2 x WWxBB, Led and CFL's, SCROG

[kovacs]

Hi, all!

I'm doing it again- making the journal! Although not from scratch. Only the exciting part- the flowering!

"Executive Overview"-

Strain: White Widow x Big Bud from femaleseeds.nl. Both seeds germinated, both are female.

Currently (Jan 4.) it is in Day 65 from seed and approx day 35 when switched to 12/12

As previously I'm doing it in the box 2"x2"x4" and SCROG in soil as it's cheap and easy and I'm used to it.

Did intend to use LED from previous growth, but after 2/3 of failures (imo from cheap power supplies) have switched to different lights (see below)

New for this time, comparing to previous blog, is-

1. 15L AirPots, although seems it was bit overkill. 6L or 10L would have been fine. But as I Wanted to grow BIG, so 15L it was!
2. Hesi Nutes (starter kit)
3. (unplanned) Lights. Recently switched from previous led's to "Hans LED panel" 56w and Osram Dulux L's 2x55W. If Hans Led will fail, I'm definitely switching to Dulux'es because of multiple reasons I'll describe sometimes later.

Current problems to date were minor problems with nutes, as there were some leaf's yellowing, but everything seems fine now. (Everything fixed by itself! ) and with the lights as described above, yet at the moment everything seems fine again!

Here are current pictures to date-

 

[kovacs]

Day 69 - Dulux L setup is now for 5 days (I've installed it on Day 65) old and plant seems to has responded very well as under those LED (finally on 33% max rate) they did not grow well + signs of a LED bleach appeared (bad- stunts growth! Altough those white tips seems cool. See my C99 blog for pictures! )

In one of those pictures there is closeup of lamp construction. Ugly DIY if You ask me!

 

[kovacs]

Flower Day 42! (Day 70)- I'm doing an experiment! I did a total defoliation for both plants!

I have been successful with this technique previously, but on a smaller scale, so now I'm trying it big time! 1 month ago I have had serious doubts whether I will reach even close to previous time 77g (which lasted 9 months) but now with new dulux'es and led panel and defoliation (if it works!) I'm having a star of hope, I could get at least close to this number, in terms of grams per watt, because previous number is 77g / 180 (real consumption, stated 270) -> 0.42!

Current wattage is 56W and 2x55 -> 110W, so comparable numbers with previous growth would be having 68g from two plants, what will be results.. we'll see!

Before:

After:

 

[kovacs]

Flower Day 45 (13-Jan)- not much happening.

 

[kovacs]

Flower Day 49: Buds slowly, but surely are getting bigger and frostier. In order to give plants bit more light, added some white sheets of paper over the pots.

 

[brazel]

Nice Grow, been looking at the hans panel. you happy with it so far? 110 watts thats so rad!

 

[kovacs]

Nice Grow, been looking at the hans panel. you happy with it so far? 110 watts thats so rad!

Thanks! Yeah, hans panel seems doing it's job quite nicely, currently no apparently big difference from 2x55w dulux L's.

Still, if anyone would ask me what he should choose I would recommend dulux'es because they're cheaper and system has modular design so in case of failure you must replace only broken component and the cost of whole setup is approx 40EUR vs 220EUR for hans panel with shipping (1 hour vs 1 week) . Plus dulux'es dont need fan -> less noise -> better for stealthy grow. (although it seems that Hans has recently released new "stealthy" model, also, without fan!).


Latest pictures:

 

[brazel]

I like the sound of that! you got more info on these Osram Dulux L's 2x55W? i did a google search, came up with 55w- 6500k with a 4-pin plug? are you buying the base the light plugs into separately? have you ran these by themselves? thru flowering at 6500k? or as supplement light with some red led? I would like to try these, any info you have or i missed would be awesome!

 

[kovacs]

I like the sound of that! you got more info on these Osram Dulux L's 2x55W? i did a google search, came up with 55w- 6500k with a 4-pin plug? are you buying the base the light plugs into separately? have you ran these by themselves? thru flowering at 6500k? or as supplement light with some red led? I would like to try these, any info you have or i missed would be awesome!

In short about dulux'es- on paper they are extra fine, but how's the real life performance, we'll see. Currently I'm using 2700K's.

Here's my facts about dulux'es, but keep in mind i'm primary interested doing SCROG as my bet is, that this is where CFL's must be on par or better suited than HPS. My primary concern why I don't like HPS, because of it's extra heat it produces and gets very hot, so ther's alwats is much higher fire risk.

55w have 4800lumens -> 87 lumens per watt. I have 2"x2", 6000-7000 lumens per square feet is recommended. Yet there is a catch with the lights (high school physics becomes useful! )! Energy loss is proportional to the square of the distance (e.g. 250W with 29000 lumens at 0.5 meter from plant is the same as 7250 lumens at 0.25m distance). My target was to get 6500 lumens per sq foot so my thinking is if I keep the dulux'es at approx 25-30cm from plants, it would be as same if they were growing in HPS setup at 40-50cm from plants (e.g. HPS using cool tubes). Whether it works we'll see!

Yes, they have 4 pin plugs sold separately and require ignitors (I'm using osram's electronic ones). I'm doing mine DIY style.

What's the setup You want to grow in? If big tent, lot's of untrained, untopped plants, no care for heat, HPS is probably easier. LED's are imo not there yet in terms of reliability and there's currently so many manufacturers, you can't predict which will be in the business after 2-3 years when your 600-1000$ LED with 5 years or "lifetime warranty" will have to be serviced or replaced.

 

[brazel]

scrog looks Delicious! I totally agree about the lights, i've rocked a couple cfl grows that blew my mind coming from a hid background. a kept them super close used 23w different k's on flexible desk clamp on lights fan blowing. also led which was a big yield but weak... could of been old seed, or human error but i saw potential in both.

never tried these i like cause the length, i grow some lst, a lil sog. i have a 3x3 tent.
I was looking at a 4 pin ballast, base, and bulb. are you using one ballast for two bulbs? you got model number?

I like to use as lil power and heat as possible. now im using hps flower(getting replaced with 96x3 topled thats in the mail) and cfl for veg.

was wanting to try hans, probably still will! researching led me here now i'm also going to build one of your 4 pins! I like the diy

these bulbs seam dope! good lumen , k selection and spread

 

[kovacs]

scrog looks Delicious! I totally agree about the lights, i've rocked a couple cfl grows that blew my mind coming from a hid background. a kept them super close used 23w different k's on flexible desk clamp on lights fan blowing. also led which was a big yield but weak... could of been old seed, or human error but i saw potential in both.

never tried these i like cause the length, i grow some lst, a lil sog. i have a 3x3 tent.
I was looking at a 4 pin ballast, base, and bulb. are you using one ballast for two bulbs? you got model number?

I like to use as lil power and heat as possible. now im using hps flower(getting replaced with 96x3 topled thats in the mail) and cfl for veg.

was wanting to try hans, probably still will! researching led me here now i'm also going to build one of your 4 pins! I like the diy

these bulbs seam dope! good lumen , k selection and spread

did some more research in those bulbs- surpisingly, but people say the best result is mixin 27k with 65k for flower, like 1:1 or 2:1, not only 27k's.

see osram online catalogue for compatible models! I like it very much!

 

[kovacs]

Flower day 63 (31-Jan): Today did swap one 2.7K for 4K lamp, hope it will boost the growth a little bit. Also did take "sample branch" from left plant "for testing"!

Not much going on lately-

 

[brazel]

looks good! man i cant belive you get 5000 lumens from the 55 watt flouro. i havent bought yet but got it all figured out on 100bulds .... i think lol thanks for the tips on da light!

 

[kovacs]

looks good! man i cant belive you get 5000 lumens from the 55 watt flouro. i havent bought yet but got it all figured out on 100bulds .... i think lol thanks for the tips on da light!

Good luck then! Keep us posted on your progress!

Also, flower day 67 update-

not much happening, not even trichomes ambering! I assume it's because the night temp's for my growbox is 4..10C as the plants are starting to become slightly purple'ish, it seems it also slows growth down. Probably will cut them down at the end of the next week.

 

[brazel]

how you like airpot? have you used fabric? chopping this weekend! awesome

 

[kovacs]

how you like airpot? have you used fabric? chopping this weekend! awesome

Currently I'm not sure about airports, but I'll carefully will examine rootball when I've chopped them. Still- have bought 2x10L for the next grow and probably will do back-to-back with "basic" pot! What "fabric" did You mean?

Turned lights out yesterday, will chop in 2-3 days.

Flower day 74:

 

[kovacs]

ps. "smoke" test has been very successful! Very strong stuff, not too psychoactive, but also no paranoia although got quite stoned!

 

[brazel]

Fabric Pots or smart pots.... it's kinda like a felt or some kind of fabric. Some people just use those reusable cloth grocery bags. I have used the fabric smart pots and liked them, for the most part butunfortunately I didn't get to see the root ball as it was a joint Grow and i was out of town at a time.

I'm looking forward to see what each plant brings......from pics cfl looks taller but led looks more bushy!

CONGRATS AND ENJOI

 

[kovacs]

havent used smartpots, probably someday will. But after harvesting I'm sure about one thing- 15L is overkill for the plants I've had. 10L would have been more than enough.

 

[kovacs]

Cut both plants yesterday, so it's totally 3.5 months from seed to harvest.

Bigger bud's seemed very heavy, sticky and dense, definitely bigger and denser than in my previous growth, although not so many of them.

Wet and with stems- 251g (8.8 ounces), so hopefully at least 40 grams when dried.

There are the pictures-