Why are my autos so small and low yield?

[EP3]

I wanted a Mars hydro SP3000 but at 108cm wide it was 4cm too big to fit in my space. Have a look at that. Great value light IMO or my second choice, which I bought, spider farmer sf2000.
Mars I think looks better and would have had it if I had the space.
Regards,
EP3

 

[Olderfart]

I see. I guess in the future, I will only do one plant per pot. Thanks!

You can do more than one in a pot. One grower on here, I forget who, grew a serious tent full with four plants in one 10-15 gallon pot. He put dividers in it to separate the roots into four quadrants, and it worked well. As I recall, he absolutely plugged a 2x2 with his four plants, and got about a pound of bud from the grow.

If you are interested in a cheap and effective LED for a 2x2, you can use screw in bulbs to make up a 9 bulb array with ~135 watts from the wall, which is ~34 watts/ square foot. Here is my current Northern Lights under that setup:

The above pic was at Day 69.

Here she is a few days ago at Day 81:

She will produce quite a bit of nice bud. Total cost for the light was roughly $60 Cdn, not including the aluminum base or wire which I had hanging around. The base could be made of plywood scrap, and the wire could be made from any old extension cords you have hanging around. I had the hangers already, but if you want to avoid cost, you could just use some cord and tie it as required to get your height adjustment.

You could up the power easily by making a 4x3 array.

Just a thought if you are into a bit of diy wiring.

Good luck with it.

 

[MagicBeans]

Just for shits, why not transplant one of them? Just see how the plant reacts and what the plant can handle. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it'd be detrimental at this point. If nothing else, the other plants would have more room to grow to.

 

[J-Plug]

You will need a minimum of 30 watts per sq ft........so if ur in a 2 x 2 tent? Thats only 4 sq ft, you need 120 watt DRAW from the wall of LED lighting....Not the 1000 watts that Amazon claims the light has. You need to find out how many watts it has from the wall, what does it draw?

HLG, Amare, ChillLED, Timber, Mars Hydro, Spider Farmer are a few good brands. Cob lights or Quantum board, bright white full spectrum is best.
You do NOT want purple/blurple lights unless you want fluffy, airy garbage buds.

Basically, go cheap on LED lighting and you have cheated only yourself.

Hey seriously garbage? I grew some insane fire stuff of short stuffs genetics. Under blurples it came out pretty dank. But, I prefer a white led light myself. Just so I don’t have to use my method sevens all the time. Is there anything new coming out for 2021?

 

[Couch_Lock]

No idea what new lights are out. I'm set and have not looked.

Have a 315 watt CMH with phillips 3100k and 4200k veg bulbs
Have a timber 2 VL
Have HLG 550 V2 Rspec


When I started indoors 3-4 yrs ago I bought a CMH first. No way in hades I'd spend on purple lighting.

 

[J-Plug]

No idea what new lights are out. I'm set and have not looked.

Have a 315 watt CMH with phillips 3100k and 4200k veg bulbs
Have a timber 2 VL
Have HLG 550 V2 Rspec


When I started indoors 3-4 yrs ago I bought a CMH first. No way in hades I'd spend on purple lighting.

I agree today I wouldn’t buy a new blurple. I might get a Mars hydro haven’t decided or something else

 

[hope2grow]

You can do more than one in a pot. One grower on here, I forget who, grew a serious tent full with four plants in one 10-15 gallon pot. He put dividers in it to separate the roots into four quadrants, and it worked well. As I recall, he absolutely plugged a 2x2 with his four plants, and got about a pound of bud from the grow.

If you are interested in a cheap and effective LED for a 2x2, you can use screw in bulbs to make up a 9 bulb array with ~135 watts from the wall, which is ~34 watts/ square foot. Here is my current Northern Lights under that setup:

View attachment 1285108

The above pic was at Day 69.

Here she is a few days ago at Day 81:

View attachment 1285112

She will produce quite a bit of nice bud. Total cost for the light was roughly $60 Cdn, not including the aluminum base or wire which I had hanging around. The base could be made of plywood scrap, and the wire could be made from any old extension cords you have hanging around. I had the hangers already, but if you want to avoid cost, you could just use some cord and tie it as required to get your height adjustment.

You could up the power easily by making a 4x3 array.

Just a thought if you are into a bit of diy wiring.

Good luck with it.

I'm totally blown away by your DIY light there @Olderfart .. amazing dude.. what a result with it too.. beautiful plant.. can I ask exactly what sort of bulbs they are??

 

[Couch_Lock]

A dude from Canada, posted at RIU two yrs ago, about his setup. He had 100 ordinary lightbulbs powering a good sized grow. Plants looked very healthy, no idea how they smoked. He used just tap water (not ph'd) and soil. He must have had 20 plants. Photos though.

 

[Olderfart]

I'm totally blown away by your DIY light there @Olderfart .. amazing dude.. what a result with it too.. beautiful plant.. can I ask exactly what sort of bulbs they are??

The bulbs are just standard 100 watt equivalent leds with the plastic diffusers removed, Noma and Phillips, a mix of 2700K and 5500K. You just need to make sure that you get the ones with the leds pointing down, not sideways. Some 100 bulbs have most of the leds pointing sideways which would not work. The ones I ran into were A21 size, but that size may not be the only one with the problem.

I also switch out one bulb to a UVB bulb for final flowering. Rumour has it that the uvb increases thc, and I would guess other cannabinoids. I don’t bother with far red, the 2700K bulbs have enough.

 

[low_and_slow]

The biggest downside of using non-horticultural lighting is that it will be as bad or worse in efficacy compared to HPS. You can still get amazing yields, but your power bill will be straight out of 2002.

The modern quantum boards with external drivers are up to 3x more efficient, so you get amazing yields and quality for lower energy consumption.

FWIW I run two separate 2x2 spaces; one has two 3500k autocobs, the other has an HLG 135w quantum board. The quantum board seems to be greatly outperforming the autocobs, but I need to do a few more grows before I declare it the clear winner.