Maybe someone using quantum boards should chime in, HLG recommends a 550 for 6X6 veg and 5X5 flower, from what i've seen in other people's journal you have more than enough very high quality lighting. I myself grow in a room the same size with a 600w hps and a 200 watt COB setup, must be bright as hell in your room.
It might be overkill but you can dim the lights which will help with temps and also give you better efficiency with your lights. In general when using quantum boards for veg you want around 20watts/sqft and 30-40watts/sqft for flower. @Tbone Shuffle what do you think?
Those are good rules of thumb to go by. You can stretch them even further especially in veg. For a long time I vegged my 4x4 with 4 qb120's. That's 240 watts. That's 15 watts per square foot and you can go even lower. Actually all 4 running was too much light at times and I would unplug one board. If you wanted you could veg with as low as 11-12 watts per square with qb's and not do horrible. I've done it and grown monster plants that way. Look at the oldest qb120 thread. I started with two boards and vegged my first crop with only 2 in the 4x4. They did well. That's under 10 watts per square. For flower you do want power. I've ran as low as 500 watts but I feel like 600-650 or so is best in a 4x4 for the largest crops. You may be able to do better at watts per gram around 500-550. Lately one of my favorite setups to recommend for a 4x4 for flower is 2 qb96 elite v2's on a meanwell 320h-54a and 4 qb132's on a meanwell 320h-c2100a in series. Put the qb96's in the middle and put two qb132's on each side. I feel like that setup is better then 4 qb288 v2 boards on 240h drivers. The new rspec boards might be comparable because there would be more deep red but you'll spend more and not have as much absolute power on the top end. Those two 320 drivers maxed would be close to 700 watts draw at the wall. Likely you'll run them dimmed which helps the whole setup run better.
I've spread this info around but a phd plant scientist employed by a cannabis grower on a podcast I listened to just completed a bunch of trials with fluence leds and different light levels. 450ppfd in flower all the way up to 1200ppfd. They got the best gram per watt ratio at 900 ppfd. They got larger flowers at 1200 but it cost way more electricity so the gram per watts was still best at 900. Because of that I target about 60,000 lux in flower with the qb's which is roughly 900 ppfd. I have spots higher and lower but I go for about 60k on average. I just started doing that with the newest crop and I've got no light stress the whole flower when I usually do get some. Also no calcium deficiency which seemed to be normal with qb's late in flower until this crop. I did change to GH's GO series organic cal/mag instead of calimagic. I never grew with a light meter before. It's really nice to not guess at the light levels and wait for the plant to tell you it's too much. Just set it and forget it as they say... =)
I'll throw a few new pics of my current plant in. It's almost 8 weeks from flip in these pictures. Blueberry.
Well I got limited space so I wanna keep these buds as tight as possible my setup (which isnt setup) is flood and drain so that puts me up 18 inch plus whatever the the boards are hanging at which leaves me with about 4 feet I can get an extra foot for flower but since I scraped the clone idea I got some fruity juice and cake n chem germinating rn but that fruity juice is supposed to be tall so if I give it more light and top it can I keep it from stretching so fast? I dont have any extra red spectrum but I did buy 4 solacure bulbs for each flower tent doesnt that do kinda the same thing? I thought about getting a light meter didnt know if it was worth it sounds so though lol and those look really nice how long have you been growing I need to be able grow like that I'm just not sure how do you know when and what to trim I dont wanna screw anything up
The extra red boosts growth. UV retards growth so has to be run on short cycles. It's the opposite end of the spectrum from far red. UV can raise potency but has to be used carefully to not hurt the plants especially the powerful solacure bulbs. Been growing since 2016 but been researching it for 25+ years and it finally became legal in my area. Been a pothead at least that long. I ran without a light meter forever and didn't think I needed one but they are so useful and cheap. Under led I keep the thickness of the top canopy about 14"-18" you can see that from the zoomed out pictures of the bloom plant. Everything below that is removed. I also selectively removed tops from the canopy to thin it for light penetration. I lollipop about a week before flip extensively and then after about 3-4 weeks after flip. I remove dead leaves between.
I got so many lights going in flower idk if i dare squeeze in a red light haha its ridiculous at this point seriously abs yea they're the solacure I got to have a long talk with Dennis last Thanksgiving got all my emails saved for when I get to the flower tents
I got some autos growing I think they'll be done next month can I recycle that soil that they're in and just give it a top dressing? Or should I throw it in a compost and let it steep before using it again? I dont have a compost yet but I should this year
Generaly speaking yes you can but depending what soil/amendments recipe you used will dictate if you can just replant in the same pot or if you will need to reamend.
It's just the roots organics greenfields that I top dressed with some super soil concentrate so they call it but I was thinking about top dressing them one more time since it's been about a month but I just didnt want to waste it if I could recycle it and start some more autos back up for a second run this year and use leftover medium
So these double lemon pies had a rough start up inside I didnt give them any nutes then I gave them to much a couple weeks later that's when I put them in 5 gallon pots with a super soil concentrate mix and I'm assuming they shot upwards really fast is because they werent getting sun until afternoon but how do I get them to branch out they just have big ass fan leaves and no branching I just topped them maybe 2 weeks ago and they're going on 3 months old in about a week
There are a few ways to train a plant to branch out but I'm going to assume anything more aggressive than low stress training (LST) would hurt your yield with an auto. Maybe @Organic sinse could answer that better then I. As for the soil IMO I would mix a new soil, you could cut it 50/50 with your current soil, or toss it in the worm bin if you have one. If you dont have a worm bin start making one ASAP, seems like you have space for it Copy the soil mix in the no-till thread, change those airpots to 20gallon fabric pots and fill em up with no-till soil mix. From now on you can just chop the plant down at harvest and stick a new baby plant right into the soil next to the old stem. Aside from watering and the occasional top dress and weekly spray for pest prevention its pretty much work free from that point on.
The ones in the black pots are photoperiod and worm bin I was going to do a compost bin with 2 or 3 stages of compost it should be the same idea right? Worms will have access to it I'm building a big garden this year and want to do the same for fruits and vegetables and for the 20 gallon pots I dont really have a place for those somebody would see if they got that big I want make a geodesic greenhouse and just run autos all year maybe some photoperiod with some added led and isnt this the same as the no till soil just a different recipe? I mixed mine through the soil though
I would lay the branches out flat, and defoliate the big fans on the bottom on those. Its a tad late to start training, but it will help if you start now. If you start in the beginning it will help keep them from stretching so much, and the lowers will develop a lot nicer. Outdoor plants always stretch a lot more than indoors due. There are lots of pics on my auto thread (see my sig line) showing how I stake or Velcro branches down, to get them to grow out, before turning up. cheers os