Ideas for Next Round

After a couple months off from growing I'm gearing up to start my next round of led ladies. Thought i'd run some ideas by my fellow led heads and see if you guys had any suggestions or preferences on what you'd like to see.

I currently have 2 panels from advanced led: a 180w extreme flower and a 200w diamond series.

Here are some ideas ive been tossing around:

1. Use both panels at same time for close to 400w of led power.
2. Use the 180 for veg and the 200 to flower.
3. Use the 200w all the way though veg to flower.
4. Divide my grow area and run a side by side even though I expect the 200w to win.
5. Use the 180 for veg and buy a kessil h350 or two to flower with the 200w.
6. Buy another 200w diamond series and run two of them.
7. Test the blackdog platinum xl. This one is the least likely to happen at this time but very likely to go down in 2012.
8. Test another undecided panel in a comparison to the 200w.

I know thats a lot of choices im throwing around but it's nice to have options. What do you guys think and what would you like to see?

1. Use both panels at same time for close to 400w of led power.

or

5. Use the 180 for veg and buy a kessil h350 or two to flower with the 200w.

Thanks for the input beef! Those are actually two that I'm leaning the heaviest toward. I found a local hydro shop selling the kessil h350s for $350 compared to the +$400 I've seen them going for online.

puffenuff said:

Thanks for the input beef! Those are actually two that I'm leaning the heaviest toward. I found a local hydro shop selling the kessil h350s for $350 compared to the +$400 I've seen them going for online.

Click to expand...

I've wanted to try Kessils ever since I saw them.... I'm extremely curious about their ability to grow as a stand-alone light.

I wonder how much "kessil power" is equivalent to standard "LED power"...

With my tent I'm rocking now I have 8sq/ft of space, so I'd need about 2 Kessils to get adequate coverage. I'd be looking at $700-800 for less than 200watts of power....

Not saying it's not worth it, but it's still a hard bullet to bite.

Beefbisquit said:

I've wanted to try Kessils ever since I saw them.... I'm extremely curious about their ability to grow as a stand-alone light.

I wonder how much "kessil power" is equivalent to standard "LED power"...

With my tent I'm rocking now I have 8sq/ft of space, so I'd need about 2 Kessils to get adequate coverage. I'd be looking at $700-800 for less than 200watts of power....

Not saying it's not worth it, but it's still a hard bullet to bite.

Click to expand...

I hear you loud and clear about the kessils. Definitely on the higher end of $ per watts so it's a tough choice to go down that road, especially if someone wants to use them as primary lighting. not sure what a h350 would be equivalent to in other leds, but i'd hope they would perform similar but with using less watts. Im very intetested in trying them out though and I feel like my diamond with a kessil or two might be a killer combo.

Since the kessil uses those dense matrix LED's all of the different colors are focused from one, tiny little area on the chip - no doubt the spectrum coverage would be far more even than spacing out separate colored LED's.

I have a feeling the penetration on the Kessil's is really good too since it's a lot of light coming from a tiny area instead of bits of light from a lot of area. I'd love to hear from Cannawizard with regards to the H350 and my hypothesis...

I think youre right about the penetration on them. Feel like I read somewhere or saw a video about how they penetrate very well.

Also, scrog, lst from veg, top, supercrop, or au natural?

From what I learned from my last veg was keep the LED super close to keep the plants, to keep them short and fat. The nodes get crazy close together, and once you've got your almost un-managable cluster fuck of growth; bend the bitch over LST style, and back the light off and she explodes upwards with a ton of branching searching for the light while still staying really "short". My plant really flattened out, almost too bushy, so I cut the strings and now it looks like it's Scrog'd, but it's not... hard to explain.

I also, fimmed my plants about 2 weeks into veg....

Thanks for all the input bro! Thought more people would jump in but oh well...

Last couple grows I just did au natural grow style with some super cropping into bloom because I ran out of head room. I liked the results I got but willing to try new things.

I notice a lot of led guys say they start off with their panels high during veg and then lower. I do the opposite and raise as they grow, start lower than some would suggest to make sure the nodes are nice and tight, avoid unnecessary stretch. Then i flip them and raise the light up and start to work my way back down closer to the canopy until i hit the sweet spot that the plants respond the best to. It's interesting to hear how others approach this.

Fuck off leo

Go fuck yourself, Leo.... And when you've finished, go die in a fire (preferably caused by one of your HPS lamps).

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the internet, I can't show you my temper.

Anyway, i'm also thinking about placement of the led panels themselves. Usually I just have them parallel above the canopy. Has anyone played around with the placement of their leds and the angles they hang at? If I go with a couple kessils, what are some thoughts about placing one or both on the floor to shine upward? Just thinking outside of the box

puffenuff said:

Anyway, i'm also thinking about placement of the led panels themselves. Usually I just have them parallel above the canopy. Has anyone played around with the placement of their leds and the angles they hang at? If I go with a couple kessils, what are some thoughts about placing one or both on the floor to shine upward? Just thinking outside of the box

Click to expand...

Interesting placement....side lighting sure, but shining up towards the undergrowth yeah why not try it. Be cool to see how that develops.
Obviously people are gonna say that its unnatural and will confuse the plant....But we are growing indoors with artificial light (pretty unnatural to me)...So fuck it experiment.

puffenuff said:

Anyway, i'm also thinking about placement of the led panels themselves. Usually I just have them parallel above the canopy. Has anyone played around with the placement of their leds and the angles they hang at? If I go with a couple kessils, what are some thoughts about placing one or both on the floor to shine upward? Just thinking outside of the box

Click to expand...

I thought about that for a while, but I think I've come to a conclusion although it is hypothesis at this point. There is a reason the top of the leaves turn toward the light and are a different texture than the bottom of the leaves. Plants are pretty much optimized for light to hit them in a 180 degree arc, although just adding more light is going to help, light hitting the bottoms of the leaves isn't optimal. I think side lighting would be better than bottom lighting but who knows.

I think my reasoning is at least somewhat sound.

Yeah I don't know too much about the science of the leaves' underneath and how they respond to light. makes sense though that theyd respond differently. was thinking mostly to fatten up the bottom nugs. I saw this one grow where the guy had his panel mounted on the wall and trained one big ass plant to grow horizontally leaning toward the led. don't think he was rotating it but it came out pretty good.

I'd like to try some horizontal lighting at some point in the future. I'd like to get another PG180 and use 2 overhead, and setup my BS180 horizontally, maybe even get another BS180 for even more side lighting....6 plants, and 4 panels... lol those plants would be bumpin!

Damn a couple panels on the sides would be killer.

I also need to start experimenting more with my far red spotlights I have. I have two 15w far red spotlights, not sure the exact wavelength but you can't see any light being emitted other than the leds being red themselves. They are supposed to promote flowering and increase density. I saw a video from ed about how far red is supposed to alter the plants reaction to light by making them still active for about two hours after the lights go off. I need to figure out the correct amount and duration of far red to shower the girls with. I believe there may be a line of which too much far red exposure becomes harmful to the plants...anyone have any thoughts on this?

kind of what I am trying now

puffenuff said:

Damn a couple panels on the sides would be killer.

I also need to start experimenting more with my far red spotlights I have. I have two 15w far red spotlights, not sure the exact wavelength but you can't see any light being emitted other than the leds being red themselves. They are supposed to promote flowering and increase density. I saw a video from ed about how far red is supposed to alter the plants reaction to light by making them still active for about two hours after the lights go off. I need to figure out the correct amount and duration of far red to shower the girls with. I believe there may be a line of which too much far red exposure becomes harmful to the plants...anyone have any thoughts on this?

Click to expand...

Far red as in IR? Past the 700Nm range? I've read about people having them on a separate timer, and putting them on for 30 mins every 2-3 hours.... I'll see if I can find the link!