My apologies for causing the thread to jump the track and be about indoor vs outdoor. Not my intention at all. My intention was to state that lighting technology has “surpassed” the sun in that we can put down 10x UVB of what the sun does at the surface if we want to. We are beyond striving to match the sun. Outdoors is limited by the atmosphere. Lots of photons just never make it to the planet. Indoors whatever we produce at the light makes it to the plant unfiltered.
I can also put down a higher ppfd than the sun in whatever spectrum I want, and yes I can simulate sunrise and sunset as well as clouds passing over. I can change spectrum within the day, within the season, whatever. All at higher ppfd than what I measure in my back yard. I am not saying this is better than the sun only that matching the sun is not a limit to strive for.
My point is that we are trying to find a loophole in cannabis genetics that we can hack into that produces X, in the case of UVB, X = higher THC.
An example of where we have been successful in exceeding nature is injecting CO2 or running hydroponics instead of organic dirt.
What I am saying is that UV does not seem to fit into the same class as CO2 supplementation for hacking into the plant.
None of this is an indictment on outdoor weed and now I wished I had just kept my mouth shut. I think I’m gonna follow granny’s lead here and do a quiet exit, cheers to all.
Conversations should go where they go, there's nothing wrong with things taking an interesting turn. :) ......I've thought about how close we're getting to the sun (or surpassing it), and we're at an interesting point in history......we get to witness and be part of the indoor grow revolution, through the difficult phases, the increasing power and efficiency phases, and the "surpass the sun" phase? I can only imagine what there will be 20, 30+ years from now.........a light-producing device the size of a baseball that you hang or stand in the middle of the room that bathes every square foot........
It seems as if most of the progress has been in the breeding, with artificial light being more about maximizing the potential for these new strains (or being able to properly produce difficult, long-season sativas that were out of reach for the indoor grower 30+ years ago). Nutrients are nutrients, manure, bat guano, fish emulsion, peat moss, compost........nature has pretty much always provided, we just add it. Then there's knowing the plant.....what Ph does it like, the best temp, humidity, air circulation....there may be better examples, but tomatoes is often used as a comparison. We can grow vine ripened tomatoes indoors, and excellent ones. There's certainly enough power from lights to grow red, sweet, juicy tomatoes. But as we all know from.shopping in winter or spring, supermarket, mass-produced tomatoes aren't very good, especially off season......and growing those varieties, even under powerful lights, will mostly yield medicore tomatoes. But if we planted seeds from heirloom tomatoes and maximized those........now we're talking....
Ok, so if we can already produce the light energy power of the sun, with all the right parts of the spectrum.......is there anything else the sun produces that we haven't yet artificially? Like, I know we get Vit D from the sun, I've never looked into how it gives it to us (not that plants need it, or don't, it's just an example)..Some things the sun produces we actually don't want.......at least for us....
I've always thought about how far we can go with indoor lights and reproducing nature.......can we grow bananas indoors? Coconuts? If we had the space, or miniaturized them enough......I don't know. It certainly wouldn't be cost-effective, but could we? Could we grow 10 foot tall Redwoods and plant them outdoors?
For our purposes, it's like we're trying to produce the best, sweetest, juiciest heirloom tomatoes possible. If you love tomatoes (with mozzarella, fresh basil.....) then you know how delicious they are. If tomatoes isn't your thing then whatever fruit is.......cherries? Those honeybell oranges that drip sugary juice all over?
The rest seems up to the breeding. How much more THC do we need? Or need to fit into a certain amount of resin? Already, one or two good hits is certainly all I need. And how much resin can a plant produce before mold issues pop up, the weight of the buds becoming too much for the plant to support........I don't know where the resin/THC ceiling is, but it seems like it can't be THAT much higher than we're getting now. So what does all of this leave? Flavor, smells,
terpenes, color.......well, we've already tackled citrus, skunky, berries......I've never actually had any "banana" variety, I'm actually wondering why I haven't, but do these varieties really smell/taste like bananas? You'd think if you had a variety called "Banana Tsunami pie" that was Banana OG x Banana Cake, that it would very much smell and taste like bananas.......
This all also leaves the "old school", heirloom, landrace, nostalgia side of things. I think that's actually going to be the next big thing........anyone who can produce these varieties and do them well.......I think there's going to be a big market for them. Just like older people like listening to "oldies" music. Of course, it depends on what their oldies was. When I was younger, oldies was doo-wop. Today Madonna is oldies. ;)