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Do you guys think I can use this light (or two of them anyways) without having to take it apart and all that? I mean just hang it from the top of my grow space and use it as a grow light for flowering stage?
Lithonia Lighting 50 Watt Bronze High Pressure Sodium Floodlight - TFS 50S 120 LPI M6 at The Home Depot
Wow....you go Deadhead!! Great start....even with the teeny seedling detail which we won't mention.....you're trying to be thorough which is terrific....it will REALLY help you later. :thumbsup:
Cool grow thread you've started, deadhead! I'm sure with the advice you can get here you will have a successful first harvest. PLEASE be careful with the electrical wiring! Also, you will have to plan on some better ventilation later on.
Good Luck
Shovelhandle
Nice it should be great!
Well Sick Sally is not only still alive much to my suprise but already has new growth on top!!!! I didn't take a pic 'cause the kids have been up my butt but I will later on in the week. Happy Helen is doing ok too. phew!
I'm obsessing over lighting for flowering stage now. Decisions decisions. I was originally just going to do cfl's but you know...the more I read the more it seems like I'll double the yield if I do an hps and since this is taking so much time and effort why not go for it.
Here are the two I'm looking at:
400w HPS COOL TUBE GROW LIGHT 400 watt Sodium Cooltube - (eBay item 180127387721 end time Oct-02-07 13:47:09 PDT)
and:
High Tech Garden Supply
I am not comfortable in my venting abilities so I'm leaning towards the 150 watter. Plus my space is pretty small so I don't really need *that* much light. I"m gonna sleep on it for a week and see how I feel.
Just watered sick sally and happy helen for the first time since I repotted and flushed them.
Sick sally flopped over when I watered her so I nudged her back up and put some more soil around her stem to hold the poor girl steady. One of the newer leaves has brown spots on the very edge, though even newer leaves are popping up on top so not sure if she's gonna bite the big one or hang in there.
Happy helen is doing very very well. Lovin life and sprouting new growth on top. I'll post more pics later on in the week. . . possibly along with sick sally's obituary at which point I sure as heck hope happy helen is not happy harry since then i'll be sol in a major way. :wtf:
Ok so we're making progress!
Sick Sally is still sick though. She seems very weak to me. Since I transplanted her to the Fox Farm although she has shown a LOT more growth, she has four damaged leaves insted of just two. No more have been damaged though so hopefully she is well on her way to recovery.
I have been waiting for them to be bone dry and then I water them. Today I flushed them both.
Happy Helen has not shown any more damaged leaves so I think she's ok. I really think this is because she didn't have as much of the old soil as Sick Sally did when I transplanted her.
Although Happy Helen is ok, she isn't looking as green as she's been. I have heard though that Fox Farm ocean soil is supposed to give them enough nutes for a month so do you all think I should feed her or just let her be?
This weekend I'm going to go buy a 150 watt hps light. Is that ok to add to the room for vegging too or do I just only use it for flowering? I've heard mixed reviews on that but I don't totally understand why.
Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the pics! (oh btw when should I move them to bigger pots? and when to start lst'ing them? is it when the fourth shoot comes up?)
Where can I get a good magnifying glass too?
Hello deadhead. I'm not so familiar with the ferts you are using such as superthrive but I assume they are all organic. Foxfarm is a great soil to use, I use a similar soil called happy frog for my plants and they love it. Earthworm castings, bat guano, mushroom compost, perlite are all great additives to your soil. 150 watt HPS will suffice if you are only flowering I'd say 4 or fewer plants. I use a 400W HPS in each of my flowering rooms for around 12 plants in each. HPS is only used for flowering because of the light spectrum it emphasizes (redish-orange) while fluorescents or Metal Halide are best for vegging with the blue spectrum.
For organic gardening you really want to enrich the soil as much as possible so any "fertilizing" in just supplementary. Peace of Mind has several great soil additives that you also use as top-dressing twice in flowering. The two I use are "fruit & flower" and bat guano.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
My mentor says that you can grow with HPS, but your node spacing will be big. But i'm not sure that it would be any worse then using CFL's.
Also about switching to those red CFL's, I had problems using them for back up lighting in my seedling cab. For some reason, my plants just never seemed to like them. maybe its coincidence but i don't think so, although i can offer no other explanation.
Go to the hardware store, like Home depot. Pickup a Daylight CFL, it should be in a blue colored package. This cfl will be rated at 6500k. This is a very blue part of the spectrum, it will generate almost no heat and your plants will love it, most of the cfls you buy are in the 2700k range which is very red, plants do not like this spectrum when they are vegging. spectrum goes 1000k-----6500k higher the k the bluer the light. I wouldnt waste your cash on a HPS, i bought a 150w one from the hardware store and never used it, it generated to much heat and used alot of juice, i got the same results with 6500k cfl's. HPS lights are very red in spectrum so they are not the best for vegging, they do work, but your plants will grow fast and stretchy, they will not be very busy. Red spectrum light is however good when you are flowering your plants, so that would be when you should use a HPS if your going to use one. Or you can just buy afew 2700k CFL bulbs and put them in when its flowering time and save yourself 60bucks.
DO NOT ADD any nutes to your plant, till it is 3 times bigger, and even then only add a drop or two of liquid nutes. Trust me i have almost killed my plants afew times with 4-5 measly drops of nutes. As for soil, it tried miracle grow, soil and in the end i went with a mix stinky attic uses, Went to rona picked up a bag of Moo poo, menure mixed it with humus and perelite about 50/40/10 percent ratio's and my plants have almost doubled in growth, and they are more resistant to over fert. To get a good magnification lense go to London drugs and look in there camera section. You can get a nice handy 10x mag lense for looking at photo's. Hope this helps