Grow Room SCROG cages round two. Russian Rocket Fuel, 4 plants

[sWeed]

Last three years I have been growing Russian Rocket Fuel and it has become a favorite strain of mine. Last two grows were reported here on AFN. The object of my very last grow was to try and up the yield of the previous grow; about 100 g from 4 plants, inside my kind of small cabinet. To manage this I wanted to try out a few changes to my Tek. One of the ideas I came up with was a kind of SCROG cage, made from metal mesh, covering on all but one of its six edges . Eventually I made these four cages from slightly modified wardrobe drawers. The idea was not only to try and maintain an even canopy for all four plants that would fit at one time for this operation, but also to provide each plant with an "extended canopy" right around the perimeter of each cage. Previous grow the larger plants would shadow its smaller sisters; this was to fight that problem. The reason for using free standing individual mini-scrogs for each plants instead of one big screen attached to the cabinet is to make sure I can easily evacuate my plants, should I need to, but also to be able to rearrange plants inside the cabinet, and to easily take them out when I need to inspect and/or tuck leaves etc. I just about doubled my yield, and i think the cages are mostly to thank. I include two photos here to get a general idea of them.







For more info, visit my last grow report. Also check the grow prior to that one for more info on my coco, drip to waste tek/setup…or just follow this thread since I´ll most likely go through the process in detail throughout the grow : )


Today is actually day 18 from planting ten beans. The seed were from my own production and are all the same lineage and generation. All ten had broken soil by about day 5. Since trying IKEAs coco coir last operation, I´ll keep using that ´til I find anything better. It´s cheap and it worked just as well as the 6 or 7 times as expensive stuff I bought from my hydro specialist. This week I started to be able to sex the plants. I think its at least 50% females, but ill give it another day or two until I get the plants into 2 gallon fabric smart pots. This time, instead of transplanting - which contrary to most I´ve read, have worked excellent without any stunting - I´ll cut out the bottoms of my small containers and put on top of my smart pots. I´ve noticed that the top 3rd of my substrate gets a lot less if any root mass, than the bottom 2/3rds. I remember reading that this technique should counter this effect of transplanting. I also need my plants to either get a bit closer to the top of my cages anyhow, for the simple reason that the smallest of the RRF phenos might not even reach the screen; one of mine didn´t last grow. This variation on transplanting puts them higher up to start with, and should give each plant some more roots and height as well.
I´ll post a couple of pictures from the first two weeks in sequence.

pH 5.8 straight through the grow is the plan, by the way, and that yellow thing you see on top of my coco, thats rice husk. Excellent alternative to perlite, for aeration. Cheap and Friendly: )

Peace!



Adding a photo from this morning, which is close to 24 hrs ago. And boy have they grown more since. They just take off around day 15 or so, and then it's a 5 week vegetative train ride.

 

[Anasazi]

Awesome looking plant. Nice cage idea too. ;D

 

[sWeed]

It's close to two weeks since my last post. I meant to post more but life came in between.
So, I only got three female plants which turned my project I to trying to get the same yield as last grow but with one plant less. It was very cramped inside my cabinet lady grow, so it should be interesting to see what some more space might do. I've added fans in two direction to every cage, hooked up to a central hub made for computers (the fans are also 9 mm computer fans. Put makes a tidy sethp, teal,y easy to set up. I also set up my extra t5s.
I'll post some describing photos from my "transplant" followed by a few updates from within the cabinet over the last two weeks.

 

[sWeed]

I couldn't post more than 15 photos in my post from the iPad, so here's two more.



And for the final shot, this is what RRF plants are capable of in the twelve days that has followed on my last post, even in such a cramped environment as this one. Today they broke through the cages roofs.


For now my system is more or less on auto. I'll refill the reservoirs about weekly, and I'll also take each individual cage out at that point, to tuck and train, and also to rearrange the order an direction of the cages inside the cabinet, to vary the lights that hit each individual plant.

Bye bye for now.

 

[jackmc]

sWeed, How did those cages work on the last grow? I still love the idea. Cheers

 

[sWeed]

Hi jackmc,
they worked beyond my expectations. I roughly doubled my yield from 100g to 200g between two otherwise similar grows. If anything the last grow had some minor changes for the worse, other than the cages that worked exactly as I hoped and produced more than I could have hoped for. This grow I am correcting some small errors, and have upgraded the cages with individual fans - cables easily detatched when I take the cages out for inspection and training. Each fan line up with each other in two directions forming a circular wind motion inside at mid level of the cages. I am on the look out for a small enough oscillating fan for the canopy, but I have still to find the one.
I set out to try to at least repeat last yield, well I only got three fem out of ten planted seeds. On this note, I've noticed that when I start my plants on the 20/4 day/night cycle I run my grows on, I get a lot more males. When not I usually get a very high rate females instead. I forgot this when I started out this grow and didn't bother, thinking that I've mistaken myself thinking this could affect the ratio. Well, it turned out I got another one for the statistics : )
This have led me to upgrade my goals to get the same yield from three plants as apposed to four last grow. I have not come to conclusion yet wether I have a bushy pheno this grow (previous two grows had one each). Not having at least one bush will risk me not reaching my goal, but I am hoping that my upgraded transplantation tek leading to more root mass, also resulting in the plants higher starting point, will lead them to reaching the cage earlier, producing more bud sites. Last run one of the squat plants didn't even reach the cages' sides or tops so the scrog effect did not take place. Still produced decent amount of marvellous tasting pot through (the best weed of the four plants).

Heres the two previous grows

https://www.autoflower.org/f104/follow-up-russian-rocket-fuel-grow-36776.html

https://www.autoflower.org/f104/russian-rocket-fuel-really-late-started-journal-35491.html

 

[AnanKofan]

sWeed could you tell ma what are advantages and disadvantages of that claber oasis and is ii worth that money or better to look for somthing better.

 

[sWeed]

Hi AnanKofan,
I'm very happy with my two Clabers. They do exactly what I need them to, and that at with a very simple principle. I like to keep everything really simple and aim for minimum maintenance while still yielding a lot. I prefer not to have my water pipes hooked up to a timer to avoid any risk of malfunctioning and possibly leakage. The units can only hold up to 25 liters each. This menas that If anything malfunctions my waste water reservoir will catch anything dripping through my pots. When using both units I can combine any amount of drippers (I use up to ten for each plant) with the four different settings, to administer up to 1.2 litres nutrition/water/plant divided between four separate waterings. This ensures even oxygenation to roots and also keeps my coco constantly flushed since I run my waterings to at least 20% waste.

Today is day 36 for this grow, and I have spent some time past weekend upgrading my drippers to more easily detach the cages to take them out. I also added a small water pump to the bottom of my waste water reservoir so that I can easily empty this without having to take cages, shelf and the container itself out each time.

My light cycle same off today before taking any photos. I'll try and take some tomorrow..

 

[sWeed]

6 weeks from planting seeds.
Being away working a convention for the weekend I came home to some rapid development in my grow locker. I decide to take each out to inspect and train/tuck som fan leaves. I do his to ensure lots of light hit the plants nodes and bud sites, trying to have my plants produce more branching and stems turning into proper colas.
For easy reference I've colour coded each cage, red, yellow, green. (Also blue, but since I only had three girl this grow, this cage is not used) This is handy for when I need to plan and hook up drippers and fans, but mostly to keep track of the positions of each cage.. Every time I take the plants out for inspection I switch places on a rolling schedule. Today I finished a full cycle (three weeks since week three, making one week on each position) so now it's time to turn them 180 degrees to further alter how the light hit the plants and start a new cycle.

I did some super fast Google searching before starting to write this post, and found out that, obviously, loads of others have come up with the same or very similar kind of cages and there is of course a term/name for them. I was thinks of calling them COG, short for Cage Of Green, when I googled it and of course that's the name each and everyone else come up with, so from now on I'll just keep referring to my cages as COGs : )

Red COG
This one is this runs medium plant. It is not of the dwarf RRF phenotype, but I do not think it has the monster trait that some of the bushier plants have. Seems to be a good yielder however, and she is looking healthy green. There weren't a lot of tucking to manage, but I folded some large fan leaves and in general tried to let flowering stems come clear of dense foliage.
This is her after being tucked in.


Yellow COG
This is my bush for this grow and it already has two impressive colas, with more just penetrating the mesh on top of this COG. Very promising when it comes to yield, and I needed to do a lot of tucking and folding on this one. I'm glad I installed fans on all COGs to help prevent any mold building up when all that dense green is being tucked inside.
These phenos usually yield up to 3 or 4 times as much as my more modest RRF plants and they do really explode in growth at this stage of the grow. Since I grow my own lines of RRF from my first purchase of seeds, I don't know if I have luck in my genetics but I do manage to usually get at least one of these for each grow I do.

First a photo from the open side of the COG, then each of its four mesh sides.


Green COG
If yellow is the giant bush, this one is the dwarf of the grow. In my opinion, this pheno has the best taste and the most uniform beautiful look of the types I've encountered. When properly cured I think they have exactly that taste that defines MJ to me, can't describe it better than that : )
Properly grown they can yield just as much as the other phenos, save any bushes. They get a main cola that shoot straight up, usually sporting buds all around it like a giant phallos of flowers, uniform branches shooting up regularly around this main cola from below. These branches never seem to reach the same height as the main cola but sport a small but dense top of buds that make excellent smoking material. I was hoping to provoke more growth by changing to a transplanting method that would give each plant roughly a 10 cm head start on its race to the top of its COG. Seems it wasn't enough though. Unless it start some massive growth suddenly I think this one is going to stay roughly the same height as now, but fattening up a lot all around. At least if she follows in its predecessors steps.
One future change to my COGs will be custom sown fabric pots. I use 2 gallon smart pots for now, but I can easily make pots that would contain at least twice that volume that fits snugly inside each COG, which would probably contain more coco than I will actually need when utilising a drip/drain to waste setup. I do feel however that probably at least another 50% substrate could promote even more growth. Also this would give me the opportunity to help my plant reach the top of their COGs a bit earlier to let even the smallest of dwarfs benefit from the idea of SCROGing in the future.

Side by side, before and after some tucking. Not to much to fold away, but by weaving leaves one can get some light to hit most of the lower parts.


Finally a side by side, as they are currently positioned inside the locker. From left to right, Red, Yellow, Green.

 

[sWeed]

Oh and by the way. I forgot about disadvantages regarding the Claber units I use for my feedings. I do not really have any real complaints. It would be nice in a way to have larger container for being able to do larger batches of nutrition. However, since I don't really want my water to stand for more than a week and possibly deteriorate, and the two units together give me up to at least 7 days of automatic feeding and then some more, of as much volume I can need for the four plants I can fit in there, there is really no need.
Could even be that having a larger container would make me lazy and possibly against better knowing make me change my reservoir every two or three weeks only, hehe.