I was told that if I didn’t want to switch veg lights to flower lights that the best thing to do was stay around 4000k for both. So would a combination of both (white and red/blue) like @Albannach is talking about the best overall option?
It really comes down to personal preference and your grow needs.
You’ve got multiple opinions, and only one of them is going to matter, YOURS.
Some folks want all that red in their lighting, for frosty stretchy plants. Red will have the most distance between internodes and some say it helps finish flowering faster. (No proof imo)
On the other hand, some folks want as much blue as they can get, to keep their plants short little bushes. Tight internode spacing, frost production is still great as well.
Personally, I like a middle of the road. 3500-4000k is where I like to be, I’ve got a bunch of 2700k screw in LEDS that I may try out in my 2x2 but my strip array (I call it the “JellySol”) is 4000k strips and i’m loving my results.
At the end of the day, Ya just gotta try something and see if you like it. Best of luck friend
As other have said it comes down to choice, there are advantages and disadvantages depending on the color temp. To me anything in that 3500-4500k range is a nice sweet spot as utlimately it the middle ground and we are the ones viewing the plants in the end ;).
Bluer light (4500k+ when talking white) reduces stretch and cause the the plant to produce hormones that will keep it a bit more dense and compact, energy wise for the plants photo receptors a bluer light is actually less efficient than a warmer light (1.9umol vs 2.1 or something like that) because the wavelengths need to be down converted slightly to be used more so by our plants.
Redder light (less than 3500k when talking white) causes stretch and the plants to produce those hormones that trigger flowering functions, and energy wise as stated above its more efficient than the bluer light.
So its really choice as can you flower under bluer light, or veg under redder light forsure, is it ideal no, but use what you have as the difference isn’t really a huge amount or say you may have height restrictions and want to keep things a bit more squat (typically my case).
Key point just for info sake, all white leds are actually just blue leds with a phosphor coating, so thats why when looking at spectrum graphs they always have that spike in the blue region of your nanometer range. Saying that the more blue the led is typically the more efficient it is as far as light production vs energy use standpoint goes, as the when you start going redder some of that energy is lost when the phospor is down grading it to a longer wavelength aka redder. So for us its a weird situation where redder light is more efficient for the plant from an energy perspective, but bluer leds are more efficient from an energy consumption perspective.
Again why the middle ground works.
@Jellypowered and @Mr.Sparkle - It seems that you both fall in the “white light” category. Would you recommend mixing a little “purple(ish)” light with the 'White" like adding 1 "purple(ish)? cob with 4 or 5 “white” cobs?
I see no added benefit to adding “purple(ish)” light to an already complete solution like “white” light. If you start with a light that has quality diodes, it’s gonna have plenty of the spectrums the plant uses… No supplementing needed.
Just my .02 pennies.
I’m leaning toward a blend that produces around 3500K and my experiment with red/blue solstrips is still ongoing. I’m wondering if i overdid it with the red cos i got a poor male/female ratio. Maybe 1 red/blue strip in a rack of 10 would be a better mix
No real need, but there is current research out there about adding far red right at the end of the daytime scheduled, like last 15-30min before lights off and continuing them on for another 15mins into lights off, as the far red supposedly kicks the plant into going into sleep functions and activities quicker. Something to look into if you would like.
That’s interesting. So would the new red light need to be that high in wattage, in other words, if you were running 600W normally, would you need to run 600W of red? Would want to be in the high 700’s to low 800’s, in the IR range or in the 600’s in what I believe they call “deep red”?
FWIW, I’ve used both 12-band and full spectrum. I will never go back to the blurples.
no like say in that case 20-40w extra, just some added deep and far red what nm range specifically i can remember, but i haven’t jumped into the science or trying my hand at that yet so i can’t actually say what’s ideal or works.
Shout out to sungod x shroomgod collab
I’m going all through this. I needed this. I need to get the whole Chandaliers fixture as slim as possible without rewiring a ton of stuff. I wanna get some strip less asap for my new 3ft. Lol tent. Awesome stuff. Thank you for your exploration and time.