300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

[Saturn]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Originally Posted by Setting Sun View Post
It's really OK with me if you think the grow is fundamentally flawed and discredit it, so I have no interest in proving anything to you or in spending energy convincing you otherwise .

Wow. Not really what I thought you would say. ?

I was hoping we could get into optimizing each system and discuss that a bit.

doing another run and combining data etc.


All I can say is.......

Saturn, Whenever you are ready to duplicate this grow and spend the time, money and effort to prove your point I'd love to subscribe. In the mean time SS has already stated it was for his own personal knowledge and in doing that was nice enough to share that knowledge with us. Many people learned valuable lessons on this grow. Every one had input and many informational discussions arose from it. I find it hard to believe that you could do much better without having many thousands of dollars and a large warehouse to do multiple experiments to get a finite answer which would still leave people asking questions. That's the beauty of it. You will always keep learning new things and improving on other facets that we thought were great already. When you get that warehouse going let me know, we'll love to watch. By the way I've never owned an LED light. But I tell you this. From viewing the results although not to your standards, I will definitely have one or two before this summer hits. If you look back on this thread you will see that I was favoring the Hid most of the grow. Now that I see the final results, I believe! I'm not saying that the LED side kicked the HID sides ass but it definitely grew as good if not better quality plants then the HID. Keep us posted on the warehouse. SS is nice enough to do this experiment at the risk of loosing yield and quality which due to his outstanding care and knowledge didn't happen. You will find very few people willing to risk 3 months just to help everyone else decide. How many real side by sides have you seen? Google it up and you will be hard pressed to find many quality ones. I'm not trying to bash you but if you could do better ( I have. 5ft. Monster plants with monster colas that no led could ever grow. I'll upload a pic for you later.) I want in on it.

I agree for the most part.

Me saying I appreciate the effort here is a genuine compliment, not being condescending.

Don't shoot the messenger.

And I'll leave it at that.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

I noticed a more potent result from my last vertical CMH grow - same strains I'd grown outdoors over the summer were much stronger when grown indoors with the 400 CMH bulb.

I'd guess that it's the spectrum that counts, not HID vs. LED.

That's very interesting Silent Bob.

I'm glad you're not too silent .

I wonder if there are other factors at play here also besides just the difference in spectrum.

Outdoor plants generally have a harder life and are less pampered than indoor plants. Perhaps the energy that outdoor plants expend in defending themselves from pests and the elements can be used by indoor plants to grow nicer flowers?

I have a tendency to think of the sun as being the gold standard for spectrum, but we grow this plant for its psychoactive properties, while nature may have different priorities, so for our purposes, maybe it's possible to improve on the sun's spectrum?

thanks again for your interesting observation Silent Bob, and very nice to meet you

 

[IrishBoy]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Irish are RedBud seeds available anywhere? And are you saying you like DNC better?

I haven't seen Red Bud for over 30 years but sure would love to see it again.

i can promise if you get red bud you can get seed in that sack.lol. yes i would take DNC over red bud any day. i rather take none and just stick to my chronic though. i havent seen red buds forever and i am ok with that.

 

[Silent Bob]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

That's very interesting Silent Bob.

I'm glad you're not too silent .

I wonder if there are other factors at play here also besides just the difference in spectrum.

Outdoor plants generally have a harder life and are less pampered than indoor plants. Perhaps the energy that outdoor plants expend in defending themselves from pests and the elements can be used by indoor plants to grow nicer flowers?

I have a tendency to think of the sun as being the gold standard for spectrum, but we grow this plant for its psychoactive properties, while nature may have different priorities, so for our purposes, maybe it's possible to improve on the sun's spectrum?

thanks again for your interesting observation Silent Bob, and very nice to meet you

You are absolutely right that it's far from a direct comparison. I had hoped to do a grow with my 400 HPS next... but it didn't work out. Someday I'll have a direct comparison of the same strains and different spectrums...

I feel like I know you Sun... guess I've been following your grows for a while... silently...

 

[molotov]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

I agree for the most part.

Me saying I appreciate the effort here is a genuine compliment, not being condescending.

Don't shoot the messenger.

And I'll leave it at that.

We are talking about 24" plants that produce 2+oz each. You couldn't fit one monster plant in those tents. Your plants as huge and beautiful as they may be are not in the same ball park as far as what is being tried here. I could grow 12 foot plants that would produce 3 lbs each using sunlight and 8 months but that is not the point here. 2 foot plants, 2 to 3 months from seed or clone, 8 plants, minimal area, 1 + lbs. Whether Hid or Led, you couldn't do that in those tents and grow monsters. This grow is targeted at the personal meds grower trying to optimize his best bang for the buck. I in no way am trying to belittle you in any way. If it came across that way I apologize.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Ebay item number 250386648806

yep, those are the ones, thanks Dexter!

SS what size jars are those ?[/QUOTE]


I use both the quart and half-gallon size wide-mouth jars.

Once my bud is fully cured, I have a Foodsaver vacuum attachment that I can use to vacuum pack my buds in the mason jars for long-term storage, if they last that long

the jar in that pic is a quart jar

I used to try to preserve the nicest colas whole and cure them in the half-gallon jars, but after getting some mold I stopped doing that and now just cut them into nugs and enjoy the memories .

thanks brother!

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Well. Fancy high-tech LEDs may have kicked HPS ass, but CMH still shines

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

High SS,

Thanks for the rootie kazootie shots... those girls had some healthy foundations

The roots loved the coco, but they also love perlite. It's nice to have choices.

I thought I remembered it was an all hempy grow... or just this one plant?

They were all in hempy buckets, but I managed to carefully slide that root ball out intact, so I took a pic of it to show how the roots grow through the medium and into the res.

I thought it was very fair comparison so far, pretty get 'em ready, get 'em set, let 'em go. But the dry weight and smoke report are what I'm waiting for

thank you Horse, I appreciate that, and I'm looking forward to the weigh-in and smoke report also, but it's raining hard and the buds are curing slow.

The jars can be open all day and the buds stay at the same moisture level, so it's just going to take what it takes. No mold problems so far.

take care Horse

 

[Saturn]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Originally Posted by Setting Sun View Post
It's really OK with me if you think the grow is fundamentally flawed and discredit it, so I have no interest in proving anything to you or in spending energy convincing you otherwise .

Wow. Not really what I thought you would say. ?

I was hoping we could get into optimizing each system and discuss that a bit.

doing another run and combining data etc.


All I can say is.......

Saturn, Whenever you are ready to duplicate this grow and spend the time, money and effort to prove your point I'd love to subscribe. In the mean time SS has already stated it was for his own personal knowledge and in doing that was nice enough to share that knowledge with us. Many people learned valuable lessons on this grow. Every one had input and many informational discussions arose from it. I find it hard to believe that you could do much better without having many thousands of dollars and a large warehouse to do multiple experiments to get a finite answer which would still leave people asking questions. That's the beauty of it. You will always keep learning new things and improving on other facets that we thought were great already. When you get that warehouse going let me know, we'll love to watch. By the way I've never owned an LED light. But I tell you this. From viewing the results although not to your standards, I will definitely have one or two before this summer hits. If you look back on this thread you will see that I was favoring the Hid most of the grow. Now that I see the final results, I believe! I'm not saying that the LED side kicked the HID sides ass but it definitely grew as good if not better quality plants then the HID. Keep us posted on the warehouse. SS is nice enough to do this experiment at the risk of loosing yield and quality which due to his outstanding care and knowledge didn't happen. You will find very few people willing to risk 3 months just to help everyone else decide. How many real side by sides have you seen? Google it up and you will be hard pressed to find many quality ones. I'm not trying to bash you but if you could do better I want in on it.

There you go. They stand 4ft 6in.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

im sorry i meant good garden tap to rap around the bottom of my kali mist to help support the buds? only two colas have needed support so i put the bamboo sticks and tied them to it, but i dont like the fact im stickin bamboo stick in my soil, maybe damaging roots. im stickin them in on the sides.

It's a stretchy plastic tape made specifically for gardening. You can find it in garden centers, hardware stores, all over.

I like the 1/2" tape because it's gentler on the plants than the narrower stuff.

If I need narrower tape for something, I just cut the 1/2" into 1/4" with a box knife or razor blade.

Stakes work fine, and it sounds like you're using them safely. I just avoid being too close to the stem and have never had trouble. Bamboo stakes usually have a narrower end, and that's the one I push into the soil, which also helps prevent root damage.

The problem I have with stakes is remembering they're there and not poking an eye out, which sounds funny, but sometimes you forget and bend over to check your plants out and I've come pretty close to losing an eye.

If I use stakes, I cover the ends with a small chunk of styrofoam, because it's easy to do and I'm very attached to my eyeballs.

I'm going to do a little LST pictorial, so you'll see the type of tape I use.

I use the same tape to go around the plant and support the branches when the buds get heavy.

It's a very easy way to support your branches, but if it fails, you might snap several branches instead of just one if you support them individually, so that's a negative, but since I used it in late bloom, the tape was fine. Garden tape breaks down and gets brittle both outdoors under the sun and under grow lights, so I check it and replace it if it's getting old.

thanks staffy

sorry for the long delay in getting back to you

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

ya i have to keep my exhaust fan on too, always, i cant let the smell get out, so why exactly would this be a problem, would it just suck it all out and not fall to the plants?

i got my tent in garage.4x4 tent.

how about if you put the bag out side your tent, up against your intake? the only thing about me doin that, is i have a filter on my intake.

I've never used CO2 and know very little about using it. I know you can run significantly higher temps when you use it, but not as high as they would get if you didn't ventilate your tent.

the only way I can think of that would work is with an air-cooled HID hood where you draw air from outside the tent, through the hood, and exhaust it back outside, but again, I know very little about venting strategies for CO2.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

I tried gently bending one of my two original blue dream clones and it snapped off clean. I think that shaking for a few daze or hooding the tip in dark material would cause the same effect. T'would b interesting to do a side-by-side with untouched, pinched, bent, and supercropped clones.

I like to bend them over a couple of hours after I've watered them as it makes the stems more flexible, but snapping them is a risk. Doing it over a few days a little at a time is safer with stems that aren't real flexible, but older clones seem to get pretty woody, so they may not be the best candidates. I hope your BD clone recovered OK.

My experience with weedy sativas is outside and letting them get to about six feet and then wacking them back to around three feet and tying down the side branches seems to work. I think that I will try to bend one of the bds just to see what it does, but it already has mad lateral growth. Your buds b solid top to bottom, sweet spot only so deep, technique is simple and productive. If you want to grow any taller plants, you will need more headroom and more power, more $, but for how much more product?

I don't want to grow taller plants, but I would love to grow taller pure sativa strains if I can keep them short enough using the same technique. I just don't know if it would control their height enough to do so with my limited amount of headroom.

I think that you should try growing the blue dream, it is a little more temperamental than many and makes killer [and pretty] meds. The sharkies are 64 daze olde today, still filling out, but they will be chopped probably sunday nite after 24 hours in the dark. Another batch of sharksbreath under one light and the blue dream under the other so I'll get a chance to play a little, but the clones are doing so well that I may not touch them other than shaking them every day for the first week of stretch [one control] just to see if it makes a noticeable visual difference.

Blue Dream is one of my favorites and I would love to grow it. I love the rock hard blue nugs, and the taste and buzz are sublime. It would take very little arm-twisting to convince me to grow it .

As good as your plants look, I think that it will be hard for you to make an objective evaluation, too hard not to be attached, so you might want to find an objective third-party to do qualitative analysis, someone with years of testing experience, who wouldn't charge you too much.

I think I might know someone like that

We will have bud death RHs for a week or more coming up, think I'll put some rice in the desiccation jars, sharks like uncle ben's.

yep, very big storm. Do you have to do anything different with the curing process when you put rice in the jars? I'm talking about mason jars, but not sure if you're using the same type of sealed jar.

 

[Karr]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Ss you could run co2 with your led setup in the tent if the temps stay reasonable. If not you can still seal the tent with a window ac unit on a thermostat cooling the air inside. Pretty simple to setup, and not overly expensive. I imagine the tent will not get too hot too fast so the ac will not be running too constantly.

There is also a way to cure with dry icenif your rh is too high, I can't remember it offhand. But google I'm sure has it.

 

[Planter]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

It's a stretchy plastic tape made specifically for gardening. You can find it in garden centers, hardware stores, all over.

I like the 1/2" tape because it's gentler on the plants than the narrower stuff.

If I need narrower tape for something, I just cut the 1/2" into 1/4" with a box knife or razor blade.

Stakes work fine, and it sounds like you're using them safely. I just avoid being too close to the stem and have never had trouble. Bamboo stakes usually have a narrower end, and that's the one I push into the soil, which also helps prevent root damage.

The problem I have with stakes is remembering they're there and not poking an eye out, which sounds funny, but sometimes you forget and bend over to check your plants out and I've come pretty close to losing an eye.

If I use stakes, I cover the ends with a small chunk of styrofoam, because it's easy to do and I'm very attached to my eyeballs.

I'm going to do a little LST pictorial, so you'll see the type of tape I use.

I use the same tape to go around the plant and support the branches when the buds get heavy.

It's a very easy way to support your branches, but if it fails, you might snap several branches instead of just one if you support them individually, so that's a negative, but since I used it in late bloom, the tape was fine. Garden tape breaks down and gets brittle both outdoors under the sun and under grow lights, so I check it and replace it if it's getting old.

thanks staffy

sorry for the long delay in getting back to you

its all good, i appreciate u actually getting back to my questions thanks you for your time.

ya thats what ive been doin exactly using the thinner bit of bamboo to stick in the soil, just around the egdes, and then just using twisty ties to hold the stem, but not to tight!, i know exactly how u feel, last grow with the SSH i had to have quite a few bamboo sticks in and ya it got pretty dangerous in their on a few occasions, lol.

im gonna look for the tape when i have some time to go. the only thing that really pops in my head when thinkin about the tape. you just wrap it around the plant right? so the buds dont fall backwards/outwards, right? but what if they are fallin sideways into other buds, does it still support it? i cant see it doin so, but then ive never used.

thanks again mate

 

[Planter]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Ss you could run co2 with your led setup in the tent if the temps stay reasonable. If not you can still seal the tent with a window ac unit on a thermostat cooling the air inside. Pretty simple to setup, and not overly expensive. I imagine the tent will not get too hot too fast so the ac will not be running too constantly.

There is also a way to cure with dry icenif your rh is too high, I can't remember it offhand. But google I'm sure has it.

what would be reasonble temps? ive never used CO2 and dont know much at all when it comes to it.

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

seems i didn't need to delete my post.lol.

actually, the tango can be done alone, but you look pretty silly

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

Once again SS, you make me think

I take a 'hit' with PE compared to GWS, for market acceptance. Wish I didn't have to. The powerful reek that I uncomfortably deal with is another burdon. Mea culpa, and I won't compound my error; when I grow 'better', it stays at home unless the money's right. Spoiled stoners!

With excess on hand, I smoke .5g/day. 'Regs' work for me just fine.

straight answer PG

great answer.

probably because I'm a gardener as opposed to a conniesewer

 

[HorseBadoritz]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

straight answer PG

great answer.

probably because I'm a gardener as opposed to a conniesewer

I'll bet it's more because you're a gardener as well as a connysewre

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

SS, if possible, id really like you to do a more detailed explanation of how you divert the stretch energy horizontally, and prevent them from stretching vertically.

Your last post explained the theory, but its the technique im really after!
If i get my plants to look like yours, i will be one very happy person

I skipped back and checked it see if you netted them off, but it didnt appear so, however, i saw you mention LST, and i would really be interested in knowing how exactly you went about it, in an much detail as possible,
you mentioned tying them down, but im not sure exactly what you mean by that.

As much and detailed info on this as you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

I'd be happy to bro, and it's something where pics just do a much better job than words, so I'll take a few pics and probably describe it in so much excruciating detail that you'll be sorry you asked .

 

[Setting Sun]

re: GrowLEDHydro 300W LED vs. 400W HID Demonstration

We are talking about 24" plants that produce 2+oz each. You couldn't fit one monster plant in those tents. Your plants as huge and beautiful as they may be are not in the same ball park as far as what is being tried here. I could grow 12 foot plants that would produce 3 lbs each using sunlight and 8 months but that is not the point here. 2 foot plants, 2 to 3 months from seed or clone, 8 plants, minimal area, 1 + lbs. Whether Hid or Led, you couldn't do that in those tents and grow monsters. This grow is targeted at the personal meds grower trying to optimize his best bang for the buck.

nailed it