Well, I have a flood n grow system, and use hydroton as a medium. The pots are 3 gal buckets with a net pot that pretty well covers the whole pail. I have tomato cages stuck into each pot. On the day I chop, I drain the nutes into the barrel, and start cutting the stems of each plant near the bottom. I bring the plants to where I trim and place the buds directly on a (fly) screen that has a 1"x2" frame around it. When that tray is full (nothing on top of each other) it is placed on a bakery rack on wheels. Once all is trimmed I wheel the rack with the buds back into the flower room, set it in a corner, and lay a large piece of plastic over it to keep the light away as much as possible. It sits there about 4 or 5 days drying. The buds are then removed and placed into sealed plastic containers (they were intended for LEGO toys). They cure for another week or two. ... Oh, I should mention that my buckets sit on rails. That means I took 2 1" angle irons and bolted them together with a piece of flat iron about 11" apart. I then put some caster wheels on them. That way if I need to get to a plant in the middle, I can just roll each row over to the side, and then roll them back under the light once finished.

After the trimming is all done the nutes are pumped out of the barrels, and the pots of hydroton are emptied into a laundry sink (less the roots and stems). As the laundry sink fills with water I dump a half cup of bleach into it to disinfect the rocks. I then rinse them and store them in a bin for re-use. Once the barrel is empty, I fill it with water and a bleach solution and cycle the system once or twice. I use a wet vac to remove and leaves between the pots as well as any water in the bottom of each bucket. Then I refill the barrel and add nutes (start out at 800-900ppm) leaving the lights high for the first day. The girls graduating to the flower room are then removed from my ebb and flow table and its 4" net pots and repotted into the larger net pots that cover the buckets. I have an insulated reflective pad that goes over the pots, and it also serves as protection from leaves falling directly onto the hydroton, as well as help with humidity and temperature control.. I change nutes twice before I flush them.

keylime