Trouble reading today's article? Click
here: Issue #297 - Sunday, December 24, 2017
Dear Fellow
Grower,
In today's issue... - We lowered the heat, raised air circulation and lowered our lights to see if a plant can take all the light we can give! Guess what happened...
- More and more often, I find myself using a tool we've both fell in love with: the Lux Meter! See why Nebula and I both have one plus a backup!
- We have a friend named Tika and every so often, she swoops in to brighten our day with crisp, colorful, high-def trophy pics!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!" ~Charles Dickens
Public Service Announcement: Too Much Light?! by Sirius
Fourside |
We all know that light is important to cannabis plants!
In the wild, growing cannabis plants generally like bright, direct sunlight. Outdoor cannabis plants given lots of light
can grow to the size of trees!
That’s why indoor growers have been trying for years to make a system that mimics or even improves on the power of the sun.
The suns awesome penetration power remains unmatched; however, we can mimic its power at close range. In fact, grow lights can outdo the sun in
terms of light levels received by the plant because we can position grow lights about 93 million miles closer than the sun!
When setting up grow lights, we position our lights a good distance away from the top of our plants (depending on the type of grow light) because we don’t want our plants to get too much heat. But is that the only reason why? If we could reduce the heat in the area, could we
give our plants more light by moving the grow lights even closer? If more light equates to more bud, I could be harvesting more using the same amount of electricity...right?
In one of my past grows, I decided to try keeping my lights as close as possible without heat/light burning the plants to see if they would capitalize on the abundance of light. My Liberty Haze and
Critical Kush had become the unfortunate guinea pigs in a test to see if a plant can get too much light!
A Natural Amount of Light |
|
|
First, it’s good to know how much light a cannabis plant could possibly get if it was being grown outdoors.
A plant being grown outdoors in a location with relatively low levels of sunlight could get as low as 32,000 lux (lux is a measurement of light) on a bright sunny day in direct sunlight. Light levels can fall down to 10,000 lux (or even less) on an overcast day. On the flip side, a desert in the height of summer can see light levels as high as 100,000 lux on a sunny day. Cannabis plants can usually survive at either end of these ranges as long as the temperature, soil,
etc. are acceptable.
That being said, there is definitely a desirable range when it comes to the amount of light a cannabis plant receives. Although that range varies depending on the type of plant (Indica vs. Sativa) and strain, most plant's ideal light levels fall into the range below:
Vegetative: 35,000 - 70,000 lux
Flowering: 55,000 - 85,000 lux
Note: Lux is the measure of how much light is being received at a specific point in space. You can measure the amount of lux at different places in your grow tent using a lux meter. Using a lux
meter gives you the power to accurately position your lights so you get the biggest yields without accidentally light burning plants.
When a cannabis plant is having its other needs fulfilled, being in the desirable light range means that it grows at a pace that isn’t slowed down by any factor besides its genes. A plant in light levels below this range will produce spindly stems and buds and will
take significantly longer to develop. Conversely, a cannabis plant getting higher levels of light than this range will usually experience nutrient problems, heat burn, light burn, or a combination of
all three! Let's take a look at what too-high levels of light can do to your cannabis plant.
A Too-High Amount of Light In the aforementioned grow while the plants were flowering, I lowered the temperature in my grow tent with an AC so I could get my lights closer. I also used a fan to blow air right under the light to further reduce the amount of heat on the plants. Generally,
a 600W HPS grow light should be kept ~16" away from the tops of the plants in order to give the same brightness level as direct sunlight. What distance should my MH/HPS light be from my plants? I ended up keeping my 600W light only 8 inches above my plants,
but the heat was reduced enough that I could stick my hand right over the plants without my hand getting uncomfortably warm. I thought that the plants would be able to use all that extra light because they didn't need to worry about heat.
When we measured the amount of light the plants were getting with a lux meter, we got readings between 105,000 and 120,000 lux! This means that these cannabis
plants were getting more light than they would on a sunny desert day, but with temperatures in the 70s. We thought this would make the plant grow even faster and better than in the wild. However, even with the heat being controlled, we didn't get faster growth or bigger yields and problems started showing up…
Tip Burn, Nutrient Deficiencies & Dying Leaves As a plant gets
higher levels of light, it increases the amount of nutrients being taken in by the roots. This is most true for growers using powder or liquid nutrients.
This is because cannabis plants drink more water when it's sunny out. And taking in more water at the roots also causes the plant to take
in more nutrients. In other words...
Cannabis plants take in more water and nutrients in bright light
Why? Photosynthesis (the process of making energy from light) causes the plant to evaporate more
water from its leaves. As a plant evaporates water from the leaves, it creates negative pressure which sucks up water from the roots like a straw. This capillary action - known as transpiration - is how plants get water from the roots to the leaves. Though plants can also absorb nutrients through their leaves, cannabis plants generally get the majority of their nutrients during the process of taking water in through the roots.
Did you know? In addition to light levels, several other environmental factors can cause plants to drink more, including high temperature, low humidity, and a higher amount of air blowing over the leaves.
So if a plant is drinking more, it's also taking in higher levels of nutrients from the roots, even if
it doesn't need them. Unfortunately, cannabis plants don’t seem to uptake nutrients a la carte. Rather, they uptake all the available nutrients in the water and get whatever is on the menu. Cannabis plants aren't really
able to sense if there's too much or the wrong type of nutrients, they just take whatever nutrients show up. This is most true when growers are using powder or liquid nutrients since these provide minerals in the most chemically available forms, making them extremely easy to uptake.
So as plants are using more light, they take in more nutrients than they otherwise would, which can lead to a buildup
of nutrients in the plant, causing...
Nutrient Burn If a plant gets too-high levels of nutrients at once, it doesn't know what to do with it all and this causes problems in the plant. Generally, the most common symptom is nutrient burn where the tips and edges of leaves get a brown, burnt appearance.
Though a plant can handle a small excess of nutrients, they won’t be able to handle a huge extra load of minerals being piped in through the roots, especially if it happens all at once. An excess of a certain nutrient can show itself in many ways (like with Nitrogen Toxicity where leaves turn dark green), but when mineral levels get too high for the plant to process anymore, you get this:
These nutrient burn symptoms are actually caused by the grow light being too close So you realize your plants are getting nutrient burn, and your thought may be to simply lower the nutrient levels. Although that's a logical guess, it'll probably just lead to...
Measure the Amount of Light
Your Cannabis Plants Receive! |
Plain and simple, a Lux Meter equates to a better harvest in the right hands! Luckily, 'the right hands' is anyone who can read a display!
Don't leave one of the most important aspects of your grow up to chance or wild guesses, get a Lux
Meter!
|
|
"Absolutely great job on web site.This is one of the best sites i have came across!! Keep up the great work! I think i have found my bible!" ~Mark |
Trophy Picture of the Week! |
"Not a day goes by that I don’t utter thanks to you both, to the newsletter and the forum."
-Tika
Tika is a good friend of the GWE community and boy does she have a talent for making things look good! Note that the third
picture below is a light burned bud though it still looks incredible. Tika, you rock!
-Sirius |
We encourage you to forward this email to a friend in need!
Check Out Our Growing Community! |
Check out our friendly growing community to ask questions, discuss your grow, share pictures, or otherwise talk about growing cannabis with other real growers!
Ask Questions & Talk With Other Growers!
Please note: We let each person in manually, so please be patient after you request to join and we'll try to let you in as soon as possible!! |
Who Runs This
Newsletter? |
Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to
make it easier for new growers to get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
|
Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture, bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis can be a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water
doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
Get Your Seeds Delivered
Safely! |
|
GrowWeedEasy.com has put together a hand-picked list of all the available seed
banks including what type of payment they accept and where they ship in the world!
List of trusted seed sources:
http://www.growweedeasy.com/seeds Get Seeds!
|
Copyright (c)
2017 GrowWeedEasy.com NOTE: If links aren't working or if pictures are not showing up
properly, please view the full newsletter here: http://archive.aweber.com/gwe-updates Disclaimer: Grow Weed Easy only recommends products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. For doing so, we may receive a commission. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Financial, Legal, or Medical Advice. The
contributors to this magazine grow legally under their local laws but are not lawyers or medical professionals. Any decision to grow marijuana should only be made after consulting with an experienced lawyer or other legal adviser. Any medical decisions should only be made after speaking with a doctor or other medical professional. Be safe! How Did I Sign Up For This Newsletter?
Our records indicate that requested to be added to the GrowWeedEasy.com weekly newsletter at .
Date:
To unsubscribe: |
|
