CoffeeShopSeeds Sponsored Grow: Emmie’s Huge 1 Month Interval Constant Harvest

[7Dust2]

Wow, well I definitely feel for you. The odds are the odds however and over time you should experience 50/50 on males and females. This means that you might not see another male for a while... the odds are in your favor.

I have never had good luck. Seen it once . Had a t-shirt says luck on it.

 

[Emilya Green]

I have never had good luck. Seen it once . Had a t-shirt says luck on it.

To have no hope is the most tragic thing of all. Let's see if we can turn that around. Everyone please give a lucky thought in his direction.
Heartfelt Blessings from my garden to yours! May your harvest be bountiful and extra dank!
Em

 

[7Dust2]

To have no hope is the most tragic thing of all. Let's see if we can turn that around. Everyone please give a lucky thought in his direction.
Heartfelt Blessings from my garden to yours! May your harvest be bountiful and extra dank!
Em

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #1
One of the Green Cracks, the one that was trampled on, has set the new record for water use and was the first one to drain the container in 3 days. The others are fast behind her, but did not need water yet, so I let them ride. The precocious one got a few drabs of water around the outside edges so we can try to start syncing these girls up... they are moving to the next room in 3 days after all. Today was the third day since spraying, so all the plants got a little spritz.

Most of the seeds are starting to get tails on them, but still not long enough to plant. This will probably happen tomorrow.

Veg Room #2
Again, today was bug spray day so they all got it. Damage having been attributed to bugs is no longer occurring and the plants are looking very strong for the move over to bloom in 3 days. They all look happy and well fed.

Bloom Room
I have been cleaning and getting ready to activate this room in a few days. One of my light timer plugs is giving me problems, and being the one on the red lights, it has to be totally reliable. I have replaced that plug with an earlier model and will probably be sending this defective one back to WYZE for replacement. The red lights will come on for 20 minutes before and after turning the big light on and off and also for 2 hours around noon in honor of Bruce Bugbee's profundity that Deep and Far Red cause better photosynthesis. Go Bruce! The 40 minute period in the beginning of the day will help the plants orient with the horizon which helps them not to stretch, and the 40 minute period at the end of the day will put them right to sleep so we can get by with a longer daytime. The big light will be on from the very start at a 13/11 time period and we are going to move to 14/10 shortly after flowering actually starts. Toward the end of the grow, I will be attempting to go 15/9, without the plants sliding back into veg, hopefully because of the Deep Red. DLI to the max this time... wish me luck!

Harvest Area
The first Amnesia chopped is now dry enough to move to the paper sack stage. The second one will dry for another day.

 

[Jon]

Veg Room #1
One of the Green Cracks, the one that was trampled on, has set the new record for water use and was the first one to drain the container in 3 days. The others are fast behind her, but did not need water yet, so I let them ride. The precocious one got a few drabs of water around the outside edges so we can try to start syncing these girls up... they are moving to the next room in 3 days after all. Today was the third day since spraying, so all the plants got a little spritz.

Most of the seeds are starting to get tails on them, but still not long enough to plant. This will probably happen tomorrow.

Veg Room #2
Again, today was bug spray day so they all got it. Damage having been attributed to bugs is no longer occurring and the plants are looking very strong for the move over to bloom in 3 days. They all look happy and well fed.

Bloom Room
I have been cleaning and getting ready to activate this room in a few days. One of my light timer plugs is giving me problems, and being the one on the red lights, it has to be totally reliable. I have replaced that plug with an earlier model and will probably be sending this defective one back to WYZE for replacement. The red lights will come on for 20 minutes before and after turning the big light on and off and also for 2 hours around noon in honor of Bruce Bugbee's profundity that Deep and Far Red cause better photosynthesis. Go Bruce! The 40 minute period in the beginning of the day will help the plants orient with the horizon which helps them not to stretch, and the 40 minute period at the end of the day will put them right to sleep so we can get by with a longer daytime. The big light will be on from the very start at a 13/11 time period and we are going to move to 14/10 shortly after flowering actually starts. Toward the end of the grow, I will be attempting to go 15/9, without the plants sliding back into veg, hopefully because of the Deep Red. DLI to the max this time... wish me luck!

Harvest Area
The first Amnesia chopped is now dry enough to move to the paper sack stage. The second one will dry for another day.

I'm doing the same, blurple style with no timer. I simply turn off the veg switch on the blurple for a few hours each day and let them bathe in just the reds for a while, then just flip them back to veg/bloom. Lmao.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #1 just got a lot busier. As far as the law goes, I have just moved 10 non-plants in there under the light for a total of 15 containers. There would have been 17 containers, but two of the seeds soaking in the water did not crack open.

But Em? Aren't you restricted to 12 plants per room?
I don't see more than 5 plants here and we are 2 days away from the monthly rotation. I hope to move everyone to their next rooms at that time, just about the time these Tangerine Dreams will be coming up, so that everything remains on the legal side of up and up. The 5 previous stars of Veg Room #1 got watered last night, establishing a 3 day wet/dry cycle, and I think they will the perfect wetness to up-pot and feed them upon moving to Veg Room #2 on Wednesday.

It all fits on the elevated grow table, barely!

 

[Jon]

Veg Room #1 just got a lot busier. As far as the law goes, I have just moved 10 non-plants in there under the light for a total of 15 containers. There would have been 17 containers, but two of the seeds soaking in the water did not crack open.

But Em? Aren't you restricted to 12 plants per room?
I don't see more than 5 plants here and we are 2 days away from the monthly rotation. I hope to move everyone to their next rooms at that time, just about the time these Tangerine Dreams will be coming up, so that everything remains on the legal side of up and up. The 5 previous stars of Veg Room #1 got watered last night, establishing a 3 day wet/dry cycle, and I think they will the perfect wetness to up-pot and feed them upon moving to Veg Room #2 on Wednesday.

It all fits on the elevated grow table, barely!

So the law doesn't recognize a plant as a plant until it's a sprout, eh? NIce. Until they pass the law going by number of containers instead of plants. Lol! Dumb state governments. Always messing things all up and stuff.....way to work around and within the law at the same time.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #1
Still no seedlings. I just squirted each cup 10 times and did a little dance in my chair. Let's see what morning brings.

I was so tempted... I so wanted to do the rotation and uppotting today, but I was good and we will wait until tomorrow, as planned. Tonight 2 of the young plants drained their water to the point that they would have been in bad shape in the morning, and the other three will definitely be ready by tomorrow too. Most are already putting out the 5th node and it is time to top them. As fast as they are drinking the water, there are sure to be good strong roots showing on the outside of a tight rootball. Now to get them in 1 gallon containers, asap... well, tomorrow. They also need to be trimmed up a bit, and I want to take some clones of the white widow in the other room... more on that later.

When I looked at this scene I knew I could show you what I see. See the 3 plants praying hard, with upturned and slanted leaves all up and down the plant? Look at the two droopy Dora's there in the middle.

Their lower fans are starting to point down, and soon that will travel up the trunk. These two are light as a feather and this tells me that they have about 12 hours of water left.

These two got an inbetween drink... they only got a bit all around the edges of the cup. The middle got zero water. This will get them through the night, and the roots will be rapidly growing laterally into the wet regions, demonstrating the sheer power of growing in a solo cup. At this moment in time I have total control... I own those roots... I am gardening like a boss!

Veg Room #2

Just some pretty shots tonight of some pretty content girls. The bugs have been kept in check long enough that we might not spread many of them into the bloom room. The are due for their next spraying tomorrow anyway, right before the move. They are at 5 days since last watering and I have no desire to water them before moving them to the other room. I will get them under the @NextLight MEGA first, and then we will see what happens to water use.

The problem plant seems to have straightened herself out and looks like she is ready to produce. I think we are going to let her into the bloom room after all.

Here is what I hope to be a pretty shot... I saw it in my mind's eye and tried to set it up in the camera.

 

[Emilya Green]

Morning came and I am indeed on the verge of becoming illegal. I suspect that later today many of them will have surfaced but for now, only one is showing. For now, another 10 squirts all around.

I have a lot of work to do this afternoon. Today's schedule, in order of importance:

1. Trim bottom third of the plants going into bloom
2. Spray insecticide on all plants in both rooms (3 day interval)
3. Final cleaning of Bloom Room and testing of lights
4. Move 5 plants to Bloom on a 13/10 light schedule, deep/far red 20 min before lights on to restrict stretch, 20 min after lights off to allow more DLI, and 2 hours around noon to increase photosynthesis.
5. Transplant 5 plants from solo to 1 gallon, fertilize and move to Veg Room #2, top where necessary
6. Squirt more water at the new seedlings in Veg Room 1

 

[Jon]

Morning came and I am indeed on the verge of becoming illegal. I suspect that later today many of them will have surfaced but for now, only one is showing. For now, another 10 squirts all around.

I have a lot of work to do this afternoon. Today's schedule, in order of importance:

1. Trim bottom third of the plants going into bloom
2. Spray insecticide on all plants in both rooms (3 day interval)
3. Final cleaning of Bloom Room and testing of lights
4. Move 5 plants to Bloom on a 13/10 light schedule, deep/far red 20 min before lights on to restrict stretch, 20 min after lights off to allow more DLI, and 2 hours around noon to increase photosynthesis.
5. Transplant 5 plants from solo to 1 gallon, fertilize and move to Veg Room #2
6. Squirt more water at the new seedlings in Veg Room 1

"on the verge" Lol. My favorite place to be.
Wow, that's quite a list. You'll be a busy girl.

Could you please clarify a little what you mean by this?:

1. Trim bottom third of the plants going into bloom

Thanks!

 

[Emilya Green]

"on the verge" Lol. My favorite place to be.
Wow, that's quite a list. You'll be a busy girl.

Could you please clarify a little what you mean by this?:

1. Trim bottom third of the plants going into bloom

Thanks!

I want the bottom third of the plant to be nothing but bare stems in the bloom room, for better light penetration and air flow. I also thin out the middle quite a bit, ruthlessly removing anything that won't make it to the canopy. I traditionally do this final cleanup on the last week of veg and this is also the point that I take any clones I am going to send to the cloner. The timing is about perfecte to get roots going on the clones and get them planted for a month and a half, to be ready to go to bloom when these have finished. Now in the 3 room rotation, for better timing I should probably have started the clones a week ago, about the time I dropped the last seeds. There will be no clones taken this time... I am out of room.

 

[Jon]

I want the bottom third of the plant to be nothing but bare stems in the bloom room, for better light penetration and air flow. I also thin out the middle quite a bit, ruthlessly removing anything that won't make it to the canopy. I traditionally do this final cleanup on the last week of veg and this is also the point that I take any clones I am going to send to the cloner. The timing is about perfecte to get roots going on the clones and get them planted for a month and a half, to be ready to go to bloom when these have finished. Now in the 3 room rotation, for better timing I should probably have started the clones a week ago, about the time I dropped the last seeds. There will be no clones taken this time... I am out of room.

Ok, I get it, thought that's what you meant. Undercarriage cleanup as it were. Lol. Thanks.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #1
The new seedlings seem to be familiar with Missouri's cultivation laws. While they could have exceeded our allotted number of plants in this room today, they respectfully held up and only 7 out of 10 reached the surface, making for a perfectly legal 12 plants in the room. I sprang into action in order to keep things on the up and up. I do expect to see the other three make their appearances by morning.

Today is reset day in the veg rooms, having completed 31 days. The 5 plants in this room this morning now needed to be uppotted, and by using their water in 2-3 days, they deserved this chance. They could have gone longer and created a tighter rootball, but not on this rapid room change schedule. Here are a couple of the roots and they all were similar.

For plants that have flown around the room and been trampled by large breed puppies, they have not done badly at all and I felt confident moving them into their 1 gallon containers before moving them to Veg Room #2. The container got 1 large tablespoon of @DYNOMYCO before putting the rootball in and then after everyone had been transplanted, they were carefully watered to runoff to merge the soil regions.

Here is the new view in Veg Room #2

Bloom Room
The 5 plants formerly in Veg Room #2 have now been moved to Bloom. This will be their first short day and their new schedule is 13/11. Deep and Far Red lights are coming on at certain times in their schedule in order to signal the plants to do some extraordinary things. The red lights will come on 20 minutes before the big @NextLight MEGA comes on at 6am. The theory is that these "trigger" lights orient the plants with the horizon and somehow keep them from needing to stretch more than 10% or so in the first 2 weeks. The red lights will again come on for 20 minutes as the MEGA goes off at 7pm. This "trigger" light will very quickly put the plants into sleep mode, saving all that transition time for the plants to immediately get on with whatever goes on at night. This will allow me to run up to 15 hours of daylight without sending the plants back into Veg. Any light that we can get away with beyond the traditional 12 hours is going to be considered to be extra DLI.

Here is the Bloom room, running at slightly less than 50% capacity, on day 0 of transition. In about a week, we will declare the first day of Bloom!

The plants were fed Veg formula 7 days ago, so they didn't need any extra. After moving to the bloom room they all got a last spray of chemical insecticide and were watered to runoff. The lights for now are about 24 inches away from the tallest plant and I will be attempting to lower those lights a bit in the next few days, again to try to keep them from needing to stretch.

 

[Jon]

Veg Room #1
The new seedlings seem to be familiar with Missouri's cultivation laws. While they could have exceeded our allotted number of plants in this room today, they respectfully held up and only 7 out of 10 reached the surface, making for a perfectly legal 12 plants in the room. I sprang into action in order to keep things on the up and up. I do expect to see the other three make their appearances by morning.

Today is reset day in the veg rooms, having completed 31 days. The 5 plants in this room this morning now needed to be uppotted, and by using their water in 2-3 days, they deserved this chance. They could have gone longer and created a tighter rootball, but not on this rapid room change schedule. Here are a couple of the roots and they all were similar.

For plants that have flown around the room and been trampled by large breed puppies, they have not done badly at all and I felt confident moving them into their 1 gallon containers before moving them to Veg Room #2. The container got 1 large tablespoon of @DYNOMYCO before putting the rootball in and then after everyone had been transplanted, they were carefully watered to runoff to merge the soil regions.

Here is the new view in Veg Room #2

Bloom Room
The 5 plants formerly in Veg Room #2 have now been moved to Bloom. This will be their first short day and their new schedule is 13/11. Deep and Far Red lights are coming on at certain times in their schedule in order to signal the plants to do some extraordinary things. The red lights will come on 20 minutes before the big @NextLight MEGA comes on at 6am. The theory is that these "trigger" lights orient the plants with the horizon and somehow keep them from needing to stretch more than 10% or so in the first 2 weeks. The red lights will again come on for 20 minutes as the MEGA goes off at 7pm. This "trigger" light will very quickly put the plants into sleep mode, saving all that transition time for the plants to immediately get on with whatever goes on at night. This will allow me to run up to 15 hours of daylight without sending the plants back into Veg. Any light that we can get away with beyond the traditional 12 hours is going to be considered to be extra DLI.

Here is the Bloom room, running at slightly less than 50% capacity, on day 0 of transition. In about a week, we will declare the first day of Bloom!

The plants were fed Veg formula 7 days ago, so they didn't need any extra. After moving to the bloom room they all got a last spray of chemical insecticide and were watered to runoff. The lights for now are about 24 inches away from the tallest plant and I will be attempting to lower those lights a bit in the next few days, again to try to keep them from needing to stretch.

Cool update that begs a few questions or comments on this end, please.

First, I have to chuckle as I recall being jealous of your white wheelies when mine were black, since white reflects light and black absorbs it. For obvious reasons.

This: The plants were fed Veg formula 7 days ago, Isn't this a Geo grow? Are you referring to GeoFlora veg nutes?

Good thing your plants/seeds cooperated, since there was probably a cop or seven right outside your house with infared technology watching those pots like a hawk, just waiting to slap cuffs on you should it sprout at the wrong time...........

Those root ball pics are very cool. Also noteworthy to these eyes how thick the roots encircling the pot on the outside are. Those are often voluminous but fibrous, while those look like....well, ROOTS. Also consider puttting this one in the bank: five of those root ball pots exposed like that and together could probably be arranged to make a very unusual photo for a contest that nobody has ever seen the likes of before....just sayin.....heh.

 

[Emilya Green]

Cool update that begs a few questions or comments on this end, please.

First, I have to chuckle as I recall being jealous of your white wheelies when mine were black, since white reflects light and black absorbs it. For obvious reasons.

This: The plants were fed Veg formula 7 days ago, Isn't this a Geo grow? Are you referring to GeoFlora veg nutes?

Good thing your plants/seeds cooperated, since there was probably a cop or seven right outside your house with infared technology watching those pots like a hawk, just waiting to slap cuffs on you should it sprout at the wrong time...........

Those root ball pics are very cool. Also noteworthy to these eyes how thick the roots encircling the pot on the outside are. Those are often voluminous but fibrous, while those look like....well, ROOTS. Also consider puttting this one in the bank: five of those root ball pots exposed like that and together could probably be arranged to make a very unusual photo for a contest that nobody has ever seen the likes of before....just sayin.....heh.

I need to order more of those white wheelies... just wait till you see 12 of them lined up in a row! I suspect you will become giddy.

Yes, usually I take great effort to mention @GeoFlora Nutrients every chance I get, and I refer to the VEG or BLOOM product that I am using that day. This time I called it VEG formula, and here come the questions. Yes, at this time I am exclusively using Geoflora Nutrients in my grow rooms.

Today we had one more pop up in Veg Room #1, and luckily she was wise to the infrared and fleer wielding cannabis police yesterday when all was on the line. She was a good girl, and everyone got another 10 squirts to celebrate her arrival. With luck, by this afternoon the last two will make their appearances too.

@Jon , The root shot with 5 or more plants would indeed be something... I will have to think about setting one of those up without drying everyone out too much while doing it. What I noted on those roots was not only how white and strong they looked, but how there was also ribbing and side growth off of those roots. This rootball was getting more dense by the day, as it should be. Imagine how strong they would have been without the dog incident?

Veg Room #2 looks great this morning! These plants are really enjoying the new soil, the feeding and the increase in light with the @NextLight 420h. Let's give them 2 weeks here, and then we will uppot to 5gal for the final push.

Lastly, the Bloom Room. These plants are all praying hard and apparently loving the @NextLight MEGA and being woken up this morning by Deep and Far Red. We are on stretch watch now... hoping that the red lights keep the stretch to a minimum, and we are also watching to see if we can easily trigger flowering in this 13/11 environment with the help of the trigger lights at the end of the day. There is a lot going on in here, and the plants seem very happy to cooperate.

 

[Jon]

I need to order more of those white wheelies... just wait till you see 12 of them lined up in a row! I suspect you will become giddy.

Yes, usually I take great effort to mention @GeoFlora Nutrients every chance I get, and I refer to the VEG or BLOOM product that I am using that day. This time I called it VEG formula, and here come the questions. Yes, at this time I am exclusively using Geoflora Nutrients in my grow rooms.

Today we had one more pop up in Veg Room #1, and luckily she was wise to the infrared and fleer wielding cannabis police yesterday when all was on the line. She was a good girl, and everyone got another 10 squirts to celebrate her arrival. With luck, by this afternoon the last two will make their appearances too.

@Jon , The root shot with 5 or more plants would indeed be something... I will have to think about setting one of those up without drying everyone out too much while doing it. What I noted on those roots was not only how white and strong they looked, but how there was also ribbing and side growth off of those roots. This rootball was getting more dense by the day, as it should be. Imagine how strong they would have been without the dog incident?

Veg Room #2 looks great this morning! These plants are really enjoying the new soil, the feeding and the increase in light with the @NextLight 420h. Let's give them 2 weeks here, and then we will uppot to 5gal for the final push.

Lastly, the Bloom Room. These plants are all praying hard and apparently loving the @NextLight MEGA and being woken up this morning by Deep and Far Red. We are on stretch watch now... hoping that the red lights keep the stretch to a minimum, and we are also watching to see if we can easily trigger flowering in this 13/11 environment with the help of the trigger lights at the end of the day. There is a lot going on in here, and the plants seem very happy to cooperate.

It's really looking sweet in every room now Em, damn. Your green is so consistently good it's crazy, and that plant you were wondering if she'd make the team looks great now to me, compared to where she was. One thing I know I'm going to see in an Emilya grow room is healthy plants, and plants that are praying sweetly. Just look at those puppies. Beautiful.

This: This time I called it VEG formula, and here come the questions.
Considering you can tell you stopped just short of tossing in a roll your eyes emoji after this sentence, you gotta understand, we don't know what the hell you might do at any given time. You're a wild card. A renegade rebel. Prone to do stuff. So yeah, you called it VEG formula. So yeah, damn right here come the questions.

 

[HashGirl]

Good morning, Emilya.

First of all, I want to say for the detailed updates you provide. I love how organized your grow is. It's hard to believe you've just started this perpetual grow when some other growers are struggling with it. The plants look nice and healthy. However, I have some questions.

Veg Room #1

The container got 1 large tablespoon of @DYNOMYCO before putting the rootball in and then after everyone had been transplanted, they were carefully watered to runoff to merge the soil regions.

Some other 420 growers have been wetting their rootballs and applying the Dynomyco directly to the rootball. Could you please weigh in on this?

Bloom Room
The 5 plants formerly in Veg Room #2 have now been moved to Bloom. This will be their first short day and their new schedule is 13/11.

Most of the 420 growers I follow run their flowering rooms in 12/12. Why are you doing 13/11?

Deep and Far Red lights are coming on at certain times in their schedule in order to signal the plants to do some extraordinary things. The red lights will come on 20 minutes before the big @NextLight MEGA comes on at 6am. The theory is that these "trigger" lights orient the plants with the horizon and somehow keep them from needing to stretch more than 10% or so in the first 2 weeks. The red lights will again come on for 20 minutes as the MEGA goes off at 7pm. This "trigger" light will very quickly put the plants into sleep mode, saving all that transition time for the plants to immediately get on with whatever goes on at night. This will allow me to run up to 15 hours of daylight without sending the plants back into Veg. Any light that we can get away with beyond the traditional 12 hours is going to be considered to be extra DLI.

I must have missed the introduction of this method. It makes sense but where does the red light come from? Is that a separate light from the MEGA Light?

And, why don't you want them to stretch?

 

[Emilya Green]

Good morning, Emilya.

First of all, I want to say for the detailed updates you provide. I love how organized your grow is. It's hard to believe you've just started this perpetual grow when some other growers are struggling with it. The plants look nice and healthy. However, I have some questions.



Some other 420 growers have been wetting their rootballs and applying the Dynomyco directly to the rootball. Could you please weigh in on this?



Most of the 420 growers I follow run their flowering rooms in 12/12. Why are you doing 13/11?



I must have missed the introduction of this method. It makes sense but where does the red light come from? Is that a separate light from the MEGA Light?

And, why don't you want them to stretch?

Hi @HashGirl, good morning! Again, good questions, thank you.

Applying the @DYNOMYCO can go several different ways, depending on how you approach the transplanting process. If you do it like I did this time, by setting the floor height in the new container with new soil, and then building up the container around the old rootball, my standard way of doing this is to create a layer of myco under the old rootball, then building the soil up around it to the top. In this method, it would probably be an excellent idea to wet the old rootball and then sprinkle myco on it before building in the soil. I will try that next time I transplant using this method.

The other method is to use a spare container the size of the one you are transplanting out of, to create a hole in the soil built up in the larger container. To maintain the shape of this hole, I always pre-water this new soil, and the edges of the resulting hole are wet. Into this hole, I don't just put myco in the bottom, but I also sprinkle it along the sides of the hole so that there is myco all the way up and down the outside of the old rootball, without having to spray it and apply it as before.

Anyway, whichever way it is done, I feel this is a very good way of getting the myco right where it needs to be, starting the colony as early and quickly as possible.

On the lighting, most of us do go with 12/12 because it is a fairly safe bet that most of the varieties that we will see in our gardens will flower in that light period without complaints. We do know however that the plants can get by on less light per day, and that they can also go with a bit more than 12 hours a day, as long as we stay shy of the 14 hours of daylight that tends to drive our blooming plants back to the veg mode. It is actually to our advantage to run as much light as we can get away with, and many of our members play with their daily light index (DLI) to get the maximum amount of light processed by their plants.

So I already know that 13/11 is going to work. The plants will, without help, usually respond well to this light period without complaint. I want to go further than this. I want to see how far I can go. As soon as stretch is over and we are officially in the bud set stage (day 21 or so), I am going to raise the DLI some more by going 13.5/10.5 Two weeks later, I am going to attempt 14/10, and in the last 2 weeks of the grow, I am going to go 15/9 just to prove that it can be done.

This is where the red lights come in. This 35w Deep and Far red LED light strip is a special order from Cutter Electronics in Australia. The shipping cost more than the light strip and it is powered by a sophisticated WYZE plug with 3 working rules per day running on it, powering the smallest constant current power supply that Meanwell makes. This light strip is affixed to the middle bar of my MEGA, not interfering with any of the other lights. It is set up to turn on 20 minutes before the light goes on to restrict stretch and for 20 minutes after the lights go off, to knock the plants immediately into night mode without the up to 2 hour delay they usually experience. This efficient shutdown is what allows us to go with extra light in the day... the plants are still getting their required rest. The third event for the red lights is around the noon hour, and soon I will be adding UV light during this event also. It is my belief that an hour before and after noon is when the angle is just right for outdoor plants to get their maximum UV from the sun, so I am adding that feature to the grow room. Adding the red lights during this time period is an homage to Dr. Bruce Bugbee, who astounded the world with his profound revelation that red light helps photosynthesis. There is plenty of red light in the MEGA already, but I figured what the heck... Bugbee does it, so I should too.

Lastly, why am I trying to avoid stretch? First and foremost, 6'6" ceilings in my attic grow rooms. If they stretch too much, I have no choice but to resort to supercropping. The second important reason is physics, specifically the inverse square law. The intensity of light coming out of the led array is diminished by the square of the distance. If we have a plant that has stretched to 5 or 6 feet, the middle and bottom of the plant are getting a very much reduced amount of light as compared to the top. Oftentimes, this would make me think about staggered harvests, with the top of the plant getting done well before the bottom did. If I can keep my plants short, this doesn't happen, and I get good light penetration well into the canopy. The plants will stretch as they need to so as to make room for the buds that are being formed on the branches, but I believe that a lot of the extra stretch that people tend to get is unnecessary and can be avoided.

 

[Jon]

Wow, I need a cigarette after that. Amazing questions @HashGirl, and amazing answers Emilya. Thanks to both of you.

 

[Emilya Green]

Veg Room #1, Day 2, light intensity 18k LUX
We may have 2 casualties in the room... not all of the roots were as long as I would have wished when I planted them. To have 8 out of 12 seeds now above soil, I am happy. Now we will wait to see how many females we have in this group around week 5 or so. They will not be transplanted to their final containers until we know.

My dynomyco grow will be starting soon and we will start some more seeds for that run. I am trying to decide between Purple Kush and Dutch Passion, both of which I have plenty of seeds. Whatever I decide, I will be attempting to sex them using the shape of the connecting point indentation.



Veg Room #2, Day 2, Light Intensity 28k LUX
These are some happy plants. They are 2 days from the last watering and feeding. They are 2 days from the last foliar insecticide spray and bugs don't appear to be an issue.

Bloom Room, Day 2 of Transition
I lowered the @NextLight MEGA about 6 inches. The light intensity has been raised to 60-80K LUX, depending on where the plant is in the room. If increasing light intensity at the onset of bloom keeps the stretch away, this should do it. I am more convinced that what I have been seeing lately is a result of the deep and far red lights. They are 8 days into the feeding cycle and don't seem to be wanting anything extra. They seem to be very happy and transpiration is off of the chart... they are sucking water hard. We are 2 days into the watering cycle and there is a good possibility that they will need water again tomorrow.