New location, New strains, New adventures, and New Problems

[painretreat]

Thanks CChrissy,
My apology for not being a loyal writer and just a loyal subscriber and reader! I so enjoy your thread, just so many to read. However, I just love the picture of your set-up's writing, etc! And you brother, send him over. At least he is of some use, mine were all dud's and didn't do anything to help! At least he knows electricity, give him the weed when he is finished, next time!

Thanks so much for all your time and the entire thread. It seems pretty doable for me! As I am trying to get myself together for a early Spring grow! That is one heck of a nice yield!

I doubt what u use will make that much difference in wt. though. By the way, do you have any left in flower on the plant? I don't think I've seen very many real good pictures of the fowers. They are pretty too! Everything is pretty right now!:stoned: have a good day! PR

'buddy' the frog must return to eat the mite and spiders! You didn't bleach him out did u? Pr :jointsmile:

[Chronic Chrissy]

Hey PRT Thanks for following along. I didn't get any bud shots really, I'll keep it in mind next harvest when I get some dildo size buds. I don't think the frog got bleached, I didn't bleach the veg room and turned the fans between them off for a while. Oh and with how much we have been smoking I'm sure we've made a dent. GTG busy day!

[painretreat]

Size doesn't matter with bud, take some bragging pictures. I bought some books tonight and I can now see, any bud that grows well and harvests well is well worth the picture! Saw a room full of waste from bugs! U did real good gal! Keep it up!! I'LL keep my eyes open for 'buddy' to return! Pr :thumbsup:

[Chronic Chrissy]

Pain I got 3.5 ounces with no stems off that last harvest, and one really nice pic for you, I just have to get it up now.

[r00tdoctor]

I'm still around crissy, hows she smoke? I see you have a small army of plants in waiting so soon you wll be overflowing with herb. You should just make a cheapo bubble cloner yourself get a small plastic container a aquarium air pump and a couple air stones and clone to your hearts content lol i made mine for next to nothing and it works like a charm.

[frostedwonder]

I think I am a fan but one question to anyone who has read this... Using that much space and having as many plants as you mentioned wouldnt your yield be much higher? I have seen people pull tons out of 10-20 plants... nice detailed thread tho just more of a question on results/risk it is of course your hobby as well as mine,,so keep growing and writing..

[Chronic Chrissy]

I think I am a fan but one question to anyone who has read this... Using that much space and having as many plants as you mentioned wouldnt your yield be much higher? I have seen people pull tons out of 10-20 plants... nice detailed thread tho just more of a question on results/risk it is of course your hobby as well as mine,,so keep growing and writing..

You're right my harvest were sad and pitiful but I've learnt alot. Not to mention I haven't been updating this thread in forever. I've learnt alot about the weaknesses in my set up and am still working through them. Since I've posted last I've got a pretty good cycle going of 10 plants in and out every 3-4 weeks. Which means there are always two cycles going half a flowering period apart. I'll fill you all in in a few hours about the changes and thing I've learnt that have made big differences. Just because you have the space and lights doesn't mean you have your most important resources addressed and covered, just remember that.

[Chronic Chrissy]

Wow looking over this I can see just how far back this thread goes. You guys have missed alot! But that's all my fault.

Anyways Frosted you are right that was a very low harvest when the outdoor plants came in. It was also a low harvest after that and then again.

My first problem I had to deal with was the temp issue. We have feirce winters here with temp dropping easily into the -30f. It so cold here that 2 out of 3 of my doors are frozen right shut for the winter and the third usually has to be defrosted to open, so even getting outsdie to the garage is hard. Lights give out alot of heat but not enough around here, even with the 2 1000ws in the grow room. The additional problem with the energy and money put into heating is that the intake air is as freezing as the outdoor -30 air and your heat goes out with the exhaust. The great thing about my grow being vented into the garage however is that I have no humidity problems. All the vapor condenses and freezes on the large garage door which is now incased in about 4 inches of ice in one huge sheet.

The flower room has it's own heater and thermostate but it also incorperates the cloning/early veg room into it where temp consistancy is much more important ans sometimes harder to control as the flower room temp fluctuates. The clones on the shelf are fine and rather stable under the flouros 24/7. But below under the 400mh there was such a temp differnce from the pot/root level to the 3-4inches of plant growth that the roots were always too cold and the tops were a little warm. Even up off the floor on grates the concrete pulled so much cold out of the ground into my area.
The third room(I'm not sure you even know about this one yet!)
I needed a buffer room one that could be used when needed for what ever. At the time I wanted to switch my veg plants to 8/16 to ease them into flowering faster and allow for the roots to develope strong and healthy. I took 10'x10' of panda plastic and built a 6'x2' room up on one of my counters allowing for about 4-5' of verticle space. After flowering the plants that grew all summer I lwearnt how inefficient tall plants were and how much you really waste on them. The new goal was to have plants no taller than 2' from the souil after flowering was done. I built the room with a plastic bottom so the drainage could all be diverted easily into a pail on the floor and used the same grates on the bottom as my other rooms(I love my pig grates they work great for everything!). I put in a spare 400whps horizontally and on the small wall shared with the garage I installed one of my bathroom exhaust fans(120cfm) half way up the wall and directing the air up towards the ceiling. At the other end of the room I cut and exhaust hole about 6 inches close to the ground which opens up into the work area of my back room which contains all my grow rooms. This allowed the air to be shot up over the plants flowing along the light then down and out.

My plants ended up loving their time in this room especially and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why 'till a few weeks ago. Once the plants were switched to this room the roots were kept rather consistantly warm because of the path of the cooling air, but when the fan kicked in it provided enough cool to keep the tops at the right temp just long enough to not affect to root temp. A simple timer adjusted as the temp changes maintains my temp in there. It works so well I've shut down my other veg room below the clone shelf and move all my new clones and vegging plants to the buffer room. This is just temporary though. I've had a hitch lately and fell behind with my cloning so I have lots of room. Once I get back on track and ready for spring planting I expect all the rooms to be full to capacity once I build my stock back up.

Another reason why I never brought in good harvest were bad genetics. I had the white rhinos which were of scetchy origin, and hermaphrodites. As much as I thought they should still produce well I really didn't understand how bad my strain really was until I started concentrating on growing my juicyfruit strain well. Side by side I really was able to see the big difference good seeds make, and that having a good mother stock was essential for harvest outcome. I decided to concentrate on cloning only my juicy fruit and phasing the white rhino out as I had healthy JF to replace them. Needless to say I always seem to accidently take at least one clone from an unknown WR and just can't seem to get them out of rotation, lol. There is always at least on white rhino per cycle somehow. But one hermi doesn't even seem to seed itself, not like before when I had crops full of seeds.

Oh yeah mothers! I was having to much trouble with my mothers and keeping them happy and balanced. After spending the summer outside with the other plants I picked up thrips and mites which I fought so hard to get rid of through out ever room. I quickly learnt that the only way to get rid of them was to concentrate my efforts in getting a step ahead of them. I gave up on trying to rid the mature plants of pests and instead concentrated on keeping the new clones as pest free from the start and preventing back contamination. I put my mothers to flower and used my trimmings and toppings as my new clone stock and learnt alot more about training and shaping plants as wellas clone selection. As time went on the new shoots grew faster than the pests could move up the plant. The clones became pest free and I noticed less and less pests in the early veg room then in the buffer room, and now I don't see any evidence of them at all anywhere. They may be hiding though, but so long as I use rapid growth to stay ahead of them I think I'll be fine.

The alcopolco gold is long gone and was such a bad hermi that I killed all my flowering plants half way through flower.
There is a down side to not having mothers though. Life got busy I forgot to clone my vegging plants and got lazy with the clones I had going. I soon found myself with the vegging plants in flower and no stock to take fresh clones from. That ment patiently nursing slower clones so they could be healthy enough to get the cycle going again as slow as it was I'm finally(just the other day) back up to a safe stock and finally able to start on my spring preparation. In the mean time it seems my next cycle will be a little late going in since they need a little more time to fill out and there is no sense in rushing things because then everything falls apart.

That brings us to the water issue. you would figure with 3 feet of snow on the ground water would be easy to come by. well it's not! My current and the most efficient system I have it filling a rubbermaid contaier with snow and setting it up on buckets(other wise it will neve thaw with the cold coming through the floor) and waiting 3 days for it to thaw and hoping there is enough for everyone. the other big thig besides the time it takes is that I have a 2 year old and am about 6 months pregnant. Finding time to "harvest water" (since it is too cold to take the kid with me to even play in the garage while I work) is becoming increasingly difficult, not to mention to loose joints that come with pregnancy that open me to more injuries and sore muscles. It's just a really pain in the ass! Next to money, water is my most restricted resource and you can only grow as well as your weakest link. Due to water rationing flushes weren't happening as often as they should have, so I adjusted my nute concentrations to avoid build up. as our harvests came in and we got a few more bills caught up I was able to buy RO water for flushes which I do once a month as the new plants go into the flower room. Of course before I was flushing I thought that build up was the problem. Now that I crossed that off the list it looked like deficiencies were the problem. The plants grow better and better each cycle as I improve things, but I still couldn't get around my yellowing problem close to the end of flowering. Alot of people say yellowing at the end is normal but I felt it was happening too early and wasn't right. I finally talked H into letting me buy more sunshine mix(yes I dispose of it after every harvest, I just mean more than normal) and I pulled out the 2gl and 3gl pots again and transplanted the plants I had at about 3weeks into flowering. This alos ment more water(especially during flushing), and nutrients. All costs which add up when you budget tightly. The difference is huge though! Seeing the 1, 2, and 3 gl side by side sows just how root bound my plants were even if they looked fine after being cut and examining the roots.

So once again my problems lead back to my water situation(and still do because I am still experiencing restrictions that wouldn't bee there if I had a good unlimited supply of water available to me). My water supply affected everything to the point where I was spending money and time treating things that didn't need attention to try and make up fo r the things I couldn't provide.

I just finally chopped that "Pot size experiment" cycle down and am half way through and at 5.5oz off of 10 plants. That's my best since living here. My current cycle 4 weeks into flower has 5 3gl, 2 2gl, and 3 1gl that were transplanted at the begining of flower instead of half way through. I still can't afford to upgrade everything but am hoping to slowly put myself ahead enough so that by the time this next baby comes a) our bills will be caught up, b)I will be able to at least maintain a consistant crop even if it isn't maximized, and c) make it as self sufficient as possible and as easy as possible for me to handle for the first year after the baby is born. Above that I'd love to continues to increase my crop amounts and productivity, and make the whole set up more efficient and self sufficient since being a full time stay at home mom, owning and starting 2 businesses, and the grow room(which is a job in itself), on top of choosing to try to live an off the grid life(cutting our own wood for heat, growing our own food...) I must say my plate is quite full. I can't wait until my garden can run in the background and be fully enjoyed instead of being tainted as a chore. I am really looking forward to my realistic goal of 1oz per plant consistantly but know that until we can work up to affording some additional improvements it may not happen just yet.

Luckily we live in a rural area and I am also looking forward to investing(yes $200 is alot of money to us and takes a long time to save up for things that aren't already on the "bill" list) for a gps system and am hoping to getting about 200 or more plants scattered out there this summer. If half of those give me at the very least an oz each after a full undisterbed canadian growing season I should be able to get us far enough ahead to be able to reinvest at least a part of that into my setup and go high tech(in the same space and with the same numbers just growing much more efficently), which would include a full solar panel system and eliminate our hydro bill at least for the garage. After that we should break even in about another year, and hopefully then I can retire my grow op as a money maker and give my surplus away in exchange for for goods and services just like our garden veggies to help make us completely self sufficient and release us from the grasp of money.

I hope I've covered everything, if not please ask or let me know. It is just as cold here in my office as it is outside(-26f today) so frozen fingers and brains tend to forget things after being numb for as long as I've been typing this post.

Thanks for reading and following and I look forward to being more invovled with my own thread once we thaw out here and my hibernation is over.

Oh yeah! I still think that it is the strangest thing in the world that my very first grow attempt as primitive as it was was my best bringing in almost 2oz each on all 7 plants. I hope to some day grow as well as I did when I was a hard core noob! LOL

[Shovelhandle]

Great to see your back posting here. Very cool reveg and frog pics (and pot plants, of course). I'm just harvesting a 'half a grow', which is some plants I had abused while waitign for the grow lights to be available. Probably a skimpy harvest as well, but the buds are very well grown. :hippy:

Early Spring, now's an ideal time to think about the 'hidden gardens'. Planting in some out of the way places, hoping to harvest a bumper crop later.

Shovelhandle

[painretreat]

Hey PRT Thanks for following along. I didn't get any bud shots really, I'll keep it in mind next harvest when I get some dildo size buds. I don't think the frog got bleached, I didn't bleach the veg room and turned the fans between them off for a while. Oh and with how much we have been smoking I'm sure we've made a dent. GTG busy day!

Hi CC, nice to see you back!! Missed ya! Still have that pic. I gonna need it real soon! Thank you! PRt. :clap: