How many plants could I grow in this tote? It is 24" x 18" x 10" and is rated at 10 gal. Or can I grow anything at all with this?
im not crazy about the whole thing but it was free, and since I spent all my money on lights, tent, ventilation, and nutes figured that I would make due till I can get something more sturdy. I got 2 tanks they are identical and the first one has 5 holes in the lid, the other was not so I think I will just cut holes in that one. What type of pattern should I use? all in line or a triangle layout?
Depends, are you going to be using that tote as your pot through the whole plant cycle? Cuz I would only recommend putting up to 2 flowering plants in there at a time, then they each have about 4 or 5 gal of dirt to expand their roots. But if you're going for a smaller harvest you might be able to do 3 or 4 plants.
they cant get very big because the tent is not that tall (63") add the light and tote and its ~40" of grow space. So i figured the plants cant get any taller then 36". Am I way off here? Would topping or LST be necessary?
I can't say for sure because my plants are under much more powerful lights than yours so the rate of growth is probably way different, but I would recommend topping your plants or using some sort of trimming method to keep them short and bushy throughout vegetative growth so that when you put them into flowering they split their initial rapid growth between multiple main colas and end up forming a nice thick bush which will stay rather short and manageable. If you don't top or manicure your plants down they will definitely get tall as fuck though. I have a super silver haze plant in flower that I didn't trim right and it's like 2 feet taller than all 3 of my other flowering plants.
Just went in and measured them. The super silver haze is just over 4ft (not counting the pot), my 2 youngest flowering plants are just over 3ft, and the sugar shark which I'm harvesting tonight is just under 3ft, and it has been budding just as long as the super silver haze.
No cuz I use an HPS lamp and the light spectrum makes it pretty much impossible to take a pic with my phone (only camera) while the lights are on. I've got a couple green light pics that i'll try to upload in a little bit though. And i'll definitely have pics of the sugar shark buds after it's all trimmed up
I'd only go 2-3 max in that size tote, Cut diagonally if it were me that is: ------------ -O--------- -----O----- ---------O-- ------------- Like this. Height is pretty simple as the general rule of thumb is that a plant will triple in height during flower. So just take 1/3 of your vertical grow space and veg them out till they get that tall. If they get too bushy, you can tie down, lst, trim even etc...
Plants don't react to a green light spectrum, so I have a green lightbulb in my flowering room so that I can inspect plants during night hours (when the lights are off). Doesn't make for very good pics but this is what I mean: These pics were taken about 2 weeks ago though, I chopped down the plant on the right in the 2nd pic last night. Should get somewhere around 10g off of it, which would be good considering we gave it no nutrients until it was already half way through flowering.
Because I wanted to see how far I could push the sugar shark and the super silver haze without nutrients. But I didn't consider the fact that I would need to transplant them into fresh soil before budding to do that, so they started to die from macro nutrient deficiencies half way through flowering, at which point we gave them a low dose of nutes and then worked them up to standard dosage for about 2 weeks before flushing the sugar shark for harvest. The super silver haze is currently only being fed sugar water because it's getting chopped down in the next week sometime.
Right on, I thought that might have been what it was for but wanted to be sure. Very cool. Just any old "green" light? I run light hell out of my room when those lights click off lol.