2014 +3kw coco PPK grow attempt

[cashcropgrower]

cool "grow-case" (with this 6 plants). even with drain (so i see?).
i think, it's a smart idea to grow more plants in a bank system.
possible, you can put more (8 or 9?). thx for this good opportunity,
you show here.
i am looking for a same system, in which i can plant a lot of clones (low budget / cocos with drain)
well, that is a great suggestion for me, hey!

greetings
good luck and have much fun!
: Dance013:

 

[Mister_D]

Get a watering wand, hose thread x 1/2" barb fitting, 1/2 hose (preferably flexible stuff. Flexzilla is awesome!), and a pump (300-500 gph). Connect the wand to the hose thread x barb adaptor, barb to the flexzilla, flexzilla to pump. Place the pump in a reservoir, plug in and use the wand's on/off switch to turn the water on and off as you water each pot.

 

[farmari]

Thanks for the replies everyone and thank you Mr D for that setup. As a temporary measure I made a ghetto wand with 1/2" tubing, a valve, and an ebb/flow fitting with filter screen at the end as the spout.

How long did you veg those trees for?

The two big POGs were planted way back in October. They were handwatered in 1gal coco buckets. As you can see by how big they were in the start of the thread, they grew very slowly before being transplanted into this PPK system. The main factors why they grew so slowly:

1) I always get slow growth when hand watering coco. (probably overwatering a lot of the time) I wasn't very attentive to watering them properly.

2) They spent all of their time last year under CFLs... often just one 23w CFL over both of them, sometimes 2 CFLs.

3) I took well over a dozen cuts off of them in December.

So basically, anyone with a dialed in setup could veg plants to the POG size much faster than I did.

Plus, they have a very indica dom growth pattern with short internode lengths. This becomes very inefficient as a plant gets larger. Instead of a plant stretching out into new space for more light, the short internode length means that new growth mostly simply covers up older growth from getting any light. Any foliage that doesn't get direct light is costing the plant significant energy if not cut off. I've been overly conservative at pruning, even though it feels like I'm annihilating the big plants every day. I've cut off what seemed like whole trees worth of branches that weren't getting any light...

Once in the past I put a sativa dom plant into flowering when it was the same size as the big POGs are, and it stretched well over 6 feet wide and tall. So a strain with a much better stretch would only need to be half the size that the big POGs were at the start of 12/12 to fill in their 3x3ft canopy spaces by the end of the stretch.

A higher number of smaller plants is a lot more time/energy/labor efficient, in my opinion. I only got 4 clones of the two big POGs rooting and growing a few weeks before they were put under 12/12, and the four are taking up the same canopy space as each of the big ones. And the clones actually overvegged despite all that...

I'm planning on setting up the same type of coco PPK tray seen here in flowering in my veg tent this month, vegging plants in containers sitting on the coco bed, similar to how I've seen Alien Dawg use his kiddie pools. As my photos show, you see the seedlings grow rather slowly in January in their small handwatered containers, then immediately began growing many times faster when transplanted into the PPK beds. Not the best example but you get the idea.

cool "grow-case" (with this 6 plants). even with drain (so i see?).
i think, it's a smart idea to grow more plants in a bank system.
possible, you can put more (8 or 9?). thx for this good opportunity,
you show here.
i am looking for a same system, in which i can plant a lot of clones (low budget / cocos with drain)
well, that is a great suggestion for me, hey!

greetings
good luck and have much fun!
: Dance013:

Indeed if I didn't care about the legal risks of high plant count, my ideal setup at this point would be a SOG of the coco PPK beds I'm using here, with at least 9 per bed.

Yes I used a jigsaw to cut a 6" circle in the middle of each bed, then rested one of those 6" net pot lids (photo at the start of the thread) down in the hole. Window screen netting into the net pot to keep coir from falling through it. The water level of the bucket underneath is just high enough to touch the bottom of the net pot, acting as a drain but mostly to wick moisture up into the trays.

Any questions feel free to ask. There are a lot of informative PPK threads on Icmag that can help ya out too. Good luck!

 

[flat9]

I've had pretty good luck with blumats + coco in geopots ... the blumat seems to keep the coco consistently moist. Cranking the humidity up to 70% also helped tremendously. Maybe worth considering for your veg?

 

[otis33]

how often are you saying the trees at this point?

 

[farmari]

I've had pretty good luck with blumats + coco in geopots ... the blumat seems to keep the coco consistently moist. Cranking the humidity up to 70% also helped tremendously. Maybe worth considering for your veg?

I never set up blumats because I was too afraid of runaways and it would be difficult to set up the elevated res. Some who tried blumats like them while others found them to be a high maintenence nightmare.

how often are you saying the trees at this point?

I'll call them trees if the harvest turns out like a tree should!

 

[farmari]

After 3 weeks of 12/12:

left bed:

right bed: (most of the left and right bed plants are about 3 feet tall)

big pog #1: (the Pot of Golds are about a week ahead in flower development compared to all the coco bed plants)

big pog #2:

the 4 pog clones in the corner:

Bad news... last week one of my intermatic timers messed up. The 'off' marker on the clock wasn't screwed in tight enough... the on/off switch merely pushed the clock marker instead of being turned off by it. So for one or two nights, (not sure) the lights stayed on all night!!! I really don't want a seeded crop...

And it was the timer I had been using for a couple years now. I guess that's why it's always important to check everything on a regular basis... every connection, every plug, every screw. Check for any weaknesses or potential hazards when it comes to electrical or plumbing or anything else.

Been removing lots of fan leaves from the POGs. I don't want to remove too many at once and stress them into herming, but I don't want to leave too many on which would reduce airflow and increase the chances of bud rot later on either...

A small number of the fan leaves of the coco bed plants have been yellowing... the fan leaves getting the most light. Veins and area closest to the veins yellowing first. (opposite of mag deficiency which yellows in the area between the veins I think?) I'll try to upload good photos of it this week.

I had been using tap water but switched to RO a week ago. Tap has been good to me but it's very alkaline despite it being under 0.2EC ... I end up having to use a huge amount of PH down.

Preferably in the future I'd get at least one 55 gallon drum, using that as the main res which feeds the controller bucket through a float valve. Currently the RO filter goes straight to the controller bucket float valve, meaning I have to add nutes daily to keep the ppms in the proper range.

Would be nice to be able to mix say 20% tap, 80% RO, with Jacks Hydro nutes in 55 gallon drums. More automation. Currently using Ionic... I like it but Jacks is much cheaper. Ionic is simple, one part... no hassle of getting ratios just right while I'm adding nutes every day.

 

[DabOnDabs]

I had a light issue mid flower, and have no hermies... It was on for 8 hours that it should have been off. Caught it first day. Good luck

 

[farmari]

Hi all, thanks for following this. I have photos for 30 days of 12/12.

Gnats have gone wild on this grow. I've been using a lot of fly traps and gnatrol, which usually keeps the numbers way down but this time is different.

I was using bad quality traps until 2-3 weeks ago, and the population boom happened around then.

I estimate that the traps have caught somewhere between one and ten thousand adults this month.

And I'm not happy with the growth rate of the last 10 days, although it has been okay. Twisty leaves on the POGs despite good PH and EC.

Back to tap water for now. Used RO water from day 18 to day 27 or so.

I pulled one of the AK48s in the left side coco bed because it seemed to be a hermie.

Some of the coco bed plants have stretched to about 4 feet.

I sprayed 350ml of Dutch Master Reverse combined with 3ml of Dutch Master Penetrator a week ago, then again a day ago. (after that timer malfunction)

Regarding the gnats, I guess next round I'm going to be using buckets only with a layer of sand or DE on top of the coir... I don't know.

Or else I'll switch to ebb/flow. DE, perlite, and turface are good PPK choices but I don't have the space or energy to screen turface and I don't want to use perlite or DE because of the dust. I could chain smoke a pack of cigs (I don't smoke) and it wouldn't bother my respiratory tract like one whiff of DE/perlite dust do....

Here is POG #1: (aka Seedsman Pot of Gold, aka Hindu Kush x Skunk #1)

POG #2:

The 4 clones of POG#1:

Left side coco bed with AK48 and Crystal:

Right side coco bed with Critical+ and AK48:

 

[farmari]

A closeup of POG1:

And of one of the POG1 clones:

The four AK48s and four Crystals have had quite a bit of variation from each other. Also I had to pull one AK48 because of hermie, and one of the Crystals is a runt (1ft tall while all the others are near 4ft)

The four Dinafem Critical+ have grown fairly similar in size and appearance. POG1 and POG2 are very similar too. The most vigorous plant has been one of the AK48s. (in the middle of the right side coco bed, with 4 Critical+ plants surrounding it in the bed)

 

[BrassNwood]

I'd upgrade your car visor sun shades to some real Mylar.. Did wonders for my Veg stage..
http://www.htgsupply.com/Category-Reflective-Mylar
Just my 2 cents.. BNW.. good looking babes all the same...

 

[farmari]

I'd upgrade your car visor sun shades to some real Mylar.. Did wonders for my Veg stage..
http://www.htgsupply.com/Category-Reflective-Mylar
Just my 2 cents.. BNW.. good looking babes all the same...

Brass I'm not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting putting mylar on the walls to replace the reflectix and white poly?

What do you think of Orca film? I think High Life 45 (a pro) did some tests and swore by it over other types of reflective film. If I was starting over I'd line the walls with Orca.

 

[flat9]

looks pretty awesome in there farms!

 

[farmari]

I added a layer of sand on top of all the coir. Couldn't reach a couple of the POG clones in the back right corner but covered the two beds and 4 of the 6 POGs. Saw a number of people recommending a top layer of sand or DE for battling gnats, supposedly providing a barrier that they adults cannot easily crawl through.

Here is a photo of one of the coco beds. Is this entire grow a castle made of sand? We shall see!

 

[otis33]

Lookin good farm

 

[otis33]

Maybe you could give chow mix a try in your ppk mine are loving it. It has the same qualities that I'm familiar with since I've only really grown in coco, but the clay pebbles help the buckets drain faster and I'm able to water more frequently.

 

[farmari]

40 days of 12/12:

Really not happy with the bud density. Usually at this stage my plants look a lot less healthy than this, but the buds are a lot denser. Maybe the genetics I was using before were unknowingly high yielders but I think the bad gnat problem probably really hampered the growth by week 4 or so. The plants growth during the first 3 weeks of 12/12 was great and the only thing that changed was a bad gnat outbreak.

Here is the right bed:

^ if you're wondering why this photo looks different from the rest, it's because a few lights were still on, and the light over this bed is a 600w MH while all the other lights are HPS.

Left bed:

Main cola of one of the Nirvana Crystal in the left bed:

And one of the AK48s on the left and the Crystal on the right of this photo:

Sorry, I really don't know how to use a camera.

 

[farmari]

Pog #1:

Pog #2:

Pog #2 closeup:

Pog #1 closeup:

And the Pog clones:

 

[flat9]

It looks pretty awesome in there to me. Maybe these POGs take a while longer to develop density?

 

[flat9]

Any updates?