This year I switched from HPS and MH lights to LEDs. Five Roleadro fixtures (4x300W + 1x600W, all second generation). These are ‘wide spectrum’, with light which appears nearly white to human eyes but supposedly has several wavelengths to support both veg and bloom stages without switching.
Five seeds turned out female. One ‘Purple Urkle’ seed donated by a friend. One ‘Break Dance’ Indica hybrid from 303 Seeds. Two ‘Pipe dream’ Sativa hybrids (also 303 Seeds). And a random bag seed which turned into a drop-dead gorgeous plant of unknown heritage. All grew up fast and extremely healthy, could have put any of them on a magazine cover. Far better than ANY crop I’ve grown under the HID lamps. The purple monster had a foot-long cola which brushed the ceiling, and those pipe dreams wound up at 4 and 5 feet with buds everywhere. Their diet has been GH ‘Flora’ series, with healthy doses of Terpinator. Growth media is soil, mostly cactus mix. Test-smoked a bud which broke off one of the Pipe Dream plants and was suitably impressed with the result. I definitely recommend ‘Pipe Dream’ if you can find it (Seedfinder lists three breeders which offer it).
After 9 weeks in flower mode (12 hours, then 11), they are all starting to die of old age. Huge numbers of trichomes, but NONE of them have gone dark. With a few minutes of searching, I can find a couple that are slightly golden, but that’s all. Mostly they are milky, but many are still water-clear. Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience. Five plants of four strains are doing the same thing, and the common factor is those new lights.
Obviously too late to change anything this time around, but I’d like to understand why this is happening and perhaps what should be changed next time. Second question is whether I should maybe be happy there aren’t a lot of dark trichomes, since that often predicts couchlock weed.
Five seeds turned out female. One ‘Purple Urkle’ seed donated by a friend. One ‘Break Dance’ Indica hybrid from 303 Seeds. Two ‘Pipe dream’ Sativa hybrids (also 303 Seeds). And a random bag seed which turned into a drop-dead gorgeous plant of unknown heritage. All grew up fast and extremely healthy, could have put any of them on a magazine cover. Far better than ANY crop I’ve grown under the HID lamps. The purple monster had a foot-long cola which brushed the ceiling, and those pipe dreams wound up at 4 and 5 feet with buds everywhere. Their diet has been GH ‘Flora’ series, with healthy doses of Terpinator. Growth media is soil, mostly cactus mix. Test-smoked a bud which broke off one of the Pipe Dream plants and was suitably impressed with the result. I definitely recommend ‘Pipe Dream’ if you can find it (Seedfinder lists three breeders which offer it).
After 9 weeks in flower mode (12 hours, then 11), they are all starting to die of old age. Huge numbers of trichomes, but NONE of them have gone dark. With a few minutes of searching, I can find a couple that are slightly golden, but that’s all. Mostly they are milky, but many are still water-clear. Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience. Five plants of four strains are doing the same thing, and the common factor is those new lights.
Obviously too late to change anything this time around, but I’d like to understand why this is happening and perhaps what should be changed next time. Second question is whether I should maybe be happy there aren’t a lot of dark trichomes, since that often predicts couchlock weed.
