Sea Of Green Or Separate Tables?

[Elevator]

Hi all,
Long time lurker first time poster here. First off thanks to anyone who is willing to help!
My current setup is two 4x8 lowtide trays with dtw coco with auto feed stakes. There are two air cooled 1k watt XXL hoods over each tray, four total. The room is 10'x13' and the grow area is 10' x 8', with a 2' work walk path in the middle of the two trays. My light is a bit of overkill and the walking path has great buds growing into it that I constantly have to trim back, and I feel like it's just wasted space since after thinning out my plants after early flower, I never really need to go to the back of the grow area. I'm thinking of turning the lights from running parallel to the trays, to facing the other way, which means instead of having overkill on a 4x8, I'll have good coverage over the whole 10x8 area. Then I could pack in significantly more plants and go from 6 elbows a cycle, to hopefully 7 or more!

My question is if anyone has pointers of how to deal with the inherent problems of thinning out plants and dealing with equipment issues when there is no room to walk around the plants. Am I just asking for trouble? Everything will be automated and the only time I'd need to access the area is if something went wrong, but it'll be a BITCH to disassemble and then set everything up again, and how do you deal with monitoring your plants for PM, or feed lines that malfunction and don't deliver adequate fertigation to one of the plants?

 

[3N1GM4]

Shave their legs really well?
Gogo gadget arm...

 

[3N1GM4]

http://arcmate.com/ezreacheroutdoorpro.aspx
Lol
http://www.amazon.com/Fiskars-Long-handle-Swivel-Shears-92107935J/dp/B00004SD6Y

 

[Elevator]

Lol thanks! But yeah I'm mostly concerned with falling leaves and other debris attracting mold and pests. How do you deal with it?

 

[DieselDuds]

Lol thanks! But yeah I'm mostly concerned with falling leaves and other debris attracting mold and pests. How do you deal with it?

If I was you a good idea may be to spend the time picking that stuff up by hand, at the same time you will be able to truly inspect your plants while doing so , preventing any bug issue or mite issue. Or put a heavy layer of top of thick coco and use one of the air hoses off of your air pump and blow away the fallen leaves and vacuum them up?

 

[Elevator]

Ya that's really the crux of my inquiry, I pick them off by hand and with a small shop vac now, but if I do a SOG setup to add the extra plants and take advantage of the wasted light and space, I won't be able to reach them or even inspect them really. I'd prefer to not have to spray a ton of preventatives but I'd also prefer to get an extra elbow each grow with the same overhead!

 

[Bud momma]

Hi all,
Long time lurker first time poster here. First off thanks to anyone who is willing to help!
My current setup is two 4x8 lowtide trays with dtw coco with auto feed stakes. There are two air cooled 1k watt XXL hoods over each tray, four total. The room is 10'x13' and the grow area is 10' x 8', with a 2' work walk path in the middle of the two trays. My light is a bit of overkill and the walking path has great buds growing into it that I constantly have to trim back, and I feel like it's just wasted space since after thinning out my plants after early flower, I never really need to go to the back of the grow area. I'm thinking of turning the lights from running parallel to the trays, to facing the other way, which means instead of having overkill on a 4x8, I'll have good coverage over the whole 10x8 area. Then I could pack in significantly more plants and go from 6 elbows a cycle, to hopefully 7 or more!

My question is if anyone has pointers of how to deal with the inherent problems of thinning out plants and dealing with equipment issues when there is no room to walk around the plants. Am I just asking for trouble? Everything will be automated and the only time I'd need to access the area is if something went wrong, but it'll be a BITCH to disassemble and then set everything up again, and how do you deal with monitoring your plants for PM, or feed lines that malfunction and don't deliver adequate fertigation to one of the plants?

 

[Bud momma]

Hi all,
Long time lurker first time poster here. First off thanks to anyone who is willing to help!
My current setup is two 4x8 lowtide trays with dtw coco with auto feed stakes. There are two air cooled 1k watt XXL hoods over each tray, four total. The room is 10'x13' and the grow area is 10' x 8', with a 2' work walk path in the middle of the two trays. My light is a bit of overkill and the walking path has great buds growing into it that I constantly have to trim back, and I feel like it's just wasted space since after thinning out my plants after early flower, I never really need to go to the back of the grow area. I'm thinking of turning the lights from running parallel to the trays, to facing the other way, which means instead of having overkill on a 4x8, I'll have good coverage over the whole 10x8 area. Then I could pack in significantly more plants and go from 6 elbows a cycle, to hopefully 7 or more!

My question is if anyone has pointers of how to deal with the inherent problems of thinning out plants and dealing with equipment issues when there is no room to walk around the plants. Am I just asking for trouble? Everything will be automated and the only time I'd need to access the area is if something went wrong, but it'll be a BITCH to disassemble and then set everything up again, and how do you deal with monitoring your plants for PM, or feed lines that malfunction and don't deliver adequate fertigation to one of the plants?

Put your trays on a heavy duty platform with wheels on it. I'm new to this site and it won't allow me to upload a pic, however you can move each tray easily and make it easy to spray, water, and prune... while utilizing your entire space you only need about 4 feet from the last trade to your wall to easily maneuver between all of them

 

[Bud momma]

9 nights, 8 trays... all hand-fed. When I move the trays from from one side of the room to the other gives me about two and a half feet between trees to get in and prune or spray, it's definitely a sea of green

 

[Elevator]

Thanks for the tip, I never understood when I saw those pics like yours how they maintained the plants, but movable low profile platforms makes perfect sense! Since I posted this I've changed up the layout already and I might take your advice for the new setup. I'll be switching from 4 aircooled 1k's to 3 gavitas (open) and I'll have them in an L shape rather than the whole room. I don't have the amperage to run a bigger ac unit so I'll stick to three gavitas and not 4, BUT I can still use the idea of the trays since I'll need to access the corner plants every two weeks to trim and cleanup.

Would you be kind enough to point me in the direction of where you found your design for the movable platforms? Also, does the platform design incorporate a waste container for drain to waste setups?

 

[Bud momma]

Thanks for the tip, I never understood when I saw those pics like yours how they maintained the plants, but movable low profile platforms makes perfect sense! Since I posted this I've changed up the layout already and I might take your advice for the new setup. I'll be switching from 4 aircooled 1k's to 3 gavitas (open) and I'll have them in an L shape rather than the whole room. I don't have the amperage to run a bigger ac unit so I'll stick to three gavitas and not 4, BUT I can still use the idea of the trays since I'll need to access the corner plants every two weeks to trim and cleanup.

Would you be kind enough to point me in the direction of where you found your design for the movable platforms? Also, does the platform design incorporate a waste container for drain to waste setups?

Hey good morning! Good timing on the questions since I'm working right now.these are pics, platform I built to set my trays on for a mobile work space.

 

[Bud momma]

When I water I give them just enough to wet the soil but not so much that the tray has water in it. I just got heavy duty plywood from Home Depot and the rollers I have are from a hardware store... there have been times when I've had to use my Shop-Vac to suck out excess water from the tray that's only happened a couple times that's also the method that I use when I'm flushing them

 

[Elevator]

When I water I give them just enough to wet the soil but not so much that the tray has water in it. I just got heavy duty plywood from Home Depot and the rollers I have are from a hardware store... there have been times when I've had to use my Shop-Vac to suck out excess water from the tray that's only happened a couple times that's also the method that I use when I'm flushing them

Ok, that's pretty easy! Well I'm going to stick with my drain to waste set up for now, but I currently water my plants to runoff once per day and shop vac it out of the trays to dump, I've been reading about having a runoff collection container so I can analyze my runoff ph/ppm to dial in my feeding and I really like that idea. These trays could still help my setup though, I just need to figure out a way to fit a small container on the moveable tray.