Skyflyer's growing Grapefruit on a non-recovery drip system in a room that's 4M x 4M with a 3M ceiling. These shots were taken at 10 days into flower, and because of the reflective lining it might look like there's quite a few plants, but there is actually just nine.
His only previous grow was Grapefruit as well, and he got an average of around 13oz per plant, spread over 12 plants - not bad for a beginner, especially when he said the lights weren't working for the whole grow. He was pleased with the yield but not the quality/THC content so he's looking to improve on that this time around.
There are nine HPS bulbs in here. The bulbs and ballasts are Eurolux 600W and are each attached to a Euro Reflector (when these photos were taken the bulbs had been lifted up, but now they're now positioned at 18" above the plants).
Each plant is in a 32L pot with two drippers. Skyflyer's using Gold Label Hydro Coco along with Gold Label nutrients: Hydro Nutrition A&B, Ultra PK, Ultra MG and Enzyme. pH is currently around 7.6, which is obviously a little high. There's also a bit of yellowing on the lower leaves, which is probably due to a pH problem.
There are four fans placed around the room at floor level, and Skyflyer says he plans to hook the fans onto the wall higher up once the plants have grown a bit.
In the photo above you'll be able to see a Kahn air conditioning unit. This is a new model that's not even on the market yet and it replaced a Bergdorf in Skyflyer's setup. The Kahn runs much quieter and is an all-round improvement. The sensor is in a water-tight box, rather than being housed in the unit itself, and can sense day/night too, so the room temperatures are set at 31°C/26°C currently.
Skyflyer says he's been really impressed with the telephone support from Kahn too, but the big problem at the moment is condensation leaking out of a seam on the very left hand side of the unit. Obviously this isn't great and it's just ending up in a bucket on the floor at the moment. Skyflyer plans to fix this either by modifying the AC, or adding some kind of pipe system so the water drains straight out of the room.
Humidity is around 60~70%, whereas it was around 90% with the Bergdorf. He also has a REMKO dehumidifier that will go in at week 4. As you may already know, low humidity is important towards the end of flower.
One of the lessons learnt during his last grow was that one layer of netting wasn't enough. The plants got so tall that they started to fall over, so this time he's got two layers to hold everything in place. You can see in the above photo that there's a piece of orange string woven into the edge of the nets. That's a nifty trick so you can easily pull the whole thing taut if it's sagging.
There's also another small room just next to this one that's not shown in these photos. The water tank and ballasts are in there, and it provides a space to do any prep work and germinate seeds. It's a basic 200L tank and Skyflyer says he's about to fit a pump inside to keep the nutrients circulating, as they've been collecting at the bottom recently.
One of the disadvantages in having netting covering the whole space is difficulty getting in amongst the plants. Skyflyer says he has to crawl under the net to do so, and the canopy got so thick on his last grow that he couldn't even do that. He's planning to 'lollipop' these plants shortly, so that should be less of a problem now. In the photo below you can see a little strip down the side of the room that the netting doesn't cover. You can also see a tank of CO2 there and it's hooked up to a sensor to be released when necessary. Skyflyer's going through about two tanks a week.
Thanks for these photos, Skyflyer! We've got a few elements that make this grow quite different to our last one and you can expect an update soon.
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