UPDATE: Whelp, the deed is done. 10:15 this morning all four plants came down and got hung up to dry. Now begins the cleanup process. I’ll shop vac the tent l, then spray with bleach and allow to dry completely, followed by a spray of H2O2 and let that dry completely, may do that more than once to be sure there’s no errant pollen or anything kicking around. Once clean the tentative plan will be to move mothers and vegging plants into the 2x4 and then use my 3x3 with the HLG225 as the flower tent. Tomorrow or Monday when the tent is dried out, the clones will get up potted into 5 gallon bags; gonna try out some honor bags that I bought a while back, and given maybe a week to recover before hitting the flip on the sensi run. Very excited about that. Here’s some shots from the chop:
In other news I got the chance to try out a bit of new tech I came up with. Last night was what I dubbed “IPM Friday” (It’s just the night that I spray the plants but it sounds catchy.) I had been pretty bummed about spraying things inside the tent with the heater and fans and other stuff around, it just made me a little nervous thinking that the overspray could cause a problem with equipment that might not be rated to handle it, so I got the idea to buy a pop up spray tent to use for hosing the plants down. Here’s a link to what I bought:
It’s basically a folding paint booth, it folds out and up quickly, and folds down to a really small size, so it’s easy to store. My thought was that I could pop it up real quick, pull each plant out and stick it in the booth, spray it down then stick it back in the tent. Minimizing cleanup in my veg tent and allowing me not to potentially overspray my equipment. Last night was the first test run and it worked like a charm! Only downside is that the tent material is not 100% water proof so the bit of spray that pooled on the floor of the tent did end up seeping through the bottom, but I’m in a concrete floored basement so it wasn’t really a concern. I left it open to dry overnight and folded it up this morning. No muss, no fuss. I realize this isn’t really feasible for someone to itch a big garden and big plants, or for a trellised flower tent, but for my little setup it’s pretty perfect. I was pretty proud of myself and just figured I’d share here in case anyone else was wringing their hands like I was about spraying inside their tents.
That’s it for now, I’m gonna go play janitor for a while, I’ll have another update once things are cleaned out and there’s something to share. Much love to you all
Well done on a very successful run! It’s always nice to make it across the finish line.
I’d be careful about using harsh chemicals on your tent, as even heavily diluted bleach sprays can damage the reflective material of your tent. Soapy water works just as well. And it doesn’t have the effect of lasting fumes or harsh oxidative effects.
I think it’s really important to be diligent, but also to find balance so the work becomes less of a burden. If you run a tight ship, with weekly “IPM Fridays” (which is awesome!) and not too much of a temp/humidity swing, you can likely reduce the amount of cleanup you do when resetting things between rounds. One of my mantras for life is regular preventative maintenance = less work = more fun.
Like you, I also don’t really like spraying inside a tent with all the equipment, when possible. Sounds like you figured out an ingenious compromise. I also don’t overspray too much so they don’t end up dripping that bad. I usually take all my plants out to our kitchen/diner to get sprayed on the vinyl floor since it’s easy cleanup. Then I walk them over to the living room and set them under the ceiling fan for an hour or two to dry off, and wipe the floor with a towel or mop. We both really love the smell of the homemade IPM, which is at minimum the following: neem, peppermint, and rosemary oils emulsified (shaken up) in the spray bottle with bronner’s peppermint soap and water. It’s a good hippy household smell.
Oh, also if you want to speed up drying, you can remove all the fan leaves from your hanging plants. There’s no benefit to leaving them on for seed runs - they serve no function except to make your job harder with way more plant matter to separate from the seeds. That brings up another good point. Trim all your “mummy fart dry” seeded buds to basically no leaf before you start shucking or else you’ll have a lot more work for yourself.
@nube thank you for swinging in again! you’ll be happy to know i didnt use any bleach for the first round scrub, just Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap and piping hot water. ill still spray with H202 once the tent dries out, but i was on the fence for a while on using bleach, we avoid it in general since we’re on a well, but all the resources i was able to find on how to properly clean a tent recommend the bleach. i know that EM5 s supposed to be a good cleaner too, but i guess when i think about it i don’t know too many pests, or grains of pollen that can survive hot water and soap, as well as multiple sprays with peroxide, so hopefully ill be good there.
@HorseBadorites my wife actually threw out that same idea re: some kind of tray to catch the water, but when i reminded her that the whole idea was to have something that could fold away so as to not have a fourth tent permanently set up in our basement she quickly replied with “yea, no you’re right, your way is better”
The reset is moving around here! Spent all of yesterday cleaning and let everything air out overnight. 2x4 got scrubbed and sprayed twice with peroxide, set the floor tray in there this morning and sprayed it as well, once that’s dry I think it’ll be good to set the lights back up and move the plants out of the 3x3. Once that’s set I’ll up pot the clones for flower. I’ll be sure to take some pics, debating now whether or not I should hit the mountain and go snowboarding, the weather has been shit around here lately, but my wife and kid are out of town so I feel like I have to take advantage. Currently enjoying a coffee and a couple bong rips of some Hubba Bubba Skunk, so I might not make it far from the house today, we’ll see. I’ll update with photos wherever I’m at by EOD.
UPDATE: 2x4 is dried out and back up and running as the veg tent setup. Clones of GM1, 2, 5, and 6 have all been transplanted into 5 gallon pots. I’m trying out some of the Honor Core 5 gallon bags that I bought a while back, pretty snazzy looking, we’ll see how they do. Of course I bought one less than I needed, so GM2 gets an old regular 5gal fabric bag. The OCD dork inside of me wants all of the pots to be the same, but it is what it is.
These girls are all tucked in underneath the HLG 225. I’ll give them a week to recover from transplant, during which time I’m hopeful that the backup cuts I took of the GM2 will have rooted and then it’ll be time to flip to flower. I’m really excited to see things setup like this as moving forward this will likely be how things run moving forward: veg in the 2x4 and flower in the 3x3. More updates to come. Love to all!
UPDATE: not too much to report here, the girls are still under 18/6 lights right now, I had intended to flip this weekend but I ended up catching a gnarly stomach bug and was LAID OUT for a good 48 hrs. I think at this point I’ll let them have the rest of the week to veg and will flip next weekend. Dosed out a compost tea on Saturday (I think) and will likely follow with some cal mag on the next watering, but really just letting them get thier legs stretched before we head to the show. Here’s a little group shot:
Everyone looks a little different this time around after being topped, I’ll be interested to see the yield in this run compared to the seed run. Speaking of which, those seeded moms are still hanging, not quite bone dry yet, but I’m hoping to get to shucking sometime soon. Not the most exciting or informative update but I’m hoping there will be some more fun stuff to see in the coming weeks. Love you all
Got a little update on the seeded plants I wanted to share. I purchased a 110 micron screen from a silk screen supply store to start making dry sift and figured it would make a good surface to shuck seeds on and collect some soft that I could press I think hash from the seeded plants as a little bonus for myself. Finally got all the pieces in place today and decided on my lunch break to pull a bud from one of the dry plants and see what we had for seed. What you see here is from one tiny bud from the very bottom of GM6 that seemed the most dry out of all the tent:
I count about 30 seeds in that shitty photo from the one bud, if the rest of the plant is seeded along the same lines I think it’s safe to say that there will be a whole mess of these things once it’s all said and done. Very encouraging for my first shot at this.
Damn, so I couldn’t just bust up that one bud, I shucked the whole plant of GM6, and fuck is that shit tedious. Wound up with a good pile of seeds (still need to sort the whiteys and shit but largely looks pretty good) and a nice little pile of sift, and a larger pile of suspect shuck that I guess could be good in joints but I’m not certain that there aren’t any tiny seed grenades hiding in there ready to hand out a headache when puffed on, how do y’all smoke the shuck??
i didnt make it, bought it from a silk screen supply shop online. the place is out of PA and they make and stretch all thier own stuff in the USA. the prices for purpose made dry sift screens are outrageous, at like 120 or more for a set of like 3, this one was i think around like $30 shipped. its a 110 mesh, so basically just a full spectrum grade one, you could easily buy a 73 ans a 220 and net out around like $90 for what is essentially a full set and be able to clean the heads down to full melt status. might do that in the future, but i press all my stuff and roll temple balls, so the 110 should be all i need, at least for the time being
Awesome! Yeah, I am not a fan of single use overpriced bullshit.
I’ve tried several “trim bins” and they have all been less than ideal. This looks really nice, love the size of it
It’s always nice to make it across the finish line.
I also don’t overspray too much so they don’t end up dripping that bad. I usually take all my plants out to our kitchen/diner to get sprayed on the vinyl floor since it’s easy cleanup. Then I walk them over to the living room and set them under the ceiling fan for an hour or two to dry off, and wipe the floor with a towel or mop. We both really love the smell of the homemade IPM, which is at minimum the following: neem, peppermint, and rosemary oils emulsified (shaken up) in the spray bottle with bronner’s peppermint soap and water. It’s a good hippy household smell. 
