DarkStar Project - Advanced Growing

Years from now, some guy is going to have a singular amazing, standout grow or plant, and people are gonna be "Wow, that thing went full Mr Smith. Good job!"
 
I made a error. These are pics at day 11 in flower.

Here some pics at day 17 in flower. The plant is 3 and a half feet tall and it doesn't matter which side you measure with its between 4 and 4.5 feet wide. The roots really filled up the tote and are looking good. The base is really fat with multiple heavy lateral branching.
BPN 2part 50/50mix at 1050-1100ppm

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I don't know about you but I'm impressed. I really hope she's worth the effort I am putting in to her. She's the biggest plant I have grown so far and looks to dawf that 10 ouncer I had last time. Think she's worth rating this journal? Opinions please.

I made a error. These are pics at day 11 in flower.
 
I harvested 496 grams from the sog. The buds have a good density and bag appeal. I am pretty sure I can improve the numbers since I burned this crop during a crucial bud building time. The gram per watt ration is .496grams per watt. Plant arverage is 13.77 grams per plant.
I like this type of sog and will practice more of this type of growing in the near future with both my aero 36 and my aeroflo 60.

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The darkstar mother I am flowering is looking great. Not much to tell. I was using bpn 2 part nutes(monster bloom schedule) at 1300 to 1350 ppm with 2ml blue booster per gallon. I am switching to the 3 part bpn and will be keeping ppm the same but will use boomblastic as a booster for week 4 and week 5 nute change then will continue with the blue bpn booster.
This is a pic at day 19 in flower

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And here is a pic at day 26 in flower.

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2 days ago she fell down and I had to make a stand with stakes to support her. She became top heavy and I am using a 10 inch pot net.
 
The sog grow was the end of the first part of the darkstar project. The second part is about the flowering darkstar mum in the diy rwdc and today is day 29 in flower.
The 3rd part of the update is about the last part of this journal, the vertical tube diy. Its going to be a large part of this journal so I am taking a short break to burn a fatty and recollect my thoughts. This part of the grow op should turn a few heads just because it looks awesome and stoner complicated. The goal of course is to bust the 1 gram per watt ratio.
 
12/29/11 was day 12 for the clippings rooting in the cloners.

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Most of the clones I need are ready for transplant but unfortunately I was not prepared. I just started to make the dwc stations to help promote more root growth while I clean, move and reset the level of the tubes on the vertical.
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The dwc stations are 27 gal. totes with a bunch of 2 and 3/4 inch holes cut into the lids.
The lids were then spray painted with that paint made for plastics to light proof the lids.
The totes were then filled with 18 gallons of aged tap water and bpn nutes were set low at 600ppm. 4 foot flexible air stone/wands are placed at the bottom of the totes and are hooked to 1 big airpump. 1/3/12 the clones are placed into the dwc stations to veg until I get the vert running. The next day I added another air pump and now have 2 4 foot air stones in each tote. One of the clones died leaving me with 84 clones intead of 85.
These pics are from 1/10/12. Plants were trimmed the day before.
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And roots at 1/13/12
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Right after the sog was harvested from the aero 36 I broke down the system and moved the vertical tube machine to the middle of the room so I can have access to all the plant sites from the outsides of the machine so I don't have to crawl into the middle to check and prune the plants. The tubes were releveled so there is a constant decline on each tube then I resealed all the joints with silicon calk in case I created any leaks. After the tubes were sealed and cured for 24 hours I ran the plumbing to retrofit the diy into a ntf drip system. Each plant site gets its own drip tube. The first test run only 2/3ds to 3/4ths of the drippers had water coming out of them. There was not enough pressure from the 1000gph pump for all the lines to work so I installed shutoff valves or 2gph drippers to enough drippers to build enough presure for all the drip lines to work at a good flow rate. This new water delivery system now seems to work. I have the drippers on the top tube wide open to give the most water delivery and the 2 middle tubes have shutoff valves on the drip lines that are cracked open enough to give beat the 2gph drippers. I have the 2 gph drippers installed on the bottom tube and thats because I ran out of shutoff valves.

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1/17/12 day 0 flower

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1/18/12 is day 1 in flower cycle. I always tell people growing is as easy or as complicated as you make it. I like both easy and complicated.
 
Man, ingenuity is WAY too slender a word to describe that bro! Don't you love the versatility of some 2x3's, pvc, and a few thousand zipties, I do!!!
 
The darstar mum I kepted in veg is a very good mum. I have been giving here rough trim jobs to keep her at bay and she would be great for getting large amounts of clippings. Unfortunately I don't need her anymore so I took a few pics as I bagged her and threw her away. Say good bye to mommy. The darkstar project ends when the vertical grow is finished.

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While I was cleaning up the veg room and getting ready to dispose of the ds mum I germed a number of seed of different strains to have my variety back.

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2 reserva privada's purple wreck fems
1 th seeds mk ultra fem
1 delicious seeds fruity chronic juice fem
2 moscaseeds sweet tooth reg
2 moscaseeds cinderella 99 BX1 reg
1 world of seeds northern lights x big bud fem
2 th seeds heavy duty fruity
These will be used on another grow project and I hope to get a few good mums. This might be a beginning of another production type journal.

This is the end of the updates for today. Any questions or comments are welcome.
 
just came across this, that it one cool setup! im gonna ride this one out for sure. is this your own design? or did you modify from something else? ive seen similar setups but not like this.

The diy vert started as a repleca of one of Heath Robinson's setups but then I changed the water delivery and made it my own using tech and knowledge I have found in other grows through out the forums. Its not new tech, anyone can build it if they want to but going this big is a lil pricy when it comes to materials.
 
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