have much need beyond that but if things go well and get bigger I will start to flower in the 5x9 and everything else shifts accordingly.

Garage is 40F in winter, 70F in summer attached to house but not climate controlled, I am now testing increasing the tent temp up to 82F for the LEDs.

Vegetation light is the HLG 550 Eco @ 3000k
Flowering light is the HLG 550R, flower footprint will be 5'x5' tent
Soil is johnny's 512. will not be reusing any soil.
Tap water
trying to stay away from all supps (i.e. starting down a magcal hole)

I am probably most excited to propagate, clone, and similar.

anymore details needed on the above?


lookin for feedback (1):
I don't have exhaust ventilation set up yet, (nor make up air + screen or filter) I am interested in comments on any ventilation in general and how often rooms need to be turned over with LED: vendors say 1 x 1min, ive seen posts that say 1 x 5min, my mentor suggests even having intermittent ventilation such as a few times an hour or a few times a day. will a non HEPA and non carbon filter do enough for pest and containment control on the tent inlets?

lookin for feedback (2)
See next few diary posts and infirmary section: LEDs, temps, over watering, lockout, or ??

lookin for feedback (3)
higher than average amounts of arsenic in well water; right now I am watering via the sink which has a filter which lowers for human consumption. if anyone has any experience with this or is fluent in how cannabis absorbs and holds toxins please lmk!

lookin for feedback (4)
I can better manage all aspects of the grow by moving the tents inside the house from the garage but i will loose a 1' of elevation for grow height. going from 8' down to 7' for the tent height. comments on the give/take?

 

[Mars Hydro Led]

Welcome. subbed

 

[hearda_hadda]

I knew that i would need heat for the garage and tents in the winter, but tents temps in the summer are around low 70's bumping up to high 70s. the lower temp during photosynthesis may be impacting my growth?



?
I was going to post in the infirmary section, but plants have been stabilizing and look good enough to simply post this as an experience in this diary. In a sentence I blasted the $#!*^ out of the plants when they were young. Clearly I stressed the plants, and something along the lines of a nutrient lockup occurred. I don’ know much more than that but It appears reducing the LED output and letting the plants stabilize on their own has worked out OK. I have seen in ICmag posts people having some similar issues with LEDs but frankly I misunderstood/misunderstand the concern. hopefully I can do this without jumping into a cycle of additives.

Up to this point:

plants spent first 30 days under the LED light with added Red (HLG 550R). I knew this wasn't right but was what I had and I was ready to experiment with the indoor grow/environment. the first 21 days the plants were 20" under the LEDs with the lights on 90%. they did 'good' or 'ok' rather but quickly drained their beer cups and had really shorter branches and huge almost comical leaves. i got into a cycle of over watering trying to hold off in the beer cups a bit longer. That went on too long and the nutrients in the soil were depleted. They couldn’t go longer than a day w/o watering and the repotting was a last effort.

Plants were moved up to 1 gal day 27(13 days ago) with no additional watering after the transplant (bottom 1" soak for 2 hr). this longer watering cycle by itself is good news.
Upped room temp to 82 previously averaging 72-77 during light cycle. I would really like to be able to not have to heat the grow rooms in the summer but I don’t have enough information yet to show that I can lower the temps even those 5-8 degrees.

Humidity is naturally in the 40% range. I have been upping this to the 50s and 60s.

Plants have been under the 3000K LED since day 33 (7 days ago) and the new vegetation already shows this with all leaves looking normal and new branches looking to be spaced a bit different and stretching more. this is good news The light was raised to 30” - 36" and dropped the LED output% down to 57% for four days, now the LEDs are at about 62% output for 1 day and plan to stay there for a week. I am pleased at how the quickly and drastically the plants can be impacted by type of light (eliminating the red spectrum).

As could be expected due to the early on issues, older growth has fat leaves, lowest of branches continued to slowly loose color, most trending towards death. Other older growth managed to stabilize.

New growth looks very typical and normal.