Things are wrapping up over here and I've learned a lot about the entire process. This site and forum was/is instrumental in providing the information I needed from start to finish.
Challenges that took up the most time to research and implement:
Things that were straight forward:
Challenges that took up the most time to research and implement:
- HVAC
- Cooling the environment from day one was the hardest thing to figure out. Retrofitting insulation on ducts, reflectors, and configuring how to hang all the various pieces so that the light reflector could be moved all the way up to the top was difficult.
- Converting a window AC unit to be run completely inside to supplement cooling to the environment and figuring out how to supply the air to and from the AC out of the area. This kept the area with lights on around 86F for the majority of the time. Occasionally to make it to the end, the lights were dimmed for a few days while the AC unit was replaced. There was a miscalculation of the amount of BTUs needed to cool the space, so the window AC unit ran full blast for about 3 months straight and died.
- Figuring out nutrient and plant problems
- Figuring out what nutrients to buy was difficult since there are so many; and not wasting to much money on gimmicky stuff.
- There was a deficiency that showed up occasionally and based on what was on the leaf and where it was on the plant it could have been 3 or 4 different deficiencies. The root cause of the deficiency was never solved, but during flowering things looked like it went away.
- Watering
- How much to water and how much each plant used while it was going through each stage, a soil meter was an excellent asset to have.
- Implementing an automated watering system that would water the plants perfectly and how to route water lines
- Creating a plan to keep PH levels down and the reservoir cleanish.
- A procedure to check the drippers to see if they were clogged
- When to harvest/is it ready for the jar
- Looking at trichomes is difficult even with a jewelry loupe and determining when to cut them down.
- The harvest was probably still "early", but the schedule is running low on time.
- It's difficult to determine when the flowers are dry and when to jar them, flowers seem to dry at different rates
- Flowering stretch
- A miscalculation of the height when flipped to 12/12 led to the tops needing to be super cropped because vertical space ran out, the 5 gallon pot height wasn't considered when first planning veg height.
- The strain was supposed to be a short strain with minimal stretch, but the plants doubled in size and vertical growth space was tight.
- Defoliation
- Figuring out how much to defoliate and lollipop.
- With hindsight, more lolipopping/defoliation should have been done to prevent fluffy buds below the main canopy. Not having light penetrate lower into the canopy may have reduced the size/length of the main colas.
- Number of plants
- The number of plants to maximize yield was difficult to determine. The space got cramped, everything grew into each other, and there was not much space to work around the plants.
- Choosing a strain
- There was just too many strains to choose from and making a decision on an easy to grow and potent strain that would work in the grow space took many hours.
- Bud Rot
- Dense buds need to be separated a little bit from the stem while drying or it could start to mold/develop some bud rot even if the plant was healthy when cut.
Things that were straight forward:
- Mainlining
- Followed the tutorial to the T and it was very effective and the plants recovered very fast from it.
- The tops from the plants were "cloned" and all survived.
- Trimming
- This is the most tedious part of the process and hours upon hours a day have been spent hand trimming.
- A faster more efficient solution is needed.
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