25 Watt LED Grow

Hello everyone this is my first grow journal on here. I have been conducting an experiment with LEDs for small closet grow that I thought I would share.

My ladies are now in their 9th week from seed. The seeds were from a good bag. I originally grew them to test some new prototype lights and check distance needed for separation. The plants stretched like crazy no matter the distance. I think this is because of too little blue in the prototypes. The lights are a mixture heavy on 670 nm red, with about half as many 420 nm purples and some warm white thrown in to round out the spectrum. I thought 420's and the warm whites would be enough blue but I was wrong. Like I was saying they stretched to the point they fell over. After 10 days out of the ground I then added a 7 Watt warm white spot to the mixture and this seems to have done the trick. I was able to brace them and get them to grow mostly straight. I decided to let them grow and see what would happen. After 4 more weeks under the combined total of 25 watts from all the lights, I turned the lights to 12/12. That was 3 weeks ago. They are showing pretty good now. I have been interested in how well they will flower as just about every LED grow i've seen the grower uses some other type of light before they finish flowering. I decided to start doing a grow journal at this time because I figured there are others who have wondered how well a pure LED grow turns out as well. I plan on continuing to grow them under nothing but LEDs until finished. So if interested please check in and see their progress from time to time.

Factoids:
Total lighting power 24.8 watts according to Save-A-Watt

To date the 3 plants have only been watered 6 times with a grandtotal of 5 quarts of water.:holysheep:

Total energy used to date is less than one 250watt HPS light used 24hours a day for one week.

Plants are in 2 liter soda bottles filled with MG soil.

I took the picture yesterday in a hurry as it was just about time to start the dark period for my girls. Here are some better ones and a little overview on my setup. The last two pictures are the same plant looks like I need to feed her some more magic bloom. but it is hard to since the soil holds the water so well.

Any experts out there venture a guess at any of the girls genetics? They are from a bag so I don't know nothing about them.

Til later gents!

it looks like it is stretching a bit

stoner said:

it looks like it is stretching a bit

Click to expand...

Understatement of the century. When I started them I was just using the prototype lights, only about 3.5 watts a plant and very heavy on the red spectrum. They got to be amost 6 inches tall with just the pea leaves and tiny real leaves before they fell over from the rapid growth. I thought about taking a few shots and posting them but figured you guys would ban me do to plant abuse. LOL!!! I was just going to pullem out and throw them away but when they responded to the additional white I decided to try and save them.

lol, ye it was a good idea to try and save them they are looking really healthy now, im liking the shade of green to

:stuff-1125699181_i_ hum, Interesting....

you could add a 120 watt grow light (u can buy at lowes or menards) and that might help fill her out a bit.

good luck.

I am sure more light would help I usually grow with 7 27watt cfls, but i'm doing this one just with the LEDs to see what happens.

wel if you didnt experiment you wouldnt find out what works so i support you

The ladies are doing good. They are 10 weeks old from wetting the seed, ending their fourth week into flowering. I was able to get them to drink a little more than half a quart of water with MG magic bloom in it. Here are a few quick shots.

Looks pretty good. For only 25 watts, you got three healthy females doing great and loving life!

I was wondering what everyone thought about when is a good time to stop feeding nutes when you are flowering? Any help would be appreciated!

I was thinknig the same thing very impressive :hubba:

They are stretched. I am impressed though, kudos for sticking to your plan.

I have a life long friend who does some big things with indoor grows.

That friend told me to stop all nutes at 50-60 % amber triches. I was told to let them sit for at least two weeks once I cut the nutes. Giving them a couple good flushes in that time. The only reason I was giving is, nutes will affect the taste and burn quality of the buds.:ignore:

That may be wrong, or not the general consensus...?? Just what I was told.

Keep us posted and keep it up.

nice looking ladies. glad you decided to do a all led grow :aok: im very interested to see how it turns out, definitely going to follow the rest of yer grow.

interesting!
Well i happend to stumble upon this thread and think that a L.E.D only test grow is a great idea. But i think if your going to take the results seriouse than you should be growing with enough lumen output to that of a 250watt bulb, which i think is around 35,000 lumens. This will at least give you the minimum requierd lumen output per sq foot, which is 5,000lumens. Hope some of this can help, and as far as your grow i would fertallize untill my 6th week and then add water only for the last 2 weeks so your finishd product will taste smooth and have more of an aroma!! Peace and Love!!!
Roken.

The ladies are now 11 weeks old from seed ending fifth week in flowering. Starting to see some good trics forming.

hey they are looking really nicce, that shade of green looks so good

:48:
:2940th_rasta:

1. Due to my living situation I am limited to to small micro closet type of grows and the LEDS generate very little heat. They make CFLs appear to be hot in comparison.

2. They last a long time and use very little energy for the amount of light the produce. My grow to date has used 32.6 kilowatt hours of energy or about $3.40 worth of electricity. This is less juice than a 250 watt HPS ran for 6 days 24 hours a day. I like using green technology to grow my green.:hubba:

3. They produce a wide spectrum of light. The attachment shows a MH and a HPS both comparaed to the plant reaction curve (the curve used by 'PAR Watt' light meters) and a warm white LED. The LED is the blue line for those new to seeing the plant reaction curve. As you can see the LED has a nice smooth curve of a spectrum that matches up fairly well to the PAR curve. The MH and HPS are both more spikey and have the most light produced around 560nm by them. Which makes sense since they are meant to help us see not grow plants. So basically what the graphs show is that at equal maximum intensites the LED produces far more plant usable light. The HPS and MH bulbs are far cheaper and produce far more light from a reasonable budget at this time but the price of LEDs are dropping everyday. One day not to long in the future LEDs will be the way to go I am convinced.

The 2 spectrum read outs for the MH and the HPS are for the standard lighting variety of bulbs not the ones that are enhanced for growing, I try to play fair but I couldn't find a good spectrum analysis of an enhanced bulb to use.

hey rogue
interesting thread, i have 1 northernberry that i have been vegging under t5 that i plan to flower with an led and a 17w ott light just to see what happens, i am looking forward to see what you get off of those plants of yours, good luck

I wonder what the results would be if you put those plants under 150W LED lights? Keep it up.:headbang: