Naughty.Psychonaut

My option - build a light using a design that saves the life span of the diodes and the driver aswell as provides better coverage and penetration for your canopy and because the light runs cooler you may have to put a very very small room heater on a timer for about 4 months of the year. You guys - build a light that runs so hot it needs external cooling, taking into consideration that it's being externally cooled which means it's already running hotter (more W to heat less to light output, simple grade 1 stuff) so you already wearing more on the light plus you gotta get and run a AC for the rest of the 8 months of the year, cause you can only run your lights druring the day. Must be nice having so much money you don't really have to put that much time into thinking. School fees, especially for indoor growers, can get kak high. Best to at least try and take the right approach from the start.

unbuffered coco lacks cation exchange sites which means all nutrients will have less of an effect. you'll reach a point where giving and giving means nothing, you'll end up with salt build up cause the plants roots can't acess the nutrients. shock treatment with calmag does not resolve this, plus a shock treatment of Ca/Mg where there are no cation exchange sites in an inert medium may cause root burn and nutrient lock out aswell. best would be to scrap the synthetic stuff, you can't buffer that medium while there is a plant in it, take about a 3rd of the top of the coco medium off, get lekker worm castings and top the pots up with organic media and shift over. a lot of people start their plants in an inert medium then "build" ontop of that as they go. but wait, it's an auto.....? with autos it's always a "one more fiddle and I give you the finger" lol I've never tried an auto cause I feel my skill level isn't quite up there yet, to grow a nice auto you gotta be ontop of your game. minimal mistakes, minimal fiddling. Maybe ignore everything I said, do what you can with this one, but with the next batch I would suggest get yourself some photoperiods. that way you can also clone them and have a second, third, fourth, fith .... heck as many chances as you want. also, they allow you to make these mistakes and be forgiven, you can turn a photoperiod around right at the grave. and I would also suggest to move over to the organic side. salt growing is quickly becoming a thing of the past, not only cause it's been proven to not be as great as people claimed in the early 2000's and infact is a big contribution to killing the planet, if you wana know more about how terrible salts are check this out .... as a cannabis grower I just cannot turn a deaf ear to this, it's heart breaking, trying my best to spread the positivety

Biggest threat is PM due to the fall of the FAE and no air circulation. Not light schedule. Natural outdoors RH goes up at night, naturally higher in tent too as they get their air from outside, no power to push air around or exchange the air is a WAY bigger concern than if the lights are on or not. This whole thread is a bit backwards. You can watch my threads bud, I grow indoors with loadshedding with no gennies no inverters none of that fancy stuff, cause I am one step ahead of the curve. there are ways to combat and navigate the high RH, but it's got nothing to do with your lights. and you gotta stop thinking you already know the answer.

Holy hahahah so you still don't understand that things that give off heat grouped together build up more heat than when those same things are spread further apart???? You're kidding me right? Yeah. I am sooooooo tense man, ooooh you tense me up reeeeeeeaaaall bad man, aaaaahh soo teense!!! hahahah The fact that I have a QB on a heat sink - which it needs to dissipate the heat - and the bar light that doesn't need a heat sink, cause it runs coolers is more than enough information I need to give you. you just gotta stop THINKING you know better and open yourself up to learning from those ahead of you, I'm reaching a long arm out trying to help you still after you giving me shitty attitude, you should thank your stars, but don't worry, as you grow through what you go through the truth will catch up to you. I never said you HAVE to build it this way, I just say theres a better desing than QB or PCB. If you don't already know this then you stuck in the past and reluctant to move forward, you went on to disagree with me and now I am trying to help you understand something that I have dealt with a really long time ago and you going off a hunch and have no experience in the field. I'm not about to let your emotions tell me I am wrong about something I can measure. It's clear you not ready for this big step of accepting information that might help you, sometimes letting go of what we used to know is scary, I get it man. Just get busy, build that light you speak of forget about anything I said, don't let new information stress you out. like mentioned before by a couple of us - you probably gona do a rebuild once the answers reveal themself to you. and we're all here to watch and support it all when it happens

Hell yeah bud, nice to see you studying the right stuff remember not to take 1 bit of info and neglect all the rest, everything has to be in balance with everything else, you need to consider the given. The given being the given amino acids inside the soil, because perhaps the most important part you mentioned is "at a cellular level" - the higher up you move in science the more you realise how little you can witness the cells with the naked eye, you need lab equipment to do soil analytics to read the given compounds in the soil. then based on what that info tells you, you can then see if the soil is in need of more amino acids or not. the plant will react accordingly. Hope this video does not give you insentive to run to the nearest grow shop and grab some aminos just to go add it to your regime. If anything, all these soil science videos should start off by saying "If you don't know what's going on in your soil, get it lab tested before watching this video, because there will never be a video that can accuratly cover all bases of soil science" that being said, experience will bring you closer and closer to be able to guage these things with the naked eye and less and less need to have soil tested. Some old soil gurus I've worked with smell the soil and tell you very very close to what lab results will give you. Fact is, the longer you work with soil the more you realise how important lab results are, even if you're able to tell from smelling it it's still a shot in the dark. Best of the best growers get their soil lab tested, cause they have put their egos aside and accepted the fact that they can't see at the cellular level.

Hey bud yeah it's the loadshedding that's a problem. As with all big businesses they gotta look at generators and with the main push behind mushroom production being to reduce carbon footprint it's kinda counter intuitive to run off generators. Also the bigger scale productions all focus on Agaricus species, such as the portebellos and portebelinni's - they're all mycorrhizal fungi, the cultivation setup to grow those are muuuuuch much different than the cultivation setup I need to grow the Pleurotus species that I am growing such as the Oysters. I use waaaaay less electricity and have not run into issues yet. This is true to that old saying, "the bigger they are the harder they fall", like with those big setups an hour or two of loadshedding hit them quite hard and running that off alternative power will hit just as hard. My small scale production I can still get away and manage with the loadshedding.

he's gona be running his lights during the day. heat wouldn't even be only from the lights. why it's so much more important to go with a design that doesn't heat up, don't know why people are so reluctant to accept help

That's the whole point!!!! The heat needs to be displaced, like you said - so if you know that then what are you arguing about????? you know how heat build up and heat dissipation works, right? if you group ANYTHING that gives off ANY kinda heat it will build up more heat than when those exact same things spread further apart, bacause the heat is allowed to dissipate more freely instead of building up in one spot - basic knowledge dude. you learn this shit before going to school. the fact that you're an engineer doesn't even come into play here, this is basic preschool knowledge. the principle is true doesn't matter what lm/w doesn't matter the quality of diode doesn't matter any of the kak you gerting lost on. lm/w may be great indication of efficiency, I clap my hands for you smart man, but sadly ALL diodes, ALL lights, ALL THINGS IN LIFE SUCCUMB TO THIS PRINCIPLE. I'm gona say it again, try to read carefully here - ANYTHING THAT GIVES OFF ANY KINDA HEAT WILL HAVE MORE HEAT BUILD UP WHEN THEY'RE GROUPED TOGETHER THAN WHEN THEY ARE SPREAD FURTHER APART. If you can't understand that there's probably a bigger problem at play here. I didn't ask you why heat sinks are used, your mind is like a gold fish. You read a word you think you know something about then you don't read the rest or howcome it's so hard for you to understand basic stuff??? You the one that said you don't wana get technical then went and got as technical as you possibly can and then play victim and say sometimes some of you wana get technical and ask if I have a problem with it bro what are you on? It was never even technical to begin with. I pointed to heat sinks and external fans being used, because of the importance of heat displacement and that there are better ways to achieve even better results. You know about the difference in "active cooling" and "passive cooling". If you know about heat displacement, next thing for you to start learning about is how to achieve best heat displacement. There are better ways and worse ways. You'll learn in due time my friend. Build your light, I'm excited to see how long it takes before you realise I was trying to help you and you just neeeeeeded to protect that ego hey this will cost you in the long run, rather you than me.

Dude, just gona give you a little perspective here real quick - I have 3 different LED grow lights. I have used them all and they all got different heat dissipation. Each light got a different heat coming off the actual light and they each hav impact on the heat in my tent...... and funny enough, the kak lights heat up way more and they heat up the tent way more.... care to explain that to me mr. engineer? you don't need to worry about if I am grasping what you saying, cause what you saying has very little to nothing to do with what I am trying to explain to you. Like I said - forget about the lm/w forget about W forget about all your fancy finer details about each individual light. honestly if you do this test between 2 kak cheap diodes and 2 kak expensive diodes the results will remain the same, cause it's really not the output or the tech behind these diodes I am talking about. It's the layout of the build, the design of the light. have you heard about heatsinks for qb's - why do you think they use heatsinks? have you seen the old tech LEDs with built in fans - care to explain to me WHY those fans are there in the first place, mr.smartboi? I give you a hint - the cooler the appliance runs the better for the appliance itself that's all I am saying. the cooler the thing runs the better and there are ways to build a design that don't heat up as much sparing you on extra fans and sparing the life of your light. How you feel about that isn't gona change the fact. perhaps, get your box and your light built and gain some experience here, then maybe you'll get the picture, cause right now you being waaaayy too smart to understand basic stuff and completely missing what I am trying to say to you I don't need to have back and forth with you about something I have dealt with a long long time ago, wasnt giving the info to discuss it really, just wanted to help a fellow grower save some money and grow better weed, but yeah can't help those who don't wana be helped hey kinda perplexed at how hard it is to explain this basic info to an engineer, thought it would be like second nature to you.

Running lights on during day is gona be a tough one. indoor growing 101, first thing you learn. big no no to run lights on during day unless you in full controle of environment. good thing you jumped on LED first instead of HID. Well man, I just don't know what else to tell you. Out of all light style designs the bar style OUT OF ALL OTHER DESIGNS heats up least........ what are you trying to argue? I hope you're not trying to say I am wrong about that? I am not talking about the heat coming off each single diode itself. the driver itself warms up too even more than the diodes, we haven't even touched on that, but you focussing on the intricate details of a single diode. I am talking about over all heat. you wana keep things as cool as possible, right? so why go with the design that needs external cooling????? PLUS you know heat wears on the stuff..... I really don't understand what it is you not grasping? If you take that info and go back to your point about each single diode, would it not STILL make more sense to try and get that diode as close to running as cool as possible? Grouping diodes together OBVIOUSLY will cause more heat around the diodes itself. spreading them further apart will OBVIOUSLY allow them to run cooler in general.... You can see the light I built on my page. and read carefully, I said that I never have issues with heat and constantly in the 25-30°C range. light on or off. because it fluctuates. I also said IF the light has a 3 to 5°C impact on my given temp inside the tent, that doesn't bother me. indicating that the light can give off some heat, not absolutely no heat. It's just minimal, no need for extra cooling in my situation even though a wendy heats up a lot more than inside a house or garage. remember we all got temp monitors inside our grow rooms, I watch my temp closely. If there is something you don't understand cause you haven't got experience in it, that's just your level of understanding. It doesn't mean it's not true. If you don't want to understand it cause it challenges how you currently understand things then that's on you If you know soooooo much about the way heat and electricity works together, you should also know bringing it as close to the least amount of heat coming off the appliance would be best right? (meaning things are running smoothe) And vice versa, running it as hot as possible will be worse, right? So if you have an option to run the thing cooler, why would you argue that and opt for the design that runs hotter and needs external cooling. especially for a guy running on alternative power you should be looking at these things. Anyway, I'm not gona try to give you any more pointers Goodluck bud

hahah brother if you switching between 3000k flat and 5000k flat you not mixing at all. when the one is pumping other one is sleeping. never running both at same time. going with 4000k stuff you gotta add either red or blue - mixing spectrums. that's what I mean by that. cause already 4000k isn't where you wana be so you HAVE to add blue for veg to pull that 4000k closer to 5000k (mixing the stuff) and for flower you still work with same 4000k and add red to pull the 4000k closer to 3000k. and the 4000k will be running at all times and you only switch beteeen red spec and blue spec. that's early 2000's tech, it's been improved on. heheee bout that heat thing, we in the same book but just on a different page you say you don't wana get too technical, but that's waaaaayy more technical than it needs to be. Forget about the lm/w forget about all the finer detail stuff. Basically all I am saying is - the bar style layout design allows for the light to run cooler over all. Now you already got the common knowledge on how something that runs hot is wearing out faster so that's point nr.1 but you also saying you wana displace the heat from the light before it heats up the room? why not skip all that and go with a light design that doesn't heat up? saving you money in the long run (not having to replace burnt out / worn out parts) aswell as the short run (not having to run extra fans or cooling appliances of sorts) aswell as providing better light coverage and penetration for your plants? It's a win win win situation. going with PCB is shooting yourself in the foot, people used to use these early 2000's but we have discovered new and better ways. no need for external cooling when the light doesn't heat up or give off much heat I got over 300w in a 1mx1m tent, bar style LED that covers the canopy with diodes from wall to wall, more than what's needed in that space, but in the right spec atleast cause I only flower in that tent so never need to accompany vegging plants under that light and I can toggle W output for early flower - late flower output increase, though I've had it on full blast during peak summer and we get 40°C days down here in the Winelands, those hot summer nights with my lights on I hit about 25 to 30°C inside the grow room and lights off during daytime keeping things dark I still sit at around 25 to 30°C inside the tent. pretty constant. my grow is in a insulated wendy house outside in my yard. never had any heat issues and I got no aircons no external cooling none of that. Actually thinking about running a small heater on a timer in there during the colder months, cause I am not a fan of purple weed. I don't smoke with my eyes.

Oh wait, maybe I am not even answering you there. just rambling away! The bar LED layout design allows for passive cooling, so you don't have to actively cool it with extra fans. With the bar layout, out of all designs, allows for the coolest running temperatures from your diodes and driver. Allowing space between strips and driver it doesn't build up or trap any heat. you can hold your hand around the strips while on, air moves around the strip freely, extrusion strip being alu it doesn't conduct heat, light spread muuuuuuuuch better allowing for closer to canopy allowing for better penetration and overall less heat, allowing for less electricity consumption cause no extra fans

To achieve optimal desired spectrum on the leaf surface for both veg and flower situations with one light is almost impossible, because they're so far apart. This is the reason people mix and match, but if you upping the Wattage and switching between spectrum, it's better not to play in the middle. Best to go full white at 5500k for veg and switch to full yellow at 3000k for flower and look at it as two seperate lights. much less technical and you don't have to worry bout adding blue and red and and and and and, cause that stuff just takes you closer to the middle again. and adding red to 3000k spectrum is over kill, my flower light is a DIY 3000k already can't see shit cause it's so yellow it looks like HPS. same with white, adding blue to the 5500k is overkill. it's only when you work around the 4000k mark that it really gets technical cause then you have to add blue and then you look at one single light as "best of both worlds" but it actually does two things half half and cause it's more technical it's easier to go wrong. But that's just my About that last bit, looking at the bigger picture, out of all lighting options, the life span of LEDs beat out all the rest, except for the centennial light bulb that's been burning for 120 years straight but yeah, so getting into why it lasts so much longer is because the output in light is so much greater than the output in heat, even from the little generic poop grade LEDs you get on your christmas lights. Samsung, with their new tech, they start pushing the limits. Some diodes give off more heat some give off less heat, but in all cases it's not a fixed output, it's always got to do with the resistance you put on it. You're an engineer, I just grow plants hahah you probably know waaay more than me about thermal resistance and that stuff? If you look at 2 of the exact same diodes, brand new. One running one at 100% output will wear it out quicker than that same one runming at 50% output. The reason for that is because the 100% diode is running physically hotter than the 50% one. and this is the same principle that goes for why most electrical appliances need fans on them to keep them running cool at all times to keep them from wearing out too fast. most electrical stuff got built in fans for that ot the design of the body allows for passive cooling of to some degree. The hotter a circuit runs the more resistance it has on it, the more resistance the harder the thing has to work to reach the same amount of output and eventually shortening the lifespan much quicker. Logically, if the design or "layout" of your light causes it to heat up more the light will have a shorter life span. If you gotta run fans on it, it means it runs hot. If you gotta run more fans you pulling more W from the wall. why not build a better working design that the plants will also appreciate more PLUS save money by not having to run extra stuff plus less wear on the light

just shows you how quick my quick over was, but as soon as I read you mixing spectrums and adding uv and ir and that stuff then I knew where it's going. if looking at doing a duel spec, working with the 300w/1m2 rule, you gona have to put roughly 600w driver on. cause you only using half the light most of the time if I am not mistaken? you going for building 2 different lights on one panel? gona be a tough one but goodluck!!! have you seen the LED BAR designs??? no need for extra heat management and stuff brother. You already got the PCB's? I'd advise to go with the aluminium extrustions. look for a T shape. Pack of tiny pop rivits, tiny drill bit. Build a square with bars running across. light will basically never even heat up + coverage and penetration goes waaaaay up since you have diodes all over the canopy and you can bring the light muuuuuuch closer to the canopy cause of the little heat. just all around better design. don't have to run 100% all the time + minimal heat = last almost forever with minimal power drop. for ages and ages the techy techy dudes been teching the tech out these tech things, like a couple years ago you could find these big body LEDs with built in fans and and and all the fancy jazz, all the extra shit they didn't need cause they too focussed on the tech side, not looking at design. a lot of times, when we approach something we wish to understand better cause we don't completely understand it yet, it's always a complicated start so we tend to look at the easy answers and go "no way it could be this easy, it has to be more complicated" when actually it really is that simple. just the layout of the light design can make a moerse difference in the way the tech performs. with those old big body LEDs with built in shit you buy a light that sucks 300w from the wall, but 80 to 100 of those watts are being put out in the form of heat and another 50w goes to running the fans leaving you with about 200w of light output, then people are left scratching their heads when they throw a PAR meter and get less than what the product is advertised, just cause the design is all wrong.

lol my current setup If you heavy handed and don't have time to look that you do everything carefully - I'd go for the Budbox. If you someone that looks after their stuff and can make a material thing last long then the Mars will be better for you. Budbox - Better zips, thicker and heavier material, I don't see any light leaks coming through the "almost plastic-like" inner lining of the tent walls. doors can hang open. Sturdy build. MarsHydro - Better bang for buck as the mylar prooves to reflect better than the white across many different light PAR tests. (Budbox need to remove that false claim) but then most complaints you hear about is light leaks from either the zips wearing out or the material flaking off from bending too much and forming creases and flaking off on those creases and also the stitching on the material itself wears out over time leaving pin hole light leaks. so with a mars to make them last longer you gotta hook in the doors each time so they not hanging or flapping (wearing out the material and the zips). also Mars is a bit cheaper, so yeah... they kinda balance eachother out in that regard.

Hi bud, hope you well. We got a inhouse LED specialist, if I may say so myself. @MrE have you seen this? @koosjr I did a quick over everything, but I didn't pick up on any mention bout if you gona be using the light for veg or for flower or for both? when buying a light this most important so you can imagine how important it is to know what you wana do with the thing before diving head first. a duel spec light that will cover both veg and flower phases needs to be quite a bit stronger in overall wattage and you'll need to be able to switch between spectrums like turn the red on and off by itself, same with the blue and you gona have to mix spectrums to keep the plant happy through all of it's cycles. Duel spectrum lights don't really offer that. If you take a 300w driver and make it pump a duel spectrum - even if it can't switch between spectrums and just on full blast all the time - it means during veg your plant is not getting optimal PAR/PPFD readings and undesired spectrum for vegging, and same goes for flower. not technically but to make it easier to understand, then the plant will only getting 150w of good veg light and 150w of good flower light, cause you pulling that 300w in two different directions. It's more technical than that, but I am sure you get what I mean? So building a duel spec you need to get a driver that can push 600w and split that spectrum so you can toggle between veg and bloom. basically what I am saying, it's the same as with all things in life, if you want one gadget that can do multiple things it becomes gimmicky. it will do both things at mid quality. much better to have, lets say 300w on full blast, but with the right spectrum in order to get an optimal veg and a optimal flower light. you'll be glad to find out that those added UV, added IR and all the mixing and splitting of spectrums you only need to do if you want to go for a duel spec light. which I would advise against. much more important to be able to dim the light, when it's in the right spectrum the output % becomes way more important. Besides what we telling you, we can talk till we blue in the face, but here is a link to LED gardener, I'll drop the link to the page you need to be on right now study it thoroughly, there are even step by step guides for each build, you get optimal performance minimal mumbo jumbo. https://ledgardener.com/diy-led-strip-build-designs-samsung-bridgelux/

Yebo, heat strips the A and leaves THC, this is why we need to decarb for edibles. Can't get high with the A still present, basically if you vaping or smoking THCA in any kinda way heating it up before consuming, you actually just consuming THC. THCA raw wont get you high unless it's heated at some point. Basically, the reason why you can find CBD products on the shelf of dischem, clicks and basically every second commercial store is because cannabis is being regulated to some degree. It is legal. There's some movement, it's not like we stuck in the boendoes and the government sees "only dagga". that's a crude way of looking at it, especially since we have seen a whole lot more freedom for the cannabis community. Obviously it's not 100% legal, but to say it's still 100% illegal is just as ignorant. Our government sees CBD and hemp (a dagga leaf lable that has CBD or hemp written on it is good enough) and everything else is still under one umbrella. If it has a dagga leaf on it that doesn't read CBD or hemp - it's illegal. What I mean by SA being far behind on R&D is a very broad spectrum statement, you can see it in all factors. Our whole country is a "developing" country - has been for yeeeeeeeeeeeeaars - but instead of moving forward into a developed country we are moving backwards into an underdeveloped country. our "leaders" will waste their own time on that's important to them and still miss and slip up. when it comes to shit that's important for the country and its people they don't give a fuuuuuuuuuugggg... they're such air heads and the fact that we're so far behind leaves space for many many many maaaaaanny loopholes. almost like the guys taking these big chances are taking advantage of the level of understanding from our "leaders" side. cat and mouse game, we're one step ahead of them, but as soon as they catch on to the fact that some people outside of government was smarter than them they throw a hissy fit and make sure they rob you

Awesome work man, I can imagine once starting to do proper pheno hunting on that level it becomes more exciting to reveal recessive traits in the F2 pool. Right now I am basically calling a "shot at luck" my phenohunt, cause I'm still working with seed packs and never had yo work through a bigger batch than 5 at a time so not really a hunt. A question on the plant count topic, working with such a high plant count in a small tent. My understanding is you gotta clone every pheno before flipping, how big do you grow them before cloning and how do you go about the clones? If I got 25 plants and I take 3 to 5 cuts per plant to ensure at least one of each root. That's between 75 to 125 cuts for every pheno hunt. Is this correct, or how do you go about it? I've got a 2 or 3 ladies I would like to knock up, was thinking of doing a BX on all of them just to get the feeling and see what I can do, but also dig through my reg pack asap for the best male and hit them all with his pollen for a OX. Just testing the waters, seeds will be distributed freely as I don't have space to dig through them all especially if it's just the "test run" and don't really want to work with the seeds.

I still pump them at stage 6, no inverter no battaries no generator. but I am pushing my luck. If I'm home I open the tents, but keep the wendy dark, luckily the wendy breathes so RH only sky rockets with rainy naturally high RH times. though my IPM i do like it's my religion, I skip church, use the hour to spray my whoooooole garden, tents and outdoors even ornamental stuff, literally everything on my property gets sprayed, helps a ton with PM and pest pressure. light cycle.... whole different topic. but the results show in my plants. also helps that I have 1mx1m tents that can stand open and passively let RH out, where as with bigger tents you'll have to run a fan somehow. anything more than stage 6 I think I'll just veg indoors and finish outdoors.

SA really stuck in the early 2000's when it comes to basic R&D. I just think it's a tiny loophole, cause our "leaders" are too klip dom to know what thca is and they're too lazy to do anything out of their own to research cannabis for the bennefit of the people. they want money to go directly into their pockets so they focus on that doesn't help anyone besides themselves.

I'll fix that

So basically, what we are trying to say is, the answer to OPs question is - no nutrient. If the plant is healthy looking at that time don't do anything "special" like give more magnesium or anything - don't micro manage. Infact giving more of something it doesn't need can cause more harm than good. Some people can't tell if a plant is stunted, but in fact, the reason why there's such a false belief around hydroponic cycle being much faster than organic cycle, is because the majority of organic growers stunt their plants by over feeding it or micro micro managing it or their soil composition is completely wrong to begin with. Always thinking adding stuff is gona increase something in the plant, while the plant only has it's genetic potential and to reach the best of it's potential is to keep it healthy at all times. No funny business. We have all learned what we know somewhere else and like mentioned before, there is a BIG misconception in this industry and how people approach growing most plants. And it'a because of the marketing around nutrients. "Buy this to do that, apply that to do this" has made people look at a plant a little backwards.

the less you have to top dress the better "well rounded" the soil was to begin with. a healthy plant makes the best seeds. not a certain amendment given at a certain time. going with the notion of "it takes this or that to make better seeds" may cause more harm than good, cause the plant might not need it at all. just focus on getting the soil well rounded. and that's what is meant by focusing on actual soil science. people look at the plant and say "the plant needs this", "the plant needs that", but what they should be looking at is the soil and they should be saying "the soil needs this" or "the soil needs that".

Not really all that much, I think it's the placement. Our yard is on a slight slant and that's the lowest corner of the yard so the soil stays moist and the area is naturally humid, also got the house built in the corner there with 2 walls next to it and the house is about a meter away from it, you can kinda see it in the second photo, building with the beams on is the house. So it's a "dank" corner hahah never gets hit with sun all around, but when I do get low humidity in there it's still 3 to 5% higher than outside of it and the cacti want low humidity. Still in the 20% range in there, though. Colder, slower, higher humidity months I pump that big metal fan. The water pipes run along the roof, the deep corener side got a little fern collection, got misters on a timer so if I need to raise humidity I can, but I never need to.