I was wondering if some of the more experienced Hydro growers could advise me on one of the first (of many) questions I have come accross. I am looking at hydro setups and am wondering exactly what reprocussions/benefits am I going to run into as far as grow cup sizes go? Will I severly limit my grow by using 3" cups as opposed to (insert any other option here)? At the moment I am looking at the AeroFlo systems and am a bit worried about not getting the full potential of my grow.
After thinking about it for a bit and rereading my post, I don't think my question was asked correctly. Bottom Line is that if I am looking to keep my plants in a Hydro setup that only uses 3" Cups throughout the life of the plant. What type of yield can I expect? Now I know that yield depends on the strain and is still dependant upon growing techniques. But I know that seed banks will give you rough yield estimates based on traditional techniques. Let's say for instance that that number given is 300g per plant. Using the above scenario what type of yield am I looking at?
i use 4" net pots & (almost) always had better crops than in soil using 1 gallon pots & 2 gallon buckets - the exception being a hooj monster grown in a home brew bin, but I got busted with that so didn't claim any bud my new hybrid system (below) uses 5" cubes. Starting off in 1" rockwool plugs, the 5"ers will see the grow through to the chop. 1 main advantage there - u can fit a lot more 3" / 5" pots in your growspace than 2 gallon buckets So, in short - ur hydro system will probably yield more inch for inch versus a soil grow, & also u will have more plants & finish earlier. * the figure some seedbanks quote is imho usually for the whole pack of seeds m8! Unless they're weighing the entire plant, including roots! I have yet to see a single plant yield 300g. That's over 10oz! U might be very fortunate to get 10oz from an outdoor plant, but that would take almost all summer to grow versus 12-15weeks in ur hydro garden. In your hydro setup - or any grow method tbh, u will be Very lucky to get 2 - 3oz per plant. (50-100g dried weight) In ur usual hydro setup - go sog / scrog, use 8 plants instead of ur soil growing m8's 3-4 & be happy with an oz or 2 per plant
The size of your net pots is of secondary importance to your yield, IMHO. Things like lighting, proper test equipment and nutrients will determine your outcome far more than netpot size. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no problem with using 3" pots. Assuming you have a big light (400W or bigger) and you can properly control your nutrients and growing environment, you can expect anywhere from 4-5 ounces to a pound per plant. It depends on the strain and how big you grow them. Outdoors, plants grown all summer may yield several pounds. (Num, I think the seed banks use a one meter sea of green for the most part to come up with their yield estimate. Yea, they are talking best case senario) Also, instead of buying a system, you could build your own using 5 gallon bubblers. The instructions are on this site. Growing several plants in one container presents serious crowding problems unless you intend to flower them when they are very small. (and get small yields) Read,read,read. There is a lot of information out there. Hope this helps some. Pigailia
Thanks for the info guys, I was just unsure of how detrimental smaller cups would be. I would not want to apply the perfect growing technique only to limit myself because I am not using something big enough to hold them. To give a bit more info, I am not going to skimp on anything, lights especially. I am pretty set on using at least (1) 1,000W hps I am still up in the air on how much space I am going to use (hence I am still looking at different sized systems) so all the rest will fall into place after that.