Something I am working on.

So I have been trying to come up with a way to keep track of the growth rate and come up with a more scientific approach to growing.

Basically so that I don't have to rely on the lack of natural ability to grow. And want to see if there is something that can mathematically be used to estimate the optimal growth rates and establish a base-line for how to monitor it.

Anyway I had been taking measurements of height , length and width at the widest points.

Then I multiply those three measurements to get the volume (of a box that would perfectly fit it) of the plant. I would like to do it in the metric system, but since we like to use antiquated measures here in the states, I would be lost.



So anyway since I measure in inches I take that number (H*L*W) and divide it by 12 for feet. Then I find that square root.

So in essence I get the square root of ((L*W*H)/12) for the volume.

This also gives me a manageable number so that I can chart it.




Now once I have more data I can map out the growth progress and really get a better idea about how my plants are doing.

For example, #1 and #2 are strait bagseed from some respectable weed. During the first couple weeks I used regular soil and had a serious heat issue. It was always above 90 degrees F until day 27.

Also I started giving them nutes on day 16. Full nute mixes started on day 25.

For the NY Diesel 1 & 2 The heat got fixed on day 16, and nutes on the same day.


Anyway This is the start of this for me. I plan on putting together a excel sheet so that everything is a lot cleaner, and when I do I will post it here if anyone wants to use it.

So what do you think?

Is there something like this out there? If not do you think that this would be a good generalized guideline on how strains should look size wise when checking if a plant is doing fine?

I can also see this as a good jump on checking different strains and what to expect under optimal conditions for people to check when they are growing a new strain.

And also it may help (need massive amounts of data to be more accurate) to get a better idea of yield vs. plant size with growth rate. IE slower growth may affect the yield, ect.

Anyway any feedback or is this a colossal waste of my time?

thats cool for certain genetics size has alot to do when your growing indoors

thats cool for certain genetics size has alot to do when your growing indoors

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Exactly. If you can control everything, this is a great way to see how you are fairing against the people that have perfected their grows. Like the fact I have no idea what my C02 is, but if I checked and saw that someone that grew a very nice Diesel at day 20 had a volume of 16 feet squared, then I would know that I have some adjustments to make to the room.

There is a lot of things to consider in growing, room size, bulb distance, soil, nutes, on and on. This would be a way to really get a grasp on the ideal sizes to see how it is going.

Had an issue with the posting of the pics, so just updated with the handmade charts that I have. Might be more understandable now.

it is impossible to compare plants between two growers in two different areas of the world with 2 different grows..

even if the strains are the same, the doesnt mean the plants will grow the same..

unless you had seeds from the mother or clones from the same mother your comparisons arent going to be accurate..

for instance i have 3 super lemon haze plants going... they were all started at the same time... all 3 have very different and are different sizes... and all three are in the same hydro setup as one another.. so they are all getting the same nutes, in the same temps, same humidity, ect..

not to mention that different strains grow at different rates..

the idea you have is a good one.. tracking your growth rate and working to optimize your setup is a great thing to do.. but comparing my grow to your grow, even if its the same thing we are growing, isnt going to give you a fair comparison...

now if you use your idea, and track clone generations, so that you know that your growin the same strain from the same mother everytime, and using that information to tweak your setup would make more sense...

i dont want to shoot your idea down.. or make you think its a bad one... its just that for your comparisons to be accurate you would have to make sure that each step of the grow you are comparing your too are done the exact same as yours.. from RH, to ambien temp, to co2 levels, to medium, to strain, to nutes, ect... but again, using it as a bases to track your own grows so you know how your doing grow to grow is a great idea...

I like it. I like seeing reasoned stuff like this applied to growing instead of theories based in nothing but number of times repeated on forums. It is possible to make the comparison. Of course I can see issues that need to be ironed out. Such as, 2 plants with the same h,w, l could be very different in density. If you weighed them they could be multiples apart. But that's a matter of finding better metrics. Conclusions could be dicey too but sometimes you just have to start by collecting the data and then see what you have. At least this would enable a given grower to say, "I did these two grows the same except for X, now I can quantify the impact of x."

i dont want to shoot your idea down.. or make you think its a bad one... its just that for your comparisons to be accurate you would have to make sure that each step of the grow you are comparing your too are done the exact same as yours.. from RH, to ambien temp, to co2 levels, to medium, to strain, to nutes, ect... but again, using it as a bases to track your own grows so you know how your doing grow to grow is a great idea...

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Not at all, I am looking for the pros and cons! I am still so new to this that anything I learn good or bad is fun. As sick as it sounds I am kind of looking forward to my first bug invasion so I can learn how to spot them and clear it up.

I was not thinking of this as so much an exact growth rate, more of an average of the strains. And what approximately to expect with growth rate under optimal conditions. So I guess more of a range. If I grow NYD for 12 grows (would be about 4 years strait of growing it) I would now have all those different growth rates to average out, this way I can have something of an ideal range to see what is happening.

But then I would have to start collecting data on the next plant, and so on. If there was something like this that others were putting out there it would be easier to plan new strains.

Since this is my first grow I really have very little to expect (aside from the wealth of info I have gotten here). But there seems to be no set guideline on when the best time to supercrop, or what the yield difference is when you do, ect. There may be something out there, I just am not sure where to find it. No measurements but a ton of pics that make it difficult to tell the height or floor space of the plants (and makes me itch to have my babies mature).

But mostly this is for myself to do exactly what you said! It already helped me to realize that I had overwatered them how much they boom a couple days after you feed them and how the high heat had stunted #1 and #2.

If you weighed them they could be multiples apart. But that's a matter of finding better metrics. Conclusions could be dicey too but sometimes you just have to start by collecting the data and then see what you have. At least this would enable a given grower to say, "I did these two grows the same except for X, now I can quantify the impact of x."

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Exactly! I love the idea of weighing them. This would give a optimal time to water based off of past info. Being able to register the droops or booms in size (I don't have a accurate water level tester). And also another area to look at the expected yields based on weight.

I love being on the same side Illegal smile!

i know how you feel.. when i first started growing i was frantically trying to find out how tall my girls should be at what point... when to do what.. ect ect...

i realized that its a grower to grower thing... a setup to setup thing.. and a strain to strain thing..

the biggest realization of this has came since i changed from soil to hydro, and expanded from 1 strain to 7...

its good that you are keeping track of that stuff tho.. it will help you get your system for watering and feeding down to a science and really boost your yields in the end..

Yeah it is the science of this that excites me. Hell I was flirting with the idea to change my major to Botany after I started to play around with this.


Luckily my girlfriend is smarter than I am and talked some sense into me.

Not a bad idea to do this - think I'm going to do the same thing with establishing a baseline when I'm set-up completely indoors. Would be cool to know just how much that CO2 you added benefited your own plants at the end of a grow for example... or any other number of things like trying different training/topping techniques. Would give a lot more insight to what individually works for you and what doesn't.

I approve.

Wish I had the disapline to do that but I'm just a lazy ass pothead and as long as my plants keep growing nice and healthy, I'm just too lazy to measure them everyday. Love to see your work though!

hanimmal said:

Exactly. If you can control everything,

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"If" is a very handy word at times. If my Aunt had balls she’d be my Uncle.


It sounds like a cool hobby or pastime but no amount of measuring and charting will make up for the day you pop a bean of some strain that you have charted even in the most detailed way and then what happens is it turns out to be a different phenotype. You will never be able to predict when a different phenotype will pop up and when one does, unless you have previously seen them all and fully charted them all, all your efforts and charts will be next to worthless.
　
Still it’s a cool idea … to a point anyway.

For the naysayers - statistics takes into account variances (such as if one plant ends up being a different phenotype than normal - but in that case, maybe you should be looking for more stabilized genetics). You don't need total and absolute control like people are suggesting. It's a good idea and a good practice if you are serious enough to put the time into it.

I also think it's a good idea. If you had done this with a strain I was growing it would be neat to say "oh hey, your plants are 20% bigger then mine on average. How can I fix this?" Or if mine was bigger I could say this is what I did different and it MAY be because of such and such. Obviously there is no way it will tell everyone what their plants will do, but it will give some ideas.

simpsonsampson420 said:

it is impossible to compare plants between two growers in two different areas of the world with 2 different grows..

even if the strains are the same, the doesnt mean the plants will grow the same..

unless you had seeds from the mother or clones from the same mother your comparisons arent going to be accurate..

for instance i have 3 super lemon haze plants going... they were all started at the same time... all 3 have very different and are different sizes... and all three are in the same hydro setup as one another.. so they are all getting the same nutes, in the same temps, same humidity, ect..

not to mention that different strains grow at different rates..

the idea you have is a good one.. tracking your growth rate and working to optimize your setup is a great thing to do.. but comparing my grow to your grow, even if its the same thing we are growing, isnt going to give you a fair comparison...

now if you use your idea, and track clone generations, so that you know that your growin the same strain from the same mother everytime, and using that information to tweak your setup would make more sense...

i dont want to shoot your idea down.. or make you think its a bad one... its just that for your comparisons to be accurate you would have to make sure that each step of the grow you are comparing your too are done the exact same as yours.. from RH, to ambien temp, to co2 levels, to medium, to strain, to nutes, ect... but again, using it as a bases to track your own grows so you know how your doing grow to grow is a great idea...

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yipp fully agree.

Damn OP, and people say pot heads are stupid and lazy! your like a rocket scientist or something.

but hey if ppl didnt do things like this we probably wouldent kno shit about marijuana.
somebodys gotta get scientific

MrJoshC said:

I also think it's a good idea. If you had done this with a strain I was growing it would be neat to say "oh hey, your plants are 20% bigger then mine on average. How can I fix this?" Or if mine was bigger I could say this is what I did different and it MAY be because of such and such. Obviously there is no way it will tell everyone what their plants will do, but it will give some ideas.

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this is the problem in and of itself tho... comparing grower A's grow to grower B's grow wont tell either anything about either grow.. except how the other's plants are doing..

there are SO many variances in grows and grow ops that will play into this... light type and strength... nutes or lack there of.. soil and differemt soils or hydro.. room temp.. co2 levels... humidity.. veg length... strain.. phenos.. there are to many details that are VERY hard to control to keep things the same throughout all your grows to make a solid data sheet of information..

in order to compare grows EVERYTHING, and i mean EVERYTHING has to be the same...

if i give you a clone of a plant i am growing, and your environment (lights, humidity, ect ect) are not IDENTICAL to mine, then the data i would compile would mean nothing to you...

but like i said a few times.. if you are using it for your own knowledge then its viable information...

if your able to keep your grow op consitant from grow to grow... use clones from the same mother from grow to grow... then after a few grows you can starting changing X-factors to see how the change in X affects your grow... be it good or bad...

but again... and i stress this.. compiling data for others to use as a basis of comparison will not give an accurate or fair comparison for either grower since, in all likelyhood, both grows and grow ops will have numerous differences which will cause differences in growth rates and yields...

MAYBE, it could be used a lose guide line for strains.. but even at that its like someone showing a 6" plant and asking "what will i yield"....

Nah, come across a situation that is a little or a lot different? It just becomes new data that will help in the future (especially if there are other people who are interested in sharing information with each other). The more work you put into the data set like that, the more accurate and specific you can be - that's all. Just wish more people would be able to say things like:

"Damn, using molasses for the last 5 weeks before harvest increased my final production by 5% over last time."

And less of this:

"Damn, that molasses turned my buds into big, fat, fatties!"

But yeah... just would be more helpful in separating out the voodoo from the productive.

I fully agree.

I am looking at this more for an average, and peak performance of a strain, the lowest production of that strain, and if more people compile data the same for different strains. As of now this is for me, but eventually if more data can be gotten the averages become better and better.

There is no way to really ever get exact estimates on this, but a more scientific look at the data may help to measure more things. Like the temps. Right now there is some great data out there that shows the ideal temps and what changes to expect at different swings. But it is still pretty spread out. There really is nothing on size of the plants.

It would be nice to have an ideal room. Use this mix of soil: This exact temp: Water when this happens/measurement with this gauge: When it gets to this size or you see this kind of topping off of the volume repot: Supercrop at this volume: If you see this stretching you need to move the light down: Once it is at this size turn to 12/12: then looking at the trichomes flush at this stage: ect.

Maybe this could turn out to be just another tool in the process.

Most likely not since I am completely new to this, but heck I have nothing to do but watch the grass grow so may as well have some fun with it to tweak my set-up.

Plus it is fun to see others successes.

And I fricking love charts.