Sealed Room combined with LST, and HST for height control. Second grow attempt!

I am posting on behalf of a friend for his security reasons (Fuckin paranoid potheads eh... lol). I do NOT personally grow anything Illegal! All of my horticultural knowledge comes from many years of indoor gardening in EXTREME cold climates. I have been posting on this site for a while, and have been giving my friend advice on how to grow based on info I have found in this forum. He as asked me to post his set up as his results have apparently been fantastic thus far! Props to TRANOBLE and his thread http://boards.cannabis.com/growroom-...lbs-light.html as he is running a very similar set up to the one I run up north. His info is more tailored to "Medicinal Crops" and has taught me a SHIT TON about pushing my own crops to their fullest yeild. (Which is handy when you grow your own food!) Anyways.. enough of my blabbering.. here is his set up, I re-typed it to explain a few things.. and why I suggested he do it that way. He (or I) will answer any questions you may have.. but it may take me a day or two to track him down (He doesnt have internet.. and uses mine to check this site.. LOL)

Hey man, here is my set up!

Room Dimensions: 10'L x 7'W x 4'H
Bed Size: 2 beds 3'Wx 7'L x 6"D
Plant count: 60
Lights: 4 x 1000w HPS
Shades: Custom wing reflectors mounted over 6" cool tubes
Co2: 8 Burner Blu-ox with Matador controller
Cooling: 1 fan Keep Rite evaporative chiller, and 10,000BTU A/C as back-up/humidity control
Heating: 1200w fan forced heater with thermostat.
Soil: Sunshine Mix #4

Nutrients: GH Grow, Micro, Bloom
B-52 (Vitamax)
Liquid Kool Bloom (first 6 weeks bloom)
Dry Kool Bloom (7th week of bloom)
Growth Plus (Foilar Spray)

I feed every day when the lights come on. 2 feeds 1 water, 2 feeds 1 water etc. Just after feeding I mist the whole crop with Growth Plus as a foilar feed, the stuff works amazing! It also has natural anti-fungal properties so it will fend off the dreaded powdery mildew and bud mold! I stop spraying at the start of week 7 while the buds ripen. Here is the feeding schedual I am using for this crop, it is WAY stronger than anything I have seen. I am actually surprised each week when I up the feed that they are taking all of it without burning! You MUST use the B-52 (Vitamax) and Very high Co2 when using this agressive of a feed or you will burn the shit out of your plants! On the third day when I give the plants JUST water I add 1 extra gallon to the res. pH of the mixture is adjusted to roughly 6 +/- a point or two. The idea behind the daily feed is simple.. plants inhale Co2 through thier leaves during the day, and exhale oxygen through the roots at night. SO.. if you soak your soil so that you only water every 3 or 4 days.. the roots are basically "drowning" for the first few days as there is too much water around them and it makes it hard for them to oxygenate for the first few nights after a feeding. By only feeding just enough for a 24 hour period, it allows the soil to be as dry as possible and lets the roots breath really well.. try it.. it works wonders. This was formatted with Excel, so it gets kinda fucked when I post it on here.. but the formula goes like this... Week=Micro/Grow/Bloom/Gallons per feed/PPM. The food is displayed in ML per Gal.. so the first feed would be 48 micro, 24 grow, and 36 Bloom based on a 6 gallon feed. When I water.. I move VERY quickly.. counting quickly to 5 on each plant untill all plants are watered, then I go back between rows to finish off whatever is left in the res. The plants obviously use more water towards the end of the cycle.. thus.. the amount of water goes up as they get older ;)


1= 8/ 4/ 6/ 6/ 800
2= 10/ 5/ 10/ 6/ 1000
3= 12/ 6/ 14/ 6/ 1200
4= 14/ 7/ 18/ 7/ 1400
5= 16/ 8/ 22/ 7/ 1600
6= 18/ 9/ 26/ 8/ 1800
7= 20/ 10/ 30/ 8/ 2000
8= 0/ 0/ 0/ 9/ 0


I sealed up the room as best I could with Poly and tuck tape, the cool tubes are on a sealed loop in and out of the room with a blower hooked up to a variable fan controller. The blower I have is WAY too big so I need to be able to turn it down so that it doesnt create negative pressure in the room and suck all the Co2 out! The beds are made out of Duraboard.. which is kind of like MDF but its made out of polyethelene plastic.. so it will never rot. I set the bed frames on top of a piece of heavy duty poly and pulled up around the out side and stapled it to the outside of the box. Next I measured 8" spaces and put a series of screws in the tops of the beds lengthwise, and spaced the rows 6 inches from the front and back.. with a foot inbetween rows (need space to water!). Next I used regular mason line (String) to tie a grid across the entire bed so that I would have something to tie my plants down when I do the LST. The strings also help with watering down the road.. as its pretty hard to find the main stem through all the leaves once they mature.. so if you just keep an eye on the string.. you know where the plant is ;) I veg them till they are about 6 inches tall (usually about 3 or 4 days) due to my height restrictions I have to keep them short! At about day 10 of bud I lollypop the plants by taking off the bottom 5 or 6 branches.. this only leaves about 3 or 4 branches at the top of the plant. Once I have finished lollypopping, I take small pieces of rebar wire about 2-3 inches long.. and put duct tape around one end.. I then bend the wire into a "C" shape and use it to tie the plants down to the strings. as long as you do it early enough when the stems are still quite small.. you should be able to bend them quite easily without breaking them... Make sure you keep your duct tape handy tho.. if you do break one.. duct tape it up really quick right over top of the break and it will usually save your plant ;) Another fine use for the almighty Duct Tape!! LOL. During the first 3 weeks of bud, they grow like weeds! (heheh) so I usually check them every day and if some of them are getting too tall I use HST (Supercropping) to control the height further. I usually dont need to HST much.. as the LST training works really well.. You just have to keep moving the piece of wirefurther up the plant as it gets taller.. and it will just pull it more horizontal instead! My plants have not gotten much taller than about 16 - 20 inches from the soil.. but the stems are probably closer to 24-26 inches if you were to measure the actual length... any taller and they would be WAY too close to my lights! Temps are kept around 85 during the day and 75 at night, I didnt have my temp under control for the first few weeks of bud.. so these ones got a little bit streched unfortunately.. but I have a heater with thermostat now.. so next crop will be MUCH better! At the start of week 7 when the buds go into ripening mode.. I drop the temps to 75 during the day and 65 at night, this helped harden up my buds last time. And I tried turning the lights off for the last 2 days (At the suggestion of Tranoble) and it did make them a little more lime green.. not sure if this is good or bad.. but Ill try it again as Tranoble seems to swear by it! LOL.. This is only my SECOND GROW ever! And it already looks 10X better than my first grow. My first show yielded 2.4lbs off of 3 - 1000w HPS... Bought some new gear, sealed up the room and got a 4th light to even out the room as Jay suggested and BAM.. these babys are looking awesome! Here are a few pics of my set up.. these just hit 6 weeks in bud yesterday :-) [attachment=o286521][attachment=o286521][attachment=o286522][attachment=o286523][attachment=o286524]

Attachment 286826Attachment 286827Attachment 286828Attachment 286829UPDATE! Starting to flush today... I had to adjust the feeding schedual slightly as my soil was not drying up enough.. seems like 7 gallons is the magic number for weeks 4 through 7.. gonna try 8 gallons for the flush. Im going to be shutting off the Co2 today, and I will not be spraying with growth plus for the final week. Here's a few pics.. I will shoot some more when they come down!

Just got some pics sent over.. Final yeild was 4lb 7oz dried off of 59 plants and 4 x 1000w HPS lights.. The first pic shows how the stems are bent from the LST, second pic is the "King of the Crop" (yes.. that is ONE plant!) and 3rd is the biggest bud he pulled down.. That one bud weighed in at 24.6 grams dried... Just under an oz! The flush didnt seem to yellow the leaves as much as it normally does, and from the looks of it.. he could have let them go for at least another 4-7 days before taking them down. He doesnt have a microscope so he just went by the 8 week date.. Still.. not bad for his second attempt!

I posted this in the wrong thread to begin with... if there is a mod checking this out... could you possibly move this thread to the "Indoor Gardening" section! Cheers!

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