Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

thanks miwa,

all good harley, ill do an update shortly, had a pretty rough day today so ill see how i feel over the next couple of hours, been to hospital, i went to watch my daughter at a dance show, she was dancing and cadburys world, the people who make chocolate, that have this got to dance tour on with top dancers antics, so she was dancing with them and i was blown away, she is 6 and dances better than most the adults she dances along side,
anyway i managed to sit through her dance then i had to go and sit outside, then the pains kept getting worst, i suffer with ibs and the pain is so bad sometimes, today was one of the worst, it got to the point where i couldnt talk, couldnt breath, i was lying on a bench in front of thousands of people and crying from the pain, it was like someone was grabbing hold of my insides and squashing them, my mom took us to the show and wanted to take me to hospital but for over an hour their was no way i was moving from where i was, i was just crippled up in pain, im on all these meds and i still get pain like that, i can go days with no pain but i still have to take the meds, then i get days like today and clearly the meds are doing nothing,
so pointless taking them, i honestly thought something had burst inside me, thats how bad the pain was, felt like my liver and kidneys exploded, so mom finally rushed me to hospital, they gave me gas and air, then the doctor came, he gave me a cup and to take the pi55 he gave me paracetamol and said their strong painkillers, i told him where to go and said i can buy them over the counter so what good are they going to do me, what a joke, i just had to sit their, letting them try and find a vein to draw blood but my blood pressure was to low, they kept hitting tendens with the needle and sent shocks down my hands and into my fingers, i told the one bloke he got 5 seconds to stop before i give him a good kicking, he was clearly struggling but didnt care, he lucky he still walking,

ive been speaking with jandre via pm about lighting schedules, ive been searching the net for weeks about best schedules,
now some growers swear by 24-0 and even jorge cervantes, but growers are now starting to notice that clones start to fade under 24-0 and not do so well, mother plants grown under 24-0 will suffer if left under that schedule long enough,

we know plants grow at night, in nature the most hours of daylight a plant is likely to get is around 15 hours and thats only for a week or 2 at the longest day of the year, plus during the day the plant is often in shade and not getting much sun,

so look how big plants grow outdoors, i know the sun is brighter and has more colour spectrum but having several 1000watt lights still dont come close to outdoor plants,
so ill post some info that jandre wrote to me that explains a hell of a lot and clears a lot of info and miss info up,

such as why glr works so well, some people think its not natural because you give it one hour of light during the 12 hour dark period to stop it flowering, well the reason its only 1 hour of light is because any longer than that and the plant thinks its daytime and starts to grow so more than 1 hour in the middle of dark period would just stress the plant, but 1 hour of light is just long enough to prevent the flowering hormones from building up to high,

another thing glr does is build the plant up with huge amounts of flowering hormones, the plant is kept on the edge of flower due to glr, so when you go 12-12 the plant then is loaded with hormones for flower so will flower sooner and flower well,

im not the best to explain so ill go get jandres msg and post it in here and link it in my sig so others can check it,
 
i use a portable washing machine similar to the Bubble Magic 5 Gallon Mini Washing Machine and ice for my trim, and when it is done its cycle i then pour the extracted trichome liquid through 5 Gallon All Mesh five Bubble Bags into a 5 gallon bucket where i let it drain through the different micron bags. i dry the extracted trichomes and press with a Piranha Aluminum Pollen T-Press into blocks.
 
thanks miwa,

all good harley, ill do an update shortly, had a pretty rough day today so ill see how i feel over the next couple of hours, been to hospital, i went to watch my daughter at a dance show, she was dancing and cadburys world, the people who make chocolate, that have this got to dance tour on with top dancers antics, so she was dancing with them and i was blown away, she is 6 and dances better than most the adults she dances along side,
anyway i managed to sit through her dance then i had to go and sit outside, then the pains kept getting worst, i suffer with ibs and the pain is so bad sometimes, today was one of the worst, it got to the point where i couldnt talk, couldnt breath, i was lying on a bench in front of thousands of people and crying from the pain, it was like someone was grabbing hold of my insides and squashing them, my mom took us to the show and wanted to take me to hospital but for over an hour their was no way i was moving from where i was, i was just crippled up in pain, im on all these meds and i still get pain like that, i can go days with no pain but i still have to take the meds, then i get days like today and clearly the meds are doing nothing,
so pointless taking them, i honestly thought something had burst inside me, thats how bad the pain was, felt like my liver and kidneys exploded, so mom finally rushed me to hospital, they gave me gas and air, then the doctor came, he gave me a cup and to take the pi55 he gave me paracetamol and said their strong painkillers, i told him where to go and said i can buy them over the counter so what good are they going to do me, what a joke, i just had to sit their, letting them try and find a vein to draw blood but my blood pressure was to low, they kept hitting tendens with the needle and sent shocks down my hands and into my fingers, i told the one bloke he got 5 seconds to stop before i give him a good kicking, he was clearly struggling but didnt care, he lucky he still walking,

ive been speaking with jandre via pm about lighting schedules, ive been searching the net for weeks about best schedules,
now some growers swear by 24-0 and even jorge cervantes, but growers are now starting to notice that clones start to fade under 24-0 and not do so well, mother plants grown under 24-0 will suffer if left under that schedule long enough,

we know plants grow at night, in nature the most hours of daylight a plant is likely to get is around 15 hours and thats only for a week or 2 at the longest day of the year, plus during the day the plant is often in shade and not getting much sun,

so look how big plants grow outdoors, i know the sun is brighter and has more colour spectrum but having several 1000watt lights still dont come close to outdoor plants,
so ill post some info that jandre wrote to me that explains a hell of a lot and clears a lot of info and miss info up,

such as why glr works so well, some people think its not natural because you give it one hour of light during the 12 hour dark period to stop it flowering, well the reason its only 1 hour of light is because any longer than that and the plant thinks its daytime and starts to grow so more than 1 hour in the middle of dark period would just stress the plant, but 1 hour of light is just long enough to prevent the flowering hormones from building up to high,

another thing glr does is build the plant up with huge amounts of flowering hormones, the plant is kept on the edge of flower due to glr, so when you go 12-12 the plant then is loaded with hormones for flower so will flower sooner and flower well,

im not the best to explain so ill go get jandres msg and post it in here and link it in my sig so others can check it,

Hmmmm, plants grow at night?, please tell me how this happens!
 
Knowledge droparoonie Roo. :geek:
Plants require light for photosynthesis, so it is impossible for plants to increase in dry biomass without any light.

Some plants do not require high levels of light for growth, because they are adapted to low light conditions (such as jungle and forest plants).

Plants left in the dark will grow taller than plants in lighted conditions over a short period of time, but they will also be yellower and more spindly (etiolation). The increased height is a response to low light levels - the plant is trying to grow over anything that may be blocking the light, and will grow towards any source of light.

This response is controlled by auxins in the plant growth points.

For very short periods of time the plant will appear to be going faster than a control plant in normal light intensities - however, this is because the stem is normally thinner so the amount of biomass produced is roughly the same. In addition the plant has to make use of stored energy reserves as it is not able to photosynthesis.


Etiolation is a form of self-protection mechanism, the plant expends energy and reserves looking for a source of light that can ensure its continued survival. Bam!!:Namaste:
 
thanks for the info harley ill have a look, feeling much better today, ill check this juicing out,

kingjohn, i was looking at the bubble bags the other day, thinking about ordering a set of 5, found some pretty cheap, sounds like its a pretty easy method and should produce plenty of hash from what i got,

as for plants growing in the dark, well all i can say to that as i had a power cut for nearly 48 hours during one of my last grows, when the power came back on and i had light in the grow room i noticed my plants had grown more in them 48 hours than they had in the few days before,

i know at night plants focus on root production, so plants dont actually sleep, we cant look at them like humans
so plants do grow at night and other processes within the plant take part,

if you grew an apple tree in a 10gallon pot then the tree would only get so big, so the bigger the root mass the bigger the plant and the faster it will grow, its why outdoor plants get so big, huge root masses, we really limit width by the pot size, we can increase width with lst but without having plenty of roots it wont be taking in as much nutrients as it can do.

im only going on info i have been told, i also know for a fact my plants grew more in the 48 hours of dark then they did in the few days before under 20-4.

if it was actually down to the amount of light hours we give the plants then indoor plants would get huge under constant light, but outdoors plants get 15 hours and less per day over the veg period, so they dont get anywhere near 18 hours plus of light yet these outdoor plants get huge, sunlight plays a big part but the amount of light is never more than 15 hours and thats if you live in certain areas, plus that 15 hours of light would not be for the whole of veg, just the middle 2 weeks of veg before and after this time it would be getting less light,
then plants get shaded by trees and other plants, early in morning and late at night its getting low levels of light until the sun is higher in the sky, so we are actually giving the plants more light than they actually need.

24-0 does not produce any better results than 18-6, ill try and find the link but i came across a side by side grow and it showed that long term plants suffer under 24-0, 18-6 was found much better for the plants health and growth,

once my autos are finished im flipping back to glr, 12 hours on, 5,5 hours off, 1 hour on (this 1 hour on is not long enough to make the plant think its daytime, this would then stress the plant when the light is switched off, so just 1 hour of light prevents the plant from building up to much flowering hormones so stops it from starting to flower and it allows the plant to benefit from 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark) then 5.5 hours off and start again,

plants show sex sooner under glr but wont go into flower, using glr makes the plant build up high levels of the flowering hormone then when you remove the 1 hour of light during dark it then goes into heavy flower production due to the built up hormones,

ok, here is a conversation i had with one of our top growers on this site
Autos benefit from every amount of light oyu can give them. They don't even seem to have a "rest period" like there non-ruderalis cousins. So 24/0 would be best for them. However, for the photo-type plants, they *DO* have, and need a rest period. It is most healthy for the plant to be in darkness when the rest period begins. Thus the more darkness you can give them the better. With the GLR schedule, the plant gets 11 hours with which to go into and out of their rest period in darkness. Even if the light comes on during this 4-hour period, it doesn't seem to harm the plant in the least.

To better explain what I'm talking about, I will do this:

Plants have normal Day/Night processes that they perform... when the Sun is up, they devote most of that time to photosynthesis, converting radiant energy into chemical energy for better storage within the plant... Now, when the Sun goes down, they can use all that stored energy, to grow new cells both above and below the soil, and make repairs to any damage they have received. It is best not to have light on the leaves to detract from this process, because when this happens, growth can slow, and repairs are made much slower, because the day process starts up and plants are not good multi-taskers in this respect. Now, after the night process is complete, the plant will go into a rest period. This can be observed as a partial wilting, or drooping of the leaves, and usually happens on a 24 hour cycle. Light on the leaves can cause this rest period to be cut short, or not exist at all.

In humans this is known as sleep deprivation. For one day, or two, it's not all that harmful, but the human can be moody, and somewhat lethargic. Over a week, lack of sleep can start to cause physiological, and mental changes that are more serious. Delirium, psychosis, and hallucinations have been observed as effects in the mind. What happens in the body can be deadly as organs start to shut down. Kidney and liver function are first affected, and you know what happens when those two organs shut down.

Plants, while not as complex, and lacking a brain and organs of an animal, do have their own organs, and still suffer from lack of their rest period. Given an extended period of time, although in plants it's much longer, they will start to show more, and more serious effects of lack of darkness for their rest period. Some studies have even shown a complete cessation of growth, and even death of the plant altogether after a long period of time. It just gives out and shuts down.

Now, the good news is that it takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to shift from night process and/or rest period into the day process. The 1 hour of light in the middle of the dark period is not enough to rouse the plant into day operations, but it is enough to break the flower cycle by destroying the hormone responsible. This gives the plant 12 hours for day process, and 12 hours for night process, and for the rest period. This results in a much more healthy plant, and we all know a healthy plant is a rapidly growing plant.
I hope that I've cleared things up for you a bit.

As far as the so called "Photoperiod" plants, allow me to shed some dark on the subject. Those that are not auto-flowering rely on the dark period to build up the correct amount of hormone that causes the flowering cycle of life. That hormone is destroyed by light. This is what causes the misconception that it is the length of the day that causes flower, when it is actually the length of the night that allows the hormone to build to a point that it saturates the correct cells, and causes the plant to shift into end-of-life. This has been found to happen with as little as 10 hours of dark. So as you can see from this finding, that is is actually not the light, but the dark allowing the hormone to build enough, that causes the shift into flower.

info was provided to me via pm from jandre
 
nice info smokes,

thats possibly why my plants grew like crazy in them 48 hours, plus its why young plants stretch when their in the shade, they can sense the light source but clearly are in the shade so they grow to reach the light,

jandre provided me with the info above, glr worked well for me when i tried it and i did have vigourous growth and plants seemed very healthy, but because i been growing autos i have not used it since but when this auto cheese is finished ill give it a try,

does anyone have any idea why my kc45 auto this time round ended up 3 times the size of my other kc 45 autos, the buds on the one i harvested where huge compared to the other 5 kc 45's i grew, the others where grown under 20-4 from start to finish, the one i just harvested was grown 12-12 from seed, yet it grew taller, wider and had much bigger buds,

i was thinking along the lines of this,
say an auto grown under 24-0, well thats getting 24 hours of light per 24 hours, meaning the plant is 24 hours of light old per 24 hours,
the auto under 12-12 means its getting 12 hours of light per 24 meaning it takes 2 days to get 24 hours of light,

now my kc45 auto grown under 12-12 took an extra 2 weeks to start flowering and just over 3 weeks longer to harvest, nearly up to 4 weeks longer to grow than the 5 plants of the same strain i grew before, all was grown in same size pot, followed same nute schedule but took over 3 weeks longer to finish and was 3 times the size at least of the last kc45s

so did giving it less light per 24 hours mean it had to grow longer to get same amount of light as a plant under 24-0,
so lets say a plant needs 240 hours of light to complete its life cycle, so under 24-0 it would be done in 10 days, under 12-12 it would be double this at 20 days,

so do autos flower due to age in days or due to age in the amount of light hours it well get, all autos i have grown under either 20-4 or 24-0 have ended up less than 1ft high and produced very little at harvest, this last auto under 12-12 grew bigger and better than any auto i have grown.
its just an idea, im probably totally wrong but do autos flower due to age in days or age in light hours, if its light hours then the dark period is allowing the plant to get bigger than it would if given constant light,

or was this juts a energetic seed out of the 10 i bought, i got 3 seeds left, all the buds smell the same and look the same, but this last harvest the buds are fat and much much bigger than the last 5 i harvested,

im just looking on that site about the led's also, thanks for the link,
 
here some pics,

its pics of seeds, more seeds and even more seeds,

i can even tell my future by looking at these seeds, the bud gods have told me they see many plants in my future, i some how agree with them, their smiling down on me,
since ive started growing i have only have had 2 seeds that did not sprout, now ive had seeds sprout and not grow, but this was when i was using paper towel method, since been told that planting seeds directly in soil will give higher germination rates, i plant my seeds about 4 or 5ml below the surface, some sprout in 2 days some sprout in 10, but all sprout and grow, the only one that died on me did sprout but i was eager to check if it was growing so dug down in the soil and found the seed had sprouted, i covered it back up and it just died,
so dont ever dig down to check seeds, its risky and does cause problems, they will sprout just give them time, ive had some seeds take a bit longer than 10days, but once they break through the soil they grow like crazy, i got to say i think this method is much better than paper towel method, transplanting seeds causes stress, the microscopic hairs on the root get damaged and can cause problems, not all the time but can cause problems, i have used paper towel method and find it does work well, but growing in soil seems to make them sprout a bit quick and seem more healthy when they start growing,

so here is the seeds that i have been storing for a while, i do have more but they need removing from the buds as their still drying,
my auto purple is now making seeds, i used pollen from a banana on one of my harvested fem plants, the pistils on the bud i put the pollen on have now died and shirvled, the auto is still young so these seeds will be ready before the plant is due to harvest so will need to catch them as they fall out, only put pollen on one bud so far

PICT3042.JPG

PICT3043.JPG

PICT3043.JPG

PICT3044.JPG

PICT3045.JPG

PICT3046.JPG

PICT3047.JPG


the big pile of seeds are unknown, when i started crossing i didnt plan on getting this many seeds and sort of never wrote down what they was, so its a jumble of unknown seeds, not even had chance to grow any out yet, all the others i have grown at some point, i know all crosses where only done with female plants i liked, if i didnt like the look of it then i didnt cross with it,

so now im not going to do much crossing, im work with crossing an auto to get some auto seeds or auto fem seeds if i can pull it off,
the other cross id like to do is a purple strain that grows purple under normal conditions so got plenty of pollen now from ken estes gpd,
it will be crossed with the purple cheese auto so hopefully the 2 purples might come out and make a decent purple plant,

apart from them 2 crosses i wont be doing anymore for a while, i can clone what ever i want to keep around for future grows and future crosses, but for now i got more seeds than i can grow out so got plenty to be getting on with for a while,
 
thanks both,
plenty to keep me growing for years, just wish i could grow outdoors but we just dont get a good summer here, so indoors it is,
plus i keep buying strains i like the look of from herbies, strains i have smoked in the past and liked like the jack flash, problem is i got to wait now to plant them as i dont have enough room for more plants,

id love to try outdoor growing, but last time i planted 2 seedlings outside they turned yellow and stretched like crazy, so left them where they was and gave up on outdoor growing, maybe next sprind ill find a good spot and sprinkle a few seeds here and their, maybe some will grow.

thanks for the reps
 
@harley, you know the led link, well when i click on the uk part of the site it takes me to fleebay and shows that everything comes from china,
so how does the free led work, do you buy some then they send you a free light with the order, cant seem to see how it works on their site, but i know when i click on the uk link it takes me to the well known auction site and all the lights listed say from china under neath each pic,

try clicking on uk at the top of their site and you will see what i mean,
 
hope hiker didnt mind me copying this from jandres journal but its some more info about what we was discussing with lighting schedules and glr
Many (perhaps most or all?) of the plants growth processes are controlled by hormones. These hormones react to environmental stimulus and this leads to the plant responding. One example is gravitropism. We see this when we bend and break plants to promote branching. The plant makes a growth inhibiting hormone at all active growth points. This hormone always travels down. This is why, if left to it's own devices, cannabis will form the classic christmas tree shape.

Flowering, in response to the change in light cycle, also happens due to hormones. In this case, the hormones are photosensitive. They decay when exposed to light. It takes ~12 hours of uninterrupted darkness for the flowering hormone(s) to reach the threshold that triggers the plant to shift to making flowers. So whenever I think about photoperiods, I care more about how long the dark cycle is.

Here is the way I explain it in my head... At each node, the plant is making new cells. Some are stem cells. Some are leaf cells. This happens at every node. What type of cell it grows into is controlled by hormones. I think this also where the flowering hormones are being created. When there is enough of the flowering hormone around, ie it's been dark for 12 hours, these flowering hormones are able to overpower the other influences telling what type of cell to create. Kinda like it's a factory that gets told what to make over a speaker system. They can't 'hear' the instruction to flower until it gets 'loud' enough.

GLR works because it doesn't allow that flowering hormone to build up to a high enough level. If it normally takes 12 straight hours to get to that threshold, GLR let's the plant get to that threshold minus however much of the hormones decay in an hour. It's essentially a 13/11 schedule, but by moving one hour to the middle of the dark period, you can keep the plant in veg more reliably. In theory you could put a couple half hours in there, or put the hour a couple hours in or a couple before they wake up. All I think that matters is you don't allow 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness. I think the 12/1 GLR schedule came out of a compromise between power savings and hindering growth rates. It's also very easy to visualize the schedule by looking at the type of timers most of us use.

its me again now,
so glr works so well because the plant is getting more dark hours than 18-6, 20-4 and 24-0, in fact 24-0 is doing more harm than good to the plants, it causes problems with clones fading after so long, ive not used 24-0 for a grow, i have used it for clones and my clones seemed ok but info on the net suggests that clones would root quicker if given some rest period such as 20-4,

so clearly the night hours benefits the plant a lot more than not having a night period,

for weeks i been searching the net for an answer, some top growers like jorge cervantes say these plants can grow under 24-0 and is the best method to use, but then their are many top growers who say 24-0 just stresses the plant and does not help with making the plant grow quicker,
i was pretty much on the fence but the more i read the more i found that 24-0 is doing more harm than good,
so when my autos are done ill be using glr for my regular plants, i used it in the past but stopped using it due to autos, i was getting more growth under glr than 20-4 so will give glr another try this time round,
i know plants show sex a lot sooner under glr and many growers have thought their plants are flowering under glr but their not actually flowering their just showing sex and getting loaded with the flowering hormone, its why they dont stretch so much when flipped to flower and why the start to flower a lot sooner than not using glr,
 
i just removed my last flowering plant from the grow room to give it its 12 hours of dark as the grow light is now on veg schedule, i just had a good look over it and the inner buds at the bottom of the plant are growing lots of banans, for anyone looking for bananas on their plants the place to look is where the stem of the bud meets the branch, my bananas are growing where the stem meets the branch on the inner and lower buds,

so tomorrow when i take it out the dark ill harvest it, then while the buds dry these bananas will get ripe and be ready to collect and use for future fem seed production, never noticed them before but never looked this closely at the inner buds,

now the reason i have left this plant nearly 3 weeks longer than it needs is because the trichs are all cloudy with the odd amber trich, but heres the problem, the pistils on the main buds are still white and not showing signs of turning brown, but the pistils on the small buds are turning brown, so not sure whats going on, the buds have not changed in 2 weeks so not sure why the main buds are still showing healthy pistils,

but its ready to harvest so down it comes, thats the last of my flowering plants, then onto my next grow,
 
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