LED w/ Veg and Bloom Switches

[D-TrainCA]

I have one of those LEDs with both veg and bloom switches. The veg switch turns on 2 wavelengths of blue plus white and IR, and bloom turns on 2 wavelengths of red.

I'm manifolding 2 plants pretty aggressively, and I also want to keep them as short as possible (I had light burn issues with the last grow due to limited vertical space). Plants were just moved to final pots, got their first topping, and moved into the tent. So far I'm just running the light in veg mode, trying to keep them short w/ blue light, but I'm loosing about 40% of my intensity without the bloom switch on (it's a 400W equiv. / ~200W actual light). I want the plants to recover quickly from the surgeries, but I also want to keep them short... Anyone with experience/advise? Run w/ bloom/red during veg?

 

[gbauto]

I'd say that the plant is going to use as much available light across the spectrum as it can. If your intention is to add light intensity via increased lamp wattage then utilizing all of your lamps output would be the way to go. I don't think that adding some red during veg is going to wreak havoc on your budz. I use three different lamps-one has a red shift bias and the others have a blue bias. For my ~16 sq ft growing area I have a total of about 550w of actual power radiated. I just crank everything up and I get very good yield and the girls seem very pleased.

 

[D-TrainCA]

Thanks gbauto. I realize that if give the plants more light by turning on bloom I'll probably get more growth overall, but I'm looking to really minimize stretch and keep the nodes very tight. However, I don't want to do that at if it's going to slow down growth significantly. To refine my question:

General Wisdom Says: More light tends to slow stretch, while less light tends to promote stretch. Similarly, blue light tends to slow stretch and red light tends to induce stretch. I don't have any quantitative information about this, so I'm wondering if I'll get the best mix of growth and minimal stretch if I turn all my blues and reds (i.e. high intensity) vs giving lesser intensity mostly blue light.

I think I'm going to answer my own question by riding this out w/ blue only and see how things go. I've tried various techniques to keep height down but this time I'm going for broke (you can see how early I've topped them...).

 

[gbauto]

Let me ask this-if you are growing outside and using that big fireball in the sky as your light source, aren't your plants exposed to a broad spectrum all at once? All I'm saying is that under 'natural' conditions the plant thrives getting hit with everything and doesn't inhibit growth or cause unusual growth. Strain selection and plant training are going to be your best friend maximizing your space. Let their be light!