SOUTHERN GROWING PART 2

Hi there again and welcome back to my little article, which this month is the continuing part of my first article back in february titled "Southern Growing".

Hi there again and welcome back to my little article, which this month is the continuing part of my first article back in february titled "Southern Growing". The last time I documented the growth of the 150W HPS light with an electronic Ballast that are supposed to be the equivalent of around a 300w HPS. We saw last time that although the plants grew fairly well under these lights for around the first 4 weeks of flowering, they still lacked a certain amount of intensity which was clearly visible come harvest time!

This time round I will be documenting the use of a new piece of technology in the form of LED lighting. The LED fixture being used is the EVADER BLOOM LED 300W. This expensive bit of kit is part of a whole range of LED lights on the market which have been designed and tested specifically on cannabis plants in Canada to find the best spectrum for the plants to absorb the maximum amount of light energy availiable to them. There has been lots of hype around this new technology which has grown massively in the last few years and has seen companies like Advanced Nutrients taking an interest and helping to design LED lights for use in the hydro garden.

This unit costs around £600, which is a horrendous amount of money to be spending on a light but if the hype around it is anything to go by then this will be the way to grow in the future. When the initial costs come down a bit more, and then a little more still, more people will be buying these lights as they run at lower wattages (which means less power consumption) and they run with virtually no heat at all so you can get away with using smaller intake and exhaust fans which again means less electricity use! Here for this test we will be looking at growing Super Skunk under the 300w LED light to see if this can really match a 900w HPS like they say it can, or if it falls short of the mark!

These plants have been brought through to the flowering room after a couple of weeks veg time under fluorescents and CFL's, and are looking healthy and strong after a good start being fed on Advanced Nutrients' PH/EC perfect range of grow nutrients.
The Wilma system I will be growing them in was set-up a few days prior to speed up the process of moving them and reducing any chance of transplant shock. In the bottom of the 11ltr pot, is a layer of felt to filter out any leftover dust from the clay pellets (which are being used as the growing medium), so that the drip emitters do not become clogged up.

Make sure that when filling up your tank, that the water either comes from a large feed tank that is PH corrected or, fill up the nutrient tank with water a few days before the plants get moved in so that it gives time for any contaminants in the water to evaporate. After this you can start to adjust your pH levels and add base nutrients, I like to give a slightly weaker dose of nutrients for the first week than what is stated on the labels so as to ween them off the grow formula they have been using for the last three weeks.

WEEK 1

The plants have been set out in their final positions and the 300W LED is hung and switched on at about 15 inches from the top of the canopy just to be on the safe side, as although these lights run very cool, the light they give off is very bright and intense and can still give you leaf burn if you place them too close too soon. Once the light is on all the plants turn a deep, dark, purply black colour and the light penetrates through every leaf and stem and through to the bottom of the plants which just seems odd in the grow room after using bright yellowish coloured HPS lights for so long!

The plants are all looking a good healthy...err..purple.... and all the leaves are pointing for the light which they seem to be loving and thriving under at the moment. The EC in the tank is at about 1.3 after a dose of amazing Aqua Flakes Bloom Nutrients which is a two part formula that I've used for a few years now and can say is a very good set of plant feeds that cover all bases from start to finish.

WEEK 3

The plants are all looking healthy after a couple of weeks of adjusting to the new light and have gained about 30-40cm in height and all branches are beginning to show white pistils forcing their way out from the calyx' on every bud site which is always a good sign! The nutrient solution is then drained down out of the nutrient tank to get rid of old/stale feed water and then replaced with heppa filtered water from two de-humidifiers from within the grow room itself (a small example of self sufficiency within the grow room) and then fresh feeds are added back into the tank so the plant receives cleaner nutrients that are easier to take up and shift around its internal cells. The LED light is an amazing bit of kit really, it runs so cool, yet is so bright and the plants seem to be liking the different wavelength of light as the internode spacing is tight with only 10-15mm of spacing between each set of leaves/branches. I decided that now was the time to lower the LED light down nice and close to the canopy as they had proved that they could handle it from a reasonable distance so I dropped it to nine... yes, nine inches away from the top of the buds and thought I'd keep a close eye on them for the next couple of day just in case the intense light burt my ladies. I spent the next week monitoring the tops and the leaves to make sure they were still in tip top form and to my supprise they didnt seem to care that the light was that close as they all still looked a lovely shade of deep...purple - and with no signs of leaf curl or burnt hairs in sight.

The plants are all looking a good

Healthy...err...purple!

WEEK 5

Not a lot has changed in the size of the plants as they are staying nice and dumpy but there is now visibly plenty of bud sites all over the place that are soaking up the light and making good use of it as there is not a wilting/yellow/dead leaf in site and the smaller leaves surrounding the buds are shining with a layer of resin glands already and things should be looking good as today is the day that the Shooting Powder is brought into the equation which takes the grow to a totally different level of class.

As with the start of week 3 we drain down the tank and repeat the process of re-filing and re-feeding the system but when applying the base nutrients (Aqua Flakes A+B) we only add enough to bring the EC up to 1.4. Then I add a whole sachet of Shooting Powder into a jug that has been filled with water from the nutrient tank and stir until all lumps have dissolved and the mixture has finished fizzing. (I would like to mention that when doing this I held the jug up to the purple light from the LED it gave the water a cool radioactive look!) This additive is a great investment in your garden as it works wonders in plumping up your flowers and in the production of essential oils which is clearly visible by the next week when you get to add 2 sachets into the tank!

All the plants are healthy and look great although they lack a little in size of the buds forming compared to a 600W HPS but are a great deal bigger and better formed than under the 150W HPS lights from the previous issue. Harvest time should be interesting!

WEEK 8

Week 8 turns up after a pretty uneventful grow that has gone surprisingly smooth considering this is a new technology. The only downside to this grow was the overall yield which was about half what you could get off a 600W HPS, but, things do look very good with glistening THC crystals covering the buds and any leaf close to them. The plants at this stage have had 5 weeks of feeding followed by 3 weeks of supercharged feeding (due to the shooting powder) so they have had a whole lot of nutrients pumped into them which although is good for them, is not so good for us the consumer so now we must flush the whole system for about 10-14 days to leach out as much nutrient solution as possible from the plants so that the end result is as smooth as possible.

When draining the tank down you must make sure you have somewhere suitable to dispose of your waste so that it won' t overfill while draining down or pollute the local water supply!
Once the tank is empty I like to run the hose through each pot for short amounts of time so as to rid any excess salt build up from any unused feed, and then drain that away too, before filling up the nutrient tank with pure water to set the plants on the final stage of their life, a good clean out.

The ladies are looking good although the amount of large colas is not that great, but upon closer inspection you can see that the bud structure is a lot tighter and looks better than when under HPS and the crystal content is unbelievable. The smaller yield looks as though it may deliver a knock-out stone at the end as all the nuggets are extremely dense and coated in more THC than I've seen on a plant ever!

OVERALL

To get the chance to work with a LED light is a great experience as it shows you what modern technology can do for us gardeners and our plants. The cost of this unit is a major investment and you must show a bit of patience when using this type of light at first as just replacing it for your old light means that you have altered your plants' environment straight away as the LED light gives off little to no heat at all. This may be advantageous if you live in a sunnier climate and struggle with horrific temps indoors even without turning on a HPS lamp!
But if you live in a not-so-sunny country such as the UK then you may need to think about somehow adding a heater to your grow room just to bring the temps up a bit to compensate for the sudden loss of heat.

The hype was that this should out-shine a 600W HPS light and it may well do, but on this particular grow it fell short of the mark by quite a bit. This is not to discredit the light as it has many great points which can be seen by just looking at the plants as they have not yellowed off at all and all look in top health, not to mention the thick layer of crystals that cover the plant and the tight crisp feel of each bud. I am going to keep playing with this light for a while as I feel that I can get a better result with it but it means doing some drawings and a bit of re-arranging to get the optimum environment for it to do its thing and maybe, just maybe it will produce what they say it can.

I would recommend growing a maximum of 3 plants under one of these lights to get the best results otherwise things can become a bit awkward trying to work in purple light when branches become entangled together.

I dont think you can beat HPS, get a cool tube, get a heat deflector, get some fans, HPS produces the goods every time and unless a major jump is made in LED technology which visibly pisses on HPS lighting and the prices fall, people wont want to part with their hard earned cash on a bit of kit which costs more than a secondhand car and yields them less than before!

Happy smoking stoners!

Smokedout