Jon705's First Attempt at Organic SuperSoil Featuring TopLED's New COB LED Panel

[ronnie6690]

hey jon , love the fact your journals are always full of great information. you always do an excellent job explaining your techniques and methods. most of my growth as a grower has come from following along your journals. for that I want to thank you.
the work you do for us here in this community is outstanding. +reps for all you do.

 

[jon705]

Sorry Jon don't mean to question your methods. Thank you for taking the time to explain your methodology; not just how you do it but why you do it.

I like you.

no worries bro, were all here to learn, how else will you understand why I do what I do if you dont ask, sometimes I forget theres new members and growers following along with me and I forget to explain why I do something a certain way, I am a stoner after all and keep in mind just because its the way I like to do things doesnt mean its the right way to do things lol...I just do what works best for me through lots and lots and lots of trial and error, now that im into supersoil there will probably be lots and lots more

 

[jon705]

hey jon , love the fact your journals are always full of great information. you always do an excellent job explaining your techniques and methods. most of my growth as a grower has come from following along your journals. for that I want to thank you.
the work you do for us here in this community is outstanding. +reps for all you do.

Thanks brother, that means alot gonna come over and have a look in your neck of the woods right now its been awhile

 

[jon705]

Blue Hash, I decided to take her down, I ve been cutting out whole colas full of budrot for a few weeks now and I decided enoughs enough time to salvage something from her, I did it all yesterday and made hash and forgot to take pics sorry about that. I figured it was the best thing to do, hopefully this will help with the others ones in there that dont have it as bad. Heres a few nice macros and a few of the botritis for those that havent seen it before, its some real nasty shit. Next year the greenhouse will be out in the open away from the treeline, hopefully this helps keep the botritis to a minimum. Blue hash stalk, were gonna make a shandelier out of it for the man cave lol..its a gazebo at my neighbours, seems appropriate since we do all our trimming and most of our smaoking in there

random macros.

Botritis

 

[CascadianDank]

Blue hash stalk, were gonna make a shandelier out of it for the man cave lol..its a gazebo at my neighbours, seems appropriate since we do all our trimming and most of our smaoking in there

Thats a cool idea Id like to see pics when you get it done. I may have to save an outdoor stalk and make me one.

 

[Crawdaddy]

Budrot is terrible stuff.

 

[shottafire]

That is gonna be one of the coolest chandeliers ever made.

 

[Jay233]

Amazing photos jon!

I really appreciated how quickly you were able to recover those plants in flower...they look great!

 

[Cultivator]

i was wondering why u had the LED so high on the 2 plants. but i get what u are saying with the light intensity. i veg primarily with MH 600w bulbs but occasionally with hps. I have to admit ive never had a prob with the intensity of light and i usually have the lights around 18-24" above plants even when they are very young fresh out of the aerocloner.

So are u saying LED lights have a higher intensity? im so confused with LEDS. Firstly i am not tech minded, i can grow weed in any system u like these days but thats all im good at (apart from my fighting, fighting sun 6thoct BTW ).

id love to try LEDs in my small personal space in a 4x8 tent but where to start?

 

[LED Acolyte]

i was wondering why u had the LED so high on the 2 plants. but i get what u are saying with the light intensity. i veg primarily with MH 600w bulbs but occasionally with hps. I have to admit ive never had a prob with the intensity of light and i usually have the lights around 18-24" above plants even when they are very young fresh out of the aerocloner.

So are u saying LED lights have a higher intensity? im so confused with LEDS. Firstly i am not tech minded, i can grow weed in any system u like these days but thats all im good at (apart from my fighting, fighting sun 6thoct BTW ).

id love to try LEDs in my small personal space in a 4x8 tent but where to start?

LEDs put out light in a different way than HPS. LEDs are very directional; typically blasting out light straight down where as a bulb is a ball of light shooting off in every direction. Unlike bulbs LEDs can be focused and that's why we see them with different kinds of lenses at different angles. With an led light height can make a dramatic difference in light intensity because of this focusing effect and they don't have the heat stress issue of hps so you can get a lot closer. Get too close though and the light will be so intense it's actually bad for the plant.

As to where to start? Having done a fair bit of looking around myself I think Top Led is a strong contender. If they are what they say they are I can't see why anyone would buy anything else. They are the cheapest in some case by over a thousand dollars. It's pretty ridiculous. The smart buyer would wait and see but I don't think I'm going to. You could murder a 4x8 for about 1300 bucks from Top Led or 2-3 times that from other brands.

 

[Cultivator]

Money isnt an issue so i am flexible on ideas. The thing is i get fantastic results from my hid lighting. I dont know if i want to change even if there are benefits. I dont believe the leds would improve my yield or quality as im pulling big numbers of stickyness.

But as a commercial grower there could be benefits in costs to run, cooling rooms, and the life time of led over hid. I dont mind experimenting in my personal space as its for fun more than anything else and i use that space to scale up the good or scale down the bad in the real grows.

I have a set system that works and im reading that u need to run rooms at higher temps (85f canopy) and change the way u use nutes. but i dont know if this is bad info or good?

I dont mind paying a grand or 2 for leds if they work but its not like buying a ballast and bulb for couple hundred max. i can throw a few hundred away, but not a few thousand. plus the time of grow.


Having said all that im still going to try it cos im just like that. never even thought id dare say the word .....soil..... again till jon got me thinking. maybe my next journal will be led? Def looking to start a new journal but dont want to repeat same old stuff and need to time grows. really want to show a big one but after my recent run in with the law im a little reluctant, even though i didnt do it 'cough, cough'. We'll see what happens over coming weeks.

 

[LED Acolyte]

If money were no object I would get Area 51 because he uses CREE diodes. I don't think anyone else is doing that. It makes sense that his panels cost more because CREE costs more.

EDIT: I take that back Advanced LED uses some CREE diodes as well

 

[Cultivator]

what is that? what is the diff?

 

[LED Acolyte]

Area 51 is led grow light brand and CREE is a brand of LEDs. It is my understanding that CREE is the only American LED manufacturer and that the diodes are quite good but also very expensive. Most other LED grow light brands are going to use diodes that were made in China but I'm learning that's not always a bad thing.

 

[Cultivator]

i dont live in america. but im all for home grown. but fact is most of the best things are made abroad these days, not everything, but just cos something is manufactured in china or india dont make it shite. i dont like it cos makes people lose jobs in own country but i just want the best lol.

i need to do more reading.

Jon what was the crack with the fero LED's? and why did u change?

 

[LED Acolyte]

A lot of us have been burned on bullshit Chinese LEDs so that's why it's an issue. Thing is the "American" led grow lights are all components manufactured in china and then assembled in America and marked up 300%.

 

[jon705]

Money isnt an issue so i am flexible on ideas. The thing is i get fantastic results from my hid lighting. I dont know if i want to change even if there are benefits. I dont believe the leds would improve my yield or quality as im pulling big numbers of stickyness.

But as a commercial grower there could be benefits in costs to run, cooling rooms, and the life time of led over hid. I dont mind experimenting in my personal space as its for fun more than anything else and i use that space to scale up the good or scale down the bad in the real grows.

I have a set system that works and im reading that u need to run rooms at higher temps (85f canopy) and change the way u use nutes. but i dont know if this is bad info or good?

I dont mind paying a grand or 2 for leds if they work but its not like buying a ballast and bulb for couple hundred max. i can throw a few hundred away, but not a few thousand. plus the time of grow.


Having said all that im still going to try it cos im just like that. never even thought id dare say the word .....soil..... again till jon got me thinking. maybe my next journal will be led? Def looking to start a new journal but dont want to repeat same old stuff and need to time grows. really want to show a big one but after my recent run in with the law im a little reluctant, even though i didnt do it 'cough, cough'. We'll see what happens over coming weeks.

LedAcolyte got it right bro, if moneys no object you cant go wrong with area 51,(if this is promoting then please remove this post admins) I have exellent results with my lights and the new ones are alot better than these,Cree and Kessil are probably the 2 best diodes on the planet, they are both very expensive but ever since I joined this site I ve been preaching that when it comes to Led grow panels you get what you pay for.Im hoping...praying that Curso, Buck, and Bid get great results and TopLed proves me wrong, I'd like nothing better than to switch my entire grow to led for the cost of a couple area 51 panels but as of right now they are on the top of my list, as for TopLed...I cant say really, I havent grown with any of the other panels from TopLed that I would concider growing with, if I was in the market for new lights I wouldnt be looking at COB lights at all, I really like the idea of one large panel like mine per plant, there is another reason for you to concider led's to bro, no thermal footprint, that means the pigs cant see your grow from the sky, I dont know how things work in your neck of the woods but here thats how they find the majority of indoor grows, when you use traditional lighting your rooms look like roman candles on a nightvision screen, this isnt an issue with led's

 

[Cultivator]

U say no thermal footprint jon but from what i understand the room needs to operate around 85f? i currently run between 75-80f? so although lights give off less heat, u must have to increase temps in grow room???

Also u just said an LED panel per plant? At $1000 a plant? thats a huge some of money and if that is true its surely not worth the investment? If i run 4 plants dwc per 1000w hps and average 32-38oz per light with 2 weeks veg and that hps/hood/ballast sets me back £250 ($400ish) thers no comparisson unless the led can triple yield?

or am i missing something?

I no i say money is no drama but i spend money to make money, not lose it?

 

[Vegas flower]

if it was to far away the plants would be stretching bro.

From the picture it looks like the really intense light fades before it makes it to the plant. You have those strong pink cores of light on the wall and then that drops off before the top of the canopy. Is it possible it's getting enough light to not stretch but also not enough to thrive?

It deceiving in that little space bro, the reflectors send the light out at that angle, the bright spots are just the light bouncing off the wall, its not any brighter then at canopy level, look at the light on the back wall that is around 3 feet from the light, it doesnt fade at all as it gets closer to the floor. I am following the same rules with this light as my big panels, start the plants around 48 inches from the panels and let the plants grow up into the lights as they get used to the intensity, the plants are now maybe 34-36 inches from the panel, by the time the strech is done around day 21 of flower the plant will be around 18-22 inches from the panel. Theres a few growers here that question this tecnique but I think my results speak for themselves. On my holy grail run the lights were on movers at about 14 inches from the canopy, even on movers the lights were way to close, the pistils were burnt at the tips and curled away from the lights, the nugs were also alot smaller than they should of been. A healthy plant has pistils that stick pretty much straight up, if your lights are to close they will curl downwards away from the intense light, its a good thing to watch for when you grow with led's. Now I dont know if the Helios diodes in my are 51 lights are better than epistar or not, the epistar definetly look brighter but brighter doesnt nessesarily mean better either.

Sorry Jon don't mean to question your methods. Thank you for taking the time to explain your methodology; not just how you do it but why you do it.

I like you.

Great info here.

I finished one plant by putting My LED with directional lenses at the top of my tent and never moved it for the duration. This only put it max 38" away from the plant and the top cola on the auto was within 8" at the end of its growth. I never saw a stretch with the light that far away. Now in the second round I have noticed with the light so far away the lower buds are/were very small. I have since lowered the light down to 24"-18" and now 16" from top colas and I have seen significant size increase to the lowers.

My question is why wouldn't we want to take advantage of the lower temps of the LEDs and as long as it works within our footprint have the lights as close to the plants as is healthy?

 

[jon705]

i dont live in america. but im all for home grown. but fact is most of the best things are made abroad these days, not everything, but just cos something is manufactured in china or india dont make it shite. i dont like it cos makes people lose jobs in own country but i just want the best lol.

i need to do more reading.

Jon what was the crack with the fero LED's? and why did u change?

I didnt bro, turns out Fero was just a rebrander, he bought his lights from area 51