Outdoor light to prevent them from flowering early in tropical climate?

[AlcoholicO]

I'm planning to set up an out-door grow on my balcony and around here it's 12h/12h give or take an hour, year long.
To get bigger plants, I want to put an out door spot light on them, with a timer, to add 4-6 hours of light per day, with the sole purpose of keeping them from flowering.

I heard it is possible to use Warm White 20watt LED out door spots and I was wondering if anyone has tried these or if anyone has any advice?
I found 30watt LED's for 17$ and since they come ready for out door usage, it would be easy, but I'm worried they won't keep the plants from flowering . . .

Anyone?

 

[qwizoking]

It has to be a fair amount of light, depending on your balcony size. To maintain photosynthesis you need about 2100 lumens per sqft. I don't know how many is needed to register and trigger responses to stop flowering. I'd guess 1-1500 from my own experience. Keep in my mind they will be stretching like mad and you will have airier bud..

I run a lot of landrace Sativa's. If you can find one from your area, it should auto flower after a couple months. And gives a great high and is actually great bud

 

[AlcoholicO]

Thanx for the info - 2100 and 1500 lumens per square feet isn't much. I get in excess of 8000 PAR lumens from my LED at 2 meters distance for example (I keep them 50-150cm over the plants when inside)...
This should be easy enough for a 20-30watt spot to achieve, I just don't know the proper distance etc.
I've seen it done with 2- watt LED's, but am not sure exactly how successful that was in the end.
I attached pictures of the spot, in the hope that someone might have an idea with these lamps.
Basically I'd like to know what approximate distance I should put these lamps...

The nodes would be stretching over the 4-6 hours the lamp is taking over from the sun, but in the normal 12 hours every day, the sun would be doing all the work. The lamp isn't supposed to help the plant grow, just to prevent the flowering!
I am starting these babies off inside with a strong LED light, where they get very short inter nodal lengths - the opposite really.

 

[gR33nDav3l0l]

You should just veg inside for a few months and take 'em outside later on.

 

[AlcoholicO]

You should just veg inside for a few months and take 'em outside later on.

That works unless I'm making big plants, which would be the plan here.

Anyhow, I found a few growers using flood led lights successfully for growing, though mostly vegetatively. The point here though, is that the lamp is merely there to prevent them from flowering, not really to make them grow faster or bigger - got the sun for that.
Since the outside light cycle doesn't change much here, I leave the LED flood light on (for 6 hours a day, adding to the approximately 12 hours of natural light), until I want to flower them, then turn it off.
Only issue is how much one LED covers (haven't got the actual stats), but if I get 30 watt LED's, they'll do a few plants each I reckon.

 

[gR33nDav3l0l]

What about red and yellow light from the sun rise and set?

 

[AlcoholicO]

Well apart from the actual sun rise and set actually hitting the plants, since they're outside, the LED is Warm White and so full spectrum and there should be some Red and Yellow light there as well.

 

[Humboldt14]

i run supplemental lighting in my 30x60 greenhouse. right now i have 1000watt Metal Highlights running to keep my plants in veg and to make up for the weak winter sun. i run them until 10:40pm every day

 

[rikdabrick]

I actually do that in the tropics. I use 30 watt LED flood lamps and it's plenty to keep the plants vegging. You don't need that much light to keep them vegging. I know guys in NorCal who use 15 watt CFL's every 10-15ft to keep really large gardens vegging.

Here's a pic of my veg area with one of the 4 30 watt LED lights. It works great.

I'm planning to set up an out-door grow on my balcony and around here it's 12h/12h give or take an hour, year long.
To get bigger plants, I want to put an out door spot light on them, with a timer, to add 4-6 hours of light per day, with the sole purpose of keeping them from flowering.

I heard it is possible to use Warm White 20watt LED out door spots and I was wondering if anyone has tried these or if anyone has any advice?
I found 30watt LED's for 17$ and since they come ready for out door usage, it would be easy, but I'm worried they won't keep the plants from flowering . . .

Anyone?

Where'd you fing the $17 LED lights?

 

[qwizoking]

That definitely won't work. The CFLs I mean. I use 42's indoors for this purpose and 1 every 4 feet or so is necessary.

 

[Humboldt14]

yea but CFL's don't make up for the weak sun in the winter

 

[rikdabrick]

That definitely won't work. The CFLs I mean. I use 42's indoors for this purpose and 1 every 4 feet or so is necessary.

Howzit qwisoking? I'm not sure I follow what you're saying. Are you talking about lighting just to keep your plants from flowering? I know it works because I do it and better growers than myself do it too. I'll share some pics with you. These are from a grower named Butte on icmag:
I was wrong on the wattage and spacing. He uses 40w CFLs, but spaced further apart than what I said at 15-20' apart solely to keep his plants from flowering too early; not for getting them to grow. They don't need very much light to keep them from going to "sleep".

And those plants there turned into these:

Anyway, I don't mean any disrespect. I appreciate your input on this forum.

 

[rikdabrick]

yea but CFL's don't make up for the weak sun in the winter

Howzit Humboldt? I don't follow what you're saying either. The OP lives near the equator and wants to know how to use lights to keep his plants from flowering. There is no such thing as weak sun for him in the winter in the tropics. Here's some pics of my winter grow in the tropics:

This was harvested today literally


Here's some buds from a plant harvested two weeks ago


This is from plants harvested one and two weeks ago


This pic was taken last week.


I'm right under 21* N' Lat so the sun here is weaker in the winter than it would be at the Equator, where the OP is. So what are you saying about CFLs not making up for the weak winter sun in the tropics to keep his plants from flowering? No disrespect meant, I just don't catch what you're saying.

 

[Vnsmkr]

I think people misunderstood what he is trying to do with the lights. Not meant to supplement growth, but to keep from flowering

Though for me its hard to mistake with that title....

 

[Humboldt14]

if your just trying to keep from flowering then CFL's work in the winter to prevent flowering obviously, any light would work Obviously. but to grow a optimal plant in the winter CFL's are shit. your bud will be airy.

as for the tropics, i don't live in the tropics. and the bud looks pretty airy in the pic. just my opinion and i do this year round for a living not for fun.

and i noticed in the other pic it says June 8th, grower named Butte, so i am assuming he is in Butte County which means those lights on are not necessary in june. the days are already long enouph to not flower.

i think he has his answer.

 

[qwizoking]

Perhaps being indoors makes it different, but for me to keep them from flowering takes much more light. A 23 watt bulb for example only puts out about 1600 lumens..at I guess 1 foot. Idk I also constantly forget to turn off some lights so maybe their just used to higher levels..being that theres no real data, or science behind this to prove I'm just giving my own experience. I do this with my moms and male keepers mostly.. I'm at 30°N and even though I'm higher up, still able to grow year round, I'm jealous of y'all.
Anyway..happy growing

 

[rikdabrick]

if your just trying to keep from flowering then CFL's work in the winter to prevent flowering obviously, any light would work Obviously. but to grow a optimal plant in the winter CFL's are shit. your bud will be airy.

as for the tropics, i don't live in the tropics. and the bud looks pretty airy in the pic. just my opinion and i do this year round for a living not for fun.

and i noticed in the other pic it says June 8th, grower named Butte, so i am assuming he is in Butte County which means those lights on are not necessary in june. the days are already long enouph to not flower.

i think he has his answer.

I would agree that using CFL's for grow lights in a greenhouse during winter would not work out well.

And you're right, those buds are airy. Those are from a pure landrace sativa from Africa. The airiness is because of the strain, not the sunlight here. About half of my garden is made up of sativas that are 90-100% sativa and the buds don't get as dense as indicas, but they'll give you a great sativa high.

And I too do this year-round for a living and for fun. Though if that's your garden in your avatar then it looks like you get to run higher numbers than I do.

Those pictures were from a grower who went by Butte. June 8th does seem a little late to be leaving lights on, but that guy knows what he's doing. He grows lots of 10+ lb. plants. He posted a bunch of stuff along with a lot of other amazing growers on "The growing large plants, outdoors, thread..." on icmag.com. Check it out if you haven't, it's some good reading for any gardener and there's a ton of big beautiful plant pics in there. I got those pics from that thread.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=159846

 

[rikdabrick]

Perhaps being indoors makes it different, but for me to keep them from flowering takes much more light. A 23 watt bulb for example only puts out about 1600 lumens..at I guess 1 foot. Idk I also constantly forget to turn off some lights so maybe their just used to higher levels..being that theres no real data, or science behind this to prove I'm just giving my own experience. I do this with my moms and male keepers mostly.. I'm at 30°N and even though I'm higher up, still able to grow year round, I'm jealous of y'all.
Anyway..happy growing

Hmmm, that's interesting qwisoking in regards to the amount of light you need to keep your plants from flowering. Is it different varieties or mostly extreme sativas? I've seen you mention a couple of times that your grow landrace sativas and I've had some sativas that were very difficult to keep from flowering once they reached a certain age so maybe that's part of it if you've got heavy leaning sativa strains.

Do you ever grow outdoors where your at?

 

[qwizoking]

Yes my experience with this is all landrace sativa and only strains from central\south America, Ive never had breeder seeds come anywhere close to competing in potency and the uniqueness of flavor.. I do grow outdoors, a good few years back wild fire or whatever you wanna call it burned about a 1,000 acres of my ranch in west tx, very common here. The land now quite rich in pk and what not, grows the finicky sativa's perfectly. I remember the first year after the fire I was so surprised I didn't have to use fertilizer once.. I have had several auto flowering Sativa's so that could be in the genetics. Ive had some very viney strains that I just couldn't keep in veg even under 24\0.. In general they take about 16-18 weeks, I've had some nice plants that went 14 and some that took up to 26.
For the most part recently I grow The Mexican sour, I'm sure she has other names. That's by far my favorite strain, creator of many well known strains she is very sour almost chemmy and can be quite garlicky with blueberry undertones mmm so good burns your eyes when trimming gives a runny nose too. Like sour d in structure flowers about 16 weeks. But when I do grow outdoors its a bit higher up than I already am. High enough that snow isn't terribly uncommon, the longest day of the year is 14hrs here so most everything flowers once maturity is reached without intervention or equatorials tend to with age auto flowering. I've even seen plants grow along the ground vine like that consistently threw bud. No I have never used lights to prevent flowering outdoors, just indoors to save elec I guess. Like I said mainly for mommas males and whatever I deem a keeper

 

[Humboldt14]

I would agree that using CFL's for grow lights in a greenhouse during winter would not work out well.

And you're right, those buds are airy. Those are from a pure landrace sativa from Africa. The airiness is because of the strain, not the sunlight here. About half of my garden is made up of sativas that are 90-100% sativa and the buds don't get as dense as indicas, but they'll give you a great sativa high.

And I too do this year-round for a living and for fun. Though if that's your garden in your avatar then it looks like you get to run higher numbers than I do.

Those pictures were from a grower who went by Butte. June 8th does seem a little late to be leaving lights on, but that guy knows what he's doing. He grows lots of 10+ lb. plants. He posted a bunch of stuff along with a lot of other amazing growers on "The growing large plants, outdoors, thread..." on icmag.com. Check it out if you haven't, it's some good reading for any gardener and there's a ton of big beautiful plant pics in there. I got those pics from that thread.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=159846

yea he has some really nice plants.
i too grow monster plants you should check my 2014 outdoor thread