Lighting Bigsm0 and the cob addiction

[AutoWonders]

is growing over toward the autocob

No kidding. I had the wider parts of some plants reaching for the other autocobs near them. That is pretty damn impressive.

 

[Evil-Mobo]

@BigSm0

You know my exp with the Crees vs the AutoCob's.......for long have I been telling you there's something in the "Citizen" spectrum that cree does NOT have. My plants under the crees did not grow like under the AutoCob's which are citizens. These Cob's are the ONLY non HID light I have used that gives me results as good or better than the HID while still leaving the plants feeling and looking "natural". No plastic feeling leaves, stupid deficiencies, etc. You're just going to waste your time testing the Crees lol. Maybe I'm the old crazy man in the corner talking or maybe one day someone in a lab will come to find out what it is I don't know and I'll be a genius. Only time will tell right........



PS- You know how much I LOVED the Hortilux Blue MH bulbs, and for how long have I been one of the few nuts trying to apply the same "mentality" of the HID's with the more blue light and it's benefits, your 6500K COB's is my new Blue MH brother, I'm gonna do a run beginning to end soon with the 6500K and we will see..............

 

[BigSm0]

I feel you. Just have to keep checking and checking. I do think a lot of ewww ohhhh this is the best ever stuff is generally a fluke. Never real testing before the flood gates are open. I have made the joke about planting on a full moon before or other crazy superstitions. Actually my uncle years and years ago owned hundreds of acres of farm land. Wish I learned more when I was younger. Well anyways some of the things he learned in the 50 years time was impressive. Imagine growing canna for 50 years and being completely open minded. But back to reality. The cree were my first cobs and who knows maybe I was a learning experience. Thats really why I wanted to retest them. It’s probably 2 years later and I’m getting the same result. I’m also growing with panels, regular leds, blurple all sorts of stuff. Just a lot easier to give unbiased advice if I actually test most of the stuff out.

You are absolutely right about the citizens and I can officially say it’s not a fluke. These have grown better than anything I have seen yet. Actually just received an email from a photo grower out in Colorado who bought a pile of cobs. His reply was “ sorry I was so skeptical about the cobs... I ran a test just to see and you were absolutely right. 3 cobs produces much better than the 315cmh. Now I didn’t compare cobs to the cmh but I did tell him the cob would do well. He ran 175 cob watts against 340 cmh. 315+ballast and had much better results. For the spec guys 43% efficient cmh with double the wattage should have done better. This just proves that efficiency and wattage isn’t the main factors. I did ask and he did adjust the cobs to the plants and that alone can make a bigger impact than efficiency can. Inverse square law and par readings. Higher is best for coverage but higher leads to a lot less light at the canopy. When you don’t need the coverage you can keep them lower and increase ppfd dramatically. In this case he adjusted each cob compared to the big reflector on the cmh.

 

[Dabber]

Talk about loving light these gals love cobs

 

[RicanBlazer]

I feel you. Just have to keep checking and checking. I do think a lot of ewww ohhhh this is the best ever stuff is generally a fluke. Never real testing before the flood gates are open. I have made the joke about planting on a full moon before or other crazy superstitions. Actually my uncle years and years ago owned hundreds of acres of farm land. Wish I learned more when I was younger. Well anyways some of the things he learned in the 50 years time was impressive. Imagine growing canna for 50 years and being completely open minded. But back to reality. The cree were my first cobs and who knows maybe I was a learning experience. Thats really why I wanted to retest them. It’s probably 2 years later and I’m getting the same result. I’m also growing with panels, regular leds, blurple all sorts of stuff. Just a lot easier to give unbiased advice if I actually test most of the stuff out.

You are absolutely right about the citizens and I can officially say it’s not a fluke. These have grown better than anything I have seen yet. Actually just received an email from a photo grower out in Colorado who bought a pile of cobs. His reply was “ sorry I was so skeptical about the cobs... I ran a test just to see and you were absolutely right. 3 cobs produces much better than the 315cmh. Now I didn’t compare cobs to the cmh but I did tell him the cob would do well. He ran 175 cob watts against 340 cmh. 315+ballast and had much better results. For the spec guys 43% efficient cmh with double the wattage should have done better. This just proves that efficiency and wattage isn’t the main factors. I did ask and he did adjust the cobs to the plants and that alone can make a bigger impact than efficiency can. Inverse square law and par readings. Higher is best for coverage but higher leads to a lot less light at the canopy. When you don’t need the coverage you can keep them lower and increase ppfd dramatically. In this case he adjusted each cob compared to the big reflector on the cmh.

Good to know on the height /coverage and lower for more light at canopy. I’ve been keeping mine at 24-26 throughout the whole grow, just lowered them to 20. You said the lowest is 18”? Or depends on strain?
Also- if one light is lower than the other and coverage overlaps to another plant , would I need to take the height in consideration as well?


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[AutoWonders]

Good to know on the height /coverage and lower for more light at canopy. I’ve been keeping mine at 24-26 throughout the whole grow, just lowered them to 20. You said the lowest is 18”? Or depends on strain?
Also- if one light is lower than the other and coverage overlaps to another plant , would I need to take the height in consideration as well? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I haven't grown a strain so far that I could move my autocobs that low. Current run I have an Exodus cheese that doesn't like the light any closer than near 35". That plant stretched and is around 40" tall half way through run. My Skystomper is 35" tall (yeah it stretched too) near end of it's run. The other two plants are short. Still learning with the oustanding autocobs.

 

[RicanBlazer]

I haven't grown a strain so far that I could move my autocobs that low. Current run I have an Exodus cheese that doesn't like the light any closer than near 35". That plant stretched and is around 40" tall half way through run. My Skystomper is 35" tall (yeah it stretched too) near end of it's run. The other two plants are short. Still learning with the oustanding autocobs.

Hhhmm, im not sure what it is then. I’m thinking cause I haven’t kept the humidity up constantly in the 40-60’s maybe. Ran out of plugs to plug in humidifiers. I’ve had the COBs for almost a year and I’ve gone as low as 16” but that burned them, so I raised them back to 24-26 and been keeping them there. I’m probably messing around with too many different lines of nutes lol. AN has given me the best yield so may go back to that, I just hate mixing almost 10 damn bottles


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[BigSm0]

Good to know on the height /coverage and lower for more light at canopy. I’ve been keeping mine at 24-26 throughout the whole grow, just lowered them to 20. You said the lowest is 18”? Or depends on strain?
Also- if one light is lower than the other and coverage overlaps to another plant , would I need to take the height in consideration as well?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Light height/distance is one of the most important factors in lighting. This is really why I push the singles so much. The benefit is adjusting the cobs to the canopy vs adjusting a frame above the tallest branch. Shorter plants under a frame aren’t getting nearly what they need unless you have a flat canopy. Which most don’t, even with a scrog. The only way to really grasp this is with a par meter. 1 inch actually makes a big difference. 1 foot farther away is less than half the total light hitting the canopy. Our eyes don’t pick up on this as much as a meter does.

Something I often think about is, is efficiency and how light companies post their numbers. Then growers read them and try to compare. A lot of times these numbers are generally ppf = total amount of light emitted. When ppfd which is light at the canopy which is the most important. For instance a gavita claims 35% efficiency. I don’t doubt it. But after taking light travel into consideration you realize there are losses most don’t think about. The bulb is 360 degrees. That means some light shines up, then back down. That short distance might not seem like much but it actually is. You also have light blowing out of the sides and everywhere else. This makes a very big impact on light at the canopy-ppfd. Something else I have heard is if your in a tent there is no need for reflectors because all light hits the plants eventually. Again light travels farther if it’s blowing from the sides, hits the walls then down. Cobs are directional and the bjb holder with its little reflector helps dramatically increase the ppfd over other light sources. This is also the reason I don’t use reflectors because it not only focuses but it helps the light travel the shortest distance and that increases its intensity which is often to much for our plants.

You can Google the inverse square law and read up on this.

 

[Seymourbud]

You explained that well @BigSm0, so that even a layman like me understood, thanks!

 

[Madness]

Light height/distance is one of the most important factors in lighting. This is really why I push the singles so much. The benefit is adjusting the cobs to the canopy vs adjusting a frame above the tallest branch. Shorter plants under a frame aren’t getting nearly what they need unless you have a flat canopy. Which most don’t, even with a scrog. The only way to really grasp this is with a par meter. 1 inch actually makes a big difference. 1 foot farther away is less than half the total light hitting the canopy. Our eyes don’t pick up on this as much as a meter does.

Something I often think about is, is efficiency and how light companies post their numbers. Then growers read them and try to compare. A lot of times these numbers are generally ppf = total amount of light emitted. When ppfd which is light at the canopy which is the most important. For instance a gavita claims 35% efficiency. I don’t doubt it. But after taking light travel into consideration you realize there are losses most don’t think about. The bulb is 360 degrees. That means some light shines up, then back down. That short distance might not seem like much but it actually is. You also have light blowing out of the sides and everywhere else. This makes a very big impact on light at the canopy-ppfd. Something else I have heard is if your in a tent there is no need for reflectors because all light hits the plants eventually. Again light travels farther if it’s blowing from the sides, hits the walls then down. Cobs are directional and the bjb holder with its little reflector helps dramatically increase the ppfd over other light sources. This is also the reason I don’t use reflectors because it not only focuses but it helps the light travel the shortest distance and that increases its intensity which is often to much for our plants.

You can Google the inverse square law and read up on this.

At one point I had my cobs about 12-14"from canopy but people made me nervous about them being too close so I raised them to around 19"-24". I can't remember what they are exactly at right now. I think ~20".

I'm also growing photoperiods though so that makes a difference.