Effects of 'Manifolding' on Seed Development?

[McDdd]

OK, I can do this one straight away – just the one circle to change.

Looks like that would work, doesn't it?

[McDdd]

I need to find a way to move four of those 28w LED's out over the centres of the three-gallon (surrounding) pots; make some kind of suspension frame.

[McDdd]

OK, I've repositioned the lights here – using all six 28w's, spread them out over the centres of the surrounding pots (need to build a suspension frame – there's no way around it), added handles (which are actually present on the pots, in any case) and deleted the canopies for clarity. This looks pretty good, but I'm wondering – if I've built a suspension frame, anyway – whether it might be sensible to get another 2x28w's to fill those gaps in the middle at the edges (top and bottom).

Doing that, though, would start to make it get expensive, and money is important everywhere now. Put that together with the ham-fisted, homemade look of a jerry-rigged suspended lighting frame and I start risking the wrath of something more dangerous than the law: the wife. It might look a lot better and feel a lot more balanced, but I don't know how much difference they would actually make; 2 is 33 1/3% of 6, or 25% of 8... Hmmm... Pondering. And the big one in the middle is an unknown.

But all these new LED's are unknowns with Chinese entrepreneurs utilising their new confidence to explore innovation, making new-and-improved units pop up like mushrooms after an autumn rain, responding to demand of the world's largest economy, where growing cannabis is actually legal in some places now. (Nothing like a bit of hypocrisy to keep the wheels of commerce and industry turning!) Yes, we live in interesting times.

[oldjarhead100]

MCddd just curious where are you at

[McDdd]

Right, I've revisited the single-pot route now, having made so many modifications to the five-pot plan. I kind of like it, rather inclined to go this way. I think it should be easier to keep water under control (off the floor) which could be a really big advantage if push comes to shove with the wife over safety concerns. I've just had an electrician in to put a surge protector on that line, but it's still hard to beat not having water on the floor and walls of the tent in the first place; I like the pot-in-a-pot concept. No need for a manifold frame, either: just secure ties through holes drilled in the rim of the outer pot.

I've already had an idea about how to keep the roots of the central plant from being wetter than those of the surrounding plants: I'll put an airpot with nothing inside it upside down in the middle of the floor of the fabric pot, directly underneath the central plant, cover it with a few centimetres (couple of inches) of soil and sow the plant there, so water can drain away to the sides and the roots can grow around it. Might be a problem with the air inside the airpot, which will be trapped by the earth around it, going stagnant? Do I need to make vents? Probably wiser to.

The question now is how far from the wall of the pot I should put the surrounding plants. Any ideas?

[McDdd]

MCddd just curious where are you at

Well, I don't want to actually use the name of the country here. They pride themselves on cyber security and I'm sure any direct mention like that is likely to set off alarm bells in the Big Brother HQ Control Centre. (Paranoid, or what?!) Ours is one of only three countries in the EU North of Italy (Norway isn't a member of the EU.) where Sensi Seeds will not send seeds. (Because they, like me, know they won't get through and have experience of unpleasant consequences. And if they are allowed through consequences may not be evident until the grow is well established.) See here: https://sensiseeds.com/faq/country.asp.

[McDdd]

Actually, there are four including Luxembourg, but they don't count because they're one of the Benelux countries, and they're all so rich there they can just jump into one of their Rolls and drive to Holland to get seeds, be there in half an hour or so and go to see what's new in the coffeeshops at the same time. No point taking stick from Germany, like the Dutch do, for having it legal; they earn Brownie points with the prohibitionists and get to eat their cake, too! Iceland doesn't count, either.

Anyway, this is it (attached PNG). I reckon this is the way to go. Couple of minor points, like do I need two vents to get a cross flow of air...? But nothing major, I don't think; I reckon this is pretty much what we're going to do. Maybe we'll take some pictures while we're putting it together and make a tutorial to go online?