3510w LED 12x16 grow with multiple strains

I finished my all LED conversion in the flower room tonight. Hanging boards is no fun. Rough on the back. Here's the hardware I'm running:
1x660w 3000k/5000k mixed lm301b chips
2x660w 3000k lm301b chips
1x450w 3000k/5000k lm301b chips
2x440w 3000k/5000k lm301b chips
2x100w Cree CXB3590 chips

I dumped my 2x1000w hps lamps and 2x600w hps lamps. I replaced the 1000's with 2x660w 3000k chips. I replaced the 600's with 2x440w lm301b 3000k/5000k chips. I did my upgrade in pieces so all the qb's were bought at separate times without an exact design I was working to achieve. That's why it's kind of an odd match of different wattage boards and especially those 2 100w COB's. The reason I bought those was to supplement the 450w qb in the rear right. With a 100w COB on each side of that board the total output is 650w nearly identially matching the output of the 660w board with 3000k/5000k chips to the left of it. The idea was to keep the light output even across the canopy. Works great. In front of those lights are the 2x660w 3000k chip qb's. In front of those are the 2x460w qb's. I mounted a 500CFM Vortex power fan pointing down the middle channel of lights pushing air from the front to the rear of the room cooling the qb's keeping the air circulating nicely above the canopy.

Since the 460w and 450w qb's are of lower intensity I'm mounting them 8-12" lower than the 660w boards. Simple solution. There's not as much spread as the 460w qb's are missing 2 panels compared to the 660w boards but as you can see it works nicely. I might add a couple more 2 panel qb's to balance things out in the future.

Tonight I got all the power ran back to the light controller and cranked 'em on full blast to check it out. It's considerably brighter than running 4310w with HID and LED mixed. Mostly HID. Very impressive. Tomorrow I'm slapping a fresh coat of flat white killz paint on the walls, mopping the floor, spraying the room down with 10% bleach solution, cleaning all my fans, and I'll be ready to move my plants in.

Strains I'm running:
Blue Dream - A real fan favorite with patients. Heavy producer for the grower. I'll never get rid of this strain. Potency, yield, and flavor are amazing.
Bruce Banger - So this is my 2nd run with BB. It's a house strain from seedsman. The aroma is difficult to describe. It's wonderful and unique. Very potent and flavorful. Medium producer.
Jager - I grew this one from seed. Fast grower, few leaves, extremely large plant, extremely large buds, extremely large yields, and purple gorgeous flowers. It smells like black licorice though. I hate black licorice. However, the smoke is rich, heavy, and oh so potent. It doesn't taste anything like it smells. It's got a kush like taste that's very smooth.
Maui waui - Heavy producer, very potent, rock hard flowers, large growing bush like plant, amazing aroma that earns it's tropical name, and the flavor is fantastic. Another favorite with patients.

I'll post a picture of the nursery plants tomorrow. Here's a pic of the lights up and running. More to come tomorrow.

To make my pesticide applications easier and more efficient I just ordered a cold ULV fogger:

I'm spending an inordinate amount of time applying pesticides. I use spinosad and venerate CG in flower and it takes about 2-2.5 gallons of solution to cover everything. Then it drips on the floor and there's a flash flood that has to be cleaned up. Awful awful process. It's a good thing I only have to do it every 3-5 days eh?

Fogging is how the big commercial gardens get the job done. It's fast, cheap, and efficient. They come in all sorts of sizes. For $118.99 I've just made my life a lot easier. It'll save me 4-6 hours each week in labor. That's a minimum of 16 hours/month I get back of my life. Aside from trimming pesticide applications are the most time consuming task in the entire growing process. I'll post how the performance is on Thursday when it arrives. I'll thoroughly test it over the 30 days I have to return it. If all goes well I got a badass new tool in the arsenal to fight the borg. Instead of 2 hours applying and cleaning up with a standard sprayer I'll be in and out in 20-30 minutes with my fogger including setup and cleanup time.

I'll post some pics of the nursery plants today. Looking dam good. I've got some seedlings going in another tent that got beat up by horticultural soap. Worst shit I've ever applied to my plants. Even at 50% strength it fried everything. 2 weeks of fucked up growth coming out. Awful shit. Just as bad as neem oil. If you're considering neem oil take the shortcut and buy azamax or azaguard. Both contain the same active ingredient in neem oil and no emulsification is required. I've never heard of anyone damaging plants with either product. Neem oil? Horror stories of lost crops are a dime a dozen. I've even got one of my own. Those days are over though. Live and learn eh?

I won't be using coco wet anymore. It caused light foliage damage to my large plants and a considerable amount of damage on my small plants. I've never had a problem applying spinosad in the past. I've made 2 applications with coco wet now and every plant in each nursery has been affected the same way. I see many people promoting it's use which is kinda perplexing. Garbage product. Yucca is a much safer wetting agent.

I finally got some pics of the nurseries. Been short on time buttoning up the last harvest. Dam near a 1 month process between trimming, drying, curing, then finally clipping the buds from the branches for long term storage. Anywho the plants look great. A couple maui's are much smaller than I'd like, but I'm giving them another 4 weeks of veg time to bush up.

The fertilizer I'm running is Jack's 3-2-1 @675ppm. PH to 5.8. I'll be using the jack's 10-30-20 blossom booster for 2 weeks at the beginning of flower to promote flower set. I had a P&K deficiency last cycle at week 2 because I was running at 600ppm. Stupid on my part.

I ordered some coco wet on the recommendation of many people. It damaged all of my plants to some degree. The active ingredient is kinda like soap. It is not organic and it will fry young foliage and bloom sites even on relatively large nursery plants. I have used it twice now with spinosad. The same damage was observable the next day after each application. I've used spinosad for many years and have never seen anything like the damage caused by the coco wet. There was also some odd blotching on several leaves. Kind of like a minor phytotoxicity. In short - fuck coco wet and I highly recommend other growers use something else.

Personally I have used and enjoy the results of Hygeia Hydration. A quart is usually $12-$15 and it only calls for 1.25ml/qt. It is a yucca extract which is both organic and safe for all plants. I'm still confused as to how and why so many people say good things about coco wet when it causes to much damage. I feel the same way about neem oil. People recommend it over and over again and it's garbage. It more often than not burns plants and the efficacy of neem oil is simply not worth buying or applying it. If you want the active ingredient in neem oil, Azadirachtin, you can buy Azaguard. It's pricey, but a bottle will last you years with no risk of frying your plants. No emulsification is required. There's a reason commercial gardens don't use neem oil. It's horribly inefficient and there are much better products to incorporate into your IPM.

In the pics below you can see where the coco wet damaged the foliage and new bloom sites. Nothing major, but something I definitely have no interest in seeing again.

I've got my ULV fogger arriving on Thursday. As soon as it lands on my door step I'm using it for an application. I'll report back the results.

Spraying a 10% bleach solution in the flower room today. Got the white paint applied. I cleaned all the fans and am nearly ready to move my plants in. That's good timing because they're getting big and I need to tie down the branches to open up the center of the plant. That way I get a large bush versus a christmas tree.

As you can see my grand daughter hit me with the nail polish. My other hand is pink. Slightly embarrassing when I go out in public

Today is moving day. I got all the vegging plants into the flower room to cook for another 4-5 weeks on 18/6. The reason they're spaced out in an odd way right now is because I'll be tying down branches on the large plants. They'll consume 2-3x the the space they're consuming now after the tie down.

All lights are at maybe 15-25% power. No need to cook 'em at this stage of the growth cycle. The seedlings in the front right are something I may just toss out. I damaged most of them pretty good with safer horticultural soap then damaged them even more with coco wet. Both caused a lot of phytotoxicity. Only 3 or so may survive. Here are the strains I'm running:

Maui waui
Strawberry cough
Rocket fuel
Blue dream
Bruce banger
Jager
God bud

I'm hoping I can at least get 1 or 2 of the SC's to rebound. I've got 1 or 2 good looking rocket fuels that I'm holding out hope for a rapid recovery. They look pretty decent. The others are a sad sight. I'll see what they all look like in 7 days. Whatever hasn't recovered gets trashed. The survivors get TLC. I'll be clipping clones tomorrow. Planning to take 20-25 cuts. Next cycle I'm planning to flower 2x the plants while cutting the veg time in half to increase the frequency of my harvests.

Here are some pics of the flower room. I know it looks kinda funny with the plants spread out like a whore on dollar day. They're all basically positioned directly under a light. As they grow the room will fill rapidly in the next 4 weeks.

My fogger comes in tomorrow. I'm jacked to the tits man! No more effing water allover my floor after a pesticide application not to mention more thorough coverage and a fuck ton of time savings. This cuts my IPM applications from 2 hours with cleanup down to about 20 minutes. I do this once every 3-4 days. That's a huge savings on a monthly basis. God willing I'll never use a spray bottle on my plants again. I feel like I just discovered my first boner man. Very exciting stuff

You can see the portable AC in the back but it's not going to be used for the winter. I have a 200CFM Vortex fan piping cold air from outside into the grow room. I have a fine mesh screen on the intake to keep debris out. I've got it hooked to a speed controller because when it gets down to 5 or 10 degrees outside at full blast that room can get down to 60 degrees fast. Ideally I'd have a thermostat controller hooked up, but it is what it is for the time being.

Nice setup.

jzs147 said:

Nice setup.

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Thanks man. I started growing in a 4x4 secret jardin about 13 years ago in a 2 bedroom apartment. Maintenance was constantly hassling me about my electric bill. Apparently I was the only tenant hitting $300/month and they got very suspicous. Fuckers started doing random inspections and shit so I had to hide the tent by stacking a bunch of bullshit allover it then tossing a queen sized mattress up against it so it just looked like a pile of crap. I sure don't miss those days. Eventually I was able to buy a house and dedicate an entire room in my basement for the flower room. When this room was started I had a single 600w HPS and 1 plant 3 years ago. It's been a time consuming and costly road to get things where they are now and it was all worth it. Couldn't have done any of it without the pros on RIU helping me along the way. Love me some RIU!

jonnynobody said:

Thanks man. I started growing in a 4x4 secret jardin about 13 years ago in a 2 bedroom apartment. Maintenance was constantly hassling me about my electric bill. Apparently I was the only tenant hitting $300/month and they got very suspicous. Fuckers started doing random inspections and shit so I had to hide the tent by stacking a bunch of bullshit allover it then tossing a queen sized mattress up against it so it just looked like a pile of crap. I sure don't miss those days. Eventually I was able to buy a house and dedicate an entire room in my basement for the flower room. When this room was started I had a single 600w HPS and 1 plant 3 years ago. It's been a time consuming and costly road to get things where they are now and it was all worth it. Couldn't have done any of it without the pros on RIU helping me along the way. Love me some RIU!

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I started a few yrs ago to.
Check out my journal.

Fogger came in today. Ran some Forbid through it. I'm pretty impressed so far. It's like a reverse vacuum with an atomizing nozzle. The force of air coming out is pretty heavy. It's got an adjustment screw near the handle on the hose so you can increase or decrease the water output. On/off switch right at the hose handle. Solid piece of equipment. Took me 15 minutes to cover the whole room. I'll see how things look tomorrow and post some pics.

Well the fogger is going back to amazon. The velocity of air coming out of the machine is so heavy it literally wind burned the plants. I'm going to continue to search for a low velocity fogger to replace this one. The dam thing is like a leaf blower in reverse. Matter of fact this thing might be stronger than my gas powered echo leaf blower. Live and learn I suppose. Back to pump sprayers and hand sprayers until I find a replacement. The wind burn damage probably put me a week behind. What can ya do? Keep on truckin.

jonnynobody said:

Well the fogger is going back to amazon. The velocity of air coming out of the machine is so heavy it literally wind burned the plants. I'm going to continue to search for a low velocity fogger to replace this one. The dam thing is like a leaf blower in reverse. Matter of fact this thing might be stronger than my gas powered echo leaf blower. Live and learn I suppose. Back to pump sprayers and hand sprayers until I find a replacement. The wind burn damage probably put me a week behind. What can ya do? Keep on truckin.

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Madness

I'm ordering this tonight to replace the fogger that wind burned my plants:

It's an electric paint sprayer by Wagner. Low velocity output with adjustable spray patterns. No risk of hitting your lights with moisture while spraying the undersides of the leaves. No risk of wind burn due to the gentle output. Perfect for a hobbyist sized indoor garden! Not to mention it's nearly $40 cheaper than the fogger. I think the fogger would be fantastic for any outdoor applications, but absolute overkill for an indoor hobbyist gardener.

It'll be a few days before I get it. I'll report back as soon as I get a chance to try it out. I'm fairly certain I hit the bullseye this time. Fingers crossed

I decided to go with the next model up:
$104 and much easier to use because the motor is remote. The long hose is very nice for moving around the room without hauling around a heavy noisy motor. Arrives tuesday. Excited to the tits!

While I'm waiting on the new paint sprayer to arrive tomorrow I ran across this video on youtube of a guy using an air compressor, 2 1/2 gallon pressure tank, and airless paint spray gun with an air hose for applying pesticides. It's pretty dam impressive. I'm pretty confident the wagner unit I ordered is gonna work great, but for $300 or so all in I could setup the same system as this guy. Far more than I'm willing to spend right now, but definitely a long term solution I'd like to add to the garden eventually - only if the wagner doesn't work effectively.


Is that badass or is that badass? Fogging like a boss on the cheap more effectively than a high priced ULV fogger. Dope shit

The new wagner paint sprayer arrived today. This is one sexy piece of equipment. You can control the air output via dial and you can control the output from fine mist to coarse larger drops at the end of the nozzle on the gun. The hose is very long. Maybe 20' or so. The gun is lightweight and a easy to work with. And the cherry on top is the mist only extends about 18" or so in a beautiful wide misting pattern. No risk of hitting my lights or other electronics on the ceiling like the pump sprayers were doing. If you have more than a small plot of plants this puppy could make your life a hell of lot easier for applying anything on the foliage. Organic teas, pesticides, anti fungal sprays, and the list goes on and on.

I tested it out in my utility sink to get things dialed in properly. I reduced the pressure to the lowest setting and have the output on the nozzle at the fine mist setting. The tank only holds about a quart which is the only caveat. Refilling is a breeze because of how it's designed, and for the price what more can one expect? The system I posted above this one is obviously a more robust system that won't require refills, but you're talking $120 versus $300-$350 for the more elaborate system above. I'm happy to refill the quart container at this point. My garden isn't big enough to justify the big setup.

Here are some pics showing off the operational features on the sprayer:



Pressure control:



Mist adjustment:

jonnynobody said:

The new wagner paint sprayer arrived today. This is one sexy piece of equipment. You can control the air output via dial and you can control the output from fine mist to coarse larger drops at the end of the nozzle on the gun. The hose is very long. Maybe 20' or so. The gun is lightweight and a easy to work with. And the cherry on top is the mist only extends about 18" or so in a beautiful wide misting pattern. No risk of hitting my lights or other electronics on the ceiling like the pump sprayers were doing. If you have more than a small plot of plants this puppy could make your life a hell of lot easier for applying anything on the foliage. Organic teas, pesticides, anti fungal sprays, and the list goes on and on.

I tested it out in my utility sink to get things dialed in properly. I reduced the pressure to the lowest setting and have the output on the nozzle at the fine mist setting. The tank only holds about a quart which is the only caveat. Refilling is a breeze because of how it's designed, and for the price what more can one expect? The system I posted above this one is obviously a more robust system that won't require refills, but you're talking $120 versus $300-$350 for the more elaborate system above. I'm happy to refill the quart container at this point. My garden isn't big enough to justify the big setup.

Here are some pics showing off the operational features on the sprayer:

View attachment 5012702View attachment 5012703

Pressure control:
View attachment 5012704


Mist adjustment:
View attachment 5012705

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What size is that can? And is there a way to pump larger volumes without have to stop? Or is the most so fine the small can can go really far?

MidnightSun72 said:

What size is that can? And is there a way to pump larger volumes without have to stop? Or is the most so fine the small can can go really far?

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The cup size is 1 liter. That's as much as my squirt bottles hold so I won't be refilling anymore often using the machine than using the spray bottle.

Yes, larger volumes can be emitted according to how you set the output dial. The engine ramps up as the dial increases and ramps down when the dial is decreased. The unit will output more or less air according to your dial setting. This can be adjusted while the machine is running so you can dial it right into the sweet spot you're looking for with your particular situation. The mist can be adjusted. I like the smallest drops I can get so I set on the mist setting which is the same as a fine mist spray bottle. It closely replicates a ULV fogger's output without the leaf blower style velocity that wind burned my plants. I really think paint sprayers are the perfect tool for small to medium sized gardens. Great spread, versatile, easy to use, easy to cleanup, and relatively inexpensive. This puppy will cut my IPM applications from 1.5-2 hours down to 20 minutes.

Want fine mist with high output? Increase the engine speed. Fine mist with low output? Decrease the engine speed. The configuration options are great. Especially for what I would consider a value priced paint sprayer.

Plant pics and some pics of the room how I have it setup at the moment:

Wind burn on my bruce banger from the ULV fogger that blew like a leaf blower. The BB is the most fragile and sensitive plant I've ever grown while the rest of the strains can take a lot of abuse.


Bruce banger: A little more wind burn here. It's not horrible but enough to piss me off. In 10 days they'll all bush out to the point this won't even be visible anymore. It just stunted them a bit. Got my paint sprayer though now. No more wind burn and no more ULV foggers. Ever.


The seedlings: As you can see I had to tear off a lot of damaged growth on the lower portion of the stems. Some more than others, but they're all recovering beautifully. These aren't going into the next flower cycle. They'll veg for around 12 weeks. Gonna be monsters! Strawberry cough, jack herer, white widow, and rocket fuel.




Another BD. No wind burn damage other than a few pale leaves:



Maui waui: Looking good. She'll veg for about 12 weeks. Almost no wind burn damage. I already tore off the damage. Recovering nicely.


Another BD: As you can see there's almost no damage other than a pale leaf or two.



Jager: This fucker is an interesting one. Smells like black licorice. Who the fuck likes that nasty smell? However, she smokes incredibly well. Rich, smooth, potent, and has a great flavor. It tastes nothing like it smells thank god. And it's tied with BD for extremely high yields. I'm rotating it out though to make room for new strains. I'm done with black licorice


God bud: In coco killing it. No windburn. Very tough strain.



Rocket fuel: Soil grown looking good. Minimal wind burn. Some is visible though on the new growth that's slightly chlorotic and twisting a bit with rippling in some of the fan leaves.


Strawberry cough: She took it to the teeth hard. Finally spitting out some good new growth after 4 days of devastation. I really want at least 1 SC to survive. It smells so stanky right now it's almost unbelievable. Definitely the stinkiest one I've had in the garden.

The whole tamale spread out:



Another maui waui in coco: Looking great. Minimal wind burn.

A few pics of how I've got my room setup. Nothing fancy:

Entry way into the garden:



An accordion door behind the curtains:


Heavy duty tarp with PVC attached down the middle as a handle. 3 layers of light proofing as I go in and out of the room during lights off for watering and such:


Pump connected to water hose ran to my basement sewer drain operated by an on / off remote control:


Random supplies for hanging branches and such:


Battery powered siphon pump I used to drain the saucers. I dump that into the waste bin and pump it out. This way I don't have to haul buckets of water out of the room. Easier on the back.