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A PPK for a 12 Plant Limit

SuperWeed

Member
Hi guys. It's been a long time since I posted. All my rep is gone, I can't edit my posts and my life has changed dramatically. It's been a bumpy ride.

Let me start with an intro. Hi, I'm SuperWeed, formerly StrainWhore. I used to post a lot, finally coming out of the shadows of the closet after OverGrow was taken down.

I learned so much from you guys... SoQuick, Heath Robinson, Delta9, Spurr, Res and Head, my old buddy Neptune... so many. I too used to share the knowledge, doing what I could to help other newbies (you might remember my Washing Machine Hash Thread). Then I got busted. I deleted my handle (StrainWhore) and fell off the forums. I lurked, but until now, have not posted.

In July 2009, my brother-in-law turned me in for growing. He blamed me for his divorce from my sister. I'm certain he felt justified in his actions, but he caused his divorce, not I.

In 2010, my pregnant wife and I were sentenced to prison for a year. We bonded out on appeal after two weeks in the county. The day of sentencing, my wife was bleeding vaginally. We had only just found out she was pregnant. She wasn't supposed to be able to have children, as she has a thyroid condition. This baby was a surprise after 10+ years of marriage. She was given NO medical attention in county jail. I am genuinely surprised more people don't die from lack of care in the county jail system. SO, she just rested. For two weeks, she watched TV and laid on her rack. It turns out, she also has a blood condition (I had to give her a shot every day of her pregnancy), and had she not been forced to rest, she might have lost the baby, as had happened, in the past. "Who knows what is good, or what is bad?" - Zen

In 2011, we lost our appeal and on Tax day, when our son was two months old, we went to prison.

The judge would not grant judicial release to myself or my wife. I only tried once, she tried 3 times. She kept up her milk production, right until the very end. You see, since the baby was born, she couldn't take him into prison. We were forced to grant guardianship to some old friends. Friends who neglected our poor little man (he hated his swing when we got home). We transferred guardianship to another older couple, new friends, but angels from God. They loved our son until we came home.

In prison, I didn't see my boy for 4 months, until he was 6 months old. He didn't recognize me. That was a hard day. Luckily my wife got to see him about once a week, but she was not allowed to change him or breastfeed him. When I say the system is broken, I am telling you, the f****** system is broken.

When we got out of prison, I got a job making $8 an hour slinging bags of mulch. Luckily, I had worked out a lot in prison. Obviously $8 an hour, didn't cut it. And I had only popped off one 10+ 5 light show before Fat Camp. (prison, I lost 35lb). The partner on that deal also cut me off while I was in prison. Stole my equipment. So I cashed out everything I had, found a friend with a basement and set up shop. Right back to work. Foolish. I had no choice.

Starting back up on limited funds is difficult. I was used to popping off 3lb a week at $4k. Making so much money I could "DO WHAT I WANT!". I tried every stupid line of fertilizer, every growing method, every bottle of snake oil. I have run everything, scientifically, side by side. But as Brian Tracy would say - "if you can't save money, then you do not have the seeds of greatness within you"

So I figured out better ways of doing things. Fewer, bigger plants. Better canopy maintenance, etc. My main focus was on getting to a legal state, where I could grow 12 plants, all by myself. The guy I was working with wouldn't water the plants... Cost us tens of thousands of dollars and I could no longer afford to work with him 50/50. It was a bad break, where I literally walked away. And started over. I had another identical location set up, before I walked. Always be prepared.

I took on an apprentice who was great,,, for a while. Then the pills took over. He cost us a lot of money.

He was replaced with a young man I will affectionately call "Junior", because he was great.

This second show was simply meant to get down to one plant per light. I went through so much evolution. Harvesting a crop weekly has allowed me to gain infinitely more experience in a shorter period of time. After 16 years, I have literally grown over 700 independent harvests. I had my largest confirmed (I will explain in a minute) harvest trying to get to Michigan. 50 ounces and a few grams. 4 plants squared off, surrounding a light, canopy heavily managed. 2 PimpSlaps (I miss her) and 2 I can't remember. The 2 PimpSlaps weighed over a pound a piece and the other two made up the difference. Had they all 4 been PimpSlap, then it would have been 4 pounds. There is no doubt in my mind that 4lb's is possible using an old-school Hortilux.

After tons of tests, trials and errors; a year of preparation, this grow was loaded into the back of a U-Haul truck and driven 3 hours to the new legal home in Michigan. And so the evolution of my methodology was finally coming to fruition.

I built this legal grow with the following rules firmly in place:

1. I am only allowed 12 plants (later increased, thankfully to 24)

2. 3lb A WEEK. Going from harvesting 48 plants a week down to harvesting just 1.

3. I can only be there part-time. 2 days a week, tops. The show must be run by an inexperienced 20 year old. "Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it." - Peter Lynch (That idiot was me, my apprentice was a God-Send.)

4. I have next to no money, due to previous failures with partners and employees.

5. The manufacturing output has to be the same every time. There is no room for failure. 0. Zilch. Nada.

A Pipe Dream some said. F*** them.

I did it.

My setup in Michigan ended up being allowed 24 plants, so a number of my innovations were not needed. Such as the air-layered super mother, which would be one plant in a scrog with air layered cuttings being main-lined, growing roots while attached to the mother. Then I could just cut the branch off when I was ready to put one into flower. This was a sight. It worked, but was a lot of work. I got the idea from a book on trees and the thousands of cloned aspens that grow in nature. All the same tree, thousands of trees. I do not have pictures. I should have taken pictures. It was cool. We used a similar method for a while. We had 12 plants in flower and used the extra patient card to change out the method of cloning, which had developed into a tree laying down and having it's branches ground layered.

To keep a lot of variety, I learned how to graft. I ended up with a total of 15 elite strains grafted onto one bonsai mother. She was beautiful.

I have made many modifications and upgrades to the system since this, but I usually don't document my grows, because of LEO...

I will post more pictures shortly.

 
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SuperWeed

Member
This garden produced 1 plant per week, approximately 2.5 pounds each, after evolution 5 (upgrade to 7 gal pots and taller cages). With one extra plant every three weeks. So 10-12lb per month, depending on strain. 12 flowering lights. 12 flowering plants. Plenty of medicine, in any form you need. This lady had fibromyalgia and we made tinctures for her. This show was shut down because the Cult of Ultimate Evil working Narcotics for Western Wayne County Michigan said the plants were too big. The case dismissed, but all my plants, including my 15 strain grafted SuperMom was dead.

I made the foolish decision to start back up near home, in Ohio. And, as you can imagine, I was busted again. This time they pointed the assault rifles at my 2 and 4 year olds. Fucking cops.

I worked for a construction company for almost a year and only watched other people grow, whilst going bankrupt. I got tired of that.

Now, I have moved clear across the country and am working for a Collective in Southern Oregon. I'm improving upon their Under Current system.

Ask me anything.
 
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The_Enthusiast

New member
Interesting life, i hope from now things will go in better direction.

I have two questions for you:
Did you ever try mixing your own nutrients (from lets say pure elements) and what formula was best for you? At the moment I am using this with tap water (i know the elements in tap water):
N P K Mg Ca S Si
138 87 200 60 150 153 48

Fe Mn Zn Mo Cu B
4,5 2,3 0,7 0,3 0,5 1,0

And other question - how in your experience is it better to approach lighting design? Are ceiling lights and many of them overlapping better than light over growing bed/system?
 

Buddler

Well-known member
Veteran
Yes the story of a surviver ,looks like things can only get better now for u and family best of luck for you, and thanks for posting again great grow skills to share.Bud:)
 

SuperWeed

Member
Wow.. Very moving life story.. You sir have skills!

Thank you sir. Years of hard work and thousands of hours of reading and applying... It has had it's ups and downs. I'm still fighting my last bust...

Interesting life, i hope from now things will go in better direction.

I have two questions for you:
Did you ever try mixing your own nutrients (from lets say pure elements) and what formula was best for you? At the moment I am using this with tap water (i know the elements in tap water):
N P K Mg Ca S Si
138 87 200 60 150 153 48

Fe Mn Zn Mo Cu B
4,5 2,3 0,7 0,3 0,5 1,0

Thank you! I did, in the past. But at the end of the day I had to ask myself; "Self, am I really as experienced at mixing nutes as Peters? Do I have the same level of training, years of experience, and friendly, helpful attitude?" No. No, I don't. So I stuck with Jack's per Delta9's ratio.

And other question - how in your experience is it better to approach lighting design? Are ceiling lights and many of them overlapping better than light over growing bed/system?

With traditional hoods and 1kw, 4x4 with the squarest hoods I could find provided the best overlap. Especially when you consider how I harvest. Say I'm running a 9 week strain. I have 9 lights. The last plant in the row is ready to be harvested, and the one beside it just got brought in. Sooo, you get tons of overlap onto the more mature plants, because of the difference in stretch and age. It means you have to raise and lower lights, but that is worth it.

At the end of the day, this design, with the plants literally growing around the light at optimum light distance (about 21" - check with a par meter, brought the absolute highest yields and most consistent product. The plants ready to harvest would have easily broken 3 pounds. But only the thieves that call themselves police will ever know.

Yes the story of a surviver ,looks like things can only get better now for u and family best of luck for you, and thanks for posting again great grow skills to share.Bud:)

Thank you too sir.
 
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SuperWeed

Member
The Design.

This show was built with simplicity in mind. All off the shelf parts. Wal-mart, Lowes, Home DePot, any hydro store. I was there for trimming and nutrient tank change-outs. The rest of the job is a few hours a day tops, handled by the patient and her 20 year old son. My goal was the four-hour work week. Thank you Tim Ferris for the inspiration.

I stayed away from RDWC type systems for one reason. They inevitably fail. They eventually cause crop failure from one of many things: Power loss, root rot, evil magic, Pepsi in the res, etc. It is next to impossible to tell what type of nutrients are still dancing around the reservoir that the plants have not taken up. Not without expensive equipment.

So, this design is hybridized Bato Buckets / PPK. The Dosers feed Part A and B through the tap water (70 degree, 110 ppm, but I've run successfully over 450 ppm tap) every two (was 4 at first) hours. Off the shelf Orbit Lawn Watering system on a computer battery backup. Later simplifications have removed the need for the timer and battery backup. The plants now water themselves. The buckets are connected to a control bucket (an extra part, but useful in case of extreme root growth) with a heavy duty float. The water level goes down enough from wicking action, they get top fed from the dosers.

The plants were flooded 2 minutes every 4 hours and they drain into the 5 gallon buckets. The buckets are connected together at about 4 inches down from the top, so each site would hold about 4 gal of water, to reduce the P.W.T. and to water as redundancy, in case of power outage. (No money for a generator)

As you can see in the picture above, the roots did not make it to the water. I suspect this is because the plants had plenty of room to grow in the fabric pots. According to my research, the best growth in all forms of media occur in fabric pots with a wick. Caliper sizes on hardwoods tell me that you could get substantially more weight off of 7 gal than I got inside. Perhaps I will try a smaller pot and see if the roots won't grow down into the water - "Kratky Style".

I used BCuzz coco, because it was easy for the patient to use. Later cost savings measures forced the use of coco bricks, which is extra labor. The trade-off is that labor is cheap. The lights are old school 1kw hortilux. The netting is just dog fencing from Lowes.

All plants from the rooted cuttings through flower are fed Jacks at 750ppm (600ppm left some strains deficient). All respect to Delta9; I love you. I'm going to say this, and probably get a black eye for it, but call me Morpheus - we live in The Matrix and liquid nutrients (and any other snake oil) is the Blue Pill. Delta 9 is the Oracle. Jacks was probably developed for Pot farmers. The yield is outstanding, the quality is every-bit as good as anything I've had so far in the Emerald Triangle.

In a pinch, Dynogro Grow works from veg to flower. The plants were healthy; so healthy in fact that we never got bugs. Except for the spider. I never flush, they get fed 750 ppm from clone to harvest. Clean white ash. No harshness, unless I dried it too fast. The only way I could have improved upon my quality would have been better environmental controls, but money was too tight (total investment was less than 12k).

A trimming tip I picked up from an organic vegetable farmer. Dip your colas in lukewarm (NOT COLD) tap-water before trimming. You wash off anything that may have gotten on your bud and you never have to clean your scissors. Saves soooo much time. Try it. They dry (as long as you are drying properly) just like normal and they lose no crystals (as long as the water is NOT COLD). You're welcome, unless you like hippy crack...

Edit: I am undecided on the best method of trimming. To save time trimming by hand, I trim all at once. She comes out of flower, I cut her down and trim her, then hang her at 78f, 57% for about 7 days. Usually she is perfect. I learned this from a guy who has grown commercially for way longer than me. However, I see guys hang the plants allowing them to dry naturally, then dry trimming by hand or by machine and their product doesn't look like it loses as many crystals as you might suspect. The final product seems the same. I am undecided on the method, when it comes to efficiency.

Eventually, I was able to take clones the old fashioned way, but as you can see in one of the pictures above, the mother was laying on her side (green bucket) and her branches are the plants growing around her. It was difficult to manage the growth of the canopies, but it saved on plant numbers, because technically - it is one plant.

The little bonsai tree on the floor to the left is my SuperMom... god rest her soul. She was a few years old, with grafts on her of strains I had collected the previous ten years. All gone. And people ask why I hate the police... It literally took me a hundred tries to get her right...
 
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SuperWeed

Member
I know this is the worst grow journal or tutorial ever, but, I just felt I had to share. I am going to use this project to apply for my Black Belt in Six Sigma. The whole goal was to obey Einstein and "Simplify, always simplify". The best part is that as I simplified, I got better as a gardener. Each bust, each bad partner, each crappy employee; they all forced me to do more with less. So, again I ask, "Who knows what is good, or what is bad?". I think this is the cheapest, most efficient way to grow, period.

This grow was originally running on a 60 amp service panel. Safely. In less than 1000 square feet. 10-12lb a month. Anyone can do it. Especially if I can. I'm not a genius to figure this stuff out.

"Well, I don't work alone. There's a lot of stuff in there I don't even understand. I'm really, uh, a systems management man. I farm bits and pieces out to guys who are much more brilliant than I am." Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle, The Fly, 1986

I want everyone to OverGrow the government. They can't lock us all up.
 

SuperWeed

Member
If one of the moderators would please give me the ability to edit my posts? I am appalled at my spelling errors.
 
Okay to simplify your description of your method;
Take clone
Veg it out for how long?
Top or FIM it?
Replant in finishing pot with screen
How tall is the screen and what diameter?
Drop a 1k in the middle
Harvest
Right?
 

SuperWeed

Member
Okay to simplify your description of your method;
Take clone
Veg it out for how long?
Top or FIM it?
Replant in finishing pot with screen
How tall is the screen and what diameter?
Drop a 1k in the middle
Harvest
Right?

Most of the extra work in this grow was just managing one plant into multiple plants, ready to go into flower. But yes, after we got another patient card, things simplified.

Take cutting in 32oz potato salad container (GFS) that is drilled out like a smart pot, filled with coco fiber and watered in with the same water everything else gets. After about 10 days, it will be fully rooted to the cup (if you did your job right). Then it can go into the 7 gal under 1kw mh. Use NugBuckets MainLine method to build the canopy.



Veg it until you know that the plant will finish it's stretch at the top of the flower cage. This is the most work, because it requires you to dial in your strain, really well. Most take 3-6 weeks, even with the superfast dwc like growth. Because of the canopy maintenance.

Most of the canopy work is done while she is little, the rest is like maintaining a tomato vine, inside the tomato cage. Prune suckers. "Leafing" kills yield. Period. Think, giant pumpkins - do they pull the leaves off?? Hell no. They remove sucker flowers.

Then take her tomato cage up and out (if you vegged her inside the cage, no ties are needed) and move her into flower. Open her up like a giant flower and tie her tips to the bottom (or higher for indicas) of the flower cage.





We built our screens 4 feet tall, to take full advantage of a 1kw light. We know that at 18 inches away from the bulb, you can get a 4x4 canopy. Well at 21 inches (or so) and vertical, you get a much bigger canopy, closer to optimum uMol. These pictures, the screen was at 19 inches from the edge of the bulbs glass housing. This was two years ago, so I am not sure the exact diameter. But you can figure it out pretty easy, me thinks.

Then flower her. And watch the magic of the DTW PPK happen.



All in coco with top(?) auto watering/feeding

Coco, 7 gal fabric pots, Jacks at 750, dtw, top fed from a 1/4 T, until runoff, every 4 hours. Rope wick from the bottom of the bucket, to the top of the fabric pot. Drain-to-Waste Passive Plant Killer. So easy your grandmother with fibromyalgia could do it.

Yields, 40 ounces a piece was the average for Blue Dream. All Colas. No larf. Sour Cream Diesel would kill 3lb and the LSD with an 8 week veg, probably would have topped 4lb. Only the Mi Staties will ever know.
 
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