Get a Harvest Every 2 Weeks

Al B,
Quick question. You mentioned way back that you flood your trays once per day. During a 12 hour cycle, when to you flood them? start, middle near the end ?

How long do you run the flood cycle for?

I have my first 3x3 (foot) tray with 24 plants in and the top few inches of each pot feels rather dry.

Great system you have. Just installed first of four 3x3 (foot) trays in my 6x13(foot) room.

RI

hydrotech364 said:

about how much area is the whole setup taking?i like the idea of that much every two weeks i like it alot ,,,drool!!!

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My entire op fits in a carpark sized space. It is 9' L x 8' W x 7' H.

Mind you, it is very small compared to what is in it and is a bit cramped to work in. The room size is closely matched to the lights and trays. This means the reflective pandafilm covered walls are all very close to the trays, returning more light to the plants which would otherwise be wasted on the floor.

I think I'd prefer to work with a grow tent within a larger room, which would have the same advantage of having the walls very close to the plants but would allow access to plants from all sides by moving the tent walls, but I had to work with wot I got. Given that my plants are in pots of media, they can be picked up and moved if need be, making all-side access a bit less important than if they were in immobile arrangements.

Just browsing thru the thread and got a question or two.


I havent heard anything mentioned of CO2. Do you use any?
Also, your the first i have seen using such large clones. What is your success rate on them?

Thanks.

Sorry Al, for the CO2 Question........ I see that you have answered that already. Thanks.. Such a long great thread, and I got anxious.

Thanks for the info, the fytocell was a good find. But do you buy the slab or flake bags of that stuff?

I still have a month before i close (own) the house and i am thinking of making my own hydro hut and going with the smaller trays with 1000hps with adjust a wing. Have any good links for hut building materials?

Again ty for all the info i have learned from ya and please take some pics of your cooltube with adjust-a-wing mod please!!!!

pvc is cheap and easy. wood is even cheaper.

Squeechie said:

Also, your the first i have seen using such large clones. What is your success rate on them?

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100% nearly every time.

The only time I have clones fail to root is when I get some RW cubes with poor density. Some cubes are simply defective- you try to plug a stem in them and they collapse. Sometimes I can make cubes with poor density work, sometimes I can't. The stem has to fit snugly in the RW cube. Soft cubes don't stay snugly on the stem- the air gap prevents proper rooting.

To compensate for bad cubes, I do cut more clones than I need, to insure against any failures and so I can select the most vigorous ones to flower. I only need 23-24 per batch but I cut 30 each time.


As you see pictured here, thicker stemmed clones outperform thinner ones. Cuttings on the stack on the left are all 4mm and under, the ones on the right are 5.5mm and up. Of course they were all cut at the same time. Thicker stems make more roots faster, every time. You can make your cuttings as tall as you like; as long as the cutting can get sufficient water uptake through the stem, it will not wilt. No humidome required. If clones wilt, the scalpel wasn't sterile or the media is overwet and the stem tip is being blocked by pathogen activity. Recut the stem with a sterile scalpel, stick it in fresh media that has been dampened with a 1ml H2O2 per 1L water, corrected to pH 5.5-5.8, put it on a 30C heatmat and it will root in 7 days, 10 max. Overwet media will cause rooting probs for most new cloners. Think damp, never wet or saturated. A 40mm rockwool cube weighs 5g dry and 25-30g when damp. Heavier than that is too wet- insufficient air will slow rooting development.

SaRaNaC said:

Thanks for the info, the fytocell was a good find. But do you buy the slab or flake bags of that stuff?

I still have a month before i close (own) the house and i am thinking of making my own hydro hut and going with the smaller trays with 1000hps with adjust a wing. Have any good links for hut building materials?

Again ty for all the info i have learned from ya and please take some pics of your cooltube with adjust-a-wing mod please!!!!

Click to expand...

I buy 100L bags of Fytocell "flake" (more like crumbs).

The only fancy stuff you need to build your grow room is pandafilm (PVC sheeting, black one side, white the other). If you need it to be lightproof, buy the heaviest thickness you can get. You can see a dull glow from a 400HPS through 115 micron pandafilm. Use 250 micron if you need 100% blockage of light. 250u will block all light from a 1000HPS. Any hydro shop and many large hdwe shops have it.

There's some (bad) pics of the cooltubes here. I'll take some better ones when I can.

Al B. Fuct said:

100% nearly every time.

The only time I have clones fail to root is when I get some RW cubes with poor density. Some cubes are simply defective- you try to plug a stem in them and they collapse. Sometimes I can make cubes with poor density work, sometimes I can't. The stem has to fit snugly in the RW cube. Soft cubes don't stay snugly on the stem- the air gap prevents proper rooting.

To compensate for bad cubes, I do cut more clones than I need, to insure against any failures and so I can select the most vigorous ones to flower. I only need 23-24 per batch but I cut 30 each time.


As you see pictured here, thicker stemmed clones outperform thinner ones. Cuttings on the stack on the left are all 5mm and under, the ones on the right are 5mm and up.



I buy 100L bags of Fytocell "flake" (more like crumbs).

The only fancy stuff you need to build your grow room is pandafilm (PVC sheeting, black one side, white the other). If you need it to be lightproof, buy the heaviest thickness you can get. You can see a dull glow from a 400HPS through 115 micron pandafilm. Use 250 micron if you need 100% blockage of light. 250u will block all light from a 1000HPS.

There's some (bad) pics of the cooltubes here. I'll take some better ones when I can.

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what do you think of the DIY cool tubes? =]

Is there any way to show us a picture of the finished buds after they have been dried?

lumberjack_ian said:

what do you think of the DIY cool tubes? =]

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Nice work.

I bought a pair of Pyrex Bake-A-Round tubes off Ebay with the intent of making cooltubes out of them, decided I liked them better in the kitchen.

Here's some (marginally) better pics of my cooltubes, as promised.

bigal10 said:

Is there any way to show us a picture of the finished buds after they have been dried?

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Sure, bi gal... or is that big al?



dunno, 'bout 4-5z there in a 10 litre plastic storage tub.

WOW! i started reading this tread and got so hooked i couldn't stop... it took hours to finish, lol! there's so much information here... it's a lot to absorb in one sitting! most of the questions i had at first have been answered somewhere along the way... so i just wanted to add my thanks to all the others. Mr. Fuct (et al) you've done a great job with this thread... it's EPIC! i've been inspired... THANK YOU!

rifishman said:

Al B,
Quick question. You mentioned way back that you flood your trays once per day. During a 12 hour cycle, when to you flood them? start, middle near the end ?

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Fytocell is less absorbent than rockwool floc. Since changing to Fytocell, I'm flooding 2x per lights on cycle, at lights-on and 2 hours before lights-off.

How long do you run the flood cycle for?

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Just long enough for the pump to fill to the overflow tube level. This varies by the capacity of the pump. I have several different pumps; the fastest pumps fill the tray in 3 mins, the smaller pumps in about 5.

I have my first 3x3 (foot) tray with 24 plants in and the top few inches of each pot feels rather dry.

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No problem. You're watering from the bottom and that's where the roots are. However, new plants can be handwatered from the top for about 4-7 days, until their roots grow down into the media a bit. The fingertip test works better when watering from the top. Just before planting newly rooted clones, I use a spare pump and a hose to fully saturate the Fytocell. Once it has been well saturated the first time, Fytocell generally wicks enough water from standard flood cycles up to the middle of the pot, where a young plant's roots are, so that handwatering newbies isn't all that necessary.

A side benefit of watering from the bottom by flood is that the media tops do stay quite dry, inhibiting messy algae growth.

Determine when to water next by the weight of the pot. When the pot loses about 50% of its water weight, it is time to flood again. Determine the water capacity of a pot of media by weighing a pot of dry media, wetting it and allowing it to drain. Weigh again, subtract dry weight; since water weighs 1g per ml, you now know exactly how much water in ml your media holds.

nice lot of bud, is that what you get every 2 week or so?.
looking good.
im starting the 2 week cycle thing,, just 2 plants every 2 weeks.
so i have a plant a week to smoke.
i smoke 1/2 oz to 3/4 a week, so thats all i need .

Al B. Fuct said:

Nice work.

I bought a pair of Pyrex Bake-A-Round tubes off Ebay with the intent of making cooltubes out of them, decided I liked them better in the kitchen.

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i didnt know people actually used them for baking...

hahaha

crazy-mental said:

nice lot of bud, is that what you get every 2 week or so?.
looking good.
im starting the 2 week cycle thing,, just 2 plants every 2 weeks.
so i have a plant a week to smoke.
i smoke 1/2 oz to 3/4 a week, so thats all i need .

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No, what's pictured is only about 1/3 to 1/4 of a biweekly harvest. The rest has already been smoked (by someone, if not me).

When just starting out growing, grow a little more than you need to cover you in case things go wrong. Put in 3 plants if you can. Dispose of the worst performing plant a week or so into flowering.

lumberjack_ian said:

i didnt know people actually used them for baking...

hahaha

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They're BRILLIANT in the kitchen! I use them to bake French bread. I also use them to assemble stuffed chicken breast rolls; I pound out the chicken with a kitchen mallet, put some crouton stuffing with celery on the chicken, roll it up and stick it in the Bake-A-Round- not for baking, but to help slide the chicken roll into an elastic baking net. The butcher shop will do that for me- but then they gleefully charge me 2x the per kilo rate for chicken breast, just for sticking some chicken in a baking net...

Al B. Fuct said:

They're BRILLIANT in the kitchen! I use them to bake French bread. I also use them to assemble stuffed chicken breast rolls; I pound out the chicken with a kitchen mallet, put some crouton stuffing with celery on the chicken, roll it up and stick it in the Bake-A-Round- not for baking, but to help slide the chicken roll into an elastic baking net. The butcher shop will do that for me- but then they gleefully charge me 2x the per kilo rate for chicken breast, just for sticking some chicken in a baking net...

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my grocery sells french bread $1 per loaf, maybe things are differnet down under... so i think i'll keep using mine to cool my light...

the other thing just sounds like too much work for this lazy stoner

thebAse said:

WOW! i started reading this tread and got so hooked i couldn't stop... it took hours to finish, lol! there's so much information here... it's a lot to absorb in one sitting! most of the questions i had at first have been answered somewhere along the way... so i just wanted to add my thanks to all the others. Mr. Fuct (et al) you've done a great job with this thread... it's EPIC! i've been inspired... THANK YOU!

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Thanks for the compliments.

However, the thread is getting so long that it is beginning to capture significant changes in the way I run the op. The info on the first post isn't totally valid anymore- some things I was doing were causing problems. Unless you read the whole thread, you'll repeat the mistakes I was making.

Notable changes:

* PK13-14 applied now at 0.5ml/l in week 5 only, not week 3
* 1tsp Epsom Salts and 10ml Canna liquid calcium per 125L tank on biweekly tank dump/clean/renew
* No grow nutes added to clone watering mixture. pH correct with phosphoric acid 'pHDown' to 5.5 and add 10ml 50% grade H2O2 per 10L of clone watering soln
* Media is now 25mm of RW floc tightly packed in pot bottoms with remainder of pot filled with Fytocell flake. Fytocell holds so much air that pots of it will float. Wet floc in the pot bottom weights down the pot to stop it floating and prevents Fytocell from escaping pot drain holes
* Watering cycle is now 2x per lights on cycle in flowering; at lights-on and 2 hours before lights-off

lumberjack_ian said:

my grocery sells french bread $1 per loaf, maybe things are differnet down under... so i think i'll keep using mine to cool my light...

the other thing just sounds like too much work for this lazy stoner

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You can buy the bread but you can't bring home the smell of the bakery! Nothing perfumes a house like the scent of a loaf of yeasty bread in the last 30 mins of baking.

A stuffed chicken roll IS one of the more complex things I do in the kitchen, but I do like to cook. I also hate paying the meat shop 2x the chicken per kilo rate for something I can do myself in 5 mins.

Al B. Fuct said:

You can buy the bread but you can't bring home the smell of the bakery! Nothing perfumes a house like the scent of a loaf of yeasty bread in the last 30 mins of baking.

A stuffed chicken roll IS one of the more complex things I do in the kitchen, but I do like to cook. I also hate paying the meat shop 2x the chicken per kilo rate for something I can do myself in 5 mins.

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... i prefer my place reeking of pot, not bread... thank you

haha
lets let this thread get back on track, huh?

Bingo, Bango, Bungo those buds look tasty nice job!!! I am in the process of finding where to get the spot set up. I am in Southern Cali at the moment you think its better if I move to N. Cali.