California Lightworks 440 SolarStorm LED Medical Marijuana Grow

I got my California LightWorks Solarstorm 440 LED grow light on May 6th, a couple days ago. I have high hopes with this LED system from CLW, I have previously used 1000 watt HID systems and experimented with LED's only in flower. The highest quality bud I've ever grown was with LED lights.

I'm growing in a 4x4x8 grow tent, 2 oscillating fans, fresh air intake and a makeshift CO2 system. My areas climate is still cool so heat ventilation isn't necessary, with the grow light active and fresh air intake the temperature is between 77 - 82. I got 4 clones I got at my local collective; white fire, super glue, sugar cookies and purple urkle. Only the super glue clone was a small clone 3.5 inches at first, purple erkle 11 inches, sugar cookies 11 inches, and white fire 14 inches.

So I realize you can never know it all so all and any advice, tips, or tricks about growing cannabis please share.

So I recently repoted All 4 clones into bigger pots so I think their growth is a little stunned because they're getting used to their new environment. Other than that they look healthy except for one of the Clones the sugar cookie strain, for some reason it's getting a little droopy kind of like it was over watered. I'm going to let it dry out and see if the perks back up. The other clones each have at least one inch of new growth in the last week.

Nice set up. Curious how your new led does. I also have a 4x4, been considering switching from my hid to led to save on my power bill and have a quieter ballast. Il be watching, thanks for sharing

sierranevadaca said:

Nice set up. Curious how your new led does. I also have a 4x4, been considering switching from my hid to led to save on my power bill and have a quieter ballast. Il be watching, thanks for sharing

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This is my second time growing with LED lights. The first time I decided to grow with LED lights I just used it in flowering and it worked great with increasing potency. Right now I'm in veg and they're growing a little slower I think because I put them in pots that were too large for the size they were so the root system is having to play catch-up now but I'm still having some pretty decent growth. I've been researching California light works for a couple years now and I definitely think they're the way to go if you want to go LED.

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Purple Erkle 13.5 inches on 5/18
White fire 23
Superglue 8
Sugar cookies 16

Hello all I wanted to update you on my progress. I've made a couple of additions since the last posting, I change my grow tent from a 48x48x96 to 48x96x96 so I doubled my grow tent. Also, I live in a very hot part of Northern California and as summer comes it has been getting hotter so I bought a Soleus air 8000 BTU portable air conditioner and actually put it inside the grow tent. So now my setup includes the new 48x96x96 grow tent, 8000 btu AC unit, 2 oscillating fans, 4 inch fresh air intake fan and my homemade CO2 system which is supposed to leave anywhere from 800 to 1200 parts per million, which I haven't actually measured yet but I have a meter on the way I bought on eBay to prove or disprove the theory if anybody wants to know how I make this makeshift CO2 system reply and ask and I'll make a instructional video.

Now to the plants. Three out of the four are thriving the white fire og, Super Glue, and purple urkle are thriving after being stunted from being put in pots that were too large for the size of the plants they were, the plans have finally caught up and there is significant growth now. The fourth is giving me some kind of trouble, it's a sugar cookie strain and it seems like the leaves on top are suffering from some type of stress I can't identify while the leaves on bottom are fine so if anybody out there recognizes anything please drop me a line for right now I think it could be either too much light from this high intensity LED from California Lightworks or I might have calcium magnesium deficiency so I'm going to go get some Cal Mag today and see if that helps the situation other than that this light it's pretty damn impressive.

Okay today's June 7 2016 and I just did the switchover flower so today is day one. The plans are looking very healthy with this California light works Solar storm for 440. The plants are thriving, i had one issue with the sugar cookies strain but bounced back after I gave it some oily cann from Earth juice pretty much their version of Cal mag. This plant had purple veins and like it was suffering from overwatering with droopy leaves I really looked like she was getting sickly but like I said she's thriving now.

I've seen pretty good growth in all plans the purple Erkle is about 15 inches, White fire is 28 inches, sugar cookies is 19 inches and super glue is 13 inches.

Last night I went ahead and flipped on the Bloom setting on my solar storm 440 and I'm still debating if I'm going to go ahead and activate the UVB now or wait for final weeks of flowering.

Ok all hello again!! I made my switch to flowering a few days ago and everything is looking great!! I know I'm gonna get some flack for this but I'm a stanch defoliation supporter and this grow I'm trying a new technique. I conducted a rather heavy defoliation in 1st day of flowering, then another defoliation at week 3. The idea is when a plan begins to flower it won't have to expend energy sustaining big fan leaves and I can focus primarily on bud development. Cannabis plants create leaves well into the second or third week of flowering, so when the next defoliation session comes up it week three I have to remember no more leaves will be produced by the plant so I need to leave enough where the plan can still create energy for but development. Now I've use the defoliation techniques before, but not this extreme; so it looks like we're both can get a good lesson here.

I'm on my 3rd grow using the solar storm 440 , still learning and doing hydro .I'm using 4x4x8 tent ...I stop defoliation after week 3 and still get good amount of leafs in return , another thing I do is LST and have an even canopy , and I start with the uvb light on week 4 till harvest , gets some sticky buds !!! good luck and ill be watching ....

bubba73 said:

I'm on my 3rd grow using the solar storm 440 , still learning and doing hydro .I'm using 4x4x8 tent ...I stop defoliation after week 3 and still get good amount of leafs in return , another thing I do is LST and have an even canopy , and I start with the uvb light on week 4 till harvest , gets some sticky buds !!! good luck and ill be watching ....

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Sweet. I wasn't really sure when to switch on the UVB bulb. I do have a question since we do have the same light, how would you say it does in the yield category? This is my 1st grow with theach 440.

Mike011 said:

Sweet. I wasn't really sure when to switch on the UVB bulb. I do have a question since we do have the same light, how would you say it does in the yield category? This is my 1st grow with theach 440.

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the yield category from 2-6 oz dry .... many factors .. will get tight hard nugz...

So I'm at flowering day #11, I've started to notice the flowering stretch in all plants. The California Superglue strain, Gelato x Gorilla Glue #4, is definitely flowering faster than the others. No trichomes yet.

Mike011 said:

So I recently repoted All 4 clones into bigger pots so I think their growth is a little stunned because they're getting used to their new environment. Other than that they look healthy except for one of the Clones the sugar cookie strain, for some reason it's getting a little droopy kind of like it was over watered. I'm going to let it dry out and see if the perks back up. The other clones each have at least one inch of new growth in the last week.

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Your garden is looking good in general. What's up with the lower branches on the plant in the back right being cut off? Looks like it came that way or you cut them? All of those leaves are energy collectors and a wick, they facilitate nutrient/water movement from the roots up the xylem and through the plants tissues (the stalk, stems, leaves, and buds) , it's difficult to grow a healthy plant to it's full potential with so little growth sites.

If it helps I just chopped my first plant from under this light and the yield is about the same as I got under my 600 hps. I have a few more to go in a couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see if the results are steady. All in all I'm pretty happy with it so far. One thing I noticed on all the plants is they seem bushier than usual, but I'm also doing soil this time and not hydro, maybe that's the difference. idk.

Dobby said:

If it helps I just chopped my first plant from under this light and the yield is about the same as I got under my 600 hps. I have a few more to go in a couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see if the results are steady. All in all I'm pretty happy with it so far. One thing I noticed on all the plants is they seem bushier than usual, but I'm also doing soil this time and not hydro, maybe that's the difference. idk.

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I'm glad to hear yields will be on par with a 600 watt HID like the manufacturer claims. I also think my ladies were bushier before I defoliated as well.

Sad news I found mites.......... Fuck!!!!

Although I think it's not fatal infestation, im on day 17 of flowering and did my 3 week flower defoliation few days early so I think there's enough time to fight these little bastards. I bought about 1500 ladybugs and released them all in there and it seems like it's working. Ladybugs are working better with LED lights, for one reason they're not flying into the bulb and dying like they would with a hid system. Since there's no extreme heat coming off of the solarstorm they're just flying around and eating mites and eggs as its there only food source in my tent.

I put the ladybugs in the soil and on the floor of my grow room. The ladybugs on the floor go for all the eggs and mites that have fallen to the ground and the ladybugs I put on the soil gobble up the mites and eggs in the soil then work their way up the main stem of the plant. The reason I do this is because mites are mostly on the underside of the leaves and a great majority of their eggs are also on the underside of the leaves so as the ladybugs are going up the stem the first thing they see the underside of these leaves so I'm hoping it's the first meal they're going to go for.

Any tips, tricks or advice?