Staggered harvests or one huge grow?

[AcesFull]

Hi,

First post here. Been lurking for a while. Hope everyone is well today.

I have a 10x10x6.5 box in my garage with (3) 1000w lights. I'm in the middle of my first grow and not sure I'm thinking about the harvests correctly. The original plan was to have three separate grows going and stagger the harvests to roughly one every 20 days. That means all three lights at different levels and three different feeding schedules.

It also prevents me from providing 36 hours of complete darkness before switching to 12/12 since there's always a grow happening in there and the separate veg tent needs its 24/0.

It is more work, but my question is should I be doing one big grow under the three lights as opposed to staggering them out? Are there disadvantages of the stagger method that I'm not thinking about?

Thanks a ton and thanks for all you guys and gals do around here. I'm proud to now be a contributing member.

 

[simondetroit]

I started my initial grow out as a "perpetual" grow. 3 1000 watters and tried to time everything out so I had a harvest every 21 days. Problem was that I had multiple strains which made it impossible. so I have essentially been just vegging my plants to 30" and squeezing them into the flowering room. I do a ton of bending/lst to keep the canapy as level as possible. it make the harvest much more manageable to since Im harvesting 1 to 3 plants a day instead. Good luck

 

[TJGrow]

Saw your post. I'm doing a staggered grow with 4 1k lights now. I've been vegging up to it for some time and my first batch is only 40 days into flowering now. I plan for a batch of 4 plants every 10 days.
I decided on a rotation because I believe it will produce 50% more volume over growing a single batch with what I have available to me for a few simple reasons:
Flower room is always full
I can veg batches of 4 plants up to 60 days in a separate closet. The only place I have to veg a full batch of plants to that size is my flower room so I gain extra weeks flower time in my main room not vegging there and have plants with extra time in veg.
I can also cure one batch at a time on the back side where I face the same issue. The only room I have fully vented is my main flower room. So I don't have to wait to dry to put in the new batch.
More Plants
I move the oldest batch beside the lights while it flushes. One of my batches is always new and smaller giving me a little more room for the older batches. I always have more plants in the flower room then I could on a single batch.

I've solved the issues I face from multiple batches with some real cheap equipment. I'll see if there's any interest in this before I go on.

 

[PrairiePoet]

I've solved the issues I face from multiple batches with some real cheap equipment. I'll see if there's any interest in this before I go on.

Please do, or maybe start a new post. I've been working on getting a small continues grow. Trying to harvest every 6 weeks. Clone and veg for three weeks, flower for 9 weeks.

I'm always interested in better methods or ways to make it easier.

Prairie

 

[Steve McStoferson]

I do a perpetual grow with a much smaller setup. 1 600W HPS for flower and a 105W T5 for veg. Keep around 3-4 plants in bloom at a time, harvest 2 of them every month. I take clones a week before putting the veg plants in bloom. works really well for me.

 

[TJGrow]

Good to hear I'm not alone on perpetual growing. Here's the basics on what I'm doing:
I have 3x 125watt CFL in my veg closet:

I'm using 2 66qt tubs as trays supported by milk crates. Each can hold 10 6inch cubes. 20 plants making 4 batches each spending 40 days in the closet. Plenty of time for the girls to fully root the cubes and room to grow up over 2 ft tall.

In the flowering room I'm using 60 qt tubs with 2 or 3 plants in each. These are deployed to shelves or milk crates. All the tubs are deployed above the water line in the res so they drain. The tubs are plumed in pairs:

The sets of tubs are at different heights (milk crates) to level off the canopy. I'm using 18gal tubs with only 12 gal of water. The res are in another room next to the sink:

By using many small trays: I can move them in and out of the way to work on the plants. I keep different feed recipes including pH water to flush the lines. They aren't in the grow room so no excess humidity.

Here's the current layout of the flower room:

The new batches come in at the top and then get caged and moved under one of the 4 lights at 10 days. Then at 50 days they will move in between the lights and at 60 over to the side. My 1st batch was 8 plants of which I lost 2 already. Another benefit of small batches is that it limited the impact of the issues I've faced getting the room together.

I'm on a 12/12 at all times in the flower room but I have adjustable ballasts so I can raise and lower the light levels. I am just moving the plants in from 18/6 to 12/12. I can't darken part of the room.

For my next rotation I'll fire up my 4th light. I have several different strains now but will be focused in on Bubba Kush and maybe some X13. I have 8 BKs vegging up now behind some more OG Lemon Kush.

 

[Steve McStoferson]

thats a real nice organized setup you have going man, and your plants look great, so they must be loving it. I hope to make some major structural improvements to my room this coming year, then I'll be able to upgrade my equipment, but for now its doing its job and I couldn't be happier with the results.

 

[PrairiePoet]

Good to hear I'm not alone on perpetual growing. Here's the basics on what I'm doing:
I have 3x 125watt CFL in my veg closet:

Very nice setup...

Prairie