The White Light Led Revolution

The Saga continues: 
 
 I had decided to try my hand at indoor "dirt growing"  Being a hydro man from the beginning of my indoor experience I ran iinto the dreaded "root rot". It stemmed from high reservoir temperatures. I was able to nurse the ladies to harvest but it was a dismal harvest. After having several flooded tents from a dripper line popping out of its holder. They should give the person who decided on that liner in the  bottom of the tent a extra bonus!  Well I decided to change. I went back to the good old forums and web for information on what  I could use..... Went to the big box store and picked up a few of those self watering pots. Hey I though easy as pie.... Filled them with hydroton poured in my nutes and here we go... Well they actually worked rather good but the down side was that I had to feed a lot more.. This worked out good until the ladies got to a certain size and they would get root bound. After much reading and advice from the good old hydro store guys. I settled on 5 gallon fabric pots and a "name brand" mix that has a #4 at the end... Well guess what I learned dirt can make a MESS too! Well finally got everything transplanted into their pots and setup the lights.in the tent. Everyone looked happy except for the normal transplant shock as they ladies realized "hey I got room to stretch here".... So we are all settled in and ready to grow... Well using these "white lights" were different. One of the first things I noticed was that I could actually see what was going on.... You spend anytime under those a heavy red spectrum lights and your vision gets real screwy for sometime. Yeah they have those expensive sunglasses but honestly I became a drug store sunglasses guy when after losing a third pair  cruising down the highway on the bike or giving the fishes at the lake something different to look at... With the full spectrum lights I pop on my convenience store specials and all is well. Hmmm... wonder how those "blue blockers " two pair for $9.95 would work? Well lets take a look...
 

 
Here they are at Week One
 

 
Here they are at week three

 

Welcome SmokE!!
 
Glad you hopped aboard the Bud Train...

 

Hey Fellow Resin Thumbers!
 
Sorry for the lack of updates the "real world" caught up with me. Just wanted to show you a Super Economy  grow box....  Had to empty the veg tent and move it out of the room for the big boy until I could harvest the pollen. I picked up this tip a few years ago... Just tape it up where the hanging 
bar goes and cut yourself a door. Cost me less than fifteen bucks. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FLOWERING!
 

 
 

 
Keep it Green...
 
 

 

Another Chapter:
 
The original plan was to go with three white and three red LED  lights in the tent. We felt that utilizing all of my lights would give me the wattage and intensity that was needed.  We were running about 900 watts of LED lights. Well there goes the cost savings instead of using hps I thought. Yet my cooling needs were not affected that dramatically. After a couple of days something interesting began to happen. We noticed that the plants under the red LED's were actually turning themselves to reach towards the white LED lights. I thought this quite interesting. As the grow progressed I struggled with my feeding schedule... How much should I feed? My hydo system was pretty straight forward  it went as follows.  mix up a batch of nutes.  see how the ladies liked it. incrementally increase the strength of the nutes until they said "no mas",  Monitor the ppm and PH and change on a ten day schedule... Dirt was different... You had to figure out if they were hungry or thirsty. Do I feed them nutes all the time or do I alternate between feeding and watering? After consulting some fellow growers I had a basic guideline. In its simplest form it came down to "watching your plants". Well as the grow progressed other things started to become evident. We had to keep the white lights higher than I expected. There also seemed to be a lot better penetration down into the canopy. When I asked my "white light "guru why that seemed to be happening they said it was because white light had blue and green in its spectrum and that those spectrum's could penetrate deeper than red light could. I've always been a big plant and au natural grower. It stems from my outdoor gardening days... Yet they suggested that we do some defoliation, since I grew "trees"  Well I have a mentor who had years of experience in such things. They stopped by and agreed to show me how it is done. After their haircut  and me repeating over and over  "don't you think that is to much"? They would just smile and say "nope not yet".  On the last lady they slowed down and showed me the reasoning behind what I thought was madness. There was a technique that had been honed over the years. First you evaluate the plant starting from the bottom up. Then you would remove any small branches that were in the lower part of the plant. which were basically being shaded by the top half of the plant.Secondly they would target specific fan leaves that were covering bud sights. Third you always looked from the top of the plant down and see if you could see through it.  Well surviving the traumatic experience they went back into the tent. The first thing we noticed was the amount of light now hitting the floor of the tent. In a couple of days they recovered and BAM did they start putting on the weight... You get to a point when you can put the grow on cruise control. Sit back and enjoy the ride... Now that doesn't mean you don't tend your lovely ladies and as a good friend of mine says : "You gotta show them the LOVE" ... Around the corner trials and tribulations"

 

Alf,
 
Welcome aboard my dear friend. Glad to see you here! Please feel free to impart any observations or nuggets of knowledge you would like to share. Keep it Green! 

 

What's up Resin Thumbers...
 
Well we are entering the dog days of growing... We have just been tending the plants. We also did some selective pollination of a few branches for seed stock. We took the strongest male who's attributes we liked and collected pollen. I always collect pollen far away from the females. We basically use the bend and tap method. Using a large tray you basically bend a stalk over and the gently tap it . The pollen will fall on to the tray. You then scrape it up "old credit card " works good. Then place it in a container. Which I store in the fridge. Once you complete that it is on to pollinating. Here is what we do.
 
1. Make sure you shut off all fans... I even shut off my LED's and use a spot reflector for light. Don't forget to cover your heat duct.
 
Here are some pictures of our setup. 
 

 
We have the following :
 
a)  Grocery bag,- use to cover the pollinated branch  
b.) 1 gallon zip lock- use to transport pollinated brush,
c) Container with pollen,
d) Makeup brush- used to apply pollen to flower
e) Painters tape- used to identify what branch was pollinated.
f) Marker- used to label the tape (strain type and date)
g) Bleach wipes - used for clean up and disinfecting (bleach kills almost anything) 
 

 
Use the brush to collect some pollen. We always do this in a separate room. The brush has been soaked in rubbing alcohol then thoroughly rinsed under hot water and allowed to dry completely.
 

 
Take your hand with the brush and place it into the ziplock bag and seal it up around your wrist.. You now can go to your flower room to perform the pollinating. 
 
Part 2 will show that process.... Keep it Green ...

 

Hello Weed Heads!!  Sorry for the delay in Part 2 of selective pollination. We took a few days of R & R.
 
As I stated before. I shut off all fans and lights and use a spot reflector for light.
 
You can use painters tape to identify the branch you wish to pollinate
 

 
You now remove the brush very carefully from the zip lock bag.
 

 
 
You then gently brush each flower you wish to pollinate. Remember a little goes a long away
 

 
Once you have completed your pollination put the brush back in the zip lock bag 
 
The next step is to cover the branch with a bag. I normally leave it on for 24 hours...
 

 
Cleanup the floor around each pollinated area using a bleach wipe.
 
In a few days the hairs on the flower will normally turn brown and shrink.
 

 
Well that is it my friends...  Keep it Green.

 

Garden Update:
 
Well everything is moving along nicely... Here are a couple of pics of the ladies at week #5. We are now feeding one ( 1) gallon per plant every other day. We also started rotating the plants one quarter turn at every feeding. The ladies are starting to stack their cola's. They are in need of a defoliation. The lights are doing a great job.. 
 

 
 

 

Hello All!
 
Well need a little help from you dirt growers out there. I was surprised to find a little flying bug in my veg tent.... I think they may be fungus gnats but don't have any experience with them. I have dealt with mites before ( always seem to be on gifted clones)... Now I have several of the little critters hiding under the pot when I move it.. I have been exterminating them by hand. I have used a product called wipe out and NEEM  oil mix that handled the mites. How do you get rid of these little pest. 

 

Hey Pharmer,
 
Thank You for the tip and link. I found this article a few years back for mite eradication it was a home remedy. We called the stuff the Mite Destroyer. The stuff killed everything even your plants. if you weren't careful with it.  You would spray down your plants real good and it would wipe out the mites in a day!.The down side is it would kill your plant quick if you didn't rinse it off!!! When I get clones now I dip them in a bucket of the solution let dry for about 15 minutes them dip the plant in fresh clean RO water. Never had issues with these buggers  (gnats) before. We did have some standing water in the bottom of the trays which we cleaned up. Going to let the ladies get good and dry. 

 

Same here!  I was a hydro grower for a few years. I ran a DWC drip system. It worked great until I ran into a few bouts of root rot. Decided to switch to soil less which seems to be more forgiving. If you don't keep your reservoir temperatures under control  with hydro you will run into problems. Yeah I like Neem it works good as long as you reapply it like you said. Never heard of using Potassium Silicate how do you use it? Yes, LED's are different still trying to figure out the feed / watering schedule... Using a white spectrum LED is also quite  different.  than a red based LED. My last grow actually produced a harvest comparable  if not better than HPS. I also noticed you get better penetration using a white spectrum LED and they run a lot like HID minus the heat... Never heard of water logging sounds interesting... 
Keep it Green... 

 

Hey DDP! 
 
Well not really sure how to answer that.... The intensity on the whites are more akin to HID.. They do generate more heat than my red panels but they were only pulling 135 watts.  Yet the heat is nowhere near a HID system.The Spec is puling over 200 watts.with both switches on.  I basically use my carbon filter to provide air circulation in conjunction with a small fan. Since I am growing a personal strain and it is in coco it is a different set of rules (which I am learning as I go!). My current feeding schedule is 1 gallon per pot every 2 to 3 days. We are basically feeding by observation. We just hit week 6 and they look like there going to be at least a 10 week strain... One thing I would recommend is keep them high on younger plants.  We basically kept them at a minimum of 20 inches from the top of the canopy.  You will know if they are to close  because they will look slightly wilted. We actually had some slight bleaching.  If they do look like that move the light up. I found a happy medium by watching the plant. When they would reach up with their leaves I would drop the light maybe an inch at a time until they had just a slight up turn in their leaves. There is also no need  to use the flower switch until you actually flip to flower. Now that they have completed their growth spurt the ladies have adapted to the intensity...  I have basically run out of height in the tent. I super cropped them twice to try and keep the canopy even. Once again I let the ladies get to big. Yet the penetration is a lot better than my "red lights". My last grow was my first experience using white LED's and we got great results. With the 1000 (four Specs) you will have one heck of a system. I have grown one plant exclusively under the Spec and she is a beauty. We threw a lot of different variables in this grow because the strain is in its first generation. I am using a nutrient line for the 3rd time (still cautiously tweaking strength). We switched to fabric bags and coco. Feel free to post any updates or progress that you like. Sorry for the long winded reply and be prepared for the "White Light LED Revolution"..
 
WD