The little things add up. Boosting your yield beyond 1g/watt

Dankblueberries said:

A lot of these little things get underestimated when growing. If you ad them all up you can see, they actually make a big difference. A small change that effects your yield just 5% can mean $1000's of dollars depending on how many lights you are running. If you spend the money, you will make it back tenfold.

Get rid of the lens on your light and buy an air conditioner. The only application that I would use vented hoods was if my ceiling height was too low(below 7') or if there was absolutely now way I could integrate an air conditioner into the system, which is rare. The lens on the vented hoods take out 5% of the light, and that is if they are perfectly clean. What a pain in the ass to clean all those lenses! I have seen some people put filters on the intake, to keep them clean, but I am sure dust still settles on the lens within a week, and all of a sudden you are losing 10% of your light. You will need about 3000 btu's of cooling per 1000 watt, depending on your local climate. Not only will your plants enjoy the consistent temps, the humidity is reduced somewhat also.

Use CO2 and a CO2 controller. Obvious right? A lot of people do not believe the difference it makes. Once you get the air conditioner, you can keep your room a closed system and get the CO2 levels up to 1300-1500 ppm. BOOM!

If your water starts out above 100 ppm from the tap, get a reverse osmosis system with a large storage tank, with a float valve. The R.O. system gets the water down to almost 0 ppm. How much this makes a difference, I can't say for sure, but think about it. If you are limited to raising your fertilizer concentration to 1200-1400 ppm, and you are starting at say 200 ppm from your tap, that means you can only put in 200 ppm less fertilizer than you can with a R.O. setup. That is over 10% less, which theoretically is 10% less medicine. (10% less money for the financially motivated) You will need to add a calcium/magnesium supplement.

Get new bulbs every 2-3 cycles. Once again, spend the money and it will pay you back more in the end. I buy eye hortilux in bulk and get them for 70$ each.

In hydroponics, adjust your ph and tds in your res daily. My theory is, if your ph and tds are up and down too much, your little girls will be spending too much energy and time adjusting to the constantly changing levels, as apposed to no change. Smooth sailing!

I even blow this one off occasionally, but I am always punished. Prune all the lower "sucker" branches near the bottom. You can tell which ones should be cut off by feeling how stiff the stems are compared to the others around it. If it is really weak than it is sucky more than it is beneficial. Clearing all this stuff out, also gets ventilation underneath the plant, which has many advantages.

These all seem like little advantages. They all seem to appeal to our self-inherent laziness, so you blow it off. But like life it self, little advantages are what its all about.

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Bongstar420 said:

Concern over 5% yield means its time to get out of the game. This is what people growing corn are concerned with. I don't mean this in the sense that you have multiple factors adding up to 50%. I mean you literally only have that 5-10% left to "try and win" The more you are concerned with this small amount, the more likely your charging too little and your operation is too bloated.

Do you really want growing pot to be like growing corn and wheat?

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