LED Test 3: Transplanting And Vegetative Growth

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Everyone's raving about LED's. But do they work?

We decided to see for ourselves. This is test 3 of 3. 

Here, we find out if LED's are any good during transplanting and vegetative growth.

• Research (July 2012): Do they Actually Work?
• Test 1 (Aug 2012): A small Matter of Survival
• Test 2 (Sept 2012): Rooting Clones
• Test 3 (Oct 2012): Transplanting & Veg Growth (this article)

For this test, we needed to upgrade our LED!  

One kind retailer sent us a 360W LED unit worth a whopping £550. It's a serious bit of kit - just look at it!

We were looking forward to putting it to good use.

The manufacturer reckoned it'd outperform any 600W light. 

Sounds promising. 

To find out if they were right, we decided to make this one an A/B test - their LED vs. our lowest cost HID.

This is what £550 of LED looks like! Something we did notice is that it only has one hanging point. Lights like this rotate now and then and mess up your footprint. Not a great feature.

For our HID, we just used a bog standard 600W BAY6 Euro Light  (£49.95). 

We used 2 of the cuttings and 2 of the seeds that we rooted in Test 2! 

We left it a little late to transplant. All cuttings were a bit manky. The extra time under the UFO LED didn't do 'em much good. Still, the roots were nice!

The two cuttings were transplanted into 3"" Grodan Transplanting Cubes.

Two Large BudBox Tents (100cm x 100cm x 200cm) were set up.

To make it a fair test, we used one fan to draw air from both tents.  

Next, we set up the lights and put them in the tent. 

After the pest problems we had in Test 2, we decided to add a Hortishield Insect Trap.

An Accuread Temperature and Humidity Meter also went into each tent.

We made a DIY bubbler for each tent, using:

• Black buckets
• Oxypot net pots

One cutting was transplanted into each pot. 

The two plants grown from seeds were placed in RhizoPots.

One went into each tent. 

All plants got a good spray of an organic insecticide, and lights were set to run on an 18hr cycle.

Since the cuttings looked so shabby, we were genuinely worried the test would be over before it began. 

We were in for a surprise...

By day 10, the cuttings in both tents had seriously improved!

They almost looked like normal plants.

The cutting under the LED looks the best, but it was the healthier of the two cuttings so that doesn't surprise us.

The plant under the HID light wasn't doing as well, but it did start out with only one good leaf on it! 

So, it's too early to really judge which light is best.

Plants in both tents were looking good!

The one in the HID tent had improved the most, and was looking much bushier with lush, green leaves.

The one under the LED light wasn't doing as well. It had gained some height, but was lacking lateral growth. The leaves were also thicker, darker and leathery.