3BM
Member
JOG Grow Guide by 3LB
The basis of our system are 2'x3' plastic utility containers that the three_little_birds are now infamous for growing in. The containers are just under a foot deep and will hold something in the range of 25 to 30 gallons of soul depending on how full we pack them. Needless to say these containers are heavy so we have each of our containers on an individual furniture mover to make them mobile (and to avoid root stress when the containers are moved).
In our "Jungle of Green" system we use a maximum of 4 plants per container and a minimum of 2 plants in each 2'x3' container:
4 plants per containder gives each plant 1 1/2 square feet a piece and 7 to 8 gallons of soil.
3 plants per container provides each plant 2 square feet of space and 10+ gallons of soil a piece.
In a 2 plant JOG each plan needs to fill out 3 sq ft and gets 15+ gallons of soil for their roots.
(experiments with 1 plant per container were also successful but require strains that really like to "bush out" and some patience too)
In all honesty we've had great success with any of those plant counts - the specific results in terms of look and structure may vary a little depending on how many plants are in a container, but we have found that yields can be the same regardless which you use. The primary difference is plant count vs veg time. Its funny how even in a JOG system it comes downt to that basic choice (much like the choice between SOG and SCROG). One offers little or no veg time and the other offers reduced plant count. We have tried both SOG and SCROG in our gardens and found them inferior to the Jungle of Green.
We normally clone our plants directly into 4 1/2" square planters and grow them up to around 6" or 8" under strong floro lights - currently we use a combination of Agrosun, Sunstick, and daylight floro bulbs in standard 4' shoplight fixtures. Experiments with VHO floro lights have also been very successfull. In addition, some T5 floro arrays are showing extraordinary promise for vegging plants. (Eds note: These bulbs are smaller and set closer together thereby more efficiently utilizing an alternating lamp strategy). But those are expensive investments for beginning gardenders and we've done well with standard floro bulbs.
At 6"-8" with almost all strains we will top (or top clone) our plants to encourage bracning. Allowing a single cola to grow would not allow the canopy to fill in evenly and diminish yields. Topping at this height encourages multiple colas and one secret to creating the jungle of green effect. (Eds note: Bending tops via "supercropping" can also encourage multiple branching without eliminating the apical meristem). Once the plants have recovered from the stress of being topped - once they begin to show the development of those multiple arms we transplant them from their square planters into the 2'x3'. At this point they are around 6" in height and are pretty close to being root bound.
As we said, the JOG will work in a 2'x3' container with 2, 3, or 4 plants. For simplicity sake in this example we'd plant 3 plants in a straight line up the center of the container. We then place the 2'x3' container under at least 110 to 130 watts of VHO floro light; a pair of these containers side by side can be lit by a 400 watt MH light to great effect as well. Depending on the strain and it's veg vigor they will ove inder that bright vegging light for 10-15 days. Plants that been topped will grow more slowly in height since they energy is split between multiple colas. During this time ther roots will be spreading into every corner of the organic soil they have been planted in. As the plants in ther container reach about a foot in height they are ready for the move out to HPS light and a 12/12 light cycle. At this point they are suisually 3 squat little bushes who are just beginning to intermingle their branches and fill in the canopy. Once the plants move to the bloom light cucle they normally explode in size. Even strains known for little or no vegetative stretch will gain some height in a JOG; maybe that stretch is because we usually continue feeding them a grow fert mix for a few days, or maybe its becase of the huge amount of soil their roots have to stretch into.
Once the plants are in bloom it's just a matter of rotating them through the grow as they mature. Once a week the containers are rotated 180 degrees to encourage the plants to grow an even canopy, and once a week they rotate in position. (Eds note: the importance of this point cannot be under stated. Under 600w lights the rotating helps ensure all the plants recieve their share of intense light at the "overlap" points. Under 1000w lights rotating helps ensure no plants gets over exposed to intense light while others are deprived.)
The very smallest plants are on one side of our grow, the mid sized plants on the far side, and the tallest plants are in the middle. Many high tech grow systems are V shaped or stadium shaped - ours is the opposite and we designed ours that way for a reason! Our system is designed to maximize a 3 light system. We feel that multiple light angles are one key to producing good plant vigor, an even canopy, and high yields. We keep our air-cooled PL lights as close as possible to the plant's canopy to maximize the energy our plants recieve. Since the outer plants are shorter, the outer lights are hung lower. This sidelight helps to fill in the lower canopy of the maturing plants in the center of our grow, a detail which helps to significantly increase yields. With JOG some of the lower branches can produce nice "popcorn" buds which helps this system get a little edge on some other gardens. (Eds note: 3LB documented average yields around 1.5g/watt, with high marks reaching over 1.75g/watt).
Airflow and control of the atmosphere are critical factors when growing in the "Jungle". For every 10 sq ft of floor space in the jungle we have about 100 cfm of exhaust pulling through a large carbon filter. This means a 600+ cfm exhaust fan for a 60 square foot growing footprint, ensuring a strong and steady supply of fresh air to the jungle. For a 60 sq ft grow we recommend 2 oscillating fans also blow on the garden constantly. Good airflow discourages pests and diseases while encouraging good general plant respiration.
A relative humidity of 60% or less is also a key. When humidity raises too hight your plants can't breath properly and your plants growth and vigor will both suffer. We are creating a solid canpy of plants with the JOG and those plants will want to breath a lot of moisture into the air. In some locales and in some seasons a dehumidifier is a necessity for a successful JOG.
Hopefully that covers the basics of the bird's do things a little differently ... Welcome to the Jungle.
(Eds note: the following represents 3LB's direct responses to reader questioning as contained in the thread. This is heavily excerpted, but hopefully the nature of the questions will be clear by the response provided.)
We originally started blooming in 3 gallon and 5 gallon buckets, and certainly a great garden can be grown using those kinds of containers. We still use these for unsexed plants when selecting keepers on a grow from seed, but for cloned plants (once we know sex) we almost always use 2'x3' plastic utility bins. The fact that they hold 25 to 30 gallons of soil really gives our babes room to spread their toes, so to speak, and that means happier, healthier, and more productive plants.
Container plantings of this sort offer multiple benefits. Plants in smaller pots (3 or 5 gallons for example) are quicker to show nutrient shortages than thsoe grown in large containers. If there's a little pocket of soil who's pH isn't quite right, or where nutes got mixed in a little too strong, a plant in a smaller contaner will almost certainly be effected. However, the roots of plants in bigger containers can somply seek out better soil and keep on growing.
Our 2'x3' container grows have no drainage holes ... never needed em.
They are about 10" deep and hold 20-30 gallons of soil. With 100% organic food no flushing is needed, and with careful watering there's not even the need for any drainage holes. We never water to the point of total saturation because roots like some air.
We generally would expect to water a 2'x3' container every other day for fill sized plants that fully fill in the caopy above the container. For smaller plants it might be as long as 5 days between waterings. A "normal" watering would be about a gallon of water, but it varies depending on the particular strains needs.
As for the volume question ... 1 cubic foot = 7.4805195 gallon [US, liquid], and a cubic foot is simply 1' x 1' x 1'. Our containers are 2'x3' giving a surface area of 6 square feet. So if our tubs are only 6" deep (and ours are certainly deeper than that) we'd have a max volume of at least 3 cubic feet ... that's about 22 gallons right there. If our tubs were 12 inches deep we'd expect a max volume of 44 gallons, so at 10 inches deep container holding 30 gallons isnt really a stretch.
The basis of our system are 2'x3' plastic utility containers that the three_little_birds are now infamous for growing in. The containers are just under a foot deep and will hold something in the range of 25 to 30 gallons of soul depending on how full we pack them. Needless to say these containers are heavy so we have each of our containers on an individual furniture mover to make them mobile (and to avoid root stress when the containers are moved).
In our "Jungle of Green" system we use a maximum of 4 plants per container and a minimum of 2 plants in each 2'x3' container:
4 plants per containder gives each plant 1 1/2 square feet a piece and 7 to 8 gallons of soil.
3 plants per container provides each plant 2 square feet of space and 10+ gallons of soil a piece.
In a 2 plant JOG each plan needs to fill out 3 sq ft and gets 15+ gallons of soil for their roots.
(experiments with 1 plant per container were also successful but require strains that really like to "bush out" and some patience too)
In all honesty we've had great success with any of those plant counts - the specific results in terms of look and structure may vary a little depending on how many plants are in a container, but we have found that yields can be the same regardless which you use. The primary difference is plant count vs veg time. Its funny how even in a JOG system it comes downt to that basic choice (much like the choice between SOG and SCROG). One offers little or no veg time and the other offers reduced plant count. We have tried both SOG and SCROG in our gardens and found them inferior to the Jungle of Green.
We normally clone our plants directly into 4 1/2" square planters and grow them up to around 6" or 8" under strong floro lights - currently we use a combination of Agrosun, Sunstick, and daylight floro bulbs in standard 4' shoplight fixtures. Experiments with VHO floro lights have also been very successfull. In addition, some T5 floro arrays are showing extraordinary promise for vegging plants. (Eds note: These bulbs are smaller and set closer together thereby more efficiently utilizing an alternating lamp strategy). But those are expensive investments for beginning gardenders and we've done well with standard floro bulbs.
At 6"-8" with almost all strains we will top (or top clone) our plants to encourage bracning. Allowing a single cola to grow would not allow the canopy to fill in evenly and diminish yields. Topping at this height encourages multiple colas and one secret to creating the jungle of green effect. (Eds note: Bending tops via "supercropping" can also encourage multiple branching without eliminating the apical meristem). Once the plants have recovered from the stress of being topped - once they begin to show the development of those multiple arms we transplant them from their square planters into the 2'x3'. At this point they are around 6" in height and are pretty close to being root bound.
As we said, the JOG will work in a 2'x3' container with 2, 3, or 4 plants. For simplicity sake in this example we'd plant 3 plants in a straight line up the center of the container. We then place the 2'x3' container under at least 110 to 130 watts of VHO floro light; a pair of these containers side by side can be lit by a 400 watt MH light to great effect as well. Depending on the strain and it's veg vigor they will ove inder that bright vegging light for 10-15 days. Plants that been topped will grow more slowly in height since they energy is split between multiple colas. During this time ther roots will be spreading into every corner of the organic soil they have been planted in. As the plants in ther container reach about a foot in height they are ready for the move out to HPS light and a 12/12 light cycle. At this point they are suisually 3 squat little bushes who are just beginning to intermingle their branches and fill in the canopy. Once the plants move to the bloom light cucle they normally explode in size. Even strains known for little or no vegetative stretch will gain some height in a JOG; maybe that stretch is because we usually continue feeding them a grow fert mix for a few days, or maybe its becase of the huge amount of soil their roots have to stretch into.
Once the plants are in bloom it's just a matter of rotating them through the grow as they mature. Once a week the containers are rotated 180 degrees to encourage the plants to grow an even canopy, and once a week they rotate in position. (Eds note: the importance of this point cannot be under stated. Under 600w lights the rotating helps ensure all the plants recieve their share of intense light at the "overlap" points. Under 1000w lights rotating helps ensure no plants gets over exposed to intense light while others are deprived.)
The very smallest plants are on one side of our grow, the mid sized plants on the far side, and the tallest plants are in the middle. Many high tech grow systems are V shaped or stadium shaped - ours is the opposite and we designed ours that way for a reason! Our system is designed to maximize a 3 light system. We feel that multiple light angles are one key to producing good plant vigor, an even canopy, and high yields. We keep our air-cooled PL lights as close as possible to the plant's canopy to maximize the energy our plants recieve. Since the outer plants are shorter, the outer lights are hung lower. This sidelight helps to fill in the lower canopy of the maturing plants in the center of our grow, a detail which helps to significantly increase yields. With JOG some of the lower branches can produce nice "popcorn" buds which helps this system get a little edge on some other gardens. (Eds note: 3LB documented average yields around 1.5g/watt, with high marks reaching over 1.75g/watt).
Airflow and control of the atmosphere are critical factors when growing in the "Jungle". For every 10 sq ft of floor space in the jungle we have about 100 cfm of exhaust pulling through a large carbon filter. This means a 600+ cfm exhaust fan for a 60 square foot growing footprint, ensuring a strong and steady supply of fresh air to the jungle. For a 60 sq ft grow we recommend 2 oscillating fans also blow on the garden constantly. Good airflow discourages pests and diseases while encouraging good general plant respiration.
A relative humidity of 60% or less is also a key. When humidity raises too hight your plants can't breath properly and your plants growth and vigor will both suffer. We are creating a solid canpy of plants with the JOG and those plants will want to breath a lot of moisture into the air. In some locales and in some seasons a dehumidifier is a necessity for a successful JOG.
Hopefully that covers the basics of the bird's do things a little differently ... Welcome to the Jungle.
(Eds note: the following represents 3LB's direct responses to reader questioning as contained in the thread. This is heavily excerpted, but hopefully the nature of the questions will be clear by the response provided.)
We originally started blooming in 3 gallon and 5 gallon buckets, and certainly a great garden can be grown using those kinds of containers. We still use these for unsexed plants when selecting keepers on a grow from seed, but for cloned plants (once we know sex) we almost always use 2'x3' plastic utility bins. The fact that they hold 25 to 30 gallons of soil really gives our babes room to spread their toes, so to speak, and that means happier, healthier, and more productive plants.
Container plantings of this sort offer multiple benefits. Plants in smaller pots (3 or 5 gallons for example) are quicker to show nutrient shortages than thsoe grown in large containers. If there's a little pocket of soil who's pH isn't quite right, or where nutes got mixed in a little too strong, a plant in a smaller contaner will almost certainly be effected. However, the roots of plants in bigger containers can somply seek out better soil and keep on growing.
Our 2'x3' container grows have no drainage holes ... never needed em.
They are about 10" deep and hold 20-30 gallons of soil. With 100% organic food no flushing is needed, and with careful watering there's not even the need for any drainage holes. We never water to the point of total saturation because roots like some air.
We generally would expect to water a 2'x3' container every other day for fill sized plants that fully fill in the caopy above the container. For smaller plants it might be as long as 5 days between waterings. A "normal" watering would be about a gallon of water, but it varies depending on the particular strains needs.
As for the volume question ... 1 cubic foot = 7.4805195 gallon [US, liquid], and a cubic foot is simply 1' x 1' x 1'. Our containers are 2'x3' giving a surface area of 6 square feet. So if our tubs are only 6" deep (and ours are certainly deeper than that) we'd have a max volume of at least 3 cubic feet ... that's about 22 gallons right there. If our tubs were 12 inches deep we'd expect a max volume of 44 gallons, so at 10 inches deep container holding 30 gallons isnt really a stretch.
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