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Friday, April 09, 2021 Matt D. Connecticut

Entry 37 of 90  
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Cold Frame Lighting Inside View of the 2294.5 Noel ’19 (F: 2114 Wallace x M: 1938 Sperry)

This view shows the inside of the cold frame and on the ground retile heaters can be seen to help provide night time warmth which is especially important when the CMH grow lights go off. The entire structure is covered with blankets and a tarp which traps the heat in nicely keeping the temperature in the 70-75F range no matter the outside. It helps that there are 4-5 heaters each at 100 watts around the plant.

Reptile ceramic heaters are used since they just generate heat and not light to keep the plant under the proper photoperiod. Looking at the lights the far light has a more cool white (sunlight replicating) spectrum. The intention was to increase the blue spectrum to reduce the tendency of the leaves to stretch upwards compared to the warmer (more red) spectrum of the light near the growing tip in the image. However, there was no observable difference between the two bulbs so regardless of the spectrum the “best” bulb should be chosen.

In my opinion the Philips MasterColor CMH 315W 4200K Lamp is the “best” option. What is also great is while it is good to have an extra bulb, the Sun System LEC Boss 315 Watt Commercial Fixture has an option to come with this bulb in the same package. This is the fixture and set-up being used in the distant light. In short it works great and can produce enough light to burn the leaves so checking the intensity with a PAR meter is advised.

The main vine is growing on weed block which worked out well last year so it is being implemented again this year. At the leaf nodes a small tear is made to allow the roots to easily penetrate into the soil.

So far things seem to be going as expected or ahead of schedule!
 



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