Would an led lamp be good for the seedlings stage? how big should my tent be for 10 seedlings? And how far should my light be?
Small LED bulbs or CFL bulbs are fine for seedlings, but the plant will require more once it is beyond the first couple weeks of it’s life. You can place the lamp over the tops of them and if you can’t feel heat on the back of your hand at the top of the seedlings, then it’s not too close.
You are going to need about 50 square feet (5’ x 10’ or similar) to have room to flower 10 plants.
~40 watts (power draw from the wall) of quality lighting per square foot of canopy would be required to properly flower cannabis. Total wattage needed for that many plants will be around 2,000w.
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Is there one light that could cover all 10 seedlings?
You are going to need a lot of light for so many plants, so you can go ahead and start buying fixtures (assuming you intend to flower them indoors.) One good cannabis light would provide enough light for all of them for a couple of weeks. You’ll need to have good lighting on hand for all of them once they get a little bigger.
Are you going to flower these indoors or outdoors? It’s going to be expensive to do it indoors.
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Yes I’ll be flowering them indoors, it’s going to be perpetual so I’m going to need a light fixture for each stage including flowering, veg, seedling
Do you have a budget in mind? How much room do you have for these 10 plants?
Anything under 10k hopefully. I need 50 square feet for it you said so I’ll have that, can turn 2 bedrooms into 1 if the need arises.
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$10k? You are on the right track then. I was concerned that your appetite for plants was bigger than your budget, but you can do nicely with that budget.
You are going to need 2 tents or separate grow areas to run a perpetual grow with plants both in veg and in flowering. One will need a light cycle of 18/6 for plants in veg and another with a light cycle of 12/12 for flowering plants.
Let’s get the lighting expert @dbrn32 to help lay out what would be the best options for lighting fixtures for whatever grow space you intend to implement. You can get some really nice cannabis lighting with the budget you have, and you will be pleased with the results.
Happy growing! I will be interested in seeing your results as you go along. You’ll have a great setup.
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Awesome thankyou for your help HLG Scorpion Diablo LED Grow Light - Horticulture Lighting Group — LED Grow Lights Depot
This is the lighting for flowering stage
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HLG makes great lights, and that was what I was going to suggest, but thought I’d let Dbrn32 weigh in with other potential options or configurations for a large grow area.
I run HLG lighting and love them. HLG is among the best in the business.
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Scorpion Diablo would be excellent light to flower with. Figure it’s good for about 5’x5’ space in that capacity. Depending on how large you plan to grow your plants, you will have to take this into consideration.
When Buying lights you need to consider area requirements more so than plant count. There are growers here that grow 4 or more plants in a 3’x3’ tent, and others that fill same space up with one plant. But the lighting requirements for a 3’x3’ tent don’t really change. So some planning is required to determine how many plants each space will have to support at the same time and for how long. 10 seedlings can fit into a 2x2 space for couple of weeks no problem. But after that the plants will start growing pretty quickly and need more room. A 4x4 space would probably get them through a few more weeks and old enough to flower if you wanted to. Flipping 5ish week old plants from seed to flower, you could probably do 5 plants per 4x4. But a lot of variables will start to come into play, that could make this a good or bad experience.
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I plan to grow Afghan Kush and yield about a pound per plant so I’ll need to grow them to their Max. I’m guessing I’ll need 2 of those lights for 10 plants? And would you suggest I also get them for veg stage
Lights are based off square footage. You want one pound per plant!?!? Yield is more based off of training and veg time if photoperiods. And if you want one plant to give you a pound, you’re talking about a very large plant. Anyway. One of the numbers growers shoot for is 1 gram per watt of led light. I haven’t reached this yet, but there are people here who have destroyed that with HLG lights. I’m sure my current girl will break the 1.0 for me. Again anyway. As a beginner grower you’d want 4536watts of v2 boards to safely maybe hit your 10lb goal. Note the discontinued part of the diablo series is not v2 tho, so be careful what you buy coming with the diablo label. It’s being discontinued anyway.
The qb288 v2 rspec > diablo > qb288 rspec
Boards are why there are so many different HLG lights. It’s generational in a way.
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I was thinking topping with scrog would be the best way to achieve this, would you agree?
And I know it is gonna be tricky to reach this yield but 10lb is what I’m hoping to get
Why not more plants? Are they photoperiods? Cloning is very easy. And even in one breeders seeds there are multiple phenotypes. A high yielder can be found and kept, like I did with Chocolope. These are the same plant, one generation apart. Mother and first daughter. The other 8 choco I sprouted… Did nothing like these. That’s why I’ll always have her in my stable. I could clone her a million times. No extra cost.
The lower picture here was the original mother. ~180grams from her. Now look at her size. It takes space to make weight. Considering it would take two of her to make almost a pound.
Just don’t aim too high and be dissappointed. Don’t buy cheap on lights unless it’s HLG. If it’s cheaper than HLG and not for propegation it is surely not worth it.
I can’t have too many cause of electricity usage. I’ve done my calculations and 10lb per harvest would be perfect for me, that’s why I chose Afghan Kush and because it’s indica dominant
I said why not more plants. Not more lights. It’s much easier to get 10 lbs out of 20 plants under 5 lights instead of 10 plants under 6-10 lights.
Say you want 10 lbs. So you want five areas ~4’x4’. Each area with four clones in a scrog. Each area would need an HLG 320. Or you line the areas up and use the 500/600s whatever. But for every 4x4 you want to be hitting that ~300 watts of v2 rspec board.
So with the best boards. 1500 actual running watts. And you’ll be hitting the numbers I use. Since I have a 2x4 running 250w and a 3x3 I run between 220-260w.
I can’t have 5 lights because of electricity usage, I thought 2 lights that could each cover a 5x5 area would be sufficient
Electricity usage is based off of kilowatt hours. 4 lights at 250w is exactly the same as 2 at 500w or one at 1000w.
How many watts do you expect to run?
Two 5x5. Just get a scorpion for each. Like stated above. Gonna be hard to hit your numbers in that area tho. All I’m saying. Remember, a high level in growing is when you can say you yield over one gram per watt… that’s 448 watts per pound. Although people obviously bust 2 grams per watt. Just not right away. My best so far was .72g/w.