mountaindude530
Active Member
So Here's the deal.. I used to grow a good amount of pot.. I went and got a house with a huge 20X20 foot room and lined it with mylar and ducting.. I had a few 1000's on rail movers and a sea of green in a couple ebb & flow trays with about 100 or so plants under co2... and so on and so on.. It was a beautiful room, but it had some quirks just like almost every room does.. There's always room for improvement.
1) Mylar is only effective if it is COMPLETELY flat, sealed with a special glue and properly insulated underneathe (otherwise it promotes mold )
2) The ebb and Flow only fills water up to a certain point on the plants root structure (not a big deal, but it bugged me)
3) Ebb and flow doesn't take advantage of the properties of rockwool like I would have preferred to
4) I was spending a BUTTLOAD of money on co2 and electricity for the plants (worth the spending cash in the end but hurt my poor pockets in the meantime)
5)With soo many plants.. it's difficult to tend to each ones needs and not neglect others.. I noticed out of all the pounds I was harvesting, easily 65-80% of the weight was coming from about 20 plants that I subconciously favored and happend to be in optimal spots
If there is any piece of advice that I always give to newbies about growing it's that there are two HUGE main things to remember about growing..
***Keep your Set up simple and purposeful
***Keep your operating costs low for the room
So I ended up moving out of that house and into a new house with my gf, who doesn't know a whole lot about growing but loves everything about it. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to get back to basics, teach my lady the secrets, and relearn the standard stuff for myself before I rebuild the old room.. I started about a week ago and here's where I'm at.
The Set-Up:
Room Dimentions: 10X7 and 8 feet tall
- Plants sit on a shelf about 3 feet off the ground leaving about 4 feet under lights for growth
- I chose the Height because I'm going to use a "Bonsai" method of tons of trimming and supercropping; therefore the shelves allow me to spend less time on my knees (haha) and I dont need to move the light as much..
ANy ways here it is::
4 Purple Kush Clones
House & Garden Nutrients (love em)
6X6 Grodan Rockwool in Hydroton
18" wide buckets -- 8" tall
1 Sunsystem 1000 watt HPS
4" Intake Fan
6" Outtake fan
18" Oscillating fan
Carbonaire Filter
White Poly plastic on walls
Water:
I did an experiment before, when I had my other room, where I didn't put 4 plants in the flood tray and simply watered them by hand every day or every other day.. My thought was that if the stress would work on soil, then It should work even better on rockwool if properly maintained.
They grew like CRAZY.. Letting them dry out every now and then, and not saturating the entire cube in water in turned caused the roots to freak out and go searching for more sources; they were EXPLODING out of the rockwool
So I'm trying this time around to just water my plants by hand for as long as possible and put them on a pump toward the 2nd half or end of their cycle.. unless of course I see any signs of thirst or underwatering.. but hopefully it will work out..
Co2 :
I still haven't decided.. But I'm thinking about taking it back to the old school trick with the Co2 too and do yeast and sugar.. I did another experiment (this time in one of my chemistry classes ) and, long story short, figured that with aproximately 25 ounces of yeast and 8-10 pounds of sugar.. you could ultimately maintain the 1300 ppm mark for the co2.. I think I'm going to give it a shot, if nothing else just for the sake of experimenting on this one trial harvest.. Thats about $25 for supplies.
So I'll get pics up here in the next couple days and show how everythings doing, like I said I'm already about a week in from transplant.
Hope everyone likes and reads this journal, I think there's going to be a lot of good stuff for new people to learn and for seasoned vets to review on..
1) Mylar is only effective if it is COMPLETELY flat, sealed with a special glue and properly insulated underneathe (otherwise it promotes mold )
2) The ebb and Flow only fills water up to a certain point on the plants root structure (not a big deal, but it bugged me)
3) Ebb and flow doesn't take advantage of the properties of rockwool like I would have preferred to
4) I was spending a BUTTLOAD of money on co2 and electricity for the plants (worth the spending cash in the end but hurt my poor pockets in the meantime)
5)With soo many plants.. it's difficult to tend to each ones needs and not neglect others.. I noticed out of all the pounds I was harvesting, easily 65-80% of the weight was coming from about 20 plants that I subconciously favored and happend to be in optimal spots
If there is any piece of advice that I always give to newbies about growing it's that there are two HUGE main things to remember about growing..
***Keep your Set up simple and purposeful
***Keep your operating costs low for the room
So I ended up moving out of that house and into a new house with my gf, who doesn't know a whole lot about growing but loves everything about it. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to get back to basics, teach my lady the secrets, and relearn the standard stuff for myself before I rebuild the old room.. I started about a week ago and here's where I'm at.
The Set-Up:
Room Dimentions: 10X7 and 8 feet tall
- Plants sit on a shelf about 3 feet off the ground leaving about 4 feet under lights for growth
- I chose the Height because I'm going to use a "Bonsai" method of tons of trimming and supercropping; therefore the shelves allow me to spend less time on my knees (haha) and I dont need to move the light as much..
ANy ways here it is::
4 Purple Kush Clones
House & Garden Nutrients (love em)
6X6 Grodan Rockwool in Hydroton
18" wide buckets -- 8" tall
1 Sunsystem 1000 watt HPS
4" Intake Fan
6" Outtake fan
18" Oscillating fan
Carbonaire Filter
White Poly plastic on walls
Water:
I did an experiment before, when I had my other room, where I didn't put 4 plants in the flood tray and simply watered them by hand every day or every other day.. My thought was that if the stress would work on soil, then It should work even better on rockwool if properly maintained.
They grew like CRAZY.. Letting them dry out every now and then, and not saturating the entire cube in water in turned caused the roots to freak out and go searching for more sources; they were EXPLODING out of the rockwool
So I'm trying this time around to just water my plants by hand for as long as possible and put them on a pump toward the 2nd half or end of their cycle.. unless of course I see any signs of thirst or underwatering.. but hopefully it will work out..
Co2 :
I still haven't decided.. But I'm thinking about taking it back to the old school trick with the Co2 too and do yeast and sugar.. I did another experiment (this time in one of my chemistry classes ) and, long story short, figured that with aproximately 25 ounces of yeast and 8-10 pounds of sugar.. you could ultimately maintain the 1300 ppm mark for the co2.. I think I'm going to give it a shot, if nothing else just for the sake of experimenting on this one trial harvest.. Thats about $25 for supplies.
So I'll get pics up here in the next couple days and show how everythings doing, like I said I'm already about a week in from transplant.
Hope everyone likes and reads this journal, I think there's going to be a lot of good stuff for new people to learn and for seasoned vets to review on..