Hey everyone, I've been hanging around the forums for awhile now, but still a "novice" grower. The reason I'm writing this thread is because I haven't seen very much info regarding this subject. Almost EVERY grow guide states that vegging and flowering plants NEED different spectrums, but NONE of them explain WHY, or WHAT is going to happen it the spectrum is WRONG! I'm a beginning grower, and I bought a light system that was GREAT for vegging. When I bought it, the guy at my hydro shop said "This light will be GREAT for vegging, but you're going to get fluffy buds if you use this for flowering." Not quite understanding what he was talking about, I decided to go with the light I bought for the WHOLE grow. Needless to say, vegging went EXACTLY as advertised! my plant looked "GREAT"! She literally had 5 leaf sets and was ONLY about 8 inches tall! I decided that since she was "bagseed" and I didn't know her sex, I'd go ahead and start flowering her. Now she's almost 5 weeks into flowering and shes ALMOST 24 inches tall and ONLY PUT ON 2 LEAF SETS!!! The stretching REALLY scared me so I went back to my "hydro" guy to talk to him, and he said "Well, I TOLD YOU this would happen?!" Now, I know he told me my buds would be "fluffy"! I didn't know that meant my plant was going to stretch TO THE SKY looking for the right light! I now have a set up where I have ALL my plants in one area that has BOTH types of lighting, and I move my flowering plants every 12 hours. I know this isn't the "IDEAL" set up, but I'm short on space so, this is the most logical set up. The reason I'm writing this is in order to, hopefully, INSPIRE a more knowledgeable grower to write a "sticky" as to WHY plants NEED the different spectrums during vegging and flowering so that the other "Noobs" like me don't have this problem in the future! Thank you to EVERYONE on GC that has submitted and helped ME so far, and I HOPE someone with more knowledge reads this and takes the time to write an explanation for this! Thanks again, and Good Luck!
a more experinced grower can prob explain better, but the diff spectrums are to imitate the different spectrums of light the sun gives off at diff times in the season, like at the start of the season (when plants will veg) the sun is giving off the more blue spectrum then later in season the suns spectrum changes(gradually) to a more orange/red spectrum(when night are shorter & they flower) when the guy said u will get fluffy buds he ment they wont be dense so wont have much weight to em, also when u put a plant into flower they do stretch for the first 2-3 weeks this is normal hope thats some help i know it dont answer all ur asking & its not writen well but i gave it a go lol
Mills is right, Blue is for flowering stages, and red is for vegatitive. Use a HPS bulb all the way from germination to the point you're ready to put it into it's flowering stage, when it reaches the point you believe it's ready to flower, go ahead and slap in any type of halide bulb, you'll see impressive results...
The types of bulbs or the spectrum stages... Sorry, I gave up on using halide bulbs and use only HPS bulbs now.
Not only is it the wrong way around, but it also doesn't address the ORIGINAL QUESTION?! I understand the facts. The point I was TRYING to make was that NOBODY has stated WHY or WHAT WILL HAPPEN if this isn't followed???
well kinda all of it lol but no need to say sorry, MH bulbs are for veg, HPS for flower(although many use HPS the whole grow), veg uses the blue spectrum & flower the red @op i dont think its life or death if its not followed like it shouldnt kill ur plant but it makes for better yeilds & potency, i once grew a plant under CFL's 27k ment for flowering as an experiment & didnt notice to much difference in the plant growth but thats just me lol
You're plants will grow less, produce less, lower quality than with comparable wattage in the "right" spectrum.
As Mills said, the "why" is that the different light spectra are what the plant has evolved to experience from the sun. MJ is an annual plant -- in nature it sprouts from seed in the Spring, grows all Summer, flowers in the Fall, then dies. The seeds stay in/on the ground until Spring, when the cycle starts again. How does the plant know when to switch from a vegetative state to a flowering state? It has evolved to respond to two cues, the spectrum of the light received from the sun and the length of the light/dark period. In Summer, the earth is tilted towards the hemisphere that is having Summer (the other hemisphere is in Winter then). That means, on earth, the sun is more overhead. Therefore, it filters through less of the atmosphere and has a lot of blue-spectrum light. In addition, the days are very long. As Fall approaches, the earth is now tilting away from the sun, causing the light from sun to come in at a lower angle, filtering through more of the atmosphere which causes a more red-spectrum light. Plus, the days are getting shorter and the nights longer. MJ has evolved to respond to these cues so that it doesn't stay in veg too long -- the penalty for which would be that it flowers too late and reduces its chances of reproducing. All life is driven by two forces: to survive and to procreate. Responding to the cues of light spectrum and length of dark cycle is how the MJ plant ensures its best chances at that second goal.