LED light saturation nation

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secretmicrogrow420

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bra just get a par meter and if your broke buy a lux meter and call it a day. i used to always wonder if my plants were getting enough light or too much and i dont have these problems anymore. its so easy.
also like another member stated your leaf tips are yellow i highly doubt this is nutrient burn looks like your plants are nutrient deficient.
 

secretmicrogrow420

Well-Known Member
thanks for the replies everyone this is really an interesting conundrum. on another forum having the same discussion

what i think i know now is the rh really needs to be bumped up with led's which i will not be able to do in this closet grow heading into winter. also gypsum/calmag apparently has a major protective(?) rejuvenating effect for plants that have these problems under led's

so for me it looks like either grow with leds on low/lowest dimmer settings at 2 1/2 feet from the plants, or get an hid. so far i have not had any good weed from the led it was all decent looking and healthy but tasteless and mostly odourless. whatever taste or smell there was was harsh and/or weird
honestly man when me and my bro burly started growing bud back in the day we started using HPS and all our bud was also frosty dense nug but it didnt taste or smell good.... we had this problem for like 2 years there was one time when he grew a sativa that smelled amazing with HPS but no real potency it didnt get you stoned.... eventually my brother started using advanced nutrients with coco / rockwool and adding 10k solistek Metal halide vertical bare bulbs for UV into the 4x8 he had at the time and his end quality skyrocketed. he went from growing the crappiest buds too the best in town.
here is something a book im reading says
"The amount of UVB light a plant receives affects THC and terpene production. Plants growing under higher UV levels are more potent."
good luck with future grows boss man.
 

dank'd

Well-Known Member
i am realizing yes that humidity and temps are more of a factor with led than hid thanks for mentioning this and also someone has reported the need to let the soil get near bone dry before watering. i just won't be able to compensate with winter coming. a friends grow was very robust and lush and he used led and the tent was super humid and warm (and also smelled moldy haha)

yes this is great soil i've had lush and robust growth with it consistently under flouro, hid and sun. i can see why some would blame the soil because they don't understand that light saturation causes nutrient uptake problems

and ohhhhhh yes i know first hand the RADICAL difference light can make to clones of the same plant. comparing sun grown clones to tent grown under hid mh it was like night and day. same plants, same medium, just some were in a tent and some were outdoors

that was a learning time and the tent was way too hot so the buds had almost no thc. but here is a summary of each (grown in the same season also, at the same time simultaneously btw):

too hot tent clones: ultra frosty, had the sort of rank skunk smell that it like a dead skunk in the glove box, seriously overpowering the whole room no matter how you stored it. but had an off putting edge to the smell, smoked nasty, with no high. small buds with no real colas

outdoor back porch clones: sweet and mild, similar basic blue print of the tent clones but no stink. much more pleasant odour if again not crazy loud. great high, not nearly as frosty as the no high rank tent version. massive wine bottle colas

see? it's nothing to do with the lights!.........right!?
 
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dank'd

Well-Known Member
this was the healthiest growth that i achieved under this light it was early spring 2022 direct exhaust coming in from outside 43.5° north latitude ontario so the weather was warming up and humidity was coming up. the max these plants could take was 40% dimmer. i believe i could get the dimmer up to high but it would take a level of humidity that is not possible

2022-09-05_12th day of 12_12.JPG
 

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
One thing you could try is hanging a small incandescent light in your tent. Get a little heat and far reds on the cannopy. Watch out though, too strong and youll get a fair bit of stretch.
 

amneziaHaze

Well-Known Member
my last grow i could not get the light dimmer above 40% without causing all four strains (except for the more sativa looking one) to lose chlorophyll (except near the veins) and slow way down. at that time it was in winter with almost no humidity and that seemed to be a factor

this time it was late summer/fall and this new strain has done the same thing all the way down to the lowest dimmer setting or just slightly above

i keep the lights over two feet from the plants btw and well ventilated
View attachment 5330877
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have you ever considered using magnesium?
 

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
ya me too that's why this thread is about led's not flouros or hids

here is a quote from the following thread which explains the situation:

"The highest recommend distance on the website was killing my plants. 3 different strains all very healthy until placed under this led light and returned to healthy after removing. It didnt stop until it was almost 3 feet away and Im sure the PAR value is dismal at that distance due to the reverse square law. The same sister plants next to them under a close open bulb 400w MH is already 6 inches higher in growth."

https://www.420magazine.com/community/threads/my-leds-are-killing-my-plants.239747/
Yeah you'll find plenty of evidence to support that.. but for every 1, there's 10 without that problem.


So .. one question.

What are your temperatures in there?
Through Veg and flower
 

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
OP, as you see there is a lot of focus on environment in the answers here. And magnesium and also calclium. With leds its quite hard to get the plants to transpire enough:
You need to dial in temps and humidity according to vpd: vapour pressure deficit, and observe what vpd is good for each stage of growth. Its not a 100% science; you also need to be able to read your plants: when they show the same kind of plant posture as you showed as your healthiest growth check what vpd your environment gives you and use that as your baseline. This is the way to drive healthy transpiration which results in good nutrient uptake. Vpdchart.com is your friend in this. Remember that leaves under leds are often several degrees colder than environment; all the lights you mentioned keep the leaves hotter than the environment which throws the numbers off a bit so you can never expect the same behaviour from led grown plants as hid grown. Vpdchart lets you adjust those values for convenience.
Once you start getting this right and increase light intensity then you also need to think about temperature floor: since the plant is freezing a bit the metabolism cant really keep up with the amount of light your giving: for full intensity flower temps need to be over 80F and your humidity needs to be adjusted to the right vod for the stage. +80F should be your temp floor for full intensity but many get away with a bit less in veg under low light intensity: keeping rh high in 80F is very hard so if you see good growth in high 70ies its allright while light intensity is low.

If you still have problems then adjust the nutrients; higher mag seems to be helpfull as long as it doesnt go overboard. But mag have specific ph needs to be properly available so some get better results keeping ph towards the higher side of the ph window.

"Its the light" argument: yes and no; its the light and your failure to adapt to it.
"But ive seen other people having my problem" : if you listen to these guys you're listening to the people who failed to get this working, obviously thats not going to be helpfull. Listen to someone who made it work instead. Growing with leds in the cold isnt easy: the one ive seen best able to do so is @Moflow , hes already on this thread. I think he uses a meat mat and some magsulfate/epson salt in the pot during veg and grows well were most would fail.

Substrate: the all nutrients in the soil/pot is usually not the best way when youre trying to work this out. Coco hydro is usually the go to solution, but make sure to prebuffer the coco lightly with calmag. Its easier to adjust and control everything that way. Never used promix myself, maybe someone else can talk about how it affects ph. Remember you want somewhat high ph. But not crazy high. Theres charts around for mag availability according to ph. Again this is your friend.

Another cheat code for increased transpiration is using more blue in the spectrum: blue (or even better violet N-uva, or any blue under 440nm) and heat drives transpiration up.

Also make sure you have a temp/rh meter that stores the values so you can check what happens at night etc.

Dont get desperate, listen to what people that made this work is telling you. You have some really good tent growers responding to you here on the thread. This grow might be frustrating, once the plants started going light stunted its kinda hard to get them back on track and to man up to higher light intensities. Next time make sure you do not push to hard at once with light intensity, and if you increase intensity you need to up temps a bit aswell in the same time.
 
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Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
ya me too that's why this thread is about led's not flouros or hids

here is a quote from the following thread which explains the situation:

"The highest recommend distance on the website was killing my plants. 3 different strains all very healthy until placed under this led light and returned to healthy after removing. It didnt stop until it was almost 3 feet away and Im sure the PAR value is dismal at that distance due to the reverse square law. The same sister plants next to them under a close open bulb 400w MH is already 6 inches higher in growth."

https://www.420magazine.com/community/threads/my-leds-are-killing-my-plants.239747/
Please read the thread you linked to: OP would never give complete details on his grow conditions just saying "everything is perfect". But his grow was cold and he never mentions rh. A lot of the advice in that thread were correct. But op still seems to only blame the light, not his own failure to adjust to led conditions. Dont follow his misstake; if it aint working youre doing something wrong, drop the assumption that everything is right and make adjustments. Best of luck :)
 

sh0wtime

Well-Known Member
Ramp up your lights = ramp up your nutes.
If the top leaves are yellowing: might be iron/sulphur/manganese def.
If the bottom leaves are yellowing: it's nitrogen

If your entire plant is healthy and fed well and you are bleaching them starting with the tips it's the light intensity.

At least in my book...
 

dank'd

Well-Known Member
that's a lot of helpful information there thanks everybody : )

is magnesium also gypsum? i have some on the way from amazon, and is mentioned in that thread i linked and used by many of the members there

the light is quite bright still even at 40% i mean it grows sticky buds in good amounts. this pic is my first crop with this light from spring 2022 (my mistake on the date of the last pic which was september 2022)

2022-04-17_49_days.JPG

i think it was like 5 ounces or something. but regardless for me i only need two crops a year max and in my part of the world and with my means of climate control that means spring and fall for flowering

it wouldn't matter if i used hid or led etc in february everything grinds to a perfectly healthy halt

but, in those zero humidity conditions in my experience, at least with this led, the plants are easily oversaturated with light, at least if going by the assumption they actually require that particular light at full blast. maybe that light at partial dimmer is the perfect amount already

but for spring and fall growing i think i can use the led still. i think i am thrown by the first weed i grew with this setup because i was using wicking pots and the soil stayed perpetually moist borderline soaked

it grew healthy plants but i worry that it may have effected the terpenes

i have a space heater in the closet though so it should be ok for the winter

in regards to high temps though, i am thinking of the video from the dr bugbee lab with mitchell westmoreland, explaining the tests they were doing with small grow chambers with different levels of heat for flowering

they found cannabinoid concentration dropped significantly starting at 27° c daytime temps. and my personal experiance as i explained above with the metal halide in a super duper hot mid summer no ac tent that hardly got me high tells me the same

so it seems the question is, settle for growing with the led in sub optimal conditions, or get a metal halide and grow spring and fall only for low flowering temps
 

Lou66

Well-Known Member
magnesium also gypsum
Gypsum is calcium sulfate. Magnesium is usually supplied with epsom salt (magnesium sulfate).

Why do you insist on fixing all issued with the light? You say that humidity problems are controlled by switching the light. Why not... fix the humidity?
 

sh0wtime

Well-Known Member
Can i ask another thing? That space looks really small. Are you using a 240 light in a 2x2? Then expect problems, would be a very over sized light.
Hmm, at full blast only one light in the center could really be too much, actually.
That's why I stayed with the boards. You can hang them at the borders and tilt em inwards and if the uniformity is shitty well, just add one more.
 

Medskunk

Well-Known Member
Dude noway. I have my optic 2 cobs @120w, 4 feet from the seedlings and thats as high as it can get, no more room. If i lower it a little, they get weird. I let them grow into the light, no moving up n down but thats cobs for you. Just keep lifting the light and let it grow towards it.
 
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