Planning a new vege room in our facility and have some internal debates on lights and wanna get some outside input. I am not here to debate growing methods, soil vs hydro, organic vs synthetic.
I want to keep focus around lights and their unique benefits such as:
-Spectrum
-Strength
-Penetration
-Growth Speed
-Growth Structure (We will be training, tying, focusing on bushing them out to prep for raised bed with trellis)
In our Vege room we will have a two tier table.
Vege Cycle:
Week 1: Cut Clones
Week 3: Transfer to 1 gallon
Week 5: Transfer to 3 gallon
Week 9: Transfer to 7 gallon
Week 13: Transfer to Bloom (Raised Beds)
We plan on having these LED T5 for this entire room and cycle above.
From Week 0 - 9, we are very confident these LED lights will provide amazing spectrum, penetration, and light for plants at this age and size.
The debate is from Week 9-13 in a 7 gallon, the concern of penetration and strength to get these plants to 36in by the 13th week with a stacked bushy structure (while being trained/topped/tied down)
IF we find that these LED T5 can’t just quite get the plant tall enough or big enough, this could affect planned yield. So alternatives to increase that would be MH vs CMH vs Stronger LED
Here are my thoughts so far:
Stronger LED:
This guy will continue the benefits of low amps, strong light, penetration, and broad spectrum.
Metal Halide:
This is the typical use case for my story above and is the main debate whether we move to this for the 7gallons should the LED T5 not work OR the debate between this and the stronger LED G2 above.
Ceramic Metal Halide:
This is pretty much the best standard now a days for vege, our issue is our height limitations in this room. If the plant is reaching 36in, we will have about 18-21inches of space between canopy and light and that is pushing it for the heat signature of these lights which could cause burn. Especially with Duals.
So that takes us to the final scenarios and the input I am looking for:
1.) These LED T5s will do just fine getting us to 36in with a stacked bushy plant (with training)
2.) They are not strong enough and simply swap out with the G2 which is stronger and has the LED benefits
3.) Metal Halide, using more power, more amps, the hoods are bigger but 18-20 inches typically is ok for the heat signature with these.
But OF these scenarios, which one is BEST for vege growth speed and getting a dope 36in stacked bushy plant for raised bed trellis (screen of green) growing.
Hope I did not dive too deep, any input would be appreciated, just want to hear others thoughts.
Thanks!