Doc Crow's Medicine Cabinet. 420 W CFL powered Perpetual Micro SOG PPK

[DocCrow]

You can take each 1L pot out and say...move it to another part of the rez right? Is there not any build up of salt via the wick into the coco? I'm reading through PPk links posted here, but not yet finding what I'm looking for. I'd be very interested in something like this...

What are you looking for in the PPK threads? Ask away here man, if I can't answer it I am sure another PPK Army soldier will.

The pots can move around willy-nilly. I move em around whenever I pull em out since I have the extra room to let em get as much space as possible.

Salt build up is handled through top feeding. I haven't got my automatic pulse setup yet. I have a pump in the control res. I use that to individually top water them (with the same nutes in the res) daily. I will have it set up so they get a saturation pulse every 2nd hour (12 per day). Kinda like an ebb and flow setup, but with the media wick, if something happens to my pump my plants will never go dry. The pulse has many benefits. It keeps the excess salts from evaporation flushed out of the medium. It pushes out bad gases from the soil, etc.

Doc,
Are you pulsing any, either by hand or automated? I couldn't tell by looking.

It will be automated by the end of the week. Going to Home De Pot tomorrow to get the rest of the stuff I need to make my manifold. It will be a piece of 2" PVC with 36 lines coming off of it, one per site. It will mount on the back wall of the cab. The pump wil pump up into it, and there will be a line run to each pot. After some preliminary testing I may need a larger pump, but I will have to wait to get it set up before i will know for sure.

Pics will get posted when I put it in.

I will try to get a good picture walkthough of the entire system once I get it all set up.

DC

 

[5th]

Pics will get posted when I put it in.

I will try to get a good picture walkthough of the entire system once I get it all set up.

You answered them, thanks. And the quote...well I have a feeling thats going to fill in the rest of the blanks for me/us, thank you.

I'ma go read the Wicked Pulse now...

 

[DocCrow]

Doc ... That cabinet & ppk system is fantastic !!!
The 1 improvement that i think would be a nice addition would be an LED panel instead of the cfl's . cheaper to run & a little easier to cool .
But its sweet as it is ..... great job dude

Thanks for the props man.

I did not go with an LED as I am limited in vertical space. And money. LEDs are expensive, and CFLs are easily replaced, and have an 8 year warranty. Plus With CFLs the plants can grow right up to the glass without worrying about bleaching. I think if I remember correctly bleaching can be a problem if the LEDs are too close to the plant, but I never looked into them too much, as the cost for me right now is prohibitive. I have been scrounging this stuff for this since August.

The lights are sealed off from the flower chamber so cooling is easy as pie. Temps are a constant 72-75 lights on and 65 lights off.

How close can you run your LEDs to the tops of your plants?

DC

 

[DocCrow]

Any input on keeping mother plants v. just using my pruning cuts as clones for my next batch?

 

[oldone]

Any input on keeping mother plants v. just using my pruning cuts as clones for my next batch?

Well I'm doing the same thing sorta, so I think its a great idea.

My plan differs in that I want to reveg my current plant after harvest then take cuttings from that.

Great show!

OO

 

[Anti]

I love this, And I think i'm starting to understand PPK. Now I need to go read more threads.

Thanks for the suggestions and the great write up, Doc!

Looking forward to seeing this progress!

 

[DocCrow]

OO Thanks for stopping in. I think this will be the way to go with a perpetual. It will give me 48 cuts every 2 weeks. That will give me plenty of clones to choose from so I can pick ones that will be the proper height (and plenty of variety to find that height. And when I want some variation I will have plenty of room in my clone cab to pop some new seeds. I may flower a couple of autos out in there too. I got some freebie fem auto seeds. I want to use some silver to turn a branch or 2 on the plant male, collect the pollen and pollinate the female flowers. I am not too sharp on breeding, but this should give me a bunch of fem auto seeds to throw outdoors next spring for a bumper crop to make extracts with. I want to make a shit load of oil so I can make topicals for my wife to help her out with her MS symptoms.

Anti

Thanks for the props man. I hope you enjoy the show. Let me know if you have any questions. A lot of the PPK guys are lurking around here. I am sure they will be happy to chime in. Like I said in your thread I think the potential of one of these setups on a 3x3 table under a 600w hps at a density of 9 per sq' would be extremely productive. You would need to average 7.5 grams per cut to hit 1gpw.

I just got some great buds, not sure what it is, but I am fully baked. I cant wait to be toking my own again.

DC

 

[Dr.RedWhite]

I am growing in General Hydro CocoTek Coco. Plants are being fed Jacks Hydro plus Calcium Nitrate. I feed 2 tsp of jacks and 1 1/4 tsp of Calcium Nitrate per gallon of water. This should be ~360 PPM of Jacks and ~240 PPM of calNit which should put me right on the money. I don't own a PPM meter of a PH meter. I don't think I will need one.


I think 2 tsp of Jacks and 1 1/4 tsp of Calcium nitrate would be way over a total of 600 ppm. Typically 1/2 to 5/8 teaspoon of each per gallon would give 600 PPM. How are you plumbing your 18 gallon reservoir to your float valve? Bulkhead fitting or tire valve?

 

[Dr.RedWhite]

I meant to edit that post to read over 600 PPM but it seems there is no edit feature.

 

[DocCrow]

I think 2 tsp of Jacks and 1 1/4 tsp of Calcium nitrate would be way over a total of 600 ppm. Typically 1/2 to 5/8 teaspoon of each per gallon would give 600 PPM. How are you plumbing your 18 gallon reservoir to your float valve? Bulkhead fitting or tire valve?

I am not really sure as I don't have Going off of the information on the website the measurements I used will create a solution slightly over 600 PPM. I will get a gauge eventually so I can be more accurate, but have had zero issues so far (halfway through flower) other than a very slight calcium def in a couple of plants. I upped the cal nit slightly to compensate and all is fine now.

For the Cal-Nit per the J.R. Peters website

For small volume mixing
Dissolve the following amounts in 1 gal. of water. Do not use an injector.
1/2 tsp. = 100 ppm
1 tsp. = 200 ppm
1 tbspn. = 600 ppm

And the Jacks Hydro

For small volume mixing

Dissolve the following amounts in 1 gallon of water. No injector should be used.

1/2 tsp = 94 ppm
1 tsp = 188 ppm
1 tbspn = 564 ppm

If you have jacks and would mix up a gallon of distilled water and the above mentioned amounts of Jacks Hydro and Cal-Nit and test the tds of the solution I would appreciate it.

DC

 

[gtgio]

This is all looking pretty awesome, great job.
I have a pretty stupid question - How exactly are you securing the 'plumbing tailpipes' or whatever onto the inside of the pot?

 

[DocCrow]

This is all looking pretty awesome, great job.
I have a pretty stupid question - How exactly are you securing the 'plumbing tailpipes' or whatever onto the inside of the pot?

The pots come with a hole the size of the tailpiece. The tailpiece has a flange on it, a bit of glue is all it takes to keep em together. I used Amazing Plumbing Goop.

I will be putting up a good set of pictures showing how everything is set up with my next weekly update. For anyone with construction questions they should be answered then.

Some of my plants are outgrowing their space. I figured I waited too long to flip em, but oh well. I just pinch em and bend em over. I am gonna put my clones in short to start I think. I also am popping some more beans. (5 from a bag of blueberry) so I can get some more genetic variety. I think I may get some CS to revert a branch here and there and see if I can make some Fem Pollen to play with

 

[ShortStackz]

Good stuff. Love the fact you doing a SOG in such a small space.

 

[DocCrow]

Day 28 Flower Update

Day 28 Flower Update

Update Time!

It's day 28 of flower for these plants right now. It is apparent that I waited too long to put these plants into this cabinet. I have had to do some crazy plant yoga to keep the tops out of the glass. As you will see in the pictures the tops of a bunch of em have gotten crispy. Not too concerned, as this first run is just to get me going, and I have a bunch of clones rooting as we speak to get this baby filled up in the coming weeks. Hopefully next week I will have some rooted and ready to go into flower so I can start getting data to determine start heights.

A few of them are a week or 2 ahead of the stragglers in flowering. The Kandy Kush, AK1, and a few of the Mandala Safari Mix plants are runty, and slow budding. The BBxWW and BDxOG are both perfect height along with one M7. AK2, 3, and 4 along with M3 have all outgrown the cab in height. It is not too big of a deal since I only have the cabinet 1/3 filled. I wont be able to afford the space to bend them over in the future though. It is apparent that I will need to start small with my clones, and gradually increase the height at which they go into the cabinet until they are finishing within 1-2" of the glass.

Ok Now with the Pics

Shot of the Entire Cabinet.

Kandy Kush

Black Domina X OG Kush

White Widow x Blueberry

 

[DocCrow]

AK47 #1

AK47 #2

AK47 #3

 

[DocCrow]

AK47 #4

Mandala Safari Mix plants

M3
This one has stretched like crazy and was the biggest when it they went into flower. This one would make a great scrog strain as long as the potency is there. Had to do extensive plant yoga on this one. Gonna start the clones of this one small for sure!

Better Yoga shot, making it kinda curl like a corkscrew, haha. I hope it doesn't stress it out too much and make it hermie or something. Hasn't seemed to even slow it down yet.

M6
This one is pretty runty. I'll give the clones I cut a shot, may be more indica leaning? I'll let the clones get a little bigger on this one.

 

[5th]

Nice looking AK's...that manifold in the back keeps grabbin' my attention however.

 

[gtgio]

Oh damn, its a real jungle in there. Looking good man

 

[DocCrow]

M7
This one should turn out nice, if it stretches a little bit more it will be perfect

M8
Not bad, a bit slow flowering, this one is.

Again the whole cabinet

QUESTION
Should I do any sort of defoliating? I am thinking once I get up to full density I will have to strip the Bottom 1/3 of each plant completely after week 2, and possibly strip all large fans off after week 4 or so. Thoughts? Suggestions? I guess I will know more once I start getting clones in there, as these were all young immature plants from seed when they went into flower. I am sure the clones will react a little differently.

Any ideas, opinions, criticism weather constructive or not, questions, or anything else you post up are welcome.

You should like my next post.

DC

 

[silverhazefiend]

+1 for defoliating

I seen a beautiful sog done with soda bottles he defoliated the bottom 2/3s of the plant at 21 days ..second at 42 days 1/3 of the bottom and 63 days was the last defoliate ..jus remove some of the large fans leaves plants still grow fine with out em ..

I've been getting my sog ready myself for headstash but idk if I wanna use those same tree pots u used or go with something like soda bottles ..where did u get the pots ? I like the fact that it had a hole to soak up water tru the bottom and I've seen trays to go with them

As far as yield I seen a 14-15 gram plant sog ..u need a bigger pot and stronger lighting ..I would say ur gonna get 4-7 grams per plant not bad at all ..

Cfls don't penetrate that deep so the buds and lard won't be getting light anyway so it would make more sense to remove them and promote top growth