Efficacy of lights shinning up from the bottom?

[Albrecht]

Just curios about people's opinions about this. Just generally speaking, from the experienced grower's common sense, is it less useful because the light is shining on the bottom of the fan leaves, which are designed to take most of their light from the top surface? For my particular situation, it was really the only way I could place this light, and it also servers the purpose of illuminating some nice lower buds that were kind of smushed against the wall and not receiving a ton of light.

See what y'all think.

 

[Puffin Afatty]

:watchplant: recently, I accidentally chopped a viable branch from mySnowWhite and stuck it in the back corner of the hygroton tray. It looks to me as though She will survive, but being much smaller than the canopy, I am going to put a 65w cfl back there just to keep Her alive until next grow.

I always have been of the opinion that lower light is a good thing, insofaras keeping the lower portions of a plant healthy :aok: However, I have also heard lower lights can cause stretching

 

[Growdude]

I tried somthing just like what you have going, had a 150 HPS from the bottom just like yours.

In the end it only seem to cause some weird growth that was closest to the bulb with no real benificial results.

 

[Growdude]

I found the thread I started on this same subject.

Shows my plants and setup but doesnt show the "results"
http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10406

 

[Albrecht]

Hmm, that sounds weird. Well, I'm into my 10th week of flowering with mystery sativa's, so I'm not too worried about "weird growth", since it looks like my babies have had their last growth spurt and are packing on the density and triching up. But I'm curios to know what you mean by "weird growth". It sounds like lower lighting might not be a good idea in veg, but could you please describe what kind of "weird growth" you saw.

But at this moment I'm really happy about this addition to my lighting. There were about 8 or so lower branches that were budding well, but more light is always better, and the branches where all in the perfect layout so that I could kind of spiral them around the light, so that they're all getting a good light bath, but none of them are close enough to get burned (I think at least!). So I think this will add a nice little punch to the end of my flowering.

 

[Albrecht]

I found the thread I started on this same subject.

Shows my plants and setup but doesnt show the "results"
http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10406

Damn man, that is an impressive grow you had. That's what I'm aspiring to in the future I think. Anyways, thanks for the links, I'm gonna check it out and do some more research, but at this point I think it'll work for me this late in flowering.

 

[Puffin Afatty]

:watchplant: I have seen grows where they lined a closet with flouros vertically along the walls, grew a jungle in between, had an 400w HPS on top. they grew good buds, but alot of trim as the buds outside the range of the 400w didnt get very frosty :hubba:

 

[Albrecht]

Ya, I had a couple of floros on either side of my biggest bushiest plant, but when I saw these 150W HPS lights for so cheap, I decided to buy a couple and see if it will benefit my harvest. What's funny is that it's the lower buds on my main plant that are the frostiest and smell the best. The larger colas have been slowly triching up for the last week or so, but that still seem to be in "fill out and dense up" mode.

But I'm starting to notice that frosted up look all over, which is getting me really excited! :watchplant: :woohoo:

 

[naturalhi]

:watchplant: I have seen grows where they lined a closet with flouros vertically along the walls, grew a jungle in between, had an 400w HPS on top. they grew good buds, but alot of trim as the buds outside the range of the 400w didnt get very frosty :hubba:

This is a good example of "Harvest no bud before it's time"!>)

When the top buds are ready, harvest them, then reposition light to shine on the lower imature buds.

Even with a 1KW light I've gotten 2-3 harvestings off of one plant, now the lower buds won't become colas but they mature nicely=>))

 

[Albrecht]

That is one of the best pieces of advice I've gotten here. I probably wouldn't have thought of it myself, but I'm seem several people mention it, and that is definitely what I'm going to do. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[naturalhi]

Yeah! I for one get bored with trimming those small popcorn buds and generally end up tossing most of them into the trim with the leaves and hashish them later.

With this method of 'no bud before it's time' there are very few popcaorn buds left:>D

 

[Growdude]

Hmm, that sounds weird. Well, I'm into my 10th week of flowering with mystery sativa's, so I'm not too worried about "weird growth", since it looks like my babies have had their last growth spurt and are packing on the density and triching up. But I'm curios to know what you mean by "weird growth". It sounds like lower lighting might not be a good idea in veg, but could you please describe what kind of "weird growth" you saw.

But at this moment I'm really happy about this addition to my lighting. There were about 8 or so lower branches that were budding well, but more light is always better, and the branches where all in the perfect layout so that I could kind of spiral them around the light, so that they're all getting a good light bath, but none of them are close enough to get burned (I think at least!). So I think this will add a nice little punch to the end of my flowering.

The weird growth was from small branches that were close to the light they seemed to grow out but very dence and small, hard to describe i guess.

I hope it works out for your grow but I think in mine it was a waste of electricity.

 

[Growdude]

What's funny is that it's the lower buds on my main plant that are the frostiest and smell the best.
But I'm starting to notice that frosted up look all over, which is getting me really excited! :watchplant: :woohoo:

I too have noticed this in my grows, were most tell you to harvest the tops then harvest the bottom, my bottom buds are seem to frost up first and seem more mature than the tops,
I know the tops are growing at a much faster rate than bottom buds and could be a reason the mature trich ratio is less in my top buds, eventually they frost up and mature but somtimes them bottom buds look tasty first.