Good morning ladies and gentlemen hope everybody’s enjoying their holiday weekend.
Got a lighting question. I’m using a 4X4 tent with a 6 bar Viparspectra KS000 (I highly recommend this light)
Currently I have a 3-1/4" tall GSCE Autoflower that’s 11 days old today. Per the lighting manufacturers recommendation during the seedling/germination cycle ( a 10 day process) they highly recommend setting the light at 29" inches from the top of the pot at 50% with an 18 on 6 off lighting time.
As you can see from the image below the plant has been highly receptive to this.
Having just now received new seeds (autoflowers as well) I’ve started the soak stage of germinating these new seeds. If all goes well they will hit the dirt tomorrow and be placed in the tent in 3 gallon bags along with the 11-day-old existing Auto.
Since today theoretically the existing Auto would be considered in the vegetative stage which the lighting manufacturer request that the light be moved to 26 in and the power to be increased to 75%
I see one small issue, I normally run 24 hours on the lighting until the seed pops through the dirt.
With the new seedlings going in that’s going to conflict with the lighting schedule that I’m currently using. I don’t want to interfere with the existing plants lighting and I don’t want to mess up the new plants lighting which requires 24 hours on at 50%
So, do I ignore the seedling stage lighting and simply lower my light to 25 in at 75% or do I leave the light on for 24 hours until the seeds pop. .
Whatcha ya think?
Oh here’s the image of the happy healthy 11 day old
Like everything, it looks like a compromise is in order. Lots of options that I imagine the pros will offer up, but I’d just say stagger the height. Run the light where you think would best benefit the older plant, but instead of lowering the light to meet the demand of the older plant, raise that plant by putting it on a bucket or something (and possibly the light itself), and allow the seedlings to keep their distance until they’re ready.
There’s quite some discussions over light cycles for autos, but 18/6 seems to be the crowd favorite, with maybe a little 24/0 for babies, like you mentioned, but it’s certainly not “required”. Babies just don’t have the leaf surface area to process large amounts of light, so we growers just give them more (24 hr) at a lower intensity, that’s all.
There’s a few good phone apps to measure light intensity, Photone seems to be the favorite these days. Then you can measure intensity of all the plants, and get the height spacing where you want it.
If you like using 24 hours light to pop seeds you can run them all on it. I have vegged plants on 24 hours light for probably 2ish months. The only thing you’ll see is node spacing a little tighter than if they had some dark time in schedule. You could also start the seeds on 18/6 if you are set against changing schedule. Either way will work.
Should be no issues with that. 18/6 is what i typically use unless starting seeds while i still have plants flowering in my tent. In these situations i have a small 30 watt led panel i will start my seeds on a shelf in my basement with the panel on all the time. The 24 hours light helps them from stretching under the weak light.
@dbrn32 my light is set at 50% 28 in the canopy. 7 out of 10 of my last seedlings are all runts. Two out of 10 didn’t sprout. One single seed is growing normal. I’m not totally sure that I trust the app but it says my ppfd is 224 I’ve used the same specifications on at least 10 grows of my periods and always been normal never had a runt. Can I eliminate the lighting as the issue for all these runts
I don’t know for sure, but what you’re describing sounds plenty reasonable to me.
What else may have changed? It seems like you have pretty good handle on what you’re doing so I will spare you of the basics. Maybe the seeds or media just became contaminated. Stuff like this can happen without you even knowing or maybe even before you had them.
@dbrn32 I tend to always blame myself for the problems that I have. However, I’m not a fast person to blame seed companies or their genetics. I do realize not every seed is guaranteed the germinate or grow at 100%
Double checking everything that I’ve done and how I do it I’m going to almost guarantee there’s some type of unforeseen element, seed condition, or something that I may never figure out. As we both know a runt can be because of over a thousand different reasons. I believe moving on in this situation is the best thing to do.
I know it sounds funny but I love making mistakes as I’m one to never do the same mistake twice. Or should I say I learn from my mistakes.
I’ve got some new genetics also I tweaked my environment changed a little of this in a little of that and it’s time to move on.
