While commercial LED grow lights are gaining wide-spread popularity in the Cannabis cultivation community due to their high efficiency, lower heat emission, spectral precision, and low maintenance, there is still wide-spread skepticism throughout the community as to whether LED’s, (at roughly 60-70% of the power usage of HPS) can get comparable yields to those achieved with 1000 watt HPS lights.
At California LightWorks, we have been working intensively with select high-end professional growers and horticultural scientists to not only optimize our LED fixture performance, but also identify environmental and/or nutritional changes that may help you get the maximum benefit from this powerful new technology. Many of those changes can be found in our LED primer.
Recently, we were very excited to hear that one of our growers was regularly achieving yields of 2 lbs of high quality, manicured flower, with various strains, for each CLW 880 light, running at roughly 650 input watts. This grower Jay S., has kindly offered to share with our community, in detail, how he is accomplishing these terrific yields.
At California LightWorks, we been working intensively with select high-end professional growers and horticultural scientists to not only optimize our LED fixture performance, but also identify environmental and/or nutritional changes that may help you get the maximum benefit from this powerful new technology. Many of those changes can be found in our LED primer.
Jay’s Grow–room Specifics:
- Veg: 100 sq. ft. / 9’ ceilings / 8 SolarFlare 220’s
- Flower: 200 sq. ft. (13×15) / 7 SolarStorm 880’s, 3 SolarStorm 440’s
- System: 5 Gallon, non-circulating deep-water culture w/ hydroton
- Nutrients: Full Botanicair line (per label recommendations)
- Co2: 1350 PPM continuous during light period.
- Temp: 80-81 degrees f.
- Cycle: Perpetual Harvest, 1/4 of the room every 2 weeks.
Jay says that he tops his plants very early, and multiple times to create a plant that has multiple branches with many nodes, but a very short base stem. His plants average around 5-6 feet tall at the end of flower. His room temperature is 80-81 deg. f. Jay said he is currently trying the elevated temps recommended in the LED primer and he is excited by the results so far.
Notice the beautiful crowned canopy of the plants. This insures that all the buds receive unobstructed light. Shaping the plant is essential for high yields when not using SOG or SCROG techniques.
“If you ensure that all branches receive full light levels at all times, the plants will not stretch and they will have thicker branches with dense flower nodes.”
Jays Tips:
- Thicker stems / branches = higher yields
- Shape the plant for maximum light exposure.
Jay’s yields are quite impressive:
“I have 3 plants for every 2 SolarStorm 880’s. I get an average of 1.3 lbs per plant or roughly 2 lbs per SS880.”
While there are other approaches we have heard are achieving HPS comparable yields using our SolarStorm and Solar Flare LED systems, we want to thank Jay for allowing us to document exactly how he does it, and his real world results and images so all our growers can have a template for achieving his exceptional results.
