LED Grow Light Forum

Hey all. My wife is a recent medical user and I get to be the gardener since I can't smoke it myself.

I've started building an NFT system while my seeds are germinating and I have a few obvious questions.

When should I start using lights on my seedlings? The seeds have just cracked open but no sprouts yet. I have a CFL ready to go though.

Also, I'm looking at getting a prosource 90 for when they are ready for the nft. When should I move them?

Growing is a lot of fun, I enjoy that part too.

Start the lights now since you're just using a CFL. For seedlings, I recommend a 18 hour on - 6 hour off (18/6) schedule. There's is a lot of debate regarding lighting schedules in veg and even flower, but within a few days of sprouting I switch to a 24/0 schedule until time to flower.

I'm not going to be a lot of help on picking LED lights, I use HID lights still and my knowledge of LED growing is purely based on research and talking with other growers.

I'm also not a NFT grower, myself, but as soon as the seedlings have an adequate root system to reach the flowing nutrients, is the right answer. What medium are you using for starting your seedlings? Have you considered using clones instead?

Hope that helps...

We started them in little peat pellets. The hydro store I went to, to look at their nft setup, has some of their plants done that way.

From there they have a pot designed for hydro systems. It looks like a mini laundry basket.
So I guess I let the roots grow long enough so they can reach the water flow.
???

Peat pots are OK, I guess, I don't like them because they break-up and make a mess in the reservoir. There are better mediums but they'll still work. I'd suggest not putting them in the NFT in the peat. I'd break them open, gently, and wash them clean before moving them to the NFT. I like "Rapid Rooters" better than peatpots or they make these little rubber plugs that are slit down the side, you open them up and they grip the stem and fit in the NFT/aeroponics/aerocloner holes. Other people like hydroton, grow rocks, rockwool, etc for NFT. Net pots come in different sizes, depending on your hydro system design and how big you plan on growing your plants. In NFT, with LED, I wouldn't let them get very big. I wouldn't go more than a week or so in veg, from clone. If you post dimensions and details, we might be able to give other advice but even within "NFT" systems there are a many options and variables.

One of the down sides of starting from seed is you won't know which are male or female for a while, then you have to get rid of the males so the females don't go to seed. All of that takes a while. I assume you plan on taking clones and keeping a "mother" plant so you don't have to deal with male plants or grow from seed all of the time.

You might want to visit other hydro stores too, assuming that there is more than one in your area, I've seen some that give bad advice. Here in SoCal we have a ton of hydro shops.

Yeah, if the roots don't reach the nutrients, they get no food. Some modern NFT channels are flat-ish ovals instead of round or square.