40+ lbs with 12 Plants in 2 Rooms on a Flip

Bet it took awhile to figure that all out! But sounds like you have it on auto pilot now......good deal, frees you up more too. If I knew you the past 3-4 yrs and lived nearby you'd have oodles of my loot banked....haha

Renfro said:

Thanks man. 1200 sqft. Took me 6 years to get it where it is now. I started with one flowering room running and no CO2 or air conditioner. Nice thing about that is I have ventilation system that serves as a backup if my AC goes out. I have the fresh air intake blowers connected to my autopilot controller so that if the room gets hotter than the AC should keep it at, it disables CO2 generation and vents. I also have my end row lights and between row lights on a high temp cutoff so they would kick off and wait for the room to cool down and wait another 15 minutes before coming back on. So if an AC unit stops and Im not home it handles it automatically. I can also set the nite temp lower than the day temp and when lights go out the fresh air kicks on and pushes out any ethylene gas out.

Click to expand...

No ethylene gas from tanks.

awesome grow journal! beyond amazing what you've managed to do with small plant counts indoors.

Couldn't stop reading. Thanks for sharing

ttystikk said:

No ethylene gas from tanks.

Click to expand...

It comes from the plants. If not ever vented in a sealed grow it could build up and cause early ripening.

Renfro, hypothetical for ya

I am from Canada, 4 plant limit

If you were in the same situation, how would you grow to maximize your limit?

I will have a blank canvas for my grow space/lights/environment, it will be tailored to what i need/want(prob looking at 6-8k budget max, less would be optimal lol). Electricity is expensive here, so i have been leaning towards cobs/leds for the future space.

Just curious how someone like yourself, who grows indoor fkn trees would go about it. Would you continue as you are? go perpetual? Keep a couple moms and keep taking clones for quick turnover?

Sorry if this isnt the place to ask, i will delete this and send you a message if that works better.

Thanks

diggs99 said:

Renfro, hypothetical for ya

I am from Canada, 4 plant limit

If you were in the same situation, how would you grow to maximize your limit?

I will have a blank canvas for my grow space/lights/environment, it will be tailored to what i need/want(prob looking at 6-8k budget max, less would be optimal lol). Electricity is expensive here, so i have been leaning towards cobs/leds for the future space.

Just curious how someone like yourself, who grows indoor fkn trees would go about it. Would you continue as you are? go perpetual? Keep a couple moms and keep taking clones for quick turnover?

Sorry if this isnt the place to ask, i will delete this and send you a message if that works better.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Well with a 4 plant limit I definitely wouldn't keep moms. I would take clones off my plants either before flipping to flower or I would take them about 15 to 20 days into flower. I would have two plants in flower and two in veg after they are rooted to be the next into flower, so a dedicated veg area is required. I wouldn't do perpetual as I believe that's a lot harder to keep pest free.

I would setup where I can have side lighting all around the plants and lighting over the plants. I want them big so I would use HPS for overhead lighting and LED would be fine for the sides. I would run CO2 and thus air conditioning. A solid trellis rig (I use 1/2" galvanized pipe) to hold the weight of the buds and to allow for training them so they grow wide as possible, you want one plant to fill out a 4x4 or 5x5 area once stretch is finished.

I would pick one strain that likes to get big and yields well. Plants that stay small are not good for this situation.

Basically it would be as I am doing it now, but perhaps you would want to do DWC or RDWC to help improve yields even more.

Basically grow em big! When limited to 4 plants, you want them as big as possible. You will get more that way than you would if you had another harvest per year with all the harvests being smaller.

Renfro said:

Well with a 4 plant limit I definitely wouldn't keep moms. I would take clones off my plants either before flipping to flower or I would take them about 15 to 20 days into flower. I would have two plants in flower and two in veg after they are rooted to be the next into flower, so a dedicated veg area is required. I wouldn't do perpetual as I believe that's a lot harder to keep pest free.

I would setup where I can have side lighting all around the plants and lighting over the plants. I want them big so I would use HPS for overhead lighting and LED would be fine for the sides. I would run CO2 and thus air conditioning. A solid trellis rig (I use 1/2" galvanized pipe) to hold the weight of the buds and to allow for training them so they grow wide as possible, you want one plant to fill out a 4x4 or 5x5 area once stretch is finished.

I would pick one strain that likes to get big and yields well. Plants that stay small are not good for this situation.

Basically it would be as I am doing it now, but perhaps you would want to do DWC or RDWC to help improve yields even more.

Basically grow em big! When limited to 4 plants, you want them as big as possible. You will get more that way than you would if you had another harvest per year with all the harvests being smaller.

Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to answer that.

It was along the same lines as I was thinking. 2 veg/ 2 flowering , separate rooms. I assumed longer veg to grow indoor trees like yours would be the most beneficial.

I am only in the planning stages for the room, it will be happening this spring, trying to get a head start on the research so I have everything bought and ready to install once the garage is built. The garage will be heated. Running dual head heat pump as heat/ac. It will also have 10` ceilings

I will have to do some reading on RDWC and DWC. not overly familiar with either to be honest.

Lighting i assume will be my biggest expense., My idea is to set it up exactly how i want, go big or go home type mentality i guess . Do it right the first time.

1000hps above each plant and led strips all around each trellised plant sounds like a beastly scenario for growing trees lol

I have been looking hard at the timber fattys or at building an equivalent. Our electric costs are expensive around here, so the efficiency may help in that area.

What size lights would you use to VEG? 600w? or also 1000`s?

I very much appreciate you running through that for me. very helpful info in that post.

In veg I use 1000w MH. I do this only to keep them sorta compact with shorter internodes. If I let them, they would get way to big to move without a lot of branches breaking. I use the MH lights and monster cropping to do this. Before I did that I had HPS and took clones before I flipped to flower. The plants ended up really big and long internode lengths. This made them very difficult to move. In my flower room I veg a little while to get them all stretched out wide and fill the area. All those branches that are turned sideways shoot new branches out of the nodes making for a massive canopy with lots of buds.

A single 1000MH could easily veg the two plants. Turn it down or use a led to root the clones. When potted you can start with the light dimmed and closer, move it up higher and turn it up as the plants get taller and wider.

10' ceilings is something I would love to have, I could grow bigger plants in bigger pots and have more yield. I would definitely build the trellis rig for a 5 x 10 area for the two plants. I currently use a 4x8 with my lower ceilings. All that side area is basically canopy when hit with good side light. So you have 5 sides of a box that get good light, with trellis to hold the weight of the buds. All thats left is the floor.

I would use 20 gallon pots with that ceiling height.

Another thing to consider is the 1000 DE CMH setups that are pretty new. I wanna try one but I haven't yet. Was looking at the nanolux ones even though I had a lot of problems with their DE HPS ballasts crapping out.

One may even setup two rooms like this and just let the plants live their whole life in there, adding the trellis and side lighting as needed. Have one room vegging while the other flowers. Doing it like that with 4 plants may be the way to go. Downside is that you need two ac units (or one minisplit with two heads), two co2 generators / controllers, two trellis rigs... you may wanna put some thought into this as thats what I would do if I had taller ceilings. Actually planning a future grow built in a metal shop building. I want 12 foot ceilings and grow them really high/wide. Two rooms, one vegs while the other flowers and then flips to flower and the other is now in veg.

You can get minisplit heat pumps that will also heat so you can kill two birds with one stone. Get like a 3 ton unit with two heads, one for each room. Or even a third head if you need heat in area outside of the rooms.

Do the math on how much side lighting you will use and then figure the tonnage based on all the heat including CO2 generator if you go that route.

I have actually just stumbled down the 1000 DE CMH rabbit hole. i knew about the 315s and 630s, didnt even know a 1000de was made. Will be looking into these further for sure before making any decisions.

I love the idea of 2 separate rooms just flipping back and forth, seems very practical.

I just spoke with my Heating guy(close buddy) yesterday, we agreed on a dual head heat pump he called it, being my best choice. its like a bigger/better version of a mini split? thats how he explained it anyway. It provides both heat and AC. Not sure if that could be branched off to provide for 2 separate rooms inside the bigger grow space tho? sounds like it should be able to but i have no clue about that stuff .

Ya i wanted 12` ceilings and still may yet but the wife wants a loft up top , so im thinking 10` will keep the building a little lower. 6 months ago i started sketching up plans for this garage and loft, now changes are being made because my room has now taken priority.

20g pots to finish? what would be your potting process ? 3-5gs straight to 20gs?

So much knowledge in those 2 posts bro, thank you very much. Very helpful stuff

diggs99 said:

I have actually just stumbled down the 1000 DE CMH rabbit hole. i knew about the 315s and 630s, didnt even know a 1000de was made. Will be looking into these further for sure before making any decisions.

I love the idea of 2 separate rooms just flipping back and forth, seems very practical.

I just spoke with my Heating guy(close buddy) yesterday, we agreed on a dual head heat pump he called it, being my best choice. its like a bigger/better version of a mini split? thats how he explained it anyway. It provides both heat and AC. Not sure if that could be branched off to provide for 2 separate rooms inside the bigger grow space tho? sounds like it should be able to but i have no clue about that stuff .

Ya i wanted 12` ceilings and still may yet but the wife wants a loft up top , so im thinking 10` will keep the building a little lower. 6 months ago i started sketching up plans for this garage and loft, now changes are being made because my room has now taken priority.

20g pots to finish? what would be your potting process ? 3-5gs straight to 20gs?

So much knowledge in those 2 posts bro, thank you very much. Very helpful stuff

Click to expand...

Well your rooms may need to be cooled when the other needs heat... Not sure if that one unit could heat one head while cooling the others. Also you want a unit that will cool when it's really cold outside (low ambient). You also need to make sure it will auto restart after a power outage. The inverter minisplit tech is great for our needs because it only runs as hard as it needs to, where other units are either on at full power or off. When it's cold outside my fans don't even turn on my outdoor unit. My units is speced to run down to 5 degrees outside, some will go even lower like down to -21.

So I am not sure what type of unit he wanted to give you but make sure it will work when its bitter outside and your lights are cranked.

diggs99 said:

20g pots to finish? what would be your potting process ? 3-5gs straight to 20gs?

Click to expand...

When going with 20 gallon pots I may let the veg for a bit in 3 gallon pots then up to the 20's. Right now I just go directly to the 10 gallon pots lol.

Digging the op I'll be lurking.

Did a 10 gallon Smart Pot on my Monster Crop grow, had it on a lazy Suzan so I would spin it in the tent to work on it. Would be so nice to have the room.

gr865 said:

Did a 10 gallon Smart Pot on my Monster Crop grow, had it on a lazy Suzan so I would spin it in the tent to work on it. Would be so nice to have the room.

Click to expand...

That's smart thinking!

Hell I may be old but I am no dummy!
This is about 15 days before flipping.


The square base have castors that match the groves in the tray so I can pull it back and forth, and the lazy Susan is attached to that square base, the screen stand on top of the LS is just to keep the fabric pot drained and not sitting in solution.
Was able to rotate it about 345 degrees, should have used longer feed lines.

Renfro said:

It comes from the plants. If not ever vented in a sealed grow it could build up and cause early ripening.

Click to expand...

This is not true. Ethylene comes from incomplete combustion of natural gas or propane used to boost CO².

The only time plants emit it is during decomposition. If that's happening in your growroom I'd say you have a problem lol

gr865 said:

Hell I may be old but I am no dummy!
This is about 15 days before flipping.
View attachment 4273259

The square base have castors that match the groves in the tray so I can pull it back and forth, and the lazy Susan is attached to that square base, the screen stand on top of the LS is just to keep the fabric pot drained and not sitting in solution.
Was able to rotate it about 345 degrees, should have used longer feed lines.

Click to expand...

Sweet!

diggs99 said:

I have actually just stumbled down the 1000 DE CMH rabbit hole. i knew about the 315s and 630s, didnt even know a 1000de was made. Will be looking into these further for sure before making any decisions.

I love the idea of 2 separate rooms just flipping back and forth, seems very practical.

I just spoke with my Heating guy(close buddy) yesterday, we agreed on a dual head heat pump he called it, being my best choice. its like a bigger/better version of a mini split? thats how he explained it anyway. It provides both heat and AC. Not sure if that could be branched off to provide for 2 separate rooms inside the bigger grow space tho? sounds like it should be able to but i have no clue about that stuff .

Ya i wanted 12` ceilings and still may yet but the wife wants a loft up top , so im thinking 10` will keep the building a little lower. 6 months ago i started sketching up plans for this garage and loft, now changes are being made because my room has now taken priority.

20g pots to finish? what would be your potting process ? 3-5gs straight to 20gs?

So much knowledge in those 2 posts bro, thank you very much. Very helpful stuff

Click to expand...

What's a dual head heat pump??

diggs99 said:

Thanks for taking the time to answer that.

It was along the same lines as I was thinking. 2 veg/ 2 flowering , separate rooms. I assumed longer veg to grow indoor trees like yours would be the most beneficial.

I am only in the planning stages for the room, it will be happening this spring, trying to get a head start on the research so I have everything bought and ready to install once the garage is built. The garage will be heated. Running dual head heat pump as heat/ac. It will also have 10` ceilings

I will have to do some reading on RDWC and DWC. not overly familiar with either to be honest.

Lighting i assume will be my biggest expense., My idea is to set it up exactly how i want, go big or go home type mentality i guess . Do it right the first time.

1000hps above each plant and led strips all around each trellised plant sounds like a beastly scenario for growing trees lol

I have been looking hard at the timber fattys or at building an equivalent. Our electric costs are expensive around here, so the efficiency may help in that area.

What size lights would you use to VEG? 600w? or also 1000`s?

I very much appreciate you running through that for me. very helpful info in that post.

Click to expand...

If you want to grow big plants you need time to let them grow.

If you're serious about 4 plants, do a perpetual grow and bloom just one a month. Space your crops 4 weeks apart so you have a baby, a juvie and a prebloomer at all times.