Casual's 12-site BioBucket grow

[JACKMAYOFFER]

Thanks for all the kudos guys!! I really appreciate it!
I still have the fear at the back of my mind every morning when I go to check on them, that they'll all be dead when I walk in the room! ;)

Jack, is that a good thing that the leaves are so huge?? I'm not sure how to take that! ;)
I think it is. Because they're so close together, I'm considering thinning out the fan leaves, what do you all think?

Caz

Yes it is...I would not remove any leaves at this point.JACK

 

[bugsy1]

icm

since i am a newbie ..what does icm stand for?

 

[Casual]

ICM is another MJ friendly website... International Cannagraphic Magazine

Caz

 

[Casual]

Well, it's been a bit since I've posted... we had a plumbing nightmare... Sewer line from the house to the city sewer collapsed and we had raw sewage backing up into the downstairs bathtub... No amount of snaking would clear it. The cleanouts are located in the room that I was using to grow, so I had to move the entire room to another room in the house before the plumbers came out. A few branches got broken, but for the most part, the move was successful. They've continued to grow and are getting pretty tall now. I'm hoping they're about done stretching. I put them into Flower on June 1st.
I'm moving the light up pretty much every day.

Because of where we had to move the plants, there are 'identifiable' things in the room, so I haven't taken any new pics, although I suppose I could fire up photoshop and blur all that stuff out. Once this harvest is over, the whole setup will be moved into a bedroom, and I'm going to go every other bucket... having them as close together as they are is nuts. I think if I run 6 buckets instead of 12 in the same area, with an additional 1K light, I'll be pretty stylin'... ;)

Caz

 

[halitzor]

You could also lollypop prune them into a single cola plant if grown from seed. Little harder with clones cuz of the alternate branch nodes but it will still work. Do you have the cooling capacity to hang the bulbs bare vertically?

If so you can be really successful.

 

[Casual]

First off, my sincere apologies for not updating in almost a month.
The sewer/drain problem we had was unbelievable, and due to the carelessness of some of the people involved, included visits from the local Internet provider, three electricians, and another plumbing company. The girls are all doing well, I'm about 3 weeks from harvesting. One of the White Widows went absolutely APE SHIT and is WAY larger than any other plant as you'll see in the pics.
My hood is raised as high as it will go.

For anyone planning on doing a similar setup, DON'T try to run 12 plants in an area like this. It's WAY too overcrowded.
I didn't lollipop, or in any way trim the ladies up, I wanted to get a baseline for my first crop. It's SO dense in there. When I relocate this setup, I'll shut off every other valve, and run 6 buckets, with two 1K hoods, and NO light mover.

I just bumped my nutes and added 60g of Powdered Kool Bloom. This will be my last tweek to the nutes. In a week or so, I'll be draining the system and refilling with fresh RO water to let the flushing begin.

I have to say, this setup is as low maintenance as anything I could foresee... I peek in on them once a day, keep my eyes open for webs or pests, and every couple of weeks, toss a little bit of Nutes in the rez, and that's it. Next go around, I'm planning on keeping things trimmed up so they don't go nuts, and also adding tomato cages to I have something to tie branches too. Right now, it's about as ghetto as it gets, but with the emergency move and all, I'm just happy I didn't lose plants or get hermies (No balls found so far!)

Anyway, here are the latest pics, as of 30 minutes ago.

Caz

 

[UCMENOW]

Kudos on keeping it together through the stress.....the sign of a true Green Warrior.

 

[Casual]

Thanks UC! I'm trying. I came SO close to saying screw it and scrapping it until the sewer issue was done.
I definitely need some kind of support system to be able to tie things up. They're getting heavy and starting to feel the pull of gravity. :)

I'm really going to consider changing to a UC system for the next run, but that will depend on what this harvest yields. There are some mandatory things I need to pick up, and if there's enough left over, I'll go UC... if not, harvest after that.
I don't plan on scrapping the BioBucket setup though... it's really proven to me how easy growing can be.

Caz

 

[Casual]

Just an FYI for anyone considering a RDWC system like this...
SPREAD THE BUCKETS OUT!!!! I'd say they need to be AT LEAST 20" apart.
They're all growing into each other and there's WAY too much shading.
To reiterate, if I choose to do this setup again, I'll shut off every other bucket and remove them from the system, leaving about 24" between them, in addition to getting rid of the light mover and using 2 1K lights. I firmly believe once I get this setup dialed in, I should be able to pull 10-12oz per plant without too much trouble.

Caz

 

[Casual]

From July 31st...
Ok... Latest update. Nothing looks any different, so I didn't bother with pics, although I will take pics of my pumping setup if anyone is curious.

I figured I should flush them, as the Widow's are a 9 week cycle and I'm finishing up week 8 now. I'll flush for a week. I haven't added nutes in a couple of weeks now, so the solution was getting weaker anyway. I hooked a 55g drum up to my RO system with a float valve at the top. I let this fill over the last day or so and was ready to go.
Walked in to the room this morning and the floors soaking wet. The damn fitting on the float valve on the 55g drum was leaking.
Oh well... we were thinking about putting a new floor in there anyway!

Now the hard part. When I setup this system, as some of you may remember from my earlier posts, I forgot to add the drain fittings to the buckets. DOH!!!
I figured I'd worry about it when the time came. I was too lazy to drain the whole thing and disassemble it to put the fittings in.
Well, the time has come! I decided to pick up one of those little $6 pumps that chucks up in a drill and hooks to a garden hose.
I then found an adapter to attach a 1/2" pvc fitting to the other end of the pump (Garden bib thread). I screwed a 90degree fitting to that, then measured the depth of the bucket, added a couple of inches and cut a piece of 1/2" PVC to length. I then cut the bottom end of the PVC at an angle so it wouldn't hit the bottom flat and not suck. Voila... a perfect ghetto-rigged flushing too. I used a wood boring bit to drill a 7/8" hole in the top of each lid, near the outside edge. It's just enough for the PVC to slide in... I drop the 1/2" PVC pipe into the hole and slide it down the bottom. Fire up the drill and let her pump. I ran the garden hose I bought from the pump to the kitchen sink. It worked great, but SUCKED to do it. Sore back and feet. It took a couple of minutes or so to do each bucket and the room is very cramped.
After I drained all of the buckets, I pulled off the short piece of PVC I'd used and put a much longer piece on to feed into the 55g drum of fresh RO water. Fired up the drill again and filled the rez. When it was full, fire up the pump to fill the buckets until the pump started suckin' air. Shut it down and let it refill... repeated that about half dozen times. All fresh water circulating now. pH is at 5.7, EC and .4 I'd imagine the EC will drop throughout the week and the little bit of residual nutes get used up and flushed out.

Now, as strange as this sounds, I'd mentioned a while ago that a couple of the AH#3's just didn't take. I removed them from the system and shut off those valves. The buds that were on them were very small and airy. They hadn't been flushed.
We trimmed them up and followed a quick-dry thread and tried them last out... I didn't expect much, but was very surprised. Very nice body high, not close to as harsh as the ditch we've been getting by on. Can't wait to try a proper bud in a few weeks!!

Anyhow, that's it for now... I'll take some pics of root porn and such next week when we're cutting and tearing everything down to move it.

Cheers!

Caz

 

[Casual]

Ok... My previous post details what I did last Saturday. I'm planning on chopping tomorrow night or Saturday. It's been a bit over 9 weeks on a 9 week strain.
I (FAILED!) to get a pocket microscope, so I'm simply going off of the time frame.
Here are the latest pics. If anyone sees any reason to prolong cutting them down, please let me know!!

Any and all opinions are welcome... the main purpose of this grow was to get my feet wet, and I think i can safely say now that I did indeed do that! :tongueout

I'd like to thank everyone on the site for the help and advice they've offered up!

Caz

 

[UCMENOW]

Don't cut....they look at least 2 weeks out, no doubt.

You may see some of the stamen dying prematurely but that's likely due to the stresses they experienced during the bloom cycle, that can sometimes mimic maturity.

 

[Casual]

Oh boy... so just keep on letting them flush? No nutes?
The whole 'time' thing has me a little stumped to boot.
These are White Widows with a 9 week flower... Any thoughts?
I just want to understand the why/hows... ;)

Thanks!

Caz

 

[UCMENOW]

Hey, Hey , Hey......hit em wit da PK

I'd suggest running them on a 1/4 strength PK booster only up until 4 days before harvey, then flush with pure water.

You can feed flowers until close to the end of their lives in water culture given the quick flush time.

Besides the PK boosters do nothing to encourage chlorophyll, which contributes greatly towards the fert harshness associated with hydro flowers.

 

[Casual]

Which PK Booster do you recommend? I can swing by the shop tomorrow and pick some up. It's a royal pain in the ass to flush this system right now, see my above post #70!
I'll put some in tomorrow, and let it run for the next couple of weeks... I'd imagine whatever I put in will be used up by then.

Thanks for the advice UC!

Caz

 

[AmberMan]

Nice setup!

 

[UCMENOW]

PK 13/14, Kool Bloom Liquid, Over Drive or you can just run the GH bloom by itself......it's got a 0-5-4 NPK if I'm not mistaken........which by itself is a superior bloom booster.

 

[Casual]

Well, I picked up a microscope today... The white widows are ready to come down... some Amber tric's, some cloudy tric's.
The Arjen's Haze #3's are not done yet... we'll let them go another week, then check them again. After the Widows are out of the system, I'll spike it with some GH Bloom at 1/4 strength as suggested and let it run a bit longer.
Pretty excited. We'll flash cure a little nug or two to sample the Widow tonight.
Can't wait to get the system torn down and moved into it's permanent home, reduce the number of buckets and add another 1KW lamp. Next harvest should be much more even. You can see in the pics how uneven this one turned out.

Cheers!

Caz

 

[Casual]

Ok.... the Widows have fallen to the power of the shears!

Here are a few pics. The buds aren't the 'Donkey Dick' ones everyone brags about, but I'm pretty happy with what I got for my first attempt at growing ANYTHING!

Trimming sucks!

When we're done trimming, we're going to take some of the small popcorn buds, flash/quick dry them and give them a try out. The AH#3's we did this too last week gave us substantially more of a buzz than we expected, so hopes are high for the WW!
Man, it's been a long road to get here!!!
:boogie:

Thanks to all who've chimed in with advice and encouragement!! My hats off to you all!!
:hi:

Caz

 

[Casual]

Well folks, this harvest is done. The drying rack is now 3 tiers high and about as full as it can get. Because of the low humidity here, I'm going to attempt to jar them up to cure this evening. I picked up some Hygrometers that I'll drop into three of the jars so I can keep an eye on the moisture content, and hopefully get a killer product the first time around. I found a fantastic thread on jar curing, but am not sure about the policies of posting other websites threads. If this is ok, someone let me know and I'll post the link.

I said earlier, I'll say again, trimming sucks! It took 3 people about 10 hours to go through all of this. Sad part was all the popcorn. Lots of it. I believe I could have avoided a lot of the popcorn and had much larger buds by spacing out my plants more, and by using two light setups instead of one on the lightmover (Yes, this has been a recurring thought throughout this thread!) After another week in the system, I'll chop the Haze's and then disassemble the setup and get it moved. I'm going to make a new supply manifold for 8 bucket, and add a second 1Kw light, figuring on hanging the light between the 1st and 2nd rows, and then between 3rd and 4th rows. This way the lights now shining directly down on any of the girls, and all of the plants should get much better light penetration. I'm also planning on defoliating from the start.

Anyway, as far as a smoke report goes... I quick dried some of the White Widow.
The smoke is a bit harsh as you'd expect, but the high... WOW... We're very happy with what we reaped. I expected a bit more of a couchlock high, with the WW being Indica dominant, but found that was not the case. I guess I harvested and just the right time. Euphoric high, and LASTS... probably 3-4 hours easily.
This next round will be all AH#3's. I have two VERY healthy AH#3 moms that are itching to give up clones. My WW mother didn't make it. Soil is not for me. I ordered a new hydroponic tub system from Aerocustoms, but I ordered it too late. The WW mom was gone before I could get clones. Lapse on my part. I'm going to be looking for some new seeds though. I'm hoping to find something that's a nice yielder and a relatively short flowering time. The WW's were 9 weeks which is pretty average it seems. I may say screw it and just order more WW seeds. Definitely happy with what we got!

Sorry for the ramble... I always feel like I should explain as much as possible the first time... leaves less opportunity for questions!

Cheers all!!!

Caz