Hey, thanks Krat for the detailed and very helpful response. I've found most people doing grow journals are quite nice and helpful, but to an extent. I'm glad you care enough to provide detail above the basics when you post.
I do have a couple of other but related questions for my friend's grow.
- How long do you allow the branch or stem to be before you begin bending it over (maybe its just when it hits the screen)?
- Now gathering the grow room pieces until assembly next week I hope, pots outside now, but might finish veg in the tent for stealth reasons. The bloom area is a 3X3' Vivosun tent used only to flower. There are 3 Jack H. plants in 7 gal smart pots, and 1 AK49 in a 5 gal smart pot, using super soil mix. I'm concerned about the amount of light she planned after seeing your suggestions above. It's a single 315watt Ceramic Metal Halide, using a Phillips CMH bulb.
- I'm told CMH's offer more usable light per watt, but is this enough usable light for this setup?
- If shes need to add light, what is best type of light to supplement this one CMH fixture (LEDs, CFLs), and how many watts more for that type of light?
As a small aside, I thought your method of tying down branches on your 2 plants was elegant, by which I mean the solution was simple and highly effective. It looks like you looped the string around the branch and put the long (I'm guessing) ends underneath the pot. The ends in this way are easy to lengthen or shorten down the road. Simple, but smart.
My sincerest apologies my friend, I never got an alert about this response! In fact, I only just now noticed it when I went to make another post, I apologize for that! I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability
- You're dead on about bending once things hit the screen. You want to bend branches as soon as possible for to make sure you maintain an even flat canopy. This is because cannabis focuses the bulk of it's growth on it's tops, but if the top is pulled under a screen or tied down or even cut off then what happens is the plant does everything it can to ensure there is a top, resulting in what normally would have been side branches becoming "tops" now as well. This will eventually form a nice and even canopy that you'll need to maintain until around week 2 of flower (strain dependent). When you stop bending and tucking will depend on either when the flowering stretch ends, or whenever the screen is filled to your liking/100% full. You'll also need to make sure you consider your light's footprint when choosing how tall you want the screen to be, but I'll get into that with your next question
As you're making your bends, it's incredibly helpful to take a look at all of the nodes that you're exposing in the process of bending a top as that can help you determine which was is best to bend the branch. A top will have anywhere between 1-3 surrounding holes in the grid, and if you pay close enough attention to the nodes as well as where you bend the top you can fill numerous holes in your grid with one bend. Eventually, what will happen is all of your other branches toward the middle of the plant will start catching up to the screen because you've bent the tops down. What I'm noticing is that filling the screen is exponential, it starts with one bend every day or two, then a couple of bends every other day, then eventually you're tucking every single day until it's filled.
That string method is super helpful for maintaining your canopy though. You're almost dead on with the idea, it's just that there's actually a string tied around the pots, then the other strings are tied to that string around the pot. Little more stable that way as opposed to having them under the pots. It's time consuming and can be a pain in the ass, but I've found it's one of the best ways. I personally like anything that forces me to get up close with the plants in detail, this way nothing ever catches me by surprise.
- Believe it or not, depending on the size of your grow tent and how tall you allow your screen to go, that light is actually going to give you some pretty fucking amazing results if everything is dialed in. I have a 4x4 tent I used for veg that was 8 feet tall and for the sake of your set up I'm really hoping that your friend's tent is also 8 feet tall because that would be awesome if you could use that light for this set up! In fact, if you can get a 4x4 tent instead that would be better because I believe a 315cmh can light a 3.5x3.5 area, if not 4x4. The only thing about the cmh is that they absolutely have to be 3-4 ft above what the eventual canopy will be. If it were my grow, to maximize yields I feel it would be best to hang the cmh as close to the ceiling as you possibly could. If your tent is 8ft tall, that means that you don't want your canopy to get over 4ft tall in order to maintain the 3-4 ft distance. I know that Jack and AK49 are sativa dominant hybrids and are prone to stretch, but I can't say how much without any personal experience. You could probably get away with filling the screen 100% and even vegging a bit longer until the screen is 1ft tall (this is what I wanted to do in fact). Then, even if it triples in flower, you'll still only be at 3 ft tall canopy and won't burn the girls. Once you have an idea of how much these strains stretch, you'll be able to optimize your veg time to choose the perfect height, but until then it's best to play it safe.
All in all, it sounds like your friend is on her way to a good harvest if things are kept perfect. I much much prefer Coots recipe now, although I've had amazing success with Sub's soil as well.
But if I may, I do have some suggestions that would really take her set up to the next level, if she plans for the next grow during this one she can have some pretty killer results with that chm and a 4x4x8 tent. Have her look into Coots recipe, it's so much better and my girls can attest to that. This may sound a little bold, but hear me out, I'll be doing this as soon as my no-tills all turn to humus. If she gets a 100 gallon smart pot, the diameter of it is 40 inches where as the tent is 48 inches. If she got a 100 gallon smart pot, filled it with Coots' soil (one of my earlier posts if you'd like the recipe
) and planted 4 plants in that then her results would just be ridiculous. If she starts a worm farm now, depending on how many bins she gets going, she can harvest a decent amount of castings by the time you need to make Coot's soil. His soil doesn't need to cook either, just best to let it sit for 7-10 days and keep it moist so the microbes can establish. With no-till, the bigger the pot, the larger the microbe population. If she does this, she'll have a 100 gallon sized population of microbes as opposed to 26 gallons in separate pots. Her 4 plants would experience vigorous and optimal growth and fill a screen quite effortlessly. Then come harvest, you simply cut the plant as close to the soil as you can and leave the stump there. Then you plant your next clone straight into it, top dress with more amendments and EWC, then rinse and repeat!
I like Sub, he's a good guy and definitely very good at what he does. However, he'll be the first to admit that he doesn't know why his soil works, just that it does and he's happy with that. I'm not trying to bash the guy and have in fact had stellar results with his recipe, was very happy with my yields and the flavor was unlike anything I've ever had before. But Coot's recipe is so much more simple, yet offers so much more. All those guanos and blood/bone meals are pretty hot, even enough alfalfa meal can be hot. I've been getting these results with nothing more than crab/neem/kelp meals. In veg I would top dress with neem, and I just top dressed with more crab meal tonight. They'll also be getting more EWC once I harvest my bins again. Again, not trying to dog on Sub, it's just that his soil has way more than it needs to and just isn't as optimized as Coots' is. It's significantly cheaper too. You're buying less amendments so the start up cost is cheaper, and instead of remixing and re-potting you're pretty much just top dressing. I'm nothing special and I did nothing special, all water with the exception of the occasional feedings of aloe, coco water, liquid seaweed, Ful-Power and TM7. In fact, this soil is so good I'm finally confident enough to try growing vegetables again!
Sorry to be so long winded though, I hope I was able to help you and your friend out in some way and hope things go well. From what you're saying though, sounds like she's already well on her way!
