How to ripen best buds under LED?

[FireWeed]

For indoor season I have been growing under LEDs, and have thankfully gotten great Veg results. The issue is ripening the buds indoors. When I can grow outdoors I get nice, tightly compacted buds with excellent triclones. But indoors? Not so much. I have read on GWE that indoor buds ripen best under HPS, but I have a heat problem (grow area is in a garage without HVAC in a southern state; heat is always an issue.) Since I can't afford air-conditioning a garage as well as venting an HPS light, I am trying multiple LEDs inside 1 grow tent. Can anyone offer suggestions for optimizing bud ripening under LED lights? I am growing in soil (Fox Farm Ocean Forrest); for nutes I use a combo of organic with a few Advanced Nutrients specialty formulations for yield and bud density. Water is pH checked before each cycle and stays between 6.5 and 7.0. Thank you....

[NebulaHaze]

The total amount/power of light makes the biggest difference when it comes to bud growth and density. How much wattage of LEDs do you have in total? I ask because if it's a lot, you might be happier with an HPS if you just get a small one. 250W worth of LEDs (pulling 250W of electricity out the wall in total) aren't particularly cooler than a 250W HPS, but you'll get better yields/density with the HPS.

Can you post a picture of your plants in the setup under your LEDs? We might be able to spot something that could help

[FireWeed]

Hello: Thank you for your thoughts. I had been concerned about the same--LEDs adding up to near HPS wattage, but since I have not used HPS or metal halide lights before, I did not know how hot a 400W or 600W might get. I now have 5 LEDs in the 50x50x73-inch grow tent. I have been late-stage training the current generation, pulling colas down with gentle twine that does not constrict the plant, but as you can see I am about out of room--the girls are aggressive growers even though I have switched to more bud-stage nutes and regularly train the colas away from getting too close to the lights! Total wattage used (actual) is around 680 -- During the day, when it's about 85 outside, my vented and fan-cooled tent will see temps upwards of 85 degrees at the top of the enclosure; as you can see the plants don;t seem to mind the high heat--they grew up with it, but of course bud-burn is a worry -- Would a 400W or 600W HPS typically be cooler if properly vented? (I.e. 6-inch ducted enclosure with a decent CanMax fan pulling out the heat? Thank you again for your advice.

[gbauto]

Hard to tell but it looks like you have quite an assortment of lights. Like NH has said, light is the biggest reason for sparse buddedge(?). I run in a similar footprint and run about 550W through my entry level led's and I've gotten good results. I'm currently building a COB led array to replace the current lamps-I'll bet that I'll be amazed with the results.
Moral of the story-get the best light you can afford-because of heat constraints, efficiency is paramount so using current led technology to produce light vs heat is a must.

[tyler_ hobbyist]

Beautiful plants what strain and age are they?

[FireWeed]

Hi Tyler: Thank you. They are just about 13 weeks old--they started outdoors in some cases, and were moved inside due to early onset cold weather. The strain is a hybrid cross that came about when some AK was bred with a strain designed to mimic the old Acapulco Gold. A grower friend of mine and I call it 'Kris McKnight' -- Because it is a hybrid we have tried to isolate a breeding pair to get some seeds--still waiting to see if that pays off, but in the interim I followed GWE's cloning tutorial and we have about 2 dozen little girls in two locations that are between 2 and 5 weeks old, 'warming up' to go into bloom tents once the current crop exits. Sirius' guide to cloning works well and I recommend it.

[tyler_ hobbyist]

That's awesome mine are 8weeks auto flowers tangerine dream and blueberry with younger candy cane

[tyler_ hobbyist]

[FireWeed]

Very nice -- They are coming along really well. I have found (with LEDs,) that I need 2 or even 3, 300W lamps in a 40x40x73-inch tent to get agresive Veg stage growth. If I'm using three, I replace one full spectrum lamp with a 'bloom booster' that provides mostly red spectrum for that cycle (12 hours on/12 hours off.) It looks like you are off to a great start.

[tyler_ hobbyist]

Awesome thank u for ur knowledge is the 300w led acualy draw 300watts?

[FireWeed]

Hello -- Glad to help; I apologize for not replying sooner -- No, in fact most LEDs do not consume their rated wattage, and why you will read about more 'really-into-it' growers using Kilowatt meters to know how much their lights cost them a day/week/month (A kilowatt meter is about $15-$20 on Amazon, and since they can be used for almost any household appliance buying one is not a tip-off to anyone about anything except the fact that you are cost-conscious about electricity.). There are several reasons for the disparity in wattage and what it means for LED lamps, but I believe the simplest is the fact that LEDs get their rating (300W, 450W, etc.,) based on what the diodes are capable of handling, not what they will produce in actual light on a plant -- for example: a 3W LED going into a 300W lamp will typically have 100, 3W individual lights--or some portion of 100; the exact number depends on which exact diodes are being used. If the manufacturer is using the newer 5W LEDs, you can do the math -- The LEDs draw less than their rated maximum power for several reasons and that has to do with how an individual lamp is designed/made. Power efficiency figures in, along with a desire by the manufacturer (and us as purchasers,) to not have lamps that run 'all-out' to the point that they will have a shortened life expectancy, or, burn out altogether very shortly after being turned on the first or second of 10th time--but well under the advertised lifetimes that are estimates only. In a worse case scenario, LEDs can overheat and burn out or literally burn. Over-amping a design is a problem with some LED grow light makers--they try to get away with having the least number of LEDs in a fixture, so they push the individual lights to the max, which usually means they run hotter, burn out more frequently, or give light that varies in intensity/quality. Because a 300W LED doesn't usually draw a full 300W, the best guide to how much energy the plants get is the lumen rating, or its PAR level -- PAR is the rating that most LED plant growers consider as the most accurate way to value a lamp--Generally, the higher the PAR, the more deeply it will penetrate into your plants' canopy and the wider area it will cover at a useful distance from growing plants -- That being said, the advice here on GWE about thinning the canopy to let more light in; to give more light for every cola you grow -- these are all good practices. The site has some good primers about LEDs, so be sure to check those out. Generally, I hear that high-intensity discharge lights (the MH and HPS lights you hear growers discuss,) are better for ripening buds than LEDs and CFLs, but high-intensity discharge lamps are generally more of a headache in terms of power draw and heat dissipation. But the benefit with MH and HPS is that you pretty much get a huge abundance of light (perfect for ripening buds,) compared to just about anything else except natural sunlight....I am trying to compensate by having more LEDs in a grow tent, but the trade-off is that I now have a grater heat issue. In the long run I may grow with LEDs for the Veg cycle, but bring in HPS for the flowering/ bud ripening stage...

[tyler_ hobbyist]

That's an awesome article I loved reading it