LED grow from start to finish

Good afternoon everyone, so I plan to do my best to document this veg and flower cycle from start to finish with my DIY LED rigs. I have built 2 rigs each composed of 6 HLG QB304s with a mix of 3k and 4k in staggered placement to give a mixed spectrum. I have them powered with 6 hlg-240h-c1050a drivers. 2 boards per driver. Which puts my rigs at about 900watts from the wall a piece. So here are what the rigs look like:

I keep everything in house with clones so once my clones are rooted and ready for transplant I will transplant into small 1/4gal pots. The will stay in these pots for about 2 weeks. From there I transplant to 1 gal pots which you can see below.

So out of all of these clones in 1 gal pots I will pick the best 18 to flower. I have two different strains here, which are sunset sherbert and gp5. The gp5 is part of an in house breaking project from okie and bean in which they reversed gg4 and pollinated a purple punch female. To sum it up gp5 is (gg4 x purple punch) pheno #5. I will pick 9 of each strain to flower. I will veg in these 1gal pots until I build up a root system as you can see below and then will transplant to 3 gal pots which I will post next.

calitrees916 said:

Good afternoon everyone, so I plan to do my best to document this veg and flower cycle from start to finish with my DIY LED rigs. I have built 2 rigs each composed of 6 HLG QB304s with a mix of 3k and 4k in staggered placement to give a mixed spectrum. I have them powered with 6 hlg-240h-c1050a drivers. 2 boards per driver. Which puts my rigs at about 900watts from the wall a piece. So here are what the rigs look like:

Click to expand...

Nice setup! I got a few questions hope you dont mind. What the size of areas are your hitting per rig? What does the 240h--c1050 peak out per board when turned all the way up? Also wondering what you replaced with the quantums?

booms111 said:

What does the 240h--c1050 peak out per board when turned all the way up

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If you check out the page for them on the HLG site, you'll see the 304 hits about 113W with a 1050 mA drive current.

booms111 said:

Nice setup! I got a few questions hope you dont mind. What the size of areas are your hitting per rig? What does the 240h--c1050 peak out per board when turned all the way up? Also wondering what you replaced with the quantums?

Click to expand...

I'd say my boards roughly run at around 135/140 watts per board cranked all the way up. My rigs were designed to cover a 5'x5' area, however I get descent par readings out to 6'x6'. I've grown usually under hps or de lighting but I did not replace anything for my boards. I created more space to light up. And I never have a problem with questions because I too have questions still to this day so ask away as I try to be a transparent as possible. I will get more into details in perspective to my style of growing as this thread grows. #thefutureisbright

Good morning everyone, so here I am back on the thread. To pick up where I left off once my final 18 plants are chosen to flower I transplant from 1gal coco into 3 gal coco. I will continue to water in a wet/dry fashion until I create a big enough root system to hook up my drip lines, at that time I will start multi-feeding with my drippers. This process can take up to 2 weeks

Once my root system reaches grows to my 3gal pots is when I start multi feeding with my drip system. Above in this post you will see a pic of what I would consider a developed root system for my 3 gal coco pots

My target goal is to fill 2 trellis screens measured at 5'x5' with plant canopy. As seen below you can see that I am just about ready to go from vegetative growth to flower growth. I typically weave the plant through the trellis until I have covered every square inch of the trellis with plant canopy. During this process I multi feed with my drippers 5-6 times per light cycle. Multi feeding is really tricky until you get the hang of it, so be careful not to over water in the beginning.

Good afternoon my fellow growers! So now that I have filled my 5x5' trellis screens it is time to do a clean up prior to setting my light timer to a 12/12 light cycle, time to start flowering these ladies. I did not take the best photo of how the plants look before I did the lollipop/legshave but I did take one take a look the pic above is pre-clean up.

The pics below are post clean up




The pic below is of the GP5 "gg4xpurple punch #5"


The pic below is of sunset sherbert


Now the count down begins and I will do my best to update a day by day photo to this thread of the complete flowering cycle. Cheers everyone #thefutureisbright

Day 1 of flower:

Distance from QB to canopy? How hard you drive them?

Subbed!

Nice work, btw. Every single plant looks nice anc healthy!
Where did you get this gg # 4 x pp cross? Will it be available sometime?
Purple gg sounds somehow yummy..

KonopCh said:

Distance from QB to canopy? How hard you drive them?

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24-36" away from plant canopy. I really like 36" because my plants tell me they like my rigs further away from the canopy as opposed to slammed on them. 1050ma is the drive current through my boards.

Randomblame said:

Subbed!

Nice work, btw. Every single plant looks nice anc healthy!
Where did you get this gg # 4 x pp cross? Will it be available sometime?
Purple gg sounds somehow yummy..

Click to expand...

Thank you sir I appreciate the good vibes. My partner and I have been doin in house breeding, we call it okie and bean productions. The gg4xpurple punch was from a special project of ours and we pheno hunted through a few beans and hand slected this pheno.

Just dim the lights instead. That's all you are doing above 20" anyway. Instead of reducing the energy consumption, you are wasting it on the walls. Dim by 30% to 40% for the same effect

calitrees916 said:

Thank you sir I appreciate the good vibes. My partner and I have been doin in house breeding, we call it okie and bean productions. The gg4xpurple punch was from a special project of ours and we pheno hunted through a few beans and hand slected this pheno.

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Lol, okie and bean seeds sounds funny!
Nice to see that there are still some old school gardeners who deal with breeding
I do not have the space nor the time today, but still have my two icecream boxes full with different strains!
But just for the case I have a collodialsilver generator, should I encounter an exceptionally good pheno it will be feminized. It's so easy I only wish I had had one 20 years ago, lol!

To save a few bucks on your energy bill you could try it with ~75% output and 24" like @wietefras has recommended. I love my good old luxmeter to get an idea of the intensity at canopy level(12$, e3ay).
I would test the brightness across the surface at 36"(that's your target, because of plant response) then lower the heights to 24" and dimm the light untill you get the same readings. The plant response should be the same. Inside a tent with reflective walls the heights do not matter so much, but you have a lot of open space around the canopy where light gets lost.
You could even use a smartphone luxmeter app, because you need no true values for the matter.
I know, it's hard to believe that you get the same result with as little watts but it works.
50klx is often already too much and I can see signs of stress and slight magnesium deficits. Up to 40-45klx everything keeps nice and healthy and I see no signs of stress. As long as I use no CO² this will be my target brightness at canopy level. My light is a ⅔/⅓ mix of 3000°k CRI80 and 90, the conversion factor should be somewhere araound 67 or so. That means the 45klx are actually only 670, maybe 700μMol/s/m² in the best case!
Hmmm! Danmed, I thought I could use much more?!
Than I compared my results to HPS and what must I see? Around the same brightness point people start getting issues with bleaching ... also with HPS.
Since then I use the 40-45klx with very good results. Tops can grow closer and then show signs of stress again, but that affects only a few tops and has little influence on yield in the end.
Whether the lamp runs at 350w while hanging 28" above the canopy or whether it is only 240w and 12" distance does not make much difference. As long as I use my target intensity I still pull ~50g/sft.
To hang the light higher than necessary only produces diminishing returns and is wasted energy.

Randomblame said:

To save a few bucks on your energy bill you could try it with ~75% output and 24" like @wietefras has recommended. I love my good old luxmeter to get an idea of the intensity at canopy level(12$, e3ay).
I would test the brightness across the surface at 36"(that's your target, because of plant response) then lower the heights to 24" and dimm the light untill you get the same readings. The plant response should be the same. Inside a tent with reflective walls the heights do not matter so much, but you have a lot of open space around the canopy where light gets lost.
You could even use a smartphone luxmeter app, because you need no true values for the matter.
I know, it's hard to believe that you get the same result with as little watts but it works.
50klx is often already too much and I can see signs of stress and slight magnesium deficits. Up to 40-45klx everything keeps nice and healthy and I see no signs of stress. As long as I use no CO² this will be my target brightness at canopy level. My light is a ⅔/⅓ mix of 3000°k CRI80 and 90, the conversion factor should be somewhere araound 67 or so. That means the 45klx are actually only 670, maybe 700μMol/s/m² in the best case!
Hmmm! Danmed, I thought I could use much more?!
Than I compared my results to HPS and what must I see? Around the same brightness point people start getting issues with bleaching ... also with HPS.
Since then I use the 40-45klx with very good results. Tops can grow closer and then show signs of stress again, but that affects only a few tops and has little influence on yield in the end.
Whether the lamp runs at 350w while hanging 28" above the canopy or whether it is only 240w and 12" distance does not make much difference. As long as I use my target intensity I still pull ~50g/sft.
To hang the light higher than necessary only produces diminishing returns and is wasted energy.

Click to expand...

Randomblame said:

To save a few bucks on your energy bill you could try it with ~75% output and 24" like @wietefras has recommended. I love my good old luxmeter to get an idea of the intensity at canopy level(12$, e3ay).
I would test the brightness across the surface at 36"(that's your target, because of plant response) then lower the heights to 24" and dimm the light untill you get the same readings. The plant response should be the same. Inside a tent with reflective walls the heights do not matter so much, but you have a lot of open space around the canopy where light gets lost.
You could even use a smartphone luxmeter app, because you need no true values for the matter.
I know, it's hard to believe that you get the same result with as little watts but it works.
50klx is often already too much and I can see signs of stress and slight magnesium deficits. Up to 40-45klx everything keeps nice and healthy and I see no signs of stress. As long as I use no CO² this will be my target brightness at canopy level. My light is a ⅔/⅓ mix of 3000°k CRI80 and 90, the conversion factor should be somewhere araound 67 or so. That means the 45klx are actually only 670, maybe 700μMol/s/m² in the best case!
Hmmm! Danmed, I thought I could use much more?!
Than I compared my results to HPS and what must I see? Around the same brightness point people start getting issues with bleaching ... also with HPS.
Since then I use the 40-45klx with very good results. Tops can grow closer and then show signs of stress again, but that affects only a few tops and has little influence on yield in the end.
Whether the lamp runs at 350w while hanging 28" above the canopy or whether it is only 240w and 12" distance does not make much difference. As long as I use my target intensity I still pull ~50g/sft.
To hang the light higher than necessary only produces diminishing returns and is wasted energy.

Click to expand...

@Randomblame duly noted and I'll give it a try on my next run as it would be a difficult task to dim down my drivers in the middle of this run. I do have a par meter that I have to take readings with. I have been collecting data from the different lighting sources I use to grow with (de, hps, LED,and I even have a few fluence spyderx) and have been experimenting with growing at different par measurements. I can say that it is strain dependent as to where you want your par levels as some strains like less/more than others.

wietefras said:

Just dim the lights instead. That's all you are doing above 20" anyway. Instead of reducing the energy consumption, you are wasting it on the walls. Dim by 30% to 40% for the same effect

Click to expand...

Thank you friend I will give it a try on my next run!