Good morning everyone. 
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Random gardening thoughts: Planning a Perpetual
I've been thinking for days about lighting and setting up a perpetual. I have the DormGrow 450 for one tent (planning to buy a round red light to supplement in here) and the two 300W Mars Hydros (100x3 & 60x5) for the other tent. That leaves the closet.
A good use of your lights. You know how to do this. Sounds like a decision has been made.
What I'm considering is to make the closet my seedling to early veg area where everything on the shelves is in cups or one gallons and under CFLs, with larger girls in waiting on the floor under T8s.
You know how to do this. Ventilation is a non-issue. Another good decision made.
It gives me a month or so to get Dale's hobby stuff cleared out and get the tents up and then I can start getting some sort of perpetual flow established. The first run's going to throw me off a bit, since I have this pressing need to get some quick harvests for the daughter's oil, but from then on I want to be able to get it running smoothly to replace a harvested plant with another right behind it.
I don't think this will be hard for you. You will see why very soon
I'm also thinking I want to have one tent dedicated to autos under 20/4 lighting and the other for photos. That means the auto one could run straight seed-to-harvest and keep them flowing through. There should be enough room in there to get to where I harvest one a month, after the first run. .
The question of a quick first harvest is taken care of - You have a tent full of autos.
That is as fast as you will get on a quick first harvest and then you just keep rolling the auto out one after another.
You might consider doing all you autoflowers in high Brix. You can play with your charts and your schedules and once they start flowering, the schedule is pretty much established. Cat drench, bud backbuilding, harvest all on schedule.
Obviously, when you start looking for new shelf space afer harvests you can work the magic of growing HUGE auto flowers, whih will delay harvests, but eventually increase your need for cannabis storage space. I don't know how to do this, but you have a good idea
That leaves the closet as the veg part of the photo grows. I can only fit two crates in the bottom of the closet, so the timing will be key. I can split the space vertically, with seedlings above, one gallons below them and the crates on the floor. I bet I could learn to keep them waiting patiently in the one gallons until space opened up.
Sizing your veg area - part 1
You might want to rethink that a bit. My ratio is about 4 seedlings(solo cups) to 8-10 in late veg(one gallons) to 6-8 in flower. Once you start cloning, you can add 8 in a daisy cloner,whch is a great place to keep a plant on hold for 4-6 extra weeks (and takes up the space of 4 solo cups.) This helps a lot with the timing.
My thought is you might want your solo cups to share the top half of your closet with short one gallons, as well as the one gallons below. *You can move your cloner up and down in the closet if needed.
I started my cultivation adventures with autos, and then ran my tent under 11/13, essentially turning everything I grew in there into autos. Even my Carnival and Jamaican Dream got accelerated in the end. This growing photos is a new mindset for me, but I'm determined to get it right. What may sway me completely to autos is the new batch of high CBD autos getting ready to hit the market this summer. That auto Carnival will be out this summer too. To be able to grow the meds I need as autos would make me one happy camper, seed cost notwithstanding. .
If you end up running out of space in the closet for vegging photos, you can always toss them into the auto tent
either to grow larger or go into flower depending on your light timing
And everytime I get there I hear Shiggity tell me,
once again about how cloning assures you of the integrity of the phenotype and I go back to square one.
I hear you ShiggityFlip. It's not just me I'm growing for and the plan is to someday be able to expand, which requires me to learn the craft of growing photos and cloning. I'll behave and stop trying to wander off the path.
. . .
Not one to disappoint:
Get out there and Spread That Joy!
You don't disappoint, part of why you wear that member of the month
I think for me the biggest hurdle with the perpetual thing, is not having too much in the veg tent at one time. I need to be especially careful now since my veg tent is less then 1/2 the size of my flower tent. When I first got my cloner I was taking 2 clones from every plant, and they almost all took!!!! Too many plants. Timing the start of each plant is important.
I take 2 clones and leave one in the cloner until I see a transplant from the seedling plant to the final pot. If the first clone survives, the second clone is discarded. Only one of the two clones gets to veg at any one time.
In a perpetual, my cloner is always running. As my genetics get more and more valuable, it makes more and more sense to have a spare cloner waiting on the shelf in case of failure. After replacement T5 bulbs, that is my next next purchase.
Graytail once shared with me that the veg area is the key. You set up the bloom room and it's essentially the oven. Put the plant in and let it go. All the real excitement is in the preparation, in that veg space. So you need to figure out the first harvest date and work backwards from there, always growing more in the veg space than you'll need. That means some aren't going to make it in. That's the difficult part - putting the love and energy into plants you end up composting.
I'll get it. I'm one determined and hard-headed woman.
Sizing your veg area - part 2
You will need the same amount of plants in final veg (within their last 4-5 weeks of veg before flowering,) as you have in final flower (within their last 4-5 weeks of flowering.) You need a minimum of half the count of your flowering tent of plants in final veg.
If you veg for 4-5 weeks, your number of plants in veg is 1/2 your flowering tent count.
If you veg for 8-10 weeks, your number of plants in veg is 2/2 (the same as) your flowering tent count.
If you veg for 12-16 weeks, your number of plants in veg is 3/2 of your flowering tent count.
Being a conscientious grower, you will adjust your harvests to fit the plants, so you won't be harvesting half your flowering on the same day every 4-5 weeks. But you will be harvesting half your flowering room within that 4-5 weeks, so it works for planning.
The size of your veg area (the plant count) determines the size of your plant at harvest.
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I don't see any reason to chop a healthy plant in final veg. You don't need to veg too many plants, just veg the amount you will need
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I sincerely hope this helps. I am willing to stand corrected or clarify any of my points
) and possibly two spaces this run for autos, to get ahead of the game for oil production Duggan, but all in big pots. A combination of heady sativas and calming indicas with some intriguing high CBD strains tossed in to make it more interesting. It should be fun.