I also am an older grower (nearly 50).
I like the way you stated that being at such a young age we are.
The thing I luv about our hobby is we are always learning.
Anything I can help you with or vise versa is just a question away:)
Welcome to The Farm!

Welcome! ~2.5lbs/ plant sounds like an awesome yield for indoor and a great accomplishment! Got any photos? It might help to start the advice of growing better quality. What strain, medium and lighting do you tend to use. I’m getting 3-4 ozs/plant (cheap LED/DWC) so not a huge yield, but definitely stony. Good luck, this forum has been awesome for me, with some great knowledgeable growers.

Andy said:

Hi all!

I've taken quite a bit of care to find the right growing forum - most are littered with inexperienced growers throwing around inaccurate advice in order to sound knowledgeable, only leading to muddying the waters, spreading misinformation and cluttering up threads. I'd almost given up when I came here & was delighted to find thread after thread of well considered, intelligent posts and advice, which is a great relief and I'm happy to say that I'm here to stay. I'm an older grower (nearly 50), and have no time for ego and bravado. I'm just interested in getting to the bottom of how to grow top shelf weed.

I've been growing for quite a while (over 20 years on and off), and in the area of actually growing for yield I'm relatively competent. I currently grow 3 plants per crop at an average of around 42 ounces a plant at about 1 gram a watt. On the other hand, in the area of producing top shelf bud I'm woefully inept, producing a relatively decent product but not top shelf. My sole goal of joining this forum is to raise the quality of my product to the absolute highest quality I can possibly manage.

To do this, I'll be happy to sacrifice any necessary profit and time constraints - now, quality takes precedence over everything else. Looking forward to spending time here and getting to know everyone!

Click to expand...

Glad you found us. Welcome to the farm, partner!

Thanks guys! I'm in early veg at the moment but will post a photo at the end of flower. I veg for a long time (five and a half weeks), so it's not quite as impressive as it sounds. I've been using an old version of Jack flash from Sensi seeds that's been passed around here for about 10 years. I've been taking cuttings from the previous grow for the next grow and so on for years, so the strain has lost it's lustre over time - never again, I'll only use selected mothers grown from seed from now on.

They've always just been under sodiums, but I'm switching to sodiums + 4k CMH in checkerboard configuration as part of my mission to increase quality. I use 45 litre air pots with coco in drip to waste and the tent size is 1.2m by 3.2m. The 3 plants fill out the tent, each covering about 1.2m x 1.1m. They're scrogged completely flat on taught mesh panels about 32" above the floor, so end up looking like a flat carpet of buds covering the whole area. They need lots of careful plucking and training over the weeks, so you end up with little leaf on the canopy.

The idea was to have as few plants as possible in a relatively small area so as to give the impression of a small grow in relation to the yield. But I've realised that the light intensity needs to be reduced a bit so as not to evaporate terps, so I'm widening the room a touch to bring it down to about 75w/sqft or 800w/sqm.

In this configuration, you need to grow tallish, sativa-leaning plants to fill the space, but I've been hankering to try the rich smelling indicas, so I'm going to try 8-10 indica-leaning plants in 20 litre pots in the same space from the likes of the Jungle boy's strains to see if I can get those dank, dense potent smelling buds. I'm doing lots of research into different drying & curing methods which is my main focus point for increasing quality. I always dry clip & am interested in trying Clockworx's cure method as well as the traditional dry at 60/60 for 10-14 days then jars. I've realised that clipping without touching the buds is a must for preserving the terpenes, so will do that from now on.

I've never done a long flush so will try a week at low e.c. (1.0) and then a week with plain water at the end. I may eventually go with a full 2 week flush with plain water, but I'm reluctant to try it quite yet as I worry that it might devastate the yield. I'm also looking into RO as well, but not sure if it's worth is as my background EC is just 0.4.

I'm looking to get into organics & am also now staying on top of my VPD with a VPD humidity controller and IR thermometer.

I realise this post is a bit over-long, but I'm just getting it all down so I can reference it later in order to go into each element in separate threads..

Right on. I'm thrilled to be in what a forum rater thinks is the best Xd. Welcome to the farm.

Welcome to the farm, youngster...Agree on the never stop learning thing. Enjoy.

Glad to have also found this page and am equally looking to improve on quality, but like @Brotofsky I am averaging 4-6z a plant (4 under two 600w hps in a 1.2square footage using Coco in autopots/dripfed & using 8" in and out airflow) and will be looking to improve that.

All the best

Welcome aboard, so much great info here my head is swollen taking it all in lol