Harvest a Pound Every Three Weeks!

DIRTHAWKER said:

Times are tough, with the economy the way it is.
Im in the process of building the flowering room and all the flowering systems etc... im wondering how the first couple harvests would turn out with the bare minimums? like 1 1000w light, and no co2? would scaling back the plant numbers in the flower units work with starting out with just one light?

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I grew without CO2 and a single 1000W light for 14 years. I've always had weed coming out my ass!

Your first harvest my not weigh a pound but it will still be a shit load of buds!

The first 12 weeks are tough until the perpetual harvest kicks in.

vertise said:

do you make hash with your clippings man cause if not send me it

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Bubble hash baby!

But I also make cannabutter for some of my patients.

vertise said:

also man i need a recommendation on a cycle timer. i am not going as grand as you have it but i do want something that can do 1 minute on 5 on. whats the cheapest option

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There is no cheap solution for cycle timers.

I even went and bought all the parts and designed a circuit and relay that worked great. I was going to start selling them.

Only problem is I can buy one cheaper than I could build it. I get all my hydro stuff wholesale! I know, it's not fair but that's the way Karma works.

Look at it this way bro...The cycle timer costs the same as a good HPS light bulb. I replace my 2 bulbs every year but my timer will last a lifetime.

StinkBud said:

I grew without CO2 and a single 1000W light for 14 years. I've always had weed coming out my ass!

Your first harvest my not weigh a pound but it will still be a shit load of buds!

The first 12 weeks are tough until the perpetual harvest kicks in.

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Eventually i hope to have everything top notch.
My flower room still needs to be built 8x8x8, is using one light in a room this large ok? and stink, do you think i should just go ahead with the 3 units (14) plant sites in each unit, even though there will only be one 1000w light?
or maybe scale back (half) until i get another light?

thanks man

DIRTHAWKER said:

Eventually i hope to have everything top notch.
My flower room still needs to be built 8x8x8, is using one light in a room this large ok? and stink, do you think i should just go ahead with the 3 units (14) plant sites, even though there will only be one 1000w light?
or maybe scale back (half) until i get another light?

thanks man

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I would start with one system and then add another every three weeks until you have all three flower units running.

The 1K will work fine and then in a couple of months you can snag another light when all your systems are up and running.

Helloooo
I planted a white widow seed 6 weeks ago, it is growing high with not many leaves on it, i am use a low watage light and have used no chemicals, can anyone tell me if this will still flower and how long i am looking at, i got the seeds from amsterdam, this is my first attempt so please dont laugh at me i know use lot are all pro's.
Cheers anyone

StinkBud said:

I would start with one system and then add another every three weeks until you have all three flower units running.

The 1K will work fine and then in a couple of months you can snag another light when all your systems are up and running.

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Hindsight is 20/20 when you have people to help guide you along before you make costly mistakes.

Im envisioning this, and tell me what would be the best.

I plan on adding lights as i go (1 every 3 weeks)
how about 3 600watt hps, one over each unit?

or would 1000watters be better (3 total, one over each flower unit)?

or what about getting a 1000watt down the middle on a light mover and 2 600watters on the sides?


of course all this will be added as time and money permits.
We all appreciate the time you take to answer our stupid newb questions.. just wanna get this right.

thanks again

great thread!

I'd like to talk about growing in general and the concepts that produce fast growth. I'd to keep it simple so anyone can understand.

Plants have needs just like you and me. The biggest difference is that plants make their own food. To put it simply, plants make sugar and the sugars power plant growth.

So what does a plant need to make sugar? Carbon, Oxygen, Water and light. They also need small amounts of nutrients and of course Chlorophyll.

The plants take in the Carbon (CO2) through the leaves. They take in water and nutrients through the roots. What most people don't know is plant also take in their Oxygen through the roots.

Because plants give off Oxygen many believe O2 is a non issue. In realty it's usually the determining factor in maximum plant growth.

So if you look at what a plant need it's obvious where the bottle necks can occur.

Light is the most important element in any grow. Light is what powers photosynthesis. The more light the faster the plants grow, it's that simple.

Water and nutrients are a non issue. Why? Who has ever had a problem over watering and over fertilizing? I have. It's easy to give too much water and drown your roots. Too much nutes and you burn the shit out of them. So the problem is not giving the plants enough water and nutes...it's usually giving them too much!

Carbon is one of the building blocks of sugar. The plant needs lots of CO2 for fast growth. Normal air is between 200-500 PPM. Not much compared to what the plant can actually use. Plants can easily use 1500 PPM or more.

Oxygen is probably the most overlooked elements in plant growth. Even though plants give off more O2 than they take in, they still use a lot of Oxygen in the sugars they make.

My system addresses each one of these issues.

Light is right. You already know how to add more light.
Water and Nutrients are fed and monitored perfectly.
Carbon is added with a CO2 system.
Oxygen is the main advantage of my Aeroponic system.

Think of it this way...the plant breaths in Oxygen through it's roots and out through it's leaves. So imagine yourself a plant and let's do a test:

1) Dig a whole in some dirt. Stick your head in it and fill it back up. Now take a deep breath. This is what growing is soil is like.

2) Now fill a container with water and stick your head in it. Oh yea, don't forget to add some air stones first. Now take a deep breath. This is DWC.

3) Now just take a normal deep breath. This is Aeroponics.

Am I getting my point across?

DIRTHAWKER said:

Hindsight is 20/20 when you have people to help guide you along before you make costly mistakes.

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If I could do it over again I would hang 4 - 600W HPS lights. I would get two of those dual light ballasts and daisy chain the cooling hoses.

It would only use 400W more than the system I have now but add an additional 33,000 lumens and way better light distribution.

I think I will just go with the cull size units, I have plenty of room for the clone and veg units I'm just screwed for space for the full size Aero-NFT systems. I just wont make as many clone/ veg sites for now. Should work just fine, only on a smaller scale! I'm going to be gorwing some AK-47 and Blueberries from seed based on your recomendations and my personal experiences with those. I'm very pumped! Thanks a million!!!

StinkBud said:

Nutes don't kill clones it just makes them take a long time to root.

Think of like this, if you give the cuttings what they need they don't need to grow roots to get it.

You could use a cloner and then go right into the small system for veg and flower.

You can't move the plants in the Aero/NFT system because the roots all grow together.

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I would recommend an HO Fluorescent light system for your veg. Fls help keep the internode length down and are nice and cool. I use a small one for my clones and really like it. HO is the way to go instead of CFLs in my opinion.

Hey stink! Nuff respect going out to you on your cool setup!

I'm going to follow your trend and set myself up with one but can you help with the following;

you say you use mh250 for veg but may go to HO Fluorescent! would you use the as for your clone system? i.e wattage and bulbs? if yes what are you using now, if no what would you recommend, would HO flouros take longer for the veg phase?

Thanks dude

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You can run 7 plants. Put a hole in middle and run six holes in a circle around it.

A 600 would handle two of these systems side by side easy.

I would recommend an HO Fluorescent light system for your veg. Fls help keep the internode length down and are nice and cool. I use a small one for my clones and really like it. HO is the way to go instead of CFLs in my opinion.

With HO lights you don't have to replace the whole ballast when the light burns out. They also spread the light out more evenly unlike a single point light source.

Good luck bro![


I would recommend an HO Fluorescent light system for your veg. Fls help keep the internode length down and are nice and cool. I use a small one for my clones and really like it. HO is the way to go instead of CFLs in my opinion.

Hey stink! Nuff respect going out to you on your cool setup!

I'm going to follow your trend and set myself up with one but can you help with the following;

you say you use mh250 for veg but may go to HO Fluorescent! would you use the same as your clone system? i.e wattage and bulbs? if yes what are you using now, if no what would you recommend, would HO flouros take longer for the veg phase?

Thanks dude

hey stink I was just wondering how you check the ph in the veg system. ?? I dnt see a valve like the flower system. Do u just open it??
Thanks

iBLaZe4tozErO said:

hey stink I was just wondering how you check the ph in the veg system. ?? I dnt see a valve like the flower system. Do u just open it??
Thanks

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I forgot to put the valve in the plans. Basically I just make one of the legs of the "H" long enough to go out the container and then I put a ball valve on it.

When I want to check the nutes I just open the valve and fill a cup with the water. I use the sample to test PPM and PH.

I only check the veg unit once a week because it dosen't use much water or nutes.

The flowering system at max growth will use a gallon of water a day so I check it every other day.

I don't even check the cloner anymore. I just change the water every three weeks.

you say you use mh250 for veg but may go to HO Fluorescent! would you use the same as your clone system? i.e wattage and bulbs? if yes what are you using now, if no what would you recommend, would HO flouros take longer for the veg phase?

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A 4ft. 8-bulb HO gives you 40,000 lumens, same as a 400W MH. That's what I would veg with. But those lights are expensive.

A 2ft. 4-bulb would work and the price is actually decent.

The length of the veg phase is determined by harvest. As soon as I harvest I put the veg plants in regardless of size. Some are bigger than others.

If I had a bigger light I could have larger plants. My problem is with my State laws. I have to keep my plants under 12" tall and wide or they count as one of my mature plants.

The laws may be different in your State.

I would bet if you vegged under a 600W and had 4 - 1000W HPS in the flower room, you could easily double my best harvest.

Hey stink, just wrapping up my cloner build and noticed in the drawings you have 10 misters but only list 8 in the parts list, so before I start drilling, should I do 8 or 10 misters?

StinkBud said:

I forgot to put the valve in the plans. Basically I just make one of the legs of the "H" long enough to go out the container and then I put a ball valve on it.

When I want to check the nutes I just open the valve and fill a cup with the water. I use the sample to test PPM and PH.

I only check the veg unit once a week because it dosen't use much water or nutes.

The flowering system at max growth will use a gallon of water a day so I check it every other day.

I don't even check the cloner anymore. I just change the water every three weeks.

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Thanks. Can't wait to do this.

Just popping in stink, you sure are building one hell of a following here. Up to 37 pages, and still with good info woooo. lol Just thought I'd say hey for today, and see if you considered my thought on your new "sativa system" with putting a scrog net on top of it. Any way check you tomorrow, latta man!

StinkBud said:

A 4ft. 8-bulb HO gives you 40,000 lumens, same as a 400W MH. That's what I would veg with. But those lights are expensive.

A 2ft. 4-bulb would work and the price is actually decent.

The length of the veg phase is determined by harvest. As soon as I harvest I put the veg plants in regardless of size. Some are bigger than others.

If I had a bigger light I could have larger plants. My problem is with my State laws. I have to keep my plants under 12" tall and wide or they count as one of my mature plants.

The laws may be different in your State.

I would bet if you vegged under a 600W and had 4 - 1000W HPS in the flower room, you could easily double my best harvest.

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For those wondering about lighting - Even if you had 4 - 1000w lights in the flower room I don't think there would be too much benefit to it (Unless you had something like 10-15 systems built with 2 posts each). The lights can only penetrate about 36" of the canopy so growing bigger plants is not feasible unless you are placing lights at weird heights to get light to the lower leaves.

Also from what I understand lumens do not necessarily accumulate. That is to say if you have two 1000w lights next to each other it is NOT the equivalent of a 2000w light. Sure if you only have one CFL and you add another it's going to help but that's not what we're talking abou there. The 1000w light simply provides more coverage and lumens than a 400w lamp however having 2 or 3 400w lamps may be better than the 1000w due to multiple light sources and the ability to provide more even coverage over a footprint as opposed to one light source. I believe the general rule of thumb is 50watts/sf of HID lighting. The added benefit of 400w lamps is they do not get as hot so they can be placed closer to the plant tops. I know you have your lamps air cooled as I have mine as well which allows us to place them even closer. Light intensity drops off exponentially as the distance increases from the tops of the plants.

These are following numbers for a 1000w HPS
1 foot away - 140,000 lumens
2 feet away - 35,000 lumens
3 feet away - 15,555 lumens
4 feet away - 9999 lumens

You can purchase a device to measure the lumens and test it out.

So my point it is just depends on the situation if adding lights will be beneficial and how they are set up, etc.