250w Hydro Vert - DP Power Plant

Hi Guys

Have been visiting this site for quite a while and thought it was my turn to add to the experience pool.

I have a few indoor grows in both soil and hydro behind me and wanted my new closet grow to be vertical as I have been wanting to try it out for years.

My setup is as simple as possible. I have been doing some DIY in the past but that is clearly not where my talents are. Therefore I bought a GH Aerofarm and am very pleased with the buy.



As you can see in the lower right hand corner in the pic I use 2 carbon filters with pc-fans. They are wired to a transformer that is switchable 3,6,9,12v which means I can make the closet totally stealth if I need to. The waterpump in the aerofarm does create a lot of vibrations if it touches the bottom but a clip on the central hose is an easy way to lift it off the bottom and then it is nice and quiet.

My plan was to start out 4 seeds, sex them, then use clones to grow. It just so happened that all 4 seeds turned out female so the temptation to continue from seed was too great. It is not an optimal way of growing in such a confined space as the plants are different sizes, can handle different nute strengths and so forth, but Im not the most patient guy in the world and just went for it.



I vegged them with 60w cool cfl. Not exactly crazy wattage but my reasoning is small plants less wattage. Plus electricity is very expensive here and I am not really a heavy smoker. I was hoping for 100/150g which will last me a year...at least. It turned out to be quite a lot more. More on that later.

I did take clones and kept them as micro mothers below the flowering chamber. I use a Nimby(OG) style hydro bucket for the moms. Its just a water pump in a bucket. It is less noisy than an air pump and the plants seem to like it.



I tried to sex them with the 60w I had vegged them with. That was painfully slow.



I added the 250w hps and the 2nd filter after a couple of weeks and shortly after they all showed their lovely female traits.



Growth around this time was really something. I used GH 3-part hard water series with a little Diamond Nectar and a squirt of Ripen to add some Magnesium.

A week after the above picture it looked like this.



Here a look inside the conical net. The diameter at the top is approx. 25cm(10")



Yet another week

Real nice looking setup laylow0. I'm running the a very similar cab with organic soil, so it should be fun to see how yours end up as well!

Wondering if you've flipped those lovely ladies yet?? DP Power plant sounds a lot like Pure Power Plant too... Strange coincidence fellow grower

ill be watching this one - nice setup. im running a Power plant clone in my horizontal mod.scrog - nearly ready now - it'll be interesting to see what variation you have with your seeds - have you seen much difference apart from size so far ?

V.

Very nice and clean setup.

You don't appear to be doing any active training on the screen. Is there a reason for that?

thanks for stopping by fellas

@fully baked
Yes its quite funny how similar our ideas have been. We should start a religion with us as high priests....
This grow is already finished. It was finished mid April. Im not sure how Pure Power Plant is related to the Dutch Passion one but im sure they are quite similar.

@VerdantGreen
I had 2 different phenos although they look almost identical in their leaf structure. One is more skunky and sweet smelling, the other a little slower in flower and more grassy/pot smell. Also less potent than the skunky one.

@fatigues

I find that cleanliness is the best way to keep insects etc at bay. I had no problems with this grow or my other horizontal hydro grows. Only with my soil grows have I had any bugs.
One of the setbacks to this grow room design is the difficulty in training the plants ones they fill the screen. When they were small I did train them but probably not aggresively enough.

_____________________________________________

This picture is from the same day as the last picture of the first post. Its about 2 1/2 weeks after sexing.



After this picture I neglected the grow a bit. The EC jumped to 2,4 but the plants were very resilient to the nutes. Growth did slow and there was a slight curling of leaves but I brought it under control. This pic is around 2 1/2 weeks later.



Vertical growth had stopped and the buds were starting to fill. Below is week 5-6 after sex.

Nice grow Laylow0

Thx vintner

They kept on adding weight around this time. The whole setup was very low maintenance. The large res with a good 30 liters (8 gal) is a real bonus. The most work was cutting back the mothers. First a pic of the top around week 8



Here a pic of the whole closet on the same day. There was not a lot of room for the mothers but I chose a "large" res instead of more head room. It was ok as I only need 4 clones but had to trim them rather often.

Nice Grow! your going to yield very well for the amount of watts, Definitely near or possibly over 1g/watt!

hey thats awesome! i am debating on totally changing my plans for my first grow from flat scrog to a set up similar to this! maybe a few more plants and maybe 2 250w set ups though i have a semi large closet. not so sure on full hydro though. nutes kinda scare me with ppm also ph (keeping it right for the ladies) and im not so sure which ones and how much it would cost for decent nutes/ how quickly i would go through them... with that said, i am thinking maybe hempy buckets maight be a good start...DWC seems amazingly fast and effective but maybe too much for my first grow... agreed?

@ Osirica420

Thx. I did end up with around that.

When I created this closet my goal was to try and reach 1g/w. I now realize that it is impossible to know how much a 1g is. Since my trimming in the 2nd half of the harvest was not as....orderly as in the beginning. So I ended up with 330g of varying quality trim.How much that is in a "standard 1g of w" I dont know. And I realize I dont care. Its just a number that can be changed by buying a poor quality weight, or trim as bad as me!

@ Harvest time

Thx for the comment. I will try and answer to the best of my knowledge.

I think hydro is a lot easier than soil. If you make a mistake you can much easier correct it. You also know if the correction you made worked a lot sooner. PH and EC are very easy to handle when the tank is big and holds a lot of solution like the one I used. Holds up to 40ltr (10g). If you know that you are leaving for a weekend you simply make sure that the tank is filled and that you calculate in how it will affect your PH and EC that there is less solution. Now this can only be known if you remember to observe how your plants are doing and how the PH and EC are affected during the day. I suppose hydro is more micro-managing than soil. But I see my plants at least a couple of times a day, and the invested time is less than 5 min.

Im babbling.
I dont know if you are already running the closet but if not there are some things to keep in mind. The cost of nutes will be your smallest concern. If you put 500w in a semi-large closet, than you would need quite a lot of air exchange to handle the heat. More air moving is also more noise. If you decide to go hydro you will need the PH and EC meters. Those are more expensive then nutes. Its important to design a closet that keeps the nutrient solution as well protected from the light and heat as possible. A cool dark tank is what you want. If the roots are fine, your plants can take more stress with nutes and heat imo.

If I were you I would go like xoxxox (x=plant o=light) then you would have 4 tanks. Scrog the plants around the light and you could even mix sativas and indicas really well around the same light. Its a lot of work scrogging a sativa im sure but a nice catch in a closet. Check out the Generel Hydro Aerofarm. You may not want to buy it but maybe it will give you some ideas. DWC is so dead easy. Its a tank with a pump. On the aerofarm there are some sprayers but thats not a problem either. If you keep your tank dark and cool you won't be clugging the sprayers.

I'm exhausted. Not used to posting. Hope I could help. Im out.

Hey Laylow0
Really digging your closet man. Nice grow so far.

Im curious, what are your temps @ screen level. If u can cool your 250W with few PC fans, i could give vertical scrog a try with my 150W.
Always wanted to try vertical grow, but im afraid ill burn the plants without cooltube.

Im subscribing to this one.

idontsmoke said:

Hey Laylow0
Really digging your closet man. Nice grow so far.

Im curious, what are your temps @ screen level. If u can cool your 250W with few PC fans, i could give vertical scrog a try with my 150W.
Always wanted to try vertical grow, but im afraid ill burn the plants without cooltube.

Im subscribing to this one.

Click to expand...

You can get them closer vertical than you could horizontal. There is no reflector to block in the heat.

@ idontsmoke

Thx for the comment.

Id have to go with the "animal molester" there. I only had a single 120mm fan beneath the light. And 2x120mm on the filters. My screen was a little on the small side as several tops would grow through the screen and be really close to the light(15cm/6"). The problem with my setup is access to the screen. I could have just cut the tops off but I did get some smoke from them. Just had to cut off the most yellow parts while trimming. So with a 150w you should have no problem with heat. Exactly how hot is was around the screen I do not know.

Here is a picture at 9 weeks.


and here at 11 weeks just before the chop.



same day


I will post some budshots later.

nice wog.

Laylow0 said:

Id have to go with the "animal molester" there. I only had a single 120mm fan beneath the light. And 2x120mm on the filters. My screen was a little on the small side as several tops would grow through the screen and be really close to the light(15cm/6"). The problem with my setup is access to the screen. I could have just cut the tops off but I did get some smoke from them. Just had to cut off the most yellow parts while trimming. So with a 150w you should have no problem with heat. Exactly how hot is was around the screen I do not know.

Click to expand...

That's a big ball of bud u have there Laylow0

If i go vert im gonna make modular two piece screen. That way i could open it and work on plants.
That might be a problem with your hydro setup, coz you cant move your netpots.

@idontsmoke

I would certainly have liked to be able to get to the plants better. My main producer was my #3 plant which was on the back right corner. It got soooo big and scrogging it was a real pain. It ended up yielding more than 100g on its own. It was huge. Cant really see it in the pics.

As promised Im gonna throw in some budshots. My camera is not a very good macro cam so bare with me.



In the 2 glass containers are the remains of plant #2. It was the most skunky and potent of them all. Also the smallest. I have a good 30g left.



Close-up


Here from #4. Not quite a skunky but still nice.


And thats about it. My closet is down at the moment. I hate growing in the appartment. The joy of watching them daily gets kinda screwed when you have to be carefull to not stink up the entire appartment. It ends up being more of a drug production then the enjoyment of watching this beatiful plant grow. I have more smoke then I can handle and am just hoping for my own house soooooon.

Hey Laylow0

Buds look amazing man.
Do you have total dry weight?

I know how you feel. I too live in apartment with my little sister and have to act like frakin' ninja all the time. It kills good portion of fun.
Good luck with that house quest.

Bud pic of plant #3. Its a little on the dark side I know



Plus I made some pure alcohol oil from the best trim. Have thought about doing up most of my stash but have no good way of smoking that sticky stuff.



Have an idea for a design of a pipe but dont know how to get it made. Anyone has some advice on how to best smoke oil?

Generally when I smoke my iso, I take a little bit, burn it for a second so it gets hot and malleable, then just mix it with some bud. It covers the bud nicely and you can break the iso up into small bud covered pieces that roast beautifully.

I have a real hard time trying to smoke iso by itself without a small screen to throw over the bowls. I use to have a metal screen that fit right into one of my smaller pipes and I could just bubble away the iso. That was probably my favorite method of burning the midnight oil...

Hope this helps,
FB

great use of space and power