So I've been thinking about how to go about my situation for next year. I figured...who better to ask than the readily available minds here on GC. So come August...I'm moving into a house where I can set up a legit, homebuilt stealth setup with a significant size and yeild increase. I've decided that I'm going to use the SOG method, I just haven't figured out which road to take at this point. This is where your bright ideas will hopefully help. My delimma is this...which grow method should I use for a small SOG operation to maximize yield and space? I think I've narrowed it down to two options, but I'd love as many new ides as y'all can throw at me. Option 1: Flood table. I'd have one veg room for my mother plants (between 2 and 4 ladies) and a flower room for my clones. I'd have 4 tables set up...one for week 1-2, one for week 3-4 and so on. I would not give my clones any veg time, potentially taking 20 clones every two weeks and having a perpetual harvest of *hopefully* 4-6 ounces every two weeks. Option 2: Same mother plants, different flowering idea. I am still looking to take the same amount of clones and have the same harvest every two weeks. I feel like this method would save some space, though. In this method, I take the clones and put them directly into 1 gallon grow bags. It would be a bitch to handwater 80 ladies every few days, but that's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make. The reason I'm probably considering this method over the flood table is because I feel like it would conserve much more space. This method would be much easier to put in a stealth setup than the aforementioned. I'm not positive about these numbers, but I'll give you a rough estimate of the space I feel I will have. My veg room will vary, depending on how many strains I have going. My flower room will probably be somewhere in the area of 4' x 5'. Height won't be a concern, as I will be putting the clones straight into the flower room. Depending on how much space this actually takes up, I will have anywhere from 1 to 2 400W HPS bulbs. Possibly a mixture of HPS and MH if I decide to go with two. Anyways, if any of you got this far...thanks. And let me know what you think would be my best bet for yeild and space.
Hang on, 20 clones every 2 weeks with a flowering time of say 8 to 10 weeks, thats between 80 and 100 plants. You talk of STEALTH This I gotta see
First of all, use two 400w HPS lights and decrease your grow space to 4X4 to give you a 16 sq. ft. flowering room. This will give you 50 watts/sq. ft. wich is nice to produce thick, dense buds. Also, stick with HPS only; the high lumen count and red/orange spectrum will promote better yields. In a SOG garden with tons of plants, hand watering may seem rather arbitrary so I would recommend an ebb and flow flood table system filled with 4-6" rockwool cubes and dialed into a timer for automation. P.S. Have you looked at rumpleforeskins DWC setup...If not, check it out for this may be a method of growing that you will want to try. Please respond with comments or questions- Dr. T
Yes, I'm currently using Rump's bubble bucket as we speak for just a couple plants. The problem with this is it takes up too much space. If you notice, I'm looking to harvest around 20 plants a week. I don't feel like this would be too hard to keep stealth if I stick to grow bags or find a flood table method that would be able to fit a large amount of very small plants. If I were to use 1 gallon grow bags and go straight from clone to flower and focus all the growth to the main cola, I feel like I could stack them side by side. My estimate is after I tweaked everything just so, I could get a consistent 5 gram main cola per plant. 20 plants at 5+ grams per plant is very close to 4 oz's every two weeks. I could be wrong, but this seems more than doable to me.
Yes, the bubble buckets do take up more space and so you can only have a few plants...But huge buds. I used to use a 4X4 flood table that sat on top of a res with an 8" carbonaire in a 4X5 closet powerd by a 1000W HPS. I packed the table with about 130 cuttings in 4" rockwool cubes. I used a simple GH Flora series nute system and had a Tri-meter to keep track of pH,TDS, and solution temp. The cuttings went straight to flowering with no veg and the deal yieded about two pounds easy. I felt like the square cubes fit nicely together and made it easy to work with. I am currently experimenting with DWC methods and current-culture along with top-training and trellising to yield large quantities from few plants. So far so good. Setup that room and keep us posted!
That sounds perfect for my situation. Did you have any PH problems with the rockwool cubes? And do you think I could pull off my goal of 4-6 ounces every two weeks, using two 400W HPS bulbs? Thanks for the advice, DrT.
Rockwool will definately give you pH problems if you do not treat it with rockwool solution or soak in low pH water prior to use. Rockwool has a pH around 14 naturally; however, If soaked in solution first and monitored throughout the grow, it should be fine. I used a TRi-meter in the res which constantly monitored the solution and made it simple to adjust pH if needed. So long as your environment is kept under control, this could be made to be much less maintenence than hand watering the bags. Once you have dialed in your program for it is different for everyone, and enrich with CO2, you should be able to produce from 6-8 oz every two weeks or so, depending on the bud size and flowering time of your strain. At first, dont be dissapointed if you yield 2-4 oz every two weeks...which should be enough to keep you medicated.
I don't expect the big yields to come right away. Luckily, I'm a patient guy and quick learner. Thanks for stopping by, amigo.