Perpetual Harvest, what is it and is it worth it?

[Techead]

Hi Guys' n' Gals.
Having a supply of our favourite plant on tap, is a Stoner's Nirvana, but is an endless supply even possible, Hell Yeah, it had better be!
It doesn't matter if you grow in Dirt, Coir, Hydro or whatever, but from a practical point of view, it only works well with Autos.
Before I am shot down in flames and crash and burn, Photo periods and a Mother Plant do exactly the same, but this requires the luxury of several grow areas and several Grow lights different light patterns, and a lot of patience, as it takes a LOT longer, then Auto's arrived and things changed.
Without getting into the 'Photos Have a higher THC content, Yield and can be successfully cloned, not that you can't clone Auto's, you can but it's not as straightforward as Photos and the yields would suffer.
I have a Hydro setup I am putting together, It's one large Box, it's black very strong and made from recycled Car Bumpers, how green is that?
I will cut the top to take Six 100mm Net Pots, although there is certainly room for eight, I might add two, later on. Seedlings can also put under Cloches
Basically, I propose to add two plants about every six weeks, this wil keep the tent from looking like an Amazon Rainforest?
It will take a supply of seeds though, so it might be an idea to 'Male' one up and get some seeds from another, which would be six weeks behind.
Personally, I think the beauty of this method is the lights, as they don't need to change, as the plants are Auto's, my proposed setup is Hydro, but you can easily do this with other growing mediums. I guess a lot of others already exploit the fact the lights don't need to change
I will use Formulex nutes for convenience, I am not saying it's the best either, as we all have our own preferences, any 'Top' ups for plants that show growing issues can be taken care of by Foliar spraying the individual plant, for me this achieves my personal nirvana of Perpetual Harvest, it does have a major problem though, I will keep forgetting which plant is in which pot?
So, there we have it, three different stages of plants under one light, BUT you can only do this with Autos, whether on 18/6, 20/4 or even 24/0, it will take a fair bit of Nutes though, so I am thinking of trying just PH Balanced Water and feeding Nutes via foliar feeding, Formulex will do this with just Tap water as I believe, Correct me if I'm wrong, it also balances PH, I have all the parts and just need to put it together, Bugger, the Box it too big for my Tent, the first problem, solved, get a Bigger Tent.

[Techead]

Doh, I forgot to add this bit, I was thinking, (Always Dangerous for me.), of using a GHE Rainforest Vortex Sprayer, but at £157 each is a bit expensive, it would probably be a lot cheaper to just bite the bullet and buy a GHE Rainforest setup, as these complete with the vortex sprayer are about £250, they are quite big though and as I understand a based on the Ein Gedi System used in Israel, I have been trying to find out how much nutes these hold, does anybody have one who can answer this, and more importantly are they any good?

[ValdtheImpotent]

Sounds great, I hope you do a diary it’ll be very interesting to see your system in action. So are you talking DWC, all 6 net pots in the same res?

[barney_b]

I spent this last year with a perpetual auto tent albeit in soil.



It becomes a middling game. What VPD works best for seedlings/veg/late flower... who knows but I decided on around 26C and 58%.
I imagine you'd have to play the middling game for your res if you plan on sharing a tank. Farmer G has great success and more than acceptable yields using the same feed throughout. He'd be your guy. Megacrop at 1.5ml/L could most likely get you through all stages - that's what I've learned from FG anyways.

Vlad just offered a good idea. A few buckets would isolate any issues, allow for proper feeding per stage, and grow some good sized plants!

I'll caution you about one aspect of the perpetual grow. If you don't have a convenient grow space, it's a nightmare. Also, you're going to be trimming all the time and burping bags all the time. But the worst.... a constant supply of fresh genetics and more jars than you may have anticipated.

Cheers techead
B

[Techead]

Hi Vlad, I do intend to start a Diary on this one if I actually build it, It isn't intended to be a purely DWC system though, more a sort of Hybrid, I'd like to say Low-Pressure Aeroponic, but as the reservoir would be in the bottom of the tank, there has to be an element of DWC, perhaps more like a LWC System, Have I invented a new term, Low water Culture?
I would really like to put the reservoir separate and lower, underneath the Main Tank, this would cut down on the Nutes required, but the extra height of that would limit my grow height even more.
With this in mind, and as I am only growing one plant at present, as I am on a Summer break, due to heat, I raised the second unused Tent on a base of about 300mm, more than enough to accommodate a Bucket sized Resovoir underneath the tent, you are perfectly correct though, all 6 Net pots will be in the same res at the same time, but at different stages of growth. I am definitely interested in the GHE Rainforest though which may jeopardise my intention to build this, BUT, it's not all rosy, as if I understand it correctly, that uses 13 Gallons of Nutes, and that is a deal breaker, using a bucket underneath could cut this down to just a few litres.
I do have a smaller box to do this, it's 35L one and I may use that with just four plants, before shelling out on a new tent to accommodate the bigger tank, the 35l box is actually Clear, so will need blacking out though , unlike the large black one, which would be perfect, they are so strong you can actually stand on them, but that cost me £28.
I would like to say it's all my idea, but it isn't, it's all been done before, just not by me, I do have high hope that I have covered all the 'T's and dotted all the 'I's, I hope you find this helpful.

[barney_b]

All tents need bases imo.

[Techead]

Hi Barney_b, Some very good points there, and I appreciate you taking time to share your experience, I kind of do the same with a soil grow, the humidity is one I didn't think through though, I was planning to use Cloches on Seedlings to jack up the humidity, but as you guite correctly imply, with all the water and spraying, it would soon cause an issue, back to the drawing board on that one. I do have a Peltier Gizmo that would drop the humidity, not too sure how much of an effect that would have, I could also give them more light, as this would generate more heat, or speed up the extractor fan, the Nutes would also need to be kept at about 18c to stop bacteria taking hold, I had that once years ago, it cost me four plants and the stink will live with me forever, your post is certainly food for thought, thank you.

[Techead]

Hi again barney_b, I did read your posting again and the term VPD, stuck out, I initially thought it may be a fancy terminology for Humidity, so I looked it up, Vapour Pressure Deficit.
One headache later and I decided to stick with humidity, although VPD is relative to Humidity, I like the simple life, delving into my books on growing, they all reckon 70% humidity for a seedling, down to 40% for a flowering plant, obviously humidity is important to a plant, but I couldn't find how important, I guess my plants will tell me though if I go ahead and build my design, at present, it's looking like I will as you have sparked a curiosity and possibly the germ of another of my crazy ideas. Thanks again

[V8]

Hi again barney_b, I did read your posting again and the term VPD, stuck out, I initially thought it may be a fancy terminology for Humidity, so I looked it up, Vapour Pressure Deficit.
One headache later and I decided to stick with humidity, although VPD is relative to Humidity, I like the simple life, delving into my books on growing, they all reckon 70% humidity for a seedling, down to 40% for a flowering plant, obviously humidity is important to a plant, but I couldn't find how important, I guess my plants will tell me though if I go ahead and build my design, at present, it's looking like I will as you have sparked a curiosity and possibly the germ of another of my crazy ideas. Thanks again

I have a prep grow in coco atm. I have 1 3x3 in flower all the time and 1 small tent for vegging. Check out my grows in my signature.

Anyway this forum will give you 2 many ideas might get expensive

V8

[Shaun]

I haven't had anything tested but from my experience the autos I have grown have been every bit as potent as photos. Just my opinion.