bulk rockwool vert scrog donuts

[Desert Hydro]

many thanks to all the people who helped me get here. donjuanmatus for the bulk rockwool method, this is the shit! delta9nxs and flower farmer for turning me onto jacks nutrients.

many more to thank......i would also like to thank all the people who spouted off saying that my defoliation was gonna kill my plants! you even had me doubting myself for a day and then they perked up and EXPLODED. to each his own. this is all one big experiment for the greater good of growing techniques for all of us.

with that being said..onward to the details!

mostly all chemmy jones in the main donuts rings with one random pot of gold in there. 4 plants per cage. 600w per cage. the chemmy's were a bit overgrown and stretched like crazy but the cage helped a lot. the POG barely stretched. the MH ring in the pic is my seed tester ring consisting of 501st OG and one blue dream. the BD being haze and BB was hyper sensitive to nutrients(should have known lol) and was fried early on but still surviving kind of lol.

everything is being fed jacks and calnit at 1.2 EC with drip clean and silica until i ran out of silica a couple weeks ago.

they were set up on a dripper system but they were watering uneven because of the hand drilled drippers so now i am hand watering until i fix the drippers. other than that, all is well and super happy.

if you have any questions just ask. i am in no way a master at any of this. first time with bulk rockwool, first time with jacks nutrients, first time in vert/vert donut scrog. this is a lot of firsts for me lol. i will say that i have grow in just about every style for at least one grow and the transition was flawless and easy. no learning curve for the most part. acts just like rockwool EXCEPT for the shitty prep work involved. and its extra shitty and long lol but dont let that get in the way. i took the leap of faith after reading a strangers post online and drove over 2 hours to source my bulk rockwool and took the plunge and im so happy i did! i havent even thought about going back to anything else for any next runs. this is it.

i guess i should lightly touch the subject of prepwork as to not scare anyone off. the RW is to be broken up by hand(WEAR LONG GLOVES!!!) and placed into a BIG trash can or what have you, filled with light nutrient solution set at 3.0 ph......yes i said 3.0. its not a typo. fear not lol. this form of bulk RW is highly unrefined and highly basic in ph and will cause your ph to shift upwards if not soaked 48 hours at 3.0. by the time you are done soaking your ph will be well within acceptable range as the two extreme ph's meet in the middle. then its drain and fill your pots. takes a while but its well worth it.

im done for now. all these are at ~4/9.5 weeks into flower right now. the POG finishes in 8 weeks in average but the chemmy is far superior in all aspects.

 

[rock solid]

looking good in there desert hydro and sorry to hear about your drip rings not working evenly. I had the same problem so went back to the drip stakes better than hand watering either way I wish you luck ps I been defoliating all the time

 

[dreaded]

Thanks for the reply Desert Hydro... got my bulk rockwool..... reading a little more.... then i'm off....
tuned in here

 

[Desert Hydro]

thanks guys. i will rebuild the drip rings soon. hand watering is easy but im lazy lol.

dreaded- no problem! it works great. if you have any q's hit me up. DJM is the master around here but its simple and pretty self explanatory just make sure you do the low ph soak for a couple days and get something like a pvc pipe to stir it up in a trash can with. i used my bare arms the first time and i was itching for hours. it was torture lol

rock solid- i was skeptical about defoliation at first but in hydro things rebound so damn fast all those fans you remove are back in a matter of days. its impressive how fast they transform. in flower i only try and remove big fans that are blocking budsites. i only rape all the leaves in the first days of flower. next time i need to work on my scrog skills with these stretchy chemmy's.

i think i may add another 3 600's and 3 more rings next go around! go big or go home. i hate to talk about goals in my threads because i always seem to come up short but i would really like to hit 1 gpw or at least come real damn close.

 

[Desert Hydro]

does anyone know if OG strains are fert sensitive? or more importantly rare dankness OG crosses. they were getting the same feed as everyone else and they seem to be sensitive to something. they are in bulk rockwool in air pots and they look as if they are overwatered doing to downward taco but they arent over watered. i only water every couple days. feed is steady at 1.2 but ive began flushing them for the last few feeds to see of it helps. the pot of gold in air pot is doing great in the air pot and on the same food. it has to be a strain sensitivity. it has rare dankness in the genes which i believe is a "blue" strain which are generally sensitive.

i will get some pics up tonight but they are dark dark green and downward cupping

all my chemmys and POG's are healthy as shit. couldnt be happier.

 

[Desert Hydro]

quick updates, everything is doing good. no issues at all so far. filling in quite nicely and the POG colas are getting HUGE.

 

[zamzia]

Lovely

 

[wantaknow]

your gona like the pot of gold ,cant wait to see the total yeald on this one!

 

[dreaded]

.............. ......

 

[DonJuanMatus]

lookin good desert! glad to see you having positive results with the bulk wool and that my grow was of some help...it truly is a superior medium once you get it dialed

in 2 weeks ill be setting up 9 wool trees on blumats, im pretty confident once properly dialed to the system they will work flawlessly, possibly better than soil or coco due to the wicking ability of bulk wool..just gonna let it dry out for a little while before i set the blumats so its not too wet or too dry...setting up 3-100 gallon rez's (one per row of 3 trees) innerconnected and hooked to the RO machine with a float valve to be automatically topped off, maintaining constant even pressure in the lines..which will also allow me to do nothing other than add nutes back to the rez once a week and walk away

if you have some blumats laying around, i would definetely try it out in one of the pots.. i have a feeling they are gonna outperform handwatering and drippers once i figure out the best way to run em in wool and i wont give up until i do

good luck with the grow

 

[Desert Hydro]

i got 2 dozen laying around minus one or two broken ones lol. i may give it a go. my next grow is gonna be more high tech! im doing DIY vertical light movers for my rings to max the potential of my 600's. i was thinking about this for some time now and did a search and aardvaark (sp?) has a nice video on youtube up that shows it PERFECT. gonna run 4 600w rings in a 10x10 tent. i learned my lesson about open air grows with any CHEM cross lol.

i was shitting bricks for a while but i finally got the smell under control. lucky for me it smells more like garlic/rotting meat than herb otherwise i would have been in deep doo doo. speaking of doo doo, i cut a branch off the other night and layed it out in my living room and when i came in the next morning i thought the dogs had shit in the house the funk was so bad. i was searching for dog shit but it was the chem lol. that may sound like a bad thing but it really isnt. its truly a unique odor, anyone who has grown it knows what im talking about.

thanks for all the compliments guys. it helps. i was getting unmotivated for a bit and im trying to get refocused. got a ton of shit going on and its hard to make time for everything at the moment. it will be a relief to finish this one up and redo the setup for the better. stay tuned for some bad ass shit in the near future.

all the OG's were a legit 7 week strain. they were started ~ 2 weeks after the others and they are coming down in 2 days. the yield will be shitty but they look pretty damn nice. the chemmys are being flushed from here on out for about 12-14 more days.


....having trouble with pics. i'll get em up eventually

 

[Desert Hydro]

oh and i just popped some AK(personal favorite), c99, blue dream and tsi fly. i miss my AK mom i lost. she was phenominal. hopefully i will do 4 rings and 1 strain per ring but the simplicity of monocropping rules.

 

[Desert Hydro]

one last try. my chemmy is a photogenic bitch. this was a branch that fell and broke the other night. almost done. i cant wait!!

 

[Desert Hydro]

the 501st og's are coming down tonight. one isnt quite ready but all the rest are and im not gonna run the extra ballast for one insignificant plant lol. these are low yielders for sure but the potency looks on par. this is my first rare dankness strain. they look good and smell great but the yield is not what i was expecting, not even close. it was advertised as a high yielding OG. the nugs are rock hard but i dont think i will make even 2 oz per plant. there's no room in my arsenal for micro yielders haha.

i will get pics up tonight.

 

[Desert Hydro]

been lagging on the posts here. everything is down and drying. everything came out pretty good. the 501st og was disappointing in the yield dept. but the quality looks very good. trade off i guess, but then again the chemmy yields great and looks just as good. the POG looks pretty good but my pheno isnt the most dense. my buddy has another pheno that he says is better, yields slightly less but is super dense and generally better all around. gonna run that one next round and see how i do.

next round im moving to trees i think. i sourced some blue dream cuts and a nyc diesel from a local guy who was pretty awesome. his cloning skills were awesome but his growing skills unfortunately were not. older guy who is on a fixed income and i wanna get over there and help him revamp his grow so he can do better. it will feel pretty good getting to help someone out so they can improve there yield and quality since he cant really afford to buy his meds.

anyways...here are some pics.

 

[Desert Hydro]

all but 1 are half gallon mason jars. the other is a 1 gal. bags are 1 gallon as well.

curing out nicely. the funk on that chemmy jones is unreal. so nasty its amazing. the POG is a little fruity and sweet. not running this pheno anymore. good but not dense enough. have another pheno at a buddys spot that im gonna get back. he said it was super dense and his favorite out of the bunch. the 501st og is good but very low yield. about 1 oz per plant. unacceptable by my standards lol. ive got stuff that only takes a week longer and yields 4+ without CO2.

getting new environment dialed in at the moment. 10x10 tent with 2 1k's and 3 6's. the room outside of the tent is CO2 enriched and cool so i pull that air into the tent for circulation. i think i will air cool the 1ks and run the 6's bare bulb vert scrog again. maybe put up some DIY vertical light movers if its in the budget

the plants under the 1k's will be bigger bushes/ mini trees super cropped an ungodly amount of times to form perfect little bushes. gonna embed trellis netting into the bushes for support later on. they will be grown in bulk loose rockwool in 10 gal laundry totes DTW.

smaller plants in the vert scrog will be in 5 gal buckets of wool DTW as well. i made my scrog rings a little smaller from 36" across down to 30" to get better intensity since they will be on vertical light movers.

nutrients will pretty much be jacks hydro KISS for the most part but i have some additives left over im gonna throw in there like some kelp extracts, humics, fulvics etc.

 

[Desert Hydro]

here's whats happening right now. got my veglings going full bore. about 1200 ppm co2, 2.0 ec jacks with additives under an 8 bulb t5 HO. in a couple weeks they will go under a 600 mh maybe sooner. they are growing really fast with the co2. its pretty awesome to see the difference with it. temps are around 85. Rh is about 70%

got 4 blue dream cuts and 1 NYCD cut. they are untested so im taking a gamble on them. i hope they turn out good. i hate to waste a spot on inferior genes. the seedlings are 3 g13 seed co's cinderella 99. they are all identical phentype it looks like. short fat and toothy leaves. the other is humbildt seed organizations blue dream. got my AK's vegging as well as some of moscas tsi fly and bubblegum which im super excited for.

also have some of S@nnies killingfields f3(purple as barney) and anesthesia which is a cross of his herijuana, afghani and old school skunk. supposed to be top notch indica.

last pic is some of my previous killingfields i lost due to bug invasion. i will get her again

 

[Desert Hydro]

the new beans came in. i have a lot going right now so im gonna hold on to these until mine are in 12/12 and then pop them. cant wait to have a room full of s@nnie and mosca spawn haha

 

[Mister_D]

Good shit going on in here DH . ****** has done me right in the past . Very curious to see what comes out of those anesthesia also . I'll be over here on my bucket watching and smoking my chemmy jones cut . Mine leans more towards garlic, pine, and cinnamon, with a distinct chemical funk in the background. Top notch shit.

 

[Desert Hydro]

im loving co2 so far. its a bitch to keep everything in check but the growth rate is phenomenal. these pics are 3 days apart from the ones above and they look like different plants altogether