Bubba Nub
Member
Howdy all. This will be a little incomplete since I just flipped light cycles and don't have any pics of the before. I'm gonna do my best to try and describe how it's setup and add some pics. Admittedly, it's hard to tell exactly whats goin on because the room is so full at the moment....
The setup:
15'x15'x8' room
4- 1k nanolux digital ballast/ Hortilux SuperHPS bulbs
Lightrail 4.0
18' of extruded aluminum for light tree
4- bare sockets
8' exhaust fan w 28" filter
16,000 btu ac/heatpump/dehumid
8- 36x72 aluminum shelving units/ 4 shelves each
32- 2.3cu/ft bags of fafard 3b
128 clones 4 per shelf
5 random fans
Nutes- General Organics full line
For this run, Most of the room is either white skunk or AK-47 with like 12 widow fuckers thrown in because they are soooo tasty! Cloning ocurred on 12/18, rooting was almost 100%, roots showing by 12/23 and moved to be hardened off for planting. Planting day was 12/27, followed by 4 days of gradual light increase amping the ballast up from 50%-100%. All four lights running at 100% on 1/1/14, so we'll consider this the beginning of veg. Before planting, my medium was enriched with some of my standard compost and seasoned chicken poo to give a good population of beasties. Bags were prewatered with a light mix of fulvic acid and bioroot two days before planting.
The ladies start getting fed immediately. Starting with a light lode of nutes and ramping it up each feeding until I'm somwhere between a light and heavy feeding based off of GO labels. For the first week or two, 16 gallons of water feeds the whole room every 4 days. At around 2 weeks, roots begin hitting the compost trough in the back of the medium bag and plants absolutely explode in new growth. It's usually at this time that I begin intensive canopy management. I'm a big fan of high stress training and tend to bend and push over a majority of the plants. At week 3, things are really cooking and getting jungley. I usually have to begin some minor trimming to keep stronger plants from overtaking some that may be struggling. I install my support netting at this time so I can manage the canopy easier later. I usually also begin moving the racks around to give ones that are on the ends to a chance to bask in the high lumen loads in the center. 32 galloons of water going into the room every 3 days. I'm feeding every watering at this point. It's usually around this time that growth goes berserk and heavy pruning and shaping begins. My goal is to have each plant with 4-6 main budding branches, as spaced out as even as possible. This is much easier said than done.... By 4 weeks of vegging, I'm dumping 48gal of water with nutes every 3 days, I'm removing uneeded growth in massive quantities. Despite this, the canapy is full enough that little light escapes the interior of the screen, big fan leaves are being tucked to allow main stems to get the most light. Plants are beginning to grow into the shelves above them and usually get another crushing to make them grow into the netting and up.
By week four, it's just getting nutty as far as the amount of growth. I'm looking for 80% of the medium bags to be obscured to signal they've grown enough and are ready to flower.
Light Flip to 12/12 was on 1/31/14, making 31 days of veg. When I flip, I water with no nutes for the next week to eliminate as much stretch as possible. Still watering with 48gal every 3 days. After 2 waterings, I begin adding flowering nutes and biobud in light feed quantities. I'm pretty much done chopping at this point to avoid stress and push the girls hard into flowering. Canopy management pretty much consists of just poking long growth back into the netting and moving fan leaves out of the way of tops.
That brings it up to date in a readers digest format. I'm 7 days into the flower cycle and my indica heavies are starting to set beautifully. The canopy looks great! Fan leaves are freaking huge. Here's some pics...
Here you can kinda see how the shelving is arranged and set up. Also shows the ballast and exhaust system. Notice how little light is coming thru the canopy. This was taken 4 days after taking 2-5gal buckets worth of hacking to the compost bin.
Here's the light tree and interior. Hard to get a good shot of whats up with 4000 watts blinding the camera. Scale is a little hard to discern too. To be upfront, even though I've done this setup on multiple runs, I still catch myself saying "holy shit!" some days. Here's some more interior shots.
So that's it for now. Other than a very small group of individuals, I haven't been able to share what basically represents 10 years of trail and error in my growing life. I hope you all enjoy! Comments, thoughts, and questions are appreciated.
Thanks!
BubbaNub
The setup:
15'x15'x8' room
4- 1k nanolux digital ballast/ Hortilux SuperHPS bulbs
Lightrail 4.0
18' of extruded aluminum for light tree
4- bare sockets
8' exhaust fan w 28" filter
16,000 btu ac/heatpump/dehumid
8- 36x72 aluminum shelving units/ 4 shelves each
32- 2.3cu/ft bags of fafard 3b
128 clones 4 per shelf
5 random fans
Nutes- General Organics full line
For this run, Most of the room is either white skunk or AK-47 with like 12 widow fuckers thrown in because they are soooo tasty! Cloning ocurred on 12/18, rooting was almost 100%, roots showing by 12/23 and moved to be hardened off for planting. Planting day was 12/27, followed by 4 days of gradual light increase amping the ballast up from 50%-100%. All four lights running at 100% on 1/1/14, so we'll consider this the beginning of veg. Before planting, my medium was enriched with some of my standard compost and seasoned chicken poo to give a good population of beasties. Bags were prewatered with a light mix of fulvic acid and bioroot two days before planting.
The ladies start getting fed immediately. Starting with a light lode of nutes and ramping it up each feeding until I'm somwhere between a light and heavy feeding based off of GO labels. For the first week or two, 16 gallons of water feeds the whole room every 4 days. At around 2 weeks, roots begin hitting the compost trough in the back of the medium bag and plants absolutely explode in new growth. It's usually at this time that I begin intensive canopy management. I'm a big fan of high stress training and tend to bend and push over a majority of the plants. At week 3, things are really cooking and getting jungley. I usually have to begin some minor trimming to keep stronger plants from overtaking some that may be struggling. I install my support netting at this time so I can manage the canopy easier later. I usually also begin moving the racks around to give ones that are on the ends to a chance to bask in the high lumen loads in the center. 32 galloons of water going into the room every 3 days. I'm feeding every watering at this point. It's usually around this time that growth goes berserk and heavy pruning and shaping begins. My goal is to have each plant with 4-6 main budding branches, as spaced out as even as possible. This is much easier said than done.... By 4 weeks of vegging, I'm dumping 48gal of water with nutes every 3 days, I'm removing uneeded growth in massive quantities. Despite this, the canapy is full enough that little light escapes the interior of the screen, big fan leaves are being tucked to allow main stems to get the most light. Plants are beginning to grow into the shelves above them and usually get another crushing to make them grow into the netting and up.
By week four, it's just getting nutty as far as the amount of growth. I'm looking for 80% of the medium bags to be obscured to signal they've grown enough and are ready to flower.
Light Flip to 12/12 was on 1/31/14, making 31 days of veg. When I flip, I water with no nutes for the next week to eliminate as much stretch as possible. Still watering with 48gal every 3 days. After 2 waterings, I begin adding flowering nutes and biobud in light feed quantities. I'm pretty much done chopping at this point to avoid stress and push the girls hard into flowering. Canopy management pretty much consists of just poking long growth back into the netting and moving fan leaves out of the way of tops.
That brings it up to date in a readers digest format. I'm 7 days into the flower cycle and my indica heavies are starting to set beautifully. The canopy looks great! Fan leaves are freaking huge. Here's some pics...
Here you can kinda see how the shelving is arranged and set up. Also shows the ballast and exhaust system. Notice how little light is coming thru the canopy. This was taken 4 days after taking 2-5gal buckets worth of hacking to the compost bin.
Here's the light tree and interior. Hard to get a good shot of whats up with 4000 watts blinding the camera. Scale is a little hard to discern too. To be upfront, even though I've done this setup on multiple runs, I still catch myself saying "holy shit!" some days. Here's some more interior shots.
So that's it for now. Other than a very small group of individuals, I haven't been able to share what basically represents 10 years of trail and error in my growing life. I hope you all enjoy! Comments, thoughts, and questions are appreciated.
Thanks!
BubbaNub
Iv seen some commercial tomato greenhouses grow right in the bags like that too. 