HPS for entire grow cycle

why not use mh for veg and hps for flower?

 

Depends on what you want to achieve through your veg cycle.

Ive used both MH and HPS for veg, and i now use HPS for veg because i can control the plants growth better.

MH will give you really tight nodes and a more vibrant colour but less control, MH does exactly what it does and theres no changing that.

With HPS with a little experience you can manipulate youe veg cycle to fit what you want from the plants, you can decide on your node spacing etc..
For example i like to extend my 4th and 5th node then squat the rest while i give extensive training.

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hps is the worst veg light they ever invented. But after the plant has struggled through less than optimum veg they do an excellent job of flowering and until qb came along were hard to beat. Depends I suppose on the subjective declaration that a veg is "good" but I grow autos and we only have 28 days of veg and I like to make those good days. I know now for sure and am proving that watts isn't the answer. It takes very few watts to grow good pot with the right qb spectrum. They make a 3000k and if you try to veg with it the plants look like you tried to veg under hps. I tried hps germ to harvest on photos and they looked just exactly like you would expect. Now, if you wanted to supplement your cfl with hps that would be a nice improvement. But yes, more blue. 4000k is about right for me.

 

3 week veg with hps, then a shot of 3rd week of flower.

HPS is a solid veg lamp, duel spec.



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How do you manipulate your veg cycle using just the HPS? Is it the distance from the light to the plant?

 

Id use a Hortilux 1000w HPS Superbulb. 145,000 Lumen/1600/1650 PAR. This bulb is BLUE ENHANCED. 30% BLUE.... No brainer at $70 or so a bulb. We replace them every 60 days veg at 24 hours, and every 2nd flowering cycle.
We also use 1000w Gavitas. 3100k. Hortilux I believe is 2100k

Weve used Hortilux HPS bulb for 20 years for both Veg., and Flowering. Can give extremely tight nodes if the genetics dictate it. No unwanted stretching with this bulb.
Plants do need Blue though.
We can get this bulb as close as 18 inches from the top of canopy in the winter. But 24 is more like it.

We also start all seedlings under the 1000w Hortilux.

 

yes, with these qbs there is no doubt about spectrum. The pot under 4000k looks like lettuce and the pot under 3000k looks like a redwood forest. I thought maybe since the auto veg is so short I could do better with a flower spectrum led and that produced very spindly weak branched plants. But plenty of people grow photos under 3000k germ to harvest and to my eyes the 3000k is almost identical to hps.

 

Yes, distance and power using digtal balasts.

 

I use Hortilux bulbs also, i sit at 20inch during flower and set by ppfd, i sit at different ranges during veg to open up node 4&5 then drop lamps to squat the rest of the nodes.

 

I dont disagree with you about qb, i have a qb space also..

I will say results between hps and qb are very different in appearence but both produce around the same with the same fire power.

Obviously it costs less to run the same power with qb and you will get get your set up costs back quite quickly.

Call me old fashioned, i dont know, i still love a good old hps set-up.

 

I use to veg with a hps I always felt like the growth was slow in the 1st couple weeks then exploded later.