Medical Marijuana Growing

I just wanted to make a few points on lighting for any new gardeners who might be just starting out.Of course this would only apply to indoor gardening,as ya might guess..lol

Over my years I have seen people try to grow with all manner and types of lighting,and I wanted to kinda give some guidlines as to what works,and what doesn't work,,and why!

Let's start out with what doesn't work so we can get those pesky questions out of the way without having to read through a long drawn ouot thread only to find the answer you seek in the last few paragraphs,I know how that can be frustrating.lol


DOES NOT WORK,(or doesn't work well enough to promote the type of growth we need for maturing a plant)

Incondecent light bulbs-
Now then although you can buy those kinda blue purple looking incondecent bulbs that say "Grow Light" on them,don't be foled by that.Yes they can sustain life,but thats about it.Number one reason is they have not got much in the way of lumens,and the color range is not that good either.To have any type of success with them you would need ALOT of them,lol..This would cause it's own type of problem which would be HEAT!
These type of Grow Lights are best suited for,nothing more than keeping your Cactus warm on a cool winters night !So don't waste your time or monies on them,ok...

Next would be any type of "Halogen" bulb,again the color range is all wrong,and they produce even more heat than the incondecents.These would be like trying to grow your plants in a "Microwave",,not very productive huh...These are best suited for your work lights around the house or garage,as they make a lot of light,with alot of heat.They will on the other hand keep you nice and warm on a cold night out in the garage under the o'l jallopy..


Mecury Vapor Lamps..

Although I seem to remember some reserch about 5 years ago that used them as some type of additional lighting for some type of plants,I don't think they will have much use for your MJ plants.Best left out on the pole as a street light in my opinion !


There are others,, that we won't get into right now,untill I see someone ask if they can be used.lol


PROPER LIGHTING


We will get into some of the better lighting systems for growing now,and move away from the things that won't work well..

Prolly the most used system would be the "H.I.D." this is "High Intesity Discharge".
These lamps work by the use of either an electonic or transformer type of ballast.What the ballast does without going into great detail, is it ups the voltage from your standard electrical outlet to increase it for the proper voltage of the lamp being used.So lets just say they amplify the voltage.
Of these types of lamps we have the 2 most widely used being the Metal Halide known as "MH' and the High Presure Sodium known as the "HPS".These lamps are availible in a wide range of wattage,and the wattage of the bulb has to be matched by the wattage of the ballast being used.So in other words,it not a good idea to use say a 400w HPS bulb in a 1000w ballast,,it won't live very long..lol I think y'all get my point on this,,right? If ya have a 400w lamp it should be in a 400w ballast system.I will make one exception to this rule as I have ran a 430w HPS in my 400W system with no problems at all.


Next we have those Florecent type lights,these can range from your standard T12(big fat tubes) type all the way what we have come to know as Compact Florecents "CFL".These have grown alot in popularity over the past couple of years and with good reason.They offer nice low heat light,and can do a very nice job when plants are in veg.They offer low cost of operation,and low cost of replacement,not to mention the low cost of starting up a small grow space with them.One other factor is they can remain close too the plants and not put off much heat.This fact alone makes them a great choice for things like seedlings,clones,and mothers.

Then we have L.E.D. lighting systems,these have grown some in popularity over the past year,but,,in my mind thier are still not there yet.They do have thier following though.Some peeps will swear by them,and I have seen some that do a good job.The thing is for me anyway,they are just too damn expensive still and untill the cost comes down a great deal,my personal opinion is they just arent cost effective on any type of large grow.They may be fine in a small space,but again the cost factor comes into play expecialy in a small space.I mean it just doesn't make good sence,or dollars and cents to put out $300 for a system to grow in a 10-20 square foot space.But,,hey,,,too each his own I always say..lol
LED's have come along way over the past year and I will be the first to say,they are getting very close as far as tweeking out some nice color spectrums,but again the cost thing has to get more inline before they can take over from MH's and HPS systems.

Ok now in the comming posts,I will get into such things as light spectrum,temps,lighting distance,types of ballast's and some other boaring stuff that you are going to need to know,or atleast have a place where ya can find the references to your questions.Hey,,thats why I'm gonna put this here..WOW,,what a fortunate thing for those seeking this info..It will all be in one place for your viewing pleasure.lol

Ok i'm tired of typing now,so I'll start on another post tomorrow,so,,stay tuned as this will be an ongoing type of thread !


Mr.O

VERY VERY COOL THREAD!!! i am in awe of you mr. o!@!!

Coptic Time wrote:VERY VERY COOL THREAD!!! i am in awe of you mr. o!@!!

Gosh I'm Blushing !...lol


Mr.O

OK,today we talk about "Light Color".
This seems to get confusing to some folks,and it realy is nothing to be afraid of.Kinda simple realy,we just have to know what a few things mean thats all.

Light color and or temperature is measured by a numerical scale,this scale is called "Kelvin",named for the guy who came up with the whole measurement thing in the 1800's.Now then I'm not going to ge into great detail about Kelvin,I simply don't have the time to write an entire discription of how this scale is rendered,and realy,thats not all that important to what we are dealing with here as far as lighting for our growrooms. All we need to know is that "K" is a measure of lights color temperature.
We will need to see a chart to be able to better understand just how this will effect our lighting purchases,so heres a chart showing just the color scale.

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Here is also a somewhat usefull graph that shows different types of lights and thier color output


I don't want ya to get all worked up about this being difficult to firgure out,cause in reality,we are only looking at 2 ranges for our MJ plants. So when choosing a lamp too use,we are looking for a veg lamp in the range of 5500-6500K,,and for flowering we are looking for a range of about 2000-3000K.

Ok simply put the reason for these 2 ranges of desired color range is simple.Loking at the charts,you'll see that something in the say 6500K range is similar to say noontime sunlight.and something in the say 2700K range is similar to early sunrise.Ok with this in mind,we want to veg in almost noon time ight for aslong as possible,makes sence that plants grow indoors and will thrive in what we would call ideal noon sunlight.Noontime being when the sun would be highest in the sky,therefore giving the most light..Simple huh...Now then for the flowering stage,we would want the early sunrise type color,simply because this would be the most accurate recreation of the sun setting earlier in the day,wich would be our best way to recreate the "Fall Season" ,which turns on the plants internal clock into thinking it's gonna be winter soon,so it must reproduce,,,how does it do that you ask,,well it flowers to make seed for it's continued survival.No in most cases we don't want seeds,unless we are wanting to preserve a particular strain or traight,but this is the time for the plant when she builds her flowers to receive the male pollen.

OK so,the thing is realy,don't let these scales be something ya are uncomfortable with,they are simply a tool to help get your plants the correct lighting.

It doesn't matter if you elect to use,Floro's or CFL's or MH or HPS type lighting systems,,these color ranges will still be what your looking for in choosing the lamps for whichever system ya decide to use.

Some other things to concider,,MH lamps tend to be in the 6000k range and are an excellent source for vegging lighting.While there are some "Extended Color Range" MH's out there,they still just don't have the red to yellow color to give optimal performance in flowering.Most HPS lamps are in the 2700K range,and are excellent choices for flowering due to the fact that they have this red-yellow light color we want for flowering stage.Floro's can have both ranges,most of the time they are refered to as "Daylight" and "Cool light",meaning that the daylight will be more in the 6500K range,and the cool will be somewhere in the 3000k range.Same effect with CFL's as they are simply small Floro's anyway.

Ok,,are we following alone with this? I hope so,I am trying to leave out very much technical crap as most of you will not want to know this info anyway.You will just want to know how too choose the proper light for your grow space based on some of these principals it will be much easier than us having a long drawn out discusion on the effects of a handfull of equations and formulas.Yes I am giving you just the valued part of what it all means.

OK now that we have color spectrum in your minds,let look at something else that will have a direct impact on your lamp and lightig system choices.
The first thing I want you to think about is "Room Temp's",our lamps will be rated in "Wattage".Now of course a CFL rated at say just for shits and giggles,40watts,is truely only about 14watts of power.They are using an equivalent rating for these bulbs,not the real consumption of power.Keep this in mind when adding up your total wattage..OK now a HPS lamp rated at say 400watts is going to produce 400 watts of heat.If we have say a room volume of 100sq-ft,then it would be safe to say that a 400w HPS is going to make more heat in that space than say 10x40w CFL's.Even though the wattage adds up to the same number.I'm not wanting to get side tracked here,I'll get into things like proper ventilation and all that other neat stuff in another post on "GrowRoom temps and Ventilation" later..What I do want to make sure ya undrstand is that these different lamps will create different amounts of heat.This heat factor should be in mind when you are deciding on what type of lighting system you are going to be using..

Ok,now we understand that we have light spectrum,and radiant heat from our lamps to deal with.So if you are going to start out with a small grow box,or an enitre room conversion for your grow,ya have too keep these two factors in mind.Ya wouldn't want to build a 3ft growbox and put a 400w HID lamp into it,this would be certain failure as the heat produced in that small of a space would be detramental to the plants.ON the other hand in that same growbox,some Floro's or CFLs would be right on target.A growroom with say 200sq-ft would be far ore efficient with a 400w HID than with the eqivelent wattage in Floro's or CFL's.Am I making ths clear for ya? I hope so.It just requires some well though out planning,ya can't just throw some lights into an area and expect to get "Primo Buds",it just won't happen,take your time and think about what area you will have to work with.

OK now let's consider the Light Spectrum and Lamp Energy covered here in these past few paragraphs.Now lets look forward to the real selection of what type of lighting systems we have availible.As I mentioned in the first post we have a few variaties of choices that can be made.We have CFL's,Floro's,MH and HPS.Most common CFL's will not require any type of speacial base to be used.Most of them, up to a range of about 200watts will use a standard household base.Then we can go even bigger with these CFL's such as 250w and greater and that will require the use of a "Mogul" base for these larger lamps to be used.Not a big deal ya just have to use these bases with some of the larger wattage CFL's.There is ussually not any type of ballast required with CFL's as they are normally built into the bulb.
Floro's,MH's and HPS bulbs will require a ballast to operate.These ballast's must be rated for that particular wattage of bulb.
Where the Floro's are concerned,the ballast is in most cases already mounted in the fixture,or in the case of some of the newer Floro systems they will be mounted outside of the fixture,but will come with the system when purchased.I only mention this fact because we sometimes look for bargins as gardeners,and I want to be sure ya make the right choice when buying your system,or when shopping for them.Sometimes we can find deals on seperate conponents,and put them together ourselves,but I guess thats more of a DIY thing.lol..I love DIY..lol

OK that leaves use with MH and HPS,these will also need to have a ballast of the correct rating for the wattage of bulb you choose.Most of you will buy them in a package deal,but,again,sometimes you can buy them seperate and find bargins,so just keep in mind that the lamp has to be matched by the ballast.Simple....

Ok now then we need to ge more in detail on the differeces between MH and HPS.They do not interchage simply becasue that have the same wattage rating.A 400w MH will not run a 400w HPS bulb as they run at different voltages.There are ballast's that will allow the use of eiher bulb,but they are a special ballast known as "Switchable",don't mess up where this is concerned or you will blow a lamp for sure,and could possibly set your house on fire..Realy,,,be careful in this area.
Next we have 2 choices in the type of ballast we use.There is the o'l tried and true transformer type,and the newer electronic ballast's.Both do the job,and will realy be about the same.The differences come in where the eclectronic ballast's are said to be more cost efficient,and use less power to operate.They also run cooler in your growroom.They will most of the time have a higher initial investment cost than a magnetic or transformer type ballast.Again,this decision should be based on your ecconomics.Spend more money now and save on power consumption in the long run,or save money now and pay more for opperating cost.Flip a coin !

The next thing I want to kinda go over is there are many,many diffrent types of hoods,or reflectors as they can be called.This is the fixture in which your lamp will be housed,and be held above your plants.There are an aweful lot of differnt designs out there,and to behonest,,some are pure shit,but,again the choices are limitless.Open,closed ended,sealed,and so on.This decision will also take some forethought on your part,to decide what type to use in your space.Sealed hoods can be used to lower the growroom temp's as they allow for air to be passed through them and has a cooling effect on the lamp and the room because the airflow moving through them can be carried out to your exhaust vent giving you a more stable room temprature.These are more expensive but again,it's a game of what your total initial investment can be verus something on a budget.
Closed ended hoods are just that,closed off at each end.Open ended hoods as ya might guess are open at each end,such as the so called "Bat Wings".Personally I don't care for the BatWings,but again,that a personal preference.There are different shaped hoods also,some are boxed,some are octogenal in shape.One thing to pay particular attention to is what material they are made from.You don't want to have a 50lb fixture hanging above your pride and joy plants.I have seen many times when a fixture has fallen on somebodys plants,and can do major damage not only too the plants,but those bulbs don't far very well being dropped from a height either.So lite is always better than heavy.Also pay particualr attention to the reflective nature of the inside of the hood.Reflective is good,but it should be a well tought out hood.Some I have seen are just simply crap,the way the try to bend the light.Most hood manufactures will have this info listed in the adds or brochours.

Well I think this has shed some more light on our lighting systems and the choices that you have.I have tried to cover the majority of them without going into great detail.It is not my purpose to suggest whats best for you,it is though my intent to allow you be have the best information to make an educated purchase and supply you with enough of this info,so ya don't make big mistakes.

I will get more indepth in some of my future posts about lighting systems,but for now,you have enough info to guide you on your journey.

I hope this has been of benefit to someone,if just one gardener takes away something from all this,then it was worth it too me.I believe in living life in a "Pay it Forward" kinda way !


More to come,,Stay tuned !!



Mr.O