[dubracer]

Its been 6 months since i have visited this webpage. Its good to be back. Got some more spare time now-a-days so I figured I would share my latest adventure with Recirculating DWC and my first try with vertical lighting. Strain is Grapefruit, she is a beauty and one I will be working with for awhile.

Since i started using this system over a year ago, I have moved from 18 plants to 12 plants down to 6 plants and kept the same size room or even larger. Yet, I have continued to yield the same and the bud is of an even higher quality. Vertical Lighting is the way!!! The vertical lighting gave me absolutely donkey ball buds from the very bottom of the plant, touching the floor, to the very top cola. The average bud size on each plant is about the size of my fist. I am NOT using CO2 this grow. I have found that while CO2 can really help pack on the weight and density, it really creates a lot of problems and since I am not trying to get a weight record here, I dont mind having my life easier. I still ran a sealed room (well i left the door open sometimes) and as you can see...there was no problem with lack of ventilation or fresh air.

Temperatures are between 70F and 78F in the daytime, controlled by an IGS220 controller and a 10k BTU A/C, and I drop it all the way down to 55F at night to help bring out the purple in the strain. I ran a total of 1 vertical 600 watt digital HPS, 1 vertical 750 watt digital HPS, 1 air-cooled 750 watt HPS over everything (kinda like an overall sun), and 4 T5HO bulbs. I decided to conduct an experiement between plants grown with just HPS and plants grown with HPS and with T5s overhead. While the T5s did not yield quite as much, the bud was even more full of THC and the buds themselves were gigantic. The top cola is thicker then my forearm. 3 oscillating fans and each vertical light has a squirrel cage cooling it from below.

Let me know if you have questions. Plants are about 4 days from being picked, on their 4th day of flushing. 8 weeks old. I am expecting over 3 lbs from the room.

Here are some pics from the beginning to the end.

nice setup, great shots!

[dubracer]

One of the obvious problems with vertical lighting is that it can be hard to maximize it. That is why I installed a single light above everything, which helped deliver light to the outside edge of the plant. The buds on the outside didnt put on nearly as much mass, but they still are dripping with THC.

[ogenko]

nice work on the trees
what was your feeding regime???

[Bermyboy]

Excellent! Dubracer could we get a pic showing the Horizontal HPS?

Great Job man! looks wonderful..... I love the tree set-up! It looks good and is growing good. I cant wait to see what type of numbers your pulling on this bad boy! Keep up the good work and rep coming at you!!

[dubracer]

I vegged for about 7 weeks. However, I vegged for 5 of those weeks with T5s, the last 2 weeks with a 750 digital and then once flowering started, the whole shabang. I think without the overhead 750 digital at the ceiling and the 4 T5 bulbs on the end of the room, the outside buds would have suffered far more. They arent big but nice.

I dont have a picture of the 750 at the moment, but its just a 6" glass vented good (large one) with an open end on one side and a 600cfm inline fan exhaust on the other. This is what helps keep my humidity down at night and the bulb cool. The 2 fans blowing air up at the vertical lights is really important in my opinion because it gets the air sitting on the floor up into the ceiling, and then the oscillating fans distribute.

I want to remind people that I dont use an intake. Sometimes I leave my door open, sometimes not. Since there is an exhaust fan on sometimes, I assume that air is being pulled from cracks or through the A/C.

PS. Forgot about the feeding. Ive experimented with a lot of different formulas, and honestly its all strain dependent. Some things work great with some strains, and the same recipe may be murder on another. Generally, the recirculating DWC provides a higher ppm limit for whatever reasons. This grow I kept things lower then I normally do. I dont use any measuring or stuff, its sort of by memory now, but when i hit flowering we were at about 1000ppm. This was pretty good. About a 1/1/1 ratio. I use G/M/B, Advanced 3 part. I add about 50 ppm a week. I never replace my water, I only add water and nutrients. The only time it gets changed is to flush. Tap water. Works beautifully. This grow we peaked at 1350-1400 and some of the plants did burn a little bit, some didnt, but it was sort of intentional in the hopes we could get it into hyperdrive one last time before dropping off. I supplement with Big Bud. I used SIGNIFICANTLY more nitrogen this grow and I was really happy with it. I continued to use Grow until the last 2 weeks and used a lot of Micro as well. The Big Bud took care of the PK. I will repeat this.

[ogenko]

Originally Posted by dubracer

I never replace my water, I only add water and nutrients. The only time it gets changed is to flush. Tap water. Works beautifully.

i've seen that from a few of the big pullers around here
that's efficiency!
can't wait to watch this unfold
best of luck to ya

[dubracer]

i believe initial guesses of overall yield were...a bit...conservative. I just finished cutting everything down and I would like to change my expectations to about 4 pounds of beautiful dense large bud herb. The average bud size ended up around the size of a soda can, and I know from experience this will yield a very very minimum of 7 grams each. At over 100 of these buds counted, not including the huge center buds and the smaller buds, 4 pounds should be conservative.

This was the final straw I needed to be convinced of vertical lighting. what a success. At nearly 2 pounds per light, i am exceptionally satisfied by the outcome. Trichromes are bursting, abundant, and the colors I want and the buds are some of the densest I have ever had. Without the reflector, the HPS bulbs do not burn the buds since the light is not concentrated by aluminum reflectors. The buds were 8" away and not burning.

A huge success. Not one single instance of any pests, any mildew or mold, or any type of problem (except one plant falling over and ending early). By far my most problem free grow. While i have been incredibly satisfied by previous grows over the last 2 years, none have matched this. This was also the best ratio of cost to yield. Because HPS was only used for part of the time, and T5 fluros would used for a majority of the time, it makes it even better.

I attribute a huge amount of this success to this forum, and obviously I never would have found the recirculating DWC were it not for Blaze.

PS. Very conservatively, I know there will be a bare minimum of 1800 grams of prime perfect bud, not including all the tiny buds and shake for hash. Since I did not use the HPS for the entire grow, I did the math for the amount of time each light was going. The average amount of wattage of lights was 1600 watts. That would be 1.125 grams per watt, which has been my goal. Even if we had all the lights i had for the last couple weeks going the entire time, it would still be .85 grams per watt, and that was not the case by any means.

[ogenko]

good job dubracer
hats off and in the air
beetin about the bush with the yeild their though
hmmm did you make the gram/watt gang or not???