SantaMaria Floro Grow

[green girl]

Well, you know what, I miss overgrow too! To all the floro growing pals who like to argue about efficiency, I'm posting my floro diary here!

What I'm doing about pics - I've mulled it over and I do like the new rules. Sorry but I will not be posting pics for other people anymore, but if you would still like to send me your photos for squishing down, I'm still your girl! :) I was squishing/reducing like mad so I could fit as many 20 kb pics on the site (pointing at my power posting self!). Instead now I'll be posting a smaller number of big pics, where the older dated ones will get switched out for new ones. And by big, I do mean big :D So drool away, gasping sighs are the best compliment a girl can get!

Here are the seedlings

[Spawnof84]

What kind/wattage of fluoros are you using green girl?

[green girl]

I like T8 floro that I can find in the hardware store, but I'm hoping they are going to start carrying T5 everywhere soon too. In the flowering area I run 384 watts (12 4ft tubes 32 watts/tube 2950 lumens/tube). In the vegging area I use 2ft bulbs some T8 (all warm wavelengths available right now) and some T12 (warm and cool to mix up the spectrum). 228watts total in the 2 ft area - but most of the time I only turn lights on as I need them - the seedlings are using 74 watts (4 2ft bulbs) right now.

[green girl]

The santa maria is coming along nicely. One plant is lagging behind the other! I'll prune that one on the forth node.

[green girl]

The first plant took well to pruning. The second plant is still growing, and the third seed is in soil.

[green girl]

I've managed to to a 3rd node and 4th node pinches on the santa maria too! Once again, my preference is for the 3rd node, but I can't wait to see the differences as they grow. The santa maria leaves are so huge (webbed) that they look like olive shapes.

[pierre drouin]

those are coming along really nice.

i have a small 3 month plant of that santa maria in flower.

am in the 5th week of flower and she has a very bad stink to her.

the small buds are coming along nice but for some raison she his more bushy than the other 3 i have in flower.
am also flowering ST-10,willy's widow(willy jack X white widow) and super diesel treat.

will be posting pictures tommorow on here,well happy growing my friend keep up the good work.

want a 400watt MH there girl i have one not beein used,brand new all you need is a cheap 30 or 40$ reflector for it.

let me know i can help you out it's just sitting there in my way actually lol:p

[green girl]

Thanks Pierre! I'm ok for light. I really enjoy using flourescent. But, I would love to see this baby in flower :) Its a pretty amazing plant. They are just growing nicely. Taking well to the pinching - I just love that part. And the leaves are still these huge webbed things.

third node, forth node, new

[celtic]

looking very healthy.. where did you find santa maria? a friend has been looking for it for months and has had no luck

[pflover]

she won them in grow chat.

i just love watching your plants grow, gigi! :D

[green girl]

Latest update. This plant has the thickest branches. It grows upwards and training is very challenging.

[leroy]

Looks like one vigourously healthy plant. Nice job taming.

[joe6pack]

cool grow green girl. I've been experimenting with some t8's in my cabinet along with a 150 watt hps. Right now I have a 24" lamp with an 18 watt 4100K 1225 lumen bulb in there and an 18" lamp with a 15 watt 1000 lumen warm white (3000K) bulb in there. Both lamps are of the undercabinet style from lights of america at walmart and were less than $9 each. I swapped out the bulbs from what was in there too.

I just noticed that they now have undercabinet lamps at walmart that use t5 bulbs. they're small 13" with 8 watt bulbs at around $9 each. I'm probably going to pick up one or two and try them as well.

My cabinet is rectangular in shape 29" wide by 15" deep. The grow area is more like 24" by 15" deep though. So I have the 24" on one of the long sides and the 18" on the other long side with the HPS in the middle. I'm thinking a pair of these 13" t5's on either of the short ends will make nice even lighting around the outside edges.

-joe

[joe6pack]

oh well I went and picked up a pair of those 13" t5's last night and found out that they actually will not fit in a 13" space as the cord adds a couple of inches. This resulted in a very tight squeeze in the cabinet.

I also became aware that not all t5's are great. these ones apparently only produce around 50~55 lumens/watt compared to the 100 lumens/watt a high output electronic ballast t5 will put out or the 75~90 lumens/watt most t8's will put out.

So I think they're going back to the store. :(

[green girl]

Hey Joe, in a 2 ft area its a little tricky to get bulbs on all 4 sides. Even in a 4ft area its a challenge. I like to suggest as much of a surround as possible, where one side is always open for plant access. I've seen a moveable "wall" of light that gets plunked in for the forth/access side - but it was unwieldy. It all depends how often you check and/or move plants around too! Keep checking for interesting bulbs though. New products in floro lighting keep coming :D Gotta love the hardware store! I too like the challenge of continually upping the efficiency of whats running, the hydro bill isn't getting cheaper.

I worked out your numbers,
24x15 is 3.25sq ft
150+18+15 = 183 watts
so that comes to 56.31 watts per sq ft when its fully running. Very nice figures on the watts side.

[joe6pack]

hey green girl

yeah I find myself spending way too much time in the lighting section at the hardware store :D LOL

This will be the first run in my cabinet with the added tubes. Prior runs have always used just the 150 hps and my results have been very good averaging around 3oz. I'm hoping the floro's will help produce a better quality and more consistent quality over the entire screen as compared to just the HPS.

thanks for doing the math green girl - but I think you're off as follows;

24" x 15" = 2feet x 1.25 feet = 2.5 square feet

which brings the wattage per square foot up to 73.2 !

on the subject of watts per square foot - do you think it is still a fair way to guage lighting given the differences in spectrum between the floro's and HID's as well as the difference in lumens/watt?

I mean normally we think of watts per square foot and apply the 50 watts of HID per square foot rule. Given a small wattage HPS like mine puts out around 110 lumens/watt this works out to 5500 lumens per square foot.

Now my 15 watt t8 produces 1000 lumens for 75 lumens/watt so if we wanted to achieve the 5500 lumens per square foot mark of the HID we find we would need 73 watts per square footage.

If we followed this logic I think it would follow that we need more watts per square foot to achieve the same results with t8 floro's as with HID.

BUT I'm not sure this is true as the spectrum of the floro's and the overall distribution of light is soo much better with the floro's

so what in your experience is the magic number for watts per square foot with t8's?

[green girl]

Hey Joe,
Ooooooo bad math. bad girl! bad grl! I plead exhaustion! :D Glad you caught that, overkill light man :) 73!!!! Whoa......!

I only use the measurement of lumens per watt to measure the efficiency of the bulb to rate it against other bulbs. And then I tend to use both initial lumen ratings and ratings after 40% of the bulb life. With the amperage draw and bulb life I can do cost benefit analysis to see if a fixture is worth owning long term. By the middle of the bulb life, HIDs tend run at the same bulb efficiency as floro, so I've been happy with the decision to focus on floro exclusively. But, I haven't looked at more modern efficient bulbs lately to see if technology has marched onwards. I used HID briefly about 8 years ago...

I've definately noticed a difference between 4ft tube floros and multi sized compact floros. For tubes I feel very confident in saying - get to the 50 watts per sq ft in your space for flowering and your plant will thrive! No less than 30 watts per sq ft for vegging. Its great that you can save electricity during vegging if you want. For cfl's - they are less efficient so I always suggest looking at the lumens per sq ft measure first. Get up to 5000 lumens per sq ft and flowering will be a piece of cake! Some people like using the 26watters, some the 43 watters - its all matter of choice and space.The light from the tubes penetrates farther than the cfl's, but you can set up the cfl's as point source lights - which is what most people are most comfortable with the growing method!

I like spectrums tubes are available in too!

[diamond]

go,go green girl.looks great.K+

[joe6pack]

green girl,

thanks for the reply - yeah 73 watts per square foot is alot - but oh well I like my buds dense :)

good point on the HID's and there diminished output over time - I replace my 150 every 6 months or so at a cost of $20 a pop, which isn't too bad, but with bigger bulbs this can get expensive compared to floro tubes.

I've also tried CFL's and found them to produce way too much heat for flower cycle, however I still use them in veg. where I use the daylight type flourex ones.

Speaking of the whole point source thing - that is one key advantage to the floro tubes that I see playing a big role in micro growing. people don't realize that if they can't cover a rectangular area with a point source evenly. This becomes more problematic with small grows where the lamp is kept close. I find that I the hot spot under the lamp is really strong and the corners don't get enough light. this problem would seem to not be an issue with tube floros

anyways good chatting and expounding on the floro tubes with you.

I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled grow log...

-joe

[joe6pack]

hey green girl here's a picture of my cabinet showing the floro's and the 150 hps - I've since added some reflective material to the back wall too.

-joe

[nooely]

holy crap joe...make sure your safe..bro..that is some amount of wiring..i could never feel easy looking at that..please be safe

[joe6pack]

nooely,

no worries man - everything is grounded and plugged the power strips have working breakers and since they're mounted to the walls water spilling is not a danger. I know it looks a little messy but it is actually alright and the circuit is far from being overloaded.