Galt

Got the hardware together and want to get some seed ordered while I get the build done. The grow is going to be a kind of midi-micro SOG for perpetual harvest. Basically gonna try to grow budsickles in very close proximity to each other.

To get things rolling I need to raise enough mother stock to allow me to cut 18-20 clones a week.

Since this is my first attempt in many, many, oh shit...too many years, I wanna make sure that I don't waste too much time pissin' in the wind.

So I'm lookin' at Barney's Farm Pineapple Chunk, LSD, G-13 Haze, Red Dragon and or Vanilla Kush. Any suggestions comments or alternatives would be greatly appreciated 'cuz I'm throwin' darts in a dark closet on this. Also thought about maybe some White Rhino, NYC Diesel or a Widow strain but I don't want stuff that's gonna take me much past 9 weeks. Either way I figure I can accommodate about 3 each of 6 varieties. So I'll need to cut 6 clones off of each mother every 6 weeks...? Sound doable?

__________________
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
_________________

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

farmergiles

An important quality to look out for is ease of cloning.
If you can be very consistent from the start then you can keep a generation of plants in good order (similar stage in growth) easily and not waste time.

Good selection plays a big part, even stable hybrids like sk#1 will show variation in pheno in some aspects. If you are clear about what you need and choose your mothers carefully this will make a big difference.
Don't be too precious about selection- if something has a glaring fault reject it.

It will be more complicated running 6 strains together than just one but it certainly won't be impossible.

How many clones you can take from a mother is pretty much dependant on the size of the mother but you can take a lot- especially if she is given time to recover (like 1 - 2 weeks) between times.

I don't know if you've thought about not having permanent mothers at all- if you just clone each plant once before it goes into flower then your production continues unabated.
Always best to take a spare cutting or two though, just in case.

Don't know much about Barney's Farm, they seem to keep winning competitions.

__________________
Cultivate a stoic calmness

Galt

The initial idea of running six varieties was partially to broaden the test trials to see which would best adapt to my particular system's idiosyncrasies. Another reason was to see how well/quickly each clone re-vegged after harvest (wanted to try harvesting each clone about three times), and also wanted to see the most obvious - which one I liked the best. I'm hoping that the variety would also preclude me from the fatal flaw in commercial farming of mono culturing. If I find that I'm particularly adept at killng one strain by over watering I still have plenty of potential victims that I can fuck up the lighting or temperature with, and still hopefully see a harvest.

I figure that none of the mothers will truly be permanent. Some will likely be replaced by better selections from their off-spring, some just because another strain shows more promise, and some just because I'm bored and want to try something different. i have heard of folks that keep plants alive for years, although it's not clear which strains if any will continue to produce fecund clones over sustained periods of time. But I guess that that's also going to be part of the interesting learning curve with this endeavor.

The number of clones that I targeted was already accounting for significant extras to select from since I intend to try re-vegging already harvested plants several times if possible. After that, I think I'm just going to play Johnny reefer seed and start dropping my unselected and prior harvest clones all over the county.

While it's not my main objective, it did strike me that one of the best ways to defeat this soft headed prohibition bullshit is to just overfuckingwhelm the pricks. Imagine every acre of public lands, every highway median and cloverleaf, every hedgerow and preserve, every sanctuary and field being planted with cannabis. If everybody were to plant just a couple each week, with some male companionship of course, we could either swamp them or just drive them totally insane with the futility of their loosing battle. That and the idea of just scattering a few plants everywhere would make it impossible for them to even begin to destroy all of it. I still think that we can grow a fuck load more, faster than the pricks could kill it. Eventually even the non-cannabis using public would just get tired of the stupidity of it all and demanded that they call it quits. This would be specially true if their local and State gubmint can't afford to fix shit or get shit done 'cuz they're still spending truckloads of money fighting drugs while raising taxes, welshing on pensions and going broke. Just imagine people dealing with that reality every day and then seeing weed growing in every empty lot and median strip that they drive by each day. Sooner or later they're just going to say "Hey fuckheads!, Cut the shit! This is stupid!".(Said like Lewis Black in a rant).

Could you imagine mixing some BT super grow cannabis strain into the seed bins of a bunch of Midwest grass farmers that can drive their tractors without turning the wheel for hours. Overnight there'd be millions of acres of weed growing all over the country. We need one of those Monsanto Genetically Engineered, Round-Up resistant varieties that their no-till herbicides won't kill...wouldn't that fuck up their day!? Hell let's get it into the bagging room of the Scott's turf seed plant for that matter...

Don't really now Barney's Farm from Barney the Dinosaur. I just found them on a recommended site and thought that some of their shit looked righteous, but that's part of why I'm soliciting some likely prospect suggestions from folks here.

Even though it's a micro grow, I'm thinkin' I can handle some pretty significant stretch with my side lighting, a little LST and the mixed plant sizes in the perpetual harvest rotation. Ultimately I think that having too big a spread between different variety's harvest readiness times is what will screw me up the most. Keeping that in mind, and understanding that some strains might be able to be pulled for a bit of dark room before cutting or allowing another to linger under the lights a little longer in the others' stead, I pretty much want to stay close to a 9 week cycle.

I have a lot more room to work with for re-vegging, clone rooting, mothers, etc, I was just attracted to the idea of being able to manage a method that maintained a smallish component size (each can be separated from the other pretty readily), and low temperature signature (I'll be using floros w/ remotely chilled ballasts and earth tube fresh air venting). With some remote off grid power generation my radar signature is intended to be a step beyond invisible. Unfortunately I'm in the midst of a socialist regime that has dedicated inordinate levels of technology to persecuting the horrible reefer threat. I suppose that since they've already caught all of the real criminals and stopped all of the other heinous crime this is all that's left.

__________________
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
_________________

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

farmergiles

So you're going to have a very short veg time or no veg time?

You probably want a bit of sativa in the mix- a 100% indica might not grow much more after being put under a flowering light schedule. But not too much stretch- otherwise you'll run out of room

But often even within one packet of seeds you will get a lot of variation.

Ice (Nirvana) is cheap as chips and will produce lots of nice bud in 1 cola if so trained.

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Cultivate a stoic calmness

Galt

Yeah, the idea is to put them under 12/12 as soon as the clones are well rooted, maybe 2-3". The re-veg / second harvest is another thing that I'll have to play with to see who comes back when and how far along they need to be before forcing again.

Here's my inspiration:

http://www.yahooka.com/forum/attachm...1&d=1280322267

Those are 20 oz. pop bottles cut down to about 16 oz. (just under a half liter). Not mine, but that's what I'm shootin' for. Hundreds of budsickles, like stalagmites growing up out'a my cabinet floor.

Gotta thank Fenderbender again for puttin' me onto it in the first place.

http://www.yahooka.com/forum/nursery...check-out.html

Crazy part is the dude's pullin' this off with nothin' but CFL's.

But what the hell does Canadian Football have to do with growin' weed?

Attached Images

 

__________________
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
_________________

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

farmergiles

Few things I picked up from that ICmag article- this bloke has done his homework.


I think he's been developing a special strain for this purpose for over a decade and has included some fine old school genetics. He says it has a fair bit of stretch.


He sounds like he's spent a while sourcing and perfecting his soil and nutes.


So back to the varieties- the g13 haze you mentioned might show a good range of stretchiness to choose from, from Barney's blurb they say it's not ridiculous.

In a lot of ways the finishing time is irrelevant, provided the genetics are good a long finishing variety will tend to produce more over a longer period- it all tends to even out if you look at total watts in/total bud out. You just have to plan accordingly depending on what you've got.

Don't automatically discount HID's; with a remote ballast they don't fare that badly in comparison to flouro's in terms of useful light/heat emitted. I've never seen a proper study tbh.
I think it's just that most people never have 1000w of flouro's in one cab running at once so people don't realise how much heat they do put out.

__________________
Cultivate a stoic calmness

Galt

Between the amazing variety of seeds available and the specific "Best Traits" that would do best for me I guess I'm probably going to end up going through a similar process. Not that that's a bad thing. This is as interesting as it is rewarding and the whole genetics angle is quite intriguing.

Any ideas as to which traits are typically dominant / recessive. Might be a great thesis topic for some aspiring botanist, create a genetics calculator that you could plug in phenotypes / alleles and it would spit out the likely pairings' kids or visa versa.

As to the heat & light issues, I couldn't agree with you more. I have been using H.O. T-5's in other uses for a while now and the heat output from the ballasts can be significant, especially when you start ganging (8) 4' tubes into a 2'x4' fixture, but that's why the remote ballast location is critical for me. The fixtures themselves will actually be outside of the grow area and in a ventilated plenum of their own, separate from the grow area ventilation. I also want to play with super cooling the ballasts (they will be in a completely separate area from the fixtures with Peltier coolers adhered to them). As for the HID's, I don't have a point of reference because I've not worked with them personally.

I've no idea what the point of diminishing return is with regard to cooling the ballasts and reflectors but that's another interesting part of the investigations and ultimately the ideas should be equally effective on any lighting source. The Floro's ballasts are just a lot easier to play with since they aren't already covered with heat sinks. The intent is to virtually eliminate the light's heat energy as a control concern. By imparting root zone heat, temperature controlled nutrient drench, consistent humidity and optimum day/night temperatures i hope to create a controlled environment where variables can be more accurately accessed.

My circumstances are rather unusual in that my day job involves working with a lot of T-5's anyway, so that seemed a likely place to begin. The flowering cabinets' finished interior dimensions are to be 140 cm (55.1")long, 70 cm (27.6")wide and 90 cm (35.4") tall. I suck with Sketch-Up or I'd just post a drawing but the light fixtures will be recessed into the walls (a 2'x2' at each end and a 2'x4' along each side with another 2'x4' in the lid that will be height adjustable - although that part is just for the prototype). They will all have glass lenses to allow me to seal the cabinets for CO2 and ventilation control. Total wattage will be (2x192)+(3x432)=1680 watts w/ a claimed 152,000 lumens in an area just less than a cubic meter.

While this doesn't match the HPS/MH outputs what it does do is generate less heat per watt (higher efficiency) and it directs light from a much more uniform source (especially with the side lights) than I could likely ever get out of the alternatives. When reflector efficiencies, energy consumption, radiant heat issues, effective service life and distance from the actual light source to the plant is considered I think the H.O. T-5's should work well for me. Plus if I loose a tube it's not a catastrophic eclipse and I can walk into most big box stores and buy replacement tubes. The local grow shop here is notorious for causing manic fits of paranoia (it's just a few blocks from the coppers). Hopefully the super reach of the higher wattage HPS/MH's won't be missed since I'm only rooting clones and flowering bonsais, (other than keeping up the mums) but we'll see. The cabinet design should allow me to easily switch out the top light and possibly try a pair of 400's if I get impatient.

Along with attempting to monitor and select through all of the genetics I'm also going to be fiddling about with just what the optimum CO2, nutrient and light quantities are. As available light, CO2 and nutes are increased at what point do the different strains just finally say "Whoa...that's enough" and cease to show relative gains. The problem / challenge I suppose is partly impatience and partly that there are just too many variables being manipulated at the same time to make this completely consistent or repeatable but either way it should be fun. I equate it to home brewing beer...even the screw ups are still fun.

__________________
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
_________________

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

farmergiles

I've got to question the higher efficiency of flouro's.

Looking at this chart
if you had a 1000w sodium and a 600w sodium for a total of 1600w you would get about 230,000 lumens.
The 1680w and 1600w respectively from both flouros and HIDs will almost all be turned to heat in the end apart from some which will be photosynthesised.

I'd love to see the results of an in depth comparison.

You are right about the uniformity of light from many small sources though.

__________________
Cultivate a stoic calmness

Galt

I suppose I should have clarified, my statement regarding efficiency is purely anecdotal. The same relative wattage of one vs. the other is based on the heat that I witnessed being pumped by a 1000w. lamp and ballast MH at a grow shop vs. what I get off of a pair of ballasts and the housing of two 400ish H.O. T-5's I guess the way to get a direct comparison would be to measure the temps. of each when isolated in a high "R" vacuum chamber while their respective electrical consumption is measured. I don't have that capacity, but I can measure the watts consumed by each if and when I get the chance to try both approaches. It would be interesting to see.

Do you think that the cumulative radiant heat generated by the bulbs would be relatively equal, assuming the same approximate rated wattage. If so it still seemed to me that the resistance/heat in the MH ballast was still higher, but it might just be me.

__________________
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
_________________

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

farmergiles

Pretty much. The only other way the energy can end up apart from heat is to be photosynthesised.

Even then some entropous type will end up burning it .

__________________
Cultivate a stoic calmness

fenderbender

fucking awesome....


been wanting to do this for so long. Glad someones giving it an attempt.


GOODLUCK MY FRIEND!


NOW REPEAT AFTER ME

this world is made of
LOVE AND PEACE !!!

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Imagine there's no heaven,It's easy if you try

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