My journey

So for these little buggers it is day five. Only 4 of the 6 seeds that i recently planted are still going. But three of those 4 look fantastic. I'd say within 2-3 days 2 of them will be bigger and better developed than bob-b!

Can't wait till I get my lights and stuff!!! I'll post pickes once everything is setup! Bob-b has grown her first two sets of 3-leaf and there is some new growith in the middle. I'm letting Twistup04 use my 150 hps for his plant so i'm going to go cfl's the whole way through. hopefully it'll work out! I'll keep you posted.

Target has a good price on 26 watt cfl's about $4 ea mayba a little less but with tax... Lowes has 3 packs for $9 something.

They have both 6500k good for veg & 2700k good flower.

RandyRocket said:

Target has a good price on 26 watt cfl's about $4 ea mayba a little less but with tax... Lowes has 3 packs for $9 something.

They have both 6500k good for veg & 2700k good flower.

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yeah, thats prolly where i'll go for fruiting bulbs. I already have 11 6500k cfls, i'm just waiting for the sockets and the "Y" adapters to get to me!
11 of those CFL's should be sufficient for 4 plants right? that'll be 286w (actual) and over 11000 lumens. as long as the foliage gets adequite coverage that should be enough right???

blazin waffles said:

11 of those CFL's should be sufficient for 4 plants right?

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It should be.

blazin waffles said:

that'll be 286w (actual) and over 11000 lumens.

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It's really about 5307 lumens if all 11 are at 1600 lumens ea.

To cal. square 1600 x 11 = then sqrt the sum

sqrt(1600^2*11) = 5307 lumens

I know it's odd but a physicist at work gave my the formula.

On my system I have 1 400w @ 30000 lumens and 8 26w @ 1600 lumens

sqrt(30000^2+1600^2* 30339 lumens

As you can see the 8 cfl's add little light they are just their for the color.

My 400w is 4000k and the cfl's are 6500k.

Note: it takes 4 of the same light to double the lumens output.

RandyRocket said:

It's really about 5307 lumens if all 11 are at 1600 lumens ea.

To cal. square 1600 x 11 = then sqrt the sum

sqrt(1600^2*11) = 5307 lumens

I know it's odd but a physicist at work gave my the formula.

On my system I have 1 400w @ 30000 lumens and 8 26w @ 1600 lumens

sqrt(30000^2+1600^2* 30339 lumens.

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Oh ok....damn. Maybe i'll get my 400w light sooner than anticipated.. . . . . i don't know. I guess i wil wait to see how they do under all the new lights.
I can't wait till it all gets here!! Well your plants are doing beautifully! Here's to you mi amigo........puff puff pass

blazin waffles said:

Oh ok....damn. Maybe i'll get my 400w light sooner than anticipated.. . . . . i don't know. I guess i wil wait to see how they do under all the new lights.
I can't wait till it all gets here!! Well your plants are doing beautifully! Here's to you mi amigo........puff puff pass

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I'd wait, my plants (7) were under 10 cfl's at first. They did ok just slow. When I put them under the 400w light I also repotted to bigger pots and it was at the time when you would see faster growth. So it's hard to tell how much the 400w helped.

if u want lights get them of ebay

RandyRocket said:

I know it's odd but a physicist at work gave my the formula.

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Yeah, that's right - lumens are candela-steradians which is a measure of light times a unit of solid angle. If you double the number of lights you double the number of candelas, but you're essentially using the same (approximate) solid angle, so you have to account for area (which is a square unit) and so you have to take the square root. Lumens can be a poor measure for plants anyway, depending on the spectrum of the lamp. Lumens are really a measure of how bright something looks to the human eye and not how bright something looks to chlorophyll. If your sources all have a similar specral distribution then then it's a decent comparison, but 10,000 lumens of CFL doesn't necessarily equal 10,000 lumens of MH or HPS, for example.



^ if you look here, you see the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll A and B. From 400nm to 500nm is "blue" light, from 500-570 is "green", 580-600 is "yellow" , and 600-700 is "red" and beyond that is infrared.

During veg it's the blue peak that is most important and during flowering it's the red peak on the right. You see that there is almost no absorption by the leaf in the middle, which is green (and which is why plants look green!).

Lumens, however, measure light as seen by the human eye, which sees most dominantly in the green portion of the spectrum. Thus it's possible to have a very green light with a high luminous intensity but which doesn't have anything that a plant could ever use. It could almost use a new unit of measurement like plant-lumens, or even red-plant-lumens and blue-plant lumens - a number that tells you how bright a light looks to a plant, not to a human.

This is why you see some of these new LED grows which don't seem to have very bright sources, but which work really well because you can get LEDs tuned exactly to what chlorophyll wants - that's to say that the LED lamp spectrum looks much more like the chlorophyll absorption spectrum. It's all enough to twist your head in knots...

Well i hope that it wil work well enough. The 11 i have now are 6500k and thats the blue spectrum correct? I hope so!! Good info!! Thank you a lot

No worries. The best unit to measure your light with is PAR watts (Photosynthetic Active Region). For example, even though they're quite close MH lamps produce a bit more PAR watts of light than HPS, but since HPS is closer to what humans see, HPS has a higher lumens rating than MH even though it's not producing as much light. It's all a bit confusing. CFL tend to be quite broad spectrum and are well matched to the human eye, so comparing against HID in lumens you probably need a bit more than you would expect, but you can cozy CFLs right up to the plant and stuff them right under the canopy, so you end up needing a bit less than you might expect.

So i am now only waiting on the mylar and lights. I've got the "Y" adapters and the sockets. I'm currently using 2 26w 6500k cfl's on Bob-b, and the same for the 3 remaining sprouts. All three are in the process of growing their 2nd set of leaves (after the starter ones so the 3rd i guess). I'm thinking after i get some more light and the mylar up it may speed up the growth. when should i add nutes? I have some 24-8-12 mg plant food, can i use that?

blazin waffles said:

when should i add nutes? I have some 24-8-12 mg plant food, can i use that?

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After about 4 weeks.

1 gal of water, 4ml of Miracle-Gro 12-4-8 (this is 1/4 strength). I was using that but I got some Foxfarm and Flora Nova today. The Miracle-Gro was working ok but I wanted to switch to something with some secondary nutrients. Plus the hydro store gave my some nice charts for 3 type. I picked two to try. My first 4 will get Foxfarm and the last 3 will get Flora Nova.
They said the Flora Nova was very good. (But they think I'm growing peppers).

RandyRocket said:

After about 4 weeks.

1 gal of water, 4ml of Miracle-Gro 12-4-8 (this is 1/4 strength).

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And when do you think i should begin watering with that solution? and if you know what are the secondary nutes it lacks and do you know of any other way to supplement? I have absolutely nothin around me. I can't find a hydro store to save my life!

If anybody out there has started there plants in small cups, when do you transplant them into a bigger container?

i tranplant from cups at about 2 weeks.

blazin waffles said:

and if you know what are the secondary nutes it lacks and do you know of any other way to supplement? I have absolutely nothin around me. I can't find a hydro store to save my life!

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I wanted to add calcium, sulfer, zinc, and copper. Read the lable at the hardware store (if there is one close) some grosery store have some also. It lists the secondary stuff on the side. Check out yor mg bottle it may have more i just can't remember all of it.

blazin waffles said:

And when do you think i should begin watering with that solution?

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Water with the mg about a mounth in, from what i read the seeds only need water at first.

The miracle-gro does have zinc, manganese and iron.

Here's one more I used Schultz 10-15-10. it came from home depot.

RandyRocket said:

The miracle-gro does have zinc, manganese and iron.

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RandyRocket said:

Here's one more I used Schultz 10-15-10. it came from home depot.

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I have another as well (schultz). Its for african violets, 8-14-9 w .1% iron, .05% manganese, .05%zinc.

The mg is 24-8-16 w/ .15% iron, .05% manganese, and .06% zinc.....but it also has .07% copper, .0005% molybdenum. You think i could use a cycle of both? or shoul i stick to one and go with it?

Oh so i think i'ma transplant them on the 17th, that'll be about 2 weeks and by that time they should have some nice leaves growin. I'll have some pics up tonight then we'll see if these bad mamajamas are running behind or right on schedule!

I mixed both together at 1/4 strength. I've seen some posts of just mg for the whole grow.

RandyRocket said:

I mixed both together at 1/4 strength. I've seen some posts of just mg for the whole grow.

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I thought that you could mix with no negative effects. But with that in mind, if I diluted both to 1/4 strength would i then end up with a mixture that looks like; 8 - 5.5 - 6.25 with .25% iron, .11% zinc, .1% manganese, .07 copper, and .0005 molybdenum?
What the shit is molybdenum???

Anywho i got my lights today so i will be adding those to the setup tonight, i'll post pics later tonight after work!!!
I have 4 26w daylight cfl's and will be adding 9 more to the mix so they should like that!!!
Looks like i'll be repotting the 3 sprouts on wed! I'm excited!!! I hope they take off!!!! Is there any better time to do the switch? I think i remember reading to do it right before night time? Is that right?