damn the full how to huh... Well here ya go better get some +rep for this
Size: 3.5 ft X 3.5 ft mylar lined on three sides, open on front, white plastic board on floor
Veg lights: 400mh + 250 hps - 650 total veg watts
Flwr lights: 400hps + 250 mh + 8 - 26w 4200K cfls + 8 - 26w 2400K cfls = 1066 flowering watts
Lighting Schedual :
Clones - 24 hours (No HID lamps)
Vegetative - 20 hours
Flowering - 12 hrs (last two weeks of flowering 13 hrs)
Hood: Sun Systems air cooled hood w/ custom 16 socket cfl bracket
Cooling: Hood is cooled with a industrial heater fan mounted in a acoustic foam lined box - Absolutely Silent
Plants have a .25 hp industrial fan w/ a dimmer switch hooked up to the cord to adjust power.
Nutrients: Advanced Nutrients - Micro, Grow, Bloom ; Voodoo Juice ; Sensizyme ; Bud Blood
Humbolt County's Own - Snow Storm ; Gravity
Cloning Gel - Rootech cloning gel
Growing medium: I start clones in 3x3 rockwool cubes. Soil is 6 part mix that i make. perlite, kentucky riverbottom loam, worm castings, bat guano, a organic soil base that a local nursery sells
Odor control - custom build powered filter box (totally seperate from hood cooling system)
holds 10 - 20lbs activated carbon
I'm not sure how early other people start training there plants, but i start by topping the clones as i plant them in soil on day 1. This is not your typical topping of a plant. I trim the very top 1 or 2 nodes on the very end of the growing tip. Then about 3-5 days after i have planted a cube in soil, the plant should be through any stress from topping and planting it in soil. The next 2 or 3 nodes down from where it was topped should be showing signs of strong growth now that they are the only 3 branches on the little clone. I start by tying these tiny braches apart with cotton string and tie them to the edge of the pot. As it grows i prune nodes that a wont need before they get and larger than 1/4 of an inch, so the plant doesn't waste any energy on growing branches that i'm going to prune off. I tie the branches out and down spreading them as evenly as i can, until i have a plant with 13 - 15 heads about the same height. I trim nodes from the lower parts of the growing heads so there is no little "popcorn nugs" at the bottom of the stems of where my main colas will be. I do all of this in 30 days. If you do it right the plant will grow extremely fast and just how you want it to. As I begin to flower my plants I usually don't have to do any more tying to position the heads but i usually just have to adjust the height/ tension of the strings. I do have to always tie them up to each other when they start getting so heavy the plant can't hold up the weight itself. Thats it on LST unless anyone has more questions.
A few other tips - I fertilize every watering (except flushing the plants of course). I just find a level of nutrient solution that my plants can handle without burning or even getting to dark green. I think a constant light feeding program works much better than a heavy fertilization every other watering. DON"T OVERFERTILIZE. You can build up levels of minerals and other compounds in the soil the don't make the plant look like its having problems but rather just slow down growth. Also i keep the glass of the hood 8 inches from the tops of my plants. The cooling system is powerful enough to keep the glass around 85 degrees. I checked it with a laser thermometer. There is two types of ways a HID bulb can burn a plant. The first is just the heat energy put off, and secondly is by the intensity of the visible light coming off the bulb. Most sources say to keep your plants 18 - 24 inches from the bulb, but i find that my plants leaves wont start showing signs of damage until 3 - 4 inches from the glass of my hood with the glass being cool to the touch (85 degrees or so). So basically I'm just reiterating the well known fact that the closer you can bring your lights to the plants without burning the better.
First pic. is a clone i was talking about the day i planted it, its topped but you can barely tell. second pic is that plant at day thirty. the last pic is two different plants but i put that one on here to show how close i keep the lights
