So I was running 2- four by eight tables in my flowering room with 2 thousand watt lights per table with rockwool cubes, ebb and flow. 4000 watts total per flowering room. Usually I'd have 28-36 plants per 4x4 area. It would be about 144 plants per flowering room I was using a sk#1 cut that was started around 88 or 89 from seeds purchased in Amsterdam to start but later changed over to Blue Berry when we figured out we got WAY better yields. The sk#1 was only giving us 2.25-2.75 pounds per light. We ran propane c02 generators connected to a mechanical timer. 10 minutes at the top of the hour and 10 minutes at the bottom of the hour. We'd cut 3 inch hole in a wall and connect one of those mini squirrel cage blowers. the sequence went like this, at the top of the hour- co2 on for ten minutes another ten minutes of circulation in the room then the exhaust fan would kick on for ten minutes- now you're at the bottom of the hour, co2 kicks on again and cycle is repeated. I never used a co2 ppm meter or controller. Along with the central air unit we would install a 220 window unit that was installed in a wall hopefully into a garage. We did have a couple of houses where we exhausted the heat into an unused bedroom and had to keep a catch bucket for the condensate water. Usually the lights were 12-18 inches above the plant tops and the temps could get up to 100 degrees at the top of the canopy and humidity was around 80-90% in the flowering room. When i see pics of grow lights on the ceiling in these modern grows it blows my mind. I was always taught to keep them as close as possible without burning them. For nutrients in flower I used the same Rockwool Formula 1 2 part mix, but we also added this stuff called Budswel. It's a liquid guano fertilizer that has guano and earth worm castings and some other stuff. So my guru was the one that started using this stuff. He wanted to add flavor to the buds. As far as adding flavor i don't think it did much of shit. The bud we grew really didn't have much flavor to it. To me being a former soil grower it just didn't have much flavor at all. What the Budswel did do however was leave a silty coating on the bottom of the 4x8 trays. It's similar to when people add Hydrocorn on the botton of their trays to retain moisture. The roots would come out of the rockwool and would spread out all over the bottom, sometimes forming a thick mat. I think this was one of the keys to our yield. The roots were always oxygenated but they always had sort of a uniform moisture. Plus hell all plants love bat and worm poop. The next thing we would do was 4 days before we'd change our water, in the morning we'd add Miricle grow Bloom Booster to the reservoir. We'd jack up our ppm from around 900-1000 to about 1400. We changed our water every 14 days. Our timers for the table pumps would kick on 45 minutes after the lights came on a 6 a.m., 45 minutes at noon, and 45 minutes after the lights went off. All in all it was a serious pain in the ass. Cleaning roots and Budswel out of a tray when the other half is full is not fun. You have to live and die by your calendar and even them some times you may have to take flowering plants off the 4x8 to clean. Honestly I don't think I'll ever fuck with rockwool again. It's nasty to breath and is a general pain in the ass, not to mention I don't think you can ever get the flavor out of hydro that you can with organics.
So here is my partial theory as to why we got such good yields. Macro and micro nutrients are absorbed by plants at different ph levels. During the morning as soon as the light came on the reservoir was at it's lowest level and the ph had climber to it's highest level. usually it was around 6.2-6.4. Specific nutrients are absorbed at that level....which was actually from the last feeding the evening before. The 35 gallon reservoir was usually about 5-8 gallons low first thing in the morning. I'd fill it up, add nutrients, and adjust ph. So the first feeding was about 5.6. I'd measure after the noon feeding and it would be a couple/few ph points higher. Finally after the evening feeding the it would be in the highest range. So over 3 feedings you get nutrient solution to the plants over a range and your plants get ALL the different micro nutrients. I probably could have tweeked it to get more flavor and better smoke but I can tell you that it was some of the most potent bud I've ever smoked. We never could grow enough to keep the locals satisfied. The Blue Berry to me was superior when grown in soil but it didn't have the earth shattering high that the hydro did. I did try keeping my ph constant and my reservoir topped off all the time and I didn't get the yield or high as when it would fluctuate. It could have been the strains I was running also though. If I get 1.2 gpw in soil I'm happy. I've just never been able to match it with SOG hydro.
Oh and charface- i haven't seen what I'd say was REAL Blue berry since around 05. I've tried to find it in Amsterdam and Colorado and it's no where near the old genetics. First off none I've seen is blue. Second it doesn't have the syrupy sweet slap you in the face Blue berry smell. My buddy works at a seed shop in Amsterdam and said he still likes Dutch Passion so I'm going to give these a shot. I've got another friend that works in a coffeeshop and he told me that pretty much any cut a grower has that yields big, has a little sweet fruity taste with a hint of Blue Berry they label as Blue Berry and send it out the door. I tried a couple of samples of "Flo" in Colorado and it was nothing like the Flo I used to get back in the 90's. IDK what is going on with some of these genetics these days. All I can figure is people have lost mother plants and there are a lot of pollen chunkers/ shitty growers out slapping popular names on stuff. I hope that helps you mytwhyt.