There is an easier way to do it.
You will need a large piece of heavy posterboard or a peice of FeRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic) is perfect.
Bend the ferp into position in a frame and lock it down. Then use the chrome spray paint to mirrorize it.
We use a version of this in Uganda for cooking and doubling up the light intensity on solar panels.
Parabolic is going to cook your plants in place. I think you want 3 or 4 flat reflectors to add more sun without the parabolic overheating. A parabola will turn your lovely ladies into burnt matchsticks.
5/31 watered, used some clone nutes.
6/1 Blegh, yesterday I thought I had my light problem well sorted but apparently the glue I was using was too weak. When I tied the mylar hula hoops at their proper angles for reflection the wind -unable to turn the hoops separated most of the mylar from them instead. For what its worth though the brightest patch of the wall was getting over 130k lumens around noon. I had planned on making a kind of bleacher setup, but a single full arc around the room pointing at the line of plants might provide too much light if anything. Oh, and hopefully I don’t have spidermites, I saw what I was pretty sure were a couple of thrips. I’ll spray tomorrow, and hope that I only ever had thrips and don’t just have both.
How many lumens can the underside of leaves endure?
That’s a great question. Have you heard of Dr. Bruce Bugbee? (He’s on YouTube) He discussed this indirectly in at least one video. I don’t have a solid answer either way. I wish you luck.
If you type into the search bar, you will get many many many threads of actual growers with actual info.
Bruce is not a grower. He does not have the practical application information.
The users you find that have the info your looking for, are the folks you want to relate to.
True, Bruce is not a professional grower, but he is a cannabis scientist and can tell you things that most growers can’t.
6/4 watered all but the still moist and tiny superlemonhaze
6/6 Watered them all with a pitcher of water and 1/4 teaspoon jack’s clone, next week is below 90 so I’m putting them in direct light
Man alive, I guess the “3 month” soil amended with worm castings is out of nutrients. I’d been lightly amending the water with Jack’s clone (because it has calcium I haven’t switched to the veg yet) and it looks like the larger plants are showing signs of cal deficiency. I guess soil with insufficient nutrients will need the full dose hydroponics are meant to have.
-If, hypothetically, some water got into the jack’s clone nutrient bag, and you thought it was a few drops but a week later you open it to find you’ve got yourself a thick blue pudding, can you still use it?
-It looks like Wakanda PB breath, and Legend og (I think) might be entering the flowering stage…but they’re each about a foot and a half tall. Poor things have been so mistreated they’re making a run for the exit. Fritter Mints looks like it tripled in size in the last week or two and is now almost as tall as those 3 with much less dense foliage and no pistils. It looks like a plant that waits to get what it wants before moving on, which if true, means it might be the only plant that I’ll successfully grow. I guess I should do some research on when to harvest and what to use instead of neem oil now that some of them might be teens, tiny teens, but time don’t stop for incompetence.
-Too bad about Bruce not being as trusted, I watched a couple of his videos and it was nice, maybe I just miss college. I wonder if the Mylar isn’t reflecting UV/IR light enough. Can’t blame the Mylar though since I’ve been so slow about putting it up.
He can be trusted. Just the tests aren’t exactly the most controlled environments for lighting test.
He needs them to be dark room without other lights to effect the results.
Ultimately though we growers have already dug thru the flash of the led craze. We know what will work and what doesn’t thru usage. No blurples, no cheap leds. You gotta put a little bang in your buck and your lights will perform to your needs.
Some of the users here have bought almost every light there is. Type in led in the search bar and you’ll have so much to read.
6/8 Watered the plants and applied a quart of neem spray.
-God I’m dumb, the nitrogen bag has the calcium in it. The clone formula has a much lower% than the 321 mix, I just thought the nitrogen bag was only nitrogen somehow.
-So my understanding is that Wakanda and Legend OG(?) are autoflowering so I can’t try to revege them and should switch to flowering nutes? I do think they’re still growing though? I’m pretty uncertain how late I can apply neem oil, since I shouldn’t use it within 3 weeks of harvest, but won’t know when to harvest until I see the trichomes changing color? How long do you think I have?
Wakanda!
Legend OG
Should I try to revege Peanut Butter Breath?
Hey maybe I can make a miniature bong and pretend I made mini-weed on purpose. You know, like a hippy Bonsai Garden.
What does it mean when it’s the veins rather than the area between that yellows?
That’s not a banana is it?
These leaves mean the plant is revegging right?
6/12 Switched to jacks 321, but two 1 gallon containers and a bigger containers to mix them in, naw, I don’t even have those, I’ll just guesstimate and do 1 pitcher part a add a pinch of epsom salt then 1 pitcher part b for each plant.
6/13 I think they may be feeling a little nutrient burn, and putting them in direct sunlight with so much mylar around has caused some light burn. I put white plates around them to keep the soil cool and that worked, but the way I measure when I need to water them is by checking the soil and this may skew those readings. 91, 103, 109, 107, 103, 101 hot days ahead.
My one real hope for this crop. A 10 foot pvc framed mylar wall fell on her and all she’s got is the kind of curves ladies kill for!
Photo taken at 7:30 pm. In my head the mylar followed the curve of the quartered hoola hopes perfectly. I guess that didn’t happen.
6/17 watered, 2 pitchers each tiny bit of clone nutes hoping to reduce nutrient burn, I think springtails floated to the surface, lil white grubs with antenna bumps, though they weren’t jumping.
6/21- Watered a pitcher each with a low amount of 3-2-1, gawd, What causes veins to yellow before the interstitial areas? It’s affecting more leaves. Maybe it’s the result of being a bit too far into the flowering cycle and revegging? It’s effecting like 5-10% of the leaves but I think not any of the single leaf new growths, and not the Fritter Mintz or Lemon haze (firs and last plants)
6/25 watered
Yes. Yes it is.
6/27 quart of neem oil spray.
Should I refrain from using other foilar sprays as long as I’m using neem oil, or should I assume the protection is just the immediate suffocation and then the chemical that gets in the plant and letting the neem oil linger on the leaves after the first day doesn’t do much?
It’s strange to look up and feel resentment towards the trees squeezing in around you
Is this them starting to reflower while revegging?
If anyone ever tries to copy what I’m doing, but you know… well 1) keep the mylar taut; it’s significantly thinner than paper and every crinkle decreases efficiency. So think scales rather than draping it at angles.
2) Pollen accumulates on them so you will probably want to wash them frequently.
3)I’ll tell you if I get cancer, walking between the plants and mylar doesn’t always feel so good.
6/29 watered, found a couple of white flies floating dead in the humidity water tray, beautiful little bug
Bud Rot or buds that were too far along to revege?
It looks like rot… have any bigger bud pics?
Could it be the result of a caterpillar, I tried picking a couple of brownish buds near those for another pic and found a tiny caterpillar had fallen on my phone?
I don’t have any big buds, the earlier pics are 2x zoom on my camera looking through an up to 30x lens.
If it isn’t that caterpillar I’m a boron deficiency short of Cannabis Crisis Bingo
You don’t need those reflectors outside. You have plenty of light out there. You don’t want to magnify the sun.
Caterpillars need Bacillus thuringiensis
Unfortunately It’s the plenty of light that’s the problem. I have to grow in the shade where during the brightest part of the day they naturally probably get less than 10k lumens. The reflectors make that a lot better, If I was a betting man I’d bet that having areas going to 130k then drop to 10k over and over rapidly causes internal stress. But I think it’s fair to say that their daily light intake is probably tripled or so.
My plants are probably unhappy and more susceptible to just about everything, but between where they’d be in direct sun or continuous shade the reflectors are working…at least until they never flower or all hermie, then it’ll be a complete bust.
So my outdoors I’ve hidden from the sun this round.
What I have found is more direct sunlight she gets (our suns intense here), the more she was Reggie. Being in direct sunlight fried all the tricomes and made it taste like Reggie.
So this round they sit where they get a major amount of shade. I want to see if I get better results and the growth is a huge difference.
Woah is that a short fence or is that pot 10 feet high? It looks to be about 52 of my FritterMints. She’s magnificent. Early next Spring maybe I’ll try growing in the berry patch if the neighbors don’t mind.
She’s like 7 ft right now. Getting close to 8. We have had an exorbitant amount of rain this year.
