Vertical/BareBulb/1000w/PassiveHydro

The room is 10x10x8 - 800 cubic feet
I have 3, 6 inch holes for passive air intake
400cfm fan/phresh filter 400 exhuasting the room/odor control
6500btu AC

I have a 1000w hps magnetic ballast. I only use hps throughout the grow.
I use a bare bulb.
I keep plants 10 inches from the bulb.
Box fan is blowing up at the bulb to keep it cool.

I made a vertical screen 12 inches from the bulb (since the plants sometimes grow through the screen, i like to keep it 12 inches)
The plants are behind the screen and also i use the screen to help support the plant.

10 plants
The strain is unkown, but i was told it was called Moe x Jamaican.

They are all clones. I cloned them in rapid rooters/humidity dome/tray with clonex. I had roots in about a week and a half.
I put them in 11 liter mop buckets I found at the supermarket.

The method I use is Passive hydro or "hempy bucket". My medium is 3 parts chunky perlite to 1 part vermiculite. There is a pencil size hole cut into the bucket 2 inches from the bottom to create a rezevoir.

My tap water is a ph of 8. I just use the liquid ph test kit. cheap and works for me. The first thing I do is make my water ph 7. then i add nutes.

The nutes i use is general hydroponics 3 part hydroponic nute system.

here is a typical veg scenario (1 gallon of luke warm water)
1ml of ph down (gh) and my ph is now 7 (if your ph is already 7 then skip this step)
shake
10ml of micro
shake
15 ml of grow
shake
5 ml of bloom


typical flower scenario (1 gallon of luke warm water)
1ml of ph down to make it 7
shake
10ml of micro
shake
15 ml of bloom
shake
5ml of grow

This nutrient recipe is just following the directions on the back of the nutrient bottle. I feed my plants this EVERY WATERING. Until i see runoof (usually a half a gallong per plant). although, for the first 10 days of veg i water a little bit every day until the roots hit the rez. This step really only requires about a gallon of water per 10 plants. Then, when the roots hit the rezevoir (you will know, the plants show it and its usually about 10 days), I start giving them water until i see runoff which is usually about a half gallon LIke i said previously.

After that, I only have to water every 3 to 4 days. I waited 5 days once and they still showed no signs of needing water. I like to water them every 3 days because it seems like the really like the fresh water. they just seem to grow faster that way. if i dont water them for 5 days they dont show any negative signs.

so thats about all there is to it. I dont add anything extra to my nutes or anything. just gh 3 part and following directions on the back of the bottle. I never have any problem with nutrients or ph.


Another great thing about this method, is the cost. When I first started growing, I bought a tent, magnum reflector, A/c, Space heaters, all kinds of fans, lots of soil, etc... i ended up spending around $2500. I sold all that stuff to a friend of mine and started using this method I am using now. Here are the cost of my current grow:

phresh filter 400 - $160
I already had a air conditioner but lets just say $200 for a used one.
400cfm inline fan - $100 shipped on ebay.
1000hps light bulb - $60
11 liter mop buckets - $2 each i bought 10 so $20
mogul base/socket to hang vertical - $30
for nutes i bought 1 galon each of GH 3 part on ebay for $80 all together. that should last a few grows at least
ph down only cost about $10
the screen was about $20 at a lowes i think
perlite was $25
vermituclite was $25 but you really only got to buy verm like once every other year cause i barely use any.
space heater was $30
timer was $20
ph drops were $7
tarp if you have carpet (i think this is important) $20
syringes(to properly measure nutes) $5
ducting is $20
panda film is about $25
aluminum tape is $7
dust mask because messing with perlite is dusty $5
thats about all i can think of.. this total does not include cloning and taking care of mother plants. i have that in another room completely seperate. I veg in the same room that I flower in though. my MOMS and clones are the only thing seperate.

so the total was somewhere right around $860 but i didn't have to buy a ac so about $650 for me. I trim about every 3 months and i doubt you could manage to get less than .5 grams per watt. its way to easy to do this. even if you only grew 500 grams, it pays for itself the first time you grow. 500 grams is about 17.8 oz. and that should really be the minimum.

Now I will include pictures. The first picture was taken at the last day of veg. I vegetated them for 20 days.

The second picture is about 10 day into 12/12

The last picture is at 16 days since i flipped to 12/12.

The strain that I am growing is unknown really. I was told it was Moe x Jamaican. I have no idea if it is true or not. I have never even heard of "moe".

Before this strain, I was growing White Widow and a strain called Woody Haze. I like this Moe x Jamaican strain the best. It also grows faster than the other 2 I have grown.

It is hard to say Moe x jamaican all the time, so lets call it "MoJam". to shorten in up.

After this grow, I am going to be growing Mental Floss and White Russian. I got 4 female mental floss and 4 femle white russian out 10 seeds that I planted. They have been vegging for about 3 months now and they look great.

cool setup. i like how you have the AC setup but are also the exhausting the room. Although it seems that this could be a bit inefficient power wise, it seems preferable to needing co2 and sealing the room, provided that it holds temps to the perfect level. How have the temps been? Does the AC work very hard?

i suppose it does use more electricity to exhaust the room and run the ac. it kinda seems like it is pointless. however, I have no choice. during the summer it gets to hot in there. right now I have no heater or a/c running and temps are perfect. The A/C does keep the room cool, even though it is being exhausted.

also, the exhaust and intake are going into the same room next to the flowering room that you see in the pictures.. Basically, there is a closet that connects both rooms. you can enter the next room through the closet. so i just took both doors off and created a new door with panda film. It is easy to cut holes in it and it keeps light out. so then i ran ducting for the exhaust and the intake into the next room.

I keep the door in the next room always open for CO2 and fresh air.

so i am not exactly exhausting all the A/C or heat outside. I am kind of re-using it i guess.

I did have it exhausting outside at first, but I also live in this house. Since my intake was from another room, it was sucking all the A/C out of my house. That was fine when I had an AC in my living room, but it quit working on me. So I had to think of a way to keep all the air in and came up with my current idea. It works great. I have no temp issues. I never have. Just wanted to keep my AC in my house.

Subbed. Nice grow. Cant wait to see what it yields.

thanks

I will be updating with more pictures in the next day or so.

Nice setup, looking forward to more pics.

Yeh nice set up Rukind, thanks for the link..

Thanks. I hope this grow yields better than last time. I didn't use a screen last time and most of the bud sites were at about 15 to 18 inches. only a few of them were 10 inches away from the light. this is because, the bottom branches of the plants seem to grow out away from the stalk. when you use a screen. all branches and stalk are at the same distance. Also I didn't really have to train the plants or anything. I let them veg (20 days) normally and then i tied them loosely against the screen when i switched the light to flower.

So far my plants are twice as big. the stalks are twice as thick too. last time the bud looked and tasted great. so the plants were healthy, I just had to get them closer to the light. The distance to the light is extremely important when it comes to yield. No more than 10 inches for a 1000w bulb. If i get the plants closer than 10 inches, you can tell they are not happy.

alfie moon - it doesn't matter what style you grow. it doesn't matter what medium you use. if you grow vertical or in a reflector, it doesn't matter. it is your choice for your grow. all mediums can be just as effective. You just have to know how to use them. This is my second try at hydro ever. I grew in fox farm soil and pure blend pro nutes before this. I had a lot more trouble with soil then I have with hempy buckets so far. it is by far the easiest method i have ever done. I just like to know that my plants are going to like what im feeding them every time without any worry. They never burn. I got a little spot here and there on the tips or the leaves, but its nothing really compared to when I used dirt. With dirt, I had to water full strength.. Then the next 2 waterings were just plain water. then back to full strength nutes again.. its just a cycle with dirt you have to get down. My plants always had some sort of nutrient issue and i just wasn't happy with it. The last time I used soil, I did well with it, though. I got it down good enough I think. it wasn't that difficult, but when i tried hempys, ill never go back.

here is an update on whats happening.

today is day 21 since i flipped the lights to 12/12.

Looks great ,Im going to take a shot at the hempy bucket as well.Do you feed nutes with every water,and if so do you use a tds meter to check your ppm levels?

if you read my first post, you will find the answer to your question in detail.

the quick response is: yes i feed nutes every time. and you can water as much as you want, anytime you want. just dont let your plants run out of water. the reason you can water as much as you like is because perlite gives the roots all the oxygen they need. so you cannot over water hempy's

no i do not use a tds meter or anything, like i said in my first post. I just check the ph with a liquid ph test kit. the ph of my water is around 8. so i use about 1 ml of ph down to make my ph 7... then i add my nutes by following directions on the back of the bottle. very easy.

if you are lucky and the ph of your tap water is already 7 then you dont even have to add ph down.

here is an update. day 25 of 12/12

here is another update. This is day 30 of flower. I only grow this strain for 60 days, so I am half way there.

here is another update. this is 36 days of flowering.

Deleted

no this is not hempy.. lol i promise you that

I am just inspired by his grows. i tried it myself and it works!

41 days since i flipped 12/12

everything is going pretty good so far. no problems yet. A few of the bud sites are a little too close to the bulb (about 9 inches), but they will be okay. you can tell they are getting a little too much light at those 2 or 3 budsites, though. I am not really concerned about it. Next grow I am going to make the screen about 1 more inch from the bulb to be on the safe side.

Looking very nice

thank you. I can't wait until this is finished. Next grow will be mental floss and maybe some white russian.