Can someone tell me if I'm as retarded as the guy at the hydro store thinks I am?

I lurk a bunch and occasionally post some nonsense to a thread, but I use rollitup for the fantastic resource it really is. Thanks.

Anyway, I've always grown in soil but recently decided that I wanted to try my hand at growing in coco. I came up with a bunch of cuttings from a friend and kept the 22 plants I decided were worth my time, they are:

1- Tang
1- Cherry Pie
3- Maui Wowie
4- Black Diamond
4- Sweet Dreams
4- Purple Kush
5- Wreckage

I decided I wanted to run my plants in 1 Gal Smart Pots on a drip system because I liked the small footprint of the bags and wanted to work my way into hydroponics; the guy at the grow store looked at me like I had a third eye when I explained my plan. I was told "it isn't worth it unless you are using at least 3 Gal pots.", I refuse to believe this.

When I moved my clones from my cloning machine to dixie cups full of coco I never expected them to take off as well as they did considering the size of the media, I just made sure they were fed. After 3 weeks I felt they had to be moved into larger accommodations, they were given 1 Gal pots with a 70/30 coc/Growstones mixture; at first, they seemed so small in those pots. After a week in veg I tossed them into flower; they got bigger than I thought they would so I decided to run a drip system and add a third light into my room.

Should I have used 3 Gal pots? Should I not add an extra light and separate them 2 weeks into flower?

I run perpetual SOG. I used to run 3 gallon smart pots. Pulled around 55 grams each. Then I tried 1 gallon nursery pots with the same strain and everything and pulled 35 grams each. Now I run 2 gallon smart pots and pull 50 grams each. I also can run 6 more plants in my flower room with the space I saved by switching from 3 to 2 gallon pots. I don't think your retarded, I think you gotta do what works for you in your grow space and your goals for each cycle.

Oh yeah, currently a 4x6 grow space but after the other light is added it'll turned into an oblong 6x7 with 3 1Kw HPS lamps (2- CAP Lumineer hoods running Nanolux 1Kw ballasts with Ushio HPS bulbs, the expansion lighting is a Hydrofarm Lumii hood, a 1Kw Lumatek ballast running an Eye Hortilux Super HPS bulb).

RO water brought to 200 ppm using Botanicare CalMag Plus

Nutes: Botanicare Kind

Planned Flower Supplements: Botanicare Sweet, Axiom Harpin Proteins, Humboldt's Own Purple Maxx

I designed the drip system to be on a timer but my plants haven't established enough roots to handle daily waterings (yet) and the system will need to be expanded tonight when I add the extra light. I don't know if I'll be able to use my photocell timer yet, for now it's manually operated 396 GPH pump pushing 2 GPH emitters through recycled rubber drip rings.

Hopefully I didn't seem like to much of a douche with my intro to this minor journal, I'm just a bit excited about being shot down and recovering well.

If you have any pointers or criticism please feel fee to add it; this is my first time in coco and I wouldn't mind any help I could get.

polo the don said:

I run perpetual SOG. I used to run 3 gallon smart pots. Pulled around 55 grams each. Then I tried 1 gallon nursery pots with the same strain and everything and pulled 35 grams each. Now I run 2 gallon smart pots and pull 50 grams each. I also can run 6 more plants in my flower room with the space I saved by switching from 3 to 2 gallon pots. I don't think your retarded, I think you gotta do what works for you in your grow space and your goals for each cycle.

Click to expand...

Do you think I might stress them by adding an extra light and space? I really doubt the plants will mind much, I just worry a bit about stressing them early into flower.

Incidentally, my plan was to run SOG but I think the plants have gotten a bit out of hand to do so. How long are you vegging for? How big are your girls when you put them into flower? What is your feed schedule?

This is assuming you are running coco.

nice garden, looks great!!!

Adding extra light won't hurt as long as the temps stay the same and you don't light bleach them (yes, there *is* such a thing as too much light).

2 gallons is fine depending in the size of your plants. If you aren't growing 3 foot bushes, 2 gallon pots are fine. Old man's rule of thumb is 1 gallon of medium for every foot of growth.

Looking at your plants, if they aren't at least 2 weeks into true flowering yet, I might transplant into 3 gallon pots. It looks like your plants aren't even done stretching in flower yet, so I might even think about transplanting them before they finish off their growth and start fattening up.

I dunno, bigger roots equal bigger fruits. Those plants look like they are almost too big for the pots to flower already. Not saying you can't do it, I use 2 gallon grow bags in my room. But you are going to have to water a lot more often when you get late into flower.

Nice Garden mate bro

Yes more room is nice but if you are not going to veg your girls for long then there is not much point you can fit a lot more in your grow area with smaller pots if you have no limit on how many you can grow then what your doing will work fine

if you want to start growing trees then yes upgrade your pot size and veg longer i think with you using 3000watts your going to get a huge yield so i wouldn't stress so much you might just need to water more as the pots are smaller and will dry out faster

using something like CANNAZYM is a high-quality enzyme product that speeds up the process of breaking down dead root material and activates beneficial micro-organisms. CANNAZYM also helps plants take up nutrients and increases the resistance against diseases. Enzymes are substances that speed up the reactions in living organisms

that way the dead roots will be eaten and the new roots will grow in its place it looks like your not a noob and you got your shit dialed in so don't worry about the guy at the hydro shop

Just make sure you got good air flow in between your plants and keep us posted looking forward to seeing them girls with some huge colas

I decided to follow up, everything is looking good. Things got a bit out of hand but I'll know how to pull off 1 gal flowering much better next time.View attachment 3319477

With ur type of garden 1-2gal is good also another light would be good.
You can tank me later bra!

hellmutt bones said:

With ur type of garden 1-2gal is good also another light would be good.
You can tank me later bra!

Click to expand...

I was thinking of adding 2-400w MH lamps and placing them between my 3 HPS lamps for my next session, at that point I'll almost have too much light in the space though (6 x 9 x 7).

I was thinking the same thing as the second guy to post; whatever works best for you. Me, personally, I would have suggested the same thing as the guy at the store-- but that just shows that him and I have similar grow styles, with larger plants. I grow in a 5X5 space with 1kw hps and I can pretty much count on close to two pounds, regardless of strain (although strain definitely makes a difference in what I wind up with yield wise).

But when I started messing around with aero, I had 4 plants taking up 1/3 of my space and got 4 ounces each with half the veg time. I was really wanting to try and do 2 lights with a 100% aero setup this winter while I could take advantage of the colder weather and try and get a 6 pound harvest, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

But yeah, generally I see two approaches to great yields: either a bunch of small plants, with little to no training (or veg time) that don't require too much root space, or longer veg times with pretty intensive training, and a fewer number of larger plants with much more room for roots with each one..

If you were having problems getting a decent yield then I would recommend switching styles, but it looks like you've got the small root system down pretty well. Nice looking garden.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to add-- going hydro/aero is something I think all avid growers should at least try once. The growth is just SO fast, especially if you are coming from soil and/or organic.

In my opinion the best thing you can do for yield is to simply have the fastest growth possible. IME they stretch a little more and have slightly longer internodal spacing than soil, but it makes up for it with its fast flower growth. Here's a shot of some blue dream from HSO at about 3 1/2 weeks from the flip in my aero setup:



But yeah, I definitely recommend continuing to work towards hydro (or my preference, aero) bc at the very least you could probably get similar yields with shorter veg times, allowing for possibly an extra harvest each year if you can really dial it in.