Perpetual DWC?

xIPhobiaIx said:

Hello,

Looking to DIY a DWC or RDWC setup and am curious on how "transplanting" works in a DWC setup between different rooms.
Seed/clone chamber, Veg room, flower room. Simple idea is to have veg plants ready to go into the flower room every time a harvest occurs. This will be every 8 weeks for the strain I will be using roughly.

My questions are as follows:
1. If switching a veg plant into a flower room does the flower room also have to be a DWC setup? Is there any value in doing so (better yield?) or is an airpot/smart pot fine at this point?
2. I am planning on switching my plants to flower when they hit roughly 2ft tall in veg. In your experience how long on average does it take a DWC setup to get a plant to 2ft? I know DWC is supposed to be pretty fast compared to soil.

Thank you!

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Tracker said:

1) if you start in DWC, the root structure will grow accordingly, to optimize what it has to work with. If you try to switch a well established DWC plant to airpot/smart pot with a different substrate/grow media, it will stress out and take time to adjust, as it will need to adjust the growth of its root structures to compensate for the new environment.
2) in my experience, when DWC is dialed in right, it is significantly more productive than soil. The plants grow faster, so they fill a larger volume in less time than a soil plant. How fast it makes it from clone to 2ft tall depends on genetics, nutrients, lights, temps and other enviro variables, training methods, etc...

Good luck!

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xIPhobiaIx said:

Makes sense for question 1 but as I am doing a perpetual harvet the quick veg time wont matter as I cannot harvest any quick than every 8 weeks with one flower room. It really comes down to does DWC produce a yield gain enough to warrant it?

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Thundercat said:

If you want to harvest more, and faster you should look into SOG methods. I ran a perpetual SOG for 10 years. It is definitely the fastest way to produce yields. You shorten the veg time down to 1-2 weeks which allows you to turn over more harvests per year. You replace that veg time with more plants that are smaller. I used to get 45ish plants in a 4x4 flood and drain tray under a single 1k aircooled hps light. Yields depended on strain, with higher yielders I got 30ish grams per plant, with lower yielders it was about 20ish. To make my garden perpetual I was on a 2-3 week cycle of taking clones, putting the previous clones into veg, getting the veg plants into flower and harvesting the finished cycle of flowering plants. Then trimming cleaning and plant maintenance in between. My plan for my next garden is 4 trays, 4 lights each filled with clones on their own independent cycle. That will make it easier to mono-crop my genetics and maximize potential.

Have you ran the strain you are planning on growing before? Don't count on it being done in 8 weeks based of the breeders description if not. You will end up with a log jam when the plants need longer to finish.

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