@Covertgrower : “The lights I use are home made and the LED spacing is open enough that I don’t burn plants that are within 3” of the light."
Could I see your home made lights? Love to see the ingenuity of my friends here.
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Each light fixture measures 23 X 30". 1 1/2 X 6" aluminum tubing for the heatsink. Samsung gen 1 EB strips in 3,000K
Aluminum cut and sanded
Sections of aluminum used as spacers
Heatsink assembled
Masked off for paint
EB strips installed
Wired front
Wired back
Lighting footprint
I have four of these made to fit my 4 X 8 grow space, 240 watt peak per fixture, normally run at 200 to 220 watts peak.
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Wow, those are super nice. Awesome to have the talent to build these. Was all the materials readily available online? What did it end up costing for one light? Great job!
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I had technical help from @dbrn32 under the thread: “Let’s Talk DIY Lights”.
The only reason this was cost-effective for me was the fact I had a supply of leftover aluminum from another project. Parts came from Cutter Electronics (strips, driver) and the wire, thermal tape and fittings came from Amazon or Home Depot. Cost was right around $200 per fixture.
Normally run at 150 watts in veg then ramped up in flower to peak. I try to keep it at or below 80% of rated capacity which makes the fixture it’s most efficient. Heat is negligible. I’m guessing heatsinks settle at around 85F. And they grow great cannabis. I usually yield 12 to 14 zips from each plant grown there.
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I am guessing a potassium deficiency? My water in was 6.5 and water out was 7.2. I will adjust, hoping it is the high pH that is the problem. Other than that all my numbers are good. In FFOF, using fox farm nuts week 4, ppm in is 775 out is 1210. Light is spider farmer G3000
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I hope all are doing well!
The ladies are looking good today. Lots of fresh growth. I did a little lst to try to even them out. I tied down the 4 main branches (mainlined) and used plant trainers throughout the rest of the plant. I wish it would warm up outside so I could get one of these out of here. At this point neither one of them get to be right in the middle under the light. I think it would do even better if I could get them straight under the light.
Also the clone from topping one of the plants is finally taking off.
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Good morning Canna family! Was wondering how many hours of daylight outdoor should there be to move a plant outside? I am getting a little over 14 hours daylight right now. My 3x3 tent is filling up fast.
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And that’s good enough for an outdoor plant! If your temperatures are relatively warm, you’re good to put your planties outside, imo 
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Your nights are a bit on the cold side for now… but I’ve put my plants outside while it was colder than that… As long as the roots don’t freeze, you’re good to go! 
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Thanks I appreciate the advice. I was wondering about those night time temperature is since they have never been below 62 in their life so far.
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If it’s too cold, the leaves might dry out and fall off. I’ve had that happened on two of my girls a couple of years back… But with the warm weather, they both revegged and got new leaves. It was scary for a while but a very cool experiment!
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I would hate to see that happen. Maybe I will wait another week and see how the weather is. 
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You can also trick the plants outside by illuminating them for 20 minutes in the middle of the night. This will fool the plant into thinking it’s a longer day. An incandescent light bulb would do just fine.
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9 weeks and 2 days since these 2 ladies popped out of the ground.
With help I decided it was time for a defoliating session with them. I wanted to get rid of some excess leaves ( seemed like about a pound of em) to give bud site more nutrition and light. I have always heard that is the beginners mistake to take too much off. I hope I did not. Only time will tell. Fed them both a low nutrient dinner. Here is the final take.
And here is the trash can.
Hope I didn’t take too much. If I did it was a great learning experience.
Until tomorrow… HappyGrowing!
Oh and I did end up taking the big shade leaves off too.
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Not at all. Great work.
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Thanks Kap
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Nice haircut ya gave them, they will show you how much they enjoyed it soon, keep them clippers sharp and clean 
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Thanks, felt real weird taking so many leaves off but doing the mainline to these two really made them so much more dense than my other plants. I can’t wait to see what the final product looks like. Main lining and LST is the bomb. But it definitely slowed the growth tall wise down. These are 2 months old plants that are only 12" high.
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Like a shorter wider plant than tall, and with that said, they need thinned a bit more IMO.
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