Haight Solid State vs. H.G.LED

Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

I'm taking update pics tonight and I'll check coverage at 3". My tents are 32" X 32", so there's only 6" clear on each side.

The HSS light, since it throws a wide beam, depends more on reflective walls to bounce light down to the lower growth rather than vertical penetration, so it may still "perfuse" the plants with light very nicely at 3". It's remarkable how even the spread of light is from the HSS. The 22" X 22" reflector I've been using with my 250 HID lit up the 8 sq ft tent very evenly, but the HSS seems to fill the area just as nicely, albeit with an Area 51 glow ;).
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

I dropped mine to 3" and had to back off to about 9". Slight burn on tips of top growth. Haven't reached full flower yet. Few more weeks.
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Looking good SS....

I've had the leaves touch the light during flowering and have never seen any bleaching or burning. I stay higher during veg (12 inches or more) because when I tried closer the plants seemed overly compact - at least to me (compared to natural sunlight in a greenhouse growth pattern).

But that compactness may be good, I don't know. I think since the LEDs lack a lot of wasted white light that causes burn - you can push it further and the plants still stay healthy but compact.

I have some mother plants that I just want to grow slowly. One super nice effect with the HSS lights is that even way off to the sides the mother plants just grow slowly and don't stretch. They still grow towards the light, but they don't get leggy.
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Hey SS,

I took another look at your pictures and I have seen the slight wrinkling of the leaves and I think it is the burn you see with LEDs to close. Chances are both manufactures want you to really push it for the contest and both lights should really be a little higher. I can confirm that effect goes away when you back off the lights. It's one of the reasons I do veg at a higher distance.

It doesn't seem to do any real harm and I haven't seen it during flower when the plants are more mature.
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

sfhaze said:
Hey SS,

I took another look at your pictures and I have seen the slight wrinkling of the leaves and I think it is the burn you see with LEDs to close. Chances are both manufactures want you to really push it for the contest and both lights should really be a little higher. I can confirm that effect goes away when you back off the lights. It's one of the reasons I do veg at a higher distance.

It doesn't seem to do any real harm and I haven't seen it during flower when the plants are more mature.
Click to expand...

What height would you suggest for veg?
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Nice healthy plants there, SS!

kevin.n said:
Don't want to get ahead of your grow, but at 3" footprint can't be much wider than the unit...
Click to expand...

You might be surprised--! :)

Setting Sun said:
Nobody's going to chime in on whether LED's allow more control over plant height than HID?

thanks for all the good discussion peeps!
Click to expand...

Yep, dialing in the blue/red ratios can be a big help in the garden, going forward.

The HGL lights don't have a direct way to do that; raise 'em up to induce stretch, lower 'em to keep them compact. The issue with that is you reduce all intensities to your plants equally, which can slow down flowering (or rather, reduce yields), too.

The HSS has high/low power switches for the red and blue/white, allowing you to switch the blue to low power (inducing stretch when needed during weeks 1-3 of flowering, for example - nice if you're trying to fill out a screen) and still keep the red on high power for producing larger buds. Or, start them out with mostly blue light to increase your ratio of female plants from seed until sexing has taken place (and, keep them nice and compact).

The Lumigrow has fully variable power knobs on both spectrums for dialing this in precisely, too. A little more expensive, but you get what you pay for, I suppose... I've seen growers on other forums use these to great effect to add a bit of stretch when needed to separate calyx sites a bit. Even tweaking for just a couple of days can get you exactly the profile you're looking for. Very cool!

------------------

Not to mention using LEDs to manipulate the Phytochrome FIR response idea from Irish's thread - though that's kind of been superseded by the DIY Direct revolution (starting from around post#406) that appears to be going on, judging from the last couple of pages... ;)

Lots of possibilities, as you mentioned!

Regards,

-TL
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Setting Sun said:
MH would work better than HPS for keeping plants short if you can run MH bulbs.
Click to expand...

True. But MH doesn't work very well while I'm flowering.

Setting Sun said:
... a little stunting may be something that we could exploit to our benefit...
Click to expand...

Stuntin' like my daddy!
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

1234a5678b said:
What height would you suggest for veg?
Click to expand...

I start newly transplanted clones at about 12 inches but that's with the PPF-400, so looking at these with the PPF-800 I'd back off another 3 or 4 inches but I'm not really sure. For veg it doesn't seem to be all that important to be real close but it does help during flower.
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Day 21 veg

IMG_3957.JPG

IMG_3960.JPG

IMG_3962.JPG

IMG_3966.JPG

IMG_3967.JPG

IMG_3972.JPG

IMG_3977.JPG

IMG_3975.JPG


IMG_3986.JPG

IMG_3979.JPG

IMG_3990.JPG

IMG_3992.JPG

IMG_4000.JPG
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Looks Great!:bongrip:
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

IMG_3998.JPG

IMG_4003.JPG

IMG_4007.JPG

IMG_40121.JPG


IMG_4023.JPG

IMG_4024.JPG


IMG_4020.JPG



Per competition rules outlined in the opening post, the weakest plant in each group will be culled today at 3 weeks veg.

The plants culled will be HGL 2 and HSS 3. HGL 2 is the outlier in the HydroGrowLED group by virtue of being the shortest and most compact plant in the group with possibility of being a different pheno, and HSS 3 is the outlier in the Haight Solid State group due to being the slowest grower and smallest plant in that group.

The pots finally got light and dry and I gave them their first feeding yesterday. I went with 1/2 strength Fox Farms schedule at 3 weeks veg, which works out to 1.5 tsp of Grow Big and 1 Tbsp of Big Bloom per gallon of RO water, and each tent took 2 gallons. The PH of the nute solution was 6.4. PH of the soil runoff was 5.9.

I did not add Cal-Mag to this feeding because I only watered until I got light runoff, so I did not flush out a lot of minerals. The next watering it will be just water, Cal-Mag, and Maxi-Crop seaweed. The pots should dry out faster now that the plants are bigger. I think next time I would go with 50/50 FFOF and Perlite.

The tentative plan is to switch them to 12/12 at 4 weeks veg next Wednesday! :slide:
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

sfhaze said:
Looking good SS....

I've had the leaves touch the light during flowering and have never seen any bleaching or burning. I stay higher during veg (12 inches or more) because when I tried closer the plants seemed overly compact - at least to me (compared to natural sunlight in a greenhouse growth pattern).

But that compactness may be good, I don't know. I think since the LEDs lack a lot of wasted white light that causes burn - you can push it further and the plants still stay healthy but compact.
Click to expand...

I think that's an extremely cool thing. With HID lighting, it's really the plant that drives the bus as far as what distance the light is at. Mostly, we adjust the distance of the HID light to compensate for the plant's growth, whereas with LED lights, it seems like we can adjust the light to determine the plant's growth.

I have some mother plants that I just want to grow slowly. One super nice effect with the HSS lights is that even way off to the sides the mother plants just grow slowly and don't stretch. They still grow towards the light, but they don't get leggy.
Click to expand...


Yep, I can see how you could do that due to the coverage from the HSS light. A couple of autos on the periphery would probably do OK too.

sfhaze said:
Hey SS,

I took another look at your pictures and I have seen the slight wrinkling of the leaves and I think it is the burn you see with LEDs to close. Chances are both manufactures want you to really push it for the contest and both lights should really be a little higher. I can confirm that effect goes away when you back off the lights. It's one of the reasons I do veg at a higher distance.

It doesn't seem to do any real harm and I haven't seen it during flower when the plants are more mature.
Click to expand...

thank you for that observation, it makes a lot of sense. The HGL plants have more of that wrinkling and the HGL light has been down lower at 6".

I'm watching very carefully for any further wrinkling or burning.

thanks sfhaze, very helpful info!
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

The Lurker said:
Nice healthy plants there, SS!

Yep, dialing in the blue/red ratios can be a big help in the garden, going forward.
Click to expand...


Another excellent and informative post TL.

The instructions that came with the HSS light said to leave both switches set to "high", so I haven't played around with them at all on this grow, but thank you for mentioning the switches, and circumstances where the spectral tuning available on the HSS light may be useful.

I didn't get a chance tonight to check the coverage with the HSS light 3" off the canopy, but will do so soon.

take care TL ;)
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

The "sweet spot" with LED's where you have them close enough to avoid stretch but not too close is easier to play with than with HID because you don't have the same risk of burning your plants with heat from having the lights too close. I've read that having LED's too close can cause stunting, which doesn't seem like a good thing, but a little stunting may be something that we could exploit to our benefit once we develop a feel and better understanding of how plants grow under these lights.
Click to expand...

I've also seen photos of bud bleaching, where the tips go white, if the LED is too close
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

Very interesting. Thanks. Are those fans on top of the one light unit?
 
Re: 420 Consumer Reports Competition - Haight Solid State vs. Hydro Grow LED

The pots should dry out faster now that the plants are bigger. I think next time I would go with 50/50 FFOF and Perlite.

That's been one of my problems. The pots take half a week to dry out. Even when the plants get big. Was thinking of increasing the % of perlite, but is 50/50 to high.
 
Back
Top Bottom