Hey everybody. I have 2 flower tents, each 76"x76"x76" outfitted with 4 600w lumatek digitals each. I grow 16 in each tent, given about 4 weeks of veg under a 1000w MH in a separate veg room. I use the entire foxfarm line (big bloom, grow big, tiger bloom, open sesame, beastie bloomz, cha-ching, kangaroots, microbe brew, sledgehammer) plus B-52 from advanced, botanicare cal-mag+, and blackstrap molasses. All water is RO. My best yield to date (been growing about a year) has been 41oz from one tent. I want to increase those yields and get closer to 1g/watt. I'm thinking I'd either need to veg longer (not really something I want to do), grow more plants, or SCROG. I think my best option in terms of improving yield without creating a lot more work or veg time, would be a SCROG. I'm just looking for the best methods of doing a SCROG in a tent. Because of the weight of the lights, I have to brace the middle of the tent with a vertical PVC pipe. This means doing one screen isn't an option. I'm thinking 2 screens, approx 74x36 or 4 screens approx 36x36. This would allow me to keep them at separate heights which would be useful. I often will grow one phenotype (of the same strain or different strains) under each light, so I think 4 screens will give me the most flexibility, as the different phenos will top out at different heights. Does this sound feasible? and if so, does someone have a DIY screen guide for a tent?
To make the biggest improvement on yield go hydro. Getting 15oz per 600w lamp is not hard. As for the ScrOG screens, they work great, but do require a lot of work compared to vegging longer, or using more plants. Are you filling your canopy area properly? Making a screen can be done a number of different ways but I would make a square frame out of wooden 2x2s or 2x1s and put a leg on each corner. Attach some 2"x2" screen and place this like a table over your plants. Making four of these would be straightforward. Some people use cord to make the screen but plants can pull it about too easily for my liking. I like to use steel wire screen used for animal caging and suchlike
I honestly don't believe that I fill my canopy well enough. I've gone both sides of having them too big and having them too small. Haven't really hit the sweet spot yet. I have some AK's in flower that are super busy but squat. I usually run 16 plants per tent, but on this grow, I didn't start enough clones, not all of them rooted, and they were stunted due to cold temps (which has since been resolved), so I only ended up with 12 plants in flower. Had there been 16, I think my canopy would've been fairly well filled out. I did a lot of aggressive pruning through the stretch and all the lower bud sites are well developed and almost caught up to the taller branches. I usually veg 4 weeks, but due to cold temps over the last month or so (ran out of heating oil and didn't refill right away) I've been giving them 5 weeks of veg. I just transplanted 16 clones yesterday and those I plan to give 5 weeks veg (which given the heat issue being fixed, should be plenty). What kind of hydro system would you recommend and how many plants? 76"x76" I have a brace in the direct center of the tent, so please keep that in mind when recommending a system. I'm assuming an 8 or 12 site DWC bubble bucket system?
Pruning while on 12/12 can only lower final yield. You're essentially making your plant smaller by cutting bits off. When in veg the plants have time to re-grow, but in flower they don't. Do all your training in veg, but when flowering cut nothing off. Except low down growing shoots so you don't have to deal with popcorn buds when harvesting. But if you want extra weight leave those too. I do, they are a nightmare to trim but it's all free. I would only use a DWC or F&D systems, in my opinion no other system can compete. Because of your centre brace you would be better off with either 2 large DWC reservoirs practically filling the bottom of the tent, or two side by side F&D set ups. The DWC would definitely be the simplest system, but it is quite noisy with all the bubbles from the air pumps. Btw F&D = Flood and Drain
I'm now thinking a 6' x 3' reservoir maybe quite hard to come by. You could use separate buckets but it's a lot easier to use shallow long and wide containers. I have a 2' x 3' reservoir, 4 of those would fit in your tent quite nicely. You could join all 4 with pipes and a water pump driving the nutrient solution around so you don't have to dick about with the rear reservoirs
I respectfully disagree that pruning in 12/12 can only lower yield. All those shorter tops that I have exposed to the light can now grow big and dense. I've still got a few more weeks to go but I think this run of the Cherry AK will be the best yield per plant (for that strain anyway) yet and this is the only time i have ever been real aggressive about pruning during the stretch. As far as ScrOG is concerned...I just built my first screen and I'm super happy with the result. I made it out of 1" pvc, interior dimensions of the screen are 31"x31" with 4"x4" holes. I put it into the tent today and it fits great. I guided tops to their new homes and will give a few more days of veg before flipping to 12/12. I plan to make 3 more screen tomorrow to finish the tent. The way it is set up, I have one screen under each light with 4 plants per light/screen. This way if I run multiple strains or phenos, I can adjust the height of the screen to suit that particular corner of the tent. Will post back with updates as they fill the screen.
They can't grow big and dense because they aren't vegging, they are flowering. And if your way of allowing light to get to the small shoots is to cut off the big shoots I can't help you, that is just insane. Next time just bend the large ones to the side
Woah, nobody's cutting off shoots, just the large fan leaves coming off of them that block lower tops. I'll try to get a picture of my bushes to show you.
And I'm not claiming to be an expert lol you gave me advice, i respectfully disagreed being that I have seen improvement, at least with this one particular pheno so far, by being aggressive about pruning during the stretch. My theory behind why I do it is, during the stretch, your bud sites are finding their final position in the canopy. If they have good access to light, they will stretch towards the light. If they were shaded, they will not catch up and I'd end with tops that are below canopy.
If you cut off the leaves where do you think the rest of the plant will get it's food from so it can turn it in to bud? It's the leaves that take the light, carbon dioxide and water and turn them in to carbohydrates so it can make more plant. Cut the big hard working leaves off and it will struggle. You will uncover hidden bud so it may appear to look like you have more bud to the untrained eye but the plant simply cannot function properly if you take away one of its resources
If they are below the canopy then they are the weak ones so don't worry about them. The canopy is made from the stronger shoots. Let them make your bud for you instead, you will get a far better return
I'm talking about very selective and strategic pruning. I leave 90% of the leaves on it man but theres things were topped a few times and had a fuck ton of tops. I agree that when it's not necessary to prune, that you should leave it alone. By no means am I an expert but I am certainly not a noob. I've grown several crops outdoors over the years and for the last year+ have been running 1000w veg and 4800w flower. I'll post the final yields when they're finished. I usually average 75-80g/plant with this pheno but I expect that with this round, I'm looking at closer to 100g/plant. I will post pictures. They are a little nute burned and heat stressed (fixing the heat issues with a bigger, more powerful exhaust and adding an active intake and cutting back on nutes a bit) but I think the results speak for themselves. Until then, I suppose we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm sure you have plenty of great growing info that one day I will benefit from, but on this particular issue, I am taking it with a grain of salt based on what i have observed. No disrespect.
I'll try to post pictures of the new ScrOG set-up (I suppose not a true scrog because they're not vegging long under the screen for more than a week, but I think I'll get a lot of benefit anyway). I think that if nothing else we can agree that the screen came out pretty darn good!
It's your grow man so you can choose how you do it, but cutting leaves off while in flower can only lead to lower yield because it is the leaves that make the building blocks that form the bud, less leaves = less bud. But good luck with it man, I hope you don't lose out on too much yield
It's not as simple as more leaves = more bud. If light cannot get to the budsites, they cannot fully develop.
Light getting to the bud does nothing, the bud hardly photosynthesises at all. That's not what the bud is for, the bud is its flowers, it's reproductive organs, it's job is to use energy from the leaves to make seeds. The job of the leaves is to make energy for the rest of the plant, and in the flowering stage pretty much all of it goes to make bud. So yeah it is that simple, all else being equal more leaves = more bud. If you (for example) cut half your leaves off, it would have the same effect as turning half your lights off. This is biology 101 man, go on the wiki page for photosynthesis it will likely explain it better than me