The Pros and Cons of Running Indoor Grow Beds

Hey guys and gals, thought I'd make a thread illustrating some of the pros and cons of growing in an indoor bed. I'm 6 months in now through my bed grow and have had a few issues that I have had to work out, as well as a few things that I learned to like as well. BTW I run my beds no-till, I just add a top layer of amendment on the bed from time-to-time.

Pros:
Soil cost - There is a large upfront cost needed for the soil for your beds, however it is a one time cost (40 Cu. Feet of soil mix cost me in the 175 dollar range, using cheap nursery soils / ewc / amendments)

Root Growth- The root growth I am seeing is very fibrous and is not restricted like it is in a container.. my plants stretch often times 2-3 times their size and will continue growing throughout flower. Since a bed is much more akin to growing out in nature, the root structure is more natural and thus creates healthier plants. I can elaborate more on this if you would like me to, there is some reasoning behind this.

Watering - Watering once a week or so has been my favorite part, while it's a large amount of water at once there is less maintenance, if any, required in between waterings

Running 1 strain - if you run all of 1 strain, and are running them from the same stage of growth, watering , nute schedules, growth and everthing is very uniform. Canopy is very even and yields can be very high.

Cons:
perpetual cycles are hard to pull off- it becomes difficult to determine the size of your plant needed to create a nice canopy, problems may arise that are difficult to address with plants being in different stages (not like u can move your flowering plants out or vice versa for a quick pesticide application), plants need different nutrition at different stages

Hard work - When you do work, it's typically of the back breaking type (moving large amounts of soil or sand), while less frequent definitely more difficult

Running different strains is tough - since all the plants grow very differently, yields will suffer if proper canopy control isn't taken... While growing 10 strains at once I had a few strains dominate and choke out smaller plants , reducing my yield on the small plants

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Those are some of the major things that I can think of about running beds. If you can work out the cons or come to terms with them somehow, you can really reap the benefits of the pros..

Pest prevention and plant nutrition are both something that need to be learned quickly when running beds, however I feel the knowledge and experience you get from having to do these things prepares you for almost anything.

Would love to see some pics of the setup man!

Thanks for sharing 1337, I appreciate the insight as I will be starting an indoor bed soon. The lazy man's bed in a 150gal smart pot that is. I have an excess of soil i reuse so the soil purchase is already there, i just need to whip up a larger batch of amended soil and figure something out to keep the smart pot raised from the concrete floor so it doesn't lose heat to it in the winter, wood pallets maybe? I'll be starting with one bed under one light and the rest will stay my regular 5gal buckets, depending on how the bed performs I will continue to switch out one light at a time.

blueJ said:

Thanks for sharing 1337, I appreciate the insight as I will be starting an indoor bed soon. The lazy man's bed in a 150gal smart pot that is. I have an excess of soil i reuse so the soil purchase is already there, i just need to whip up a larger batch of amended soil and figure something out to keep the smart pot raised from the concrete floor so it doesn't lose heat to it in the winter, wood pallets maybe? I'll be starting with one bed under one light and the rest will stay my regular 5gal buckets, depending on how the bed performs I will continue to switch out one light at a time.

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Palettes sound like they would work to me and would help the air pots out too probably. . I've been interested in having more aeration , definitely keep me updated on how this goes.

batf1nk said:

Would love to see some pics of the setup man!

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I'll work on getting some good pics by tonight:

The beds are 12" deep, and 4'x5' each, so 20 CU Ft of soil per bed

I yielded close to 1.5 lbs running 12 new york sour D, and only 1 lb when I grew multi-strain .. excited to find a really good strain that has short veg time but puts up a good bush structure for a semi-sea of green approach

Excellent post hacker, I was very enthused when I first saw a soma bed set up but I knew it wouldn't work for me. I needed something much smaller than what would be practical to build. My version is a 25 gallon, 30 Inch diameter feed tub from the farm store. With my design I stuck with Soma's except for at the bottom end of the vertical pipes I installed T's and connected 1" tubing between each T. The tubing I perforated with a drill bit. I too follow a no till approach with an occasional top dress. I mulch with Alfalfa and apply an occasional tea as a root drench. In between feedings I water with fresh water through the uprights. Another thing that I am experimenting with is injecting air into the tubes to supply fresh oxygen to the roots. Right now it working way better than I thought it would. My first concern was that it would dry the root zone out to fast but I haven't found any evidence to support this yet. Plants are happy, green and grinnin with vigorous growth.

I like how you are thinking about the perpetual grow. One way this would work would be to have 4 flowering areas. Each area holds plants for two weeks after that they would be rolled, on casters into the next room. This would allow for extra time if needed for some strains. This way you always have room for the youngins in the first area. It looks much better in my head than I can explain...I assure you. At any rate where there's a will there's a way.

I am totally sold on the whole no-till, SIP, Planter and Bed set-ups. They just work better. But like you say they do have their drawbacks. I am shooting for huge yield this cycle but its gonna be a while yet. My largest yield from one plant was just over 6 oz from a run of DarkStar I did a while back. With Super-Cropping and a little branch training its entirely possible to get 10-16 Oz per. using this set up. Granted if one were using 1000K lights and had lots of vertical space that yield could be much higher. It's already being done.

This is what makes these forums great. Exchanging ideas and creating critical thinking. Have a great day.

StickEnugzz said:

Excellent post hacker, I was very enthused when I first saw a soma bed set up but I knew it wouldn't work for me. I needed something much smaller than what would be practical to build. My version is a 25 gallon, 30 Inch diameter feed tub from the farm store. With my design I stuck with Soma's except for at the bottom end of the vertical pipes I installed T's and connected 1" tubing between each T. The tubing I perforated with a drill bit. I too follow a no till approach with an occasional top dress. I mulch with Alfalfa and apply an occasional tea as a root drench. In between feedings I water with fresh water through the uprights. Another thing that I am experimenting with is injecting air into the tubes to supply fresh oxygen to the roots. Right now it working way better than I thought it would. My first concern was that it would dry the root zone out to fast but I haven't found any evidence to support this yet. Plants are happy, green and grinnin with vigorous growth.

I like how you are thinking about the perpetual grow. One way this would work would be to have 4 flowering areas. Each area holds plants for two weeks after that they would be rolled, on casters into the next room. This would allow for extra time if needed for some strains. This way you always have room for the youngins in the first area. It looks much better in my head than I can explain...I assure you. At any rate where there's a will there's a way.

I am totally sold on the whole no-till, SIP, Planter and Bed set-ups. They just work better. But like you say they do have their drawbacks. I am shooting for huge yield this cycle but its gonna be a while yet. My largest yield from one plant was just over 6 oz from a run of DarkStar I did a while back. With Super-Cropping and a little branch training its entirely possible to get 10-16 Oz per. using this set up. Granted if one were using 1000K lights and had lots of vertical space that yield could be much higher. It's already being done.

This is what makes these forums great. Exchanging ideas and creating critical thinking. Have a great day.

StickEnugzz
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Hey man.. the air should only help: I can't remember where I was reading the DIY Air pruning thread, but it seems like Soma was ahead of his time with the benefits of air to the root zone. Throughout the thread I kept on thinking of ways to somehow Somafy my bed... Someone recommended poking holes with a bamboo stick 30 minutes after watering into your root zone which I liked

I have seen people place computer fans on the top of the pvc pipes that run down into the Rootzone as well in the soma beds that worked very well.

In a bed set up you get those air pruned roots anyway since the top third of your soil regularly becomes dry and the lower part of your soil is significantly wetter (much like what happens in nature), which is cool because air pruning is a very effective way of getting the fibrous root mass growers desire.

I have seen another farmer from another forum pull 2.5ish lbs a light using the beds and all 1 strain:

I think if I focus on training in these next couple runs I can up my rate, as having an even full canopy on the bed might be the hardest thing to accomplish (I have a Jillybean that easily stretches to 4 feet for instance, as well as the RCLA which caps out at about 16 inches tall) I like your idea of doing the perpetual splitting the strains by bed, that would easily solve the problem. At this time I have about 12 strains though that I am having trouble parting with or finding a reliable donor for, so I'm going to have to make due with trying to train on the fly.

1337hacker said:

Hey man.. the air should only help: I can't remember where I was reading the DIY Air pruning thread, but it seems like Soma was ahead of his time with the benefits of air to the root zone. Throughout the thread I kept on thinking of ways to somehow Somafy my bed... Someone recommended poking holes with a bamboo stick 30 minutes after watering into your root zone which I liked

I have seen people place computer fans on the top of the pvc pipes that run down into the Rootzone as well in the soma beds that worked very well.

In a bed set up you get those air pruned roots anyway since the top third of your soil regularly becomes dry and the lower part of your soil is significantly wetter (much like what happens in nature), which is cool because air pruning is a very effective way of getting the fibrous root mass growers desire.

I have seen another farmer from another forum pull 2.5ish lbs a light using the beds and all 1 strain:

I think if I focus on training in these next couple runs I can up my rate, as having an even full canopy on the bed might be the hardest thing to accomplish (I have a Jillybean that easily stretches to 4 feet for instance, as well as the RCLA which caps out at about 16 inches tall) I like your idea of doing the perpetual splitting the strains by bed, that would easily solve the problem. At this time I have about 12 strains though that I am having trouble parting with or finding a reliable donor for, so I'm going to have to make due with trying to train on the fly.

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My method for getting air in there is with a two port aquarium pump and tubing. In hind site I should have ran the tubing before I filled it up with lava rock, landscape fabric and soil but I just made sure that they went in the tubing a good ways. Pretty cool actually. After watering I can hear it in there bubbling. Got to be good for the roots.

StickEnugzz said:

My method for getting air in there is with a two port aquarium pump and tubing. In hind site I should have ran the tubing before I filled it up with lava rock, landscape fabric and soil but I just made sure that they went in the tubing a good ways. Pretty cool actually. After watering I can hear it in there bubbling. Got to be good for the roots.

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Sick!! I was thinking about this same exact method when reading through everything... sorta sounds like it would be similar to how the water table works in nature got any pics of how things are turning out?

1337hacker said:

Sick!! I was thinking about this same exact method when reading through everything... sorta sounds like it would be similar to how the water table works in nature got any pics of how things are turning out?

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Sure I'll throw something up.

good thread guys...

Thanks guys I just built a bigger bloom box and am toying with a bed in one half, awesome info here!

Here's the bed with 11 New York Sour D, and 1 OG

Here's the same bed a few days later you can see the green new growth

And here we are roughly 4 weeks into flower



That was the first run through that bed, the plants stretched to roughly 3 times their size off a 10 day veg period. Yield was 23.5 dry oz

I am currently trying to find another strain to run all at once in the bed like that, the NYSD stretched perfectly and filled in the bed really well. So heres a couple of the plants I am testing to try and run in the future:

TGA JillyBean:

RCLA

Between cycles I top-dressed with EWC, Neem Cake, Cottonseed meal, Kelp meal:

I must add- that between all 10 strains I have ran in the bed, none have showed any deficiencies that are normally present in my container grows. The only plant I have even had a problem with was overwatered after a transplant.

Very nice set up with fantastic results. Well done.

^^^^Good shit man!

To continue the container vs. bed topic, (but a slightly different situation) I've had a 20gal plastic tub I had grown a single monster bogbubble in and after harvest i just cut it at the base, topdressed with bone/kelp/alfalfa/neem and maybe whatever else might have been on hand (a couple months ago can't remember) and covered with 2" EWC and it's just been sittin there off to the side.

I have a new round of sour bubble clones to flower in 5gal buckets (fully amended reused mix), and i threw two of the smaller clones in the 20gal tub to compare. Well a week into flower and they all look quite the same. I was thinking the 20gal tub would fall behind because it wasn't as beefed up with amendments, but I'm thinking it goes to show that there's a little more than meets the eye when growing No Till, a synergistic type of affect, if you will, with the soil food web remaining intact/undisturbed.

So far this tells me I should stop breaking my back every run remixing soil and just make some beds finally!

Wow - great thread & is first time i even seen anything about indoor beds - if u got the room tho, it makes perfect sense really. Bring the outdoors indoors! Best of luck for what looks like being an amazing harvest!

i used a fabric bed thats 4'x4' from geoppots outdoors for my veggies this year. it sat inside of a white botanicare tray and was very visually satisfying. BUT, and its a big but, moving a bed after setting it up is very difficult and deconstructing it will be a nightmare.


ill stick with big containers just because of this aspect

It's very important to put casters underneath your bed when you build them. I use a caster for large patio planters. Works great.

intensive said:

i used a fabric bed thats 4'x4' from geoppots outdoors for my veggies this year. it sat inside of a white botanicare tray and was very visually satisfying. BUT, and its a big but, moving a bed after setting it up is very difficult and deconstructing it will be a nightmare.


ill stick with big containers just because of this aspect

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definitely design your bed to have castors or to be on rolling platforms.