Hi guys, new to the forum here (well new to posting, not to visiting) and looking forward to chatting with some of you.
Looking for some recommendations on the next strains to test in our prototype grow boxes. I'll provide a little background on what we're doing with our grow boxes.
We are working with a few prototype boxes here and the basics are as follows:
1) we don't use tents, we built actual grow boxes - with wheels so that they can easily be moved (they're heavy as shit and wouldn't be easily moveable without wheels)
2) each box can accommodate a single plant up to 60 inches in height.
3) We are currently lighting each grow box with a 400 watt cob light setup - the lighting system is completely automated in movement (motors move the light up/down the grow box so that height of the lighting can easily be set and change with the plant growth) and timing (as in on/off timing). The box will actually detect the highest point of the plant and adjust itself accordingly.
4) The watering system is completely automated. We have multiple soil senors in the box that track the moisture level of the soil - those senors are used to trigger the automated watering system and keep the soil at a specific moisture level. One of the things we are doing is determining the optimal moisture level for plant growth for every strain we put in the box - so the optimal moisture level will change on a plant by plant basis.
5) The nutrient feeding process is also automated. This was is a bit more complicated - it's not automated on the first "run" of planting - because we don't have the data on the soil nutrient levels over it's development. So with every new strain we run weekly soil nutrient tests to determine how much/fast the plant is eating and thus when it requires new nutrients. Every subsequent planting, the system will automatically add the appropriate amount to nutrients based on the previously collected data.
6) The airflow in and exhaust systems are both automated (carbon filter on exhaust).
7) The box also monitors box temperature, humidity and light levels (all sensor data wirelessly uploaded to a database with all these nice little graphs - I mean who doesn't like graphs!). So we literally log every bit of data throughout the grow process - we can tell you what the moisture, lighting, temp, and humidity was at 4:20PM on Friday of whenever if you wanted to know
So basically, we go from strain to strain gathering grow data and using that grow data to automate the grow process for a strain. Over the past year, we've done 7 strains and the results have been outstanding (thus far all 'quick to harvest' strains). For all seven of those strains, we can literally direct sow the seed and come back when it's time to harvest (well, we have the system setup to take pictures every week also and send those to us - just in case there is an issue with the plant that the system isn't designed to handle) (and yes, we HAVE done exactly that - it's awesome). As an example, the last strain we finished up with was Emerald Triangle Bubba Cheese Auto. Now we can choose "Emerald Triangle Bubba Cheese Auto" on an LCD and the system configures all the automated systems around the settings we have for that strain.
So what we are looking to do is essentially go strain to strain gathering data and setting up the automated system around each strain. It's a time consuming process but the resulting system is pretty awesome.
Anyways, we were looking for recommendations for the next strains to add to our grow boxes. We prefer to keep the strain testing to auto-flowering strains that are under 60 inches and no more than 10 weeks to harvest. Obviously, strains that require any type of trimming or manual work we aren't really interested in. Thanks ahead of time for any recommendations guys!
Looking for some recommendations on the next strains to test in our prototype grow boxes. I'll provide a little background on what we're doing with our grow boxes.
We are working with a few prototype boxes here and the basics are as follows:
1) we don't use tents, we built actual grow boxes - with wheels so that they can easily be moved (they're heavy as shit and wouldn't be easily moveable without wheels)
2) each box can accommodate a single plant up to 60 inches in height.
3) We are currently lighting each grow box with a 400 watt cob light setup - the lighting system is completely automated in movement (motors move the light up/down the grow box so that height of the lighting can easily be set and change with the plant growth) and timing (as in on/off timing). The box will actually detect the highest point of the plant and adjust itself accordingly.
4) The watering system is completely automated. We have multiple soil senors in the box that track the moisture level of the soil - those senors are used to trigger the automated watering system and keep the soil at a specific moisture level. One of the things we are doing is determining the optimal moisture level for plant growth for every strain we put in the box - so the optimal moisture level will change on a plant by plant basis.
5) The nutrient feeding process is also automated. This was is a bit more complicated - it's not automated on the first "run" of planting - because we don't have the data on the soil nutrient levels over it's development. So with every new strain we run weekly soil nutrient tests to determine how much/fast the plant is eating and thus when it requires new nutrients. Every subsequent planting, the system will automatically add the appropriate amount to nutrients based on the previously collected data.
6) The airflow in and exhaust systems are both automated (carbon filter on exhaust).
7) The box also monitors box temperature, humidity and light levels (all sensor data wirelessly uploaded to a database with all these nice little graphs - I mean who doesn't like graphs!). So we literally log every bit of data throughout the grow process - we can tell you what the moisture, lighting, temp, and humidity was at 4:20PM on Friday of whenever if you wanted to know
So basically, we go from strain to strain gathering grow data and using that grow data to automate the grow process for a strain. Over the past year, we've done 7 strains and the results have been outstanding (thus far all 'quick to harvest' strains). For all seven of those strains, we can literally direct sow the seed and come back when it's time to harvest (well, we have the system setup to take pictures every week also and send those to us - just in case there is an issue with the plant that the system isn't designed to handle) (and yes, we HAVE done exactly that - it's awesome). As an example, the last strain we finished up with was Emerald Triangle Bubba Cheese Auto. Now we can choose "Emerald Triangle Bubba Cheese Auto" on an LCD and the system configures all the automated systems around the settings we have for that strain.
So what we are looking to do is essentially go strain to strain gathering data and setting up the automated system around each strain. It's a time consuming process but the resulting system is pretty awesome.
Anyways, we were looking for recommendations for the next strains to add to our grow boxes. We prefer to keep the strain testing to auto-flowering strains that are under 60 inches and no more than 10 weeks to harvest. Obviously, strains that require any type of trimming or manual work we aren't really interested in. Thanks ahead of time for any recommendations guys!
We'll certainly checkout Blue Dream though. We're actually only going to spend another 6ish months working with autos only and then we're going to start working with non-auto strains as well. There were reasons we started with autos - nothing I'm sure anyone here cares about though. We also plan to double the number of grow boxes this year and increase the height of the new ones to 96" to accommodate larger strains. And we should be a position where we will start using fewer boxes per strain - so we'll be adding strain data to the system pretty quickly starting later this year.