Contributed by: smokinrav
Submitted: 16-10-2003
Images archived: 2003
Introduction
Growers are, as a
rule, unable to take vacations, with our secret gardens
necessitating a limited amount of days gone or someone
else to provide care for those trips that take us out of
our maintenance schedule. The amount of time away we are
limited to is determined by the medium our plants grow
in (Hydroponic gardens are easier to plan out a
strategy, due to the ability to add a larger reservoir).
I will deal with my garden in this thread, soil based
with equal parts of store bought potting soil and
perlite and a touch of vermiculite thrown in. It?s a
very fast draining soil and I provide plenty of volume
for the roots to grow into, 5-7 gallons per flowering
container under a 400 HPS.
I?m going to attempt
to maintain as much of my continuous harvest setup as I
can for the 13-15 days I?ll be gone. This includes nine
plants in flower, six plants in veg, two mothers and
clones. Obviously, two weeks would be impossible to do
without some sort of attempt to provide passive watering
for the time away. The lone exception will be three
clones just rooted to small cups that will be put into a
fully watered flowering container the day I leave. I?m
sure they will not grow into the entire thing and use
all the water contained, which is about 2.5 gallons in 7
gallons of soil when completely dry.
Timetable and planning
Planning
things out months in advance, I advanced the timetable
on two generations in flower to less than two weeks
between them instead of the normal 4-5 weeks, so I was
harvesting six plants just before I left and also
throwing a generation of plants in veg into the flower
room. This left me with three plants early in flower
(one generation) that were just through the stretch that
I knew would be the problem ones. The uptake of them
would be huge and if the wick system I was planning
couldn?t keep up, there would be death in the flower
room.
Let me clarify. Two weeks before leaving,
I have nine in flower, three in veg being trained and
three clones rooting to soil. Six generation of three
plants each. Six of the flowering plants (two
generations) will be harvested. Three others will be
kept going for the trip. The single generation in veg
will be moved to the flower room and the three now well
rooted clones will be moved to the flowering room for a
SOG type grow (Just a way of getting as much out of the
space as possible)
Mothers
Right away it
became obvious that I wouldn?t be able to keep my two
mothers, or any plants in veg. My veg light is floros
and the growth would be too great for the time gone and
the lights would have to be kept too low to avoid
stretching. The mothers had to be killed, there was
simply no way to keep them.
Chopping the moms
and preparing the cuttings It was here that I
exercised one of those aspects of water cloning that
most people call a drawback, but in this case was
perfect. The extended time it takes to root cuttings in
water would be ideal for the delay that I would be gone.
Using a hormone in soil would assure no clones would be
alive, since they would grow roots and die of thirst!
Using water cloning, cuttings be placed under a
continuously burning fluoro for nearly as long as you
want. In fact, by not changing the water, you will
further slow root development (. Slow, but not stop, as
you'll see)
For this aspect, I needed a deep
pot with straight sides. This would be so the cuttings
could float down evenly as they sucked up the water
below.
Using
polypropylene sheeting, I used the pot to mark a
circular template, and then made it an inch less in
diameter. Cutting that out with a knife, I poked ?
holes evenly across the poly for the cuttings stem to
sit and dangle in the water.
For this,
the cuttings need a long stem, so trimming branches on
some of them became necessary. I made them as big as
possible; because it would be the end of the mothers,
stressing them wasn?t a factor. Water cloning supports
almost any size cutting just fine as long as you wait
long enough for a (size dependant) root system to
develop. If you plant them before the roots are able to
take over, a humidity dome may be necessary to prevent
wilting.
Leave the cuttings under a light and go
and don?t think about it. The rest of the room would be
more complex.
Constructing the wick
system
I used a
wick system, with ? nylon rope being inserted through
the existing root system to dangle in a passive
reservoir. Sounds simple enough, and besides being a
little work intensive, it was.
First, I attached
my rope to a metal bar roughly the same diameter using
duct tape. The crates I use in flower have very large
openings all around making a garbage bag liner with
small drainage holes in it necessary. This also means no
PITA poking around to find drainage holes in round
planters.
Tie a knot
in one end of the rope for an anchor against pull
through. A simple once around is sufficient. Even if the
rope goes in a bit, don?t worry, the roots are
concentrated at the bottom.
Plan on a number of
ropes, the bigger the plants the more you?ll want to put
in. I attempted distribute them as evenly as possible by
simply inserting the steel rod straight down through the
root system and out the bottom.
Next I
went exactly opposite the exit hole and penetrate back
up to the surface. When you pull the rope through,
remove from the rod and knot off that end.
The
finished surface will look like this:
After finishing the bottom of the planter will
look like this:
Next
I prepared the reservoirs, three more crates just like
the planters. This is made so much easier by the fact
that all crates are made to stack together. I filled
each with 2.5 gallons of the appropriate solution for
the plant involved (different for plants in the stretch
and those out of it) watered the soil to saturation with
ropes in place and set each planter on a res. The ropes
were soaked from the watering and the 100% humidity in
the res will keep them wet. If the ropes were to dry out
during the period that the soil is feeding the plant,
they would not wick water.
14 days later
Well, came
home to happy news from the cuttings as expected. They
all survived just fine and all had roots showing, some
more than others. This is the view from above a little
yellowing, but that happens when they grow roots.
Cuttings have to draw those sugars to make roots from
somewhere and the leaves are all it has.
From below,
all cuttings have actual roots forming, it?s just some
are still nubs and others are ready for transplant. I
would like to split these up to make two generations out
of them, but that will mean keeping in water for two
more weeks or so.
To remove them from the poly,
simply break off small pieces from the sides until you
reach the desired cutting. Try not to pull back through
the same hole as you may rip off roots.
The results Of the three that
were in flower when I left, one turned out great, with
just a little yellowing and dried leaves I cant explain
it except to say that the wick system worked perfectly.
The second suffered about 30% loss of its foliage from
the bottom up. Many of the fan leaves had a distinct
lime green tint. The third plant turned out badly with
75% loss of its foliage.
The three plants from
the veg area turned out very well. Some loss of foliage
was seen on two of the three, but less than 10%, and the
green color indicated healt (but a bit P deficient).
[Editor's note:
Some other things to try to
slow growth: >reduced temperatures (slows
rooting and growth)
>reduced light cycles
(14-18hrs), or staggered light cycles (extended periods
of darkness with intermittant light cycles. Keeps em in
veg mode, with a flower light cycle).
>Intentionally put them into shock. Delays
growth for up to one week. Cold air or water temps. May
cause deficiences.]
