Issue #86 - Sunday, December 8, 2013

Dear Fellow Grower,

In today's issue...

• LED grow lights? View a complete grow journal (with pictures and video) under a 250W LED grow light that produced over 9 oz of bud!
  
• Learn more about this type of LED grow light, and discover if LEDs might be a good fit for your grow space!
  
• Check out this week's trophy pics!
  

Happy Growing!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com)

"Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher."

~William Wordsworth

Quick Grow Snapshot

(This "Quick Grow Snapshot" was put together by GrowWeedEasy.com's Nebula Haze based on an incredibly well-documented LED grow journal by our friend and fellow grower Endive)

Endive's main website: http://GrowMedical420.com (more cannabis LED grow journals)
Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/PropagandaPharms (regular video updates)

• Strains:
  • 1 x White Widow
  • 2 x Bubblelicious
• Grow medium: Soil in smartpots
• Grow Light: Pro-Grow X5-300 LED panel
  • Formerly known as the Pro-Grow X5 Prototype
    
  • 250W power consumption in Full Spectrum mode
• Vegetative Nutrients & Additives:
  • Hydro-Organics Earth Juice Nutrients - Grow, Bloom, Micro
  • Hygrozyme
  • Earth Juice Catalyst
• Flowering Nutrients & Additives:
  • Hydro-Organics Earth Juice Nutrients - Grow, Bloom
  • Meta-K
  • MicroBlast
  • Earth Juice Catalyst

May 31, 2012: The plants were moved into a tent with the Pro-Grow X5-300 as soon as it arrived (they were originally vegetating under a less powerful LED grow light by the same company). Though the exact date the plants were started is unknown, the three plants were 12-16" tall when they were first put in the tent (you'll see pictures below), which generally takes about a month or two to achieve under an LED grow light in soil.

June 23, 2012: Switched to 12-12 flowering light schedule (sorry, not sure of the exact date, but it was between June 21 & 27)

September 6, 2012: Harvest! (The 3 plants were harvested one-by-one throughout the week, with the 3rd plant being taken down on the 6th)

The lamp has selective spectrum switching, allowing it to run Veg (blue), Bloom (red) independently at 1/2 power or have both spectrums on simultaneously at full wattage.

All 3 plants were originally vegged under a Pro-Grow 260 (I'm using the early 2011 model) which is a 180W LED grow panel from the same company. One could easily grow a few plants from seed under the single X5-300 light - it even has a special Vegetative mode that only uses half the total wattage specifically made for vegetating plants.

Total Estimated Time - Seed to Harvest:
145 days (4 months, 23 days)

Final Yield
9.3 oz

Grams per watt: Over 1 gram/watt! For those into grams per watt, this grow journal with the Pro-Grow X5 was roughly 0.8 grams per watt when it came to just the fat (high-appeal) tops & colas. When you also count the medium buds and nuggets (which were compact and covered in trichomes), you get just over 1 gram per watt (1.056 grams/watt).

On top of that main yield, there was an additional 1.4 ounces of airy buds which were collected from the bottom of the three plants. These airy buds were not included in the final yield weights.

Total Dry Bud Weight:

Main Yield: 9.3 ounces (264 g)
Airy buds (not included in main yield): 1.4 ounces (38 g)

Preview the entire grow in less than 4 minutes!

Which LED model should I get from Pro-Grow for my grow space?

Matching the right lamp(s) for the space is crucial. A rough ballpark...

3'x2' Grow Space

• Models: 180, 260 or 260X

3'x3' Grow Space

• Models: 400, X5-300 (used in this journal), 400X

4'x3'+ Grow Space

• 2 x 260 or 2 x 260X

If you have specifics on your grow area that would be helpful in determining the proper lamps for best coverage. The people at Pro-Grow will be able to help guide you to find the right lamp for your space, or ask Endive himself via his website or Youtube channel.

What Size Grow Area For a Pro-Grow X5-300 (LED light used in this journal)?

After growing with this LED grow light, Endive believes the Pro-Grow X5-300 is ideal for a small space - optimally about 3.75' x 3' x 6' to grow 1 or 2 plants

This particular LED panel by Pro-Grow has a very narrow light range due to the focusing power of the X-lens technology. The optimal range under the light from this grow appears to be about 3' x 2.5' when the light is kept 18"-20" away, with a penetration of about 1 foot below the canopy.

Optimal light range: 3 feet x 2.5 feet - panel should be kept 18-24 inches from tops of plants and penetration reaches about a foot deep into the canopy directly under the light.

Minimum Recommended Grow Space: 3'x3'x5' (or possibly 2'x4'x5', though with this size you'd be losing some prime lighting from the panel in the front/back, with extra unused area on the longer sides that aren't getting much light)

Maximum Recommended Grow Space: 4'x4'x7' would be the recommended maximum for this light panel. It's important to note that in a 4'x4'x7' tent, the parts of the tent outside the 3' x 2.5' optimal range may not receive enough light from this LED panel, and you would not be utilizing the full height of the tent since penetration is only about a foot deep into the plant canopy. To completely illuminate a 4'x4' grow tent, I recommend getting 2 of their 260X LED lights to get complete coverage over the whole area (while still taking advantage of their X-lens technology which is what I believe made this grow so impressive).

Endive believes this model of LED light would be best suited to just 1 or 2 plants, so you don't end up with any plants in the back or along the outside edges of the light range that don't get enough light (you'll see that somewhat happened to his White Widow plant in the journal below).

Some growers prefer having a little extra room around the edges so it's easier to work with the plants, but just know you should not expect significant budding outside the main 3'x2.5' range under the X5-300 LED panel.

In the optimal light range, the light penetration produced colas about 8"-10" in the deepest part of the sea, tapering out to 3″-4″ deep on the lollipopped edges.

Regarding height, the panel itself is 4" tall and should have another 7" or so to accommodate for actually hanging the light and providing a few inches of air gap above the light for proper cooling (cooling is built in to the light, but it still needs a few inches of air above the light for the cooling to work properly). So that gives you about 1 foot of height needed for the actual hardware. As mentioned earlier, this model of LED grow light needs to be kept 18-24" from the tops of the plants

So you need a little less than 3 feet of height just for the light and the space to the top of the plants.

The plants from this journal were over a foot tall going into the flowering stage (they were a little over 2 feet tall from the floor to the tops of the plants, including the soil & smart pots) and ended up being about 3 feet tall from the floor to tops of plants by the end.

At harvest, that means there was a total height of just under 6 feet from the floor to the top of the LED panel. As always when growing cannabis plants, you never know exactly how much a plant is going to "stretch" when she goes into the flowering stage, so it's always better to opt for more height if possible especially if you're a new or inexperienced grower, because that gives you much more room in case things don't go exactly as expected. For a trained hand, these plants could feasibly have been grown in a 5' tall space.

You'll see in this grow journal below that Endive barely trained my plants in the vegetative stage - they seem to have been sort of cast-offs that grew much faster than expected (and wildly out of control) when placed under the Pro-Grow X5. He believes he could have achieved more from this particular grow.

Endive didn't have time to train the plants to grow short, and now that he knows more about this panel, he believes he may have gotten better yields with shorter plants if he had taken the time to properly train just one or two plants instead of stuffing the tent with 3 untrained plants - but considering this was his very first grow to test the power of the X5-300, I know Endive was very happy with the final yields given the hands-off approach he took during the grow!

Remember, sharing is caring!

Jump to...

See another complete LED cannabis grow journal by Endive

Learn about different cannabis grow lights

How long does it take to grow cannabis?

Diagnose my sick plants!

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