I’ve been reading on lightwaves lately; and it begs the question what is the ultimate light? Well that’s easy, the sun. It’s free and bright as fuck, plus it really doesn’t get more natural for the plants. I see CMH is the closest approximation, but I wonder if you couldn’t fine tune it’s light spectrum with some LEDs. Unfortunately this is yet another idea I have neither the experience nor resources to pursue it much as of yet. So in preparation for the day I attempt it I thought it might be an interesting topic for discussion, pipe dream or not. Would you see a increase in yield to make it profitable? Probably not, but I don’t grow for profit. I’d just want to give the plants a “perfect” outdoor day all the time… and maybe use color balancing to simulate annual sun changes? Plus sunrise and sunset? Or do the plants genuinely thrive better on the same old constants their whole lives?
I have been thinking of adding a red puck that increases as the grow gets closer to finish to mimic the fall sun.
If they’re growing well and producing tight, dense frosty nuggets, then that’s the perfect light source.
People read a bit too much into spectrum. I’ve grown incredible weed with 2K HPS and 4K CMH. Differences are more minimal than you’d think. It’s really more about them getting “enough” light.
“Natural” isn’t always “better”. We as gardeners, and weed growers especially are guilty of this, tend to impose our human beliefs of “what ought to be” onto plants.
People read too much into a lot, myself included. I maintain (in my own head, to each their own) that natural is better simply because in the environment you removed the species from would logically be the best… but that itself is a human logic trait. “Better” is too subjective of a term, in my experience, people generally can’t pick out the minute details and correlate them to anything. We like to think we’re smart, but we don’t know a lot of things lol.
When I design lighting for a show, I spend a lot of time looking at the light and how it falls on the stage, looking from many angle to see what my audience will see in various seats. I design what I feel is best, then sometimes water it down a bit so more people can appreciate it than just the first rows. Every show there are things I would’ve done different if I didn’t have to accommodate so many tastes and eyes and seats, you know?
I agree spectrum is rarely your limiting factor. If you don’t have your environment on point, your feeding on point, your training on point, etc., you will never notice the difference with the spectrum change.
When you can control temp, humidity, VPD, CO2, and feed, then you can consider optimization with light. Otherwise, the light is just getting wasted no matter how “perfect” the spectrum is.
I mean, sunlight itself has minor variance depending where you drop a pin on the globe.
Natural sunlight is 5500K-6000K but you never see a flowering spectrum above 4K, the reason is the extra red light encourages more flowering. The tropics get the same intensity and spectrum every day, go further from the equator and things change. What the plant actually wants and what we think the plant wants are often separate things. A portion of the sunlight reaching a leaf’s surface isn’t even used by the plant.
CMH is a great choice if you’re trying to get closer to sunlight. I like them better than HPS so far.
I do also but I was trying to reveg some plants that were way in to flower and had 2 CMH and 1 MH
it was not going :slight_smile 
put in 2 super blues and 1 MH
and off to the races
Dequilo
They’ve definitely got their purposes. Older HID still has a lot of advantages. Cheap, easy, available, modular, intuitive, nice in the winter for heating.
here in the land of way cold the heat is a plus this time if year 
HIDs are still cheap and do a good job over all and buy the right bulbs you will not
break the bank
lots of good bulbs for not a lot of money just do not get a fancy package or well known name
they still grow weed
and made in the same factory
all the best and be safe
Dequilo
Off subject but was looking into plants and sacred geometry because I remember a “DR” whom used to talk about harvesting under blue moon for medicinal. Also something to do with blue sage he was off his meds but made sense.
Something about cooler spectrum in the direct moonlight and warmer in the shadows but the blue moon is rare not to be confused with harvest moon and creates certain nano particles through light.
So I started doing research after breaking down color spectrums into geometric shapes found you can create ground currents to by burying certain stones in soil.
But I was looking at adding those spinning window Crystal’s In the grow tent light refraction the indigo purple the fall puts off mostly in rain helps with purpling in plants.
Anyway electromagnetic invisible light photons remember the black lights in grow room back in 90s.
Anyway long story short the spectrum in last weeks of flower naturally is metal halide mixed with red range is more natural to the sun.
And short story long after LEDs we will probably electromagnetic plasma lights once we can stabilize the gases.
Uhhhh…what? Ground currents, sacred geometry, nano-particles, blue sage, moonlight, raindrops making plants purple…pseudoscientific hogwash. Dude probably was off his meds.
We already have plasma lighting.
Definitely
He had a grow room full of black lights
The part that made sense to me was metal halide with Hps in flower.
The plasma will be diffrent apparently amplified and be able to increase light growth speeds. Way beyond my understanding I just follow the normal setups.
Check out a led light called flux scale by grow flux. You should be able to replicate the exact spectrum of the sun and adjust it to match the seasons. Though you would have to get additional ir uva and uvb to be a completely wide band sun light replication.