Flatrate Farms

Was just looking over the forum and ran into some post about lighting, mainly for the area of a 5x5 and it has got me thinking. As you know I run a Timber Fatty VS in my 5x5 rated at 950 watts, fucking thing is a beast. Lately I have been dealing with a lot of leaf roll, that I know it is from the lights. I think about backing it down and sometimes I do but I always turn it back up thinking I am going to miss out.

I see HLG promoting the Diablo as a fixture at 600+ watts suitable for a 5x5 area, which I am sure is accurate as they make great lights. So my question should I turn the Fatty down to 2/3rds?

Flatrate said:

Was just looking over the forum and ran into some post about lighting, mainly for the area of a 5x5 and it has got me thinking. As you know I run a Timber Fatty VS in my 5x5 rated at 950 watts, fucking thing is a beast. Lately I have been dealing with a lot of leaf roll, that I know it is from the lights. I think about backing it down and sometimes I do but I always turn it back up thinking I am going to miss out.

I see HLG promoting the Diablo as a fixture at 600+ watts suitable for a 5x5 area, which I am sure is accurate as they make great lights. So my question should I turn the Fatty down to 2/3rds?

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Hell, I just turned my E420's down in the mother tent to 50%... They get alot more light in a reflective tent. (I think that's what you're doing).. but no harm in it, unless you see excessive stretching in veg, long internodes, etc. But, getting curled leafs is prob doing more harm than good.

So I backed the light down a bit, and will probably some more soon as the plants left are entering in their final weeks. Got the last chop trimmed up, it was a breeze! I do hate trimming, but you know there comes a time in a mans life when you got to face your obstacles and get past them and that exactly what I did.

I'll get some new pics up soon, the lights are off right now.

Malt Milkshake from Clearwater coming down in 2 days.

So like most growers I deal with pest on a small scale. Seems like I always have gnats around and for the most part the yellow stickys work great for them. Over the past months I've noticed some evidence of thrips but felt I couldn't do much at the time since almost everything was in some stage of flower. Lately I have noticed in my veg tent the thrips are on the rise. The little ones in solo cups have gotten hit hard over the past few days.

So I decided to put into play a regular pest maintenance routine in the veg tent so hopefully once they hit the flower tents there should be no problems. I started with my nuclear plan today.

1. I gave all plants in the veg tent a soil drench with Monterey Spinosad.
2. Put Diatomaceous Earth on top of the soil of every container.
3. Tonight when the light goes out I am going to spray them all down with Central Coast Green Cleaner.

Flatrate said:

So like most growers I deal with pest on a small scale. Seems like I always have gnats around and for the most part the yellow stickys work great for them. Over the past months I've noticed some evidence of thrips but felt I couldn't do much at the time since almost everything was in some stage of flower. Lately I have noticed in my veg tent the thrips are on the rise. The little ones in solo cups have gotten hit hard over the past few days.

So I decided to put into play a regular pest maintenance routine in the veg tent so hopefully once they hit the flower tents there should be no problems. I started with my nuclear plan today.

1. I gave all plants in the veg tent a soil drench with Monterey Spinosad.
2. Put Diatomaceous Earth on top of the soil of every container.
3. Tonight when the light goes out I am going to spray them all down with Central Coast Green Cleaner.

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Man, I’ve had fungus gnats for the past 3 rounds. I can usually control them with mosquito dunks and sticky traps, but they are hard to control this round. Thankfully, we’re at the finish line. We also had Springtails come up this time as well. I think I’m going to try Gnatrol next time as a soil drench regime.

DoubleAtotheRON said:

Man, I’ve had fungus gnats for the past 3 rounds. I can usually control them with mosquito dunks and sticky traps, but they are hard to control this round. Thankfully, we’re at the finish line. We also had Springtails come up this time as well. I think I’m going to try Gnatrol next time as a soil drench regime.

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Yeah man I've been lucky so far but felt it is time to get ahead of things instead of playing catch up. I searched around to find out what I could do in the soil, on the soil, and above the soil and this is what I chose to try. We'll see how it goes.

A quote from a guy I know, Dirt Bike Mike.

"It could be raining pussy, and I'd get hit with a dick"

Don't know if thats original or he got it from somewhere, thats how I feel right now!

I didn't feel the need to take pictures, because if you've seen black trash bags and a dumpster in your life, well thats exactly how my latest run finished up. This morning I was checking in on the Malt Milkshake I had hanging and found some small evidence of mold in most of the colas. So all 5 Malt Milkshake's went in one bag and not taking any chances the 5 Neapolitan Swirl that where growing the the same tent the MM were put in another bag. The NS had about 10 days to go.

So I scrapped 10 plants today, earlier in the week I tossed 5 little ones in solo cups because of the thrips. So all I got is a few plants in one 4x4 finishing up, they got about 2 weeks to go so hopefully they will be alright. So my break from growing is starting with a major dent in my harvest. Now its time to make some changes, regroup, and coming this fall, give it hell!

I couldn't sit still I had to start getting at it. This morning I stripped everything out of the 5x5. I got it vacuumed up, the flood pan is soaking in the garage and getting ready to go in for the first wipe down.



I forgot how heavy the Fatty is.



Stay tuned I already got some ideas and minor upgrades in the works!

Whats going on everyone!

Well just thought I would take a minute to let you know whats going on. I have been enjoying my break from growing, I truly am, but I started getting bored. I went back to working 4 days a week at my regular job, plus they are short on staff and I got a nice raise. As I mentioned sometime ago my father in laws business was under staffed so I stepped in to help out. I am still at that 3 days a week, between the 2 jobs I put in 8 shifts in 5 days and my only true day off is Saturday .

Besides all that I am having a blast, going to start over with dropping some seeds in about a month. See ya soon !

Great to hear things are getting back to normal for you. How though can a person working so much who only has one day off be getting bored?

farmingfisherman said:

Great to hear things are getting back to normal for you. How though can a person working so much who only has one day off be getting bored?

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Its easy! I got to have something going on, weather it being work or hobby related. I have lots of hobbies but lately took a break from those as well.

Flatrate said:

Whats going on everyone!

Well just thought I would take a minute to let you know whats going on. I have been enjoying my break from growing, I truly am, but I started getting bored. I went back to working 4 days a week at my regular job, plus they are short on staff and I got a nice raise. As I mentioned sometime ago my father in laws business was under staffed so I stepped in to help out. I am still at that 3 days a week, between the 2 jobs I put in 8 shifts in 5 days and my only true day off is Saturday .

Besides all that I am having a blast, going to start over with dropping some seeds in about a month. See ya soon !

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Keep up the good work!

After I got out of work this morning I figured I'd give another brief update with some of the changes I made to my main flowering tent, the 5x5. Nothing big.

One thing I've been focused on is moving more air. This is what I came up with.

My old fan/filter combo with a 6x16 inch Phresh Filter.



I updated it with a newer fan with a 6x24 Phresh filter.



After looking at things I moved the fan/filter to the right side instead of the back center where the old combo was located. I thought it might give me more room to raise the light if needed and it worked. The light is slightly off center towards the left. Which is fine as I am planning on running it like a 4x4. I was going to replace the Fatty with one of my Redwoods but started thinking why not just turn the Fatty down to 660 watts (same output as a Redwood) and have 9 COB's instead of 6. This picture really doesn't show it but I can go higher and clear the fan/filter with ease.



You can see the next subject in the picture above, more air movement. All I had for fans were 2 small tent pole fans, I am still going to use the just down low. For the main fan I installed a 16 inch Hurricane, even on the low setting it pushes some air. I am pleased with the way it mounted up.



All I got left to do is slide the floor pan in and it ready to go!

Looking good Hoss! Nice setup!

DoubleAtotheRON said:

Looking good Hoss! Nice setup!

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Thanks man! It wasn't much of an upgrade but I feel I am moving in the right direction. I learned some hard lessons the past couple rounds, in away I am disappointed but in away glad it happened as it helped me learn my flaws.

Taking a break from growing has been nice and I think from now on I am going to do it every year. I am feeling the itch though.

Hey everyone, what the hell is going on? Well a week or so ago I decided break time is over, time to fire the lights up. The down time was nice but I kind of missed it. So I dropped a few seeds.

Lit Farms - Red Sangria (White Sangria x Project 4516)
Lit Farms - Cappuccino (Drunk Driver x Project 4516)
Clearwater - Malt Milkshake (Dosido #18 x Creamsicle #4)
Clearwater - Neapolitan Swirl (Wedding Cake x Creamsicle #4)
Envy - Throat Coat (Creamery x Lickz)
Envy - Tropical Popsicle (Slurricane x Blow Pops)

So right after they popped out of the soil we had a storm roll in and knocked my power out for 4 days. I just gave up on them thinking they wouldn't survive and didn't bother even checking on them. Four days later when things were up and running I opened the tent and there they were. A few got a little leggy.

Will get some pics soon, who on here has never seen a seedling.

Flatrate said:

Hey everyone, what the hell is going on? Well a week or so ago I decided break time is over, time to fire the lights up. The down time was nice but I kind of missed it. So I dropped a few seeds.

Lit Farms - Red Sangria (White Sangria x Project 4516)
Lit Farms - Cappuccino (Drunk Driver x Project 4516)
Clearwater - Malt Milkshake (Dosido #18 x Creamsicle #4)
Clearwater - Neapolitan Swirl (Wedding Cake x Creamsicle #4)
Envy - Throat Coat (Creamery x Lickz)
Envy - Tropical Popsicle (Slurricane x Blow Pops)

So right after they popped out of the soil we had a storm roll in and knocked my power out for 4 days. I just gave up on them thinking they wouldn't survive and didn't bother even checking on them. Four days later when things were up and running I opened the tent and there they were. A few got a little leggy.

Will get some pics soon, who on here has never seen a seedling.

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Looking forward to watching another one of your grows!

Get your grow on son!

So things are moving along. Got them into 1gal pots yesterday followed by a watering with Big Foot Mycorrhizae concentrate. Like I said earlier they got leggy during the power outage, but the nodes coming in are tighten up.





So going to let them settle in for a minute and start pounding them with nutes.