First off: sorry if this is against the rules. to my question: for those of you that may grow, what are some technical aspects that are hindering you? Do you need more efficient lights? Is most of your electricity bill from water, or lights, or something else--etc. What do you think could be redesigned in your greenhouse? What's something you wish you had? What do you want or need to make more money? Basically, what bugs you about your equipment?
I fucking gate mixing nutes and PHing. I only have one gallon jugs to water right now and six plants that take more then one gallon to water so I have to keep refilling and mixing and PHing. I'm working on something better.
My main bug is hitting my head on my light every time I go in my tent lol But on a more serious note it's learning how to get the environment perfect as it seems to need constant tweaking lol
Haha, get a bucket and mix 5 gals at a time! Your grow is small and you got small problems. Nobody who is serious about growing uses "bag seeds"... Cost of electricity is the worst for me, although that can be solved by growing outdoors.
Instead of the 1 gal. jugs, get yourself a 5 gallon bucket. If you're op is in the house, fill it in the bathtub. Normally, the pH from the tap is going to stay about the same. I tested mine regularly for 3 years and it never varied on me, so I feel pretty safe with it being around the same time every time I draw water. I know how many drops of pH down I need for that 5 gal. bucket of water every time to get to the range I'm looking for, so basically I just go put the amount of this and that I'm using in the water, take the bucket to the tub and fill it up and mix it up. It's ready to give to the plants. We don't use nutes. We've run a soil grow for several years now and like most, I was convinced in the beginning that you just couldn't grow big plants without the stuff....WRONG. A couple of years ago or so, I stopped using them period. The key to growing a nice plant is light...not nutes. We use soil (Roots Organics Original), tap water (that I do pH...pretty much out of habit because managing the pH to the letter honestly isn't something you have to do with a soil grow) and LIGHT. We've never grown auto strains..and don't plan to start because unless you're good at what you do, I don't think you'll get anywhere the yield out of them you get from the regular photo strains. But the photo strains don't have issues with repotting...something I choose to do instead of pouring chemicals into my plants. A quality grow soil is already created just for growing these plants and is the correct mix (as far as drainage goes) and contains more than enough nutrition to feed a fast cycling plant like MJ. We allow the soil to do what I pay all that money for, and our yield has actually increased since I tossed them. The plant will always tell you if it's hungry and unless it's been in the same soil for a long period of time...like weeks and weeks and weeks, and generally it will have outgrown the container it's been in and is root bound, it's probably not hungry. When it DOES get hungry and need some food, it tells you by turning a washed out yellow green color (the foliage...and always new growth). As long as your plant is that nice rich blue/green we associate with a healthy plant...it is (new growth always when making a judgement about the health of your plant...old growth is dealing with time that has already passed) not hungry and does not need more chemicals. Nutes don't grow plants or get you weight at harvest. Giving a plant plenty of light and ROOM FOR LIGHT TO PENETRATE the canopy of the plant is what gets you a nice plant with big fat bugs. A high quality grow soil, tap water and LIGHT are the 3 ingredients necessary. Not saying you have to copy us or anything, but as an example: We run 4, 1000 watt HPS lamps per flower room (approx 10 x 13' or so) and flower 2 plants under each lamp (always keeping lamp and plant as close as possible without burning them) on a 10 week cycle. Our yields are averaging around 5 oz after cure per plant right now using soil, tap water and light. More plants won't get you more weight unless you have the space for them and, more importantly, the light to get them to produce. Didn't mean to write you a book here...just can't help it. LOL I was a medical transcriptionist for about 15 yrs and I type like the wind. But hope some of this info helps you out. A lot of people get the hydro and soil techniques crossed up. And, of course, the nute manufacturers WANT you to believe that you can't grow a plant without their stuff. But you don't have to do all that crap unless you just enjoy it...and I never have. I want nice big fat buds with as little effort on my part as possible. It's still a ton of work managing several plants, but I'm not working nearly as hard now as I was in the beginning when I didn't have a clue what I was doing. LOL Good luck. TWW
Two questions here. 1) What is your tent setup like? What indoor temp, what diff types of cannabis are growing, opacity of the tent itself, how many fans if any 2) how many factors are you checking when growing indoors? You say your growth environment is hard to perfect. Are you checking pH of soil and water and temps only, or what other factors are you checking for?
1) I have a 100cm x 100cm x 200cm tent and I'm growing 2 plants. I am growing autos cherry bomb and purple kush. I have a tall fan that stand on the floor and also a filter and fan. 2) seeds have only just come up but I've had my setup going for about 2 weeks now due to the first lot of seeds not germinating. I am checking the temp and humity. Also checked the ph of my water. Not checked ph of soil.
Okay sounds like you're a beginner. But that's good because I'm interested in what is hampering you too. Why didn't you buy a growbox? Are you not doing something more to (or for) your plants that you wish you could but can't because of cost? Also, what is the opacity of your tent? Completely clear, "foggy," "mostly see through" because I'm not expecting you to respond with some arbitrary percentage lol
I now mix a weeks worth of nutes in five gallon buckets under 3bucks at Home Depot , I also use Remo nutrients and very rarely do I ph here's some grape crinkles day 60+ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
No not very expensive you're right, but I think it's going a bit far to say no serious growers use bag seed. Hell, I've got a bagseed plant right now growing next to my sour livers and critical mass, does that mean I'm not serious about growing?
No, I didn't mean to accuse you or anyone of that. I'm just saying, I guess, most serious growers buy genetics produced from an actual reputable breeder. There's nothing wrong with bag seed per say, but you will almost never reach the full potential that good genetics will. At some point, people's bag seed weed can't get any better than their environment. That's when true genetics show their muscles
And I've never met a commercial grower (im in a legal state and have worked at these places..) who uses bag seed. In fact, I've never met anyone who doesn't grow as a hobby, that uses bag seed.
Yes total newbie lol When you say grow box I'm not sure I understand what your referring to...a grow box in my mind would be like for a micro grow...I have a tent that is specifically for growing...secret jardin. I didn't want it to cost me a fortune as it's my first grow but the only thing I think I would've spent more on if I could was lights..I have a 600w led light just maybe would've have done a lot more research into the best quality. Controlling temps and humity seems to be a tricky thing lol
Yeah bag seed is a gamble, but sometimes it pays off. If I had to choose between them I obviously wouldn't pick the bag seed, but I've grown some good bud from them. Just wanted to make sure you weren't one of those "bagseed is always garbage" type of people lol.
Nope, not one of those lol, I've grown plenty of bag seed. Its just totally worth paying a bit for genetics, especially knowing what you probably paid for setup costs...it's just sad to see people drop so much $ and then skimp on seeds, one of the cheaper items lol.