Adding vertical light

The sativas were getting a bit unruly so I made an executive decision to hang a 130W CFL in the tent. The LEDs were forming nice buds on the top, but the new generation of Mental Floss at the bottom were having to stretch. A little bit of stretch isn't a bad thing if you've got the height, but managing a perpetual grow with different strains sometimes requires a creative solution.

The CFL is 2700K and only went in tonight. It's perhaps not the most efficient use of light, but CFLs do put out a bit of UVA/B, so I'm hoping it will have other benefits besides supplemental lighting for the indicas and lower sativa growth.

The Mental Floss are keeper clones, while the sativas are a Haze/Schnazzleberry cross using my old Stinky Catpiss Haze mother. Schnazzleberry is 3/4 Blueberry (1/4 Skunk) and one of the plants on the left is showing real Blueberry expression, whilst the others are on the Haze side. One of the plants is an original Atomical Haze, which is the same seed stock as the Stinky Catpiss mother came from. There's some nice genetics in there.

It's a bit of a jungle in my tent at the moment

Nice grow man. What strips are you using?

Those ones are Samsung H-series 3000K. There are two 2' strips mounted on each U-channel, with 12 strips per frame.

Why not just put a 150w cmh in there?

diyled said:

Why not just put a 150w cmh in there?

Click to expand...

I was going to say HPS but i forgot that its hot right now down under in Oz.
Very nice top nugg meat, esp on the right!

diyled said:

Why not just put a 150w cmh in there?

Click to expand...

The CFL was cheap - about US$28 - and is really only a temporary fix. As soon as the sativas are ready for the chop, I have another four hybrid plants to go in, so the vertical light will come out and the LEDs will be lowered to canopy height.

130W of CFL still generates heat, but the main difference is it has a larger surface area than an equivalent HID, so the heat is distributed over a greater area and doesn't "feel" as hot if you touch it. You can get CFLs a little closer to the plants without harm if you don't have direct cooling on the bulb - which I don't - but it still adds heat to the tent.

Like I said, CFLs are not the most efficient, but I guess I was also interested to see if the extra UV - lacking in LEDs - would make a noticeable difference to the quality of the buds. It's a cheap way to find out. I even considered throwing a CFL reptile bulb in there, but I couldn't find a decent sized one.

Here's what the spectrum is supposed to look like. Nice bit of UVA and undoubtedly a bit of UVB if it measured that far down. All CFLs put out a little bit of UVB, it just depends on the quality of the phosphor coating - the cheaper and nastier the CFL, the more UVB!

Rocket Soul said:

I was going to say HPS but i forgot that its hot right now down under in Oz.
Very nice top nugg meat, esp on the right!

Click to expand...

Yeah, the two plants on the right are the original Atomical Haze at the back and the Haze x Schnazz at the front which most takes after its mother. The other two on the left are more Blueberry and as anyone who has grown DJ Short Blueberry type plants knows, they're rarely high yielders. The Atomical Haze has a heart-thumping "rocket" high that launches you into the stratosphere - racy weed alright!

The Mental Floss are also a Blueberry cross, but my keeper clone yields really well, as it clearly takes after its mother. The Blueberry adds a nice dimension to the high. These plants have a good strong indica body high, but also a nice clear and thoughtful head to them that makes chilling out a pleasure. It's like your body is bathed in a warm glow, but your mind is still active. One of the more functional indicas, IMO.

Mental Floss


Stinky Catpiss Haze (later sold as Atomical Haze by Paradise Seeds - my seed stock came from original test seeds given to me by Luc)

Wrap an LED strip round a king brown

I have an idea for a vertical LED grow. One day. I need the space, and right now I'm limited to a 4x2 tent, which is not the ideal size/shape for a vertical grow. You really need a square space - 4x4 is ideal, but you can see I've got wooden beams in the way.

Prawn Connery said:

The sativas were getting a bit unruly so I made an executive decision to hang a 130W CFL in the tent. The LEDs were forming nice buds on the top, but the new generation of Mental Floss at the bottom were having to stretch. A little bit of stretch isn't a bad thing if you've got the height, but managing a perpetual grow with different strains sometimes requires a creative solution.

The CFL is 2700K and only went in tonight. It's perhaps not the most efficient use of light, but CFLs do put out a bit of UVA/B, so I'm hoping it will have other benefits besides supplemental lighting for the indicas and lower sativa growth.

The Mental Floss are keeper clones, while the sativas are a Haze/Schnazzleberry cross using my old Stinky Catpiss Haze mother. Schnazzleberry is 3/4 Blueberry (1/4 Skunk) and one of the plants on the left is showing real Blueberry expression, whilst the others are on the Haze side. One of the plants is an original Atomical Haze, which is the same seed stock as the Stinky Catpiss mother came from. There's some nice genetics in there.

View attachment 4243996
View attachment 4243998

View attachment 4243999

View attachment 4244000

Click to expand...

Nice man! I still like hps & CFL because they throw light 360•
Heres some of my early work with t-5's & Cfl's adding some major weight to the opp.

Heres the dedicated 100amp service

Lovely setup mate. You're right, LEDs gain a lot of their efficiency advantage over bulbs in horizontal grows because LED light is emitted in one direction and most bulb light has to be reflected off another surface (reflector). But once you hang a bulb vertically, you get the advantage of full, unreflected 360 degree light and the most efficiency out of your bulb - I've seen estimates of to 25-30% more light from a vertical HPS compared to a reflected HPS at the same distance.

@diyled is right - a HID would be much more efficient than a CFL, and CMH has a nice spectrum - but it's a cheap experiment to see if a little bit of UV makes much of a difference, and it helps supplement the uneven canopy until I can I cut the tall plants and put in some new shorties and lower the LEDs in time to flower the indicas that are in there at the moment.

Prawn Connery said:

The CFL was cheap - about US$28 - and is really only a temporary fix. As soon as the sativas are ready for the chop, I have another four hybrid plants to go in, so the vertical light will come out and the LEDs will be lowered to canopy height.

130W of CFL still generates heat, but the main difference is it has a larger surface area than an equivalent HID, so the heat is distributed over a greater area and doesn't "feel" as hot if you touch it. You can get CFLs a little closer to the plants without harm if you don't have direct cooling on the bulb - which I don't - but it still adds heat to the tent.

Like I said, CFLs are not the most efficient, but I guess I was also interested to see if the extra UV - lacking in LEDs - would make a noticeable difference to the quality of the buds. It's a cheap way to find out. I even considered throwing a CFL reptile bulb in there, but I couldn't find a decent sized one.

Here's what the spectrum is supposed to look like. Nice bit of UVA and undoubtedly a bit of UVB if it measured that far down. All CFLs put out a little bit of UVB, it just depends on the quality of the phosphor coating - the cheaper and nastier the CFL, the more UVB!

Click to expand...

I've played around with one with hps on top n got good results I'd imagine you would do even better with the multiple light sources and lovely spread of those leds!

hybridway2 said:

Nice man! I still like hps & CFL because they throw light 360•
Heres some of my early work with t-5's & Cfl's adding some major weight to the opp.

Click to expand...

Just had a flashback.... When I was young, I soldered wires to the pins of T5's and hung them vertically by the wires. How long have people been doing vertical, when did it become a recognized technique?

1212ham said:

Just had a flashback.... When I was young, I soldered wires to the pins of T5's and hung them vertically by the wires. How long have people been doing vertical, when did it become a recognized technique?

Click to expand...

T-5' or t-8's shooting 360• of light is perfect for that if they weren't glass.
For awhile as you tried back then but the first to manufacture & kill it with led strips @ 165+ lm/w system would be SunCloak. Gotta bunch of these. Started using them in the beginning about 4-5 yrs ago & helped redesign some aspects of it to be what it is now for MJ

https://www.suncloak.com

1212ham said:

Just had a flashback.... When I was young, I soldered wires to the pins of T5's and hung them vertically by the wires. How long have people been doing vertical, when did it become a recognized technique?

Click to expand...

When I first joined Overgrow in 2002, there was a Canadian grower called krusty and he had a thread called "krusty freedom buckets" or "krusty bucket system" in which he detailed his "bunker" vertical grows using 1000W HPS and MH bulbs. Apparently there was a bunch of Canadians who were growing like that back then and who pioneered the system. I've dug up a few photos of krusty and his grows:







Anyway, it inspired me to start growing vertically, first with a single 600W HPS and then with inline 600s for a 1200W grow in a 4x4x 6 cabinet built for the purpose (photos in the post above). So I started doing it in about 2003 with a few modifications: namely I ran a floor fan on the bottom facing directly up with an extractor fan sitting over the top of the bulbs to create a "cool column of air" technique.

Here's an old photo with some plants moved out of the way so you can see the two bulbs:


I developed the column of air technique after trying cool tubes - which only got dirty and were a bit of pain to adjust, as with free in-line bulbs you can space them apart as much or as little as you like - and found I could get the plants really close to the bulbs without burning them, as all the hot air was ducted up and away from the plants. I also switched from DWC to coco, as it was easier to grow in hot weather. My yields were always consistently better than my friends who grew horizontally, and averaged 1.3-1.4gpw each and every grow.

Anyway, vertical growing started to take off in the mid-2000s and went from there, but I grew like that for about 12 years before giving up growing for a while. The main reason I switched to LEDs when I restarted was because I was mainly curious, but also didn't have the space for another vertical grow HID.

hybridway2 said:

T-5' or t-8's shooting 360• of light is perfect for that if they weren't glass.
For awhile as you tried back then but the first to manufacture & kill it with led strips @ 165+ lm/w system would be SunCloak. Gotta bunch of these. Started using them in the beginning about 4-5 yrs ago & helped redesign some aspects of it to be what it is now for MJ

https://www.suncloak.com

Click to expand...

I've seen that SunCloak system before. Having grown vertically in a 4x4 for years, I think the nine-plant system is a bit ambitious - you'd have to be growing spindly sativas (and flowering early) to get all those plants in there: http://www.suncloak.com/The-Delta-Nine-Grow-Light-System-p/sc-44-9-32.htm - but the four-plant system would work better. If I were gowing to grow with vertical LEDs, I'd probably do it a bit differently.

Prawn Connery said:

I've seen that SunCloak system before. Having grown vertically in a 4x4 for years, I think the nine-plant system is a bit ambitious - you'd have to be growing spindly sativas (and flowering early) to get all those plants in there: http://www.suncloak.com/The-Delta-Nine-Grow-Light-System-p/sc-44-9-32.htm - but the four-plant system would work better. If I were gowing to grow with vertical LEDs, I'd probably do it a bit differently.

Click to expand...

Have you ever seen my SC grows? Lil plants, big plants, it dont matter. Set the system however far apart u want. Last time I used it I did one big plant in a the newest 4 plant system I helped design w/ Horizons above each bay. Was like 1.5 #, but you deffinetly stand to gain more per sq' shooting for 2 , 1/2 + plants per bay of 200-300w.
I usually ran 4x10ish w/ about 16 plants.
No height limits & incredible g/sq' if done right.
Next run I'll take down the HPS & put up 3 bays for my pheno hunt
Nice work. Always Impressed with that online fan set up results u share.

Prawn Connery said:

I have an idea for a vertical LED grow. One day.

Click to expand...

What kind of tease is that?

I bet Krusty was smiling in that picture!!

I have matching 31"x31"x71" tents, each with a matching 250w 4xQB120 fixture, the dimensions of which are 21"x26". I've toyed with the idea of putting both lights in one tent, hung vertically down one side of the tent, with a vertical scrog on the other side. Roughly 15 square feet of grow space and 500w of light. But that's really just flipping a horizontal grow on its side, and I would not expect to yield more than I would just leaving things as they are. I think vertical makes a ton of sense when working with a 360 degree light source though. I'd be very interested to hear what you're envisioning @Prawn Connery!