Welcome, everyone, to my new journal, and apologies for the slight delay in getting this started as we were finalizing all the details.
As the title says, this is a sponsored grow featuring the Kind K5 XL1000 LED grow light, and growing Bubba Hash and Orient Express by Ace Seeds in Doc Bud's High Brix Kit soil.
Let's start with some preliminaries on the grow light and we can get into some more detail in future posts.
THE LIGHT
When I was first asked to do a grow with the XL1000, I didn't know anything about the light and was a little bit hesitant since I'm happy with my current lighting setup, which consists of just over 900w of LED's and I saw that the XL1000 was only pulling about 630w from the wall. The last thing I wanted to do was to mess up a harvest by using an inferior light and was very reluctant to reduce actual wattage.
I've grown with LED's exclusively for close to ten years and am fairly knowledgeable on the subject. As I did a little bit of research on this light, I found it had several featured I was very anxious to try.
The XL1000 won the High Times Gear of the Year Award for four consecutive years from 2014-2017, and it won the High Times STASH (Significant Technology Achievement In Secretive Horticulture) Award in 2017 for "Best LED Innovation". So, right away I figured it had to be a decent light.
When I saw the list of features this light has, I was truly impressed and understood why that had won all those awards!
I'll cover these features in detail in a future post, but let's start with what really attracted my interest in this grow light.
The feature I'm most anxious to "play" with is what Kind calls their "Mother Earth Timing Function". The XL1000 has a 12-band full spectrum, including both UV & IR, split into three channels/banks, that can be individually controlled from 0-100% intensity on a built-in timer, which allows the spectrum to be customized based on the plants specific growth stage.
This allows the ability to mimic the actual sun by "waking" the plants up in the morning with gradually increasing light intensity, and then gradually putting them to sleep at night with gradually decreasing light intensity.
The XL1000 has a mix of 3w and 5w chips and each LED has a secondary lens to increase canopy penetration. And, it's a big light! This sucker is 26" x 20" amd weighs in at a whopping 36 lbs, so it's not for an unsturdy tent. It is, however, big enough to cover a 5' x 5' tent for veg and a 4' x 4' for flower.
All the functions can be controlled and programmed with an included remote, which I've already found to be a VERY nice feature!
The last feature that really attracted my interest in this light is that is uses "Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Dimming". With most grow lights, when you're not running at full light intensity, the light is still drawing full power from the wall. With the PWM, when you run the light at lower intensity, the light is actually drawing less power from the wall.
So, when you consider the ability to use lower intensity on seedlings, clones and young plants; and use increasing/decreasing intensity to wake the plants and put them back to sleep; plus the efficiency of the secondary lens, I think this light should be able to perform as well as (or, maybe better than?) my current setup AND at a pretty significantly reduced cost of electricity.
Here is a good video overview of the Kind K5 XL1000:
THE STRAINS
While I wasn't planning on running Bubba Hash until the next round, since Ace Seeds is also a sponsor, I thought it would be good to include them in this sponsored journal.
Ace is truly one of the top breeders in the industry and are dedicated to preserving and breeding pure landrace strains. While they are probably best known for some of the most powerful and pure Sativas on the market such as Panama & Malawi (both of which I plan on growing soon, along with their Purple Haze x Malawi cross - all of for which I already have seeds!), since I was starting this round with seedlings instead of established plants almost ready to flip (as I usually do), I opted for the shorter flowering times of Indicas for this round!
So, on March 1st, I started soaking three Ace Bubba Hash seeds and three Ace Orient Express seeds, all feminized, planted them after about a 12-hour soak, and within a few days I had six new babies for a 100% germination rate!
Orient Express is an 60% Sativa/40% Indica F1 hybrid cross of China Yunan x Vietnam Black with reported 16% THC. Ace does claim that Orient Express is one of its most popular varieties providing a "warm, clean and pleasant sativa effect without paranoia or anxiety."
While I had no immediate plans to run Orient Express and there are several other Ace strains I was looking forward to running first, I picked the Orient Express because it has a similar finish time to the Bubba Hash of 8-10 weeks.
The Bubba Hash I was planning on running next round anyways, so I'm just starting them a little early and I'm hoping to find a keeper from one of the three plants. The Bubba Hash is a 90% Indica cross between Bubba Kush and the 90's hash plant. It's supposed to be very good for treating pain, anxiety, and insomnia; and, in fact, the Bubba Hash was recommended to my by
Brother Neikodog as a potential strain to help treat my Dad's pain which is why it was already planned! It has an estimated finish time of 8-9 weeks.
THE SOIL MIX
Two Bubba Hash and two Orient Express will be grown in #10's and a 3rd Bubba Hash will be in a SIP that's about the equivalent of a #5, for a total of five plants to be flowered. Currently, all five are in #1's vegging for a few more weeks before up-potting. The plants are being grown using Doc Bud's High Brix Kit in 2nd run soil and there is some great microbial activity going on so, hopefully, we can really push these plants to their potential!
More details on all the gear and lots of pics to follow. Feel free to ask any questions along the way and I'll do my best to answer them.
Happy Harvests!
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