4 x 600w dripper fed DTW 15/16 plant grow

[OG_TGR]

I agree with you to an extent, madalastori but I'd also like to add an important point.

While "if it ain't broke" is surely a prudent ideal, it can also keep one from ever advancing. Be it yields, simplicity or what have you, experimentation is conducive to a greater knowledge of any practice.

Personally I feel that once you have something dialed in, that is the perfect time to experiment and see what you can tweak. Sure, you may go backwards but afterwards, you have a greater knowledge of what the potentials are.

Given the wealth of knowledge and information that is available on vert, the possibilities to achieve the highest level of efficiency are undeniably there, but with high efficiency most certainly comes strict regimen.

When approached by the guidelines that are laid forth in the forums and strictly adhering to these principles, there is a very good chance of having high success. The point that caused issue in the attempts that haven't been as favorable as others can almost exclusively be identified and corrected in "the next run".

Just my $.02

 

[Hosttrevor]

My bad man, I could have swore that I replied to you on that one. They are fine as long as you supply drainage. Everything I’ve had them in has either had raised ridges or in this case, rings.
I also add a layer or hydroton or pearlite in the bottom of the pot. In these particular saucers, I’ll put a layer of medium in the saucer, and the pots on top of it.

Er . . . . . my bad actually, I asked you on your vert thread, and you did answer it. Just noticed the hand made felt smart pot thread in your sig, must have a look when I've got time.

Just wondering about the drainage, or lack of it, ie. the head where the force of gravity meets the force of the retention and restriction (whatever flooring its sat on). Happens in every pot I know of, including airpots, just feels like that would be quite a soggy sack at the bottom. Do you drain to waste, how do you achieve run off in saucers? I find Hydroton just about essential for any coco growing.

On the point about easier, I'm assuming with having vert screens on the walls, there'd be more floor space to move around in to to jobs such as draining tanks etc. As far as pruning and the size of canopy area, bring it on in that sense, I wouldn't mind twice the canopy space in one room if I could, but only if yields matched the extra work. I love the way I grow at the moment, but man its full in there and its very awkward to get around the canopy to scan for mould signs and other basic tweaking of branch position.

I probably will grow the same style at least once more whilst I study up further. If it can be done well and very productive if done right, I believe in myself to pull it off. I'd make sure it was done right and allow for a learning curve. I've scrogged before though and the principles are basically the same. Requirement is a strain that responds well to training with a good, but not too crazy, stretch.

I do agree, we learn from experimentation. I've been growing for 20 some years now and feeling the itch to master another way. I'll only be interested if I can make things better, either ease of access or yield, preferably both. I'll be reluctant to fix anything that ain't broke unless I'm sure I'm souping it up some. At the moment I'm more than a little curious though, and is something that I considered a few years back whilst scrogging a huge almost unmanageable horizontal table.

In the meantime, I have a week to go and the plants are looking great, some bulging dense buds. I'm a bit concerned with mould though, especially with the difficulty of getting around the grow to view from all angles, looking for those tell tale pale brown leaves coming out of a cola that tell you that mould is starting, before it takes a huge chunk out of a cola. The lights on RH has been 56 today and was at 59% for a while, dragging wet air in from outside. Its a bit high and I'd be happier with it below 50%. I could add a huey, but with the amount of air transference I've got going in there, I think the difference would be negligible (?).

I'll be as vigilant as possible though, I don't like to lose bud to mould, and experienced in pulling any mould out and getting air into it so the rest of the cola can continue if possible.

All good so far though

Trev

 

[OG_TGR]

Er . . . . . my bad actually, I asked you on your vert thread, and you did answer it. Just noticed the hand made felt smart pot thread in your sig, must have a look when I've got time.

Just wondering about the drainage, or lack of it, ie. the head where the force of gravity meets the force of the retention and restriction (whatever flooring its sat on). Happens in every pot I know of, including airpots, just feels like that would be quite a soggy sack at the bottom. Do you drain to waste, how do you achieve run off in saucers? I find Hydroton just about essential for any coco growing.

Trev

Haha yeah man I noticed that later, after I replied.

Well, with a bottom layer of about 25mm or so of hydroton inside the pot, you get great drainage. This time, actually (just got them in finally) I am going to use cut outs of a grating I use during veg.

It's made of 6x6mm plastic squares, the kind of grating you use in the large institutional flouro fixtures. I was going to put a layer of hydroton in the bag and in the saucer, but thought this may be less wasteful and possibly more effective.

Basically it will literally hold the whole thing ~6mm off of the saucer. I'll def take pics tomorrow when I make them and put them on my vert thread.

I haven't installed it yet but I have a very small inline catch system that retains a small amount of run off, every time the pumps run (eventually I'd like to have one for every site, just for my own mad scientist motivations, lol). This way, I can just come in whenever I please and check the sample.
Otherwise it is DTW, yes.

 

[madalasatori]

It's humid as fook at the moment that's for sure! Weather supposed to be warming up and drying up for next week apparently...

Can't wait to see this one come down... Mine got ruined as the friggin heat wave coincided with the last four weeks of flower in my crop...50% loss of yield

 

[OG_TGR]

50% loss of yield

Daaaamn man, sorry, that sucks.....mold?

 

[down2grow]

Puscifer,

How many gallons is the white and black bucket? I'm assuming that the white bucket has a lot of drainage holes on the bottom. Did you drill yourself or did it come pre drilled? Sorry for the hijack OP! You can answer in PM if you would like.

D2G

 

[Hosttrevor]

It's humid as fook at the moment that's for sure! Weather supposed to be warming up and drying up for next week apparently...

Can't wait to see this one come down... Mine got ruined as the friggin heat wave coincided with the last four weeks of flower in my crop...50% loss of yield

Man that's bad, I feel for you.

Did you not notice it til too late?

Everytime I've experienced mold, it always shows first by a leaf coming from a dense cola going a very light pale brown. Sometimes only a small leaf, but I've never found mold without a tell tale leaf yet.

So I spend a fair amount of time in the latter stages scanning every dense/suspect colas/buds from every angle (not easy with the room crammed like this, but its possible, I just come out a bit crook'd after a stint. I.ve had a thorough scan from the front of my grow toninght, and tomorrow I'll pop my head up in different areas and check everything fully. I always expect that I may have to encounter mold in summer grows, but usually find I can keep it from getting a hold by scanning like this. Of course if I noticed a sudden change in several buds/areas I won't hesitate to chop it down, but I'd hope it wouldn't come to that.

I've got good air movement, though I do need to add a fan to the canopy tomorrow, and I have plenty of air transference, albeit that the air that's coming in for the time being is very humid air from the rain showers we keep getting.

Hope the weather does pick up and get dryer, but I didn't think the forecast I just looked at looked that promising really. Thankfully the temps are not excessive outdoors like they were during the heatwave you mentioned Malsatori, fuck that was hot and with this humidity it would be hard to handle at this stage, canopy temps of 83-84 today.

Fingers crossed on the mold front then, Trev

 

[madalasatori]

You'll be fine I'm sure.

My problem was purely due to heat, the buds hardley swole at all in the last 3 weeks of flower...I have a very small growing space which combined with a very powerful fan usually stays cool throughout any normal nightime temps...but when temps at night are in the twenties for weeks on end nothing I could do.

I grow vert and this coupled with the extremely cramped hard to access grow space meant it was difficult to ascertain how the buds were developing...

Mold is the absolute last of my worries my strain (powerplant) is almost completely immune to mould, I've never seen anything like it.

I'll be going horizontal next run.

 

[Hosttrevor]

Yeah, one thing that makes me want to stay with standard growing canopy is that I love to see really big colas and buds like these. Difficult to show scale, though I'll take a few pics during the chop and lay a couple of branches out along something recognisable to use for scale.

I've been a proper fuckwit throughout this grow though, as a mate pointed out that one of my older two 600w ballasts is in fact only a 400w ballast!!Its been firing up a 600w bulb all through the grow, which surprises me.

I've been away and while, no not j and before I left I lent a couple of old 600w ballasts to friends. I was expecting to replace all ballasts with digi ballasts when I got back, but could only stretch to 2 new out of 4. I assumed the one i had here was a 600w, but never checked, and with needing reading glasses to see anything clearly within a few feet, I just hadn't noticed. I'd realised it wasn't so bright under the bulb, but put it down to an old worn out ballast, which it probably is for sure now. Its bound to affect yield, but I'm happy with what is there, at least 60 oz.

New ballasts and full mylar all around the room and drainage tanks and tops of pots should really bring this up to the max, will play a big part in tweaking up this set up, so definitely another run this growing style. I'd like to think I know the max end of the yield of this room, this style, maybe with an additional light or two (certainly the 400w, which will be spare (though that could go in the cloning tent to speed things along there instead of the 200w economy flouro) during the colder months before trying something else to compare, as it wouldn't be much of a comparison as this will be a bit below.

Can't believe I've done a whole grow with a 400w ballast running a 600w bulb. . . I mean what a fucking dick! With my endless years of growing experience its a bit of a guffaw!

Any way here are some bud pics for you, taken a couple or so days ago at day 59/63.







Two pics showing the puppet show. . . . . all the ties and yo-yo's





They're looking very tasty, the smell is very intense, but well contained ;-)

 

[OG_TGR]

Can't believe I've done a whole grow with a 400w ballast running a 600w bulb. . . I mean what a fucking dick! With my endless years of growing experience its a bit of a guffaw!

Oh damn! Well at least you'll know that whatever you end up yielding, the next time should be at LEAST that, plus some!

 

[Hosttrevor]

Day 62/63 Harvest starts a day early

Day 62/63 Harvest starts a day early

Yeah for sure OG-TGR, bloody idiot that I am!!

Things ain't looking bad though. I started harvesting a day earlier than planned, just to suit my timing. I'm just over half way through, 9 out of the 16 are chopped, trimmed and hanging to dry.

Looks like the yield is going to be fairly good.

This is what's going to maybe stop me opting for the vert set up, I love stonking big colas like these. I'll at least do another round of standard growing whilst I investigate vert growing more thoroughly over the next 3 months or so. I know size isn't everything, but I fucking love these biggies!







So I have this lot to go yet! 7 plants left here, and with all their ties and yo-yo's removed, you can certainly see why the support is needed. the trim is drying on newspaper before I freeze it prior to making hash/honey oil/butter.



I'm tired

 

[Hosttrevor]

All chopped

All chopped

Well its all drying away now and not too fast either with the current humidity.

Will let you know the results in a few days, I'm not sure if the yield is going to be a "ok", or "good", or "wow couldn't expect better", or "bloody hell that's amazing!!". Its been a year and a half since I've seen a room full strung up, so hard to estimate, but I do know its not going to be "crap".

In the meantime my clones are not doing too well at all. I took them 2 1/2 weeks into flower, which usually produce bushy multi branched plants, but they take longer to root and quite a few of them were badly affected by being in the propagator so long They were further slowed down as I didn't have my cloning/veg tent at the time and rooted them in the bathroom under daylight and made up for the rest of the time with a 25w energy saving bulb. . . . . . I know, oh dear! The problem with the cuttings with flowers in a very humid propagator for such a long time is that some of the buds wilt and brown off, rot I guess.

I took them 7 1/2 weeks ago and there are a few that have not given any new growth out at all, though they've rooted and are alive, as the bud sites rotted away leaving no nodes to produce new growth.

Around 13 have new growth coming from them but they're very slow. They're under a 200w energy saver grow light, but tomorrow I'll replace this with a 400 or maybe even a 600 HPS and see if I get them going properly. I wasn't expecting this and its a bit disappointing, but I hope to get a 12 good plants out of them if I give them the right TLC.

Of course all the ones with new growth look all deformed and weird as you'd expect from clones starting life when already in flower, but that'll straighten out soon enough if they get going properly. My fear is even with the ones with new growth is, that they wont become very multi branched, which would be a disaster for this style of growing, LST trained full canopy.

I guess if they don't produce well I'll have to take a fresh bunch of cuttings from a mate in a week or so when his have vegged out. He took his cuttings from my plants at the same time and has produced what I hoped for, good multi branched plants, so my bathroom bodge job has had a significantly negative affect on them. I've got a feeling I'll be making the best of a bad bunch again as for this grow, fuck I'll be glad when I get a good run from start to finish. At least now all my equipment and spaces are sorted out now so there shouldn't be any need for any bodge up make do's after this, I'm pleased to say.

Just waiting for things to dry out prior to curing now, I've done most of the work I can for now, cleaned out the 16 waste tanks, both res'. Just going replace the veg tent light to a HPS tomorrow and then put my feet up for a while.

Trev

 

[ozzieAI]

sorry to hear of your current clone issues...but your flower shots are sensational...

 

[Dr.RedWhite]

As for running a 600 watt bulb in a 400 watt ballast do you think it put out more light than it would have with a 400 watt bulb? Were the buds under it less in any way than the other properly ballasted bulbs? By the way beautiful grow. To me the most important difference between vertical and horizontal is the greater ease of cooling second is the greater yield per bulb used. The best way to run vert is with a light mover and taller plants or even stacked bulbs.

 

[Hosttrevor]

As for running a 600 watt bulb in a 400 watt ballast do you think it put out more light than it would have with a 400 watt bulb? Were the buds under it less in any way than the other properly ballasted bulbs? By the way beautiful grow. To me the most important difference between vertical and horizontal is the greater ease of cooling second is the greater yield per bulb used. The best way to run vert is with a light mover and taller plants or even stacked bulbs.

I don't know how it compares lumens wise, but definitely dimmer under that light and yellower too, as if the bulb wasn't cranked up enough, which was the case. I wouldn't recommend it, the plants didn't do as well under this light.

Great news though I smashed 1g per watt, for the first time ever this grow, I've come close before but this time I got just over 1.1g per watt, if we count the 600w bulb as 400, due to the 400w ballast that I was, er, accidentally using, I had a total of 2200w's, I harvested 2422 (86 1/2oz) plus a few I smoked up!

So its clearing out the room over the next couple of days and get the lights on my woefully struggling, but hopefully bring backable, next set of 14 plants, 2 plants down on this grow, but I'll at least replace the 400w ballast with a digi 600w one to help counter this I can't expect quite the same at the end, but we'll see huh?

I've got to try a run with 15 strong plants from this Critical strain, as it tends to produce around 15-20% runty plants, this grow I had 4 runty ones (3oz or so each) and the next one will have some too. The ones after the next one I'll get a good selection of plants vegged a good couple or so weeks into vegging in the veg tent to establish the winners before selection, only then will I be able to see what is really achievable in this set up. Goal set then!

Trev

 

[Dr.RedWhite]

Awesome grow.

 

[guerilllataktic]

connect them together with poly tubing and place a ball valve at each run off tank,when it's time to drain open the valves on each tank and fire up your drain pump, this would alow you to still monitor the amount of run off in each one and drain them all at the same time,, seems like a logical solution to that problem







connect th

Thanks for the green thumbs up

Nice set up there mate, I do appreciate the ease of use of your system.

Yeah its a bit of a drag, but they do hold 35ltr each and takes an hour or so to syphon them all roughly once a week. There's always something to do down there or when I shift my central row of tanks to the left I can be tending the tops whilst they drain off. I can get to drain all tanks by going down just one aisle.

I've thought of linking all the pots up, but I want to be able to see how much run off there is from each plant to keep them really dialed in, and its a good early warning sign of any dripper blocking or starting to block, and by linking them all to each other I'd lose that. That's also why I chose something translucent, so I could see run off levels.

I do agree though, it could be easier. I'll probably have to sort something easier out so I can leave it to someone to sort out if I want to get away for more than a few days. Vert growing would be a lot easier in that respect.

OG_TGR, yield, vert vs standard, given a strain that likes to be trained? Oh and something else I asked you above, but being stoned on some very fine homemade hash, I can't remember what it was now Edit :- Oh yeah bro, how are the Smart pots for drainage at the bottom, where they're sat on (?) surface?

[URL=http://i1351.photobucket.com/albums/p787/Hosttrevor/day%2053/IMG_0273-4_zpsee377789.jpg]View Image[/URL]

[URL=http://i1351.photobucket.com/albums/p787/Hosttrevor/day%2053/IMG_0281-9_zps438dd25d.jpg]View Image[/URL]

[URL=http://i1351.photobucket.com/albums/p787/Hosttrevor/day%2053/IMG_0279-7_zps57e7fdd3.jpg]View Image[/URL]

Trev

 

[Hosttrevor]

Thanks mate, but I think I'm going to keep things simple, for the main reason that stops me going this way is the ability I have to move each waste res complete with plant, very important to me in a dense canopy. Much appreciated though ;-)

Here are some pics of my next lot, they look quite pitiful.

These will hopefully bounce into action for me if I give em all the TLC I can. This is my biggest failure with taking cuttings that I can ever remember. The set-up was incomplete and far from ideal though.





I've had a stealth issue forced on me that I won't discuss here, but I had to pull these from the tent for the past few days and had them sitting under a 25w energy bulb to kill the fan noise and any air being pushed out of the building. Hopefully the stealth situation is under control now, its certainly settled down. They're back under a 400w HPS in the veg tent again now, prior to being moved to the main room following the clear up after the last lot.



Here are some that never made it. They're still alive, but only in limbo as there is nowhere for new growth to come from. All the little flowers rotted in the propagator so they can't do anything but root up and cling to life. I'll bin them tmro, its been quite interesting to see them root up and unable to produce new growth.





I ought to start a new thread up for this grow though, I'll let you know when its up and running.

Trev

 

[Catfish Billy]

Hope those make it for you! Great show tho man!! Those new in veg almost look like they have broadmite damage....

 

[madalasatori]

You should just get one of these mate they're expensive for what they are but thurs tested and proven and you have just had a massive Harvest lol


http://www.progrow.co.uk/acatalog/info_05222.html