Can 700 watts of LED strips grow trees???

The plants as of today. 4 of the 6 have grown wide enough to allow them to start growing vertical now. Check out the disco lighting in my grow area! I have built 3 of the side light setups now and will finish building the others this week.

Can you guys answer a mainlining question for me? My plants are all mainlined to 8 or 12 colas each. The plants are around 16" across and about 8" tall at this point. I am now allowing the colas to grow vertical. What I need to know is am I supposed to cut off all new growth buds from the main colas, or let them sprout out into colas too? It seems simpler to have just the 8-12 colas per plant, but I honestly do not know the best way to do this for maximum yield.

My plan is to let the ol' girls grow to about say 16" in height then go 12/12 light to flower them. Maybe I should veg longer for bigger plants. I have no plan to scrog these.

Please help this mainline Noob out.

Whatever you do, don't say 'mainliner' three times...

i think scrog is the best way to go, JMO..

I didnt want to scrog, but i ended up not having a choice because it was sooooo stretchy. Doubt stretch from light but from strain.

I have 2 different strains growing, 1 is super stretch the other was not. I didnt techniquly mainline, as i have 6 branches off center stalk, but LSTd and tucked under scrog as much as i could.

Ill post a pic in a bit here.

so, what i did was put aluminum foil to funnel the light, because i had alot of light going to waist. I just did this yesterday, wish i did it 60 days ago. anyways, as you can see, I decided at the last second to scrog because i had to chop 2 because of being male. Gave me more room, and was able to keep the running branches under and grow more cola terminals. believe it or not, i have 38 colas on this setup. I GLM stripped at 15 days flip and 35 days flip, ( 2 days ago ) and they respond freakin fantastic. Leaned many things during it too, lol. I messed it up by rippin thru the nodes removing leaves, doing the pinch and rip instead of cutting. Now, what Im doing is just cutting off the leave, and leavin entire stem. It seems to reduce stress by 90% because it still leaves some energy in the stem to whean it off instead of totally cutoff instantly. Still doing research on that.

Bro, at 24 inches, im getting 1550 PAR and 59,000 lux.. This light is freakin rockin it. So im curious to what the flower swell will be. 125 watts, id say this light is like 3 cobs. still get 300 par at the soil,..

if i can get 3g per cola, id say it was a success. which isnt asking alot, lol..

I ran a scrog last grow and liked it, but it was in a 2x3 grow area that made it fairly easily accessible.

The reasons I have not been planning to scrog this time are because it is now a 4x4 area that's not accessible to all sides, and with 6 plants going for maximum yield, I may need to expand my grow area by 2' (making it a 4x6x6) if the plants get big enough. Each plant at that point would have it's own 2x2x6 area.

Plus, now that I have nearly unlimited wattage of side lighting available, I feel I'm not going to be getting much popcorn on lower parts of the plants. If I was going with only overhead lighting, I think scrog would be more appealing.

I guess I am not ruling out scrog completely, but that is not the way I planned this grow.

true on the sidelighting and "leave loose" method. I entirely agree with you.

Hey, i just cant wait to see how big the buds get, lol..

Defoliate to get INSIDE the plant. We know the top and sides are good, but Inside is also important. Getting those bud sites jump started with light at the onset of flower is important,

InTheValley said:

true on the sidelighting and "leave loose" method. I entirely agree with you.

Hey, i just cant wait to see how big the buds get, lol..

Defoliate to get INSIDE the plant. We know the top and sides are good, but Inside is also important. Getting those bud sites jump started with light at the onset of flower is important,

Click to expand...

I was reading your posts on this page and the previous one. Did you power the LEDs with the adapter you were talking about? The reason I ask is that to run LEDs off a simple power adapter you need to put a resistor on it, between one of the output wires and the LEDs. Doesn't matter if it's the positive or negative wire, as long as it's in the circuit somewhere. I remembered reading about that when I was using a small LED flashlight powered from an adapter instead of the batteries. It worked for a while then burnt out. Put another flashlight on it and that one burnt out too. Fortunately just cheap little flashlights like 4-5" long. So then I remembered about the resistor and stuck one on. Worked perfect ever since.

I don't know what size resistor is appropriate, I just happened to have some that I bought to use with an Arduino to use as a LED PWM dimmer. The directions called for a certain size one, 250 ohm, so I bought some 5w ones of that ohm to be on the safe side, pretty big actually. Doesn't matter if a resistor is a higher wattage than you really need, just as long as it isn't lower than needed. A higher wattage one just gives more safety margin. Anyway just something to keep in mind when using adapters to power LEDs. They'll burn out without a "current limiting" resistor at some point in time, though they may work for some time before it happens so you'll think you're okay, then zap, burnt out. It would certainly be convenient if you really can run COBs or strips off power adapters. Since it's for plants rather than human eyes, won't matter much how "dirty" the power is.

Thanks for the Info Bob. But no, Im not using it tho.

The light Im talking about above is my Mars300w that I changed the diodes in to 4000k and a few Fullspectrum diodes too, and put 60degree lenses on. Id love to have 4 of these things,lol..

InTheValley said:

Thanks for the Info Bob. But no, Im not using it tho.

The light Im talking about above is my Mars300w that I changed the diodes in to 4000k and a few Fullspectrum diodes too, and put 60degree lenses on. Id love to have 4 of these things,lol..

Click to expand...

Oh okay. I recommended 60 degree beam reflectors for COBs instead of the usual 90 degree Angelinas everyone uses but of course nobody bothered to take my advise. 60 degrees seems like a more appropriate beam unless they planned on positioning them very close to the plants, because otherwise most of the beam would be going out to the sides.

See most people around here don't actually think stuff like that out, just blindly imitate each other. That type of reflector doesn't even focus the light properly. You need TIR type reflectors for that. There's people on here who think they're authorities on LED grow lights who in reality are just idiots.

I agree Bob, although Im still newish, ive learned alot, thats for sure.

I just ordered my strips. 10pc 4000k and 10pc 3000k, will use the 4000k for veg, and all for Flower, in a 2x2

says 71,000 lumens, so it should be interesting. 1000w HPS has 125,ooo lumens.
Then next month, Im going to add another 12 more strips for side lighting, like Big Green is doing.

that would be 113,500 lumens in a 2x2 LOL, SMH, but it will all be dimmable, to dial it in.

So, that would be close to HPS Lumen wise, but only 480 watts.

Seeing people having good runs with QBs, Im hoping for similar.

they look fine..they will grow fast closer to the ights..
are you gonna do any vertical strips between the plants and not just top and outter sides?
that will help too..
at anyrate you are doing a good experiment and its working

Hey OldMotherSativa, you talking to BigGreen?

InTheValley said:

I agree Bob, although Im still newish, ive learned alot, thats for sure.

I just ordered my strips. 10pc 4000k and 10pc 3000k, will use the 4000k for veg, and all for Flower, in a 2x2

says 71,000 lumens, so it should be interesting. 1000w HPS has 125,ooo lumens.
Then next month, Im going to add another 12 more strips for side lighting, like Big Green is doing.

that would be 113,500 lumens in a 2x2 LOL, SMH, but it will all be dimmable, to dial it in.

So, that would be close to HPS Lumen wise, but only 480 watts.

Seeing people having good runs with QBs, Im hoping for similar.

Click to expand...

You realize that 71,000 lm in 4 sq ft is 191,891 lux right? The sun is only about 100,000 lux. The word overkill comes to mind. I guess you said you were ging to dim them though. At full power, that's enough for 3x3, maybe more.

InTheValley said:

I agree Bob, although Im still newish, ive learned alot, thats for sure.

I just ordered my strips. 10pc 4000k and 10pc 3000k, will use the 4000k for veg, and all for Flower, in a 2x2

says 71,000 lumens, so it should be interesting. 1000w HPS has 125,ooo lumens.
Then next month, Im going to add another 12 more strips for side lighting, like Big Green is doing.

that would be 113,500 lumens in a 2x2 LOL, SMH, but it will all be dimmable, to dial it in.

So, that would be close to HPS Lumen wise, but only 480 watts.

Seeing people having good runs with QBs, Im hoping for similar.

Click to expand...

are you trying to burn your plants? anything over 1700 PPFD (11600 lumens /sq ft ) with white LEDS will cause light burn and photo inhibition. at the intensity your planning you plants will burn up like they were in death valley in august. with HPS 250 watts is the most you want to run in a 2ft by 2 ft grow tent or closet. you may have learned a lot but apparently not enough.

Yeah, I know man. I plan on getting a 3x3 down the road. up in the air with 2x4 or 3x3. But I also like my lights higher. another thing, Im going to experiment with Solexx greenhouse panels. They diffuse light making the light HEALTHIER for the plants, giving a better break of the spectrum spread.

man fellas, dont want to drag down BGs thread.

lol..

The point tho, is the Lumens, Lux, Light whatever, is very powerful for just so little watts.

So, these could really finally prove or dismiss if its pure watts, or pure light energy, intensity that is what truely builds plants.

HPS has crap spectrum, but make nice plants, because of the watts power, could it be the same for the other side of the equation?

InTheValley said:

man fellas, dont want to drag down BGs thread.

lol..

The point tho, is the Lumens, Lux, Light whatever, is very powerful for just so little watts.

So, these could really finally prove or dismiss if its pure watts, or pure light energy, intensity that is what truely builds plants.

HPS has crap spectrum, but make nice plants, because of the watts power, could it be the same for the other side of the equation?

Click to expand...

Yes.

InTheValley said:

man fellas, dont want to drag down BGs thread.

lol..

The point tho, is the Lumens, Lux, Light whatever, is very powerful for just so little watts.

So, these could really finally prove or dismiss if its pure watts, or pure light energy, intensity that is what truely builds plants.

HPS has crap spectrum, but make nice plants, because of the watts power, could it be the same for the other side of the equation?

Click to expand...

plants can adapt to any form of lighting. they perform best under natural sunlight or lights that come close to the spectrum of natural sunlight but will grow with just about any kind of light.lux,lumen and ppfd are biased spectrum that do not tell you how well a light will grow plants. radiant power and spectrum are both important factors in producing quality product but genetics and grower skill is the most important factor