My problem is that while I believe my set-up is best for my personal situation, I'm sure from a financial/yield perspective it could be better. The other thing to acknowledge is that I am jumping through the hoops of Oregon MMJ laws which cause me to do things to slow down my veg plants to stay legal. Well, in honor of jump starting I'll just say what I do (this is set up for a two card OMMP grow).
I use subcool supersoil, diluted by 50%, in the bottom 1/3 of containers that are 10-18 gallons. I fill the remaining 2/3 with straight Roots Organic soil. The large container size has helped me to avoid any deficiencies. I believe the $15 for an extra bag of soil is money well spent. I water with straight water (no nutes), and once in a while add a little molasses. I run 1k HPS and 1k Warm Spectrum MH during flower with an occasional 600W HPS added when it's cold to help with temperatures. 6" can fan pulls through the lights out to a large can filter with a passive intake from outside. I average about 4 oz per plant. Have pulled up to 8 oz off a big sativa. I do usually grow a couple light yielders which pulls down the average...I regularly have 5+ ounce plants.
The reason I like this particular set up is simplicity. I'm sure I could improve yields with hydro, passive hydro, coco/nutes, etc. But simplicity and ease of use is more important to me than maximizing yield but requiring a lot more time. Mixing nutes, measuring PH, daily monitoring requires more time than I can allot so water only in soil makes daily maintenance a breeze which is what I need.
Questions received & Replies:
Do you do a perpetual grow? - Nope, I like the cleanliness of being able to bomb a room or treat everything at the same time. With perpetual grow I'm concerned that if I got say, a spider mite outbreak, I'd never be able to eliminate it because there would always be some plants within a month of harvest that I could not treat aggressively.
what are you doing for starts? when are you taking them? - Mostly I clone my strains at the time the prior generation is put into flower. Due to Oregon's medical laws I have to keep them under 12" tall/wide until the prior generation is harvested which is the trickiest part. I top them twice when really small. That creates a really bushy plant and slows their growth down (which is necessary to stay legal). After that I tie them down to keep em within the 12".
How long are you leaving in veg? - After harvesting prior crop (that I took the clones from 8 weeks earlier), I transplant the veg plants and move them into the "flower room" and veg them about 3 more weeks. They are always busting at the 12" seams by the time they are transplanted and grow quite fast in the new pots where they can strech their legs. I judge how long to veg based on general size of the plant and impatience. My space is very tightly planted so I can't let them get huge.
What size space are you using? - For this set-up 7*8*8.
