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Getting Quality Buds

flyer81

Member
So obviously there is no simple formula for this but Im running out of things to control and just wondering if what I am hitting up against is just purely genetics.

I am running a dual light system with 600w in an XXL and a 1000w in a Raptor. Both are air cooled and the air is circulating independently of the room. It is all on 8" duct with an 8" fan (soon to be 10"). The hoods are right next to each other so as to allow for some overlap. I am currently using a bucket system, top feed, on a timer with 4 feedings a day. Medium is hydroton and growstone.

Plants are vegged for 2 months and when transplanted are appoximately 2 feet high and at after flowering are generally about 4 feet high. Have not had any issues there. I do a prretty good job of keeping nutes stable, change reservoir once a week, and so on. There is excellent air movement. Temps are a bit high because it is summer but otherwise it has not been a problem.

CO2 in the room is showing around 450 ppm and that is with no supplement, just constant air exchange.

My result was 6 - 4ft tall plants and only about a half lb of usable weed. Everything else was larf.

My one thing is that there is some light leakage from the veg room which I have heard can cause some larf. Can light leakage be THAT bad?

Any other ideas on upping quality? I have everything place for CO2 but with 2 lights in my room right now I cant get temps below 83 deg or so so if I turn on the generator it will go up. Considering that, would it be better to turn one light off or leave both lights on and forgo the CO2 enrichment until cooler weather returns?
 

Snype

Active member
Veteran
So obviously there is no simple formula for this but Im running out of things to control and just wondering if what I am hitting up against is just purely genetics.

I am running a dual light system with 600w in an XXL and a 1000w in a Raptor. Both are air cooled and the air is circulating independently of the room. It is all on 8" duct with an 8" fan (soon to be 10"). The hoods are right next to each other so as to allow for some overlap. I am currently using a bucket system, top feed, on a timer with 4 feedings a day. Medium is hydroton and growstone.

Plants are vegged for 2 months and when transplanted are appoximately 2 feet high and at after flowering are generally about 4 feet high. Have not had any issues there. I do a prretty good job of keeping nutes stable, change reservoir once a week, and so on. There is excellent air movement. Temps are a bit high because it is summer but otherwise it has not been a problem.

CO2 in the room is showing around 450 ppm and that is with no supplement, just constant air exchange.

My result was 6 - 4ft tall plants and only about a half lb of usable weed. Everything else was larf.

My one thing is that there is some light leakage from the veg room which I have heard can cause some larf. Can light leakage be THAT bad?

Any other ideas on upping quality? I have everything place for CO2 but with 2 lights in my room right now I cant get temps below 83 deg or so so if I turn on the generator it will go up. Considering that, would it be better to turn one light off or leave both lights on and forgo the CO2 enrichment until cooler weather returns?

I don't see 83 being all that bad. But when you say 83 where exactly is that in the room? If your canopy temperatures are considerably higher, then it can be one factor of your "larf".

Light leaks are never a good thing. I would get that fixed if I was in your position. Just a small leak can a lot of different things.

I see no talk on what genetics that you are running. There's so many strains and you might be growing a strain and pheno that is supposed to be more airy. You really need to pop a lot of seed to find what you are looking for but the problem is if you don't get your total environment in order then you you won't get the maximum potential of the strain. There are a lot of variables in a grow and you have to get them all in order and once you do that then you will know if the selection that you chose is correct for you.

I've popped a lot of seed in my day and I haven't found a lot of keepers that I would personally choose. Do a lot of research on what exactly you are looking for and then try and check out some documented grows. If your plants don't look somewhat similar to theirs, then obviously some of your variables are out of line.
 

Chillb

Member
My result was 6 - 4ft tall plants and only about a half lb of usable weed. Everything else was larf.

My one thing is that there is some light leakage from the veg room which I have heard can cause some larf. Can light leakage be THAT bad?

Light leaks are a severe problem. It can nearly ruin an otherwise perfect grow. Recently I had ran some nycdxsd clones with a light leak for nearly 3 weeks. These plants stretched to over 3 feet tall, but since the leak was fixed early enough yields didn't suffer. The exact same clones run without the leak, stayed under 16" tall. Forget the co2 for now ... get all leaks fixed asap and see what happens for you, you may be totally surprised.
 

flyer81

Member
The 83 is from a sensor hanging down at canopy height. Supposedly im running blue dream. I got the clones from an acquaintance when I first started. Ive been running clones off of the 1st two cuts I got ever since. The buds Im getting now a year later are WAY better than what was produced on my first crop but still not something marketable to a dispensary. And thats where I want to go.

I just took my first clones the other day off of some skywalker and skywalker og I popped from seeds. I also currently have atomic haze, white lightning, and lemon haze in seedling stages. So, I guess then I am on the right track. These are the first seeds Ive ever popped so its a new experience all around. I guess I just wanted to see if there was anything I might be missing outside of having environment under control.
 

flyer81

Member
Light leaks are a severe problem. It can nearly ruin an otherwise perfect grow. Recently I had ran some nycdxsd clones with a light leak for nearly 3 weeks. These plants stretched to over 3 feet tall, but since the leak was fixed early enough yields didn't suffer. The exact same clones run without the leak, stayed under 16" tall. Forget the co2 for now ... get all leaks fixed asap and see what happens for you, you may be totally surprised.


Wow, so that is very interesting. And that is what I was wondering too. Was a minor light leak that big of a deal? But apparently it is.
 

Chillb

Member
Mine came from the red power button on my 6 plug power strip ... grow area at the time was 2ft by 2ft.
 

flyer81

Member
And that was enough to make them stretch? Right now I am using a curtain between the veg and flower spaces. And lets just say it doesnt hang perfectly to seal the light out from the veg space on 24 hours. So some light from my T5s gets through. Enough to see what youre doing if navigating the flower room at night.
 

Snype

Active member
Veteran
And that was enough to make them stretch? Right now I am using a curtain between the veg and flower spaces. And lets just say it doesnt hang perfectly to seal the light out from the veg space on 24 hours. So some light from my T5s gets through. Enough to see what youre doing if navigating the flower room at night.

To make sure you get no light at all in your flowering room. When your Flowering lights shut off, go into the Flowering room for 10-20 minutes and just wait. Let your eyes adjust to that because it takes a while for your eyes. If you see any light, you have a problem. Yes, even the small light on your power strip can harm your plants.
 
B

BasementGrower

if ur doing 4 plants.. u should be lollipoppin and LST or screening them to get a good yield.. honestly.. spread them out.. and genetics are a big thing bro.. wen I first did a grow wen I was like 17 I used bagseed.. it wasn't bad but wen I got REAL genetics.. I saw a boost in quality and yield dependin on strains.

theres a few things that will make or break a grow..

u have Environment... Lights... Nutes... Veg Time... Genetics...
if u can get 4 of the 5 things perfect u can grow great buds.. but by dialing in all 5 things together.. ull get Amazing buds.. but if u have everything but good genetics.. u could actualy come out with some ehh ok buds. but usually unless u pull the seeds out of an amazing bag of bud.. u aren't going to get anything special.

then u have half done ... the other half is the dry and cure..
 
C

-Capfan-

if you can see your hand about 2 ft in front of you in the dark room, its no good, also, black tape over outlets as already suggested..


i even put a "Flap" Over my Thermostat, it turns on a Green LED when night hits.



I just watched a friend shrug off a light leak, hell i even told him about it...Shrugged it off, 4 weeks later, seeds!

Guess what?


He wrapped that shit so tight no light leaks...Funny how one has to trip over themselves first..
 

joe guy

Member
I'm not if its an "old saying" or not but I have all ways said "it has to happen once to NEVER happen again" I ended up with a few holes from the neighbor kids air soft rifle in my shed was wondering why I had 6 ft plants that I had chopped two ft off the top and 2 weeks later back to the roof and throwing single blades so yeha 5 pin holes in my shed fucked me over big time and it was a 13 weeker so much time and money on pg&e nutes and 9 weeks for nothing but larf and leaf
 

Karmic Farmer

Active member
Veteran
Lollipop those gals prior to flowering as someone said above. Strip them girls at least halfway up and you'll have much more, better quality buds, light penetration is the key. I've found that smaller plants being lollipoped will yield you better with buds from the top to bottom being stellar.
Genetics probably plays the biggest part in what is possible with the plant.

Peace,
KF
 

Yes4Prop215

Active member
Veteran
cant really tell what your problem is from no pics...

the heat could be really high which is causing the airy larfy buds. high heat will always reduce bud quality no matter what.

you could have also done a bad job at training/pruning. with zero training or pruning your yields will always suffer. i saw my yield increase 25% easily once i started using trellis nets and the weaving technique.

the genetics could be crap as well...blue dream is a massive yielder and with 1600 watts you should be getting at least 3lbs.

light leaks will mess with your grow but not totally reduce yield that much, it has to be another issue.
 

flyer81

Member
I just went down to home depot and purchased a new door. Going to install it over the next few days although I am at week 7 so its impact will probably be minimal.

The higher temps has only really been an issue in the last 2 weeks now that summer is in full effect. Otherwise the room was stable at the high 60s in winter, and mid 70s all spring long.
 

flyer81

Member
The plants are getting a mix of FIM, and LSTing. They are also tied down to spread out the lower branches. I am adding an icebox in the next couple days to hopefully help keep the room temps down. In the next week I am going to also add in wort chillers to circulate the cold water through the reservoirs as well so as to lower the res temperatures.
 

flyer81

Member
Well for the first time I would say I feel like I have the environment under control now.

In the last few days I changed out the 8" fan I was using to push air through the lights and put in 10" Elicent. I then took that 8" fan and added that onto the intake for the room which up to this point had been a passive intake. I also added an 8" icebox with another 8" fan which is tied into a 50 gallon reservoir. The res is circulated through a 1/4" chiller. It is also what is being pumped through my tankless water heater to generate CO2.

So now the ice box stays running 24 hours a day, I have the intake and exhaust tied into the humidity with my controller and the Co2 is taken care of by the controller itself too. Temp in room maxes out at around 84" now and night time tempoerature is around 75". Perfect. Not if it just stays this way through august and september...

I also put in a whole new door between my veg room and flowering room and added an intake and outake duct through the door to allow for air exchange. Alot less light is coming into the flowering room at night but there is still a little bit of light coming through around the edges. Going to have to work on that some more but its a lot less light than was coming through before. Without the green LEDs from my controller I would not be able to see my hand in front of my face. Its that dark in there now.

Im going to try and do the PPK eventually but for right now it is better for me to just move forward with what I am doing now. At least now I have my environment under full control. I can exchange the air in the room rapidly now. The temperature is under relative control even with the intake/exhaust turned off. And with all of that under control I am now CO2 enriched as well.

We'll see how things go with the next batch of flowering plants.
 

Chillb

Member
Cool man sounds like you got a LOT fixed up, on the door ... use weather stripping to button up the light "leaks" around it. Been using it since '94, simple, cheap, and effective. Good luck on your next round!
 

flyer81

Member
It seems everything is working as expected. A lot of these changes were made in the last 3 weeks of flowering and despite a pump dying and the girls not being fed for a couple of days, I still ended up yielding some of the densest nugs Ive made to date. Still lots of larf though. I reset everything and moved 8 plants into flowering now with the new improvements and everything is looking good. In the coming week I plan to upgrade my RDWC system with 1.5" PVC for the drain and 1.25" PVC for the feed with 3/4" vinyl tubing branching off of the PVC to each bucket. That along with a move from a 500gph pump to an 1800 gph pump and the changeover in solution will increase dramatically. At the same time I am moving form a 20 gallon res to a 50 gallon res. With all of the improvements, over the next 10 weeks its going to be my best show yet.
 

mrwags

********* Female Seeds
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Wow, so that is very interesting. And that is what I was wondering too. Was a minor light leak that big of a deal? But apparently it is.

It's like trying to sleep next to a construction yard.


Best way to explain it I guess.


Be Well
Mr Wags
 
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