The only way to tell is to use a microscope to see if you can find bodies/webs/feces and that's what many dispensaries do. How much mite-stuff is too much? I don't know but zero is my preferred amount.
Maybe you don't want to look...knowing might be worse than not knowing.
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
I did take a look, didn't see anything but trichs so I think it's alright, hell I'm sure there's probably a stray mite in there but nothing I'm gonna lose sleep over.
Its been a really great week weather wise, hoping it keeps up. Plants are responding well and packin' on the buds!
Are you going to try SOG with the HPS next time too so you can compare HPS SOG vs LED SOG? Are you happy with it so far? It's still too soon to see the yield results but I'm pretty confident (just based on prior HID experience and LED research) that yield will be better with SOG and even better with high w/sqft numbers.
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
Based on what I've seen so far, It looks like SOG is the way to go in these small spaces. The bud girth from the 5 plant SOG is impressive compared with one plant Scrog. You can judge by comparing the current pic with the ones from my previous scrog run. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be 3 oz. or more (scrog yielded 2), also consider that I'm using 100 less watts with the led, and the 16" square tent gives about one square foot of grow space (sides bow inward).
I would like to try SOG in the 250Hps tent, but it will have to be using fem seedlings as my cloning operation is temporarily down. What I have in the 2x2 now is two larger plants that have been topped, and the results are looking comparable, if not quite as dense as the smaller SOG. So maybe I could try to up the plant count to 6 plants without topping and see what happens? Ill use my northern lights seeds maybe with a blueberry tucked in there.
Also, I was tired of dealing with mites and set off a pyrethrin BOMB in the crawl space yesterday. So hopefully ill be saying farewell to that headache. DD
I cut them today, I think it's about time, maybe a bit on the early end bit that's how I like it.
Last night, I sprayed the buds down thoroughly with distilled water just to try and get any mite junk and stuff off there. Buds came out pretty clean, leaves had the mites, so I cut super close on the manicure, resulting in essentially mite-free buds. The pyrethrin definitely worked, no live mites could be seen.
Yield looks really good. I was actually shocked how much came out of just a square foot tent. Yay SOG. I estimate 3 oz, I'll report back with the dry numbers.
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
60 grams bud with stem removed + 5.8 grams of resin coated trimmings. I threw out any material that wasn't visibly coated in crystal.
So it wasn't really close to 3 oz dry, but still beat my previous Hps scrog run (56g) with the same strain and about 100 more watts of lighting. Therefore, my gram/w improved. Not counting trimmings, it comes out to .4 g/w this time. The scrog was about .22 g/w. this blue dream has consistently been mg lowest yielding strain, one reason I am phasing it out. It is delicious though.
I'd say that's a pretty strong case for SOG. It also was about a week or so faster.
Did you have much open space in the canopy or did it fill in?
Have you considered going high density SOG and skipping the veg stage? If you cloned, rooted the cuttings and vegged for less than 3 days (say 4"-6" depending on the size of your cuttings) or just clone and flip once rooted you could pack more in there and turn around even faster since you'd have little to no veg time. It's a PITA cloning a lot of plants but if it helps the yield and eliminates the veg time, it might be worth the risk and work.
I still feel that you should have better yields but, you're right, it could be strain related. What strain(s) are you going to try next?
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
There wasn't much space left in the canopy. I admit this harvest was taken a bit early, and if left another week or two it could have had more yield I believe, but I wanted this bud to be less couch lock and more active up high, which it is. Also based on the yield results from the blue dream in my 3x3, perhaps this strain likes to grow into a bigger, more sativa-looking plant before the buds truly reach their potential.
I think it will be worth it to get my cloner back up, while I'm working on that Ill be doing an interim grow with a couple Plants that I have had vegging from seed, a herijuana jack plant (ch9) and another cbd yummy. After I try the NL, if I like it, I might use that as basis for the clones, or perhaps blueberry, or both.
Wow really great information Is it okay to ask what sog and scrog is? I know most of the other grow terminology that was used. I am a real newbie at all this. I never thought you could grow that much using UFO lights. Thanks I really enjoyed reading these posts.