combining sun and artificial lighting?

[mackaru]

would like to now what to do to start a mother plant.

i live in sri lanka so i have 12/12 light all year around and electricity is expensive in sri lanka.could i combine sun and some kind of lighting?
my growing spot has direct sunlight for atleast 7-8 hours

what kind of lighting would be most appropriate in my situation?

2or3 23watt cool daylight cfl bulbs per plant maybe?

 

[CelticEBE]

You can supplement with CFL's during veg to keep your plants from triggering into flower. From what I have been told if you provide each plant with 25watts it should keep it out of flower. I just did a LATE outdoor run and used cfls and had good results. Someone else suggested using a flood light to me which I thought was a great idea, just not practical for where I was set up.

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

That's a really interesting problem. Most of the genetics I've grown can stay out of flower with the 16/8 schedule, so I'd say you'll probably only need about 4 hours of supplemental lighting to be able to grow whatever strain you want.

I also agree that a floodlight might be better than CFL's. There are 150w and 250w security floodlight for sale at the big home and garden stores here in the US. Pretty sure they come in both HPS and MH. They have the ballast contained in the reflector, but outside the heat is no problem. Im thinking that one of those would probably work great for about 4-5 plants maybe waist or chest high. It's possible that you don't need that much intensity, and that one light would work for more than 4-5 plants.

 

[mackaru]

If ive got it right its the blue light(6500k) im after is it not?
so are not floodlights unnessesary,im thinking of the wattage?is it not cheaper to use cfl or fluorescent light tubes?

hade a small problem with some indica that started flowering just 9days after germinating because of my 12/12 light on my balcony i guess.
thats why i would like to build a small space that i can keep a mother plant or two and the seedlings,and clones
so my plan is to combine sun and artificial lighting and stopp using artificial lighting for seedling or clones when i want them to flower.

 

[Seamaiden]

Nice to meet you, I would not have expected a farmer coming from Sri Lanka.

What kinds of lights can you acquire out there? Some sort of fluorescent lighting as the others are talking about here. CelticEBE has given you some advice, definitely go look at what he's been doing with his plants, I bet you could do something similar. All you have to do is provide enough light to interrupt the full dark period. Some folks do it all at once, say 4 hours in the morning before dawn, or in the evening starting just before sunset. I have found you can stop flowering and trigger vegetative growth using a completely different method of interrupting the dark portion of the photoperiod, but it's complicated and doing it the other way is much, much simpler.

I was just talking to my own son about his problem this weekend, too, and he's in southern California and so experiences much greater swings in daylight, and he cannot have the lights on for 4 hours at a time during darkness, so my suggestion was to do it at the beginning and end of each day, 2 hours in the morning and 2 at night.

The number of bulbs per plant might be as much a function of the size of the plant as the wattage of the bulb, but to my understanding it actually doesn't take all that much to stop flowering.

The other option is to grow a tropical sativa variety that will only flower after it's taken a certain period of time in vegetative growth. I cannot offer you any advice on varieties/strains, but am posting here because I've been very curious about the issue in another tropical/equatorial location and would like to know that answer as well.

 

[mackaru]

Hi seamaiden nice to meet you to!

I can get hold of any kind of lighting here but i want to use the most energi efficiant option because electricity is very expensive in Sri Lanka.
I was thinking of doing it all at once,4-5 hours before dawn.
What is this complicated way to stop flowering,it would be interesting to now?

what about the color temprature?2700k or 6500k or should i have both?

Yes sativas grow excelent in sri lanka i have some kerala and my own cross growing with no problems at all.i have also orderd some african sativas from world of seeds that im going to try now.

 

[Seamaiden]

I've been using a combination of standard output fluorescent tubes and household CFLs in a combination of daylight (either 5000K or 6500K) and warm (2700K or thereabouts) in equal proportions in my vegging table. I can't say I notice much difference in growth rates or internode spacing, but they do look a little better.

What would make the most sense to me, since you want to extend the photoperiod in one shot, is to do it in the evenings, when people are most active and it makes the most sense for someone to be doing something outdoors with lights on.

The complicated way to stop flowering uses a method by which the dark period is interrupted for a sufficiently long period of time, I use a two hour interruption. I've been doing this since early this year because I'd spent all winter growing all these girls to put outside (I'm @38*N lat) and I hadn't considered matching photoperiod with daylight hours for the planned "put out" date. So I use a main light photoperiod of 14hrs, which comes close to matching my summer solstice in June, with the interruption.

The way the timer is set, if I recall, is a bit more complicated than that, even, but I'd have to go down and look at the thing and it's early here.

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

Most efficient choice wattage wise would be HID's. Also, higher K temps are more UV shifted and UV light doesn't penetrate as well over distance as redder light. If your plan is to try to light as many plants as possible with as little wattage as possible, the HPS floodlight would probably be best.

 

[Seamaiden]

How are HIDs efficient?

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

Umm, they give more lumens per watt than fluorescents?

 

[mackaru]

but are not hid or hps more suited for flowering?in that case i think maybe metalhalid would be better for vegging,but i also have 7-8 hours of sunlight(and 4-5 hours shade)so if i want to save my electricity bill should i not go for fluorocent?
mh has better penetration than fluo so maybe i can have more plants per watt with mh?the time my plants are in the sun is enough for growth so the lighting is just to keep them not flowering(in veg).

thanks for the tips and you are all welcome with more so i find the best way to do this!

 

[Seamaiden]

Yeah, but all he needs to do is stop flowering and trigger vegging, and he's on an island where power is very expensive. HIDs aren't going to just pull a lot of power, they're gonna be like a spotlight on his stuff. Seems to me that if he rigged something kinda like what Celtic has for his OD garden he could control that as well as Celtic did, and I'm pretty sure he's just using standard household CFLs.

 

[supasticky]

Umm, they give more lumens per watt than fluorescents?

he wants to save money on his electricity bill.

-------------

The CFLs will work. Keep them close to the plants and turn them on when it gets dark. If you want to save more money 18/6 light schedule will keep them in veg. I've seen a few grows where they do this in a greenhouse and have a string of x amounts of CFLs, one per plant. Any more than one and you are just adding lumens to increase the rate of growth, but if you are only doing 1 or 2 plants you may want to use 2 CFLs per plant.

-Supa

 

[budboy299]

I combine sun and flourescents all the time on my clones and seedlings.
If it is a sunny day out...I put out my clones in my yard, then when night falls they go under a flourescent 4' fixture in my house. On cloudy days I just leave them under the flourescents all day.
No ill effects at all from this.

 

[mackaru]

I combine sun and flourescents all the time on my clones and seedlings.
If it is a sunny day out...I put out my clones in my yard, then when night falls they go under a flourescent 4' fixture in my house. On cloudy days I just leave them under the flourescents all day.
No ill effects at all from this.

Thanks for the tip!!!Thats what i had in mind but was not sure about it..
do you use only 6500k fluorecents or do you combine it with 2700k tubes?

 

[AlcoNasier]

Nice to meet you, I would not have expected a farmer coming from Sri Lanka.

What kinds of lights can you acquire out there? Some sort of fluorescent lighting as the others are talking about here. CelticEBE has given you some advice, definitely go look at what he's been doing with his plants, I bet you could do something similar. All you have to do is provide enough light to interrupt the full dark period. Some folks do it all at once, say 4 hours in the morning before dawn, or in the evening starting just before sunset. I have found you can stop flowering and trigger vegetative growth using a completely different method of interrupting the dark portion of the photoperiod, but it's complicated and doing it the other way is much, much simpler.

I was just talking to my own son about his problem this weekend, too, and he's in southern California and so experiences much greater swings in daylight, and he cannot have the lights on for 4 hours at a time during darkness, so my suggestion was to do it at the beginning and end of each day, 2 hours in the morning and 2 at night.

The number of bulbs per plant might be as much a function of the size of the plant as the wattage of the bulb, but to my understanding it actually doesn't take all that much to stop flowering.

The other option is to grow a tropical sativa variety that will only flower after it's taken a certain period of time in vegetative growth. I cannot offer you any advice on varieties/strains, but am posting here because I've been very curious about the issue in another tropical/equatorial location and would like to know that answer as well.

Hi, I'm growing a sativa plant in Mexico from a seed that I found in a bag of weed that I buyed in my local area. Until now I'm mixing sun and cfl light. That thing that you've mention here don't know it at all I thought that my plant would enter flowering mode when I change the light schedule. So, do you have more information about it? I should expect some kind of automatic flowering?

 

[bellumromanum]

I'm new here but for what it's worth I have a friend using a single string of large Christmas lights hung shortly above several plants. He gives them an hour in the middle of the night and it keeps them out of flower regardless of day length.

I have no personal experience to offer

 

[Aqua Man]

Hi, I'm growing a sativa plant in Mexico from a seed that I found in a bag of weed that I buyed in my local area. Until now I'm mixing sun and cfl light. That thing that you've mention here don't know it at all I thought that my plant would enter flowering mode when I change the light schedule. So, do you have more information about it? I should expect some kind of automatic flowering?

Sea hasent been around in a long time. Maybe start a new thread with your questions to get answers.