I been honing my training skills for awhile and can get decent yield off of plants lower then 12" above pot. But I want them even shorter, so that has led me to come up with a better pot. I have gone out and looked for a decent low profile container and may have found what I am looking for. I already have some 6" 5 gallon containers which will be my base and then I have a 4" high container which will sit inside the larger container for my coco mix. The bottom will get lined with some Cocotek mat to keep the medium from leaking out the into the bottom. I will use the bottom container for a small res for my solution. The top container filled with my organic coco mix and will initially have a sheet of plastic in the bottom to encourage the roots to spread laterally. Once I am happy with the root mass, I will then remove the sheet and replace it with a plastic grate allowing for the roots to drop down into the solution. The general idea behind the system is the mating of quick draining coco blend and DWC. As of right now I have a cutting that needs to be moved over from a cup and may be a potential candidate if I can open it root ball up without to much damage. If it will not look to work out I have some cutting I took the other day and I have a divider in the cup to allow for me to spread out the root mass. I will get some pics later tonight of what I have so far and will post them over the course of the plants growth. This is a good example of some of my low plants. This one is to far along to use for this but like I said I got a a rooted possible candidate and if that wont pan out I got some cuttings of my Micro Mystic waiting to take root. Big http://forum.grasscity.com/attachme...312436551-organic-coco-round1-v-lv-030801.jpg
Got some pics The Layer of Cocotek Grating to support mat Upper container, outside painted black to control light, also has a series of holes on the rim. Dumped coco left a little room up top This is the plant I will use, a Yumbold 47 This will be the first in a series of pics to show how it goes.
that looks pretty sweet man, i cant wait to get the basics nailed down so i can start tweaking my grow like this. That first picture has awesome LST'ing.
Nice, I like this idea, i wasnt sure if you could grow weed in such shallow containers, and if the roots would spread out enough horizontally. ill be followin
You should see my container in the 3 oz grow. I have a piece of plastic acting as a barrier to get the lateral growth once I feel like it has spread out I will remove it and let the roots drop.
Nothing major yet just slowly getting the plant into shape. I did not take a pic but yesterday while mixing some some food into the soil, checked out roots they have spread about 5" around stem. Cleaned up all downward branches and have picked out my secondaries. Will continue to keep pinching and cutting back to build up some stem thickness. Once my secondaries hit about 1/4" will grow them up a a few inches then pull them over. My goal is to is to have a branch network cover the whole topside of container and about 4" between the branches and the container to give me working room to soil. It is a slow process but IMHO it worth the work and I enjoy doing it. My winter indoor peppers will be getting similar treatment but will have a larger gap to give room for peppers.
I do not have my camera for another week, but the plant is coming along great. I am about to remove the divider soon as the roots fill in the corners, they come up to all the sides now but still thin on the longer axis. I will wait though tell I feel like they can take a little damage when I pull them up to remove the plastic sheet. As for the solution in the bottom will probably just use a RO water Cal Mag mix at about 250 ppm and will continue to feed from the top. One thing I did not take into consideration when making the tray is a check/fill port in the lid which I will have to add in when I make the change to let the roots drop. So far with container plant height is about 8-9" and if I was to flower in current state would give me about 15-20 decent tips. Depending on how it all pan out after the roots hit solution, it could be very promising for future micro grows and will be integral to even smaller grow cubes.
Well horrible day today, went to ikea and could not find the boxes that I used as the base of this. Apparently they are no longer sold in the states and they also pulled there larger version which I use for DWC and also was going to be used for growing carrots. They have some new boxes in but they are no where near as sturdy as the old type and most my system were designed around those. I was there about a month ago and they still had them, wish I had known they were going I would have bought a car full of them.
Thats some crap news yo. I hope you can find something that matches what you had, look around. I hate when stores do that shit, it always happens to me. Good luck mang, cant wait to see some pics
I think I have one or 2 more of them around here but after that I can not make them the same way. I bought a handful of their new containers that replaced the better old ones. They are not as heavy of a plastic as the older type but still better then your cheap container at any major store. The down side is they are only clear and a smoked color. I also can not construct some as low as before but it would allow for a much thicker root mass. I will create something out of them. The original one looks great so far, waiting on the camera so when I start watering from the bottom I can keep track of how it does.
Before I cleaned up. This is one of the corners the roots are filling in. After I trimmed away everything I do not want. This is my main branching. This is a small Blue Mystic has been rooted maybe 10 days.
Looking great in here inda. I am surprised you don't have more of a following. You have some interesting methods and are alway pushing different ideas. Keep it up man.
This is real interesting stuff. I had an idea like this yesterday when i was blazing. I thought i would veg is a pot that is super shallow, but has the same circumference as my final pot. This way in my thinking u can have more density in your root system to form straight down and thus use more of the media and having bigger plants ultimately. I hope ive articulated myself in a way thats understandable to u man as I am really interested in your outcome to try and apply to my next grow.
This particular plant is going to be a mother, I wanted to minimize it's foot print and vertical height. I also wanted a simple system in terms of maintenance, which once my root mat has built up I will open the bottom and water from underneath. Depending on the overall success of this set up it may be used down the road for my micro grows. I am trying to keep 1/4 lbs yields per plant in an even tighter space, my goal is to be able to get 6 plants in about 36 cubic feet ( 48" W 18" D 72" H ). The down side is that the base containers have been pulled from market so looking a replacement at this time. I have a handful of potential candidates for the replacement but have yet to find something that will work as well. I got more pic once I find my cable, I pruned back a lot of growth to establish my primary and secondary branching. I now have about 35 tips but this will get trimmed back even further as I see how it develops. I generally use a mix of pinching and topping to generate an excess number of tips then will select the "best" looking from the bunch and clear out the rest. I give the plant a break from the stress then repeat the process all over. This is a slow process but gives me a large level of control over the form of the plant and also allows for me to develop a good infrastructure for bud development. At a later date I may do a journal specifically on my pruning habits and the reasoning behind my selection of branches. When I get to it it will be a fresh clone or seedling that way the reader can get an idea on the time frame and growth rates. Hell I may even do a Sativa, even though they are a bitch to work with to keep them tight and compact.
Here is the pics. Downward shot after the trim. Closer look at my main branching. Gives an idea of the height of the plant so far. I will be filling out that whole area of the white box before I let it go vertical. Close up of some of my tie downs. A lot of times I will just twist the stem to get it to grow lateral, the paper clip is to hold it in place while it hardens. The trim.
Switched over, now the roots can drop in the water. Was not to hard to pull it up just grabbed it at the base and pulled it up. Minus the lose soil at the top, where I turn in the food, it was a solid root mass. For now will use pure water, but considering added a little Cal Mag if the PH starts acting weird. Have not decided on how often I will replace the water yet. Over the next couple weeks should get a decent idea on how this will work out. As of right now if I wanted to I could flip this plant in one of my cubes and it would fill out nice but that is not it purpose in life. Later on I may try running something like this through my server rack grow area if it looks like it can support the plants well enough. For flowering in there I will go will a slightly larger water capacity, because right now I am only holding 3 gallons in the system. I have another system I am playing with in the early stages based on same basic idea of establishing a dense root mass for feeding. That system though I am being quiet about for the time period though, so you guys will have to wait. Top view prior to pulling it up The bottom A little over an inch thick after I brushed away the loose stuff. The top of the soil mat. The old plastic divider. The new plastic grate. The container was scrubbed out disinfected and filled with some RO just below grate.