I love it! Very creative setup!
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Jesus dude, that is one hell of a setup! And thanks for the nice write up of what it’s all supposed to accomplish!
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today is 3 weeks since the transplant from 2.5 quart containers.
just a few pics to show progress.
i have rearranged them according to height to better manage the application of light.
i have taken one set of clones and will take one more before i flip them.
i have started thinning the largest fully expanded fan leaves.
they are beautiful, trouble-free plants. very vigorous.
getting some interesting stem rubs. i’m taking notes on my impressions.
the pic of the meters shows the current reservoir conditions.
i have not removed any solution from the system, it is all input.
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BSOG met all my expectations and goals of being as good or better than the parents.
I was looking to match up these 2 power houses that ring the bell, and have all the important attributes I look for including effect, flavor, and aroma. These come with high yields and great vigor too.
I had hoped for a blueberry dominant expression on an og frame with less leafiness. There are og frames, but they stay very og dominant. What I did find was tropical fruit og flavors on blue star frames, with a wonderful orange fruit and wood polish character. So many exotic fruit terps that were new to me. Unique mango/orange/sandalwood combos. Then theres the skunk/og chemotypes that will impress the hard core og and skunk fans. Dead skunk and og with a mild lime background.
Thats gonna be a nice full canopy my friend.
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hey, buddy! i’m seeing some distinct phenos. i have one taller plant with classic og kush-type leaves. 7 fingered leaves.
i have two of the 12 showing a lighter structure with 11 fingered leaves.
the rest are classic indica looking with huge 9 fingered leaves.
i have taken cuts from 9 of them.
i will take another set today and will have lots of choices.
one of the heavier, more squat type indica leaning plants absolutely reeks right now in veg.
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This is awesome my friend! I love the ingenuity of the setup! And you can tell the plants absolutely love it, even the canopy etc you end up with , stellar. I went and checked out some of your other stuff elsewhere a few weeks ago after you mentioned it. I’ve been watching @Josh_Blue’s work as well for a little while and am an absolute sucker for a good OG, especially the super unique ones and the DANK AF ones. I look forward to watching this progress and seeing the fruits of your labour. 
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thank you! this is a ppk system.
i am 72 and have a lifetime relationship with this plant since the age of 15.
i started growing 26 years ago when i first became a liver cancer patient and all i could find for medicine in my area was really nasty brick weed. low potency and tasted like shit.
i found a couple of seeds in a bag and grew them out in a closet. the weed i grew from the bag of crap was so much better than the bag of crap that i was really kind of shocked.
i was hooked on growing and started reading everything i could find on the subject.
i had a 20-year career as a live marine specimen collector and shipper. i build all of my own holding systems. the largest was a 20,000 gal concrete and epoxy system.
i learned about water chemistry so it was an automatic choice for me to go hydro.
up until 2009 i built and tried every form of hydro out there with the exception of aeroponics.
all worked more or less but all forms had serious flaws and lacked redundancy. or required a guru to operate.
in 2009 i had a liver transplant and got rid of the cancer with the old liver.
while recovering from the transplant i had one of those epiphanic moments and saw this flow pattern mentally.
i realized the commercial potential as there are virtually no failure points if operated correctly.
you harvest every plant unless you get bugs of some kind.
it is so easy to operate that people have said it’s boring. nothing to do but watch the plants grow at high speed.
it is truly a set-and-forget system. sort of like ron popeils rotisserie cooker.
it performs on a level equal to an rwdc or undercurrent type of system operated by an expert.
speed of growth and size/yield is on a par with these systems but there are limited roots in the solution and the plant derives most of its o2 from the air. if there is no demand for o2 from the solution it will stay aerobic simply because of atmospheric partial pressures. it never goes anaerobic.
therefore, no high-speed water movement with pumps running 24/7 or airstones requiring maintenance.
no chillers needed. in fact, it is the only closed-loop recirculating system i know of that will operate outdoors in 100f heat.
again, this is because the plant derives its o2 from the air instead of the water.
the ppk system is both sub-irrigated and top-irrigated.
the bottom of the sub-irrigation/drain-tube is always immersed in solution so the plant is in 24/7 hydraulic contact with both water and nutrients.
this tube is filled with the same medium as the grow container and capillary rise will feed the plant from the bottom during a power outage or pump failure.
pumps rarely fail as the runtime is only for minutes per day instead of continuously. in the set-up above the irrigation pumps only operate for 6 minutes per day.
30 seconds every 2 hours.
i could have patented the idea and have filed a utility application but did not follow through and get the patent. it has now been in the public domain for 14 years and so no one can patent it now.
i chose to give it away to anyone who needs it for whatever reason. all cannabis use is medicinal, recreational or not, feeling better is not a sin and is part of healing whether it is physical or mental.
i have designed and/or built many systems for myself and others.
i will include some pics of my 3500 sq ft operation in Oregon and a 10k sq ft cbd facility in nashville that i designed, built, and taught their personnel to operate.
the first 3 are from my thc operation in oregon. the next 2 are from the cbd operation in nashville, and the third one is josh’s blue star that he grew using this system
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My Lord those pics/plants are glorious! I wish I found this before I spent a small fortune on current culture setups over the years, they are great systems and the constantly tweak and improve things but especially getting them over here in Canada it almost killed me after all was said and done. And then , a bit over a year ago I was forced to move from our home of 16+ years. And in a time where prices had skyrocketed andcEVERYONE was looking for a place. Lost an entire room which housed a 4x8 and two 4x4’s . Ended up getting rid of my moms, everything started fresh, and fast forward a couple crops I’m here now, dying for more space as my CC systems are in boxes, along with those tents (well 2 of them) and ontop of that I’m still down a 4x4 breeding area which is not enabling me to do my single branch pols or anything . I am very VERY GLAD to hear you have overcome cancer, truly that’s amazing!! I would actually very much love to try this one day in the future as well and thanks so much for sharing
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hows the hunt going ?
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hi, the grow itself is doing pretty good. i’ve been going through some medical issues and have not been able to post.
it looks like i will be able to start again this week sometime.
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sorry to hear about the health issues. hope you recover fast and get back to doin what you enjoy. look forward to it
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so, i guess a little explanation of my absence is called for. i just went through a series of medical issues that pretty much deprived me of sleep for about 4 weeks. i turned into a zombie and was physically unable to do all the little things that had to be done on time to flower at 4 weeks of veg. they were flowered at 40 days and, of course, had overgrown the space.
today is 21 days of flower and about the end of the stretch. i have multi-topped and thinned heavily. i still have to do some larf removal.
i just now switched out the 5000k bulbs for the 2700k plus the incandescents. i had planned to do it at 2 weeks of flower instead of 3.
so all of the growth in these pics occurred with 5000k bulbs.
there are 66 2700k and 6 25-watt incandescents for a total of 1074 watts in each fixture. the incandescents are roughly centered over each plant.
it’s been 8 weeks and 5 days since i started this grow and no solution has been removed from the reservoirs. all input only.
i have both lights hard-tied to the top of the frame and do not have any more headspace but i should be good.
under the square fixture, i’m getting pretty uniform par readings between 1150-1250 umols.
and, under the octagonal one, it’s between about 1200-1300 umols.
it’s a good thing i’m using the 8-16 photoperiod as 8 hours of 1200 umols is 34.56 moles per period.
i’ve got a little tip burn as i let the feed reservoir run dry a couple of times and the ec crept up to about 2.6 for a day or two.
i will try to update on some kind of schedule from now on.
i’m getting some fairly powerful stem rubs now and some slight differences in smell.
i’v got full sets of clones of 8 of the 12.
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Welcome back my friend. Glad to see you and the ladies plugging along. Canopies nice and full.
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hoping you are back to sleeping regular i went thru a bout of anxiety that kept me up for days before when ever i was about to sleep i would jolt and get a panic attack. so i know how that zombie feeling goes.
plants are looking great and the lights are working well it seems. see u around next update
also those lights are interesting all cfl’s ? i was thinking of making something similar for vegging and moms to free up my leds.
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thank you for the kind words! i’m usually one of those people who can sleep anywhere, anytime.
during most of this period, i could not even lie down. all i got was catnaps sitting upright in a chair for weeks.
just now woke up after 7 hours of sleep. it feels great!
these lights are led household light bulbs that have had the diffuser globes cut off of them.
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interesting light choice. is there a reason you went this way looking at the bulbs on amazon 66 of those add up fast not to mention making the unit and wiring it . is there a certain brand you use and if you were to make one for seedlings and one for a 2x4 tent how would you go about it ? sorry for the questions you got me curious lol.
also 7 hours must feel amazing lol
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so these fixtures are experimental. i built them so i could easily change power levels and spectrum.
i’ve never used a manufactured light because i think they are compromises that are not ideal for either veg or flower.
most manufactured lights are intended for hobbyists using tents.
a typical arrangement is 2/3 warm white 3000k and 1/3 5000k daylight plus a few 660s and maybe a couple of 745s.
you really don’t want the warm whites and the 660s and 745’s for veg because they produce longer internode spacing. indoors we want compact, dense plants. the bulbs i used for veg in this grow are all 5000k.
you do want the warm whites, 660s, and 745s after stretch though because the same elongation response that causes stretched-out internodes in veg also causes floral extension.
i’m growing very dank, potent flowers with leds but they don’t acheive the size or weight that i got with hps.
so, i’m experimenting to try and improve that.
here is a graph i put together showing a typical warm white overlaid with a tungsten incandescent.
as you can see, the incandescent has a huge amount of dark red, far-red, and infrared.
it has a greater proportion of dark red than the sun. i also think that some infrared is needed to get the flower extension response as well as the far-red.
from the graph we see that an incandescent complements a warm white led very well.
this could all be done with leds of course but at great expense.
there are manufacturers making dedicated led lights for commercial use that have different spectrums for veg and flower but, again, very expensive. Valoya from Finland is making dedicated lights for either flower or veg intended to be used separately to solve the flower extension issue.
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in answer to your question about how to build your own special purpose lights.
one of the things i have done experimenting over the last 5 years is examine bulb spacing for ideal coverage of a canopy.
neither of my two fixtures is ideal.
the only bulbs worth considering are the 14-15 watt 1500 lumen ones as they will give you the most bang for the buck.
the square fixture is on 5" centers one direction and 6" centers on the other. this is not quite close enough because as you move the light down to ramp up intensity you will get a dropout in between any two bulbs limiting the maximum intensity you can apply.
the octagonal fixture has 120 positions with 4" centers. this is too much intensity and wastes electrical energy. i now have only 72 positions occupied to try and match it as closely as possible to the square fixture.
so, i think that 4.5" to 5" centers is ideal…
you have said you want a veg fixture to cover a 2x4’ area.
if you were to take a frame measuring 20" by 45" you could put 36 14 watt 5000k bulbs in it and have killer intensity.
i would take a single 10’ 1/2" emt conduit and cut it into two 42" and two 18" pieces neatly using all the conduit. https://www.homedepot.com/s/1%2F2"emt%20conduit?NCNI-5
and 4 of these https://www.homedepot.com/s/1%2F2"emt%20conduit%20right%20angle%20pull%20elbows?NCNI-5
ignore the mounting holes in the lampholders and drill 4 1/4" holes at right angles to each other in the rims of each one.
using 8" zip ties connect all the lampholders together first in a 4 wide 9 long pattern then attach them to the frame.with more zip ties.
pull all zip ties as tight as possible.
you will also need a cheap walmart 16ga extension cord to butcher up for wiring and a male plug. Hyper Tough 12FT 16AWG 2 Prong White Indoor Household Extension Cord, 13 amps - Walmart.com
a 12’ one should do nicely.
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i couldn’t get the bulbs from amazon to load for some reason in the post above but i’ll try again.
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