My very 1st Grow- Northern Lights

ilikebike said:
Edit: when i think of 'light fight' i think of a guy with a 4 ft florescent strip and a guy with a hps ballast going at it in a 50's style type of movie knife fight lol

It's more like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker going mano a mano with light sabers! You can decide who's whom.

I knew about the Inverse Square Law when I was 10 years old, HighFlyin5. Perhaps you didn't see the chart I posted. Where is your backup?

Wow you think a 45,000 lumen 400w HPS is equivalent to 8 25w CFLS? Sorry friend but you might want to do some math...it would take around 28.125 CFLS to equal the same lumens as the 400w hps

OOPS, you caught me, HighFlyin5!, My bad! I meant 32 25W bulbs. I was in such a hurry, I got sloppy. I'm great at mathematics, but terrible at arithmetic! It takes 16 CFL bulbs (16 X 25W = 400W ) to generate 400W. Since a 400W HPS is twice as efficient, you would 32 25W CFL bulbs to equal a 400W HPS. Thanks for pointing that out!

My Hortilux 400W HPS is rated at 55,000 Lumens. My 25W CFL's are rated at 1600 Lumens. That means it would take

55,000 / 1600 = 34.5 25W CFL's to equal my Hortilux.

Anyway, hopefully we can put this to rest. After all, we're guests in Princess' Livingroom, so we should answer her questions, not ours.

I think enough people have answered you nutrients questions, Princess. The two you mentioned are fine.

When you talk about CFL bulbs, just mention the actual wattage, i.e, you probably have 23W CFL bulbs which are equivalent to a 100W incandescant bulb. Nobody uses incandescent bulbs for growing anymore (do they?) and it gets confusing saying 100W. The 23W CFL bulbs I have produce 1600 Lumens, which is what yours do, so I guess you have 23W CFLs.

You should pick up a couple more. I'm using 8 CFL bulbs along with my 400W HPS. Four of the bulbs I'm using to supplement the HPS, the other four are in a veg room. I can get a four pack of 23W CFLs for about $16 at my hardware superstore, so they're cost-effective.

Even though I'm a HID bulb nazi, I grudgingly admit CFLs work just fine. It's just the 60's Hippie in me that likes the "natural feel" of HID over CFL.

The way I came up with 12" for a 100W HPS was by starting with the 18" I'm using for my 400W HPS and then since 100W is 4 X less, you can halve the distance (Inverse Square Law) which would make 9" a safe distance. To be conservative, I said 12" to leave a little room for error. Better safe than sorry!

MissBud, love the chart you posted! I can't believe you can put a 400W HID lamp 6" from your canopy. 18" is the closest I can get without burning the tops of my plants. Do you have a mega-fan to keep the heat down or do you apply sunscreen to your gals?

Regarding the 7.1 pH. That is a bit high. Add 1/4 tsp of lemon juice OR 1/4 tsp 5% vinegar per gallon of water. Lemon juice and 5% vinegar have about the same pH (2.5), so either one is fine. (Don't use both!) That will bring your pH down to about 6.0, which should be perfect. Spending extra money to buy pH UP or pH DOWN is a waste as far as I'm concerned.

I was saving the following chart for an epic post I've been planning for my journal about pH. With so many people using pH meters, it's probably not so relevant anymore, but I may post it anyway for those who find this sort of stuff interesting. You're the first one to see it!

pH Dosage Chart

pHChartFinal.jpg

I've never seen a chart like this anywhere else, so I created it myself using antilogarithms. I actually did it by hand as I don't have a spreadsheet on my computer. The chart gives the dosage in tsp/gal AND ml/Liter for those using metric. The way the chart works is as follows:

Say your tap water has a pH of 8.2 and you want the pH to be 6.0. If you look at the chart at the pH Value of 8.2, you will see that you need .38 tsp/gal to bring the pH to neutral (7.0). Then if you look at the pH Value of 6.0, you will see that you need .24 tsp/gal to bring the pH of neutral water from 7.0 to 6.0.

Therefore, you need to use .38 + .24 = .62 tsp/gal to bring down the pH from 8.2 to 6.0, or roughly slightly more that 1/2 tsp per gallon. Using this chart, you can figure out what dosage you need in 15 seconds. This is only to bring the pH down, which is the most common need. I didn't try to create a similar chart to raise pH.
 
Amazing! :adore:
Thanks ggrant! and your right about my lights. i had her at an 18 watt i think and just moved her up to i think 26w? Somewhere around there. thanks for all the help! new pics to come! hopefully she does more growing with the increased wattage. At this stage with the next transplant should i keep it normal or relatively humid? i didn't keep it humid when she was a seedling so now that she's vegging will it matter?
 
Hey Princess,

I found two very good journals that answer your question, but first I want to apologize to HighFlyin5 for being such a hothead! Sometimes I spend hours collecting the data for my posts. One of my recent posts on my own journal took several days to research and 6 hours just to cut, paste and edit. So when someone contradicts me (especially if they're right!), it drives me nuts. Then I have to check my research or calculations again. So, sorry, man. No hard feelings, I hope! Peace out.

Back to business. I've never worried about humidity. Where I live, it's fairly dry, especially in the winter with the furnace on all the time. Except for clones and maybe seedlings, I always figured the lower the humidity the better. I thought the plants would transpire more, thereby drawing more nutrients from the roots, absorbing more carbon dioxide and growing leaves or resin glands faster.

This isn't exactly true, but low humidity seems to be the way to go.

Here are the two journals I was referring to:

First, the plants grow in a wide temperature range and humidity. In the wild, there is air movement and the roots are in the ground, two key elements to the answer to the question.

As long as the roots stay below 80 degrees and above 50 degrees F you are fine. The plant can take well over 115 if the roots are not overheated.

The humidity issue can be a problem in flower, but air movement and exchange is the key to this also...just like nature's wind. I had a week of 90% humidity and was very worried I would get bud mold on my almost done plants. Fortunately my fans exchanged enough air that there was no stagnation to allow mold to form.

So, there is no 'ideal' temperature or humidity, but there are factors that must be considered during a grow.

Temperature, Humidity and Plant Growth
Temperature and relative humidity are perhaps the most common measures of atmospheric conditions, especially on radio and television forecasts. The reason is that they are probably the easiest to understand at first glance.

Relative humidity, describes how close the air is to being saturated with water. When the relative humidity is 100%, the air is completely saturated (and it is usually raining outside). The lower the percentage is below 100%, the drier the air is.

To date, there has been little positive evidence to correlate the relative humidity with marijuana's potency. However, a slightly lower humidity, in the 50 to 70 percent region, does appear to produce plants with slightly more potent buds than those grown with a higher relative humidity.

A dry atmosphere seems to produce more potent plants because, when the humidity is about 50% or less, plant development is more compact, and the leaves tend to have thinner blades. Conversely, when the air is humid, plant growth is faster, and the leaves develop luxuriously, with wider blades. The advantage to the plant is that the wider blades have more surface area and can therefore transpire more water. So, plants grown with a lower relative humidity have thinner leaves and use less water. The higher potency may be due to the less leaf tissue for a given amount of cannabinoids and resin glands.

The temperature also influences the shape and size of the plant and leaves. At higher temperatures, the leaves tend to grow closer together and under cooler temperatures, the leaves are larger, have wider blades, and are spaced further apart. Warmer temperatures seems to yield slightly more potent plants for the same reason as a drier atmosphere does.

However, differences in potency caused by any of the growth factors (light, nutrients, water, temperature, humidity, etc) are small compared to differences caused by the variety (hereditary genetic structure) and full maturation. For example, the humidity in Jamaica, Colombia, Thailand, and many other countries associated with fine marijuana is relatively high and averages at about 80 percent.

So, you should try to keep the atmosphere as dry as possible. The atmosphere in heated or air-conditioned homes is already dry (usually about 15 to 40 percent). For this reason, many growers sow their seed so that the plants mature during the winter if the home is heated or in mid-summer if it is air-conditioned.
 
I agree we are guests. I apologize princess...and for the record I never disputed the efficiency of hps in general just the 100w hps does not put out enough lumens to justify buying vs cfls therefore cfls are more cost efficient. As it would be more costly to purchase the hps ballast and bulb more or less was my point.
 
Its cool bro no hard feelings its good to debate things because eventually the right answer will come from someone as long as its in a mature manner I'm all good with it brother sometimes I feel the same way when I'm contradicted its natural :thumb:
 
Good looking out twelve! However at the time i had just transplanted and dumped plenty of dirt on her haha when i watered her i tried washing off the majority of it but a few little flecks were still on her. I held a flashlight on and under the leaves and sifted through the soil just in case. No pest yet! :) Thanks for keeping a close eye though!
 
Hey Princess,

I found two very good journals that answer your question, but first I want to apologize to HighFlyin5 for being such a hothead! Sometimes I spend hours collecting the data for my posts. One of my recent posts on my own journal took several days to research and 6 hours just to cut, paste and edit. So when someone contradicts me (especially if they're right!), it drives me nuts. Then I have to check my research or calculations again. So, sorry, man. No hard feelings, I hope! Peace out.

I agree we are guests. I apologize princess...and for the record I never disputed the efficiency of hps in general just the 100w hps does not put out enough lumens to justify buying vs cfls therefore cfls are more cost efficient. As it would be more costly to purchase the hps ballast and bulb more or less was my point.

I gave you both a like and +reps for great sportsmanship!!! ggrant!!! I know how you feel!!! I never like to be proven wrong either brotha!!! so I get where you were coming from!!!

:peacetwo:

PP!!!
The Bio Juice from BPN has worm castings in it along with other beneficial stuff!!!

Farmer's Pride Organic Bio-Juice 0.5-0.1-0.6 is a 100% organic formula derived from fermented sea-kelp tea, concentrated alfalfa tea, worm castings, and molasses. Bio-Juice is rich in trace elements, amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, natural growth enhancers and natural plant hormones including tricontanol. Bio-Juice helps to stimulate the soil's microbial population by providing just what they need for vigorous growth. Adding Bio-Juice to your feeding program will aid in the absorption of vital plant nutrients and in the development of healthy root systems.

did you add any of the organic supplements with your Farmer's Pride order???

Hope this helps!!!

:peacetwo: to all!!!
 
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