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CFL Perpetual Grow

G

Guest

Hello everyone,
I’ve been growing my own for a few years now with a simple perpetual CFL setup in a closet. The space is small, 2’ x 2’ x 5’ for flowering and 1’ x 1.5’ x 2’ for vegging. I flower 3 plants at a time with 10 day intervals between them. 2 clones are taken from each plant when the buds start to show and placed in veg for about a month. I keep the stronger of the two and discard the other. This setup yields about .5 ounces every 3 weeks.

The strains I currently grow are SAGE from TH Seeds, Blueberry from DP and Blackberry from SD. Their grown in Canna Coco and Perlite {70/30) and watered by hand with Canna Coco nutes. The veg is under a 42w Blue CFL and the flowering is under 210w Red Cfls. The lights are positioned about 2” above the plants.
Shaman

Blackberry

Blueberry

Sage

Clones
 
Reverend Willis

Reverend Willis

Member
CFL Shaman said:
I flower 3 plants at a time with 10 day intervals between them. 2 clones are taken from each plant when the buds start to show and placed in veg for about a month. I keep the stronger of the two and discard the other. This setup yields about .5 ounces every 3 weeks.
Click to expand...

Hey Shaman. Glad to see another CFL grower. My setup is very close in size to yours. My vegbox is 1' x 1' x 1' and the flowerbox is 4' x 1' x 3.' I have 100w of cfls in the vegbox and (2) 125w red spectrum cfls in the flowerbox. I'm also trying to do a perpetual garden. This is my 2nd grow after 15 years away from these agricultural pursuits. Here's my thread http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=25631

Lemme see if I understand your cloning - you are taking clones off of one of your female plants that has recently showed her sex?
Next, you veg it for a month and then throw it back into flower?
How far along into flowering can you take a successful clone?
How large a pot do you use to grow your clones?
Thanks for the info
Rev



 
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G

Guest

Hi RW,

I take clones when the buds start to show from the lower branches. I know their sex since I only have females. I place the clones in plain water and wait for roots to develop. It takes about 2-3 wks for roots to show, then I put them in 4" pots for a couple weeks before moving them into flower. When the buds start to show on them, I start the process all over agian.

I found placing the clones in plain water is the best way togo. The cuttings don't wilt and roots seem to always develop. It just takes alittle longer. Hope this info helps.
Good luck with your grow.
Shaman

By the way, Nice Blueberry pic. My blueberry is from Dutch Passion and it seems to have odd branching, nothing is uniform. What breeder did you get your blueberry from?
 
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M

Makavellian

Member
hey cfl shaman. looks like ya got everythin in check man. you ever thought about hanging your lights horizontally? better light distribution and more light for the plants always a plus lol. lookin forward to see them buddin up realll nicee. Keepi it Up.
 
G

Guest

Here are some updated pics.

The Blackberry buds are starting to get frosty @ 30 Days.


Here are pics of the Blueberry clone I took 10 days ago. It was placed in plain tap water which I changed every 3 days or so. You can see the root starting to develop. The larger leaves will also begin to yellow slightly when the plant begins to grow roots. I will move it to coco in a few days after the roots develop alittle more.
Shaman


 
Reverend Willis

Reverend Willis

Member
Gardening

Gardening

Hey, Shaman. The clone picture is a nice one. So, when you put it in the tap water, you don't need to cut the leaves back like some methods show (obviously not). You take a cutting and scrape a portion of the clone for roots and that's it. Pretty slick. I guess that's the way it was done before the invention of root gel/powder/anti-perspirant/fertilizer. Simple works best, I've found.

After you have vegged the clones for a few weeks in the 4" pots, do you transplant again when they go 12s? If so, how big a pot do you jump up to?

The blueberry you asked about is Blue Mystic from Nirvana. I think I posted the pic "a sea of frosty blueberries" without telling the strain. I found out here at IC that Blue Mystic is Blueberry X Skunk... not sure which Skunk... there are many. 3/4 of my seedlings were girls and there are 2 distinct phenos - short and tall. Other growers of blue mystic also note that the tall pheno really smells of blueberries when touched. I want to put a few hunks of those in my cornflakes in the morning. The short pheno smells more like you snorted a can of citrus-flavored lighter fluid. I found some old threads and there are a lot of repeat growers of this strain. After reading some procedures on re-vegging plants, I'd like to try that too.
Rev :cool:

Here's a pic of the short pheno.

This is all 3. The short one is out front and the 2 tall ones are in the cabinet behind.
 
G

Guest

Hi Rev,
When you take a cutting, use a razor blade and make a 45 degree cut and place it in the water. The end of the cutting should be placed in water that covers about 1" from the bottom. You'll have better success if there is atleast 2 nodes above the cut.

I keep them in the 4" pots until there roots grow nice and strong. About 2-3 weeks. I move them to 10" pots when they go into the flower cab and finish them. Because I use CFLs, I increase the light penatration by trimming away the smaller leaves to expose more buds to the light.

Nirvana has nice strains. I did a few grows with their NLxHZ strain. Here is a pic of a grow I did awhile back using a differnt CFL setup. This strain just kept growing in height throughtout the flowering cycle. I ended up with 4.5' plants @ harvest.
Shaman

Nirvana NLxHZ
 
muddy waters

muddy waters

Active member
as for cloning in water, i admit that i don't use a sterilized razor, but here in my tropical clime i have never successfully cloned this way. i always get some sort of fungus such as pithium or a bacterial slime develops and the plant ends up wilting from the top. it is true though that this way of cloning works, but i'd hardly call it the best way due to the time involved, the exposure to airborne disease, and the necessity of changing the water. a bubbling cloner, on the other hand, eliminates all these--the only catch is the electricity you have to use, which is pretty minimal.

just my two cents

BTW i also will be growing under CFLs (first time i'll be using them to flower). my space is a tiny 1.5'x1.5' footprint, and i'll be using (2) 30 watt 2700K and (2) 42 watt 6400K which give me a total of about 2600 lumens per sq foot. i'm looking forward to the results.

cheers CFLers
 
G

Guest

Hi Muddy,
It sounds like your grow environment is the problem. You should try and find a clean area to set your grow up in. I would recommend using bottled water for your clones if you have a problem with your tap water. I would also recommend you use an ionizer to keep the air in your grow clean and circulating. I put a small one right in the closet I grow in. Good luck with your grow.
Shaman
 
Maj.PotHead

Maj.PotHead

End Cannibis Prohibition Now Realize Legalize !!
Mentor
Veteran
nice cfl grow shaman have ya considered tying the leaves with twisty ties or use a coated paperclip to pull leaf aside instead of cuting them off for better light penertration. the more healthy leaves on the plant the more bud you'll harvest even a yellow leaf offers the plant something during lights out. the only leaves i remove are the dead ones that pull off with a very gentle tug if i feel any resistance i leave it just a thought. very very nice cfl hydro
 
Maj.PotHead

Maj.PotHead

End Cannibis Prohibition Now Realize Legalize !!
Mentor
Veteran
muddy waters said:
as for cloning in water, i admit that i don't use a sterilized razor, but here in my tropical clime i have never successfully cloned this way. i always get some sort of fungus such as pithium or a bacterial slime develops and the plant ends up wilting from the top. it is true though that this way of cloning works, but i'd hardly call it the best way due to the time involved, the exposure to airborne disease, and the necessity of changing the water. a bubbling cloner, on the other hand, eliminates all these--the only catch is the electricity you have to use, which is pretty minimal.

just my two cents

BTW i also will be growing under CFLs (first time i'll be using them to flower). my space is a tiny 1.5'x1.5' footprint, and i'll be using (2) 30 watt 2700K and (2) 42 watt 6400K which give me a total of about 2600 lumens per sq foot. i'm looking forward to the results.

cheers CFLers
Click to expand...
How much light do I need? Technology has advanced so much in the last 15 years that we are constantly refining the process and updating what we know works best for growing. Current theory holds that the minimum amount of lighting needed to sustain growth is around 2000 lumens per square foot. Mid range is around 5000 lumens per square foot. Optimal is 7000-7500, or higher, lumens per square foot.

taken from here the whole artical http://www.marijuana.com/Bible.php?loc=22&id=1
 
muddy waters

muddy waters

Active member
CFLShaman--actually i do my cloning in the kitchen on a shelf above the kitchen sink. i think there are a lot of airborne pathogens everywhere here, due to climate. could also be that i never sterilize anything.

Maj--yeah, some people even claim that there are "low light" strains that produce better without the brightest light. i don't know if there's ever been any serious research into this, and just logically the photysynthetic equation is pretty basic to understand: more CO2 more light = more growth. but i remain interested in these anomalies... I heard that the nepalese strain from reeferman is one of them. who knows?

light spectrum also has pretty definite effects on efficiency, so lumens in green wavelength, for instance, don't do the job like those in red and blue do. i think CFLs fall in a good range for cannabis, though i also know that great effects can be had using just an off-the-shelf hardware store HPS bulb, for instance, which must be rated at 2000K or close (?)

anyway for those of us working on the micro level, and conscious about energy usage, the laws of physics don't really allow much above the 5K/sq ft range... just too much heat, not to mention the larger CFLs aren't tiny.

peace,
 
G

Guest

Hi guys,
I buy my CFLs at Home Depot. There $8 bucks each for 42w red cfls 2700k. They hardly emit any heat. For the clones I use a 42w blue 6500k. Each bulb puts out 2400 lumens. I use to use envirolites, but there too expensive so I switched to the home depots.

Maj,
I do use twist ties for the branches and only trim smaller leaves, leaving the fan leaves alone.
Shaman
 
ogrefugee

ogrefugee

Official Tree Taster
Veteran
looks good dude.

used to be a cfl grower myself, they do have their benefits...

/mumbles something about a micro forum
 
muddy waters

muddy waters

Active member
Maj -- all due respect, but CFL's give off a shitload of heat. if you vent properly, and get some airlow over the bulbs themselves, their design gives them a lot of superficial area and thus the heat can be dissipated more easily... but that doesn't change the fact that if you leave a 42w CFL on for even 1-2 hours it's going to be too hot to touch. not the ballast so much at the base but the bulb itself.

just FWIW... i find that this is the major misconception about fluoro (both tubes and CFL), that they somehow produce less heat. actually, per watt, they produce more heat than HPS. i just finished tearing down a cab that was using 8 T-8 tubes, 32w each, because i couldn't ventilate the fucker adequately... the heat buildup near the middle was insane.
 
G

Guest

too true muddy waters.

the other thing is that many people try to run their lights as cool as possible, and wind up killing the lumen output. i'm lucky enough to own a very good light meter, and i can assure you guys that you don't want to be running those cfl's (or hid's) at a lower temp than what they were made for, the idea is just to prevent them from over-heating. i tested this a 23w cfl, and the output was halved by one small pc fan running at 9 volts, blowing on it from one foot away. so try to get a cheap thermometer and make sure you're getting the most from your lights.

CFL Shaman, nice grow.
 
G

Guest

Hi everyone,
I thought I would post some updated pics. The only thing I've changed is that I transplanted the clone with roots to coco and started to add Cannas PK 13/14 to the Blackberry. It should be ready in about 2-3 weeks so I use the PK 13/14 for about 5 days to help the buds fillout. I will begin to flush with plain water in a week or so.

Thanks for the info Sat, I have a small ionizer I use, but it does not blow directly on the grow. I use it more for circulation and odor control.
Shaman

Blackberry

Blackberry Bud

Sage

Blueberry

Clones
 
G

Guest

hi Shaman, let me say that your plants are looking good.
i plan to get an ionizer for my micro cab, i would like to find out from you if one unit would be enough to suppress the stink of about four small flowering plants.
 
G

Guest

Hi Sat,
One small ionizer is plenty for a small grow. Sage for me has the strongest oders when it gets close to the finish. I also use a can of Naturalmagic, an oder absorbing gel that that works for about 3 months and completly rids the grow of any oders.
Shaman
 
G

Guest

Here are some pics of the flower cab and plant tops.
Shaman

Flower Cab




Blackberry


Blueberry


Sage
 
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