Hi, I'm hoping my little garden will help some new gardeners setup their own and maybe even give some other gardeners that have been doing it awhile some ideas. And maybe I'll get some great ideas from the community here :)
I run General Hydroponics Maxi series grow and bloom. I supplement with cal-mag when necessary. I always use floralicious plus in flower. Seaweed rocks! I grow in #4 mother earth chunky perlite in 5 gallon hempy buckets. If you are unfamiliar with hempy buckets just do a quick google. It's a passive water to waste hydroponic system that produces massive plants with no pumps or timers for irrigation. I water with a water wand and pump every 2-3 days. My present output from the flower room is 2# 4 grams as of the last harvest. 2# was my goal and it was surpassed, barely. I'm currently running hash plant and 3 random bag seeds in my flower room. I typically would no do something like that, but I said what the hell. They're turning out quite stellar.
Feel free to ask me questions and I'll continue to journal my grow here.
Water Station with wand and pump. Primary and secondary res. Water sterilized with 3ml/gallon 35% H202
Last harvest of maui waui. Great strain. I kept a mother of her. Beautiful purple from genetics.
GG#4 from last cycle
2,000 watts over the canopy. 1 phantom II ballast by hydrofarm and a cali brand ballast. The phantom is superior in every way, but double the price of the cali. Same 3 year warranty. Hurricane super 8 fan cooling the canopy.
Below the canopy
Big trunk
Veg tents A) & B)
And the work station. Maxi grow and bloom has to be blended with hot water and then added to the res otherwise the granules will never go into solution. Otherwise a great fertilizer.
They're great but very expensive when you need to use 100 of them over your canopy. It really amazes me how quickly you go through them. I bought 3 packs of ten for around $16 and then said fuck it and made my own hooks with large paper clips and wax string. $7 for a 200 yard roll of very nice wax string and 200 paper clips for $2 at dollar tree. Much more economical.
So I was doing some lights off watering with my green headlight (why are the simple things always so cool?), and I had an idea. In a perfect world I could raise my lights higher to increase the size of the footprint over the canopy. I'm out of vertical height though, so that's not doable. The problem is a the exterior of my canopy on one side isn't getting as much light as I would like. I've got 2 nice LED bloom lights I traded some clones for, and I do believe I'm going to mount one right over the top of that side of the canopy that needs a light boost. The intensity is quite unbelievable if you haven't experienced these new high output LED's. The technology has certainly come a long way from 10 years ago, but manufacturing costs for nice high end units are still to costly to consider elimination of HID's. However, I got two decent (definitely not high end) lights for free, so why not take 'em for a spin?
I'll post pics tonight after I get it mounted up there. It's gonna make the flower room look like a disco dance floor. Very cool :)
I'll take some pics of the fixture also. The footprint is small, but I'm only using this for supplemental lighting to hit 3 plants on the edge of my canopy. It should work nicely
The other light I'm mounting in my soon to be erected mother station tent. She is 4x4x7 and will house 2 mothers in 5 gallon buckets. I'll never understand growers that run 4 or 5 different strains in the same flower room. There are just too many variables strain to strain, and it winds up turning into a through and through cluster funk when you account for different flower times, different nutritive requirements, and different growth patterns. My head hurts just thinking about it.
Anyways I'll get some pics up later. I'm cleaning some joists with a mild detergent today and vacuuming cob webs out of a room that I'm housing my mother station in. Cleanliness is second only to god in a grow room. I've seen some very dirty people growing pot over the years. You certainly wouldn't want to shake hands with them much less smoke their product. Gives me chills just thinking about it.