Ghettorigger's Energy Efficient Challenge (LED)

First of all, i want to thank everybody in the community that has posted any information that i have ever taken into consideration. I had a different name on this website, shadow51020, but I never really posted much besides when people would bash LEDs so hard that i couldent keep quiet. I'm a holder of a California Physician Statement and Recommendation for Medical Marijuana, I always follow the restrictions that are set out by my county, all my medicine is for personal use or is given away to fellow Recommendation holders. Growing is my hobby, I love to learn new tricks and share my findings with anybody who will listen. Now lets move on to the meat and potatoes of this whole article.



Just to give a little history. This was from my last cycle. The strain is rocklock, grown from seed, i wish i would have cloned her, but the ones i took died over my thanksgiving vacation. She was grown full cycle in soil under a Blackstar 240w in the cab pictured below.



This was my first LED experiment and by the end i got the hang of it. My outcome was higher than expected, considering i only had a single lady in there and the fact that it was pretty hot in there for the better part of the grow before i finally got a good way to suck the hot air out (the bottom half of the cab was low 80s while closer to the light it got into the 90s+ on hot days). I yielded almost dead on 100g dry, which i thought being that the blackstar 240 is really only 135-140w draw was not too shabby. She was only about 2 feet tall not including the dirt and roots or anything, just topped and trained well. She would have benefited so much from a screen though. Oh well hindsight is 20/20 right?

Now here is my goal:

My whole goal is to produce the best quality medicine i can with the least money spent possible. I never skimp on quality when i see there is no alternative, if i see something for sale that looks simple and i'm interested in, i request the specs and see if i could "tackle that project." If yes, then off to Walmart it is. I'm not a conservation nut or anything, but whenever i can i'm trying to save a little here and there (Maybe it makes me rest a little better driving around a big 4x4 most of the time). A while ago i realized how much something can just nickel and dime you to death (ever done a diesel conversion...oh the joy) so after seeing the potential of the LED lights with the Blackstar with basically a setup kind of thrown together to just test her out. (the light, i refer to many things as "she" and "her" and "my baby" lol sorry if its confusing) And on top of that i was able to yield about .72g/w being relatively careless during the entire cycle. Now i'm ready to throw in some more variables and some of the new methods that i have discovered doing a little research along the way.

I am very open to ideas on how to conserve even the smallest amount of anything. Also constructive criticism is more than welcome anytime.

So far these are a couple things i am going to give a shot.:
1. 12-1 photo period for veg
2. 50% coco 50% peat mix (I may change the ratios a bit, just not sure yet) Coco will be reused.

3. Light mover DIY of course, if anybody wants my plans just ask, simple simple simple design. Did i mention how simple it is?
4. I have one bubble bucket that is going to go alongside the coco plants. Not really committing fully to hydro though, i prefer the results of my previous media grown plants over hydro.

Id love any input from the community. Just please keep it constructive, i've seen alot of LED bashers around while i was researching the lights. It seems to me that this industry is more biased to anything tried and true versus experimenting and risking wasting money, losing quality and yield than their client base is expecting, or both. I will make my own decision based on facts laid in front of me. If you say it won't work then why? Or what was the overall effect that the variable had on the crop, and was that the only variable changed?

Thanks to anybody whos following. The journal is going to be loaded with as many facts as i can.

And one last note before i begin my actual journal:
Since i began my "quest" for a more efficient grow, my quality and quantity has only gone up. Nothing has gone down at all besides cost, headaches, and the temperature.

After all that info, this is going to be hilariously short. I'm really waiting on fedex to get here with my last odds and ends before i can begin. My friend is giving me a couple o' clones too, which also aren't here yet. But i'll post what i've got at the moment.



Dropped em in a day ago. 2 AK-48 and 2 White Rhino, i'm more interested in the white rhino, but with my luck i already know which ones are probably going to be sporting a sack. I just drop them in the expanded jiffy pellets, no germination or anything, i've yet to have a single seed not make it. Now that i said that lets see what happens...

In a day or 2 i'm going to drop em in their pots and put them under some t5 in the cabinet above. It is now a veg only cabinet. I'm considering adding a shelf to it so i'll have 2 levels of vegging plants in there. Again i'll be trying the 12-1 cycle in the cab. I didnt sprout under 12-1 though, just a little too sketched to do it and lose my white rhino seeds in the process.

I'll post many more pics when i get the tent and all that good stuff set up. And i'll actually have a decent camera charged up too.

til next time.

and err...day 2?

Been waiting on ups to be on time and luckily I got my new ten yesterday but the other box was on a different trailer which was late... Yay.

All 4 seeds did sprout and they are under 12-1 now. The 12-1 cycle is growig at about the same rate as 24-0 was though so far wih my last strains which i was not expecting at all. Looks like I have 1 male of each strain so far. I'll post a pic in a bit. I won't update again really until I get everything set up though.

Ok well some exciting news for me at least.

I am having an led panel designed and will be reselling it depending on my results wih it. It's a 5 band 270w actual draw panel. It would normally be advertised as a 360w by most other companies. I tailored the spectrum to the red and blue peaks for chlorophyll a and b. forgot what they were, I don't have the numbers on me right now. Also included an orange for the slight peak that occurs in orange. Also has a few white diodes mixed in as well to prevent delayed flowering and slightly improve the lack of blue spectrum . It is going to go in the flower room and I haven't decided if I want to use the blackstar in the veg room or put it on a light mover and supplement with it moving around a lot.

The 270 isn't the only one I will have available. Thought I should include it. I'm hoping to be able to compete with the value of the blackstar as well.

If anybody is interested in these at all I will sell them at my cost to anybody waning to try them. For price competitiveness comparison. The 270w is close to the same draw as he blackstar 500 (which sells for $550) and my final sale price is going to be around $450. The design is similar to a penetrator which makes for easy repairs.

Ok sales is over. I just got sick of companies ripping people off with lights so I'm trying to cut out the middle man here and save money for everybody hopefully.

Heres the pictures finally. Cant find my camera charger, i think i left it at my parent's house last time i was over there. but there they are, the right is White Rhino, Left AK-48. Under one 27w 5000k cfl and two 65w (dont remember the color) bulbs i used to flower for my very first grow, i had 4 of them, but when they are so big they break easy.



The cab has a bottom shelf for getting clones started. Eventually i am hoping to light the veg cab with LED as well. Just doing everything one step at a time. I'm going to get the c02 going in there soon, going with fermentation for now in the veg box. debating what to do with the flower tent, i might set up a little diy burner in there to make it easy. I do have an AIRGAS close by so tanks wouldn't be too hard to swap out and i've got a contractor's discount there too. Decisions decisions.

I also kind of want to add some clones to the mix as well. All the local clinics around me that had good clones are gone now and i'm too busy to drive to SD or LA to get some good ones. Black market is too sketch for me, i only started smoking after i got a medical card for christ sake. After these next 2 weeks when my finals are over i may be able to have a nice little cruise to LA on one of my days off. I don't have to go during rush hour too!!

Thanks if anybody is following. I know there isn't much to see right now, just more ideas, theory and a few facts to legitimize an idea. But i promise, the goodies are coming and hopefully i won't be the only person to learn anything from this.

Til' next time fellas, stay green (but not too green, it gets annoying)

After another day of very poor growth. I finally suspected an issue. I gave them all a light foliar feed of some Floraduo yesterday hoping that these may just be some thirsty plants, but this morning again, no real measurable growth. After some pondering i then realized, i never actually have planted my jiffy pellets into the ground before. I always wash them off and transfer to buckets, so i decided to dig them out. Shure as shit, the roots had only grown out of one (please be a mommy) they were holding WAY too much moisture. The plants werent being drowned, but the roots were pretty content with where they were and didnt really need to go looking for moisture thus, no plant growth. Except for the one there wasn't much besides the tap root down there. so i dipped the roots in a super diluted dip n grow and nutrient solution mix and then just split the remaining solution that didn't have peat in it between the 4 of them. So we'll see how they fare after that. I love the pellets for germ though, i just now know that i can't leave them in there. But i have had 100% success with all seeds in the pellets so far, as soon as the sprout pops i spray it with distilled water from my sprayer until the top is saturated again. After the pellet dries out from that i have pulled the plants out of them before, and will do so every time now. I'll throw some pics up tomorrow, hopefully they will have made some progress and dont look like they are about to die

Just a little update. Moved everything into the tent instead of the veg cab. forgot to address the water run off from the pots which left some standing water which i didn't like. They are done with transplant shock and have started growing now once again. 12-1 is getting phased out though. There is no tricking these suckers into growing with less light. Should have my new light next week. The website was constantly going down for me today so i'll upload pictures and give a good update on my conclusions and whatnot tomorrow.

Been pretty busy today. When i had my lunch break smoke i was just thinking about what to do with this. Waiting for clones still. deciding whether to get seeds again or not. I have no idea what i would want to grow though. a nice OG sounds fun, but which, too hard to decide.