TJGrow
New Member
Greetings and welcome to the TJGrow journal. I'm starting the journal after getting thru most of my setup and build out. I'm writing all this up in the hope of finding a few like minded online grow buddies. I always need a little help and I'm at the point where I can help others. This may not help folks with small grows as you won't face the same space constraints or folks with very large facilities. But for other folks with a single "bedroom sized" grow rooms this should be very valuable.
I've been part of a couple of grows with a partner. My first grows were run by my partner using 4 600w HPS lights. I just followed along and learned what I could. While I got a lot of hands on experience and we did produce decent grows I learned more from the mistakes. I learned a lot for the experience and now that I'm building out on my own I'm applying what I learned from that and what I've found online into a more valuable operation.
My First Grow:
Goals
What I'm setting out to do is to maximize the production value of my facility. I'm looking to get the most quality and quantity product out of what I have available.
The nut here is to keep the plants alive and viable thru the grow. Given how helpless the plants are in a grow room this is a big job not to be taken lightly.
Why Perpetual
Time
Plants must survive at least 4 weeks vegging, 9-10 weeks flowering, 1-2 week drying, and 2 weeks curing. While these times can vary greatly I'm using times on the Kush strains I'm growing to illustrate my point. That's 13-14 weeks in the grow room or 3-4 batches a year. With my partner we did all this work in one grow room using 4 600w lights. It was the only place we had both big enough to hold a full batch of plants at the end of the veg. Once we cut them down we had to dry in the room because we still needed the area and the venting to hold the batch. We were unable to use all the lights all the time. You could speed up the grows with less veg time or you could try to force the harvests early but this costs volume and yield.
Space
I knew we had a problem when we put the first batch on the grow trays. All those little bitty plants on the grow tray just looked like a total waste of space. The issue was that we did need all that space to hold the fully grown plants so we couldn't use any more plants. The area under our lights went from empty to full during each grow. I have limited space and more space comes with increased overhead and risk.
Splitting the room into 1 veg light and 3 flower lights would knock the 4 weeks of veg time off each grow. You end up with 12 week batches or 4 per year but each batch is only 3 lights. It's a wash on the yield. (4 lights 3 batches or 3 lights 4 batches) I had to add a veg room big enough to hold a full batch so I could still grow 4 lights. I don't have that kind of space available.
Shit
Shit happens. My partner and I faced many issues with these batches: Mites, mold, nutes, grower errors and a heat wave. With 3 batches a year losing one is catastrophic. You can't replace dead plants during the grow so you just lose yield with each issue and you don't get a chance to make it up.
Perpetual
Space Solution
You want to keep the space full at all times to maximize the yield. As soon as I started in on planning multiple batches seemed like the only way to keep everything full all the time. With many small batches I don't need a full sized veg room I can get by with a veg closet. I still hold a full room of plants but as some are very young and small, only the oldest of the girls is close to full sized. My batches are between 4 and 6 plants and are targeted at the same canopy footprint. I'm buying my clones for now so my new plants are 4 inches or so tall in 1 inch cubes. I can grow them up to over 2 feet and still hold 4 batches in my veg closet. The closet uses 3 125 watt CFL lights which are cheap to run. These have proven capable of producing the needed maturity in 40 days. My rotation period is 10 days as my flower room will hold 6-7 batches allowing 9-10 weeks of flower time without overflow. New batches in the first 10 days of flowering are really growing out with the girls doubling in size. A combination of the natural growth pattern and the increased light level moving from 125 watt CFL to a spot beside the 1000w MH lights. Once they start to bud out the growth slows to just the buds. The plants have a full canopy and are ready utilize a full light for the next 40 days. When they hit 50 days they move into the confluence area between the lights. At 60 days they move out beside the lights until they are fully harvested.
Both my veg and flower rooms will fill up to capacity and stay that way until I shut it down.
Time Solution
The most valuable time I have is under the flowering lights. This is the bottleneck on my grows. Vegging in the separate closet knocks 4 weeks off my batch time in the flower room. My harvests are only one batch at a time. I will always have a batch drying in dry box in the flower room beyond the lights. I reduce the time each batch spends under the lights 5-6 weeks. I'm harvesting "1 light" every 10 days for a possible 36 batches a year. Instead of 3 batches each 4 lights a year (12 lights of yield) I can do 36 batches of 1 light (36 lights of yield) With my 4 plants a light model that's 48 plants harvested vs 144. The killer part is that my costs are almost the same. The increased over head is mostly the expense of the plants food, and medium. I will spend a little more on lights. No dark weeks to dry or idle lights during veg. Even if I lose volume if would have to be ridiculous to not come out ahead.
Shit Solution
With a rotation up and running losing a plant or even a full batch is much less of an issue. I have another right behind it to take its place. I can test strains and everything else one batch or plant at a time. I can apply a new trick to the next batch 10 days later. I still face faculty wide issue like bugs but I have two separate rooms giving me some protection from that.
I'm still working on these sections to follow with plenty of diagrams and pics:
Set Up
Vegg Closet
Water Room
Flower Room
History
I've been part of a couple of grows with a partner. My first grows were run by my partner using 4 600w HPS lights. I just followed along and learned what I could. While I got a lot of hands on experience and we did produce decent grows I learned more from the mistakes. I learned a lot for the experience and now that I'm building out on my own I'm applying what I learned from that and what I've found online into a more valuable operation.
My First Grow:
Goals
What I'm setting out to do is to maximize the production value of my facility. I'm looking to get the most quality and quantity product out of what I have available.
The nut here is to keep the plants alive and viable thru the grow. Given how helpless the plants are in a grow room this is a big job not to be taken lightly.
Why Perpetual
Time
Plants must survive at least 4 weeks vegging, 9-10 weeks flowering, 1-2 week drying, and 2 weeks curing. While these times can vary greatly I'm using times on the Kush strains I'm growing to illustrate my point. That's 13-14 weeks in the grow room or 3-4 batches a year. With my partner we did all this work in one grow room using 4 600w lights. It was the only place we had both big enough to hold a full batch of plants at the end of the veg. Once we cut them down we had to dry in the room because we still needed the area and the venting to hold the batch. We were unable to use all the lights all the time. You could speed up the grows with less veg time or you could try to force the harvests early but this costs volume and yield.
Space
I knew we had a problem when we put the first batch on the grow trays. All those little bitty plants on the grow tray just looked like a total waste of space. The issue was that we did need all that space to hold the fully grown plants so we couldn't use any more plants. The area under our lights went from empty to full during each grow. I have limited space and more space comes with increased overhead and risk.
Splitting the room into 1 veg light and 3 flower lights would knock the 4 weeks of veg time off each grow. You end up with 12 week batches or 4 per year but each batch is only 3 lights. It's a wash on the yield. (4 lights 3 batches or 3 lights 4 batches) I had to add a veg room big enough to hold a full batch so I could still grow 4 lights. I don't have that kind of space available.
Shit
Shit happens. My partner and I faced many issues with these batches: Mites, mold, nutes, grower errors and a heat wave. With 3 batches a year losing one is catastrophic. You can't replace dead plants during the grow so you just lose yield with each issue and you don't get a chance to make it up.
Perpetual
Space Solution
You want to keep the space full at all times to maximize the yield. As soon as I started in on planning multiple batches seemed like the only way to keep everything full all the time. With many small batches I don't need a full sized veg room I can get by with a veg closet. I still hold a full room of plants but as some are very young and small, only the oldest of the girls is close to full sized. My batches are between 4 and 6 plants and are targeted at the same canopy footprint. I'm buying my clones for now so my new plants are 4 inches or so tall in 1 inch cubes. I can grow them up to over 2 feet and still hold 4 batches in my veg closet. The closet uses 3 125 watt CFL lights which are cheap to run. These have proven capable of producing the needed maturity in 40 days. My rotation period is 10 days as my flower room will hold 6-7 batches allowing 9-10 weeks of flower time without overflow. New batches in the first 10 days of flowering are really growing out with the girls doubling in size. A combination of the natural growth pattern and the increased light level moving from 125 watt CFL to a spot beside the 1000w MH lights. Once they start to bud out the growth slows to just the buds. The plants have a full canopy and are ready utilize a full light for the next 40 days. When they hit 50 days they move into the confluence area between the lights. At 60 days they move out beside the lights until they are fully harvested.
Both my veg and flower rooms will fill up to capacity and stay that way until I shut it down.
Time Solution
The most valuable time I have is under the flowering lights. This is the bottleneck on my grows. Vegging in the separate closet knocks 4 weeks off my batch time in the flower room. My harvests are only one batch at a time. I will always have a batch drying in dry box in the flower room beyond the lights. I reduce the time each batch spends under the lights 5-6 weeks. I'm harvesting "1 light" every 10 days for a possible 36 batches a year. Instead of 3 batches each 4 lights a year (12 lights of yield) I can do 36 batches of 1 light (36 lights of yield) With my 4 plants a light model that's 48 plants harvested vs 144. The killer part is that my costs are almost the same. The increased over head is mostly the expense of the plants food, and medium. I will spend a little more on lights. No dark weeks to dry or idle lights during veg. Even if I lose volume if would have to be ridiculous to not come out ahead.
Shit Solution
With a rotation up and running losing a plant or even a full batch is much less of an issue. I have another right behind it to take its place. I can test strains and everything else one batch or plant at a time. I can apply a new trick to the next batch 10 days later. I still face faculty wide issue like bugs but I have two separate rooms giving me some protection from that.
I'm still working on these sections to follow with plenty of diagrams and pics:
Set Up
Vegg Closet
Water Room
Flower Room
History
I'm sure the more roots the better but I have space constraints to deal with. I've got just under 5 feet of space between my lights and the bottom of the trays. I need 1 foot minimum of that for a gap between the light and the canopy, leaving say 4 feet. I'm in six inch cubes leaving 3 1/2 feet for the plants at present. Given the growth patterns I'm seeing I don't think the plants will out grow the space but there's not much room for more medium. To me it's more an issue of what percentage of my height is required for the roots. Also, I'm filling the trays with 3 inches of water at present and there's not much more room to make that deeper. I've got the two plant trays so I can run a test in one to see if the balls increase the yield.
I am very interested in your grow and I will defiantly be checking in on your grow every now and then. Keep up the good work.
but i definetlly want to get into something like this as soon as possible!!!!!
