Weasel Forges Ahead

Harvested another Chocolate Mint tonight. I should have left it another week but... oh well, I didn’t
Choc Mint 5

Choc Mint 5




Harvested a La Niña yesterday. These plants grow to be quite gangly, with buds like little pompoms spaced about 4” or more apart. I’ve gotten into the habit of using my amazing basket weaving skills to force them into more compact shapes. Grown naturally they’re pretty low yielders- but when woven together and shrunk down they yield well.

La Niña

La Niña


La Niña

La Niña


The one branch died and dried on the vine after I accidentally broke it.
La Niña

La Niña


La Niña

La Niña


La Niña

La Niña


La Niña

La Niña


I had another one in my greenhouse all summer which got quite large, in a three gallon pot.
La Niña

La Niña


I repotted it last week, did the weavey thing, and stuck it in flowering. Accidentally burnt a bunch of the top under the light right after that so that helps with the size too...
 
Ok,, oh, first,, your plants are just so perty,, the buds anyway,, plants look a bit rattled indeed.

MMax fert for m.c. Works out, in metric, to 12.7g per eight litres

I have been feeding at 14g per eight litres,, and as mentioned I supplement with Cal/mag as well

TThem spots,, i had/have them as well. Identical. Tho not near as much

LLooks like thrip damage,without the thrips.

MMy plants are much improved lately as I mentioned,, so i will have to look for that damage again today

KKarma sent friend,, a bot o snow reaching the valley bottom this morning. still some harvesting to do from outside plants. I have a white widow all purpling up right now with the fluffiest prettiest pinky purple buds but so leafy and a nightmare to trim. but another plant for the private reserve I think

Q for you weaseley,, would you ever buy an hps light these days?
 
nivek said:
14g per eight litres,
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that’s about 6.6 grams per gallon, so just at the high end of the scale but not quite off the charts yet.

nivek said:
would you ever buy an hps light these days?
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Oh yes definitely if one of mine broke.or something. I don’t really have space to add any new ones though. I wouldn’t mind replacing at least one of the hps with LED, but when I look at them I never feel very enthusiastic about the inflated prices. I also need a certain amount of heat, and I’m happy with the lights I have. The limiting factors in my grow haven’t been my lights- lately it’s mostly been nutrient issues, and grower error/laziness.
 
For example, looking at Budget LED’s lights right now, a 500w light costs around $1000. For some diodes stuck onto a bit of aluminium, a couple wires and a large wall-wart.
I’ll wait another year I think. All the cheap LED novelty trinkets I see in the dollar store this year- things like that would have cost a bloody fortune a few years back. Now they’ve got everything but LED toilet paper in there, and they probably have that too but someone already hoarded it.
 
Weaselcracker said:
For example, looking at Budget LED’s lights right now, a 500w light costs around $1000. For some diodes stuck onto a bit of aluminium, a couple wires and a large wall-wart.
I’ll wait another year I think. All the cheap LED novelty trinkets I see in the dollar store this year- things like that would have cost a bloody fortune a few years back. Now they’ve got everything but LED toilet paper in there, and they probably have that too but someone already hoarded it.
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you know,, that is near exactly what the fella at the grow store said,, but he is a salesman and was suggesting i look at hps

when i mentioned , on another post, same site, that i was thinking of going hps,, i got dumped on big time,, suggesting i was slightly neanderthal in my thinking and my intelligence,, haha

so i thot i would ask you,, and i'm glad i did

and the heat,, yes, i will have to take that into account,,

not a problem today tho,,

P1170915.JPG


so,, for a 3x3 tent,, how big a hps light would i need,, he suggested a 150 watt would suffice,, whatcha think?
 
A 150 watt hps? No definitely not. A 400w would be standard for that space. With LED I think you’d want around 250 watts in there.

People have been saying the same crap since the beginning of LED. I’m not sure why people get so rabidly opinionated about stuff. Five or six years ago on the forum it was the same thing with people and their insanely overpriced blurples and pics of undersized buds that looked like radioactive candy. It was obvious they didn’t grow nearly as well as hps.
Nowadays of course LED is very good. Much more efficient. I’d be happy to have a bunch of them.

But you don’t mind the inefficiency, which mainly manifests as heat, which you may have to find a way to vent, and are going be paying for on your power bill, then hps is a great option and your plants will be happy.

Most people live in a hotter climate than I do. So that’s one obvious reason to choose LED. For me the heat is a bonus. Without it I’d have to buy a heater.

LEDs cost a lot because they’re still fairly new tech, and supposedly we are paying for R&D costs- though I think they’ve stretched that excuse nearly to the breaking point now. I’ve got nothing against the idea of paying high prices for research and development, as long as I’m not the one doing it. I fully supported all those guys buying $2400 blurples. Somebody had to do it...
 
FWIW LEC is another option that is said to have a very nice spectrum. I love mine but OTOH I'm an amateur grower. I believe it gives off less heat than a HPS but more heat than a LED.

I've been watching this thread closely because I just started using mega crop and I see you (and others) are having issues with it in mid flower, being my first grow with mega crop (in 5 gal coco, fabric pots) being my first grow though I had concerns. So far so good knock on wood, I'm about 30 days into my 12/12 cycle.

I wanted to mention a product I started using this spring. My old setup was NTF my average yields were 7 ounces (I did say amateur), on my last run I started using liquid weight and that run yielded 12 ounces as compared to my usual 7 ounces. I've now switched to coco and pots to gain at least 1 foot in height... this crop literally went through the roof, getting it back under the light has been a constant struggle.

Anyway I just wanted to mention this liquid weight stuff, it seems to help with the nutrient uptake (IMO). It's cheap IMO at $18/L. It has a 2 page write-up on their site but it's mostly fulvic and humic acids with some yucca and carbs. Here's the Canadian site It looks like they cut down the info by 2/3... only about 1/2 page now.

Like I said IMO it helps with nutrient uptake, it seems to me this may be where the problem lies. It's not the amount of nutrients it is the amount of nutrients that your plant can access. Same reason us hydro folk are sticky about our ph.

Edit: I just checked, I'm at 30 days 12/12 and 17 days into bloom so I've a couple more weeks to mid flower.
 
I will agree with @Bob Loblaw concerning LEC (or CMH). I have run, and still do, LED but I really like the CMH lights...better spectrum, more efficient (than HID) and cheaper than LED.

I use 2 630w DE CMH 3000k lights in my 4x8 tent with great results and they run $370 delivered in Canada.

For a 3x3 @nivek , a 315w CMH would work, although not a lot cheaper than the 630s. One of mine is dimmable and could be run at 400w in a 3x3.
 
I definitely miss the yields I was pulling with HPS. On avg, my chops were 16-20 zips dried per plant growing in potted rockwool cubes, but the heat was killing me in the summer, not to mention knowing that I was paying extra for that heat that I didn't want, I just had to get away and get LEDs. The LEDs definitely don't punch through the canopy the way a nice extra super cheap HPS did, but I no longer have any added heat issues, plus I'll never have to replace bulbs which might be a plus for a guy way out on the edge of civilization. My plants do get a lot more sparkly tho which is nice. Even though I got $2k tied up in LED shit, it's still on the cheap end for what I bought. The COBs are only expensive because I had to buy 18 - $20 heat sinks. The QB imitations look great. I got a little 300w Mars Hydro panel in the middle that replaced a 600w HPS and so far it's doing about the same as a finish light that spills lumens onto the plants around the outside, but my COBs help smooth over the short comings from the Mars. Still, If I can free up another $900, I'd like to take out them COBs and get 3 more Mars panels to have 4 in my 9x9 room. I think that would give me exactly what I want. I've read great things about those Spider Farmer panels and they're cheap. Perhaps you could get a bunch of cheap side lighting to complement your HPS hoods?

Bob Loblaw said:
Anyway I just wanted to mention this liquid weight stuff, it seems to help with the nutrient uptake (IMO). It's cheap IMO at $18/L. It has a 2 page write-up on their site but it's mostly fulvic and humic acids with some yucca and carbs. Here's the Canadian site It looks like they cut down the info by 2/3... only about 1/2 page now.
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The active ingredient in this product is Triacontanol. you can buy a life time supply off Amazon for maybe $20-$30. Polysorbate is a much better surfactant than yucca. Just one drop will turn a gallon of RO into a frothy mess. Yucca actively dries the air, so naturally it will gum up which makes dosing difficult. I got a bunch that I stopped using when I stopped foliar spraying, but maybe I'll mix some up to add in with the ferts.
 
CMH is something I think about quite a lot. It might suit Nivek well too. It sounds like a 315w CMH will perform a bit better than a 400 HPS. That’s kind of an awkward size for me though, because I’d be using it to replace a 600 W bulb. So putting in a 315 means I either have shrink down the grow to suit, or buy yet another little light to stick in there to make up the difference. Or put in a 630 and burn more power- not less. Oh well. First world problems I guess.

A cheaper option to LED though, and saves a little power.

Have you guys ever grown your plants close enough to that CMH bulb to burn them - how close can they get? I read the plants need to be at least 2’ away - which isn’t really what I want to hear. Other people say 18” which is still about six inches more than I want I hear.

Finally getting some pods on a PC I’ve been spraying with STS. So hopefully someday I can get some seeds of it and share the pain.
PC1 pods

PC1 pods


PC1 pods

PC1 pods

 
p c pods,, got a ring to it,, kinda like b.c.bud,, bud

ha,, my p.c. cross is still the frostiest bud i grow. such a pretty thing,, i forget what the cross is,, gonna have to look again. a 'mack' sativa i think,,

P1170917.JPG


this mornin,,

cmh,, hmmm, thanks for the info folks,, greatly appreciated. so stumped why folks on the other thread were so against this stuff

cmh, runs cooler, and as suggested, if i bot a 315w,, no extra cooling required, and delivered to my door for $240 cdn.

hmmm

damn near a foot of snow yesterday friend,, broke every oct snow record,, even for most snow in october. gonna be shovelling all day

i will have 'shovel arm syndrome' to go along with my 'trimming knuckle syndrome' by the end of the day,, ha

karma sent weaseley,, thanks for the help again friends
 
1603554164819.png


perhaps like this?
 
Snow already? Crap. I hope this winter isn’t going to be as screwy as this last summer was.

nivek said:
why folks on the other thread were so against this stuff
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I don’t know either. I think maybe people get confused and think that if they’re ‘for something’ then they have to be ‘against’ the other things. Like it’s personal. Like different things can’t be useful in their own ways.

It’s more relaxing to think bigger. More inclusively. Like George W Bush, when he said “ I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." Good words George. Have another puff brother.
:passitleft:
 
P1170919 (2).JPG
 
Weaselcracker said:
Have you guys ever grown your plants close enough to that CMH bulb to burn them - how close can they get? I read the plants need to be at least 2’ away - which isn’t really what I want to hear. Other people say 18” which is still about six inches more than I want I hear.
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It seems to me my last crop was pretty close to it but I'd hate to make any guess here, it did turn out fine though. My current crop is 12" or less (less) and packed down horizontal across the top I certainly do have my concerns this round. I've been thinking about making a drop down screen for finishing...hmmm why not just throw a sheer curtain over the crop...oops thinking out loud again.

EDIT: I just checked I'm 6" away... I'm probably gonna have issues with 5 or 6 weeks to go.

The couple of burnt ones I have are from touching, the really close ones seem to take it pretty good I'd say otherwaise they would be crispy by now... I'm working on getting a cord for my camera.
nivek said:
1603554164819.png


perhaps like this?
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The only thing I would say is that I've read that the Phillips bulb is the preferred one (better spectrum). Also they are a low hanging light so you do lose a couple of inches I would say.
 
it says this about this unit at their site,,

1603567361180.png
 
The distance from plants sounds good- similar to hps then.
But 2’ x3’ coverage? That’s bad. I’d need 630 watts worth just to cover less than what I’m covering now with 600w. Maybe there are wider angle reflectors.
 
...a TSW 2000 from Mars would be perfect for a 3 X 3...362.00 Cdn....they're dimmable, as well...food for thought...cheerz... :high-five: ...h00k..:hookah:...
 
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