1000 watts Rdwc 4x4

As long as your water pump is on, you still have oxygen, a stagnant pool has no oxygen, but water that is being churned is trapping oxygen constantly. But please believe me when I say a hydro garden can go from 100% healthy and happy to laying on the ground dead in only 24 hours, I've seen several DWC grows fail in 18 hours, here on roll it up. I even have a thread saved where it happened to someone who I thought was a fucking genius. He bought some grow equipment and started pumping out a pound under a single 430w, and then he quickly jumped it up to 2+pounds under 1200w, and then the law shut him down for doing such a good job and basically making a guide to guaranteed success that anyone could replicate. I can post the thread if you'd like. But if you are trying to starve them, the tea isn't going to help at all! It'll just continue to feed, it's almost like flushing in soil when you do it like that.

As far as mold goes, because you have had mold, mold will be a issue for you for a very, very long time. First step is removing of everything and getting a fungicide bath and a bleach bath, same goes for the walls within the grow room, they need to be cleaned with something. Mold isn't going to grow on filing cabinet doors very easily, so it basically just needs a wipe down that will kill any spores that fly away, nothing extreme. Mold doesn't need anymore than 40% humidity to grow, I've seen it happen in less. Once the spores are in the air, you are in trouble. My room humidity in my Flower room is around 46%, at a near constant, but I am fighting off mold on a biweekly basis. I am letting all but 4 plants finish in my flower room and then I am going to tear down my mylar walls and rewrap it in panda film, because A) I hate mylar, and B) mold is on the mylar, and I'm certain it is resting between the mylar and the external plastic wall, and that is why I can't get rid of it.. And mold spreads from one room to another, even if you shower, even if they are on different sides of the house almost, as long as any air space is shared, there is mold being shared. It fucking suuuuuuuucks. I also run my exhaust fan 24 hours a day, and it is way oversized, and I have plenty of fans to circulate air. I rather take on a legion of Spider Mites over powdery mildew, any day. I would actually much prefer spider mites to mold, at least I can make spider mites my bitch for 2 or 3 weeks and then never ever see them again until next mite season... possibly. I am going to start doing preventative maintenance, I'm sick of seasonal problems.

Mold issues don't even start with mold, it starts with plants!!! Plants that are over feed or under feed, or with a unstable pH are waaaaaayyyyyyy more likely to catch mold! A plant sitting in water, doing something very unnatural, is going to cause a lot of stress, and any time a plant is weak, it can catch mold. Like I said, mold usually takes two weeks to show up, but just like all your plants dying, it can happen in LESS THAN 24 hours. I believe the reference I made earlier about all the plants dying was within 18 hours, I have the thread open right now. His plants died because he mixed a product form General Organics and Fox Farm, and everything went rank in the reservoir and killed his entire crop, no survivors, no second chances. Now even though this was a nutrient problem, it was more specifically a problem from the reservoir/root zone, and that is what we are discussing right now.

I do believe, that if there is any scientific evidence to back up these drowning theories in still water, it would work just fine, but with your temps and recent mold issue I would run away from this idea in full sprint! Here is where all the science collapses in this hypothesis: you must "suffocate" the roots, in order to have suffocated roots you need no dissolved oxygen in your water (69f+ temps) and no supplemental oxygen; if your plants will die without oxygen, how do the plants survive this? The answer is that you are not suffocating your plants if they survive this. If you put molasses and a compost tea in water with no oxygen (at least not enough for plants) than your whole root mass should rot off before 48 hours, especially in your temps.

It's your grow, you can try this hypothesis this guy thought up, but I can say with a lot of confidence that if your plants survive it, your attempt to suffocate the roots has failed. Which means there is something else at work here, or that this guy is full of it.


As for your rack idea, I still like it. The 10 gal reservoir is a good idea, but make sure you link those bitches up or you will hate yourself! As far as having the roots go into the reservoir, I have a lot of expensive ideas, but the easiest would be to drill 1" or 2" holes all around the base of the DWC bucket, and then cut a hole in your lid of your reservoir, and submerge your buckets half way into your reservoir. It would be very important to keep your reservoir completely filled, so we could us a large air pump to use air pressure and force the water up and into the buckets, above where the water line sits in the reservoir. Another option would be to this same idea, but use sprayers and a water pump, and hook up a sprayer system inside this submerged bucket to keep the root zone wet when it first starts. This would basically be an advanced aeroponic system, and I don't see any advantage.... So I guess in the end, the only answer to your idea is aeroponics, and I don't see any reason to switch to that when DWC is sooooo easy.

Make sure whatever nutrients you are going to use in this idea (94-130gal reservoir) is EXTREMELY stable, and very synthetic. Even weak dilutions of nutrients in the fridge go bad after 3 weeks, so make sure whatever you mix up doesn't go longer than 3 weeks. 3 weeks is the max I've gotten on the H&G line up, FloraNova line up, and Fox Farm line up, I have never put my TechnaFlora or GH in the fridge, which would probably stay for a very long time becasue it is almost exclusively mineral salts.

But come on... seriously? Don't be silly dude, of course they expect you to use an entire line up if their's is pH perfect. That is the only way it would work, and plus, it forces you to buy their entire line up! Not just the line up of theirs you already have, but re buying all the same products but with "pH perfect" pasted on the front for an additional 10 dollars a bottle, muahahahah! Fucking evil! But honestly, my plants always grow so much better whenever I use a complete line up. I never ever ever ever ever buy these snake oil products, these 50 dollar bottles of 4oz of bloom booster, that you are supposed to replace all your expensive 3 piece boosters with and I NEVER get the same results. Sometimes near the same, but balancing pH and a slue of new problems always comes with these products, so they can suck my balls. Fuck "Bloombastic" and "Red Dragon," I'll use that shit to wipe my ass with before I use it on my plants. A tea, ca/mg, humic acid, carbohydrates, and sometimes a silica additive is all I use. In Europe H&G now makes a additive with carbohydrates, micro life, humic acid, carbon, and silica. It's illegal to purchase in the States, but that doesn't mean I don't already have some!
All I need to add is ca/mg and tea, neither is really necessary with my new dechlorinator (rather than r/o) and the micro life in all my different additives kind of replaces tea, but I still use it anyways, it can only help my pH.

And yes you are correct, EWT is probably the best organic fungicide there is, and works incredible on both clones and mature budding plants. But we try not to do this on buds that are too mature because they may not be able to absorb the chunks in the tea, and this could make a cannabis smoker throw up his toe nails all night. If you are going to make edible hash, you will also get very sick. So I would assume the safe-spray time zone would be anywhere up to 2 weeks prior to harvest.

Old School Kush is a very special plant that was only available for a limited time from Cali Connections, it was an earlier strain, right after he got his Afghani #1, also known as Old School Afghan, and he got this off of someone from Elite Genetics, I believe. This was then crossed with Hindu #1, AKA Old School Hindu ( I don't know if this was already in the Cali Connections bank, or if they got it from Elite or someone else) and then they crossed them into Old School Kush. I believe it might also be crossed with the SFV, either the BX2 or the f3, I think this was prior to the f4. Or it could be crossed with his ORIGINAL, '91 Chem Dawg, either way it makes so awesome fatty nugs! you can put them in as weak stemmed clones and still pull ounces off of 1 plant, perfect for SOG! I do not know why this strain was discontinued, but it's amazing! I had a purple pheno, but my partner accidentally gave away all the clones of it, he thought I had more or that it wasn't the purp pheno or something.... FUUUUUUCK!!! I am trying to track it down right now, but getting old phone numbers from people is pissing me off.

But, my boss actually trays upon trays of Hindu Skunk Kush clones, I was thinking about picking one of those up, he says they are really dank. Want to trade HSK for HSK? I'll hook it up with a free OSK you can clone yourself and give it a shot... but I already know you are going to love it! But I would love to see my HSK grow by your HSK and see who's is danker, or if they are the exact same. I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Haha.


And I know, I know, it makes 0 sense to chop later on plants with mold issues. But here is why: my new grow partners are lazy as fuck and don't like gardening, it turns out, so when I ask them to flush the SFV and go away for a week, they don't. So now I have to do it myself in less than 1 week, rather than 9-14 days like I'd much prefer too. Luckily, through flushing and my mysterious PPM's, I've discovered my TDS meter is off by a EC factor of .2!!! Holy shit!!!!! No wonder half my plants look like SHIT and I can't figure out why, I have been under feeding them by hundreds of PPM's, and I already was feeding them the bare minimum.

But all these issues gave me a chance to work around my work and chop schedule, and give myself enough time to only have 4 plants in the grow room and rewrap it, so I don't have a bunch of plants to haul around. this extra time on the SFV has given me some more weight on it to make up for this gap in time I will have. My SFV seems to have been put into flower possibly a week earlier than I had logged though (got drunk one night, didn't write anything down, didn't remember to until next feeding a week later) so about 4 days ago the crest started to build, and now I have a beautiful crest, and I'm 2 days deep into flushing, and if I do one more flush tonight hopefully I can get them chopped after 6 days. I might wait until tomorrow though, and then flush agian, wait 4 days, and then chop.

Why 4 days after flushing again? Let me tell you, and I hope you remember this for the rest of your growing career: whatever you feed to your plant today, the plant won't get the full benefit for 4 days. You add a product yesterday, and you are like "WTF why can't I see a difference today?" and then 3 days later your plants look amazing and you credit something else that was given to them more recently. It will take 4 days for you to see the results. The plant will be effected probably before the end of the day if you feed early enough, but you won't see visual signs for usually 4 days, after the product has taken its full effect. I read that shit not too long ago.

And finally, I'll be able to spray the hell out of them for mold during this week so it doesn't come back to bite me on the drying rack or in the jars. Have you ever had to throw away 2 large jars STUFFED with only your best nugs? I know you have almost done the equivalent, but this stuff was BEAUTIFUL nugs, that i thought were well cured, but apparently still too wet.


I say it's about time for another pauwau, wouldn't you agree?

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/409622-truth-about-flushing.html

here's the read on flooding. the jist is this - plants have a program to survive floods that causes fermentation to begin whille plant is still alive. trigger this reaction and you are curing before you chop. i believe this is really intended as a replacement to flushing, so like flushing the plant isnt necessarily meant to survive. again, can't speak for the lengthy week long doses of this but, shrug give it a read. there are a number of very interesting points. regardless of any of this, the first post of this thread is essential info on flushing and curing. must read.

i actually had decided not to really flush this round at all, just reduce ppm to 500 or so and let it chill there for a week. haven't added any flushing solution yet, dont know if i will. they are getting nothing but sweet tea, and they've had the last of that today with a gallon or two of fresh stuff right into the res. i will continue replenishing with RO for the next few days keeping PPM around 300-350, ph 6.2. if i take them past this weekend i will flush with straight tap and add the final phase stuff.

rack idea is so close to good but man i can't get the top level down low enough. i do not want to sacrifice another 6". ground floor would be at 36", and it's already high at 30".
sure looks cool though. buckets in a slightly tipped, V-6 looking formation with the res beneath. i just can't find the right size tote, need something long and short. the roughneck im trying is 35 gal at 20" high. need to drop that by like 5" somehow.
gonna have to figure it out just for the cool factor now of the v-6 4x4 now.

excellent point on tea on the buds, did not think of the pathogen factor at all.

I started reading that, but I also just opened up this 12 pack that has been tempting me all week long. So I'll read that tomorrow, probably at work, lol. The cool thing about working in a dispensary is that they pay you to fuck around on rollitup. They want me in charge of the growing class and my job is to explain lineage of all the strains and their effects, so it's pretty fucking awesome! Right now I am a bud tender, but that wont be for long!

As far as your reservoir goes, try spraypainting some wrapping paper storage tubs. They are very short and very long, and often times you can pop up one side of the lid like a panel in an ice chest, makes it real easy to top everything off. They are all clear when you get them, so you have to paint them, sometimes they have wheels, so you have to check if there are holes that penetrate all the way through. BTW they make a spray paint for plastic lawn chairs, works great on these storage tubs. Usually these tubs are around 6" tall, but can hold a fair amount of water, that DWC grow I was referencing earlier was using them as DWC units. https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/221184-balls-out-first-grow-whie.html that's the grow right there. I think you could learn a lot from reading the first 60 pages of that thread, I know that it is a lot, but weellllllllll worth it.

And in soil, when flushing, your plants are considered "flushed" when you run off water is only 450-400ppm, so I guess what you are doing will work fantastically. It might even be more advanced, but I will read that thread first and cross reference with a few friends of mine that already have their degrees in horticulture. you can imagine, as the guy that got them into horticulture, that I am pretty upset I don't yet. So that is next one the menu, get a degree in horticulture. But don't give up on the rack, you'll be so fucking proud when you are all done.

But on the pathogen factor, I've gotten pretty damn sick from shit like that before, so be careful.

Anyways, enough beer for me tonight, good night.

The leaves on that SFV are huge...

eh the leaves really aren't that big. none of these plants are particularly large. i'll do better on size and in turn overall yield next run. this was just a quick and dirty throw some stuff in a tent and flower it before it gathers anymore bugs grow. most attention has been paid to the build rather than the grow.

i will definitely not be spraying down with any tea. i spray down the stuff in veg every now and then, and maybe i'll foliar some tea right when flowering starts, as it's supposed to be beneficial for several weeks. no tea up top after that though. 8+ weeks should be fine for the microbes to be rendered benign.

working on the rack today. i'm going to have to live with raising the level another damn 6". I will mitigate this by rigging the light so it can move up another 4 - 5", and i'll drop the level of hydroton in the pots by another inch or two. this should leave us roughly in the same shape we are now.

i hate sacrificing HALF of my vertical space for the dwc, and this should not be necessary. i need to move to an DD MPB bucket type system asap, where we use more water pressure to fill the dwc from the bottom up rather than top down then drain back. that drain back is where i'm losing fucking 30" of space. until then, this tent grows only OG type stuff that doesn't like to get very tall. i won't even attempt blue dream or another tall sativa in there, at least not in buckets.

talk to me about your drying / curing process for sfv, since i've seen your handiwork and know it works.
average temp in grow room has been 80. (yes, the ventilation that i thought i had worked out is anything but. need one more fan to move hot air out of here.)
humidity all around in here has been 45-50%
last run the mold got me in the drying chamber i had constructed. surely this was becoming a problem even before they were placed in there, and not breaking up the giant cola certainly didn't help, but still .. this is basically just a lateral file cabinet with a few fans that i can turn on or off. i don't think i like the air flow in it. fans on dries things out too quickly, fans off is asking for mold. thinking i might be better off just hanging the harvest in the tent where it grew, at least for the first 3 or 4 days. also thinking about constructing something basic out of a cardboard box or other material that will "soak it up" a bit.
curing i typically just throw them into jars that get opened and jostled about at least once a day. everything stays dark. never seen any mold in the jars ever. I usually wait until stems break at 90 degrees before going into the jar, but i think that's probably a bit too dry now that i'm learning more.
i want to get this right. this is damn good smoke, perhaps some of the best i've ever even seen. i am not going to fuck up the harvest and dry this time!

oh and pm me what dispensary you're at, will have to stop by.

I thought i was at end of thread when I posted reply about white bug in april....sorry

The SFV is a beaut'! That's for certain!

Drying & Curing: Two ways of going about this, the long way, or the quick way, both still take a while and give incredible results. The long way just gives you faster results while curing. You get the flavor you are looking for a little quicker, but sometimes it's only by a few days. But when you have 2-4 weeks to get rid of 4oz-8oz, a few days would be a breath of fresh air. Just remember that darkness is the number 1 in this whole topic, from crop to smoke, keep the nugs in the dark.

The short way- Go ahead and crop your plant, trim plant stalk by stalk, trying to keep the stalks of nugs as intact as possible, preferably we want a closet full of bud-sabers hanging up. Remove fan leaves, large sugar leaves, and trim the small frosty sugar leaves to expose the nug. The sugar leafs close to the nug is primo stuff, and you could add some over all weight, but if we fear mold, than we fear sugar leaf. I usually remove the sugar leaf during a quick drying process, as it speeds it up, and leaf can sometimes give me a head ache. Any branches of nugs that are just too difficult, or simply cannot be trimmed in their whole form should be cut down into smaller spears. Extremely large and dense nugs should follow a similar process breaking them down into the major cola, and hanging up the collar of nugs around the cola separately.

All my nug-sabers are hung upside down, you can do this anywhere that is dark and you have open space, I usually use my wheel of twist tie and cut 2 inch lengths that I will use to hang up the nug. But I have done it a million different ways, you can stretch a few strings are clothes line across the room, or use coat hangers, or use a combination of these 3 (hell yeah I've done that!) What I do is usually use a closet, but in a pinch of used my bureau. Leave the doors to the closet or whatever contraption you have open by a few inches, or even a full foot or two, depending on if it's a small cab or a big closet... Bigger space, bigger fresh air intake. If it's a closet go ahead and crack both sides of the sliding doors. Put a fan in the room, not in the closet/cab with the nugs, but blowing on the closet/cab that has the nugs, place the fan 5-10 feet back from the crack you left open in the doors of your drying area, make sure fresh air is being exchanged in that drying area, but there is no direct air flow on the nugs. That is what makes nugs dry out to fast and smoke harsh.

Temperature must be between 60-70 degrees, anything lower and your bud will dry so slow it will actually cure at the same time, but you also risk mold, anything higher and the oils go soft and it reeks up the entire house. 40%-50% Humidity is also recommended, this is a variable that is up to you, longer drying or slower drying, I usually rest at 45%, but you can go to 40% with little flavor lost, below 40% and we dry to fast, lose flavor, lose smell, lose weight. I don't need to explain what happens over 50% humidity. Keep your nugs out of 80 degree weather, you will lose a lot of flavor and smell, and your nugs will dry to fast, causing them to transpire and raise the humidity, however this is not usually a problem in large spaces like a garage, but you are still fucking up your nugs.

So long way- Explaining the long way is easy because I explained a lot already in the short way, ironic. When doing the long way it starts with drying, the slower you dry the better your end results, but the more you gamble your crop. You are going to want the same drying conditions as in the short way, same type of drying area, but with humidity closer to 50% and temps closer to 60 degrees. There are three ways to chop your plants, the slowest way to dry is chopping the whole plant, and just hanging it up with all the leaves on it, minus any leaves that look like they could cause trouble. A slightly quicker version is to hang up the whole plant with all the fan leaves removed, but all the sugar leaves intact, but this is only slightly easier to trim, it's a bitch trimming soggy or dry leaf!! And then finally you may opt to remove all the fan leaves and large sugar leaves, but leave all the small ones, this is by far the easiest way to do it, because it's less trimming, and you can see how the plant will look with the sugar leaf on it, and kind of decide how much you want to leave on to show off its sexy frost. You can do all these methods by drying them as separate spears, rather than whole plants, this is a judgment call on your behalf. You know your mold issues better than I do.

The way I usually do it: The SFV is so dense you can get away with the quick method every time and everyone will love it! But sometimes when I'm feeling fancy I remove all the fan leaves and hang them up as separate spears, the SFV is too dense for whole plant, and it could rot. If I remove all the fan leaves but keep the sugar leaf I can expect anywhere between 2-7 days extra drying, depending on density. Either way, I do it with separate spears, usually completely trimmed because I am lazy, until the stems snap, and they feel dry on the outside, but still squeeze good in the middle. Leaving the sugar leaf on gives you a better cure and flavor after drying, but trimming soggy/dry leaf is fucking horrible, I hate it, I already hate trimming, but damn the buds taste better. Sometimes a little leaf gives some more "bag appeal" but it's a judgment call, you may like it better nice and clean.

But I ALWAYS try and dry as close to 60 degrees as possible, 64 seems to be my average. And humidity is always around 45%, but 46% has been my average. It's not easy to get these conditions; I've used a 12 amp A/C unit, a 12 amp heater, and a humidifier all at the same time for almost 2 weeks just for that perfect crop, and it was PERFECT.



Break them up before you jar them, sometimes after I'm done breaking them down I'm not totally happy with the dry, but if I leave them out they will dry to fast, so I will put them into a brown paper bag with the top folded over once, or I will place it in a shoe box with the lid on loosely. I pop them out of the bag once a day for 5 minutes, or just long enough to put them in and out, so the same nugs aren't touching anymore. It all depends on how wet they are, really. This process lasts between 1-7 days.

I use amber jars, CHEM III is the category I think, and they are used by Biologist and Geologist collecting samples that are sensitive to UV light. This keeps all the UVB out, and it's just as good as perfect black darkness, I love it, I can leave my jars wherever I want. Sometimes when I have a large yield though, that isn't practical to have 8-12 jars of bud loaded to the gills. So I use a large vacuum sealing storage canister, much like the kind used for cereal. I bought it at target for 20 bucks, and it holds a gallon by volume. This I keep double bagged in a black reusable grocery bag (the fabric ones) and I place in a drawer somewhere safe. Whether I am using the jars or using the vac canister, for the first 4-10 days the nugs all come out once a day, sit out for just a minute, or a half hour, and then are put back into the jar. That way no nugs are touching the same nug, so even curing is encouraged, while mold is discouraged. The time spent out of the jar is once again, a judgment call.

After this period is over and I am comfortable leaving my nugs in my jar, I only open them up whenever I smoke from there on out. If I pack a bowl, all my jars open up, from the second I grab my nug, to the second my bowl is extinguished, I have my lids open. And then I shut them the second that bowl is done. If you like to take your time with your smoke you may want to just keep it to 10-30 minutes, 1-3 times a day. You can go ahead and give them a shake to keep nugs from touching, but be gentle! That is how we collect kief in the dispensary, by shaking buds, so you are losing vast amounts of resin while doing this.

After about a month I don't feel it necessary to open my jars every day, maybe every other day, the longer I go the less I do it. It's really all done by feel. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't learn anything from this, actually, lol.

As far as the DWC goes, have you ever considered just using a 4x4 flood tray with a lid? If you want more water you can put it on top of a stand with a res, but either way the whole thing probably won’t be taller than 3' and it would be very clean. If you didn't have an extra res it would only be as tall as a flood tray! For an extra 30 bucks Discount Hydro in Riverside does all the work for you. I'm starting too really like DH, sometimes they sell a load of bullshit, but they are really trying hard to build excellent products for the right price.

dude that is excellent info. im glad im not the only one who doesnt like to trim leaf after it's been drying. fuck that. like my women, i prefer them clean shaven.

i can easily roll all of the right conditions, especially with the tip on pointing a fan at the cracked drawer from afar. that is key for me. all the right conditions but one anyway. 60f is a bitch anywhere around. only thing i can think of would be to send air direct from the ac unit into the drying rack, which i can do. but that's going to be more of a breeze blowing through than id want. if no breeze, then no temp, then no point .. so. hrm.

meanwhile in the laboratory. the 4x4 becomes a 4x4x4, and adds a roll cage for extreme off-road adventure.



here's the prototype. i decided to go with 4 plants total in the tent, going for larger plants. so here goes:

35 gallon roughneck tote reservoir
two buckets, cut down to just the collars
two bucket net pots
reservoir rests on the bottom shelf, set as low as possible, about 2" off the ground. middle shelf is about completely cut away, leaving just a row on each side. notice how the net pot actually rests on the lip of this shelf. this way the rack helps support the weight of our massive plants, otherwise they would just bend into the flexible plastic lid. the fit is a little oval but it's solid and will work great. the top shelves can be added to make a very easy scrog screen resting about 5" above the lip of the net pot. this puts the screen 6-8" above the medium. perfect, and so utterly common sense, it's beautiful.

the buckets, or what used to be buckets, are just open at the bottom. only the collar is used to give the netpot some support. and because it looks cooler.

i have not drilled bulkheads yet. it's getting 3x 1" drain holes on the back, up on the top so it gravity drains back to the main res. also gets 2x penetrations on the front at the bottom. one for a water level gauge and one for a flush drain. incoming sauce will enter via the top, shooting down. not sure if i will build a cool little manifold and make 6 or 8 little intake jets shooting from the top, or just be lazy and jam the 1/2" line into the lid in two, maybe four spots. i don't think it will make enough difference to spend much time on a killer manifold but we'll see.

add a bunch of airstones and that's it.

so each sub-res will have 25-30 gallons. the main res has about 30. that's 80 gallons total. 20 gallons per plant with two racks in the tent. that's pretty serious dwc action yo.

oh and it's 21" high at the netpot lid.
this increases the vertical grow space by over 15". i believe this is as low as i can get it while still using gravity to drain back to the outside res.

i love when i can make something useful out of the fucking garbage that we buy nowadays.

Looks like you are scroging again, because if your nets are that close together in each unit it will be hard to get 4 plants large enough to fit in the tent. But if you do a little training it is totally possible. I am about to get your 2 Blue Dreams to fill up my entire 3x3 screen I dropped in my 4x4 tent. I'm thinking about maybe picking up a 1000w a build a 4x4 screen outside of my flood tray. But I don't think I can get a 1k far enough away from the tops with how massive these beasts are!

You can probably just get them to lean away from eachother with just a little LST and form a awesome bud half pipe out of them.


Smoking on some Sour Grape right now, fresh out of cure. Smoke expansion in your lungs is so brutal and harsh, even though I flushed it for 2 weeks. The Face Off is much smoother. But this Sour Grape is pretty damn strong, it's getting me dizzy!

that's exactly right. i won't really be doing a full on scrog, but the screen a few inches over the pots will help train the plants away from each other. not going to be trying to fill the screen though.

the other option is to only run one plant per rack, easy enough. i'd rather have 2 for a total of 4 in the tent, just as a safety net.

and no, never did figure out wtf those bugs were. they were either seasonal from some fresh hatch nearby, or they were more about infesting the coco than the plants. after switching the coco out for hydroton, i saw them for about another week or two, then they were just gone. no trace, no damage, no root problems, nothing.

I've had so many mysterious bugs come and go in a flash this Spring/Summer. I blasted the season of with blasting spider mites, I sent those fuckers to hell in 3 days, and I've been spraying once a week for them. Thrips came and went, they did not like the taste of my Miticide (turned out not to be snake oil, but fucking amazing!). I've had fungus gnats for God-knows-how-long... These fuckers are hard to get rid of, they have built up a tolerance to my Azamax, so I'm about to start using the Miticide, but at 20 bucks for 1.5 oz, I am a little hesitant.

But caterpillar season just started, I saw some chew marks on my OSK in the tent, and my 1 SFV I have outside right now. So I can't wait to find them and explode them between my fingers! Bwahahah! Die! Die!

Mold is another issue I think I have finally almost defeated. It was never a problem for me until I moved up to the mountains. I live in a fucking cloud and it's hard to keep the spores away. So I'm popping a ozone generator on my air intake, and tearing down the walls of my custom flower room, I am removing the 2 layers of plastic and the 1 layer of mylar and replacing it with a single layer of fresh Panda Film. This will lower the temps by reducing my insulation, and hopefully dispose of all the mold spores trapped in the petri dish that is the damp air space between the two sheets of plastic. The entire room (with all plants removed) will receive a Sulfur vaporization, and then sprayed down with Physan 20. Gnarly shit, always cover up exposed skin and protect your face/lungs/hair, because this shit is going to be one of those lawyer commercials you see on TV, "Mesothelioma? I'll fight for you!"

All my plants are going to get a mildew cure dip, then I am scrubbing all my trays down for insect eggs, probably getting new trays, these guys bought the most mismatched odd-couple 2x3 and 2.5x5 trays I have ever seen. They are different brands, different colors, different sizes. They didn't buy them because they couldn't afford a large on or because the other size wasn't available, but because they were talked into buying mismatch trays. It makes me sad, man. So I'm probably going to buy a 3x8. But I want to raise my ceiling and see if these fucking XXXL hoods can give me a larger foot print closer to 4x4. These things are expensive, but they don't seem to have a much bigger foot print that a Daystar by Hydrofarm, a certainly longer foot print, but not much wider, if at all.

I'm still thinking about putting 3 daystar or 3 yield master II in that room with either 3 600 or 3 400's. I could be growing the same amount of plants as I am now with better light and more yield probably if I stepped down to 3 400's, and I would only have to buy one more ballast.

Fucking a' dude, garden problems. I hate looking at my own "thing's to do list."

...Anyways. the 4 DWC plants under the 1k sounds like it is going to be fucking tit's, I can't wait to see that shit. Let me know if this second reservoir works out well for you with DWC. I would love to switch to a system that is cleaner, I'm going crazy with all this dirt everywhere! Dirt, dirt, everywhere! I'm about to hook up my Dechlorinator to a 55 gallon drum with a float on it, which will top off as needed, which will hook up to a reservoir of nutrients and a pump under my grow tables, this will be on a timer as well as a float. It'll automatically top itself off as it feeds my plants, I just need to come in once or twice a week and top it off. This is good because my grow partners don't do shit in the garden, just pay the bills, so it makes it really easy for them to do it while I'm gone. They have such a hard time grasping the H&G formula, it has too many parts for them. They are used to just Flora Nova A, plus clonex or b1 during veg, and Flora Nova B and use the Fox Farm trio booster pack as their boosters, if you are familiar with those products.

There way was more economical, my way is just better. it is pH balanced and my nugs eat other farmer's nugs for breakfast!

also, the spacing between pots isn't as bad as it looks. the buckets in the tent now are almost exactly that close to each other already. the two in each res will be this close to each other, but we'll have quite a bit more space betwen them and the plants in the 2nd res. remember too the top wire shelf slaps on over the bucket, so we've got a perfect training screen to keep things right where we want them. my only worry is how much work this will take, as the goal here is extreme low maintenance. if all goes well, we will fill the res and formulate the sauce, then not flush again til final flush, if even that. will certainly need to doctor the sauce some here and there, but 25 gallons per plant, this should be doable.

first attempt was 15 gallons for 4 plants. this worked alright.
second was 15 gallons for 6 plants. this did NOT work.
third we used 45 gallons for 6 plants. great results, zero problems leaving the sauce alone for 4 - 5 weeks at a time.
80+ gallons? this should work.

also no reason i can't reverse the flow (pump out of sub-res, into main res, let main res gravity drain to sub-res) and replace the 25 gallon main res with a 55 gallon drum. I may very well do this next cycle.

also could rig a second tent the same way and share the main res, easy stuff once the foundation is ready.

now that this has been realized, next thing i've had brewing in the back of my head .. take a 55 gal drum, set it on its side and build a frame to keep it there. stick 2 net pots in the top much like this rack design.

if nothing else, i am on a mission for extreme hardcore root porn.

I was thinking about doing this with dirt with my extra barrel, I don't want to go out and spend money on a new container for the BD, do you know how far away everything is when you live on a mountain? I've been looking at undercurrent systems, they don't seem to be as complex as I originally thought. I'm so fucking sick of dirt, and I hate all the transplanting prep!

Anyways, I'm getting off RIU, there is work to be done so that the BD monsters can live!

i cant imagine switching back to dirt now.

add reflective car windshield sunblock cover thing to the list of useful items found at the $1 store. they are super thin, easy to work with, and just about the right size for a tote or cooler based res. not going to do the sides of the res, but it works perfectly on the top and should realistically help keep the sauce a bit cooler.

what we need now .. some spare stick-on stealth skin from stealth aircraft to make a res that almost completely reflects the heat from our lights. yeah that's right. stealth reservoir, bitches. yes.

You are crazy.

started chopping last night. 2 down, will take them over the next few days. in the meantime they are dark with pumps and stones off.

So far so good, no problems, zero bugs found, no nastiness of any sort. Have seen a very light bit of root funk but nothing very serious.

about 400g wet pulled so far. it's not going to be much quantity for 6 plants but the quality is excellent. the first two were the smallest ones, figuring 3 or 4oz dry total from those two.

Hahaha I am chopping my SFV today too! 9 weeks 1 days starting today... or maybe 9 weeks 2 days? Whatever. I don't care. Chop! Chop! Chop!

I normally average 2.5oz per SFV, it isn't a super heavy yielding plant. Last round of SFV I took over about 4 weeks through the flower period, and only pulled 2 ounces and 1 gram per plant. But that is because I started taking care of my new grow partners plant's. This last round was all me during flower, so it should be heavier, but the stems are still weak from them vegging them improperly. So maybe just a little over 2oz a plant. Quality is much better though. The last crop they did on their own before I showed up only yielded them 1 oz per plant, and 1.5oz per plant the crop before that. I couldn't believe somebody could do such a bad job! Considering their first crop of SFV they pulled 2.5oz at least per plant, maybe more, in only 2 gal of soil! Something I would never do.

The main problem is the piss-ass-poor cuttings they would take. I need to find a new SFV mom. I got some pretty good stems on my most recent batch, but nothing like it used to be.


Fuuuuck. I'm sick of problems. And I'm going to get a diminished yield from my next batch of SFV because of a N deficiency I had earlier on in flowering, lost half my leaves before I realized that my TDS meter was calibrated to a .5 TDS instead of a .7! FACK! The stems are really fat though, so hopefully I'll still hit 2oz+ per plant... which isn't progress for me, fack.

bah we can do better than all of that. i see no reason why we can't pull 3 or 4oz + per plant once vegged properly. i'm sure of it.

the bigger ones in this batch should yield around that much, two or three of them anyway. let's find out yo! commence round two.