If you could do it over again what would you change?

so I am a complete newbie to growing, and was wondering for all you guys that have tried more than one medium (soil/hydro) and all the different methods, if you could start over again how would you set up your room? I have what I have is a completely empty space in my basement that is 21ft long X 8ft wide X 7ft high. the basement stays at about 50degrees in the winter. I am going to ATTEMPT to grow 12 plants per cycle, and want to have plants constantly (eventually) be vegging and flowering and cloning . So what I was thinking is setting up 3 rooms for this operation. one room be flowering another be for vegging, and one for a work station,HUB, and cloning. I have a lot of ideas but don't want to dump a ton of money into something that is crap! Plus I have no one around here that can help so yall will be my guides haha. I have done a good deal of research but cant make my mind up of what I want to do, so any and all input will help. I have to keep my budget at or below 3000$ ! My goal is to push out as much weight as possible in shortest amount of time,(just like everybody else) Thanks in advance!

12 plants per cycle?

what type of cycle do you want to have? every 4 weeks harvesting? every 2 weeks? if its every 4 weeks thats 24 plants in flower at a time and if its every 2 weeks its 48 plants in flower at a time.

so you should start there. figure out how long of a time period in between harvests you wish to have. then we will discuss more.

btw if you check out my grow in my sig i am also a basement grower.

Hydro - DWC. Simple to set up, maintain and productive as hell. Buy your testing equipment once, a supply of nutrients and your medium comes out of your water tap - at least mine does.

RetiredMatthebrute said:

12 plants per cycle?

what type of cycle do you want to have? every 4 weeks harvesting? every 2 weeks? if its every 4 weeks thats 24 plants in flower at a time and if its every 2 weeks its 48 plants in flower at a time.

so you should start there. figure out how long of a time period in between harvests you wish to have. then we will discuss more.

btw if you check out my grow in my sig i am also a basement grower.

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thanks for the replies! I want to do it 100% legally and we can grow 6 in each stage legally, so that's what I was going to do. So have plants vegging til the ones in the flower room get pulled. so I suppose it would be a 8-12week cycle?

hotrodharley said:

Hydro - DWC. Simple to set up, maintain and productive as hell.

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yeah i tend to agree and dissagree. if you have a brain in your head and somewhat of a green thumb already i agree, but theres alot of new growers that cant handle the responsibilities of hydro.

my 2¢ on the pro's and cons of a hydro setup vs a soil set.

overall cost. soil is cheaper to get started without a doubt, but costs more in the long run. Hydro is going to cost alot more to get started, but after you have your equipment you dont have to worry about buying soil, you use water to grow. the only costs you will endure are new nutrients and the occasional piece of broken equipment.

User friendly Soil is fairly straight foward andi feel more user friendly than hydro. Hydro theres more work day to day involved if you want top notch results.

Plants: Hydro is known for being a top notch producer, once the root system develops them plants take off. soil is a steady growing pace, you can achieve the same thing from both systems but it will take more time in soil.

Fucking up: if you fuck up your rez on a hydro system, you fucked up all your plants (you would probabally be doing RDWC if you want to grow the amount of plants your speaking of) you can come back from this but you still affected all of the plants on the rezz. soil if you fuck up a plant generally its contained to that one plant, but this isnt always the case and it really depends on what systems you have into play.

Organics: now im no expert on hydroponic organics but i do know you have to keep the biology up in the rezz and from what i have heard hydro is more of a synthetic nutrient kind of system, organics can be done but its more of a pain in the ass. soil is kinda visa versa. I have tried both organic and synthetic in soil and i find organics are far easier and simplified than synthetics. (feel free to correct me if im wrong)

these are just a couple of the big things that come to mind. i dont suggest either over the other and personally would love to be able to get my grow on a hydroponic system but i dont have the upfront costs. I anjoy soil growing but the overhead of buying bag after bag of soil gets pricy.

StonerCloner said:

thanks for the replies! I want to do it 100% legally and we can grow 6 in each stage legally, so that's what I was going to do. So have plants vegging til the ones in the flower room get pulled. so I suppose it would be a 8-12week cycle?

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ok so you just want to be able to have plants ready to go into flower on harvest time. above you said 12 plants per cycle, im assuming you mean 12 plants total 6 in veg 6 in flower right?

sorry to keep asking the same question i just dont want to type out some long ass post just for it to be 100% wrong for what your looking for.

hotrodharley said:

Hydro - DWC. Simple to set up, maintain and productive as hell. Buy your testing equipment once, a supply of nutrients and your medium comes out of your water tap - at least mine does.

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DWC hydro is something I cant figure out in my head haha...seems like there are a ton of variations? are they all recirculating? or just a reservoir that adds levels once they need it? would a t5 8 bulb 4 foot, 40000 lumen be good enough for vegging them? and would a single 1000w hps with a big reflector be enough for 12 plants?
thanks again!

me and my wife both have our cards, so we can each have 6 plants...sorry for the mix up. and yes the idea would be to have 12 in the flower room and 12 vegging all the time!

StonerCloner said:

DWC hydro is something I cant figure out in my head haha...seems like there are a ton of variations? are they all recirculating? or just a reservoir that adds levels once they need it? would a t5 8 bulb 4 foot, 40000 lumen be good enough for vegging them? and would a single 1000w hps with a big reflector be enough for 12 plants?
thanks again!

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No they are not all recircs. A plain 5 gallon bucket with a lid from Wally's. A hole to put the planter in and another to test through or add water/solution, a cheap aquarium AIR pump (not a water pump) and some plastic air line and your set. I use plain tap water and do not eliminate the chloramine (it helps control bad crap).

StonerCloner said:

DWC hydro is something I cant figure out in my head haha...seems like there are a ton of variations? are they all recirculating? or just a reservoir that adds levels once they need it? would a t5 8 bulb 4 foot, 40000 lumen be good enough for vegging them? and would a single 1000w hps with a big reflector be enough for 12 plants?
thanks again!

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yes there are many different variations of hydro. DWC stands for deep water culture. just a normal DWC setup would be a 5 gal bucket with a net pot in the lid and airstones in the bucket to keep the nutrient solution airated.

RDWC stands for recurculating DWC this is where you have one main rezz and all the buckets are conected to each other. the main rez has pump and airstones in it and pumps water to all of the buckets therefore recirculating the water.

the lights you mentioned should be fine for 6 plants at a time.

personally if i were to do a hydro setup with 6 buckets i probabally would opt for the RDWC so i could just do my changes in one place instead of having to do all 6 buckets seperatly.

Again, if i had to do it all over again I would start with hydro and live through the short learning curve. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of crap like planters and used soil you have to discard or give away. I started in soil (1964) and did an experimental DWC I made last Fall. The DWC results caused me to totally rethink the whole gig. The first plant I completed was the first one I started - a Dinafem White Widow Auto. Even though I almost killed it with heat when I could not get home and open a window, it recovered nicely and yielded 2.15 ounces of damned good bud and a bunch of smaller bud and trim that made 3 grams of bubble hash. As my plants finish in soil the soil is now out, hydros in.

If you're going to kill it in hydro you will kill it in soil - it just takes longer.

you may be better off buying a couple bags of soil for now and doing some research on Hydro as your first grow happens, you learn alot from your first grow and you can set most of your money aside for the potential hydro setup later on.

if you start in soil you can probably get setup for around 2 grand and this would be a pretty pro setup including Co2. Co2 is going to be your most expensive purchase but having and currently dealing with lack of Co2 i feel safe saying its well worth the money and if you have it to invest its is a wise investment.

here check this thread out, theres video's and its a overall decent thread if your looking at RDWC

http://www.amazon.com/General-Hydroponics-Box-Starter-Kit/dp/B004PS4B08/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1357840610&sr=8-2&keywords=bio+bud

not much of a tutorial but i think it covers the basics. and once you get the idea behind it you can make your own system tailored to your needs.

awesome, I am checkin out the vid now... so 12 plants and one 1000w hps is not enough? another idea that I have is to set up a ScrOg setup with 6 plants for now. any luck or knowledge about this? I figured if I scrogged with 6plants I would be good with 1 1000w hps...

StonerCloner said:

awesome, I am checkin out the vid now... so 12 plants and one 1000w hps is not enough? another idea that I have is to set up a ScrOg setup with 6 plants for now. any luck or knowledge about this? I figured if I scrogged with 6plants I would be good with 1 1000w hps...

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im still not sure what you want to do for plant count. if you want 12 total 6 in veg and 6 in flower the lights you mentioned earlier should be fine, if your doing 12 in flower i would suggest 2 600w for better coverage.

ScROG is a good technique but tough to move once you get them trained so you will have ot figure out how your going to move them from veg to flower. alternatavly you could just make both rooms the same with the same lights and just alternate them, flower in 1 room and veg in the other, when the flowering room is all done switch the veg room to flower and you wont have to move anything except timer settings.

I don't believe that DWC is typically recirculating. I don't grow DWC so feel free to correct me here guys. DWC is usually single buckets for each plant, so each plant has its own res. I think there are variations of DWC that may recirculate but that would complicate it. A hydro garden is a nice inexpensive way to get into DWC, I've seen some great results from them even though its not what I use. DWC grows some nice huge bushes and can produce very well. I'm a basement grower as well, and it sounds like you have a nice amount of space to grow some bushes. If you've got plant limits that would be how I would prolly do it. \

I'd be inclined if it was me to offset the harvests, and flower 3 at a time. This will take up less space in your flower room at once(you'll still have 6 in flower at a time, 3 will just be smaller to start), and give you a harvest every 4-6 weeks instead of ever 8-12. A single 1000w is enough to cover a good area, but as to if it will be enough for 12 plants that depends on the size of the plants. Won't you also only be flowering 6 at a time. I'd be vegging under a MMH light if I had the space and option. The T5 will veg small plants, but once they start to bush out it won't have the penetration. The T5 would be great for small veg plants or clones.

The important thing here is not what others would do diffferant if they could do them over, but really what will be a good way for you to get started. Hope this helps.

Peace TC

I also agree with Retired, scrog didn't occur to me, but its a great way to mazimize yield within a certain area. You can use that in conjunction with almost any medium or growing system aswell.

RetiredMatthebrute said:

im still not sure what you want to do for plant count. if you want 12 total 6 in veg and 6 in flower the lights you mentioned earlier should be fine, if your doing 12 in flower i would suggest 2 600w for better coverage.

ScROG is a good technique but tough to move once you get them trained so you will have ot figure out how your going to move them from veg to flower. alternatavly you could just make both rooms the same with the same lights and just alternate them, flower in 1 room and veg in the other, when the flowering room is all done switch the veg room to flower and you wont have to move anything except timer settings.

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you don't know how many plants I want because I keep changing my damn mind haha. preferably 12, just throwing the scrog out there!

thanks again guys, sorry im so damn confusing, I just have a million ideas running through my head. I like the idea best of running a dwc in individual buckets, I don't like the idea of extra res and tubes and pumps etc.

well if you want to keep it legal and your allowed 6 plants in each stagethen thats 12 plants total, 6 in veg 6 in flower. like Thunder mentioned it might be a better idea to do sets of 3's and eventually you will have your 6 in flower and 6 in veg and you can harvest 3 at a time. this would break up your vegatative cycle so that you can do 4 weeks veg>8 weeks flower so you would have something like this



so you could do something like this....

week 1: germinate 8 seeds, pick 6 strongest to start.
Week 2: vegatative growth, watch for best pheno
week 3: vagatative still watching for best pheno.
week 4: pick best pheno plants of each strain and cut clones, start flowering.
week 5: dead week waiting for flowering to kick in
week 6: clones rooted start getting them into the DWC, week 1 flower
week 7: watch em grow. week 2 flower week 1 veg for clones, the clones have now grown roots into medium but not yet into the water, still not much vegatative growth.
week 8: watch em grow. week 3 flower, week 2 veg on clones. clones are now starting to grow roots out of the net pot
week 9: week 4 flower, week 3 veg roots are starting to hit the rez, clones will now start growing vegatativly
week 10: watch em grow. week 5 flower, week 4 veg
week 11: wacth everything grow...wow its growing fast now and them buds are really starting to pack on there and smell ooooooh so good. week 6 flower week 5 veg
week 12: man these clones are growing crazy, the buds are taking a nice form cant wait to smoke some of this!! week 7 flower, week 6 veg
week 13: time to decide if its harvest time or you should go another week. take clones off plants in veg and get them started and decide to give em 1 more week in flower week8 flower, 7 veg
week 14: the time has come, chop them girls down and put the vegging clones into flower, work on getting them clones established again you have 8 weeks so no hurry here.

rinse and repeat. obviously this isnt a set in stone schedule but i think its a good "idea" to think about. you will have 8 -9 weeks between harvests which will give you planty of time to get your next run of clones up and going and if for some reason by week one of flower the clones didnt make it you have time to take some more. and still be able to stay on your schedule. if you go the 4 week route and 3 plants to a time theres a bit less room for error as you dont want to take cuts from a flowering mother and anything behind it might be too small to take cuts from.

i dunno man just trying to brainstorm here and come up with some helpfull ideas.

there ar ehundreds of ways to go with growing just need to find what right for you. if you take clones off mother plants the day they go into flower this gives you roughly 8-9 weeks to get them rooted (2 weeks) get them established into the DWC system (another 2 weeks) and veg them for 4-5 weeks. once the roots hit that water is game over...them plants will be growing 1-3 inches a day if your enviorment is right and you have the DWC dialed in to a T

lemme know if im helping or making it more confusing lol