Best way to grow for potency and size and denseness

Blueberry Cheese from seed | Grasscity Forums - The #1 Marijuana Community Online

That's what I do.

 

The few colas pictured look very good to me, could they be bushier with 2 toppings & lst/scrogging, whatever sure.

 

Mate, I've popped in and out of a lot of your posts, and you seem to have a good grasp of running plants in your current setup.

If I was in your spot (and I'm not trying to tell ya what to do) I'd maybe try multiple toppings (mainlining is also somewhat similar, @TimJ has a lot of good threads on the subject.

I've been steadily increasing both plant mass and number of plants for a few years now, and maybe next winter I'll try to make the jump to hydro or full organic. Might not even stick with either of those methods, but I feel I owe it to myself as a (hobby) grower to explore the various possibilities.

To answer your question direct, max potency is most directly affected (to my knowledge) by light intensity (why colas tend to test higher % than larf) so if you have the means and want to start screwing around with bigger lights that's always another route.

I went both ways, got bigger and more powerful lights, and started trying to multi-top plants or otherwise fill bigger and bigger areas with canopy while still keeping withing my state's laws on #4 of plants permitted.

For me, the fun has come from taking plants that produced great buds, and trying to really max overall size and yield within a given time frame (X weeks of veg Y weeks of flower)

So like going from 2 plants barely filling half a 4x4 bay


To 2 plants that can overflow the same size bays (several grows worth of exp later)


to 2 plants that can overflow a bay and produce colas that you can feel decent about.


I guess what I'm saying is, unless growing is how you make ends meet, there is a lot to be said about thinking long and hard about "how do I want to grow, as a grower of cannabis?"

Whatever interests you most mate, explore it imo, just maybe get a second tent (one to grow enough crops to supply your personal demand, a second one to fool around with all the varied ways one can cultivate cannabis.)

Best of luck, though I presume from your other posts you probably don't need much to grow good looking plants at this point.

 

I have two photo strains I grew outdoors and in the ground. I have two autos I grew outdoors and in the ground. I have two strains I grew indoors under lights.

All different strains. The two outdoor photos produced more than ten times the indoor autos. The outdoor autos produced about three times the indoor autos. The best highs come from the outdoor photos.

I am an amateur grower, first year outdoors followed by a year indoors and outdoors. Nothing was properly dried and cured. Also I am not good at knowing when to harvest. I have enough real good pot from the outdoor photos to last me years.

 

As Misanthropevet mentioned increasing light wattage will direct impact to your harvest yield more than any other variable.

Genetics will also play a large role in yield and overall potency.

 

Not for the potency. Growing indoors was a LOT more expensive and a LOT more work for a LOT less weed.

I can't draw any conclusions about potency. They were all different strains. The indoor grown is good enough for me.

 

Your not wrong mate, at the equator, full sunlight intensity is around 2,000 umol/s (decreasing as you head further north or south and dependent on time of year)

978 watts of power from the wall and putting lights about 12 inches over the canopy yields around 1,200-1,450 umol/s (depending on your diode efficiency) for me.

Unfortunately, I live somewhere that although home cultivation is permitted, there are local regs, HOA bs, and a number of factors that lead me keep my gardens below grade.

As others have mentioned, more light tends to equal bigger and more potent bud provided you don't fry them, so a well tended outdoor crop could certainly outperform indoor grows depending on weather conditions of the grow season vs indoor light setup.

Obviously rates vary, but I pay 11c per kw hour if I get it from the grid (we also have a 20kw solar array that most days does more than enough to keep the gardens running and most of the rest of the home).

So worst case I'm paying about $1 per day on the lights (maybe $1.50 during veg when the lights are going 16+hrs)

The wattage I pull can comfortably cover a 40sqft canopy worth of plants (50sqft if you're cool with some smaller edge buds). Conservatively, I'm expecting to yield about 2-3lbs or more once dried.

I'll spare the math, but I use about $200 worth of power on a 5 month photo grow from seeds, totaling about $200 of ultility (if I were to get it all from the grid)

Now split that bill (and adding in the costs of seeds, medium, nutes, etc) among the plants grown, it ends up being around $67 variable cost per plant for me worst case.

$67, 15 minutes a day for roughly 150 days (obviously set up and harvest take a bit more time) totals around 40 hours of my time (cause hey that's worth something too right).

The nearest place to me with rec sales is a 3 hour drive each way, and only permits purchase of 1 ounce at a time.

I guess what I'm saying is that although the sun is hard to beat, $67 and 40 hours of work (provided you have the fixed costs like tent and lights taken care of) for 4 or more plants each yielding 8-16 ounces dried is also a pretty good deal for those of us growing in more private areas I guess.


At the end of the day though, unless you are doing it for a living, grow your way mate, and best of luck!

 

Different strokes for different folks. Certainly what works for me only applies to my particular situation. My cost of electricity is 40 cents per kw hour 4x what you pay. And I live in a semi remote location and have a lot of space and can hide the plants and it is legal as long as it is out of sight. Warm weather and lots of sunshine.

Removing the political stuff and just comparing the indoor vs outdoor my in the ground outdoor was a lot less work and produced a better weed and a lot more of it. I simply converted an existing tomato bed. After planting the starts in an amended soil all I did was turn on the drip irrigation once or twice a week and ended up with huge plants with huge potent buds. I knew nothing about different strains, just planted some gifted seeds. All this without knowing anything about weed cultivation. I had no books and wasn't a member of any forum. I had no idea about the best time to harvest and no idea how to dry and cure. I know I over dried the stuff but it turned out to be the best I have ever had.

And my indoor growing location is in the living space and my better half complains about the gnats. I can keep them under control but even that becomes extra work. I hope I have talked myself out of another indoor grow!

 

I hear you mate, one of the great things about cannabis is that there are quite a few ways to grow it successfully, I mean, there is a reason most of the pics you see of giant plants came from outdoor grows imo.

I can also sympathize on the fungus gnats, early on I tried going full organic before I fully knew what I was doing and those little turds got out of control, wife was not pleased.

For me personally, who smokes daily and has a decent entourage of family and friends to supply for everything from arthritis to ptsd (no one else seems to have the knowledge or compatible living arrangement to grow their own.) I like having the control over my crop cycles over running an outdoor summer crop that likely would produce more.

Also, I'm semi-retired so I go for a lot of walks around the neighborhood, and I can definitely smell or see some of the neighbors small outdoor grows, and I'd probably flip my shit and end up with an assault charge if I spent months tending an outdoor crop and some a-hole up the road doesn't cull their males and that pollen ends up seeding multiple lbs of cannabis.

Like you said, there are any number of factors that can make outdoor vs indoor more appealing to an individual. For me, its keeping me and my family reliably supplied without making 3 hour trips to the nearest dispensary for worse quality than I can grow myself. (and also not trusting the neighbors to have any clue wtf they are doing with whatever weird ass spindly bag seed stuff they got growing next to their back fence.)

 

If you use a good quality worm casting in your growing medium the hypoaspis miles a predatory mite will keep fungus gnats under control. I harvest my own casting and never have an issue with fungus gnats anymore. As for hard dense potent bud. Indoors under a well controlled environment will produce far better bud than outdoors in the Northeast. I grow indoors,outdoors and in a greenhouse. I grow regular seed, feminized seed and auto flowers.

 

Here's my $.02. Genetics matter here. OP is asking for potency (assuming THC content), size (assuming yield of some measure), and denseness (bag appeal). There are beans in the market that are capable of this, and some that are not.

Then you have to grow them well in whatever growing technique you choose.

I think @TimJ is spot on with his comments on growing techniques and what they're good for. I would add that if terps are your only guideline, outdoor living soil is the ticket (for all plants), but again, the beans have to be capable, and climate appropriate.