Get a harvest every 2 weeks

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by lush1

Two questions please Alan.

I'm not actually an 'Alan' but I'll run with it.

What would be preferable over a 6x3 area: 2x600w or 1x1000, both air cooled?

Either would produce great results, but 1x 1000 will save you some dough. A 1000HPS will draw about 1100W, a pair of 600s will use about 1350W.

Also, you think chronic would eb a good strain to grow this style?

Is 'chronic' a strain?

To be deadly honest, I've never had any trouble cloning any strain of cannabis. Dewave's cited experience with plants not rooting and stems rotting seems to have more to do with excessively wet conditions and lack of sterility than any resistance to cloning programmed into the DNA.

In terms of what strains perform best in the zero-veg environment of SoG, any primarily indica-dominant strain will do very well.

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by Dewave

Hey bro,

The ones that do not make it seem to have a rotted stem.

[...]

So I do believe it is somewhat strain dependent.

From your figures, there's not a difference large enough to be statistically significant between your different strains.

Sounds to me like there was an overwet rootzone or poor sterility condition causing the stems to rot. If the rootzone moisture and sterility had been correct, I think all of them would have set root in similarly quick fashion.

When it came time to transplant and flower they are 6-8 inches with a very long root, up to 4 feet at times.

yikes! I'd never have allowed roots on clones to exceed a few millmetres before planting in media.

So I took your advice and just adjusted it to my needs.

cool- that's exactly what I expect folx to do with my notions.

they will start to revert back to veg at about week 4 just when I put them back into flower.

sounds about right. It has taken 4-6wks for my attempts at re-vegging a previously flowered plant to fully return to veg mode.

They easily go back to flower more so then they do veg. What I want to try is using a timer for flowering while in the cloner and then plant one month later as I have been doing. Not sure what that will do.

The problem with exposing clones to flowering cycle lighting is that it prematurely puts the plant in flowering mode. In a zero-veg time SoG op, we rely on the veg mode clones taking about 4 weeks under 12/12 to switch fully into flowering mode. In those 4 weeks (under HPS as opposed to starting the flowering in a clonebox under fluoro lighting), the plants are changing their growth habit, increasing display of flowering habit and decreasing veg habit, but not before they roughly triple in height. If you have your clones in flower cycle before introducing them to the flowering area, they will not get this vegetative growth spurt during wks 1-4. Plants will wind up smaller than they could be and will yield much less.

Either way thanx again for your help. Your grow is one of many inspirations that has helped me.

No problem, happy to be of any help.

Originally Posted by Dewave

Here's an old post that someone dung up about cloning flowering plants,,,, haven't read it all yet, but from what I see very interesting

http://forum.grasscity.com/advanced-...ing-clone.html

That thread is just a bad idea from top to bottom. From the loss of the veg spurt to difficulty in getting clones taken from a plant in flower to set root, this ill-conceived method will cause a lot more problems than it solves. The author cops a bollocking from the readership for a good reason- he's done it totally wrong, not only thinks he's right- thinks he's discovered something new, innovative and beneficial- and can't accept that his method is flawed to the very core.

[Dewave]

Statistically, no, gut feeling of how a plant is doing, yes... if all your or my observations had to be statically proven we'd spend years on this,,, but I do understand what your saying.

And the stem rot happens so infrequently I am not concerned with it. I do sterilize my scrissors b4 cutting and root zone moisture in an aeroponic cloner, hmmm dunno about that, lol.

As far as root length, I have good reason for wanting such long ones, in my style of grow I bottom feed so the longer the root the better, all I really need is 6-8 inches, but being longer they are contact with fresh nutes immediately. If they are 3-4 footers I just curl them at the bottom of the coco. In this type of grow it actually works very well, I have tried shorter roots which tend to lead to a long wait b4 the show a growth spurt or an exceptance into their new environment.

I have made some startling observations, at least to me, with the use of Super Thrive in cloners. When I am done with a full documentation and pictorial illustration I will post it.

And I agree whole heartedly about not enuff veg time when cloning flowering plants, if taken to late into flower the clones will not have enuff time to revert back to veg and flower again will cause one to have very short flowering buds.

However, my point is that you can take clones from a new plant just put into flower usally up to 14 days, during it's stretch that will provide a good clone. Any later and you could get stunted growth or a hermie.

Just to test it out, I have one now that has hermied on me and I am trying dutch masters reverse just to see if it works. I am watching it closely.

One thing that I found is that perpetual grows get boring very quickly, lol. Love the output but dam the repetition. You never mentioned that, lol. Thats why I am playing around with clones and other strains now.

Again thanx for sharing your success, I don't clone or grow like you, but your method is easily adaptable to others. And I think that is the key. +K

Dewave

PS. He called you Alan, rofl

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by Dewave

I do sterilize my scrissors b4 cutting and root zone moisture in an aeroponic cloner, hmmm dunno about that, lol.

Swap the scrissors for a fresh scalpel blade.

As far as root length, I have good reason for wanting such long ones, in my style of grow I bottom feed so the longer the root the better, all I really need is 6-8 inches, but being longer they are contact with fresh nutes immediately. If they are 3-4 footers I just curl them at the bottom of the coco. In this type of grow it actually works very well, I have tried shorter roots which tend to lead to a long wait b4 the show a growth spurt or an exceptance into their new environment.

The main problem with excessively long roots is that they can be very easy to damage. Roots will regen if broken but it stunts the plant while it is regenerating them.

However, my point is that you can take clones from a new plant just put into flower usally up to 14 days, during it's stretch that will provide a good clone. Any later and you could get stunted growth or a hermie.

I think I'd probably confine that to 7 days max. I've put plants in to flower and had to take them back out to use them as mums. Even 5 days on 12/12 will put the plant far enough into flowering mode that it will display odd, mixed veg/flower habit for some weeks after being put back under 24/0 lighting.

Just to test it out, I have one now that has hermied on me and I am trying dutch masters reverse just to see if it works. I am watching it closely.

Don't chug Sarian brandy while waiting. Once a hermie, it's unusual to see a reversion to proper habit.

One thing that I found is that perpetual grows get boring very quickly, lol. Love the output but dam the repetition. You never mentioned that, lol. Thats why I am playing around with clones and other strains now.

hahahahha, too right. I actually do make note of the boring-as-batshit environment in a copy of the thread I run on RIU (which is massively busy with more than 1000 reads/week).

Again thanx for sharing your success, I don't clone or grow like you, but your method is easily adaptable to others. And I think that is the key. +K

Sure, there's lots of little hints and kinks to be taken from this, even if you don't SoG.

I don't know whether it speaks to my persistence or foolishness, but I have tried most every method over a lot of years. I've arrived on a perpetual output SoG op cos it distributes the workload in the (much hated) harvesting task while still producing large and often.

PS. He called you Alan, rofl

Been called worse.

[doomtrain]

Great thread! So I'm considering doing a very much smaller size operation of this kind - 4 plants. 1 clone rooting, and 3 in various stages of flowering. The reason for 4 plants is because 5+ plants is a felony in my state and i'm paranoid. Anyways, I'm trying to keep this operation as contained as possible and I have a couple questions:

1) Is it OK to have 3 different plants in different stages of flowering growing alongside each other, or would this create problems?
2) Can I skip having separate mother plants, by cloning my most recent plant to reach maturity?
3) Would LST or SCroG techniques increase yield, considering i'm only going to be having 3 flowering plants at a time?

Thanks man

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by doomtrain

1) Is it OK to have 3 different plants in different stages of flowering growing alongside each other, or would this create problems?

Female plants in flower have no effect on other female plants in flower. It is male plants that spread pollen.

2) Can I skip having separate mother plants, by cloning my most recent plant to reach maturity?

Clones taken from plants in flower are notoriously slow to set root. If you don't have mother plants vegging to take cuttings from, your success rate will be low. Moreover, should your clones fail, which may take you 10-12 days to see, if you are taking cuttings only from plants you are now flowering, your problem is worse as the plants in flower progress. Keeping a mother or ten is no big deal It's easier than caring for flowering plants and assures you don't lose your strain/s.

3) Would LST or SCroG techniques increase yield, considering i'm only going to be having 3 flowering plants at a time?

When you have to do a very limited plant count, you're right, SoG isn't your best option. If I had a strict limit, I would probably veg up some clones for about 3 weeks, pruning back the mainstem after 1 week and then pruning off the growing tips of all the remaining branches in the following 2 weeks before flowering them. You will get a fairly short plant with a number of larger branches and good sized terminal colas, not the size of mainstem top colas, but a lot more bud per plant than in the SoG scheme.

Will come out looking like this grow, pictured in cop photos from a raid.






Unfortunately, this style tends to produce generally smaller and fluffier buds due to the location of the buds on the plant. The biggest & densest colas on cannabis plants form on the mainstem tips, which are removed in this style. Continuous production is not possible with this style unless one has separate, dedicated vegging & flowering areas. Longer flowering (~+2wks than normal) makes ops like this do a lot better.

[chuq6]

Originally Posted by Al B. Fuct

This is a typical 'Sea of Green' or SoG op. Clones receive zero veg time; once they have a good set of roots, they go in to flower.

This diagram shows the flow of plants through the op:



You can build this op in any scale you like, from a single mother and just one plant put in to the flowering area every two weeks up to as big as your needs require.

The idea is to grow only the top cola of a naturally growing plant with none of the lower branches and the small buds those branches produce. All branching, pretty much everything on the lower 1/3 of the plant, is snipped off in about wk 2 & 3.



Plant at 6 wks flowering, note lower branching is removed

The method of putting clones in to flower with no vegging time keeps plants relatively short, to about 33-36" (~1 metre), which better suits artificial lighting.

Even powerful HPS lighting can only penetrate foliage so deeply, so a metre tall is just about perfect. I find that big lights give better bud density, so I use two 1000W HPS, one over each pair of 820mm^2 (~2.7 feet^2) flood trays.

The mums are maintained under 24 hour 400W HPS. HPS is used as the 400 was the flowering light some 7-8 years ago and was spare after the 1000s were installed in the flowering area. It works fine in this application, so I never changed it to MH, but I'm planning to buy a MH-HPS conversion lamp for the mums soon. The clonebox has 6x 18W fluoro tubes (24"), usually on 24/7 but shut off for the first 6-8 hours after doing a new batch of cuttings.

Clones go straight from the clonebox into the flowering area- no vegging required. They grow a little bit vegetatively for the first 3-4 weeks but then stop getting taller in wk4 and start making bud weight.

I keep about 6-10 mothers and do about 30 cuttings every 2 weeks from them. I choose the best 20-23 clones to be put in the 4-tray flowering area.

Leftover clones become replacement mothers or are discarded. Mothers are replaced one by one, about every 4-8 weeks as needed.

As each batch of clones goes in to tray #1, a batch comes out of tray #4 to be harvested, every 2 weeks.


Tray #1, wk0-2
(plants pictured are at 2 weeks flowering)


Tray #2, wk2-4
(plants pictured are at 4 weeks flowering)


Tray #3, wk4-6
(plants pictured are at 6 weeks flowering)


Tray #4, wk6-8
(plants pictured are at 8 weeks flowering)

The mother vegging area is in the same room with the flowering plants, but has a lightproof curtain (just a double layer of panda film, looped over a 2x4 screwed to the ceiling, white sides toward plants) to prevent interrupting the flowering plants' lightcycle and has its own ventilation system as well.

Each tray in both the veg & flower areas has its own pump, reservoir tank and timer, allowing the watering rate and nute mix to be tailored to the plant for vegging as well as for each 2 week phase of flowering.

See also my photoessay on cloning in rockwool.

So what happens when there are no clones left to pick ? No more clone making I guess? Or do you make clones off of clones?

[chuq6]

Originally Posted by Al B. Fuct

Several problems with your theory.

If a mother were put under 12/12 lighting it would be flowering fairly vigorously by the end of wk 2.

Plants which have been in flower can be revegged but take up to 6 weeks to return to purely veg growth habit.

The mother would be useless for cuttings until it had been revegged to full veg habit once again.

Cuttings taken from a plant in flower are notoriously slow to set root.

Sorry, but you're not on the way forward!

If what you said is true, and it does make sence, would it be the same for outdoors?

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by chuq6

So what happens when there are no clones left to pick ? No more clone making I guess? Or do you make clones off of clones?

Clones come from my mum plants. When I wear out a mum, I replace it with a clone. Read the linked thread about A Batch of Clones in Rockwool. Been propagating Sweet Tooth #4 now since 2002- more than 6 years now.

I'm still waiting for a fulfillment of the promises of impending doom from naysayers who say that constant propagation by cuttings doesn't work.

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by chuq6

If what you said is true, and it does make sence, would it be the same for outdoors?

Yep. You'll have no control over photoperiod outdoors, so I'd expect reversion of a flowered plant to veg would take even longer, certainly so if the day length were not 18+h.

[dt3ks]

Al B. Fuct your thread is an inspiration. One of a few threads that have really givin' me so much information. Though I'm not running SOG right now the quality of material is priceless. I appreciate your efforts.

+rep

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by dt3ks

Al B. Fuct your thread is an inspiration. One of a few threads that have really givin' me so much information. Though I'm not running SOG right now the quality of material is priceless. I appreciate your efforts.

Thanks for that. I try to keep a high meat-to-potatoes ratio in this stew.

I freely admit that my op is a compromise- it is not intended to make the absolute maximum weight per area of lighted space. It's supposed to make a lot of buds without a lot of dicking around, maintenance or mandatory daily attention.

I could most certainly increase the output per harvest with the same amt of light by changing to a watering system that would allow more frequent flooding with oxygenated nutes. However, this means use of a less absorbent medium. If there is a pump failure, there's less water stored in the medium to get the plant through until the failure is detected.

Despite the wonkiness of centrif aquarium pumps, flood systems can not clog with nute salts. If pots filled with an absorbent medium are used, the system usually doesn't require daily attention.

Drip systems require daily cleaning of drippers or they will clog with nute salts. Some aero and DWC systems are dependent upon forcing water through a small sprayer aperture (same problem with clogging as drip). In DWC/bubble (and some aero systems), there must be a constant, 24/7 air supply via a pump & air stone/bubble curtain. DWC ops are in deep trouble if power is lost, air pump fails or bubble curtain clogs with nute salts for more than a few hours as roots will be submerged with no air supply- and will soon drown, killing the plant/s.

I'm still looking for a dope robot to do all this for me, will update you when I've got that sorted.

[sneakers]

Al,

Last year I first read this thread and was inspired to use the SOG method to grow. While much progress has been made that way in my small and limited grow (2'X6') there is still room for improvement.

The drip systems are a hassle and I am thinking about doing some sort of flood like you do. I was looking for some information and it sounds like you have a good system that floods exactly when and how long you want it to. I know nothing about this equipment including it's correct name (unless it is eb and flow).

I have some questions that I'm hoping maybe you can answer for me.

1) What kind of pump do you use? Is it submersible? Does it pump the nutes into and then back out of the trays or does gravity play a part?

2) what kind of timer do you use?

Depending on those answers could open a couple of more questions.

3) How does Hydroton work as a growing medium in this type of system?

4) How deep does a tray need to be?

5) How loud is your pump?

6) Does your reservoir require aeration?

From what I am seeing in my limited SOG, there isn't much root and therefore wouldn't need as much room. The idea of a pump running for just a couple of minutes a couple of times a day sounds like a bonus too.

Some or all of these questions may be in this thread. I read a bunch of it last year and have read bits and pieces of it off and on but surely havent read all of it.

[PURPLE_TREES]

AL- i was wondering why you like drip better than DWC or aero? was it because of the unreliability? How were the growth results comparing the two..? I currently have all drip but was going to switch over to DWC or aero..-Good idea or bad?

[Al B. Fuct]

Originally Posted by sneakers

Al,

Last year I first read this thread and was inspired to use the SOG method to grow. While much progress has been made that way in my small and limited grow (2'X6') there is still room for improvement.

kool.

The drip systems are a hassle and I am thinking about doing some sort of flood like you do. I was looking for some information and it sounds like you have a good system that floods exactly when and how long you want it to. I know nothing about this equipment including it's correct name (unless it is eb and flow).

Yes, it's commonly called 'ebb & flow' but also 'flood & drain' or simply 'flood system.'

Floods are the simplest watering systems. Nothing more than a tray, pump, timer & tank. Go here to Simplyhydro for a description of all common watering systems.

1) What kind of pump do you use? Is it submersible? Does it pump the nutes into and then back out of the trays or does gravity play a part?

I use common, garden variety centrifugal aquarium pumps. They pump water up to the tray when the timer is on and allow water to backflow through them by gravity into the tank when the timer shuts off.

2) what kind of timer do you use?

Ordinary digital timer. Digitals allow single minute increments in runtime. Mechanical timers usually only allow 15 minute minimum runtimes.

3) How does Hydroton work as a growing medium in this type of system?

Works fine. You can flood plants in pellets more frequently, meaning you get more oxygenated nutes bathing the roots, which speeds growth and improves vigor.

However, pellets don't hold much water compared to more absorbent media like rockwool or Fytocell, a downside in case of a water pump or timer failure. Pellets are also heavy and can be a problem for disposal. They can be re-used a couple of times if FULLY cleaned of old root matter and are sterilised- but cleaning them is a prick of a job. After a couple of uses, they also begin to accumulate nute salts, which really can't be removed adequately. Once they start looking frosty, it's time to turf them out.

4) How deep does a tray need to be?

Most are about 100mm deep but their overflow tubes (which set the max flood depth) ar usually about 75mm tall.

5) How loud is your pump?

There's 5 pumps and they're all inaudible, being underwater. My mother plant system has one and so does each of 4 trays/tanks in the flowering area.

6) Does your reservoir require aeration?

Yes. I use ordinary aquarium air pumps and big bubble curtains in each tank.

From what I am seeing in my limited SOG, there isn't much root and therefore wouldn't need as much room. The idea of a pump running for just a couple of minutes a couple of times a day sounds like a bonus too.

If you are using an absorbent medium like rockwool, the pump need only run for 2-4 mins (depending on the capacity of the pump- you need only flood to the overflow level then shut down the pump) once a day. In pellets, you'd start with 3x flood cycles per day. Make sure your rockwool cube (should you be cloning in RW cubes) is ABOVE the flood level, which should come up to within 1/2" of the bottom of the cube, no higher. If RW cubes are flooded 3x/day, young plants will soon show signs of overwatering stress.

Some or all of these questions may be in this thread. I read a bunch of it last year and have read bits and pieces of it off and on but surely havent read all of it.

If you can spare the effort, do try to read it all.

Originally Posted by PURPLE_TREES

AL- i was wondering why you like drip better than DWC or aero? was it because of the unreliability? How were the growth results comparing the two..? I currently have all drip but was going to switch over to DWC or aero..-Good idea or bad?

I'm not fond of drip systems at all. I don't use drip systems because their drippers clog from nute salts unless cleaned at least every other day.

DWC systems require 24/7 aeration, during lights on or lights off. If roots which are submerged in a nute solution are not constantly aerated, they will drown from lack of oxygen. DWC ops should have redundant air pumps and air stones/bubble curtains. If you can organise a backup power supply (a computer UPS can be made to work as multiple-day power backups for air pumps if you put a real big 12V battery in them, like for a fishing trolling motor), you'll have good insurance in case of a lengthy power failure.

Thanks to everyone who finds this thread useful. I haven't had any time off for a while so I'm going to bugger off for a bit. See you in a few weeks.