Indoor Hope's perpetual Skyline grow

[hope2grow]

Here she is.. day 32 today..

 

[Teetee]

you'll have to enlighten me Bro. I dunno what VPD even stands for, let alone wtf it's all about.

And it will probably scare the shit out of me.

 

[DDubs]

So having had my trusty Skyline 400 for about 10 years and figuring that her best hours were probably behind her.. I bought a Mars FC-3000.. the one with the Samsung diodes.. 300W.. 4 bars of light.

As soon as I stuck it in the temp in the tent went up to 30c.. and higher.. high 20s at best. It ran around 23/24c with the Skyline in.. usually 50/60% RH. With the temp increase of course came a drop in RH.. the 2 figures getting further away from each other.

I noticed when I moved my grape crinkle from under the 50W spotlight to the 300w mars light that within a few days I had brown spotting on the leaves.. calcium issues.. the plant was about 25 days old and lovely lush green with not a mark on a leaf when I put it under the 300W light.

That was when I started to look for answers. What did I find. VPD!!

Id read about VPD before but never paid much attention as my plants looked healthy and grew fine so the importance of it hadnt really landed with me until I witnessed what happens to a plant when VPD gets way out of range.. the Grape Crinkle was wilting.. felt papery.. leaves curling.. generally unhappy. Of course one of the things that VPD can affect is nutrient uptake as i have now learned.. leading to issues with your plants!!

I put my Skyline back in last night.. the climate changed almost immediately.. temp down RH up.. and the plant looked so much happier.

Then I remembered.. I grew that big Mazar under the Mars light.. in the conditions it generated with VPD a mile off range for most of its life.. so its no wonder she struggled especially after the introduction of the Silic Rock!!

Just wanted to share that experience and the importance of VPD.. im sure all you sensible growers out there already know.. but it may help someone someday! VPD.. it seems to matter lol

Anyway.. while i have you.. anyone interested in a Mars 300w light.. barely used.. mates rates

Can you separate the driver from the light? I have mine outside the tent to keep the temps down. Also does the 3000 have a dimmer? I have the 4800 and I can only go up to 75% before the plants start to revolt.

 

[hope2grow]

Can you separate the driver from the light? I have mine outside the tent to keep the temps down. Also does the 3000 have a dimmer? I have the 4800 and I can only go up to 75% before the plants start to revolt.

Yea the driver comes off m8 so thats an idea.. I juat wanted it out of there asap last night.. didn't want to watch the plant suffer any more.. I had it turned down to 75%! Temps still high 20s.. full power temps are 30c +

I'll leave rhe Skyline in for a few days while I mull it over.

 

[hope2grow]

you'll have to enlighten me Bro. I dunno what VPD even stands for, let alone wtf it's all about.

And it will probably scare the shit out of me.

Awwww m8.. your know what growers and rabbit holes are like lol Anyway.. its basically the relationship between your temperature and RH and what effect that has on your plants.. long and short is if your VPD isn't in range or close your plant will stop performing the tasks that it needs to to grow.. nutrient uptake being one thing affected.. and in my case.. all my own investigation and conclusions of course.. that translated as an almost immediate inability to take up calcium in the Grape Crinkle when I put it under that light in that environment.

VPD seems simple enough to understand.. a quick Google will get you a VPD chart and a million articles on it.. and chances are unless you deal with unusually high or low temps or RH then its never been a problem and never will.. but if you do find yourself faced with either then as far as I can see you should be concerned about your VPD.

Have a read over a few articles and say wow.. im only discovering this now lol

Seems more prominent in the growing world than it was before with new tech advances etc for reading it.. im looking at a hydrometer that gives a VPD readout as well as temp and RH to keep it handy.. examples below..

 

[hope2grow]

you'll have to enlighten me Bro. I dunno what VPD even stands for, let alone wtf it's all about.

And it will probably scare the shit out of me.

Its almost like in the old days.. when we'd say what's your temps and humidity and how many watts are you runnin.. today's equivalent seems to be what's your VPD and DLI lol

Imagine sayin that to a guy 30 years ago as he busts out a big 1000w HPS banger for his 6x6 tent lol just about to add 30c to his room temps lol hed be like waaaaa??

Time marches on.

 

[hope2grow]

Here we are today.. Mephisto Grape Crinkle at day 35..

And ive even managed to pull the Sour Diesel in coco round to looking half healthy at the minute..

Although I still cant guarantee she'll make it to the end! Tricky to get the hang of watering this.coco.. looks and feels like it doesn't need watered.. but it does. Hopefully I can get into the groove with her feeds and keep her alive!

 

[Antonio_DutchPassion]

So having had my trusty Skyline 400 for about 10 years and figuring that her best hours were probably behind her.. I bought a Mars FC-3000.. the one with the Samsung diodes.. 300W.. 4 bars of light.

As soon as I stuck it in the temp in the tent went up to 30c.. and higher.. high 20s at best. It ran around 23/24c with the Skyline in.. usually 50/60% RH. With the temp increase of course came a drop in RH.. the 2 figures getting further away from each other.

I noticed when I moved my grape crinkle from under the 50W spotlight to the 300w mars light that within a few days I had brown spotting on the leaves.. calcium issues.. the plant was about 25 days old and lovely lush green with not a mark on a leaf when I put it under the 300W light.

That was when I started to look for answers. What did I find. VPD!!

Id read about VPD before but never paid much attention as my plants looked healthy and grew fine so the importance of it hadnt really landed with me until I witnessed what happens to a plant when VPD gets way out of range.. the Grape Crinkle was wilting.. felt papery.. leaves curling.. generally unhappy. Of course one of the things that VPD can affect is nutrient uptake as i have now learned.. leading to issues with your plants!!

I put my Skyline back in last night.. the climate changed almost immediately.. temp down RH up.. and the plant looked so much happier.

Then I remembered.. I grew that big Mazar under the Mars light.. in the conditions it generated with VPD a mile off range for most of its life.. so its no wonder she struggled especially after the introduction of the Silic Rock!!

Just wanted to share that experience and the importance of VPD.. im sure all you sensible growers out there already know.. but it may help someone someday! VPD.. it seems to matter lol

Anyway.. while i have you.. anyone interested in a Mars 300w light.. barely used.. mates rates

VPD and DLI are prob the 2 most important things in a growroom to manage. And climate being the most important one (VPD), but don't get me wrong, even when you have a perfect climate you can easily fck up the plants by simply applying a wrong DLI.

Many growers nowadays make the mistake to use a high efficiency LED light, with about 2,7-3 umol/J that is made for growing photoperiods the same way for growing auto's. Simply said, using a 300w LED in a 80x80 or a 500-600watt LED in a 1x1 or 1.2x1.2 is prob perfect for a photoperiod, using the same wattage/light distance with an autoflower on 18/6 20/4 or even 24/0 will completely fck up your plants. The amount of photons is simply too high and will have damaging effects on the tissue/leafs, resulting in many many issues.

You would be surprised how many customers come back with similar issues related to light stress to us, simply because they are blasting them (young)plants with too many photons! It is the same as we North Europeans travel to the South of Europe or even worse, to the Equator and lay in the sun all day, I know when you're on holiday you can easily pick out the people from the UK/the Netherlands because those white skinned bodies cannot handle them high light levels!

An easy way to tackle this is simply by changing the power of the LED (if you have a dimmer) to match the extra hours that you use for an autoflower. For example, if a manufacturer says the LED light is perfect on full wack on about 60cm to the canopy, let's say 500watt in 1.2 x 1.2m tent with photo's during flowering = 12x 500w = 6000w on a day, growing auto's on 18/6 will result in +50% light hours per day (which is 3/3 of the 2/3 of photoperiod) resulting in = 6000w / 18 = 333w. so you run the lights at 2/3 of the maximum power, about 66,6% at the same light distance. And don't ever go higher in terms of wattage, period.

Most importantly, having in mind young plants need less light, you should start the power of the LED very low, prob at 10% with seedlings, and turn it up a bit every other day/week, depending on how big the steps of the dimmer are (an if you only have let's say 20-40-60-80-100% steps), you should play with the light distance a bit to increase/decrease light levels. At around 4-5 weeks in its lifecycle, maybe you can have around 40-50% power of the max power of the LED with plants handling that without issues. but rather go slow instead of wanting to give more light... because light can be very damaging during these early stages too, but it's harder to spot and often looks like nutrient imbalances...

During the grow when you see leaves starting to turn light green, with darker veins, starting on the leaves on top of the plant, you might be looking at the start of light stress. A light meter would definitely help so you can easily read the PPFD value plants are receiving.

Clones and seedlings can do with 50-150ppfd, veg plants are usually good between 250-450 (up to maximum 600ppfd for light feeders) and in flowering somewhere ranging between 600-900 ppfd. Around 1000ppfd, the higher you get the more the plants can be stressed, resulting in bleaching of the buds, I have grown strains also on 1200-1400ppfd without CO2, but these were lights with more green/orange/blue in their spectrum than full reds, because plant cells are easier filled/damaged with Red light than with 'white' light (more green/orange/blue diodes) that looks more like the spectrum of the sun.

On a sunny day outdoors (depending on where you live obviously) some days plants can get 1500-2000ppfd even, however, these wavelenghts are completely different to the LED's we often use indoor, no one can mimick the sun's spectrum yet.
Anyway, I'll leave it at that, because I can keep rambling on lol

I was a driving part behind an LED company we ran with a part of the DP team so I read my fair share about LED's and its technology in the past 10yrs. And all those manufacturers didn't have a clue about growing cannabis, or all the different variables people grow with, so we had to teach them actually...

Its almost like in the old days.. when we'd say what's your temps and humidity and how many watts are you runnin.. today's equivalent seems to be what's your VPD and DLI lol

Time marches on.

Back in the day it was way simpler imo, oh you are using a 400w HPS? Have it around 40cm above your canopy, a 600w? 60cm, a 1000w, 100cm. Autoflowers weren't even part of the game. But now with all the new lights with that high efficiencies, different chips (cobs yes or no) and different spectrums & spread, different genetics with different light needs there are simply too many variables to come up with a one-fix solution.

 

[hope2grow]

VPD and DLI are prob the 2 most important things in a growroom to manage. And climate being the most important one (VPD), but don't get me wrong, even when you have a perfect climate you can easily fck up the plants by simply applying a wrong DLI.

Many growers nowadays make the mistake to use a high efficiency LED light, with about 2,7-3 umol/J that is made for growing photoperiods the same way for growing auto's. Simply said, using a 300w LED in a 80x80 or a 500-600watt LED in a 1x1 or 1.2x1.2 is prob perfect for a photoperiod, using the same wattage/light distance with an autoflower on 18/6 20/4 or even 24/0 will completely fck up your plants. The amount of photons is simply too high and will have damaging effects on the tissue/leafs, resulting in many many issues.

You would be surprised how many customers come back with similar issues related to light stress to us, simply because they are blasting them (young)plants with too many photons! It is the same as we North Europeans travel to the South of Europe or even worse, to the Equator and lay in the sun all day, I know when you're on holiday you can easily pick out the people from the UK/the Netherlands because those white skinned bodies cannot handle them high light levels!

An easy way to tackle this is simply by changing the power of the LED (if you have a dimmer) to match the extra hours that you use for an autoflower. For example, if a manufacturer says the LED light is perfect on full wack on about 60cm to the canopy, let's say 500watt in 1.2 x 1.2m tent with photo's during flowering = 12x 500w = 6000w on a day, growing auto's on 18/6 will result in +50% light hours per day (which is 3/3 of the 2/3 of photoperiod) resulting in = 6000w / 18 = 333w. so you run the lights at 2/3 of the maximum power, about 66,6% at the same light distance. And don't ever go higher in terms of wattage, period.

Most importantly, having in mind young plants need less light, you should start the power of the LED very low, prob at 10% with seedlings, and turn it up a bit every other day/week, depending on how big the steps of the dimmer are (an if you only have let's say 20-40-60-80-100% steps), you should play with the light distance a bit to increase/decrease light levels. At around 4-5 weeks in its lifecycle, maybe you can have around 40-50% power of the max power of the LED with plants handling that without issues. but rather go slow instead of wanting to give more light... because light can be very damaging during these early stages too, but it's harder to spot and often looks like nutrient imbalances...

During the grow when you see leaves starting to turn light green, with darker veins, starting on the leaves on top of the plant, you might be looking at the start of light stress. A light meter would definitely help so you can easily read the PPFD value plants are receiving.

Clones and seedlings can do with 50-150ppfd, veg plants are usually good between 250-450 (up to maximum 600ppfd for light feeders) and in flowering somewhere ranging between 600-900 ppfd. Around 1000ppfd, the higher you get the more the plants can be stressed, resulting in bleaching of the buds, I have grown strains also on 1200-1400ppfd without CO2, but these were lights with more green/orange/blue in their spectrum than full reds, because plant cells are easier filled/damaged with Red light than with 'white' light (more green/orange/blue diodes) that looks more like the spectrum of the sun.

On a sunny day outdoors (depending on where you live obviously) some days plants can get 1500-2000ppfd even, however, these wavelenghts are completely different to the LED's we often use indoor, no one can mimick the sun's spectrum yet.
Anyway, I'll leave it at that, because I can keep rambling on lol

I was a driving part behind an LED company we ran with a part of the DP team so I read my fair share about LED's and its technology in the past 10yrs. And all those manufacturers didn't have a clue about growing cannabis, or all the different variables people grow with, so we had to teach them actually...



Back in the day it was way simpler imo, oh you are using a 400w HPS? Have it around 40cm above your canopy, a 600w? 60cm, a 1000w, 100cm. Autoflowers weren't even part of the game. But now will all the new lights with that high efficiencies, different chips so different spectrums & spread, different genetics with different light needs there are simply too many variables to come up with one-fix solution.

Great read m8.. thanks for taking the time to post it

Officially saving my grow pennies for some environmental control equipment now lol

 

[hope2grow]

@Teetee me oul China plate and master of the stuff they call coco kwaarrr lol

This wee girls 26 days old.. hasnt had a great start but hey.. its me and coco! Would you find yourself feeding such a specimen daily or close to daily?

Shes in 12L of coco on AN coco grow at about 1.2 EC and 6.0ph last feed.