Different strains, lotta' plants, lotta' stuff goin' on, lotta "oh shits"

Hey peeps I tried to make a journal before but failed at keeping it updated. Im gonna try my best to do things different this pass! Anywho-

I have a lot going on (well a lot for me atleast) and would love input from people, pointers, criticism...whatever. Ive been growing for about 3 years now and I know I have a lot to learn still so here I go.

I have four mothers:

G13 Pineapple express
G13 Gigabud
DNA Genetics Sour Cream
Barneys Farm Big Budda Cheese
(with some original G13 Haze on the way)

Pics left to right:
veg tent with leds on light rail
mom tent with newly root clones in solo cups
Mom plants
Flower tent


The moms supply my depend, I harvest 5 plants every week. I have a total of three tents to support my grow which are laid out a lil something like this.

Tents Uno or 1 is 2x4x6 ft and thats where my moms live, my clone machine hangs out at and where my newly rooted clones chill. Its lit by a 126w HGL LED and a 64w T5.

Tent 2 is 4x4x6 ft and is used as my veg tent, its packing 360w of LEDs on a light rail.

Tent 3 is 5x10x6.5 ft and is my ball bustin flower chamber! Its juiced up by 2-1k lights in air cooled lids.

So it looks like this-cuttings are placed in cloner for 14 days, from there they are placed in solo cups and vegged for 2 weeks, from there they are planted in 2 gallon grow bags and veg under the leds on the light rail for 2 more weeks, and from there they go into the flower tent for nine weeks. I add 5 plants every 7 days and harvest 5 plants every 7 days, everything is in a row if you visualize and works it way down week by week.

Pics left to right
Veg tent with leds on light rail
mom tent with newly rooted clones in solo cups and areo cloner
mother plants
flower tent

great setup.

I started out with the mindset of being completely organic, so I made my own soil following the organics section and just couldnt get it to work out for me. All my plants were hit with problems so I converted back over to pure coco and perlite.

It takes time to phase out the soil, about 14 weeks from the time the first 5 clones were put into coco. But once I start harvesting the plants grown in coco I hope for 1 to 1.5oz per plant.

Im using Advanced Nutrients and Fox farms primarily. I was a General Hydroponics fan before but tried out Advanced version of a 3 part base and found it to be much more pH stable. So I use AN with Fox Farm beastie bloomz and a calmag supp. by general organics as my bloom nutrients. As different weeks approach and pass I use things like Gravity or Overdrive or bud candy during the 9wk flower cycle.

For everything on the veg side I still use General Hydroponics three part because I find it the best for veg and just have a lot of it left before I phase it out. I keep pH 6.0 and ppm varies from 400-1100ppm depending on growth week.

All the plants in flower are fed by a drip irrigation system I crafted. Plants im weeks 1-5 are hooked up to their own 25 gal resv. and plants in weekd 6-9 are on their own 25g resv. I do this to give me control over feeding demands for the different stages of growth.

I have a ro/di filter that fills a 50g tote which is controlled automatically by a float valve which is really damn nice.

I built my own aeroponic cloner just to see if it worked well. I used to use rapid rooters but grew tired of having to buy a 20.00 bag every 4 weeks. Aero cloning is nice because it doesnt have any upkeep costs. I recently ordered a 25 site areo cloner because my 8 sight hand built cloner wont be able to keep up with the demand.

So at all times I have plants in veg and flower. I just repeat everything every 7 days which allows me to harvest every 7 days.

I hope once I get to my coco grown plants I will hit my goal of 1 to 1.5oz per plant but Im fairly confident 1oz will happen easily (you think that is realistic?)
UUUmmmmmmm I think that is all I can think of right now. If you got anything for me feel free to post it up! I know some of you folks can give me pointers

Cool system you've got running. How do you like those Air-pots in your flowering tent?

-Funk

FunkBomb said:

Cool system you've got running. How do you like those Air-pots in your flowering tent?

-Funk

Click to expand...

You know they have their pros and cons.

They are real sturdy pots, they dont bend or flex like the fabric type air pots and they wont rip like the fabric kind.

You can grow larger plants using these pots also. I have .9L smart pots in my veg tent and clones get triple the size when compared to plants in solo cups.

Its also pretty cool looking underneath and seeing the massive root structure throughout the entire surface area of soil exposed.

They also make transplanting easy with any size plant. You remove two plastic lock keys and the pot literally unwraps from around the plant.

The bad things about them are few and will only effect some applications.

One being they are messy. When you move them about soil falls out all the holes and gets everywhere. Most folks dont move their plants as much as mine move around so that wouldnt really be an issue.

Secondly they are tedious to water. You have to go very slowly so the water does not pool up other wise it runs right out of the holes onto the floor.

Lastly they are the most $$ out of all air pots on the market. That is because they are built out of a very strong recycled ABS plastic that with care, could last a life time.

Very solid pots and they look pretty cool IMO. I want to run a conventional grow with a nice 5-6wk veg to see what these pots can really do compared to regular pots.

I know they work as advertised though because when I open them up for transplanting the root density is dense, health, and pearly white. No spiraling of the roots like you would see in a conventional pot. The roots literally look like a woven web.

Cheers

What week during flower would you guys say stretching stops?

med.indoor grow first timer

med.indoor grow first timer

benny very nice and i dig ur 3piece set up.good job keep it going

shorty68 said:

benny very nice and i dig ur 3piece set up.good job keep it going

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Thanks for the good vibes bro! The tents are real nice, I couldnt grow with out them. Once C02 come into the equation, the tents will save me on cost of operation because they seal up well and are relatively small in sq. ft.

Peace bro and thanks for stopping by!

Hey everyone sorry for the slack Ive just been real busy with my job and then this. Between the two it consumes the entire day, literally.

Lot of stuff going on and only having automated watering on my plants in bloom makes for a lot of maintenance in my veg department.

My drip heads in the bloom tent are 2gph. Plants in weeks 1-2 get 60 seconds every day.

Plants in weeks 3-7 get three minutes everyday.

I have two resv. and two individual pumps on different timers so I can tweak watering frequency just a little bit. It can never be perfect when you have an auto drip with different plants in different phases of growth but does the job instead of me

Plants are looking good but Im still constantly tweaking things as I go because the biggest difficultly is having multiple strains on the same feeding schedule.

I took some pics of overall. Watcha think?

Pic order Left to Right
Veg plants in weeks 1 and 2. Week 1 being closet to you, week 2 further. 360w LED on light rail
Mother plants
25 sire Aroe cloner
cloner roots
Bloom pics week 7

nice, very nice........ tell me how you feel about your LEDs? i picked up the same unit a week or so ago. i dont think its going to impress me. currently switched up my hps to cmh and am noticing some improvements. dont you think you would get better production useing s.o.g. method ? 50 to 100 ea. cycle, you have the space.
best of luck, ur doin good !

as far as stretching, ea. variety is different.
i have noticed, about the time i start to worry about the stretching, it stops and SWELLS.
i dont think you have anything to worry about

Lookin good Benny. I here what you're saying about the airpots, definitely a love hat relationship. I have 11 strains so I also agree with the hassles of dripppers, that's why I'm moving over to Tropf Blumats to do my watering. Each plant gets watered per its requirement.
Keep up the good work.

deadpup said:

nice, very nice........ tell me how you feel about your LEDs? i picked up the same unit a week or so ago. i dont think its going to impress me. currently switched up my hps to cmh and am noticing some improvements. dont you think you would get better production useing s.o.g. method ? 50 to 100 ea. cycle, you have the space.
best of luck, ur doin good !

Click to expand...

Whats up bro?

You know SOG isnt bad, I just dont like the fact of having down time. With a single large count SOG you have to let everything bloom out...that takes X amount of time but generally 9 weeks. So for 9 weeks (not including short veg) I wouldnt be harvesting. Granted I may harvest 2-2.5lbs after those nine weeks which is great but with what I have now Ill be averaging 5 zips a week. So 5zips X 9weeks is 45ounces/16oz in a lb=2.8lbs roughly in that same 9 week period.

Plus I think I get be better light penetration this way. With you conventional sog you should have an even canopy because that is desirable, but light isnt able to makes its way down the base.

With what I do each row of plants is a little shorter then the row in front allowing light to reach down to the base because there isnt a dense canopy cover.

All in all though I cant say one way is more efficient then the other. I just like the busyness of everything I have going on because I get to harvest every week!

lokes said:

Lookin good Benny. I here what you're saying about the airpots, definitely a love hat relationship. I have 11 strains so I also agree with the hassles of dripppers, that's why I'm moving over to Tropf Blumats to do my watering. Each plant gets watered per its requirement.
Keep up the good work.

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Hey man!

You know I would love to have those Tropf Blumats! Then I wouldnt need pumps or timers but I can not find an online source that sells just the drippers. I dont need the balcony kits, just 50 Tropf Blumats drippers. You know any good online vendors?

Thanks for reminding me about those, I think they could fix my problems!

Do you know if the are cleanable? I mean I will be running nutes the through and that makes deposit build up.

Thanks again dude!

Bennyweed1 said:

Hey man!

You know I would love to have those Tropf Blumats! Then I wouldnt need pumps or timers but I can not find an online source that sells just the drippers. I dont need the balcony kits, just 50 Tropf Blumats drippers. You know any good online vendors?

Thanks for reminding me about those, I think they could fix my problems!

Do you know if the are cleanable? I mean I will be running nutes the through and that makes deposit build up.

Thanks again dude!

Click to expand...

Never mind I found some....check these out, the ceramic is much more deep. I think this would be much more accurate then shorter visions. http://waytogrow.net/store/product/3705/Tropf-Blumat-Maxi/

I got some more pics to share.

I have 25 more days until I start harvesting every 7 days. Im pretty excited!! Im guessing the first 3 rows will be about 4 ounces total but the rows to follow will be in the 5s. Just the process of tweaking and dialing in.

The pic of the solo plant in the airpot is a Pineapple express which im using to test my organic soil. So far the plant is thriving and kicking ass, I have done nothing but watered her with plain H20. She is about 3 weeks into veg and is my test plant, if I can get here to produce from start to finish with nothing but water then I have found my soil recipe. That will make my life so much easier! Only having to drip all 45 plants in flower with plain H20, not hand mix 25 gallons of nutrients a week. woohoo I supercropped her today so she will really bush out in the days to follow!