SisterMaryElephant wrote:After 25 days of 12/12 your stretch was pretty much over anyway so the only way to tell, for sure, is to put clones (not seedlings) from the same plant under different lights to see if one light isn't performing as well as it should. The Sun should outperform a LED during flower but I can do better than the Sun with large HPS lights in veg...

my thought was that this strain needed a longer veg cycle... sorry SME but I gotta call you out on this one... there is NO way any indoor light of any type outperforms the natural sun.... you can't beat mother nature....

TXStorm wrote:

SisterMaryElephant wrote:After 25 days of 12/12 your stretch was pretty much over anyway so the only way to tell, for sure, is to put clones (not seedlings) from the same plant under different lights to see if one light isn't performing as well as it should. The Sun should outperform a LED during flower but I can do better than the Sun with large HPS lights in veg...

my thought was that this strain needed a longer veg cycle... sorry SME but I gotta call you out on this one... there is NO way any indoor light of any type outperforms the natural sun.... you can't beat mother nature....

It is possible that the plants weren't mature enough to flower but a lot of SOG growers force small plants to flower, however most SOG growers use clones from mature plants, not seeds. That's a good catch, it could be that. I like to have a lot of headroom.

I don't want to hijack PW's journal with this debate but since you called me out....

Yes, you can beat mother nature, in more ways than one, especially during a plant's vegetative cycle. Mother nature is limited and it hold plants back. Allow me to explain.

1) Light cycle. Outdoors, mother nature is limited because the Sun isn't always shining. Indoors my light is on 24 hours per day during veg. I get 8 to 12 more hours of light than the Sun offers during veg. Outside, I have to plant on a schedule that will allow the plant to mature before fall. Inside I can plant whenever I want and get 6 harvests per year.

2) Weather. As one of our new outdoor growers mentioned, a storm rolled through that broke and and soaked his nearly finished flowering plants, which can introduce mold, if they even live. Inside, I control the weather and I don't have to list the benefits of that.

3) Mother nature's way is to stick the plant in the ground, where ever the seed falls. I can beat natural soil grows by amending soil and using fertilizer. I can beat any soil grow with a number of hydroponic grows.

4) Pests. Outside, mother nature gives you bugs and other animals that want to eat your plants. Indoors you can control that.

If we found a planet with perfect natural lighting, soil and weather conditions, with a shallow water source that just happened to have the perfect nutrient solution, perhaps mother nature would be queen...but not on Earth. Mother nature is CHEAPER than indoors but, other than cost, I can beat her.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

(if this debate gets out of hand or PW requests it, I'll split this debate off to it's own thread in another forum.)

TXStorm wrote:

SisterMaryElephant wrote:After 25 days of 12/12 your stretch was pretty much over anyway so the only way to tell, for sure, is to put clones (not seedlings) from the same plant under different lights to see if one light isn't performing as well as it should. The Sun should outperform a LED during flower but I can do better than the Sun with large HPS lights in veg...

my thought was that this strain needed a longer veg cycle... sorry SME but I gotta call you out on this one... there is NO way any indoor light of any type outperforms the natural sun.... you can't beat mother nature....

I would agree with Sister. Was a interesting show on Discovery channel about 2 hours long and the issue was how to deal with the population boom that is happening. A good example is NY City is projected to grow to like 40-50 million by 2050. That would require with current truck lengths 3 out of every 4 trucks would simply have to bring food into the city to sustain the population. That is entirely unreasonable. All over the world there facing the same questions...city planners anyhow. So they went to Sinapore to see what there trying out over there. Singapore is unique as 95% of all food is imported...no imports the population would starve and very fastly.

Singapore has no land to farm on so they launched a bold experiment to bring the farm to the City. Take a skyscraper knock everything out and build a giant in door hydro...actually air mist system and all artificial lighting.

In there experiment what they found was a simple 10 story building was equal to almost 600-700 acres of flat land. Yields were many times more, quality was up and it was actually 10x more eco friendly...many times less water was need..climate controlled, 24 hours growing, and zero crop loss to pests...they had to use very few pesticides.

This program was so successfull that Singapore has poured tons of money into this and in its infancy about 8% of there daily needs for food are now grown domestically. There also thinking about converting flat building roof tops into greenhouses.

So can you beat mother nature absolutely. In fact I would say that system beats it considering that 65% of the nation is under severe drought. If we migrated to a artificial system like that which we will have to sustain 20-30 billion humans we could make enough food for all of humanity in a area much smaller then what the US currently grows crops at. If we grew like this today then the drought that has wiped out the majority of our soy and corn crop would of been just a afterthought.

All human obstacles can and will be overcome with technology and its starting to geometrically advance. The Singularity will be upon us before we know it..if you know what that is . I cant wait for it.

I have read stuff regarding vertical farming.... and it may be what the future holds for dense population areas.... you are both factoring in other variables which I understand.... the original point was and simply is that no light can provide what natural sun light does... if so show me a picture of any indoor plant that matches these.... note the trash can for a ref.... not to muddy up someones blog with this, I will not respond any further

As I said, the Sun is limited by 8-12 hours of darkness and with indoor lighting I can beat that. Not for free but I can use more than one light per plant and the plants you're showing have vegged for 6+ months. With high enough ceilings, and multiple lights I could beat that in 6 months.

Additionally, plants stretch during dark hours so taller/bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. Take 2 seedlings and put one under 24 hours of lighting and the other with 8 hours of dark, the one with 24 hours of light will be shorter but it'll have tighter internodes. I'm not going to link another forum but I've seen growers using 4-5kw per plant and they get huge and yield a lot.

My original statement still stands. "I can do better than the Sun with large HPS lights in veg..." and I've debunked the myth that "you can't beat mother nature." It's obvious that those plants are not natural. Raised beds with cages like those don't exist in nature and I'm sure they've amended the soil and fed them nutrients. They are also protected from predators. Furthermore, we don't know if, or how long, those were grown indoors before being transfered outside and we can't see the shaded sides.

well, I said I would not respond but I will.... you insinuate a lot... who said they were "natural" ?.... its a medical grow in CA and of course its amended soil, given nutrients and protection from animals.... and yes they were started indoors in May and moved outside in mid June....I have yet to see any indoor grow with plants 6' x 8' tall.... doesn't matter.... your attitude is one of all knowing and adding things to a discussion that were not part of the original statement.... you haven't debunked anything with just rhetoric...

You're the one that said that "you can't beat mother nature" I just pointed out that your picture is proof that we can beat mother nature so that claim has, in fact, been debunked. We beat mother nature a lot.

When I was growing outdoors, in the 70s and 80s, we planted in March or April at the latest. Additionally, a picture of plants that were vegged for 6+ months doesn't disprove my statement that I can beat the Sun with large HPS lights in veg. Indoor growers don't veg for 6+ months; we usually don't have enough headroom and we like multiple harvests per year. I don't care if you believe me or not, try it yourself...just make it a real comparison. Take a clone or a seedling and put it outside in the spring and another inside, under one or more large HPS lights (depending on how long you veg) for 24 hours per day, veg for a month or two and see which plant is better. I already know and I explained why. By never turning off the light the plant never needs to stretch to find the light it needs. Instead it can make more internodes which are the bud sites. Conversely, Since the Sun is down 8 or more hours a day, the plant uses energy to stretch, trying to find the light it wants and needs so it makes more stem and less internodes. While that "stretch to find the Sun" behavior is needed in the wild so that the taller plants get more sun and the shaded plants get less, we can do better indoors.

You don't have to believe me, try it yourself. Here's another experiment that proves the point. Take some bagseed that you don't care about and germinate 2 or more. Take one and put it under any kind of light (Sun, HPS, LED, florescent) for 18-24 hours per day for 1 week. Take the other and put it in your bathroom and only give it 16-18 hours of incandescent (or what ever kind of light you have in there. Steam the one in the bathroom, daily, in the dark by turning on the showerhead with full HOT for about an hour with the plant on the bathroom counter. The one in the bathroom will SHOOT up several inches (I had one well over a foot tall before it even had true leaves.) while the one getting more light will be shorter, healthier and have more nodes. Plants need light and when you turn it off they stretch to try to find it.

Don't worry about replying or not replying, I'm going to move the "debate" to a new thread in the New LED Users forum to get PW's journal back on track. I'll wait to do that after you and PW see this reply so nobody is confused when it moves.

Here's yet another experiment that will prove we can beat the Sun in veg:

Take 2 seedlings or clones in pots, both outside. Bring one of them inside before it gets dark and put it back outside after Sunrise. Do that until fall, when the the light cycle gets close to 12/12 leave both outside. Guess which one will be better?

Another good example of man one uping nature is our current Fusion experiments. The Sandia National Labs laser fusion machine produces heat that is hotter then the core of our Sun I believe but just for a instant. ITER in the EU when it comes online will produce plasma that is hotter as well.

Just because its "mother nature" doesnt mean we cant do better. Take Vaccines for instance. Rather then spending eons generating a immunity from something via breeding we can do it instantly. I am immune to Anthrax via Uncle Sam