jonnynobody
Well-Known Member
So I ran 2x1000w lamps, 2x600w lamps, a 660w led qb, a 450w led qb, and two 100w COB's. The HID's were ran in +15% overdrive except 1 600w lamp which had a standard ballast and no ability to overdrive.
Medium: 5 gallon hempy buckets in #4 chunky perlite
Fertilizer: Jack's 3-2-1 with 7-15-30 finish formula 3-7 day plain water irrigation prior to harvest
Fertilizer strength: 1.6 ec start to finish PH adjusted to 5.8
Water source: RO
This was the biggest flower cycle I've ever ran. 12'x16' wall to wall. Had to scoot under the canopy on a dolly.
Successes:
1) Yield. While I don't have final numbers yet I anticipate 8#+ off 9 plants which is around .72gpw if I remember correctly. My previous grow cycle with jack's resulted in a .66gpw.
2) Flavor, potency, and burn qualities have all improved remarkably after switching my fertilizer from maxi bloom to jack's 321. The same strains from the same cuttings taste better, burn better, and get me much higher than the previous cycle. It's really a nice change of pace. I almost switched back to all soil because I thought hydro grown cannabis could never taste as good as soil grown cannabis. Jack's really saved the day. Soil grown quality in hydroponics. It's a beautiful thing.
3) The spread of light covered the canopy much better than my last flower cycle however it was not without it's faults. See failures for further info on this.
4) Ventilation. Piping cold air in from outside worked phenomenally well for controlling temps in the colder months. Zero AC usage. That was a beautiful thing. However it's ending now. Summer is nearly here and my free mother nature derived air conditioning is going bye bye for the season.
Failures:
1) Upon examining the root ball I discovered root rot on my Jager plant. I suspect this problem may be occurring in my other buckets as well. I stopped sterilizing my reservoirs with 35% h202 thinking I wasn't going to face any problems with sterility. Bad move. I'm running 35% h202 # 5ml/gallon moving forward. No exceptions. Root rot is a stupid problem to have because it's easily preventable. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The only saving grace is it didn't seem to affect the overall plant health. I suspect the rot set in very late in flower. Either way it required corrective action.
2) HID's emitted far too much heat and sent my electric bill into the stratosphere. The ultimate plan is to eliminate the HID's moving forward and convert to an all LED flower room. However, I can only afford 2 boards presently. I ordered two 660w qb's off alibaba for $670 shipped with lm301b diodes and mean well drivers. I'll dump the two 600w HID's and replace them with the two 660's. I will keep the two 1000's in place and run them at 750w. Overall it's a slight power reduction, but the primary benefit is heat reduction. Those dam HID's kick out so much effing heat it requires massive cooling to keep temps under control. It's horribly inefficient. And it's going away in about 7 days when my order arrives. Next cycle I will replace the two 1000's with two more 660w qb's which will complete the conversion of the flower room to all LED. HID is antiquated technology. My plants under the LED's performed better than plants of the same strains under the HID's. The LED grown plants also finished faster than the HID grown plants. LED is the way of the future. In 5 years you won't be able to find an HID rig in a hydro shop. It'll be like looking for a cassette tape in the music section at wal mart.
3) Strain choice. I poorly selected my strains and poorly planned my garden. Results were still fantastic, but they could have been much better had I planned properly. I chose to run 2 ghost trains that I knew to be poor yielding plants. Had I ran two more maui waui's instead of the 2 ghost trains I would have increased my yield by 3/4-1#. That's the difference effective planning makes. That's a big deal. I recognize that now, and will be planning my strains with more thought and care moving forward. Ghost train is eliminated and will be replaced by gg#4.
4) My drain system was very poor. I have a drain pump with a garden hose ran through a hole in the wall of the flower room piped to a drain in my basement. The pump operates inside a 5 gallon bucket on a key chain remote. I dump my waste water into the bucket and click the on button which activates the pump. Boom it drains. However, it was very poorly placed. I couldn't even access it with the portable AC in the way that could not be moved due to the placement of my plants. As a result my draining was a real bitch. I had to haul out 5 gallon buckets full of waste water and that's about as fun as it sounds. I'll be moving the waste water bucket and pump to the center of the flower room for easy access. I can dump my waste water right in there, turn the pump on, and be done. Hauling 1 empty 5 gallon bucket is a whole lot nicer than hauling out 2 nearly full 5 gallon buckets. Especially when you're doing it every single day.
5) I trained and supported my flower branches far too late resulting in a lot of extra labor as heavy flower sites buckled on top of one another. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This next cycle I will be supporting every branch in week 1 of flower and continuing through the stretch. That way in week 4-8 as the weight is packing on I won't be chasing my tail supporting branches that have already fallen over and are covered in sticky resin. That shit is no effing fun brother. I got 'er done though. I just don't want to go through that again
I'm excited about the next cycle. I'm going to sterilize the room this week and prep for the new lights while I do a transplant on all the vegging ladies into 5 gallon buckets. They'll veg for another 4 weeks in the flower room under the LED's to bush out as I top and train them into position. I'll be introducing a few new strains I'm pretty stoked about. Godfather OG, god bud, and bruce banger. All 3 have great profiles and I'm looking forward to the results.
Here's a pic of the flower room from last cycle. It was a hell of a ride:
Medium: 5 gallon hempy buckets in #4 chunky perlite
Fertilizer: Jack's 3-2-1 with 7-15-30 finish formula 3-7 day plain water irrigation prior to harvest
Fertilizer strength: 1.6 ec start to finish PH adjusted to 5.8
Water source: RO
This was the biggest flower cycle I've ever ran. 12'x16' wall to wall. Had to scoot under the canopy on a dolly.
Successes:
1) Yield. While I don't have final numbers yet I anticipate 8#+ off 9 plants which is around .72gpw if I remember correctly. My previous grow cycle with jack's resulted in a .66gpw.
2) Flavor, potency, and burn qualities have all improved remarkably after switching my fertilizer from maxi bloom to jack's 321. The same strains from the same cuttings taste better, burn better, and get me much higher than the previous cycle. It's really a nice change of pace. I almost switched back to all soil because I thought hydro grown cannabis could never taste as good as soil grown cannabis. Jack's really saved the day. Soil grown quality in hydroponics. It's a beautiful thing.
3) The spread of light covered the canopy much better than my last flower cycle however it was not without it's faults. See failures for further info on this.
4) Ventilation. Piping cold air in from outside worked phenomenally well for controlling temps in the colder months. Zero AC usage. That was a beautiful thing. However it's ending now. Summer is nearly here and my free mother nature derived air conditioning is going bye bye for the season.
Failures:
1) Upon examining the root ball I discovered root rot on my Jager plant. I suspect this problem may be occurring in my other buckets as well. I stopped sterilizing my reservoirs with 35% h202 thinking I wasn't going to face any problems with sterility. Bad move. I'm running 35% h202 # 5ml/gallon moving forward. No exceptions. Root rot is a stupid problem to have because it's easily preventable. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The only saving grace is it didn't seem to affect the overall plant health. I suspect the rot set in very late in flower. Either way it required corrective action.
2) HID's emitted far too much heat and sent my electric bill into the stratosphere. The ultimate plan is to eliminate the HID's moving forward and convert to an all LED flower room. However, I can only afford 2 boards presently. I ordered two 660w qb's off alibaba for $670 shipped with lm301b diodes and mean well drivers. I'll dump the two 600w HID's and replace them with the two 660's. I will keep the two 1000's in place and run them at 750w. Overall it's a slight power reduction, but the primary benefit is heat reduction. Those dam HID's kick out so much effing heat it requires massive cooling to keep temps under control. It's horribly inefficient. And it's going away in about 7 days when my order arrives. Next cycle I will replace the two 1000's with two more 660w qb's which will complete the conversion of the flower room to all LED. HID is antiquated technology. My plants under the LED's performed better than plants of the same strains under the HID's. The LED grown plants also finished faster than the HID grown plants. LED is the way of the future. In 5 years you won't be able to find an HID rig in a hydro shop. It'll be like looking for a cassette tape in the music section at wal mart.
3) Strain choice. I poorly selected my strains and poorly planned my garden. Results were still fantastic, but they could have been much better had I planned properly. I chose to run 2 ghost trains that I knew to be poor yielding plants. Had I ran two more maui waui's instead of the 2 ghost trains I would have increased my yield by 3/4-1#. That's the difference effective planning makes. That's a big deal. I recognize that now, and will be planning my strains with more thought and care moving forward. Ghost train is eliminated and will be replaced by gg#4.
4) My drain system was very poor. I have a drain pump with a garden hose ran through a hole in the wall of the flower room piped to a drain in my basement. The pump operates inside a 5 gallon bucket on a key chain remote. I dump my waste water into the bucket and click the on button which activates the pump. Boom it drains. However, it was very poorly placed. I couldn't even access it with the portable AC in the way that could not be moved due to the placement of my plants. As a result my draining was a real bitch. I had to haul out 5 gallon buckets full of waste water and that's about as fun as it sounds. I'll be moving the waste water bucket and pump to the center of the flower room for easy access. I can dump my waste water right in there, turn the pump on, and be done. Hauling 1 empty 5 gallon bucket is a whole lot nicer than hauling out 2 nearly full 5 gallon buckets. Especially when you're doing it every single day.
5) I trained and supported my flower branches far too late resulting in a lot of extra labor as heavy flower sites buckled on top of one another. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This next cycle I will be supporting every branch in week 1 of flower and continuing through the stretch. That way in week 4-8 as the weight is packing on I won't be chasing my tail supporting branches that have already fallen over and are covered in sticky resin. That shit is no effing fun brother. I got 'er done though. I just don't want to go through that again
I'm excited about the next cycle. I'm going to sterilize the room this week and prep for the new lights while I do a transplant on all the vegging ladies into 5 gallon buckets. They'll veg for another 4 weeks in the flower room under the LED's to bush out as I top and train them into position. I'll be introducing a few new strains I'm pretty stoked about. Godfather OG, god bud, and bruce banger. All 3 have great profiles and I'm looking forward to the results.
Here's a pic of the flower room from last cycle. It was a hell of a ride:
