Good evening everyone!!

Let me introduce myself and my project. Let me first say THANK YOU for this opportunity to the CA Lightworks company and George for facilitating this program and making a very nice product.

I am Matthew from Wildomar,CA a transplant from MI, guess which university I attended ; I am not a plant biologist by profession but do have a wealth of knowledge on basic plant biology, currently grow as a hobby under CA guide lines and a protein chemist by profession.

My project here is a comparison of the 800 W SolarStorm full cycle vs. Growl LED, company does not exits anymore but still have access to their most recent products, 2 120 W LED VEG and their 600 W Flower series LED lights. Since I am limited by time, I will do half the allotted time for VEG, cloning included, and half in flowering. I have 2 separate spaces for each life cycle of the plants so light contamination will not be an issue. I am very new to this and resources are limited at times, my limiting growth factors will be CO2 availability and to a degree, temperature. The grow space for the SolarStorm will be a 4'x4' tray and the 2 120 W LED will have a total area of 2'x6' tray, full area will not be used obviously. The 2 120 W LED I have had the best success thus far in terms of rooting of clones, range of 6 days to 2 weeks, and most rapid rate of growth during VEG, not including outdoor. The 600 W flowering light is specific for flowering, VEG and Flowering lights all emitt UVA wavelengths.

Nutrients and water will come from the same source, RO H2O and Jungle Juice per manufacture's recommendation, the only difference besides the light source will be plants used during flowering, I have some currently in flowering, several weeks in, and will be able to put a few new ones into flowering when the time comes.

Plants used: I will be using C. sativa[i][/i] ( blue dream, L.S.D, Burmese Kush, super silver haze, and strawberry caugh) I may include Basil if I can germinate the seeds in time, and possibly monitor my orchids, Plumeria, and Papya tree as well. In the coming days I will list in more detail height of the plants, height from the light, temp, trimming time etc. For now I wish you all a good night. Any feed back and future suggestions will be greatly appreciated as I will give suggestions to all that ask for to the best of my knowledge. Pictures will be posted later. I will be posting mostly from my iPhone so will upload images at a later date. Thanks.

Matthew

Welcome to the forums! That's a lot of strains for such small areas, are you going soil or hydro?

SME

Usually forget to mention important info, but for this study I will be using hydro. I have to re-design the hydro set up for the flowering area, since it is in a well insulated area and holds in heat. I tried hydro out there last spring and summer and the area got too hot, temps outside were reaching 110 and air conditioning was driving our electric bill up too high which resulted in the res drying out in 2 days, spermatic mold growth and unwanted black widows making a nice home. I switched to soil for that time period but working on another plan at the moment. The Veg room is only hydro. The plants are small enough so the numbers won't be a problem for the area. I'll post pictures soon.

Matthew

Welcome to the forum!
On the subject of C02. Have you tried green pads? http://www.thegreenpadstore.com/ They raise the C02 PPM's by 900, in a 5x5x7. Easy no fuss, just hang spray, and walk away! Peace. h

Thanks for the suggestion h. I would use them if the plants were in a sealed area. My rooms are far too big for these pads to be usefull though. I don't use tents and that dimensions I gave are for separate trays, the room that the plants are in are small garages. In the winter I used candles, if you work the equation for candle wax and factor in the weight of each, the CO2 output is not too bad and keeps the plants warm when the outside temp drops to 26 degrees. I'll most likely end up using a CO2 tank plus dry ice during the summer months.

Good evening everyone and happy St. Patricks Day,

Finally set up one of the rooms and set up the plants that I will be using for my comparison. Attached I will show images and bar graphs of the plants used under SolarStorm Full Cycle, Growl LED 120W (All blue and "white") panels. "White" LED panel consists of mostly white light with sparatic red and blue wavelengths; all blue panel consists of blue light <470 nm.

Note*: All clones shown in the first image I tried starting under the SolarStorm but after 3 days they started to look sick so I switched all but 1, super silver haze, to the all Blue LED. The data for the Blue Growl LED light have not started until the 11th of March due the clones not being trasplanted into larger cubes at the time.

Starting date is 3/8/2012

Legend:

MB16-01 = SC-1 = Strawberry Cough
BD-1 through 4 : Blue Dream
BU-1 through 3 : Buku (Burmese Kush)
OG-1,2 : OG Kush by Reserve Privada

Not shown yet are Super Silver Haze 1 and 2 ; Basil 1 and 2 from seeds.

Range of tempuratures: 68 degrees F to 77 degrees F
Humidity: 50-55%

Good evening everyone. I will be uploading images tomorrow evening, but for now here are my updated data points for my plants.
A new plant i have introduced are 2 several bail plants that I have started from seeds. Took 4 days to germinate and one day extra to show seed leaves and now I am just taking height measurments.

Tepuratures have ranged from 75-80 degrees throughout the day with an average humidity of 56%

Observation notes:

Solar Storm Full Cycle: The plants under this light have shown the most growth in terms of height. The leaves on all plants except the basil appear to be slightly whilty, older leaves bend down with slight yellow hue. The root system of each plant are very large for their age. The plants may have been focusing their energy in root development instead of leaf/stalk growth. All of these plants except the OG-1 are branching out more then the plants under the Blue and White LED panels.

Blue and White Growl LED lights: The plants under these units look healther in terms of leaf size. All leaves are vibrant/dark green and wide with a slight upward bend. In terms of stalk growth, these have not been doing that well compared to the Solar Storm except the SC-1 (Straw Berry Cough). You will notice a decrease in height under the Blue LED becuase I topped the plant to make a clone. It regrew very quickly and started to fill back out. These plants are growing more verticle rather then bushing out. I will be cutting the tops of EVERY plant that needs it and make a comparison with horizontal grown/branching.

Those are interesting facts. Seems like your results are almost strain dependent. Thanks for the info! h

hemivette wrote:Those are interesting facts. Seems like your results are almost strain dependent. Thanks for the info! h

So far it does seem like some strains do better then others. I am just finishing my study in veg growth this weekend. Should be posting pictures sunday for everyone to see. I have also plotted the growth data in excell and will show the rates of growth for each plant and show how the location relative to the light affects their health.

Next week, I will be starting a short term flowering study with some plants. At the end of this, I will post my final findings and recommendations and would be greatful of all input on how to improve upon my work and anything anyone else would like to see.

Matt

Here are the images. I have not yet finished the figures yet but should be done this week, sorry for the delay.
First three images are from 3-27 and the last three are from 4-4, each showing under LED light and normal light.