Upside down plants???

kilo810

kilo810

Active Member
I really want ot grow a plant up side down., have the light on the ground. I wonder if It would yeild more, no stree fighting gravity. all the energy goes to bud.
 
unorthodox

unorthodox

Active Member
budlover13 said:
All your nutes and runoff run right down the plant onto your bud i would think.
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there is a way around that...ive done tomatoes upsidedown and were some of the best ive ever had, we are stoners smoke a bowl and figure it out. ill play with you give me a date and i will have a system ready to play with too.
 
cannofbliss

cannofbliss

Well-Known Member
easy... ;)

just set up a top drip feed system into a "reverse bucket" if soil just take a bucket cut out a 5cm hole and transplant seedling's trunk to fit the hole pack tight and reverse it open end of bucket on top w/drip system...
 
kilo810

kilo810

Active Member
Seriously I think this can be done. Yes tying the branches out. having the stem locked in a neoprene collar so the nutes wont run down the plant. it would need to be a aeroponics type system. spray the roots every once and a while.
 
Monkeyfloss

Monkeyfloss

Active Member
kilo810 said:
Seriously I think this can be done. Yes tying the branches out. having the stem locked in a neoprene collar so the nutes wont run down the plant. it would need to be a aeroponics type system. spray the roots every once and a while.
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I learnt along time ago that because something CAN be done doesnt necessarily mean it SHOULD be done. ... Personally I leave those type of experiments to those with the big bucks $$$$. Im trying to maximise flavour and yield and not be guinea pig for the canna community. ... I would happily take interest in your results though.

Good luck with it.:bigjoint:
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
kilo810 said:
I really want ot grow a plant up side down., have the light on the ground. I wonder if It would yeild more, no stree fighting gravity. all the energy goes to bud.
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Bluntly, I don't think the plant wastes a lot of energy fighting gravity. Plants have evolved to do that over literally millions of years, and its more "natural" for most plants to grow up towards the sun then down towards the earth.

The only part of the plant that needs to "fight" gravity are the growth tips that are actively growing upwards. The rest of the plant (ie the other 99.5% of its mass) are supported by stem and such, and since the rest of the plant isn't moving, its not expending energy "fighting" gravity!

Water moves through the plant via capillary action (ie surface tension), and doesn't require active energy utilization by the plant. In other words, the plant won't really be "saving" anything if the water is running downhill from the roots into the stem vs the other (normal) way around.

If you want to try growing upside down purely for novelty value, go ahead, but I strongly doubt you're going to see any yield or potency advantage.
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
kilo810 said:
Seriously I think this can be done. Yes tying the branches out. having the stem locked in a neoprene collar so the nutes wont run down the plant. it would need to be a aeroponics type system. spray the roots every once and a while.
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Oh, I don't think there is much question that it "can" be done, and there are probably lots of different ways you could pull it off.

One really simple way would be to just to grow in a conventional hanging pot setup, just top the plant and train the branches to go downwards towards light. Runoff will fall into the center "hole" under the pot, and not rot the leaves/bud.

There are probably other ways you can do it with various pot designs, even hydroponics. You just have to make sure that water/runoff doesn't drip onto the leaves and buds, because they'll rot.

Again, the issue isn't whether or not it "can" be done; its whether or not it "should" be done.

Most plants have "gravitropic" auxin activity.
That means that the plants have gravity-affected hormones that affect the growth characteristics of the roots and/or stems.
So to the extent that there is "fighting" going on, I think trying to grow a normally upwards growing plant downwards is going to make it fight its normal hormonal tendency to grow up.
 
Monkeyfloss

Monkeyfloss

Active Member
I would love to see a plant grow in zero gravity. i.e Space. Nasa must have done experiments. I wonder if osmosis would be affected... In fact it would be quite interesting to see how exhaled smoke behaves in zero gravity.... Sorry, I digress. :bigjoint:
 
Thedillestpickle

Thedillestpickle

Well-Known Member
I think that despite luring the plant to grow downwards its going to pull upwards aganst gravity, I think gravity dictates where the plant grows and light is a secondary factor.

I can off a suggestion though for an easy way it could be done. Use a normal black plastic pot, upright the way you would normally use a pot, cut a 1 to 2 inch wide hold in the side of the pot about halfway up. cover the hole with tape. Fill the pot with soil or whatever your using. Remove the tape and shove a rooted clone/seedling into the hole with the plant stem positioned horizontally. Have you light setup below the plant and see what happends. Youll be able to water the plant just like you would with a normal pot and the water wont run down onto the buds.

Not sure how you would transplant though... and hopefully the weight of the plant wouldnt eventually pull the pot on its side.

I look forward to seeing your "hanging gardens" if you decide to do this.

I did see a tomato habenero plant grown upside down before. it had 4 or 5 leaves and one perfect little pepper, it was cute
 
kilo810

kilo810

Active Member
I think im going to fashion a neoprene collar at the bottom of a regular 5 gallon pot put the plant in upside down and move a light to the floor. leave myself enough room to water/ feed the plant and see what happens. just for the pure interest and novelty of this. The hanging gardens of flint MI LOL. the 9th or 10th wonder of the world.
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
Monkeyfloss said:
I would love to see a plant grow in zero gravity. i.e Space. Nasa must have done experiments. I wonder if osmosis would be affected... In fact it would be quite interesting to see how exhaled smoke behaves in zero gravity.... Sorry, I digress. :bigjoint:
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Osmosis works by pressures created by differing concentrations of particles and is not gravity dependent.

Needless to say, generating lots of smoke (let alone fire!) is not a particularly clever thing to do within artificially maintained sealed air environments, like, say onboard a space shuttle. If you want to "medicate" in space, I'd suggest a vaporizer!

If you did it anyway, the smoke would behave like any other smoke. . .that is to say it would diffuse through the air. The only difference would be no increased tendency for smoke particles to fall downwards, though in practice, I doubt you'd notice any difference.

Back on upside down growing, this is not exactly a new concept. . .people have been growing things this way for quite a while, at least decades, if not centuries. So you'd think if this were REALLY better for growing cannabis (which some think is the worlds oldest crop), someone would have noticed by now!

In terms of how to actually go about doing it, there is tons of stuff written out there on how. Here's a nice article on the fad from the New York Times, including good commentary on pros and cons:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/garden/20tomato.html

Fundamentally, I don't see any reason why a common tomato or other upside down gardening pot couldn't be adopted for cannabis.

 

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