Newbie first grow using only white LEDs 223w

Hey there, Tooty McButtsqueaks here! Im fairly new to growing and just signed up on the forum today. I thought Id start off by sharing the results of my first grow, which used only store bought white LED. It seems like there aren't any other grow results that have been posted using this or a similar lighting setup so I thought id share my results with everyone. My grow consisted of a single plant, using screen of green method using a screen I made using an old picture frame and string, measuring 2 feet by 3 feet. The equipment I used were around a dozen LED bulbs, ranging from 12w to 20w, including both bulb and floodlight style lights. Heres some photos:

This first photo is a picture of the grow room (my front hall closet). The interior was painted flat white already, but for some reason the wall on the left had a full length mirror glued to it. Why? I have no idea. Anyway its a fairly simple set up as you can see. The lights are actually suspended from a old shoe rack the previous tenant had left here, which I used as a method of suspending all my lighting. It also allowed me the ability to change the position the lights were hanging from fairly easily. MacGuyver would have been proud.

Edit: Also, my grow room had two medium sized fans: one to draw air in/out of the closet, and one to provide circulation underneath the canopy.
-nutrients used: compost tea

I moved in my plant I had been vegging for three months in a ten gallon bin with 24 on 0 off and varying amounts of 5,000k LEDs. just over a week after the flip to 12 hours, I moved the plant to its new home in the closet:

Trying to find more information regarding using only white LEDs for growing was pretty tough, as almost all the resources I found were using either red/blue or some other multicolour array. The only info I found regarding white only grows seemed to be pretty negative, and the majority opinion seemed to be that it wouldn't be successful or the results would be very poor. Here are some photos from around the halfway point. All the buds were developing pretty nicely and the plant seemed to be growing very well.

I harvested the plant around 70 days into flowering and everything went off without a hitch! I noticed there are a few people out there speculating that the white LEDs don't provide the necessary bandwidth to get good results flowering, and that there was simply not enough red spectrum being emitted. That doesn't appear to be the case though. Here are a couple pictures of the finished product. I hope you guys like it! Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Overall, I absolutely loved the experience I had growing this plant, and im now getting into my second grow (six plants, 501w) and look forward to completing many more! Also, any comments/advice would be very much appreciated, regarding both growing and the forums in general.

How much did you yield? Cant be more than about 2 ounces dry depending upon density of the nugs.

You can grow with damn near any light. Whether its smart or economical is another question. You use 228w of power but if you only yield 100oz, its less efficient than HPS. I do not think you are close to 100g dried and cut down.

Are you trying to flower with 5000k? You should be using 3000k or 3500k. That should improve your yield.

You might also want to make a panel for the floods/spot bulbs using thick cardboard or thin plywood. Just cut a bunch of hole an 1/8 smaller than the bulb and silicone the bulbs to the board.

TootyMcButtsqueaks said:

It seems like there aren't any other grow results that have been posted using this or a similar lighting setup so I thought id share my results with everyone.

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CaptainMorgan grew with all white Cree LED "lightbulbs" 2.5 years ago. I posted my grow a few months ago.

I grew with a candle.

In an air cooled hood, right?

Bonjour
White led only...wow!
3 month vegg...toooo long!

5 weeks vegg and 17days 12/12 (vegg 1week 24/0 then 18/6 plants, like you plant need to sleep...3 months 24/0???)
You just need better lights!
CU

doz said:

How much did you yield? Cant be more than about 2 ounces dry depending upon density of the nugs.

You can grow with damn near any light. Whether its smart or economical is another question. You use 228w of power but if you only yield 100oz, its less efficient than HPS. I do not think you are close to 100g dried and cut down.

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I didn't get an exact count to be honest, but it was easily more than two ounces dry. Why is it not allowed to be more than that? Theres six square feet of canopy roughly, a couple ounces would be just under 10 grams per square foot, which isn't that much...

As for the cost, I obtained all the lights for $80, which was extremely cheap and definitely not typical of prices youll find in store for certain.

Regarding efficiency, I think you made a mistake and meant productivity (g/ft^2) right? That really depends on how many watts the HPS is I suppose, but I get what youre saying. I actually have a HPS as well, but its 600 watts and I think it might be a bit more than I need for my situation.

also, why respond to my post with such hostility/negativity? I had noticed there are barely any white only grows, I just wanted to contribute to the community...

TootyMcButtsqueaks said:

I didn't get an exact count to be honest, but it was easily more than two ounces dry. Why is it not allowed to be more than that? Theres six square feet of canopy roughly, a couple ounces would be just under 10 grams per square foot, which isn't that much...

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You ran 38w/sq ft. If you got 10g/sq ft, that's 0.24g/w. That's not very good. It could be your nutrients. But, it sounds like the lights aren't good enough for growing.

You can get 1g/w using the Cree lightbulbs. I think people have done well with Phillips.

In the lightbulb world there is apparently a wide margin between the good and bad stuff (like, between the more expensive and efficient grow lights versus the inexpensive fixtures like MarsHydro using epiwhatever diodes).

I congratulate you for trying white light. That's how people learn. I like bulb lighting.

nevergoodenuf said:

Are you trying to flower with 5000k? You should be using 3000k or 3500k. That should improve your yield.

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They were actually all 2,700/3,000 bulbs. Let me take a look at my inventory list ill tell you exactly what I used
2,700k (5 lights)
1x12w 110mA 850 lumen
2x16w 140mA 1600 lumen
1x16w 145mA 1600 lumen
1x18w 220mA 1300 lumen
Total Watts: 78w (35%) Total Draw: 755mA

3,000k (9 lights)
1x18w 220mA 1300 lumen
2x20w 230mA 1200 lumen
3x14w 150mA 900 lumen
1x17w 160mA 1600 lumen
2x14w 150mA 1600 lumen
Total Watts: 145w (65%) Total Draw: 1,440mA

***im guessing you might have thought I was running 5,000k because of what I mentioned about not having enough red: I meant that because white LEDS are blue LED + (yellow) phosphor/silicon coating, and because of that, the bulk of the light emitted is at the blue end of the spectrum, with a small amount of the rest of the spectrum also being produced.

nevergoodenuf said:

You might also want to make a panel for the floods/spot bulbs using thick cardboard or thin plywood. Just cut a bunch of hole an 1/8 smaller than the bulb and silicone the bulbs to the board.

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Yeah, its not very pretty. I actually came up with something different to keep the lights organized, but I definitely wouldn't mind adding some sort of reflector over the lights because im sure I lost a lot of light not having anything there.

nevergoodenuf said:

In an air cooled hood, right?

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in my closet, with a couple 10" fans for circulation. There wasn't really enough heat being generated to warrant any cooling.

A lot of us are using "white light".

Even if you had about 4 ounces, thats still terrible efficiency for a grow. I know you didnt hit 4 ounces.

littlejacob said:

Bonjour
White led only...wow!
3 month vegg...toooo long!
View attachment 3556054
5 weeks vegg and 17days 12/12 (vegg 1week 24/0 then 18/6 plants, like you plant need to sleep...3 months 24/0???)
You just need better lights!
CU

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it was my first grow, so I didn't really realize that I was overdoing it with the vegetative cycle. I probably could produce the same plant in a fraction of the time now.

Also, the plant is nothing like me. Saying that just because I need sleep, so does the plant is pretty ridiculous. I understand that after a certain point the plant doesn't photosynthesize as efficiently, and that's why a lot of people give them a dark period, but the current draw for my setup is very small and I wasn't going to save much on my hydro bill having the lights off for six hours. It was just more simple to leave them on. One less variable to cause errors that way.

az2000 said:

You ran 38w/sq ft. If you got 10g/sq ft, that's 0.24g/w. That's not very good. It could be your nutrients. But, it sounds like the lights aren't good enough for growing.

You can get 1g/w using the Cree lightbulbs. I think people have done well with Phillips.

In the lightbulb world there is apparently a wide margin between the good and bad stuff (like, between the more expensive and efficient grow lights versus the inexpensive fixtures like MarsHydro using epiwhatever diodes).

I congratulate you for trying white light. That's how people learn. I like bulb lighting.

Click to expand...

I could definitely do much better the second time around im sure, but theres so many cool things to try out I doubt ill be using the same setup more than once for the next few grows at least.

the lights I used definitely did vary a lot in terms of quality. The bulbs that were using multiple 1w LEDS rather than a single LED producing multiple watts didn't seem to be as good, and the floodlights seemed to be much more effective (probably due to the lens and no light being emitted away from the direction of the plant).

I doubt I will be getting any more white led bulbs for my grow room, im at 273w worth of them now and it seems like it would be much much much smarter to just start building my own grow lights using the 10, 20, 50 and 100 watt chips available for sale online.

Are Cree products really that much better than everyone else? It seems like they get a ridiculous amount of positive press on the forums. The only reason I don't use them is im In Canada and I haven't seen them in stores here.

doz said:

A lot of us are using "white light".

Even if you had about 4 ounces, thats still terrible efficiency for a grow. I know you didnt hit 4 ounces.

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Most definitely have a lot of room for improvement. I cut down portions of the plant at different times so I cant give a really accurate yield number, but the final sitting there was about 100 grams of wet bud, I know that still doesn't tell you much, but whatever, its not super important really