Indoor grow tent! Swedish snus variety Tofta!

[loui loui]

@loui loui your grow is looking nice! I'm amazed how green you are keeping your plants in that level of light intensity!

I wanted to say that I think you are running your plants to hard though.

If you put your lux through a ppfd converter it looks like you are sitting around 1500ppfd, at 24 hours of light that's a daily light integral of 129 moles. The most light hungry plants I know of top out at 60 moles. Lettuce for example likes 17 moles, tomatoes and peppers will be happy in the 20-40 mole range.

Again I'm amazed at how nice your pants look so take it with a grain of salt. Drastically changing the photoperiod could be detrimental so maybe just consider for the next round. They look like they should give you something to use either way.

Ok friend, your findings are very interesting but I don't understand much about PPFD and moles.
I did manage to find an PPFD app and your calculations seem very accurate, maybe the light meter of the phone is inaccurate though.
I managed to make a PPFD chart.
Each number represent one plant except the two numbers to the left, that is room for the humidifier.
I have no idea how accurate the numbers are but I guess it works to compare different spots in the tent as long as I use the same phone.
I look at the plants and I think you may be right that I push the plants hard but it is fun to see them grow fast.

This is the plants exactly one month ago:


This is the light I have:

GL-2000 LED Grow Light with Samsung LM301B & Dimmable Mean Well Driver, 220W Sunlike Full Spectrum LED Panel Grow Lights for Hydroponic Indoor Plants Veg and Flower Growing Lamp

【SAMSUNG LM301B LED】The higher light intensity, less lumen depreciation, better lumens and Higher PAR values than ordinary LED chips. The Samsung LM301B is the highest light output and full-cycle LED for grow light at present, create more than 40% higher yields with less energy compared with...

www.sylstar-lighting.com

This is how it looks like with the light at 50-60cm height.

 

[93rdCanadian]

Ppfd is basically how much light that the plants can use is currently falling on a given area/point.

Moles is a unit of concentration, in this case units of usable light hitting the plant in a day.

You are right that the phone meter isn't perfectly accurate but it should be accurate enough.

Check out this chart I found for outdoor daily light integrals (how much light a plant gets in a day) this is for California, the father North and South from the equator you go the lower the light intensity the plants get in a given day. The time of year affects how many hours (and intensity) of light the plants get which is why even inwarm climates plants grow slower during the winter solstice.


You can use this site to calculate your DLI easily with the ppfd (light intensity) and number of house the light is on. https://www.waveformlighting.com/horticulture/daily-light-integral-dli-calculator
If you dim the light a bit you might see better results around 750 ppfd at 24 hours. However your plants still look nice and green so I wouldnt rush to change anything just yet.

 

[loui loui]

Ppfd is basically how much light that the plants can use is currently falling on a given area/point.

Moles is a unit of concentration, in this case units of usable light hitting the plant in a day.

You are right that the phone meter isn't perfectly accurate but it should be accurate enough.

Check out this chart I found for outdoor daily light integrals (how much light a plant gets in a day) this is for California, the father North and South from the equator you go the lower the light intensity the plants get in a given day. The time of year affects how many hours (and intensity) of light the plants get which is why even inwarm climates plants grow slower during the winter solstice.

View attachment 44537
You can use this site to calculate your DLI easily with the ppfd (light intensity) and number of house the light is on. https://www.waveformlighting.com/horticulture/daily-light-integral-dli-calculator
If you dim the light a bit you might see better results around 750 ppfd at 24 hours. However your plants still look nice and green so I wouldnt rush to change anything just yet.

Ok!
I will take a look at it when I come back home!
I will try to calibrate the light meter by the PPFD in the description of the light.
It is just 5 PPFD outdoors a cloudy winter day and it looks like this:

 

[93rdCanadian]

Ok!
I will take a look at it when I come back home!
I will try to calibrate the light meter by the PPFD in the description of the light.
It is just 5 PPFD outdoors a cloudy winter day and it looks like this:
View attachment 44540

Don't worry about callibrating it should be accurate enough on its own. Looks chilly! At this time of year and cloudy Im not surprised that the light intensity is so low, the plants are sleeping it off hahaha.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

We don't realize the degree to which light intensity varies because the senses weren't meant to experience stimuli in a linear mathematical fashion. Our eyes and neurons adjust to the light intensity in order to balance out our experience of it. Anyone who has done film SLR photography with a manual camera is highly aware of this fact.

 

[loui loui]

Don't worry about callibrating it should be accurate enough on its own. Looks chilly! At this time of year and cloudy Im not surprised that the light intensity is so low, the plants are sleeping it off hahaha.

Yes it was icy outdoor, it is very beautiful when the trees are frosty and white!

Ok let's do it without calibration cause I don't understand how it works anyway.
I did manage to improve the measurement a bit by adjusting the colour temperature to 4000K.
The light has 3000K and 5000K led with a few red and infrared diodes so I followed the instructions and did set it to the average 4000K +10% red.
It looks like the light has fewer than 10% red but the measurement was significantly improved.
I did set the light at two foot (61cm) and this was my result:


This is the manufacturers measurement at the same distance but with a slightly larger tent:

Now my measurement is closer to the description but a bit higher, this could be explained by a smaller tent and the fact that I did not hold the phone horisontal but in an angle towards the light.
Also my light is not centered in the tent cause I have the humidifier to the right side.

The plants placed where the light is most intensive ~930 PPFD is also the plants that are a bit more yellow.

The plant that has the least light 653 PPFD is very big and dark green.


The question is if less light is better and it may be so, maybe, I don't know.
I did water the plants without nutrients today cause I want them to go yellow, I want to make a quick harvest and make a new grow.
I have seeds for my next grow so I may skip the flowering phase this time.

This way of growing 8 smaller plants instead of one or two bigger plants is inspired by the sea of green method (SOG), it is a very effective way of growing with focus on a quick harvest.
So far I seem to be lucky that Tofta is a fast flowering variety, not very surprising since the summer is short in the north.

 

[loui loui]

The stem is stretching and new shoots aka suckers appear.

 

[loui loui]

Ok friends, the plants are stretching a lot, got to raise the humidifier cause it is being overgrown so at the moment it is switched off.
I did water without liquid nutrients the last time.
There is some nutrients in the soil left. (chicken manure).
Only the cotyledons are yellow.

I am eager to harvest but I don't know how!

I am thinking about to leave some suckers on the plants so they suck the mobile nutrients from the leaves and leave them yellow (nitrogen is a mobile nutrient).
Another idea is to harvest them green, this is a dark air cured variety so maybe that is a good idea?
A friend of mine suggested I leave the suckers on some plants and remove them from some plants, I like that idea!

Any suggestions how to proceed?

 

[deluxestogie]

The leaves appear to be immature (relatively thin and flat and uniformly green. Wait until a leaf, at a minimum, shows thickening and rugosity (a rumpled texture). A glimmer of yellow at the leaf tip is a certain sign of leaf maturation. If you harvest immature leaves, they will be challenging, if not impossible, to cure properly.

Since this is an artificial growing environment, my estimations may no be applicable.

Bob

 

[loui loui]

The leaves appear to be immature (relatively thin and flat and uniformly green. Wait until a leaf, at a minimum, shows thickening and rugosity (a rumpled texture). A glimmer of yellow at the leaf tip is a certain sign of leaf maturation. If you harvest immature leaves, they will be challenging, if not impossible, to cure properly.

Since this is an artificial growing environment, my estimations may no be applicable.

Bob

Thanks Bob!
I will look for the signs.
I have noticed two phenotypes, a short that doesn't stretch and flower first and a larger that flower later and stretch during flower.
I think I will take seeds from the short and quick plant cause there is only one of it, the other I can expect to find again.

 

[loui loui]

The humidifier is raised and back in business!

 

[deluxestogie]

Signs of leaf maturity:

Bob

 

[loui loui]

Signs of leaf maturity:

Bob

Thanks!
I guess many new growers have this problem cause it is difficult to know when to harvest the leaves. This is the first real problem I got.
The signs should be the same indoor as outdoor.
Let's wait.

 

[deluxestogie]

The signs should be the same indoor as outdoor.

I don't really know if that is true or not.

Bob

 

[loui loui]

I don't really know if that is true or not.

Bob

Plants don't have many needs, nutrient need is the same as outdoor in a pot, the soil is the same as I would use in a greenhouse, temperature and humidity can be controlled, the water is the same water used for other crops and so on.
I don't know the best humidity for tobacco, some say tobacco likes it sunny and dry but it is relative to other plants that like it humid so I don't know.

Plants mostly use red and blue light for photosynthesis and will survive under common led lights so the light is not a problem either.
If all of the environmental parameters are similar to outdoor the plant won't know it is indoor.

The biggest difference I know of is that LED normally don't output UV-light or infrared light, at least not in large amounts but plants don't need that for photosynthesis.
Infrared light will warm the plant, to compensate for the lack of infrared light one can raise the temperature about 5°C and the internal leaf temperature will be the same.
Older HPS lights emit more infrared light and heat, plants have been grown under HPS-lights for decades, both indoor and in greenhouses.

Allthough plant species are different they are related, tobacco is a C3 plant so I grow it like a tomato plant, I am confident it will survive if I don't mess up but if so I will just try again!

Light spectrum of the grow light. Plants don't need green light but it is pleasant for humans.

 

[deluxestogie]

Plants experience a seasonally changing, diurnal cycle of light spectrum alterations, and sense the end of the day, as the solar colors shift toward red. One of the challenges of generalizing plant responses in artificial light to include tobacco is that the tobacco that each of us grows outdoors in a single season is grown under sometimes vastly different light, wind, rain and humidity conditions. It is then cured and finished in equally divergent conditions. Tobacco is a sub-tropical to tropical perennial. So it benefits from warm temperatures and ample water—with good drainage. We don't eat its fruit (like a tomato), but rather we cherish the subtleties of the mix of volatile aromas that mysteriously arise long after the leaf is dead.

I suppose that all I'm saying is that there is not a tidy parallel.

Bob

 

[loui loui]

Plants experience a seasonally changing, diurnal cycle of light spectrum alterations, and sense the end of the day, as the solar colors shift toward red. One of the challenges of generalizing plant responses in artificial light to include tobacco is that the tobacco that each of us grows outdoors in a single season is grown under sometimes vastly different light, wind, rain and humidity conditions. It is then cured and finished in equally divergent conditions. Tobacco is a sub-tropical to tropical perennial. So it benefits from warm temperatures and ample water—with good drainage. We don't eat its fruit (like a tomato), but rather we cherish the subtleties of the mix of volatile aromas that mysteriously arise long after the leaf is dead.

I suppose that all I'm saying is that there is not a tidy parallel.

Bob

Ofcourse, the various environments we grow in are numerous but plants are much older than humans and have survived both dinosaurs and ice ages, they have alternative strategies to survive many environments though some environments are more productive than others.
The challenge for an indoor grower and outdoor grower is the same, to make the plant thrive instead of merely survive.

To be honest I grow all plants more or less in the same way whether it is on a balcony, outdoor or indoor and I often succeed, rarely not.
I have come to the conclusion that it boils down to me growing mostly C3 plants and they all have similar needs, after all, if they survived the dinosaurs they will probably survive a human that cares for them!

Curing though, that is a mystery to me, like magic.

 

[loui loui]

I understand that an indoor grow is not a clear parallell to an outdoor grow, ofcourse, but the thing is that two outdoor grows in two different environments at different latitudes will also vary a lot and that is even if the weather would be the same!

People have been experimenting with grow lights for decades and it is really not a dramatic change for plants. The difference between natural and artificial light is not the game changer for plants that one can imagine, artificial irrigation is probably a more dramatic change for plants and plants love it.
Seasonal changes and changes during the day can be replicated, if I want to I can replicate a few hours of cloudy weather just by dimming the light. There was a grow light on the market with an automatic dimming function to simulate the sunrise but it was a flop cause plants just don't care, such a function is useless for plants.
Rainy and cloudy weather are also useless weather if plants have artificial irrigation.

An indoor grow is in some ways a more scientific approach cause the environment can be replicated over and over again, something that doesn't happen in nature except maybe in the rainforest where it is allways humid and shady.

Many environmental factors outdoor are in fact rather counterproductive for plants, like for example animals, storms, clody weather, drought, darkness and more.

Indoor growing is very fun and a very rewarding experience.

 

[loui loui]

A closer look at the humidifier.

I am a bit surprised how good the grow works without fans and I think the humidifier is providing both humidity and air flow.

This is how the mist is circulating at the back of the tent. When the mist evaporates the air is cooled and the moist air fall down to the plants providing both cool air, humidity and air circulation.
It is also a beautiful effect to look at but it is difficult to take a good picture of it.

 

[loui loui]

New shoots aka suckers