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Crucial Cup Colosseum aka Twisted Towers

Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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aka cheap bastard vert setup

Big ups to J&DBonez (aka frugal geniuses) for the sharing the design idea, le'ts see how well it works "Avi Style". Here is a link to his thread where the concept "begins": https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=248566&page=34
^^Great thread, read thru it, worth it.

Medium is a mix of coco, perlite & lava rock
Nutrients will be GH maxibloom, and some additives along the way, liquid kool bloom (most likely) and cal mag as needed I usually feed silica during stretch, and usually add beneficials as well; assuming that's ok in coco, will also do that this round.
Also I ran out of drip clean but will likely get some more for this round... soon.

All plants in cups are "chunky diesel" a high yielding clone variety floating around my circle of pals, here they are:

picture.php


plants in the "base containers" are all phenos of my flo x grim cross, doing a lil mini pheno hunt in this round to spice it up a lil, in case there isn't enough goin on in here.
here they are:

picture.php


now the combination of the cups and the base plant:
picture.php

^^ one stake thru all the cups, 2 in front and one in back, all zip tied together at top and bottom, making the entire tower much less "tip-y" and training the tower straight vertical (less "lean-y").

now lets put 5 of those towers around a 1k light:
picture.php

^^^ IGNORE the box of clones directly under the light, they are not part of what's going on here...

EDIT:::
round 2 starts on page 15: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=253317&page=15
 
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Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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I already kno what "ftw rules" im breaking w this grow:
should run monocrop entirely
should put 8ish towers around one light, (plantcount dictates yield) but im keeping my plant count in check for this run at this location (built for a pal at his spot).
should run untopped clones for budsicles, these have been topped once each at least.

what else am i missing?

this pic gives you and idea of how branchy the plants were before transplanting:
picture.php

^^ all plants on left are chunky diesel, the one untopped on on the right is one of the flo x grim (white pheno).

here is a pic of thru two of the towers:
picture.php

^^ likewise IGNORE the postage box directly under the light, they wont be there long.

so, in order to mitigate the "broken rules" i plan on throwing some curve balls to max what this particular round can do.

I'm training these plants OUT to fill the space between the towers (where idealy other towers should be). Trying to take advantage of all the branches on these lil ladies.

picture.php

^^full tower, fully trained
"yellow" pheno in base pot, most sativa looking pheno of flo x grim I have seen thus far.

picture.php

^^ base pot & lower tower shot, all trained out

picture.php

^& top of the tower pic

The plants were put into the large cups yesterday am, watered well. Then today the entire bottom of the cup was cut out, and they were stacked, stabilized and trained. Until today they were under a 150w hps, the 1kw is now on them so they will be adjusting to that as they also adjust to their new homes and the training, hope that's not too much acclimating all at once.
 
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Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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also I plan on wrapping the entire twisted towers setup in a reflectix circle along the outside edge, to max the light, keep it in with the plants not splashing against the wall.
altho using a 1k is admittedly overkill here, i kno i could just go w the 600 and be safer from light burn, less heat, more efficient.... but the 1k is what is sitting around ready to be used, only other option was a 4oo w and i didnt want to go that low.
 
D

DaveTheNewbie

its awesome reading about a new idea and then a couple of weeks later your seeing it in action. Love this.
 
D

DHF

LMFAO.......Go Avi.....Training the branches sideways will help develop that perfect sideways canopy , and hey......

Stop talkin bout breakin the rules Bro.......Nobody down here`s gonna fuck witchas bout tryin something new and not havin optimum conditions.....even if it is Ghetto as Hell........:moon:.......that`s for JB as well........

Necessity is the mother of invention , and if this shit works........it`s just that much more return on investment.........

Good luck and....

Peace.....DHF.....:ying:........
 
U

usda101

Active member
Sweet . Wrap each cup in mylar as someone mentioned . Could revolutionize the way some closet setups does things . Got me brainstorming a hydro style setup .
 
Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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1kw bulb died.... that's what i get for re-using
that's the cheap bastard backlash getting me.
 
Kit Kat

Kit Kat

Member
I love the ingeniousness of this set up, definitely frugal. :)

Are the plants going to be trained wider than they are or is that the width with 5 total stacks?
 
Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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kit kat, thanks 4 stopping in; not sure exactly what ur askin @ the 5 stacks width....
ideally the donut would be full-ish of plant matter, but w only 5 towers of plants & plants being this size (which is prolly a lil large for this kinda grow, bt maybe not) i will be depending upon them streching in early flowering to fill this space.

im trainin them out, as wide as i can get them, ideally to fill the donut of lite.

i have considered using a metal mesh ring inbetween the canopy and light to further train the branches outward as well as keeping them a safe (& hopefully ideal) distance from the light.
 
Avinash.miles

Avinash.miles

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glad it helped, im considering throwing another tower or even 2 in here and just sayin F&%# it to the plant count vibes.... problem is they would most likely not be 2 towers of chunky diesel, which makes me think leave it as is.... ever tinkering.... i could do 2 more twisted towers of "pink" pheno flo x grim (best yet) and that would be exciting for me indeed.

also, considering some kinda sideways veg where clones come straight out of cloner/ rockwool tray & dome into the big cups, on shelves, then stack them after a week or 2 on the shelves (choosing alpha clones, culling bullshiter & mutants) just the obvious stuff to create a perpetual type scenario... simply ideally.

also,
wasnt the used bulb (which i replaced w. a brand new hortilux anyhow), it was the ballast that went, which i also replaced today w one from storage.
& tomorrow i plan on getting some reflectix to wrap the entire cup-colosseum then this thing is more or less on auto-pilot except for watering every other day or so.

I'm considering bottom feeding as well to prevent the bottom pot from compacting & see how well capillary action will draw moisture up from a tray under the base pot.
 
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