Oh My God, He Turned It INSIDE OUT!!!

Jalisco Kid said:

Two walls would be a waste, Also the reflective material would be a waste in time and money but mainly because it would interfere with ventilation. I would stare at some of HR's designs for more inspiration. JK
I think if you unkink your design and roll it out flat you would be better off with your light and ventilation. Encirculating(not sure thats a word) a plant around a bulb is creating a bunch of micro climates in your room. Going straight would be more efficient.

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It's these microclimates I'm after, to better provide the plants with what they need. Air circulation will be enhanced, not limited.

Going straight is NOT more efficient, as it interferes with the light to target distance, which is what encircling the bulb with trellis is designed to do in the first place.

Are you asking me to stare at Heath Robinson's designs for inspiration? What do you think I'm missing?

I think he uses better circulation in your circles. Trying to get a/c ,air quality and humidty equally thru those plants is much harder then with straight walls of bud. You could use a regen and the pipe they use in french drains to put that in the plants,and use it to frame with. JK

How is air enhanced by being in a circle? And what you gain in a 360* growth around the bulb in light will be hindered more by a not more perfect climate with say a 250-270* grow. Double stacking a flat wall will help the lower growth rather then being heated up down there in a circular grow. If you use air to remove the heat then you run the chance of stressing them that way.
Just my thoughts, you and cap ought to show whats possible by your circular designs. More surface area or better climate,which is more important? JK

Jalisco Kid said:

I think he uses better circulation in your circles. Trying to get a/c ,air quality and humidty equally thru those plants is much harder then with straight walls of bud. You could use a regen and the pipe they use in french drains to put that in the plants,and use it to frame with. JK

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'Better circulation in your circles' not sure what you mean here.

The cylinders will do an excellent job of air circulation, for the same reason a chimney works; it will draft heat out the top and draw cool up from beneath to replace it.

I will use fans; one underneath to blow air up and on the walls of the trellis, and the other will be the same fan that pushes air through the Icebox. It will draw its air from directly above the bulbs at the top of the cylinder. Ventilation will not be unassisted.

Jalisco Kid said:

I think he uses better circulation in your circles. Trying to get a/c ,air quality and humidty equally thru those plants is much harder then with straight walls of bud. You could use a regen and the pipe they use in french drains to put that in the plants,and use it to frame with. JK

How is air enhanced by being in a circle? And what you gain in a 360* growth around the bulb in light will be hindered more by a not more perfect climate with say a 250-270* grow. Double stacking a flat wall will help the lower growth rather then being heated up down there in a circular grow. If you use air to remove the heat then you run the chance of stressing them that way.
Just my thoughts, you and cap ought to show whats possible by your circular designs. More surface area or better climate,which is more important? JK

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JK I have the inverted version of a circular design. Each plant gets three sides of double stacked goodness. Finished my own light fixtures today. yay. Otherwise I do a wall o dank, but I do let the branches on either side of the bulb grow out towards the bulb

Currently I have no issues with air circulation. I have some overcrowding from incredibly vigorous growth, but that's a luxury problem.

I'm not planning to allow the plants to get terribly thick along the axis of lighting, only the buds will stick through the trellis towards the bulb. By then I hope to have a light mover in place, which will improve things further by eliminating the hot spot and better distributing the light throughout the trellis.

In fact, the only aspect of the grow that even remotely approaches the label of 'problem' is some minor light bleaching on the leaves directly across from the bulb. If the light were were moving like my design calls for, this wouldn't happen.

very very impressive its nice to see you take as much pride in your setup up as you do with your plants great job bro

green bastard said:

very very impressive its nice to see you take as much pride in your setup up as you do with your plants great job bro

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Thanks- everyone has their thing. Mine is the gear...

Today's update; girls coming along nicely through stretch, I'm not doing quite as much weaving with the branches anymore. Boy, are there a lot of budding sites!

Here's the biggest of a group repurposed for this experiment at the last minute;
First pic, edge on:


Second pic is taken from just inside the cage at the bottom. It looks like a fisheye effect shot- but in this case, the edges of the picture really are curving towards the viewer!

So I read the first few pages and I'm sure you've thought of this but the inefficiency of this design is in over-crowding. With no ability to back off the light there will be a moment when it is optimum to flip to 12/12. My worry is that you need rather sparse spacing on the cylinder during veg in order to not get a bunch of outcompeted plant (hence popcorn). I would at least try starting your plants 1/3 the way up the cylinder so that it grows up and down.

While we are all thinking outside of the box have you thought at all about using induction tubes without a ballast (inca-grow style)? Seems like you could use a lot less wattage, not have to worry about heat or hot spots etc. Anyway - sorry if this has already been discussed to death.

Wyckoff said:

So I read the first few pages and I'm sure you've thought of this but the inefficiency of this design is in over-crowding. With no ability to back off the light there will be a moment when it is optimum to flip to 12/12. My worry is that you need rather sparse spacing on the cylinder during veg in order to not get a bunch of outcompeted plant (hence popcorn). I would at least try starting your plants 1/3 the way up the cylinder so that it grows up and down.

While we are all thinking outside of the box have you thought at all about using induction tubes without a ballast (inca-grow style)? Seems like you could use a lot less wattage, not have to worry about heat or hot spots etc. Anyway - sorry if this has already been discussed to death.

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Growing a sparse plant through veg to avoid overcrowding is an assignment I can handle, lol. Yes, I'm finding this out as well as the need for moving the bulb to avoid light burn.

I just posted today's progress and it shows evidence of your concern for avoiding overcrowding. It's a problem I'm sure I can manage effectively going forward, and the plants currently in veg already reflect lessons learned.

You may be operating under a false assumption regarding how I do things 'round here; I do not veg my plants in my bloom room, not even for one minute if I can help it. Instead, I move bloom ready plants from my veg tent into place on the first day of their bloom cycle. At this point they won't be unmanageably big but will be shaped as you suggested above; tall and lanky, to fill out in bloom on the trellis.

Meanwhile, you've emboldened me to thin this batch more aggressively so they don't choke themselves out like they're threatening to do!

As for light sources, I'm sticking with what I know- and that's HPS. I have a few led in veg here and there but if it isn't a 24" t5 tube over clones or rooters, by and large it's hid. Currently I have magnetic ballasts running bulbs in sealed hoods for most of my setup, but I've never been happy with their performance. The vertical cylinder/bare bulb approach seems to marry many efficiencies together to create an environment that uses less power to achieve better results.

I start my plants elsewhere, so they don't need to begin 1/3 of the way up the cylinder- they've been shaped for weeks to fit onto the trellis at the bottom in the middle. This way they grow up and fan out in all directions just another foot or so, fill in and then set buds.

As Mr. Berra famously pointed out, in practice, theory and practice are different. I'm looking forward to seeing how different, lol

Wyckoff said:

So I read the first few pages and I'm sure you've thought of this but the inefficiency of this design is in over-crowding. With no ability to back off the light there will be a moment when it is optimum to flip to 12/12. My worry is that you need rather sparse spacing on the cylinder during veg in order to not get a bunch of outcompeted plant (hence popcorn). I would at least try starting your plants 1/3 the way up the cylinder so that it grows up and down.

While we are all thinking outside of the box have you thought at all about using induction tubes without a ballast (inca-grow style)? Seems like you could use a lot less wattage, not have to worry about heat or hot spots etc. Anyway - sorry if this has already been discussed to death.

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Ikea would love you if they shipped pot plants. So flat! Ha. Awesome job buddy, will be interested to see how it nugs out for you. Expecting colas or a shit ton of golf balls?

tweedy said:

Ikea would love you if they shipped pot plants. So flat! Ha. Awesome job buddy, will be interested to see how it nugs out for you. Expecting colas or a shit ton of golf balls?

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Were you replying to me or @Wyckoff ?

The plan
is the plane
I've gone insane
in the brain
to take the pain
to fully explain.

There is no yield to excess depth indoors, we've all seen it. My best plants in the past were well spread out specimens, branches opened wide and level to soak up every lumen they could. They were also relatively thin in terms of leaf area from top to bottom they were never more than 15" thick.

Once, I did an experiment with twelve plants, all the same variety, all grown in the very same rdwc, with the same trellis, same room, same environment, two each of the same thousand watt bulbs in magnum xxxl ocho hoods. One side I kept pretty well leveled out and the other side I let a bunch of big top colas bust out. The level side did four spuds, the spectacular side did only 2.5. This tells me that superstar colas are not the way to big weight numbers.

In the past, I've gone for a regulated number of buds across the top of the trained plant- this for overhead lighting, of course. It's already clear that the girls want to overcrowd themselves, so I'm going to thin this bunch, and then I plan to grow lankier plants in veg.

Thinking a little more about this I think the only noticeable efficiency that vertical scrogs have over horizontal is that there is less trimming going on with vertical. There is some loss of efficiency with hoods and glass (if used) but I think all the lollipopping does most of the difference. Any plant growth that later gets blocked from light access is a waste. Also - a little (under 2 feet) light moving on a horizontal scrog would improve efficiency similar to your light mover idea. Basically I'm suggesting the less thinning and the more LST or whatever the better. Just a theory but it will be interesting to see how well you can space things out as you go.



If you hadn't seen it.

Wyckoff said:

Thinking a little more about this I think the only noticeable efficiency that vertical scrogs have over horizontal is that there is less trimming going on with vertical. There is some loss of efficiency with hoods and glass (if used) but I think all the lollipopping does most of the difference. Any plant growth that later gets blocked from light access is a waste. Also - a little (under 2 feet) light moving on a horizontal scrog would improve efficiency similar to your light mover idea. Basically I'm suggesting the less thinning and the more LST or whatever the better. Just a theory but it will be interesting to see how well you can space things out as you go.



If you hadn't seen it.

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Didn't you see my posts there? Love his setup-

I can go on and on about the efficiency improvements of vertical over traditional horizontal- and I have, in posts both here and elsewhere on the site. I'm voting with my own grow, 'nuff said- unless you'd like a list of those reasons at some point.

I've done the light mover over horizontal ScrOG, that's another thread you'll enjoy, lol. The vertical light mover will work in similar fashion in the cylinder, and will do yeoman's work to distribute the light and eliminate leaf shading issues, allowing for higher plant density.

I'm inclined to agree with growing a lanky veg plant and letting it fill in during stretch. However, since the entire plant is utilized instead of only above some arbitrary height as in h. ScrOG, it can throw useful branches from bottom to top, all of which get the best lighting, not second hand filtered through the canopy from too far away. In fact, NO part of the plant is outside the 'goldilocks zone' of ideal conditions, as that's how the cylinder is set up in the first place.

I didn't see your post and I'm not sure which setup you are referring to. I keep saying to people that ask me about this stuff (which is few) that light movers are under-utilized. People use them in the wrong ways. They generally take a light and stretch it thin over too big an area. I'm also surprised no one has developed other light movers besides linear ones. A little movement would help with shading big time - it doesn't need to move across the room.

Honestly - my whole issue with this approach isn't conceptual - its just that the people who have tried it got okay results (in terms of watts/gram) - solid for sure but nothing game changing. I haven't dug deep but the ones I have found nobody really exceeded the 1 gram/watt metric. I'm also not sure anyone has stuck with the technique long enough to iron out the kinks. Even if you did work out the kinks, each strain is going to be a little to a lot different so nailing it once isn't necessarily repeatable. I hope I'm not coming across as a debbie-downer. I'm kinda babbling but I will be interested to see results.

Your reasoning is thoughtful and clearly considered. There are a few differences I see between my approach thus far and what I've seen elsewhere.

First is the issue of trees vs vertical SoG; I don't see anyone trying bigger plants. I believe there are lots of benefits, including covering a larger panel, efficient use of time, extremely productive in terms of square footage of floor space.

Second is that many of these are in closed wall arrangements- anything from being up against three walls in a closet or room to being in a cabinet, chamber or tent. My trellis remains open, because I desire the ventilation.

Third is that I trellis from behind the mesh; both the stem and the grower live on the outside of the mesh, and only growing tips poke through to the inside. This keeps plant depth to a relative minimum.

Fourth and related to the first is that I run my veg in a completely separate space, to create tall, lanky plants with huge beards of RDWC hungry roots. They'll be perfect for spreading out over a big area from bottom to top, with essential the root system already in place to feed the monster.

I turn the old batch out, vacuum, flush the buckets, fill and add nutes, clean glass and do any needed maintenance- and then bam! In goes the new crop fresh from the veg tent, the very perfect size and shape, ready in every way for its new vertical environment. And I don't see anyone doing that in a vertical setup, at all. Anywhere.

@ttystikk
got a pic of the veg room?

Wyckoff said:

Thinking a little more about this I think the only noticeable efficiency that vertical scrogs have over horizontal is that there is less trimming going on with vertical. There is some loss of efficiency with hoods and glass (if used) but I think all the lollipopping does most of the difference. Any plant growth that later gets blocked from light access is a waste. Also - a little (under 2 feet) light moving on a horizontal scrog would improve efficiency similar to your light mover idea. Basically I'm suggesting the less thinning and the more LST or whatever the better. Just a theory but it will be interesting to see how well you can space things out as you go.



If you hadn't seen it.

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My mistake- thought this was a link to a very similarly named thread here on the farm, where the grower is using three led lights in a closet to grow a vertical ScrOG.

I'm reading into this posting and it's fascinating stuff! Right away, he discusses vertical ScrOG as being both low effort and extremely efficient-and is recommending it for the commercial grower. I'm recommending it for everyone- after all, who doesn't care about efficiency?

I don't see anyone trying bigger plants. I believe there are lots of benefits, including covering a larger panel, efficient use of time, extremely productive in terms of square footage of floor space.

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I couldn't agree more.

I don't think you have to use a vertical light rail system to accomplish getting the light down to the lower branches if static mount lamps are long enough to get the job done. I've always wanted to see IG introduce a vertical system that gave coverage out of both sides of the light. Hyroots running this setup on another forum where he laid the light sideways until the plants get tall enough to position the light vertically. These are at Day 17. For the last three days he's running flower at 13/11.

8 plants in 7 gal
4 cheese berry kush
1 cheese og from seed
2 northern lights #5 x sfv og #3
1 northern lights #5 x sfv og #2

2 plants in 2 gal

cheese og from seed
master kush from seed

Recycled organic living soil round 5 or 6