Growing Up

[Somatek]

Getting closer to finishing the latest and smallest grow room I’ve built in awhile.  I’ve still managed to fit 42sq ft of canopy space and 15-20sq ft of veg, plus storage and walkways into a 65sq ft room with vertical growing to maximise space.  I snapped this pic to send to a friend and thought I’d post it despite not being done yet.

The veg area has two 100w quantum boards but I’ll be picking up another for the lower section to make sure I get good growth.

The flower area is a colosseum style grow with two 3x3ft of vertical canopy space for the main production area, the other two are 3x4ft and will be to test new seeds when needed or blocked off with reflectors to direct the light forward.  A 600w HPS is currently lighting it, I’m thinking of switching it to two 315 cmH for more even distribution and then I’ll have another LED panel over one side for added light during peak flowering.

Currently the plants are just thrown in there as I’ve been designing the room as I built it, which was around when they were flipped into flower because life got in the way after moving.  The plan going forward is to train the plants in an espalier so each planter will cover 3ft by 1.5ft vertically but essentially otherwise to make the 3x3ft canopy.  I’m using sub irrigated planters with around 14 gallon of soil for 3 plants using a fortified soil based on peat, coco, compost, lots of rock dusts, EWC, bat guano, biochar, rice hulls for aeration and various compost teas used over veg and bloom.  I have supplemental nutes to use when needed, like dealing with the N deficiency I’m seeing in some planters which I assume is because the biochar distribution is really off with some having far too much (long story for another time when I’m not falling asleep).

[Unholyfire]

Looking great. Cool setup.

[Somatek]

Cheers, there’s nothing quite as fun as being a mad scientist  (that’s more polite then the probably more accurate word, lunatic) and I hope my antics help people think outside the box or if nothing else provide some entertainment as I don’t mind playing the fool.  For science of course…

[Brad104]

That’s a fantastic setup that you have there buddy.You deserve nothing but praise for the grow space you have there! Great set up bro 🙂

[Somatek]

Lol, not sure what glitch happened but my post about “need is the mother of all invention” was in reply to your comment, not sure why it posted separately

[Atom]

Looking good. I live in a legal state and have often ponderd starting a business setting up rooms/building them and greenhouses. I’m sure they will start cracking down on people who are growing visible from the road as there everywhere on my area. It’s supposed to be locked and enclosed, not visible to public. Mabie there will be a demand for something like this

There’s alot of rumors floating that if it gets federally legalized they may not allow outdoor grows at all, or much worse any home grow. These are rumors though so not necessarily something to be taken seriously.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Atom.

[Somatek]

Legalization opens up so many possibilities if you think of where the market will be in 5 or 10 years, especially as the laws change around the world.

I was talking to a friend about setting up a similar business when the Cannabis Act was passed in Canada, specifically the idea of having a van with all the gear needed to build/set up any kind of system a home grower would want to keep the over head down, make it convenient for the customer and unique by offering a completely customised/personalized service to meet their specific needs and budget; whether it’s as cheap as setting up a tent or as complex as designing an integrated grow that recirculates the vented heat into the rest of the house so it isn’t wasted during the summer.  Of course offering various level of personal lessons to help people learn how to optimize their yields while also creating an ongoing revenue stream by selling them fertilizers/pesticides/clones/etc./

[Atom]

Love it man. Great minds think alike. I’ve gone as far as to consider a business doing IPM.

[Somatek]

That could be really useful if there’s a big enough customer base to support it.  Which is the big question, with legalization inevitably we see a crash in the price which makes you wonder how long people will keep growing at home.  Which I could see going either way, tomatoes and hot peppers are cheap but both have devoted followings of hobby growers who have no problem spending money on their passion.  I hope that’s our future and will actively work towards it, glad to meet a fellow like minded soul.

[Keith]

Once I can I plan on doing this for a living, and I’ll have a set up like yours.  I’ll be digging into this thread.

[Somatek]

If you have any specific questions please don’t hesitate to ask, part of the reason I shared this grow despite the sad, abused plants (that’ll be another post breaking down all the problems and how I know what’s going on where as an illustration of how to diagnosis issues and also the value of consistent gardening instead of abusing your beloved girls).

Hopefully the next planter I throw in will be better grown/trained so I can start learning how to grow in a vertical scrog essential, inspired by espallier pruning style where trees and grown flat for ease of harvesting or aesthetic purposes.  Since it’s purely theoretical at this point I’m sure there will be a learning curve, I hope you find my various mistakes and failures useful lol.  The goal is to replicate walls of bud growing out of a consistent canopy like a vertical SoG produces but getting there is half the fun.

[Somatek]

Need is the mother of invention as they say and being on a limited budget, in a very limited space in a rental unit which limits my options; my needs are very specific so my inventiveness has to be all the more creative.  Some other things I didn’t mention in the initial post:

-most of the gear in the room is 10-20 years old (including a lot of the pots), even a good portion of the panda plastic has been reused from previous grows (some up to 3 times over the last 5 years) partly to reduce the cos

Need is the mother of invention as they say and being on a limited budget, in a very limited space in a rental unit which limits my options; my needs are very specific so my inventiveness has to be all the more creative.  Some other things I didn’t mention in the initial post:

-most of the gear in the room is 10-20 years old (including a lot of the pots), even a good portion of the panda plastic has been reused from previous grows (some up to 3 times over the last 5 years) partly to reduce the cos

but mostly to reduce the environmental impact of single use plastics in growing.  People always forget that “reuse” comes before “recycling” in the three R’s any 80’s kid had drilled into them.

-the Veg area is built around a window for additional lighting instead of blacking it out.  Now that it’s legal there’s no need to hide it, especially when the price has become so devalued.

-I don’t keep “moms” per say, I take grow a half dozen varieties in rotation and take clone from the lower growth that needs to be pruned before flowering.  My usual cycle is growing 3-4 crops in rotation on a 3 week cycle usually since I grow a lot of 9-12 week varieties; taking clones every 3 weeks (usually only take 8-12 days to root and then start vegging), harvesting a crop and moving clones to veg area, veg to the empty spot in the flower room.

-For IPM I spray the veg area and early flowering crop (first 2 weeks until flowers are visible) with a home made neem oil/potassium bicarbonate spray (KCHO3 is the short for of potassium bicarbonate which I often use for brevity) up until winter is well underway and there are no bugs outside to invade the grow.  I also use mosquito dunks as a BTi source in my reservoir to prevent gnats or thrips from living in the soil.

-I reuse the soil, partly to reduce cost, partly to reduce the eco impact; plus I was comparing reusing a fortified soil (aka a living soil or no-till system but I don’t use those terms as I find them inaccurate and marketing heavy) vs a traditional hydro-organic low tech grow at my previous place where I had a 7 x 13ft flowering room and 6x6ft vertical veg room.

-I still have to finish the S.I.P.’s (I need 3 which I’ll compare to the earthbox I’ve been using for the last couple years and ideally find a much cheaper DiY version which works just as well).  Currently there’s the one earthbox and two planters I’m simply bottom watering when I remember.

-the 3x4ft area’s for testing seeds/making my own currently has 6 Guatamalan x Honduras girls which I created a year ago. I’ll start a thread about them in the cultivation section though.  Next up will be Stellar Collision F2’s I was gifted from Dman (one of the breeders) to make an F3 generation, make a back cross with the mom (pheno #5) kept from the F1’s I grew and fell in love with, reverse a clone of #5 and use the pollen to make a reverse back cross (i.e. use the female pollen to hit the girls in the F2 generation) as well as make an S1 generation.  Suffice to say I’ll have lots of seeds to share after for anyone interested in testing them and who promises to post pics, good or bad, of the results.

[Nate]

This is a really cool setup man, I hope I can get to this level of complexity some day.

[Somatek]

If you’re ever designing a room/grow feel free to start a thread and tag me, always happy to offer my opinion.  Some would say too willing to offer my opinion and ramble on for ages about it lol.

[Nate]

I’ll for sure keep that in mind man, I definitely appreciate it.

[Somatek]

We’ll try posting the pics from this morning again…

A couple shots of the flowering side, not a great angle though as the overhead shot makes it all look flat.

The buds are filling out surprisingly well considering all the problems/abuse they’ve suffered over the last 6-8 months.  The brix was under 10 (on the low end) when I started flowering and I’ve been too busy/distracted with life to give them the care they need but now that the grow room set up is almost done I can dial in the environment and then start focusing on the optimal watering/feeding schedule.  I always use to tell customers “focus on the macro and work down to the micro” as it only makes sense.  Once the enviro is stable that’ll mean the evapotranspiration rate will be consistent so you can dial in watering/nutes without fluctuations.  Once that’s on point you can start testing additives and know you’re seeing the effect of them instead of other variables.  Especially for beginners investing in the right gear to control the climate usually has a much higher return on investment.

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[Unholyfire]

Yes filling out nicely.

[Somatek]

This crop is kind of making the best out of the situation, which is a good lesson in and of itself.  The idea for the future is to have each plant vegged to about a foot or so with 4 side branches trained flat so they grow more 2D then 3D.  Three plants like that spaced in a 3ft planter should give me a solid wall of bud that’s 1.5-2ft tall depending on the stretch on the variety.  I’ll have the planter sitting on top angled slightly inwards to make a wall of bud around the cool tube.  Then I’ll add supplemental lighting during the peak growth before dropping off again before harvest by rotating the planters around the room.

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