NYC_Diesel x Jack_Herer
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:holysheep:
Hi all,
So after being told it was impossible to grow a plant upside down I immediately tried it...I hate being told I can't do something don't you?
In answering someone else's post I mentioned how much I hate reflectors and think they are a waste of money. I was asked to prove it, so here I am!
For this journal I am going to be using two Barney's Farm Red Diesel plants. These two plants were part of a group of 3 that were grown from seed and rejected as potential mothers for the garden. There is nothing wrong with them, the third was just much more hardy and since it has already been sexed as female, I do not wish to continue with these two. They were going to be destroyed but I decided to do this journal instead. Unfortunately since these two plants came from seed I am unaware of the sex yet. Therefore hopefully at least one of the two will end up female and the journal can continue through the entire growth cycle.
My other hope with this journal was to take two clones that were near identical in their growth, and do an upside down SCROG and a right side up SCROG in order to compare yield, but that will have to wait for another day.
Before we go any further I just want to mention two safety precautions I took for this experiment. First, I never ever ever ever hang a plant directly over my lights (cool tubes with reflector removed so light can exit the tube a full 360 degrees). You never want to have moisture drip on a running bulb, you are just asking to kill yourself. When I water the hanging plants I remove them completely from the garden, water them, and allow all excess moisture to drain before returning the hanging planter, this is typically done right before the lights turn on. Secondly, all of the Topsy Turvy planters are hung and secured to the ceiling with 40 lb test hooks and chains even though filled with dirt and a fully mature plant the weight will not exceed 20 lbs. The last this I want is a plant crashing down on other plants below....other than it crashing down on the light.
Perhaps you are wondering why we are doing this in a SCROG. Well the answer is simple. Take a marijuana plant and hang it upside down for an hour, come back and all the leaves are lying pointing straight toward the ground, this is because of the way the plant has evolved, to grow against gravity. They wll also try to turn themselves over. Using a SCROG allows us to assist the Fan leaves in staying open toward the light. Since no plant is ever hung directly above the light the SCROG screen will be tilted toward the light field. It hangs 7 inches below the planter on one side and 13 on the other so that it slopes. The screen that I am using here is 15"x16" and has rectangular holes that are 2"x3" (the screen pictured is slightly different, but it is not the one I am using although it is the same material).
I have selected Barney's farm Red Diesel for this journal because #1 I like it...a lot. #2 It is a smaller plant, very Sativa dominant with smaller fan leaves that do not branch very far from the stem. And since we are growing upside down we want to avoid plants that have a lot of potential to stretch. Growing upside down might exaggerate stretch even more, but this is not something I am sure of.
For those of you that are interested in why I hate reflectors, please feel free to read the following, if you are just interested in the journal please feel free to skip to the next post:
-----
I have felt that reflectors are a big waste of money when I learned how much light they reflect versus Mylar. Really all a hood and reflector is good for is "catching" light, and "throwing" it in one direction. This would work great outside, but inside it does not really take advatage of man-made lights. Why? Because man-made light is not effective over distance. Light loses power by a factor of 4 as distance doubles, meaning a plant 1 foot from a light receives 4 times as much light as a plant 2 feet away. So picture your light (or look at it), all of the light it produces is being "caught", and "thrown" down. So your bulb, which emits lights in all directions, is only illuminating a flat surface below it, this is horribly innefficient, hence the invention of systems such as the colleseium and why some are designing lights that hang vertically down from reflectors so that plants can be placed AROUND the lights. In order to get more plants under your light and hood/reflector, you must keep RAISING your light, therefore reducing the power and lumens it is giving to each plant. The desire to do an upside down SCROG around cool tubes with plants also growing on the floor is an attempt to take advantage of light emitting in all directions from the bulb. To illustrate my point consider this... how many plants can you fit under a light and have them all 1 foot from your light???? You certainly can not light more than a 3 or 4 square foot area on the flat ground with a conventional light and hood only 1 foot from the ground. However, a ball with a 1 foot radius has a surface area of over 12 feet, meaning that if you work in a 3 dimensional garden you can get much more plant surface near your lights.
Hi all,
So after being told it was impossible to grow a plant upside down I immediately tried it...I hate being told I can't do something don't you?
In answering someone else's post I mentioned how much I hate reflectors and think they are a waste of money. I was asked to prove it, so here I am!
For this journal I am going to be using two Barney's Farm Red Diesel plants. These two plants were part of a group of 3 that were grown from seed and rejected as potential mothers for the garden. There is nothing wrong with them, the third was just much more hardy and since it has already been sexed as female, I do not wish to continue with these two. They were going to be destroyed but I decided to do this journal instead. Unfortunately since these two plants came from seed I am unaware of the sex yet. Therefore hopefully at least one of the two will end up female and the journal can continue through the entire growth cycle.
My other hope with this journal was to take two clones that were near identical in their growth, and do an upside down SCROG and a right side up SCROG in order to compare yield, but that will have to wait for another day.
Before we go any further I just want to mention two safety precautions I took for this experiment. First, I never ever ever ever hang a plant directly over my lights (cool tubes with reflector removed so light can exit the tube a full 360 degrees). You never want to have moisture drip on a running bulb, you are just asking to kill yourself. When I water the hanging plants I remove them completely from the garden, water them, and allow all excess moisture to drain before returning the hanging planter, this is typically done right before the lights turn on. Secondly, all of the Topsy Turvy planters are hung and secured to the ceiling with 40 lb test hooks and chains even though filled with dirt and a fully mature plant the weight will not exceed 20 lbs. The last this I want is a plant crashing down on other plants below....other than it crashing down on the light.
Perhaps you are wondering why we are doing this in a SCROG. Well the answer is simple. Take a marijuana plant and hang it upside down for an hour, come back and all the leaves are lying pointing straight toward the ground, this is because of the way the plant has evolved, to grow against gravity. They wll also try to turn themselves over. Using a SCROG allows us to assist the Fan leaves in staying open toward the light. Since no plant is ever hung directly above the light the SCROG screen will be tilted toward the light field. It hangs 7 inches below the planter on one side and 13 on the other so that it slopes. The screen that I am using here is 15"x16" and has rectangular holes that are 2"x3" (the screen pictured is slightly different, but it is not the one I am using although it is the same material).
I have selected Barney's farm Red Diesel for this journal because #1 I like it...a lot. #2 It is a smaller plant, very Sativa dominant with smaller fan leaves that do not branch very far from the stem. And since we are growing upside down we want to avoid plants that have a lot of potential to stretch. Growing upside down might exaggerate stretch even more, but this is not something I am sure of.
For those of you that are interested in why I hate reflectors, please feel free to read the following, if you are just interested in the journal please feel free to skip to the next post:
-----
I have felt that reflectors are a big waste of money when I learned how much light they reflect versus Mylar. Really all a hood and reflector is good for is "catching" light, and "throwing" it in one direction. This would work great outside, but inside it does not really take advatage of man-made lights. Why? Because man-made light is not effective over distance. Light loses power by a factor of 4 as distance doubles, meaning a plant 1 foot from a light receives 4 times as much light as a plant 2 feet away. So picture your light (or look at it), all of the light it produces is being "caught", and "thrown" down. So your bulb, which emits lights in all directions, is only illuminating a flat surface below it, this is horribly innefficient, hence the invention of systems such as the colleseium and why some are designing lights that hang vertically down from reflectors so that plants can be placed AROUND the lights. In order to get more plants under your light and hood/reflector, you must keep RAISING your light, therefore reducing the power and lumens it is giving to each plant. The desire to do an upside down SCROG around cool tubes with plants also growing on the floor is an attempt to take advantage of light emitting in all directions from the bulb. To illustrate my point consider this... how many plants can you fit under a light and have them all 1 foot from your light???? You certainly can not light more than a 3 or 4 square foot area on the flat ground with a conventional light and hood only 1 foot from the ground. However, a ball with a 1 foot radius has a surface area of over 12 feet, meaning that if you work in a 3 dimensional garden you can get much more plant surface near your lights.
But with a little TLC they should be fine. 
