Organic Cultivation Subcool Style~ The never ending How to thread...

[mikeybtoken]

Subcool..... Dude You Are The KING!!!
Many Many thanks for all of your inlightingments. I have followed any and all of your instructions/recomendations as closely as I could with truely amazing results for a first time indoor dude.
From the very beginning I tried to create a miniture version of your growing kingdom, with my own three chamber set up with three 1000w lights. I finnished construction this past summer. Then I messed around with ventilation/cooling on my own for awhile before I finally got it all figured out.
I tried to find Buttcrackconst but I went with Asswipeconst instead.
I can't believe how well your soil mixture works!!! I had to downsize your recipe to meet my needs but it is truely amazing at how well it is working. I did a little test. Your soil vers plane Roots and it is amazing to me how your mix has doubled the size of the plants under the exact same conditions.
Once I get my camera working with my puter I will have to show the folks out there the results of my little test.
Mostly I just wanted to say Thanks!!!
If I had one question for you it would be, do you ever use any nuits for flowering with your soil mix.
Thanks Again For This Thread!
Mike

 

[subcool]

It rare but I do keep a bottle of Roots Bloom and a jug of Pure Blend grow and bloom just in case I see something amiss
I am a huge user of sugars though mainly Sweatleaf and Sucanat in the past and now a product I think is amazing called Bud Candy really seems to have the mix of sugars and carbs a plant wants but this is stimulating the krebs cycle and also the soil web so its not really feeding the plant.

I tend to simply top dress any plant that seems to need some extra food.

Thanks for the kind words it never gets old teaching someone a few things to make life easier and the meds better!

Sub

 

[Rock420]

Thank you for this amazing thread. Two questions. There is three layers to the 7 gallon pot? Top soil, super soil/roots, and super soil. Can the plant touch the 'buffer' when transplanted?

 

[2Dog]

awesome love the organic grow! I only use roots.

 

[growtek]

Hey subcool, what's up?

Man, very cool thread. There's something in it for everyone.

For me it reinforces a lot of what I do.

I like how you look at the garden as a holistic environment. My experience has been the garden will grow as fast as you let it. Give her what she needs and she'll take care of the rest.

I've been far too 'chem' but after 7 years am going to soon try organics (fungi and bacteria)

Thanks again, great thread!

 

[Cannabiscotti]

Hey subcool--love your work! and thanks for the years of effort and teaching.

I was wondering if you do any growing outdoors? I am curious how you would adapt this soil mix for an outdoor grow? this year i did my first grow, one nice little spot. now i've got a nice lil plot picked out. I want to amend the soil now for next season.- or would you wait and use the super soil fresh? thanks in advance!!

 

[Skinman]

Had to hear about your author-ship through some of the old contacts my brother. Du-ed, you write a book and don't send your boy a copy? After I sent some reading material to ya during your visit to Canada, how soon they forget! Know this ain't for personal communications and such but have gotten rid of the old land line and was wondering how things were for my boy after the garden of good and evil as it were. Hope to see ya on this site sometime while I'm surfing the net at work, yeah 9-5 now kiddo. Oh how the mighty have fallen, but we always knew the Skinman was gravity impaired any-old-who. Be good Mobius Dank!

 

[subcool]

I been calling your old # since the day it was published brother life got real busy but I want you to know I did not forget. I will get about finding your new info here and get in touch asap

So no losting in hom,e town homie PM me some digits so I can catch up


Sub

 

[docfishwrinkle]

hey sub whats up? prolly up to elbows & aholes w/ the green? hey lil discrepency on your weights? you say 1 kilo = 5 lbs on the bone meal. 1 kilo actually = just shy of 2 & a 1/4 lbs. sooooooooo what is the correct amount 2.25 lbs or 5 lbs? thx for the time & be safe brotha.

 

[subcool]

This is the current list I am using

8- Large bags of High quality Organic potting soil with a coco and Mycorrhizae
1- 25-50 pounds of Organic Worm castings
5# Steamed Bone meal
5# Bloom bat Guano
5# Blood meal
3# Rock Phoshate
¾ cup Epson salts
1 cup Sweet Lime ( Dolimite)
½ Cup Azomite ( Trace Elements)
2- TBS Powdered Humic Acid

 

[subcool]

Growing indoors can be quite challenging but if the grow room is designed properly things go much easier. There are countless ways to set up a grow room but we will focus on converting a Bedroom or Garage into a safe and permanent grow area. Control of the Atmosphere is crucial so we will go into detail. Venting the lights, maintaining proper temperature and humidity must be done properly or problems will occur. According to the part of the world you live in and the size of your set up, you may need some or all of the following equipment to run a medical garden:
Window Air Conditioner/ Portable Air Conditioner/ Mini Spit Air Conditioner & Heater
Portable Safe Electric Heaters
Dehumidifiers
In line Fans
Fan Speed Controller
Blowers
Oscillating Fans
Large Carbon Air Scrubber
HPS Ballast
MH Ballast
Vented Hoods
CO2 Tank
CO2 Solenoid and Flow Control w/Timer
Digital Thermometers
Air Pumps
Water Pumps

Why are you going to need all or at least most of this equipment?
Indoors your God of all you see and you have to have total control.
If your room gets to cold during the winter yields will suffer and worse problems like mildew or mold could completely kill your crop.
If your room gets to hot in the Summer yields will suffer and pest like mites are much easier to control in a cooler grow room.
If your humidity is to high ductwork and hoods can form moisture and reduce the life of bulbs or even burst a bulb when a water drop hits a hot lamp.
Even a legal grower doesn’t want to advertise the fact he has the dankage inside so the carbon filter is a must as well.
People that haven’t been trained simply don’t understand Air and Cooling so I am going to attempt to help out.

First some things I see commonly done wrong by growers.
A window unit goes into a window.
It is not designed to be ducted with cardboard or vented into a garage. These things work marginally at high temps and without proper air flow all they do is use energy. I was at a grow this weekend that’s improperly vented and the power bill is 600 where it should be 300. That’s 3600 a year wasted that could go to making it work properly there fore saving money every year.
That will pay for a mini split that uses ½ the electricity as a window unit.
Think Green in your grow room!
Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to Chill the room and that cost a lot more.
A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu ac uses like 8
Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone go look at there venting flex if water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbo’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting.

 

[subcool]

Lets discuss a few ways to construct a indoor grow room. According to your local laws, each state has a different limit of plants that can be grown in a space. I find it best to always have less plants budding than allowed so we will be learning to keep our plants in the vegetive state longer than normal all the while training and shaping the plants for maximum production indoors. In my youth we would run as many as 40 plants under 1000 watts in a 6x6 area. Now we design bud rooms to run between 4-6 plants in the same area with the same wattage lights. The yield is very similar and the main difference is the amount of time the plant is grown under an 18/6 lighting schedule. The plants are topped and shaped to form a wide bush that will finish with multi-headed and at a height of around 5-6 feet. Think of each area covered by a 1000 watt light as a 6x6x6 Cube that you are going to fill with Cannabis. By using 3 separate areas designated as Cloning area, Vegetive area, and Budding area, you can continually harvest medicine every 60 days.

We are going to use some firm measurements in this teaching example but almost any configuration will work that allows the three areas to be constructed. Every light/bulb has a foot print. This means the area that can properly be covered for maximum production.
They are as follows
1000 Watt Hoods…………6x6
600 Watt Hoods………….5x5
400 Watt Hoods………….4x4
250 Watt Hoods………….3x3

The design we will be teaching is a 12x6 Budding room with 2000 Watts of HPS lighting. The vegetive area is 6x6 with 1000 Watts of MH lighting, and a starting area 4x4. I also use a small shelf with fluorescents for cloning.

I am a huge fan of specialized grow bulbs and have had great results with both Agrosun and Hortilux brands. I use vented hoods as heat is your #1 enemy indoors it will zap your bulb life, and bring on a myriad of other problems, like bugs, stress, and additional watering and crappy cannabis.
Much has changed in the field of lighting and you must be careful not to place these super efficient grow bulbs to close to the canopy. Light intensity can cause fox tailing or dreading of the buds and hot spots in the center of the canopy. Keep your high tech hoods and bulbs located at 16-18” above the canopy. Some plants actually perform better and yield more with this height. Sativa strains are very susceptible to this fox tailing trait and the vented hoods allow a grower to keep his hoods very close. This is a wrong application!

I like to use small chain and S hooks mounted to a 2x4 beam I install.
This allows you to secure the small beam to the crossing studs above and hang the lights evenly on the center of the room and not where the studs happen to fall.
Once our hoods are in place its time to mount the fan and hangers for the main trunk lines that bring air into the room and exhaust it into the filter above.

 

[subcool]

Moving Air is a lot cheaper than chilling it so if your hoods are hot then your venting system sucks. You should be able to hold your hands on your hoods and glass and not have to move them. If they are generating heat then your now paying to chill the room and that cost a lot more. A 1200 CFM vortex uses like 1 amp a 10,000 btu A/C uses like 8 amps which do you want running 24/7?

Air is a Fluid! Think of it as water. Everyone should go look at there venting flex. If water was running through it would it cavitate and restrict and all those bends without elbow’s? So does air you just cant see it. Air has friction and just like any fluid just less but its still a huge factor in venting. Its more costly to do properly but straight hard pipe has much less friction than flex duct. Along the same lines each hard bend you make in the flex can add as much as 15 linear feet to the duct design and enough of these mistakes and your not moving enough air to stay cool. A very common mistake is using the fan or blower to push air through the hoods and this is incorrect. This causes a positive pressure on the hoods and your temps wont drop like they will if you Pull the air through the hoods using the fan. This is accomplished by mounting the fan near the ceiling of the room and connecting a large trunk line that all the exhaust lines coming from each hood tie into using short even lengths of Flex duct.

Technology Note**
The new 8” cool hoods work really well and even though 8” flex is expensive it has much less restriction than 4” flange fitted hoods and less restriction than a 6” vented hood. You can get away running much more flex duct with these hoods but the steel ducts will last basically as long as you will. In our design build we will be using hoods with 6” flanges.



WE want to install a hard pipe system as our main trunk line this will prevent friction flex is used only as short connecting tubes.
This may seem like over kill but you have to master your environment when growing indoors!
Ok first I cut a 8" Dryer Vent in and tore off the flapper and cover.
We then attach a 8" elbow and a 7 foot section of pipe to go from down low to up high.
At the top of the ceiling below the plate we come through with the 8" duct using an elbow 8"
As this duct passes through MzJill's hydro room we chop in a 6" hole to provide fresh air for her hood. Being close to the intake it will get lots of good clean fresh air and stay cool even with the smaller duct.
We now enter the main bud room with the 8" pipe all joints are sealed and taped as were using co2.
Using a factory 8x6x6 Wye fitting I terminate the fresh air intake feeding each hood with a very short piece of 6" flex but I use elbows at the fittings to reduce friction and turbulence.
A properly vented movable hood using 6" flex and an elbo and a long sweep. No short hard turns to restrict air flow.
The new hood straight through these hoods are cool to the touch.

 

[nvthis]

This is the current list I am using

8- Large bags of High quality Organic potting soil with a coco and Mycorrhizae
1- 25-50 pounds of Organic Worm castings
5# Steamed Bone meal
5# Bloom bat Guano
5# Blood meal
3# Rock Phoshate
¾ cup Epson salts
1 cup Sweet Lime ( Dolimite)
½ Cup Azomite ( Trace Elements)
2- TBS Powdered Humic Acid

hey Sub, I noticed in the video you just posted you were using fish meal and fulvic acid. Is this from an old recipe? Or something new you are working on? Also do you use soft rock? Or the hard rock (black)?

 

[dioxide]

I know i ant sub but you are correct we do use fish bone meal now instead of bone meal.

Peace
Dioxide

 

[nvthis]

I know i ant sub but you are correct we do use fish bone meal now instead of bone meal.

Peace
Dioxide

Ah, c'mon now Dio... Welcome to mp... And don't leave it like that man Ya gotsta explain!!!

 

[blondeboy]

Very Cool sight! Thanks for the info. I will try this project, if I can find all of these ingediants. But where do you buy all of these different types of minerals? I found most of the products at my local nursery, but I'm having difficulty in finding Azomite trace minerals and Bat Guano bloom. It was funny when I gave the list to a nursery because she thought I was building a bomb, or something. Ha! Ha!

 

[mistisrising]

What's up sub, awesome thread, covers almost everything. You guys/girl are on point, much respect. Just a couple questions, I grow guerilla, and until this year I have always lugged in new soil for the holes. This year I decided to amend the soil with additives. The recipe you give makes how much soil? It seems to fill two fifty five gallon trash cans, so is about a hundred right? Are those bags of "roots" fifty pounds, or (how many) cubic feet?

Here's what I figure, without input. Each of my holes is approximately fifteen gallons of soil (2.5ft across by 2ft+ deep). Since the soil recipe here is used in the bottom half of the pots, I figure I should cut it in half, and in half again, then replace the blood with another nitrogen source (so I don't draw animals). That would, erring on the side of caution, give me about thirty plants to a batch. If you (or anyone who has info/exper) was using it outside, does this jive with what you would expect?

 

[subcool]

What's up sub, awesome thread, covers almost everything. You guys/girl are on point, much respect. Just a couple questions, I grow guerilla, and until this year I have always lugged in new soil for the holes. This year I decided to amend the soil with additives. The recipe you give makes how much soil? It seems to fill two fifty five gallon trash cans, so is about a hundred right? Are those bags of "roots" fifty pounds, or (how many) cubic feet?
Roots comes in a 1.5 Cuft bags and my mix fill almost 3 cans full.

Here's what I figure, without input. Each of my holes is approximately fifteen gallons of soil (2.5ft across by 2ft+ deep). Since the soil recipe here is used in the bottom half of the pots, I figure I should cut it in half, and in half again, then replace the blood with another nitrogen source (so I don't draw animals). That would, erring on the side of caution, give me about thirty plants to a batch. If you (or anyone who has info/exper) was using it outside, does this jive with what you would expect?[/QUOTE]
That sounds like good math to me but note that if you use this mix you will need full sun to take advantage of this kind of heat.
Mixed properly my recipe shows a run off of 4.1 EC and even though a sludge test isn't accurate bet ya but its damn hot so id still buffer smaller plants.

We actually had a nice outdoor grow once in Used super soil and feeding the plants just pond water.

Sub

 

[subcool]

I manage 3 part rooms to maximize yields. Being a 100% medical garden we have a lot of small yielding phenotypes so instead of worrying about a plant like Tiny Bomb giving me 40 grams finished medicine I just make sure I am turning her around every 50 days. This method is not for the lazy grower and requires a good deal of manual labor as well.
I accomplish this 50 day turn around by lots of labor and a working knowledge of my strains. I know that Tiny Bomb and SpaceJill will be done about 50 days and I can harvest them and make some room for others to spread out. Jillybean comes down a few days later and then soon to follow is Apollo-13. That leaves JTR and JC to finish and I usually completely swap all the plants at this time. Once my veg room plants are the right height to be flowered I flip the timer and start budding them early. Males and any plants that have lagged behind are left under the 400 MH to mature a bit longer. You can see the plants in veg have already started stretching a bit. Once main harvest is completed and I have removed all the plants from the main 2K room and re affix the floor tarp with staples and sweep up well. I replace the pest strips and vacuum out the A/C filter. If they need it I remove hood lens and clean away bugs and clean with Windex. A dirty glass can really kill your lumens. Vacuum the floor remove all those pesky dead yellow leaves ( Damn Soil Growers) and the rooms are ready to load. I like to place tall plants like JC in the rear and then the A-13’s. The rear lamp is a 1K HPS sunmaster deluxe. I position each plant so that each growing head fits into the slot provided by the other. In about 7 days I will go tie all the stretching plants down. By employing this method and the tree areas I can pull down 6 almost 7 crops per year so if there a bit smaller the extra 2 crops make up for it. Say a small crop is 40 ounces 2 extra crops is 80 and that’s a lot of Butter and Bubble. When you are a caregiver, extra medicine just means better butter.
I am glad our law understands people have needs and the limits here are manageable. You will have to learn your local laws and apply them to these methods.
We took cuts last week from these very same plants the day they went 12/12. We have 2 cuttings of each and our cloning temps are constant and we really loose any cuts and were deff not going to loose both. Many growers are shocked when I mentioned this method but we have back up cuts in the refrigerator and with other card holders.
This will not work for someone who is not hands on. This wont work if you’re lazy, you have to be on top of this during the transition and make sure the budding plants don’t get light pollution. Its also hard to stay on a watering schedule so you must again know your gear.
I have been fine tuning this 3 room system for almost 7 years straight with one change and that’s the addition of the 400 for males instead of just some flos.
Clones and seedlings grow under a 18/6 light cycle until I can see roots in the lower drain holes. They then get transplanted again into large 7 gallon lowboy pots, using my super soil in bottom 2/3 of pot and straight premium potting soil in the top 1/3 and placed back in 18/6 under the same 1000 watt MH. Once the plants have been in veg for almost 60 days almost everything is finishing up in the bud room and harvest is approaching. One everything is trimmed up and the old pots moved out and the soil recycled it’s time to clean everything well, washing the floor and tarps with bleach and making sure everything is mold free. At this time I clean off the glass in the vented hoods with glass cleaner. A clean room is the sign of a good grower! The plants are now placed in main bud room that measures 10x5 with 2- 1000 Watt HPS Hortilux bulbs.
This is the time when we clean up our plants removing any smaller shoots that are shaded still so that this energy that would have gone to produce fluff and added time to trimming can instead go to the upper buds that are actually in the light. This also allows more air to circulate under the canopy so that O2 doesn’t stratify. This in it self will increase the yields and make your trimming a bit easier. I am not sure everyone will get this analogy but the plant looking up should kinds look like broccoli with everything up top.
Night temps run around 72 the A/C is set just to dehumidify mainly. Do not let humidity rise above 50% for long. It cooler climates this can invite mildew and mold. BTW I remove and wash my window unit well inside with disinfectant and anti microbal wash to prevent mold slime a grow room A/C gets way funky.
It may take some time before you perfect this method and you will make mistakes but each time you do you will learn from it! Day 45 here and as the bud room swells to completion over the next 15 days it’s time to take clones from the plants that are still vegging. The plants in veg have been under 18/6 since this same task was done on the last crop basically for the entire 45 days.
If you follow my 3 area set up you know that by some manual labor and lots of close attention I am able to load a crop every 50 days. It is going to be real hard this time as I have some monster plants that finish late that are not going to fit into the shorter veg room so I will have to work it out.
The Bud room is completely packed with wall to wall towering colas in the rear and shorter sticky bushes in the front.
Time to take clones! Even though I don’t keep mother plants I make sure we take clones while plants are super healthy and in full vegetive state this is very important. If you take cutting from sick or un healthy plants they can be damaged and never grow like the original plant.This is also a the time to clean up the canopy and perform your bondage. Trim off sucker shoots and make sure everything is right for entering the flowering phase.
To recap
Day 45 veg room is healthy and the plants 24-30” tall with numerous growing shoots. IT is time for your tallest varieties to be budded, this is done my manual caring the plants into a dark area when 12 hours of light has passed. The shorter finishing are given at least another week of 18/6 and some varieties like Purple Urkle can be left in 18/6 for three to four months before they are large enough to place into flower and get decent yields.
I will start harvesting Saturday taking Tiny Bomb first. Just a bit longer and day 56 chop Space Queen, this will allow me to spread out the monsters you see in the back to finish and have less shading and crowding.
What’s cool is this is when some varieties really pack on the weight and hopefully so will the other late finishing varieties in your garden. This extra weak can mean a huge difference in many plants.


Quality is what counts to me.
In 35 years of growing I have done ebb and flo, NFT, DWC, aero misters and many other contraptions. My organic soil produces the best buds I have ever smoked!
If your plants bud for 10-14 days before even entering the bud room then there ready to finish 2 weeks faster its all in the text
I am just a workaholic and this works for me if I didn't have my garden i'd loose my mind.