MassHeads
Well-Known Member
Hi all, I am a somewhat newbie grower doing my first LED grow. I have grown twice before with between 250 and 350w of CFL’s, but those grows were very low budget and poorly controlled in an unventilated closet. Not Took in something like 25 and 40 grams off of some unhealthy, heat stressed plants.
MY GOALS:
-Grow short bushy plants in a small tent, using minimal electricity and minimal space.
-Make the setup pay for itself in the first grow (I typically get high quality street bud for $125 per half oz so that’s the price point to beat. So far I have spent $397.17 on the setup, so I would need just over 1.5oz to pay for the setup excluding the electricity costs)
I want to spend some more money to do it right for once, but not so much money that I’d have to use the setup multiple times to make it worthwhile (I have roommates that are cool with me growing right now, but I can’t predict where I’ll be in terms of housing in the next 6 months). That being said, I bought the cheap off brand LED’s (Galaxy Hydro 300w) instead of something higher quality that I could expect to last... I also needed the grow tent to be small, as my bedroom isn’t that large and it’s in the corner of the room. I’d like it to look somewhat inconspicuous, although the noise of the vent fan makes it hard to miss…
I chose LED’s because A) I didn’t want a lot of heat in my bedroom and B) because I have read some many mixed reviews about LED’s, and I wanted to put them to the test my self. Perhaps the reviews are mixed because some people opt for expensive LED’s, and some of us penny pinchers opt for cheap lights…. Hmm. I love the idea of using a (supposedly) more efficient light source to save on the electric, because I hate the rather large carbon footprint of growing indoors and electric is very expensive in my state.
The Setup (Pretty much all purchased off of Amazon):
-BETWEEN THE TWO LIGHTS THE SUSPECTED ACTUAL WATTAGE OF THIS GROW NOT INCLUDING FANS IS 154W. I didn’t add the smaller TaoTronics bulb until around 5/12, though.
-Yaheetech 2ft. X 2ft. X4ft. tall (4 sq. ft. or 16 cu. ft) Tent - $60
-300w Galaxy Hydro LED w/ 100X3w leds (Told it’s actual draw is something like 140w +/- 5w) - I paid $123 on Amazon but I see it’s since dropped to $109.99)
-24w TaoTronics LED Light with 12X2w LED’s (Told it’s actual draw is 13.8w) – $26
-Seeds: Only about $20 as three of the 5 seeds were freebie throw ins when I ordered the Phat Fruity seeds and more a while back
-Accurite Themometer - $11.45
-Mini Fan - $6.79
-Adjustable rope hangers for hanging LED Panel - $6
-General Organics Go Box Fertilizer - $36.33
-Fox Farm Ocean Forest 1.5 cu. ft. soil - $25.25
-5 X 3gal. fabric Smart Pots - $22
-Light Socket for additional 24w LED – $9
-Light timer – $7
-Holmes Desk Clip Fan – $19.35
-Socket splitter/Power Strip/Extension Cord- $10
-Activated Carbon Filter Sheets - $15
-ALREADY HAD – Extension cord, Power Strip, 6” inline duct fan
Grand Total: $397.17 on the whole set up. Ouch, a little higher than expected when I just totaled it up…
Timeline of the grow:
-3/6 Germinated 5 out of 5 seeds and moved them to Fox Farms OF soil in solo cups (2 Phatt Fruity, 1 White Lavender, 1 Skunk/Northern Lights Hybrid and 1 Skunk #11 – all purchased from Attitude Seedbank)
-3/10 Seedlings sprouted from soil
-3/29 Moved 4 of the plants to 3 gal. Smart Pots (Think I waited too long to do this, plants were looking nutrient deprived). I couldn’t fit a fifth pot in the tent, so the Skunk #11 is going to be a little experiment in a solo cup
-3/31 Half Strength Fertilized for the first time
-4/1 Started Topping/FIM’ing plants
-4/3 Started LST’ing the plants
-4/4 Started Super Cropping for the first time. I accidentally snapped the main stem near in half on the Skunk/NL Hybrid and had to tape that up with electrical tape. Nearly cried, but these plants really are hard to kill. It healed back up quickly
-4/8 Started to fertilizer more heavily. Using the low end of the suggested General Organics Go Box fertilizer regimen now
-4/9 to 5/4 – Didn’t keep any notes during this period of time but I did a lot of topping/FIM’ing, a lot of LST’ing and a lot of supercropping. I quickly brought the fertilizer up to the high range of what’s listed on the Go Box and fertilized with every other watering. At one point I waited an extra watering to fertilize, and backed off the strength a bit because a couple of the plants had some slightly burnt/yellow leaf tips. The plants got very bushy and I thinned out some inner/lower fan leaves/sucker growth. Kind of regret trimming out the fan leaves after doing more research, but man do these things have some tight nodes/growth! Very impressed with the vegging capabilities of this cheap 300w Galaxy Hydro light so far. During this time span, I brought the light schedule from 22 hours on/2 off to 18.5 on/5.5 off
-5/4 TURNED LIGHTS OVER TO 12/12 FOR FLOWERING
-5/12 Added the TaoTronics 24w into the tent. It is a very concentrated beam of light, so it is adding a bit of a hotspot in the tent. I had hoped it would spread out more. The canopy is so dense that it is hard for light to get anywhere near the bottom of the plants now
-5/21 I decided to start fertilizing at just over half fert strength, 2 out every 3 waterings instead of 1 out of every 2. Reason being that the PH of the water here is very high, and these nutes are very acidic (so I’ve read, but can’t confirm).
I haven’t tested but I have heard from a friend with a ph meter as well as through online research that the local tap water PH is treated to be in the high 8’s to mid 9’s. It’s an old city with lots of old lead piping – the water department doesn’t want the pipes corroding away quickly. The organic nutes will hopefully help bring the PH to acceptable levels.
I would love to have a meter, but it was just one more thing to buy and as the grow went on my plants seemed healthy and didn’t show any signs of nutrient lockout so I didn’t feel a need to buy one. I also used a Brita filter for all of my water and let it sit out for 24-48 hours in hopes of ridding it of some of the chlorine/chloramine. I initially started by watering once every 3 days with about 80oz of water. That has evolved into watering every 24-28 hours with just over a gallon of water. The plants have been getting so thirsty that even 48 hours is a long time to go without watering them. I don’t want to overwater them, but the combination of relatively low humidity in the tent (30-50% usually), 24 hour air circulation/venting, and light airy soil in fabric pots means they dry out quick.
And that brings us up to date in this grow. I will be uploading some of the photos I’ve taken so far soon. Hope you guys tune in to my little LED grow, and advice is always appreciated!
MY GOALS:
-Grow short bushy plants in a small tent, using minimal electricity and minimal space.
-Make the setup pay for itself in the first grow (I typically get high quality street bud for $125 per half oz so that’s the price point to beat. So far I have spent $397.17 on the setup, so I would need just over 1.5oz to pay for the setup excluding the electricity costs)
I want to spend some more money to do it right for once, but not so much money that I’d have to use the setup multiple times to make it worthwhile (I have roommates that are cool with me growing right now, but I can’t predict where I’ll be in terms of housing in the next 6 months). That being said, I bought the cheap off brand LED’s (Galaxy Hydro 300w) instead of something higher quality that I could expect to last... I also needed the grow tent to be small, as my bedroom isn’t that large and it’s in the corner of the room. I’d like it to look somewhat inconspicuous, although the noise of the vent fan makes it hard to miss…
I chose LED’s because A) I didn’t want a lot of heat in my bedroom and B) because I have read some many mixed reviews about LED’s, and I wanted to put them to the test my self. Perhaps the reviews are mixed because some people opt for expensive LED’s, and some of us penny pinchers opt for cheap lights…. Hmm. I love the idea of using a (supposedly) more efficient light source to save on the electric, because I hate the rather large carbon footprint of growing indoors and electric is very expensive in my state.
The Setup (Pretty much all purchased off of Amazon):
-BETWEEN THE TWO LIGHTS THE SUSPECTED ACTUAL WATTAGE OF THIS GROW NOT INCLUDING FANS IS 154W. I didn’t add the smaller TaoTronics bulb until around 5/12, though.
-Yaheetech 2ft. X 2ft. X4ft. tall (4 sq. ft. or 16 cu. ft) Tent - $60
-300w Galaxy Hydro LED w/ 100X3w leds (Told it’s actual draw is something like 140w +/- 5w) - I paid $123 on Amazon but I see it’s since dropped to $109.99)
-24w TaoTronics LED Light with 12X2w LED’s (Told it’s actual draw is 13.8w) – $26
-Seeds: Only about $20 as three of the 5 seeds were freebie throw ins when I ordered the Phat Fruity seeds and more a while back
-Accurite Themometer - $11.45
-Mini Fan - $6.79
-Adjustable rope hangers for hanging LED Panel - $6
-General Organics Go Box Fertilizer - $36.33
-Fox Farm Ocean Forest 1.5 cu. ft. soil - $25.25
-5 X 3gal. fabric Smart Pots - $22
-Light Socket for additional 24w LED – $9
-Light timer – $7
-Holmes Desk Clip Fan – $19.35
-Socket splitter/Power Strip/Extension Cord- $10
-Activated Carbon Filter Sheets - $15
-ALREADY HAD – Extension cord, Power Strip, 6” inline duct fan
Grand Total: $397.17 on the whole set up. Ouch, a little higher than expected when I just totaled it up…
Timeline of the grow:
-3/6 Germinated 5 out of 5 seeds and moved them to Fox Farms OF soil in solo cups (2 Phatt Fruity, 1 White Lavender, 1 Skunk/Northern Lights Hybrid and 1 Skunk #11 – all purchased from Attitude Seedbank)
-3/10 Seedlings sprouted from soil
-3/29 Moved 4 of the plants to 3 gal. Smart Pots (Think I waited too long to do this, plants were looking nutrient deprived). I couldn’t fit a fifth pot in the tent, so the Skunk #11 is going to be a little experiment in a solo cup
-3/31 Half Strength Fertilized for the first time
-4/1 Started Topping/FIM’ing plants
-4/3 Started LST’ing the plants
-4/4 Started Super Cropping for the first time. I accidentally snapped the main stem near in half on the Skunk/NL Hybrid and had to tape that up with electrical tape. Nearly cried, but these plants really are hard to kill. It healed back up quickly
-4/8 Started to fertilizer more heavily. Using the low end of the suggested General Organics Go Box fertilizer regimen now
-4/9 to 5/4 – Didn’t keep any notes during this period of time but I did a lot of topping/FIM’ing, a lot of LST’ing and a lot of supercropping. I quickly brought the fertilizer up to the high range of what’s listed on the Go Box and fertilized with every other watering. At one point I waited an extra watering to fertilize, and backed off the strength a bit because a couple of the plants had some slightly burnt/yellow leaf tips. The plants got very bushy and I thinned out some inner/lower fan leaves/sucker growth. Kind of regret trimming out the fan leaves after doing more research, but man do these things have some tight nodes/growth! Very impressed with the vegging capabilities of this cheap 300w Galaxy Hydro light so far. During this time span, I brought the light schedule from 22 hours on/2 off to 18.5 on/5.5 off
-5/4 TURNED LIGHTS OVER TO 12/12 FOR FLOWERING
-5/12 Added the TaoTronics 24w into the tent. It is a very concentrated beam of light, so it is adding a bit of a hotspot in the tent. I had hoped it would spread out more. The canopy is so dense that it is hard for light to get anywhere near the bottom of the plants now
-5/21 I decided to start fertilizing at just over half fert strength, 2 out every 3 waterings instead of 1 out of every 2. Reason being that the PH of the water here is very high, and these nutes are very acidic (so I’ve read, but can’t confirm).
I haven’t tested but I have heard from a friend with a ph meter as well as through online research that the local tap water PH is treated to be in the high 8’s to mid 9’s. It’s an old city with lots of old lead piping – the water department doesn’t want the pipes corroding away quickly. The organic nutes will hopefully help bring the PH to acceptable levels.
I would love to have a meter, but it was just one more thing to buy and as the grow went on my plants seemed healthy and didn’t show any signs of nutrient lockout so I didn’t feel a need to buy one. I also used a Brita filter for all of my water and let it sit out for 24-48 hours in hopes of ridding it of some of the chlorine/chloramine. I initially started by watering once every 3 days with about 80oz of water. That has evolved into watering every 24-28 hours with just over a gallon of water. The plants have been getting so thirsty that even 48 hours is a long time to go without watering them. I don’t want to overwater them, but the combination of relatively low humidity in the tent (30-50% usually), 24 hour air circulation/venting, and light airy soil in fabric pots means they dry out quick.
And that brings us up to date in this grow. I will be uploading some of the photos I’ve taken so far soon. Hope you guys tune in to my little LED grow, and advice is always appreciated!
