5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

Contents

Introduction

2

Tip #1. Routine Maintenance is Worth its Weight

3

Tip #2. Trimming and Training

4

Tip #3. Getting The Most From the Roots

5

Tip #4. Fine Tuning Nutes

6

Tip #5. Cost Efficiency Using CO2

7

Conclusion

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Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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Introduction

With so much information out there about setting up and maintaining an indoor grow, it can be exhausting to piece together everything you need to know for success.

Indoor cultivation takes a lot of patience and practice to perfect. You need to understand all aspects of the process, such as the environmental controls and feeding schedules. This may require some trial and error to learn how to improve a grow properly, but we are here to help you get it right.

As the owner of the hydroponics store and grow consultancy Sea of Green, I have been working with other growers for over a decade.

I have seen setups of different levels of sophistication throughout the years.

Of those, the most successful grows are always a fine-tuned machine that maximize the efficiency of inputs and implement regular protocols to make all aspects dialed in from start to finish. Our goal is to help you create that machine for yourself.

Often the tendency of new growers is to push too hard for heavy yields, but this can open the door to expensive problems that diminish the quality of your harvest. Instead of pushing your system to the breaking point, I suggest checking out these five areas to really dial in, with the goal to push plants for efficiency to enjoy better results.

Justin Cosgrove Owner, Sea of Green

Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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Tip #1

Routine Maintenance is Worth its Weight Instead of using harsh chemicals to control pest or disease, a well integrated routine of monitoring plants will ensure better taste, quality, and yield for your grow. Keeping a well cleaned grow environment means being consistent. So consider some easy preventive ideas in regards to pest and disease. Save your money for nutes, not nukes.

• Check the tops and bottoms of leaves regularly for pest or problems. Cut off damaged or sickly leaves.

• Get rid of all open standing water, as it may attract things like fungus gnats.

• Consider post room cleaning rituals for the walls, floors, and reusable pots.

Tools should be treated in solutions that kill molds and spores. A good solution is to use ProKure, an EPA registered chloride gas that leaves no residuals. For post clean up, ProKure is awesome and safe for killing molds and viruses on both the room itself as well as on equipment and plastics.

• Keep the room clean of debris and dirt. These are easy places for problems to hide.

• Wear clean clothes to avoid being the source of contamination.

• Use preventive foliar feeding solutions of compost teas to help increase brix (sucrose levels) which has been linked to lower threat of pest or mold problem. Build up the defenses in vegetative growth and the 1st-2nd week of flower when using a foliar feeding program.

• Quarantine plants if they are from an outside source. You want to sequester and treat these plants to be sure they have no hitchhikers on them.

Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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Tip #2

Trimming and Training Trimming and training plants is necessary for good growth. Different methods result in different desired outcomes, but the result of a wellgroomed plant means increasing airflow through the canopy, minimizing shadows, maximizing exposure of light energy to flower sites, and increasing photosynthesis overall.

• Low-stress training is one the most effective methods to increase surface area for lighting coverage. Low-stress training removes the apex shape of the plant, so you get light more uniformly to all of the canopy by exposing more inner and side branches which normally are shadowed by a single taller apex branch.

• During the flower cycle, trimming up the lower third (lolli-popping) of the plant assures the energy is going to the right places to increase yields.

You’re better off removing the lower third because the lower branches will zap the energy that should go to your tops.

• Don’t over veg. Plants will double in size when you turn the lights to 12 hours. If you veg your plants too tall, they will grow into the lights. If you want more bushy plants and side branches, top them by removing the apex stem, resulting in more side shoots. Some strains of plants do better with this than others so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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Tip#3

Getting The Most From the Roots A healthy root structure is everything to a plant’s overall yield. Focusing on the health of the roots during the vegetative stage means that the plant will have a lot of pathways for the swell of nutrient uptake needed in the flowering cycle.

Make your roots do all the dirty work with the quick ‘n’ easy tips to keep in mind.

For Soil: • Focus on the Rhizosphere. You need a good colony of bacteria and Mycorrhizae to do a lot of the work for your plants. The better Rhizosphere can even cut the amount of food you have to use and reduce nutrient build-up, which causes salt toxicity.

• Do not let plants become rootbound. If the plant slides out the pot like a compact ball, chances are the plant’s health is being negatively affected.

The soil is depleted of food and oxygen becomes harder for roots to reach in compacted soil.

• Starting small plants in too big a container is wrong too. A good rule is the final container should make up ⅓ of the plant’s final size, so get in the habit of transplanting from a veg cycle going into a flower cycle.

• Have a flushing regime and use enzymes to remove salts. This resets the plant for better nutrient uptake. Rest and reset will improve the efficiency of adding nutes.

For Hydroponics: • Keep the temperature of water as close to 68F as possible. This keeps dissolved oxygen in the solution higher.

• Let pH move naturally to 5.5-6.2. This helps elements that absorb better at different acidities.

• Use enzymes and bacteria inoculants that are rated safe to use in hydroponics.

Mycorrhizae cannot survive in an aqueous solution, but leading manufactures have found strains of bacteria such as various forms of bacillus as well as natural plant extracts loaded with root producing hormones that are great for prolific root development. Root inoculants like H & G Roots Excelurator Silver, or Rhizoblast by Botanicare are both popular options amongst the many.

• Keep the water moving and oxygenated as much as possible

Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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Tip #4 PK

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Fine Tuning Nutes

Nutrients can be tricky as mineral salt polarity and plant physiology changes and moves as the plants develop. Understanding when to feed, how much, and how to identify nutrient problems early on is an art. Consider the following methodology to get better use of nutes, and how to approach nutrient imbalances if they occur.

• Plants know more than feed charts. Your environment and strain determine more what the plants need then a nute company may suggest. Start off with less than the recommended dose to see how they like things in your environment. It is easier to bump up food than to try to unfeed them.

This is a big money saver here. Too many nutes are often problems, not solutions.

• If you are re-circulating nutrients, use a meter to monitor changes. Be less attached to what the ppm (or what a feed chart says) and use ppm as a reference. The change in ppm and pH day by day will indicate if you are over or under feeding. For instance, a rise in pH and drop in ppm is a good indicator that your plants are taking up the nute solution. The feed cycle is a slow progression. Increase food strength gradually week by week until peak flower, then reduce again till flush.

• If the plant is not healthy, throwing in more additives like bloom boosters can be catastrophic. Be careful of bloom boosters and plant growth stimulants even when the label has a low N-P-K value. Special plant growth hormones are often what are used in bloom boosters and can negatively interact with base nutrient regimens. Bloom boosters surge food through the roots and can sometimes create mineral lockouts, and adversely affect taste and smell.

• Lastly, going back to tip #1, keep a grow log. It is hard to remember what may have been done when, and whether something goes right or wrong.

Having a good record can improve each grow cycle.

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Tip #5

Cost Efficiency Using CO2 With CO2 injections, the goal is to speed up growth, but keeping the stomata taking in carbon dioxide means having a balanced environment that allows gas to be absorbed for photosynthesis. This can be daunting to set up and expensive to implement in a closed environment. If you are not seeing benefits of CO2, there might be an imbalance somewhere inhibiting the absorption. Use these steps to keep down the price of gas for your plants.

• Make sure the room is sealed as best as possible and have CO2 drop from above and pushed around by fans. CO2 is heavier than air so air circulation helps kick it around the atmosphere.

• Keep temperature and humidity in the right range by having controllers to activate things such as cooling, heating, and dehumidification. Controllers often have settings to deactivate (defeat) CO2 when venting the room.

When venting stops, CO2 is reactivated.

• Nutrient-rich water being pulled up through the plant’s tissue is done when the climate is conducive. If temperature or humidity are not ideal, stomata close and CO2 cannot be taking in.

• Consider letting rooms get a little warmer when CO2 is injected. Plants will tolerate this, and in fact, this is a key combo for speeding up the sucking up of water. With increasing temperatures, be sure to keep relative humidity under 60% in veg and 40-50% in flower.

• Going above 1500 ppm often lowers your ROI. 1500 ppm should be considered through the first ⅔ of flowering. Otherwise, 1000-1200 ppm is adequate for seedlings, clones, and veg.

• Use full spectrum lamps for best CO2 utilization. Light wavelengths of colors do different metabolic functions.

• Do not run CO2 at night. Plants are not using it.

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Conclusion

Good practices are invaluable and help you save time and money. The tendency is to over complicate and push plants instead of balancing out the system within the limitations of the situation. Applying the above-mentioned practices will help save some money and up yields while limiting unneeded complications.

We want to see you save dough when you grow, and by dialing in and understanding the fundamentals you will find that those results are at your fingertips. Whether you're a professional grower or a garden hobbyist, Sea of Green strives to understand your operation in detail to give your grow the attention it needs. We focus on quality goods to minimize failure, increase gram/watt and maximize your return on investment.

Sea of Green. 5 Tips for Cost Effective Yields

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sea of green

Sea of Green is the original hydroponics store in Arizona, and has over 30 years combined experience helping growers with operations, growroom technologies, and plant sciences. Our extensive network of resources have helped create the long lasting relationships that we have acheived with our clients.

Our goal is to provide products and services for desired results. Contact us at 480.448.1129 or write us at sales@seaof-green.com for consultation and pricing. Alternatively, if you’re in the area, check us out at our Tempe location

If you’d like us to help you with your grow room, please give us a call at 480.448.1129 or contact us via email here for your personalized consultation from our team of expert growers.