Monday, September 25, 2017

Experimenting with Light to Grow Multiple Cannabis

Experimenting with Light to Grow Multiple Cannabis

Light is one of the most important factors for a successful cannabis harvest. Light triggers the food-making processes in plants known as photosynthesis. This plant life process enables marijuana plants to grow and the absence of light makes stunted plants.

Most indoor growers adjust their lighting depending on the cannabis plant’s life stage: vegetative or flowering. Plants in the vegetative stage receive 18-24 hours of light a day. When the plant is about half the size you want it to be, you change it over to the flowering stage by changing your light so that it only shines 12 hours a day and the other 12 hours, your marijuana plants are in total darkness.

Different types of light may also have different effects on the plants. In this grow journal, we’ll see how the new Emerson Far Red Budmaster LED can be used for flower triggering.

Grower: Icemud
Location: California, USA
Yield: 180g

December 12th

Welcome to the grow journal! This grow will be using some Budmaster LED grow lights but with an all-new arrangement. This set up allows you to customize your lights and spectrum to your liking. On this grow, the GOD-4 panels were taken apart to make four Hybrid Budmaster panels, each with 2 GOD modules and 2 COB modules.

This should allow for both of best worlds: getting the intense penetration and deep reds of the GOD modules along with the even spread and intense white light of the COBs.

modules modules modules

This is a 730mm Far Red LED which can trigger photosynthesis with the Emerson effect during lights on. It can also be used as a flowering trigger for 15 minutes after the main lights go out.

Eight different strains will be tested in this grow: Grand Daddy Purple, Candyland, Mendo Grape Kush, Trainwreck, Gorilla Glue #4, Race Fuel OG, Ogiesel, and one mystery bag seed of unknown genetics. Currently, this indoor grow is in early veg with uncounted veg days which can range between a month to a few weeks.

Each grow tent used is a Hydrohut silver edition which measures approximately 2.5’ x 5’ x 7’. Each tent also contains a large carbon filter, and a 6-inch fan on a manual speed controller. The intake air is sucked into the tent by the negative pressure and let in the lower portion of the tent on each side. Two circulating fans are installed in the flowering tents – one on an intake hose at ground level and the other on the roof of the tent blowing downwards.

the tent blowing downwards the tent blowing downwards

The soil mix contains 4:1:1.25 ratio of Promix HP, Ocean Forest, and Coco Coir with some perlite and worm castings with the following additives:

  • 5 cups EB Stone Sure Start: 4-6-2 contains blood meal, feather meal, bone meal, dried chicken manure, bat guano, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, potassium sulfate, humic acids and soil microbes including mycorrhizal fungi
  • Sul Po Mag 0-0-22, 1 cup
  • Azomite, 2 cups
  • EB Stone Charcoal, 2 quarts
  • Gypsum, 1 cup
  • Calcium carbonate powder, 2 cups
  • ½ cap per pot of osmocote plus 14-14-14

Main nutes in this grow are Earthjuice (Grow, Bloom, Meta K, Microblast, and Catalyst), Botanicare Pro Grow and Bloom, CalMag, Mammoth microbes, Kangaroots microbes, Bio-Cozyme, Thrive alive B1 organic, and Yucca extract.

The room humidity typically stays right around 50% but sometimes the winds come off the desert and dry the room humidity down to 10% or less. As for the pH, it’s around 6 to 6.5.

Watering is done once a week in early veg, once every three to four days in late veg. In early flowering, they are watered once every three to four days and once every five to six days during late flowering.

Here are the first photos of the girls. Back row (left to right): Ogiesel, Mendo Grape Kush, Gorilla Glue #4, and Trainwreck. Front row (left to right): Mystery Kush, Candyland, Grandaddy Purple, and Race Fuel OG.

These plants will be in veg for another month until they form a nice, full canopy and take hold of their new soil. Most of them were only transplanted just a week ago from 3 gallon pots.

For the very first feeding after the girls were transplanted, they were given a compost tea consisting of bubbled worm poop and premixed soil in a pain strainer.

pain strainer pain strainer pain strainer

December 18th

You can definitely feel the festivities with the holidays right around the corner. The garden needs to be able to survive being unsupervised for six days. Because of that, they were given a very light watering yesterday just to be sure they won’t dry up while left alone.

You can tell the plants are absolutely loving their new soil and growing much faster than they have in the past grows in the recycled soil. Also, they have much bigger leaves, so very happy to see that as well. They have noticeably stronger smells despite being so early in the grow process. Here’s to hoping things will go very well this grow.

The Candyland was removed from the tent and replaced with the large vegged Black Cherry Soda from a 3rd tent. The Candyland was just not looking happy and needed to be put in the other tent for some TLC.

The girls are very satisfying to look at. Some of them might need to be topped to bush them out a little more. This also will most likely slow their water use while left alone because they will be focused on repair and will have less leaves to transpire.

Here are some pictures of the Budmaster Hybrid LED tent.

Budmaster Hybrid LED tent Budmaster Hybrid LED tent

December 28th

Yesterday, some water was mixed with Botanicare Pro Grow, and some CalMag to give the girls just a light feeding. The Black Cherry Soda is still not doing very well so a 5 gallon bucket was filled with reverse osmosis water, and flushed the soil. This was done to the Harlequin and GG #4 and they recovered beautifully.

All the other plants are phenomenal and it’s unbelievable how big the leaves on the Grand Daddy Purple have become. They are about the size of a man’s palm. Not much else to report on today so here are some pics.

All the other plants All the other plants All the other plantsAll the other plants All the other plants

January 3rd

Things are going well in the garden and tall the plants are looking nice and healthy, and even the Black Cherry Soda which hasn’t been looking good has now shown some nice full growth after the soil flush a while back. It must have been what it exactly needed.

The girls were getting a little droopy so each plant received 2 cups of reverse osmosis water with enzymes and Mykos mixed with CalMag.

Mykos mixed with CalMag Mykos mixed with CalMag Mykos mixed with CalMag

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