yep!

nope!

__________________
How not to grow dope - 'Not Your Father's Marijuana' / 'new super cannabis' / 'extra potent hydro' myths busted
DIY batwing reflector - DIY power panel to keep electrics safe and neat - DIY low-temp 3-day bud dryer - Get a harvest every 2 weeks - Photoessay: A batch of clones in rockwool - Project Big Blue Bastard: DIY 5-tube, 100 watt UV ioniser

...and don't even THINK about asking me how to hide your grow from your MOM. This is an adult sport. Give it up until you grow up.

Al, great thread you got yourself into here! Thanks for all the great information you have passed onto us! I completley understand your information: do this to a "t" and you get these results! KISS= keep it simple stupid (don't try to change anything, try to make a CLONE of your assebly line). I do have a question about Co2. Do you stay away fromt eh Co2 b/c of not having a/c? Is there a way around not using a/c and using Co2? Does a/c cost that much to run in a small area like yours? Also, would chillers be more effective than traditional a/c untis? soes your strain help with chronic back pain? i have serious back problems from a work related injury? THANKS again for all the PROVEN information! stay red eyed!

Hey Al, first I'd like to commend you - and all others participating for a very great thread. One of the best books ever written. I've been behind - got busy for a couple weeks - and when i came back i had like 30-40 pages of catching up to do. And so im now im caught up (for now). I had a lot of questions for you, which most have been answered along the way, so now just need some pointers to set me straight.

First i have 9 moms right now about 3 months old from seed. Im in strickly vegetation stage right now, and not ready to clone or flower right now. I have let them initially grow out to about 22'' (tallest one) and have now trimmed them back twice within the last month. I have noticed that if i were ready to take clones I wouldn't have been able to get too many of them reaching 9" tall. I'd say the average height would be around 6" tall. So question 1 would be what would happen if i started a SOG with 6"-7" tall clones?

Second... Is there something probably wrong if i cannot get consistent clones 9" tall. I can see that most of these moms are bursting with growth, but it seems like because i have not did the early training/pruning it might cost me. Yeh, there is new growth and dividing everywhere, but some shoots take off and grow tall with fat stems, and others just stay whimpy and worthless. Is there something i can do now or do i have to clone it and grow it up proper next time?

Also... I do like the looks of some more than others. Say 5 of them really look like winners. Some are really fast luscious growers, and then there are some with the preflowers down the main stem and heavily on the branch tips. I know that i will eventually have to choose one to be the main donor plant. But at this point, should i just keep them all until flowering, just in case the nice lookers are not the heavy flowers?

Thats all for now, i do have a couple more technical ones concerning ppm, ec, and nutes strength so ill take time to compose them correctly then post them. Thanks Al.

Hey Al, I just picked up 5 clones rooted in RW
Im going to veg them into my mother plants, Im going to place them in a 6" pot with those little RW cubes. How often do you suggest i flood them? And

Sorry accidentally clicked post,

And should i flood to the top of the RW cube?

Thanks Al

So im going to assume that your using a multiplier of 700.
The reason I ask is because after scouring thru GH FAQs, i concluded that they are using a factor of 500 to arrive at the ppm. Then the ppm on their charts and feeding schedule made sense somewhat , then i got confused, then it made sense, now i dont know.... so ill ask you.

Now if i test my pipe water i usually get a reading between 150-180. One day i got a reading of about 220. Then when i realized GH uses x500 , i set my meter to x500(.5 on meter), and my pipe water reading backed away from hardwater range. Got it now right? Yeh right.
But I thought, if Al B. is using a x500 meter at 1400ppm, then that would be a 1900+ ppm if i set my meter back to x700.... just dont sound right.

So, is 1.0EC = 700ppm the factor that i should be using cause im starting to lean back to that direction now?

Thanks again. (One more coming up in a minute, kinda builds on this one)

al, what do you do with all the trim?

do you extract in any way (hash, oil, butter....)?

or do you just toss it?

Hey Al.....wondered if I might benefit from your wisdom?

Suffering from nutrient lockout due to broken pH meter. (Damn Hanna meters)...SoG, DWC, bubble system. 1 set of 6 plants in bloom, 1 set of 3 as Moms. pH meter read 5.7, but can't POSSIBLY be correct. (I've ordered a new one)

Pics*http://www.rollitup.org/marijuana-pics/index.php?u=35902

Any advice would be appreciated. Specifically, what to do now. (Sitting in tap water w/pH about 7.6-I THINK, no chems of any kind, at the moment.)

By the way, I live in an area where it's difficult to get chemicals, but I do have pH up/down and Flora Nova nutes. (also in Pics*). Speaking of the pHup/down, in the winter just a touch was sufficient, lately it takes A LOT.(Which led me to believe the pH meter was broke...that and the fact it read 5.7 but with barley ANY nutes looked like Pics*)

Thanks........ (sob)

Thanks.

Yep, that's the nut. Thanks for your close attention to the thread.

Mostly. I now have the AC mains capacity to run aircon if I want to, where I didn't in previous locations. Also, the setup costs for CO2 are just tremendous. Good CO2 controllers which automatically dose based upon a built in CO2 concentration meter reading are the shit - and usually over a $grand. It is not hard to drop $2-3000 properly setting up an op for CO2.

Not really. If you control the room temp with an exhaust blower, every time it kicks on, your CO2 goes out the exhaust line. Cooltubes (with a closed air circuit- takes air from outside the grow room airmass and dumps warm air also outside the room's airmass) will cause a thermostatically controlled exhaust blower to run a lot less often, but again, every time it runs, out goes your ga$.

An a/c unit that can cool an op like mine with a pair of 1000s, even though it has cooltubes, will pretty easily cost about as much as a 600 or 1000HPS. Cooltubes will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the amt of time the a/c unit runs, but a roughly 10000-12000 BTU unit still would be required, good for about 800-1000W.

What's a chiller?

Most primarily indica strains are good for back pain.

Should be OK, they will finish up a bit shorter than taller clones. The biggest concern is the thickness of the stems you are getting off your mums. Thicker is better.

If you have an underperforming mum, replace it with a good clone as soon as you can.
Keep vegging the mums you have now until you are sure that the plants you've put in to flower are taking off OK. Get a couple spare clones that look good into the veg area soon to get them started on vegging up to replace the slackers.

Treat pots of mini RW cubes like pots of RW floc. Flood 1x/day only to about 50-75mm deep then drain immediately. Depends on your pump as to how long that will take, but you will probably want to have a digital timer as they allow for single minute increments in programming, rather than the minimum 15 min runtimes of most mechanical timers. Sufficient water will wick up into the RW to keep thing moving. Don't flood any higher than about 75mm.

I don't use the EC scale, even though my Truncheon meter has CF, EC & PPM scales.

Consult your meter's manual for conversion instructions.

Compost. I don't mess with it. I do get some finger hash when manicuring, but I smoke most of that and give away some to favoured clients.

__________________
How not to grow dope - 'Not Your Father's Marijuana' / 'new super cannabis' / 'extra potent hydro' myths busted
DIY batwing reflector - DIY power panel to keep electrics safe and neat - DIY low-temp 3-day bud dryer - Get a harvest every 2 weeks - Photoessay: A batch of clones in rockwool - Project Big Blue Bastard: DIY 5-tube, 100 watt UV ioniser

...and don't even THINK about asking me how to hide your grow from your MOM. This is an adult sport. Give it up until you grow up.

I learned more from this thread in 3 days than I did in a month of reading the other posts on this forum. I guess thats probably an exaggeration, but not by much. My eyes feel like they're bleeding, and I really, really wish I had taken notes from the start, I guess I'll read it again!

Al, you are a hero and an inspiration, thank you for sharing your knowledge

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What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, say, think, who I fuck, what I take into my body - as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet? -Bill Hicks