Legal Cannabis Medical Grow

[WeeGogs]

i am changing from soil (good), then i tried coco (better), now to hydroponics, i want to start right away, the only issue i have is, would i be better with an nft (100mm) pipe system, or a flood and drain 2 litre bottle system.
(limited space available)
and would i be better using 32mm pipe or 40mm pipe, and white or black in colour for algae prevention.( i can get black supplied at extra cost ) to connect it all up.
Thanks G.

[Freshwater]

Hi Wee,

While this is probably not the best site for legal cultivation of medical marijuana, I can offer some advice on your specific question.

NFT systems are generally great setups for growing leafy greens and light feeders. Primarily shorter term crops. I'm not sure if you are growing indoors or out, but the root system of the cannabis plant will most likely clog / back up the nutrient film. The 2 liter flood and drain is a very good system built on a pvc manifold.

I've run12 2 liter bottle systems back in the college daze, and they work wonderfully under a 400w. MH/hps. With what I have learned over the last couple of years growing food hydroponically for myself, I would suggest you also consider a return drip system. But either will work well.

Your location and grow location would help (indoor or out). I see you are referring to metric measurements, I assume you are not in the states. Where I live the drip 5 gallon "Sack" systems are very popular for growing medical herbs, though I am a Bato Bucket guy for my veggie garden. Check out crop king.com for some more ideas.

Todd

[WeeGogs]

Originally Posted by Freshwater

Hi Wee,

While this is probably not the best site for legal cultivation of medical marijuana, I can offer some advice on your specific question.

NFT systems are generally great setups for growing leafy greens and light feeders. Primarily shorter term crops. I'm not sure if you are growing indoors or out, but the root system of the cannabis plant will most likely clog / back up the nutrient film. The 2 liter flood and drain is a very good system built on a pvc manifold.

I've run12 2 liter bottle systems back in the college daze, and they work wonderfully under a 400w. MH/hps. With what I have learned over the last couple of years growing food hydroponically for myself, I would suggest you also consider a return drip system. But either will work well.

Your location and grow location would help (indoor or out). I see you are referring to metric measurements, I assume you are not in the states. Where I live the drip 5 gallon "Sack" systems are very popular for growing medical herbs, though I am a Bato Bucket guy for my veggie garden. Check out crop king.com for some more ideas.

Todd

Thank you Todd.

[GpsFrontier]

I will assume this thread is REALLY about the LEGAL cultivation of Cannabis, simply because so far there is nothing that has been posted to suggest otherwise. With that said, I also agree that the root mass would clog a NFT type system. Although personally I would also be very concerned about the root mass in 2 liter bottles as well. From my experiences growing the crop (unfortunately not legally, but about 20 years ago while in my teens and early 20's), the plant will easily become root bound, and then clog the PVC lines. I grew peppers in a two liter bottle flood and drain system, the pepper plants were only about 1 1/2 feet tall, the roots were already growing down into the PVC tubes and clogging them.

I'm sure you would have better luck using the horizontal 4 inch (100mm) tubing, and running it as a flood and drain. However I wouldn't expect that to be able to grow the plants to maturity either, simply because of how big the plants get. Even with only 2 plants per 10 foot long tube, unless you were growing inside and induced budding while the plants were about 3 feet tall. And you would need to create a system for top support of the plant, or it would become top heavy and tip over.

Personally, I would agree with Freshwater that you should really consider a drip system. I wouldn't use anything less than 5 gallon buckets for growing a cannabis plant to maturity in myself. Depending on your specific grow site (specifically the vertical space), the only drawback may be the fact the reservoir would need to be lower than the buckets, in order for the nutrients to be able to gravity feed back to the reservoir. However if that's not possible, that can be dealt with by using a much smaller secondary serge tank, though that's a little bit more expensive setup.

[WeeGogs]

would five litre bottles be better? i grow my plants from young clones to full maturity using 600w hps dual spectrum and flower and veg from start to finish, the plants are usually about 2.5 feet high with good flowering up top when finished, with fast growth period of about 6 weeks with cocoa, dont forget i have to dry them for roughly about a week to 2 weeks depending on the weather, temp, humidity, to get a nice potency, my feeding water is always 68f my room is roughly always round about 80f and 40-50% humidity. i want to try hydroponics to see if i can speed up the growth period, even a week extra would knock off some of my drying time.
i am only allowed so many plants at one time thats why the faster the growth the better.
i like to give a little to my friends as most of them are pensioners like me. its nice to be nice.
also would black plumbing be better than white for algae reasons while having bright light for 18 hours a day?

[hydrophotobio]

Speaking as a medical cannabis patient (and landrace breeder for genetics preservation seedbanks out in the Netherlands and Finland,) NFT works just fine for cannabis.

Your best bet is flowering clones immediately off the bat in that type of system.

Like in this picture of one of my older medical grows.

If you do not plan on flowering from clone and are starting from seed, your best bet will likely be smaller DWC/SWC buckets.

Or, alternatively, assuming you have proper lighting, bucket in bucket hydro system, aka the Krusty Bucket. Easily done with buckets ranging in size from half-gallon up to 5 gallon.

[GpsFrontier]

Interesting,
So the small plants in the NFT were clones from a female mother plant, that you induced budding ASAP? How big was/is the mother plant, and how many clones are you able to get from it? Also how do you know it's a female plant before it shows signs of budding? I know you can feed it hormones to improve its chances, but I only know of one way to tell it's female, and that's when you see the tiny hairs from the buds. Have you grown larger plants? If so how does the yield from a bunch of tiny plants compare to one tall plant?

I know a cannabis can get up to 16 feet tall, although the largest one we grew was about 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and was just about bound in the 5 gallon bucket it was growing in. But most were about 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. We timed the tops to create a wider bush with more branches. We also pruned the larger leaves from the plant to increase thc in the buds. But not all at once, we didn't want to shock the plant, something like 10% a week until all the leaves were gone. And we even timed the leaves from the buds when they got to be over an one to one and half inches long, that proved to produce some potent buds. Real sticky too, needed manicuring scissors to break it up, or you couldn't get it off your fingers.

[hydrophotobio]

Yes. The clones come from mature female stock. My method of identification relies upon letting them get old, after a period of time they will force pre-flowering. I usually keep my mother plants approximately 16-18" tall and assuming I run a bi-monthly clone/fill session (fill one channel every two weeks, get rotating harvest going) I can take way more clones than I need, usually betwen 30-40 from two mother plants.

I have grown larger plants, big enough to overtake the grow lights and hit the ceiling. I can pack equivalent yields with a bunch of smaller plants and in much shorter time versus the larger plants. I have thought about taking the big NFT systems I work with and tuning one for cannabis, sell it to dispensaries or pharm companies, like the guys that make Sativex.

You don't want to cut off the leaves of cannabis during flowering, just about 1/3 of the way back from the tips. If you're looking to increase THC production, A.switch to the highest-power properly-tuned LED panel you can afford, B. add 290nm UVB, C. push the absolute edge of flowering times. Start with 12/12 lighting, push it to 13/11 or 14/10 if you can, this works usually around week 5-6 for indicas and 12-14 for sativas, although certain strains, particularly those from right at the equator, do not tolerate this at all.

[GpsFrontier]

You don't want to cut off the leaves of cannabis during flowering

Well I can only tell you about our results, and we couldn't have been more pleased with the end product. The advice was given to us by a neighbor that was in collage, and studying botany because he was starting a landscaping business. Anyhow, we fallowed the advice, and again it couldn't have turned out any better. I forget exactly how much we got off the plant, but I think it was about a pound, we likely may have had more quantity by not pruning the leaves. But the quality of the buds was exceptional when we did. It was enough for the 4 of us to split with each other, as well as smoke out all our friends for about 4 months (you'd be surprised how many friends show up when they know you have it). But you would literally only need 1-2 hits, and your done. That is no exaggeration either, but after a couple of months we did build a tolerances (we were smoking it all day other than when in school), and we were taking 3-4 possibly 5 hits after a couple of months (just because we had it), but we would be so stoned it would even be hard to move.

As I mentioned it was so sticky, and it had so many crystal's that we literally had to carry around manicuring scissors (or at least barrow some) to break it up with. If we didn't there would be more stuck to our hands, than in the bowl of the pipe. We also used a razor blade or the blade of the scissors to scrape off the crystal's from our fingers. Again I can only speak from my experiences, but the advice proved to produce some extremely potent buds, and we simply couldn't have been more pleased with the end product. If I ever grew it again, I wouldn't grow it any other way.

P.S.
As they continued to grow out, we would prune the leaves from the buds. We would dry them out and smoke that as well. It was quite good, but no ware near as good as the buds.

[hydrophotobio]

Couple of pictures from prior grows. Same system, different approaches.

Regular-light picture, a crop grown with the majority of leaves removed.

Note the smaller buds, maybe half as long as my forearm, about as big around.

Second picture - leaves left on.

That one was the size of my leg and about 20% more potent, same strain.

Third picture, same crop, from a different angle. Growth was less restricted due to the 'solar panels' being left on. Note the one oddball in the back that managed to grow past all of the lights.

[GpsFrontier]

Ya, I'm sure you can get a larger harvest from not pruning the leaves, especially if you don't mind leafy bud. But It would take a scientific test to find any bud more potent than what we grew. I cant remember having bud any better, the stuff we grew was the best we ever had.

[WeeGogs]

how long did it take to grow these plants under led, compared to... say a 600W HPS Duel Spectrum.
and why did you call them solar panels, i have never heard that term used before.
solar panels generate electric power.

[WeeGogs]

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

Ya, I'm sure you can get a larger harvest from not pruning the leaves, especially if you don't mind leafy bud. But It would take a scientific test to find any bud more potent than what we grew. I cant remember having bud any better, the stuff we grew was the best we ever had.

when you prune the leaves, the nutrients concentrate in the flowers and they grow faster, so you get bigger but less potent flowers, when your plant is fully grown and you have not pruned it you remove it and hang it upside down for 10 - 14 days and all the good vitamins (wink) drain from the plant and leaves to the flowers at the bottom.
if you prune your plants instead and store the leaves they have thc in them, once finished you can put all the vegetation in to water and ice in to a 5 gallon bucket that has special netting at the bottom called bubble bags (bubble hash), you have to mix for 30 - 60 mins, the brown sediment (paste) at the bottom can then be collected and dried to make a block of very strong you know what, the water must be ICE cold to remove the thc. in other countries where they can grow it freely, they take the plants and put them under a clear plastic sheet and beat the living daylights out of them with canes, and i dont mean a few plants either, we are talking hundreds or sometimes thousands of them, it takes about 10-20 seconds to empty a plant, and they might do 2 at the same time, the thc falls in to a container under the plants as a brown sticky powder that you can mould in to shape with your hands like plasticine, this stuff is the strongest you can get if you smoke it in a pipe on its own, the stuff on the floor gets collected and sold as seen with foreign bodies, sand, in it etc. the vegetation is dumped. the only problem is by the time it gets to the streets of other countries it has been cut so many times it is now potent but not super potent, and could have anything in it.
the shade, colour, texture, and strength of the block always depends on the type of plant, or anything it may have been mixed with later.
if you put the original block on the streets without being cut there would be big trouble as the people are not used to smoking pure thc, it would probably even produce the same effects in some people as lsd, and also highly addictive.
one of the main reasons for not legalising it.
when it is not legal you are trying to protect the community, the stronger the cross breeding and plants, the more they move up the drug class bracket, as once legalised there is nothing against producing the strongest possible, and that would be like flooding the streets with a class A drug. places it is legalised have very serious problems like holland with open prostitution etc, not forgetting they have to grow it indoors and that costs money, they are trying to clamp down on the control of it now, before it really spirals out of control, but then, they will probably be covered over by sea water by that time..

[GpsFrontier]

when you prune the leaves, the nutrients concentrate in the flowers and they grow faster, so you get bigger but less potent flowers

However you want to put it, the fact remains that we created the best bud we ever had when systematically pruning the leaves during budding. Our goal wasn't to sell it, so we wanted quality over quantity, and buds that weren't leafy. Simply put, we achieved our goal.

[WeeGogs]

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

However you want to put it, the fact remains that we created the best bud we ever had when systematically pruning the leaves during budding. Our goal wasn't to sell it, so we wanted quality over quantity, and buds that weren't leafy. Simply put, we achieved our goal.

yes you did a good job.
i have seen most, if not all of your pictures on this web site and read some of your threads/posts, and you are a professional at what you do.
i can understand why you have a career in horticulture.
and thank you very much for your help and interest.

[hydrophotobio]

Originally Posted by WeeGogs

how long did it take to grow these plants under led, compared to... say a 600W HPS Duel Spectrum.
and why did you call them solar panels, i have never heard that term used before.
solar panels generate electric power.

Because leaves are essentially solar panels in the entire photon-dependent energy system.

Faster than HPS or MH.

More potent as well. Potency is directly related to two things - genetics and exposure to DNA-damaging light starting around 450-460nm and working into the UV range.

And no, leafy buds were not grown. Once the trichome-laden sugar leaf was trimmed away, large fat buds were left. None smaller than small immature pine cones (and almost as hard.)

Potency? I still hold the record over at Herbal Solutions in LA, and if all goes well this next crop, I will be breaking that record and further cementing my local lead (current 38% THC 7% CBD 2% THCV 8% THCA by present cannabinoids.)

Shot from last night - three weeks in the system from clone under 90w LED panels and a small HPS for IR, and mothers under two little 50w panels. Hindu Skunk, Jorge's new favorite and my favorite for almost half a decade.

BTW dual-spectrum bulbs are a gimmick, especially the 1000w ones. Usually a combo 600w HPS with a 400w MH conversion tube run in-line. Highly lossy and outputs lower than standalone HID bulbs (same issue with multi-chip emitters in LEDs.)

Notice how HPS lamps are starting to add more blue and become more like MH? There's a BIG reason for that. People are slowly starting to realize that MH is the choice bulb in HID. In my personal global travels to many production sites, I have found that MH bulbs are the preferred standard for primary artificial lighting, HPS is regarded as a supplementary lamp only, especially by the Dutch.

The company that manufactures Sativex, they use MH exclusively for their cannabis plants.

[WeeGogs]

Originally Posted by hydrophotobio

Because leaves are essentially solar panels in the entire photon-dependent energy system.

Faster than HPS or MH.

More potent as well. Potency is directly related to two things - genetics and exposure to DNA-damaging light starting around 450-460nm and working into the UV range.

And no, leafy buds were not grown. Once the trichome-laden sugar leaf was trimmed away, large fat buds were left. None smaller than small immature pine cones (and almost as hard.)

Potency? I still hold the record over at Herbal Solutions in LA, and if all goes well this next crop, I will be breaking that record and further cementing my local lead (current 38% THC 7% CBD 2% THCV 8% THCA by present cannabinoids.)

Shot from last night - three weeks in the system from clone under 90w LED panels and a small HPS for IR, and mothers under two little 50w panels. Hindu Skunk, Jorge's new favorite and my favorite for almost half a decade.

BTW dual-spectrum bulbs are a gimmick, especially the 1000w ones. Usually a combo 600w HPS with a 400w MH conversion tube run in-line. Highly lossy and outputs lower than standalone HID bulbs (same issue with multi-chip emitters in LEDs.)

Notice how HPS lamps are starting to add more blue and become more like MH? There's a BIG reason for that. People are slowly starting to realize that MH is the choice bulb in HID. In my personal global travels to many production sites, I have found that MH bulbs are the preferred standard for primary artificial lighting, HPS is regarded as a supplementary lamp only, especially by the Dutch.

The company that manufactures Sativex, they use MH exclusively for their cannabis plants.

so you are telling me that led is better than metal halide and metal halide is better than hps.
how on earth do you come to that conclusion.
metal halide is used to grow in a vegetative state, and hps for flowering.
this is the first time i have heard this one.
so the dutch have very tall and skinny plants, as they dont use hps.
how do the plants flower then.

[Stan]

hydrophotobio, thats some incredible THC numbers your getting. I can only imagine how high you get from smoking a joint. I grew 2 White Rhino plants last year in a rubbermaid aero system I built. I didn't trim the leaves and the top cola was as thick as my thigh. Let me say it was the most potent weed I have ever smoked.

[hydrophotobio]

Originally Posted by WeeGogs

so you are telling me that led is better than metal halide and metal halide is better than hps.
how on earth do you come to that conclusion.
metal halide is used to grow in a vegetative state, and hps for flowering.
this is the first time i have heard this one.
so the dutch have very tall and skinny plants, as they dont use hps.
how do the plants flower then.

How do I come to that conclusion? Years of professional testing as part of my duties as research director for a large multi-national horticultural company.

Go look at the sun? Does the sun change spectrum for flowering and vegging? No. Why should your lights? The overall insolation at sea level remains the same from red to blue, it's just weaker during the fall and winter. This red for flower and blue for veg mythos is simply that - a myth. NASA studies showed that plants grown under pure red light produced very little, and that blue was needed.

Further independent studies (mostly from the company I work for before I was ever hired on) showed that blue was a heavy deciding factor in overall yield. Blue wavelengths are the only ones with enough energy potential to trigger large biomass production. I did cannabis flowering under almost pure blue lighting and got better buds than red-dominant flowering.

I will wager that you're still looking at LED panels with massive amounts of red versus blue, and that's where your conclusions are coming from.

Everyone's copying NASA and SolarOasis research, and not trying to forge ahead, just make a buck.

[GpsFrontier]

Go look at the sun? Does the sun change spectrum for flowering and vegging?

Well actually yes. The sun itself doesn't change spectrum's, but the distance from the earth, the elevation in the sky, as well as the atmosphere itself all play a part in the light spectrum that the reaches earth. This means that the time of year and the season affect the spectrum. During mid summer there's more blue spectrum of light (depending on your location on the planet). In the fall because the sun is lower in the sky, and the part the atmosphere plays in the light spectrum that reaches the earth, there's more of the red spectrum of light. The sun and the earth don't do this just for the sake of the plants, but plants have just evolved to adapt to their environment (like all life on the planet).

This red for flower and blue for veg mythos is simply that - a myth.

A myth is only a myth if you don't agree, or in the way you interpret the results. That is such a general statement, it's flawed from the beginning. Not all plants have the same requirements, also take either spectrum completely out of the picture (red or blue), and you likely wont have good results no mater what (depending on the plants your growing). Simply lumping all plants into one category is comparing grapes and oranges (flawed). Although from everything I have read, I don't believe that using just HPS during flowering would give the best results. If it were me and I had the money, I would use MH during vegetative growth, and both MH and HPS during flowering. Also from what I have read, the full spectrum bulbs aren't what what the manufactures crack them up to be, as well as the combination MH and HPS bulbs (much like LED manufactures do). If I didn't have the money for both, I would go with MH. The plants will still flower, although yield and quality likely wont be the same (again depending on the specific plants your growing).

P.S.
I keep hearing about all this research, but have yet to see any of it. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't trust any research I cant see. Otherwise you simply cant evaluate how the research was done, the objectiveness of the results and/or conclusions, nor the credibility of who conducted it. So just saying this is the results of research is meaningless to me (much like that job offer that says they'll call you, but never does). Simply doesn't help.