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.