Troughs instead of buckets?

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Hackerman

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Sorry for slamming out all the questions but I didn't see these topics anywhere so I decided to register and ask. LOL

I am going to try using troughs instead of buckets this time. I usually use a standard 2 gallon bucket filled about 3/4 way. I get 1 plant per bucket so in 4' x 1' space I get 4 plants. My room is 4'x4' so I get 16 buckets and 16 plants.

With a trough that is 4' x 1', I can easily fit 5 to 7 plants in the same space. The trough uses more dirt so the roots from all plants should have plenty of room to roam. Actually, more than they do with the 2 gal buckets.

It would seems that water would distribute nice and evenly in a trough with each plant taking the water that it needs from the whole.

I just don't see a down side.

Any comments on trough vs buckets?

Thanks
 
I like 1 plant =1 container. I have ran 4 in a square Bucket with okay results. they was same clones. I would not try different strains in same Bucket. Give it a go and share it
 
I don't see a problem with using troughs rather than buckets, especially iff they will give the plants more soil to live in. I do however, take issue with adding more plants to a given space. Often people think more plants equal more yield but that isn't true. The best method is to allow individual plants to get bigger and produce more branching and more bud sites, and having enough space for the buds to all get plenty of light penetration. I normally run 4 plants in a 4x4 or 5x5 tent. But I allow them to get bigger while doing training to create more branching which gives me nice bud producing bushes that are no more than 4'tall. :)
 
I totally agree on the yield thing. I tried 2 plants per bucket (instead of 1) a couple times and the yields were much much smaller.

I just happen to have too many clones right now so I thought I would try something a little different. I am doing one wall of the room a solid (for lack of a better term) SOG of all sativa. Actually. 2 walls. Everything else will be much smaller indica plants. I am not as worried about light getting to the lower branches as I am root restriction. Smaller roots definitely mean smaller plants. I figured the trough to provide the extra dirt required to let the plants get bigger. I don't usually keep the lower buds anyway. I just smoke the main cola and the buds from the first couple branches down. The rest go into the bubble hash bucket.

After this next crop, I am going to upgrade and change some things. Just thinking if troughs would offer any advantage.
 
I think they would give some advantage of the plants being able to feed better if you are using organics. If you are using synthetic nutrients then it wouldn't be much advantage other than allowing the roots to spread out and give the canopy more spread as well.
 
I don't know that they would offer any real advantage. These are the downsides I see: You will most likely want to keep the same strain in the same trough to meet nutrient needs. It will be hard or impossible to move a trough once it is full of medium and plants. It will be harder to water evenly. What about drainage--some kind of drip tray under the trough? You will almost certainly have height differences between the sativa and the indica--how will you deal with that?

I'm with Hushpuppy on the number of plants. Even growing SOG, I wouldn't run more than 1 plant per sq ft. Just because we have the plants doesn't mean that we have to grow all of them out, especially if it will be detrimental.
 
Yeah, I need to muster up and just use the best clones. I hate to destroy a plant. LOL

The troughs are small. 3' x 1'. So, I put 5 sativa plants, all the same size into one trough. That goes against one wall. 2 other troughs go perpendicular on the other wall with 10 - 12 plants. Now, I have 2 walls covered with SOG. All the rest is low growing Indica. And, they are in buckets. I figure I can reach over the smaller indicas and get to the wall of sativa to trim and care for. I am doing the same thing now and it's working pretty well. Only difference is that I am using all 16 buckets instead of the 3 troughs and 9 buckets. The troughs are on small PVC tubes so I can slide them in and out easily to trim and care for (at least until the plants get too big and tangled). I drilled holes in all the troughs for proper drainage. It all sits in a swimming pool so any runoff is shared by all the plants and then runs to a corner (if there is that much run off, which there usually isn't).

Not saying it will work but half the fun of growing is trying new stuff.
 
I like it when other people try new stuff and report back here to MP. That's how I got my degree here. :)
You going to post a grow journal with these troughs?
 
I do understand trying new stuff, but.....

You are only utilizing 9 sq ft out of a 16 sq ft tent.
You have 5 sativas in a 3 sq ft space--they will absolutely get overcrowded even if you SOG. It is hard to reach through other plants to tend others, especially a SOG and if the other plants are indica. Three cubic feet of wet soil can weigh 250 lbs--moving this is going to be quite tough.

I seriously wish you luck with this because I can really see no upsides to this over your 16 buckets, but a lot of downsides. I would love to see a journal, too.
 
Those troughs definitely don't weigh that much because I can pick them up pretty easily and I am 60+ years old. LOL Wet will certainly be heavier but I am putting them on little rollers so they will slide in and out easily. The actual room size is about 4 x 6 and I grow in 4x4 of it so, I have about 2 feet where I could slide the troughs back and forth to get to the rear plants. At least until they get to big and intertwined.

You actually don't know the worst of it. The reason I am doing this whole thing is because the flowering on the current batch is taking so long that my clones got too big. Now, they are stretched and pretty weak. They have outgrown my clone closet and they need to go into the main room ASAP. Actually, they are weeks late. I thought about topping the new plants but I don't usually like taking the tops off of plants. The plants are up against the lights and the tops are starting to deform from it.

This is going to be a real bizarre crop, for sure. I would scrap the entire thing and start over but I am waiting for seeds so there's no use in the room being empty while I get those new seeds started, raise a mother plant long enough to take 16 - 20 clones and start anew. Might as well have something going on in the meantime.

As far as a journal, I am still pretty paranoid about posting. And putting pictures of pot on the internet, to me, is insane. It's very very simple for law enforcement to trace any user here right to his doorstep. I guess I'm still old school paranoid. LOL However, I'll keep you up to date on any important observations.

Just for the record, I agree that no good can come out of this crop the way it is going so far. LOL However, like I said, I have some down time in my room so I really have nothing to loose except a little electricity.

However, I do think that the troughs are going to work better than buckets because of all the extra room the roots will have over buckets. I use 2 gal buckets about 3/4 full and after I harvest and toss the old dirt, there is hardly any dirt left...it's almost ALL root ball. I believe more dirt for more root growth is definitely a good thing. The next trough experiment will be with 1 plant per SF.

I guess we shall see. Certainly, this test is being run under the worse of conditions so if any good at all comes out of it, I would attribute it to the extra dirt. Like I said, I guess we shall see.

I do know one thing. I have been doing things, basically the same for over 40 years and have always been able to maintain a steady supply of quality pot in ample quantities for my personal use. In fact, I produced so much last time, I shut everything down for over a year while I smoked up all my reserve. LOL But, the one thing I do know for sure.... with all the help and knowledge that is available here at MP, I am done doing it the old way and I am about to embark on a totally new experience in growing pot. :)

Thanks, in advance for all the help and assistance so far, and yet to come. LOL

Thanks again
 
You are operating under some misconceptions. First of all, it is very hard for LEO to trace any user right to their doorstep. In addition, you are too small to be of interest to any feds, so that would mean local law enforcement like city or county. Since they only have jurisdiction in their little area, do you think they spend hours upon hours sifting through grow sites looking for something that might lead them to believe that there was a grow going on in their jurisdiction? I have been growing since the early 80s. I have ordered seeds dozens of times online. I have thousands of posts. I have posted numerous pictures. I have been posting online for about 10 years. Trust me on this. My son is a computer security expert and he has absolutely no concern about his old mother posting on this or similar sites. In addition in all the time I have been online, I have not even heard of a case where someone got busted because they posted online. Loose lips get you busted, not posting pics here. Starting a journal is very safe.

Supercrop or fim your clones to slow down their growth....or get rid of some of them so things are not overcrowded. The fact of the matter is that your space is going to produce x number of grams based on your setup. You will not get more bud by planting more plants--in fact it can be quite the opposite (as you are finding with your clones). Plants that are overcrowded stretch and do not produce what plants that have plenty of room and air movement between them will. The extra dirt will probably not really make any difference at all...
 
Goddess, no offense sweetie but it already happened to me so I definitely know it can and DOES happen. LOL I have been a computer hacker/programmer/SI/IT and security expert since the early 80's when I got my first TI99-4a computer. LOL I know what can be done and what can not. Like you know pot... I know puters.

Since it already happened to me, I'm probably a little more paranoid than most. But, you are right about small potatoes. There are just too many and they just don't care about me (I hope). When I got busted for hacking it was multi-million dollar stuff so I wasn't small potatoes. LOL I definitely get more comfortable here every day talking to you and some of the others. I didn't mean to offend or alarm anyone.

Back to pot topic.....You know, the more pictures I see here, the more I realize just how right you are about less being more. I see single plants here that are producing more than 4 of my plants. They both take up the same amount of space, mind you. It's just fewer buckets. LOL So, to say that a given amount of space will (basically) produce the same amount of reward whether it's 4 plants that produce 4 ounces each or 16 plants that produce 1 ounce each seems to be very accurate.

If I may ask another question.... I have a 4x4 room with 16, 1 gallon buckets and a 400w HPS. I get a little under a pound at each harvest. Is that good, bad or average yield?

Thanks for everything and again, I apologize if I alarmed or offended anyone.

:)
 
LOL--a TI99-4a was my first computer, too.

And don't mean to argue with you, but if you got on LEOs radar because you post pics (and there isn't any personal info in the pic), it started somewhere else first. Busted for hacking and busted for growing a small amount of mj is way different stuff. Also, I doubt that you can alarm us. Many of us have been posting journals for years or even decades with no repercussions. We understand that growers get busted because they talk about their grow to others or they leave growing debris around or they start throwing around large amounts of cannabis--it is virtually always something stupid.

Yes, a little under a pound of dry well-trimmed bud from a 400W light is a good yield. That is about a gram per watt--good yield.
 
OK, OK, you convinced me. LOL I'll do a small journal on this next grow. We'll call it the "Disaster Grow". LOL I need another week or so to finish the last crop.

Thanks again, Goddess for being so polite and so tolerant of me. As a newbie here, I could have better manners. It's obvious you are a very nice person. :)
 
Oh, thank YOU for being tolerant of my straight-forwardness and sometimes tactlessness. Not that nice--I am a 62 year old woman who sometimes gets impatient and terse.

How to keep yourself and your grow safe: Just keep your mouth shut, pick up your growing debris, make sure you take care of any odors and your chances of getting busted are very very small. I have been doing this a lot of years and since I live in a red-neck state with archaic laws, I have always had to be careful and stealthy with my grows. I have also been doing this mod thing for a number of years, so get to converse with a whole lot of people from all over the world. Loose lips sink ships and that is especially true of us cannabis cultivators.

I am glad that I have convinced you to do a journal. Just make sure that you have no personal info in pics. LOL--sometimes people post pics with license plates or mailing labels on a box of growing equipment. There is also an issue with cell phone pictures and GPS locators, but I am not sure exactly what it is. No reason to call it the disaster grow. No reason that this new grow cannot be stellar. Starting with the right equipment and good genetics gives you a big edge. Plus you are not afraid to ask questions. I predict a great harvest with your next grow!
 
Maybe this is why I never changed anything.....

Even with 20 year old equipment, a bulb that's probably 2 or 3 years old. Underlit. Almost no fresh air ventilation. Just about every thing wrong. LOL Still, these buds aren't bad, considering.

The indica is so covered with white you can hardly see the green. The sativas are not as dense but the size makes up for it.

You can see that I have one little friend who is going to provide me with seeds for next time. LOL I forced hermies years ago and the trait has stayed. I usually get 2 or 3 buds that get hit and I end up with anywhere from 4 or 5 to 20 or 30 seeds every crop. Never understood why people don't like hermies... I mean, free seeds?

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Those look really nice :) I would say that you got lucky in having a fairly stable herm trait within your group if you have never had anymore trouble than that. It may be that the strain being an older strain may have been much better locked down genetically so that the herm trait didn't come out and take over the whole grow, as that is usually what happens when hermed seeds are grown out. The hermy trait gets stronger and the potency gets weaker with each seeding that occurs unless it is crossed with a non herm plant that is able to somewhat stabilize the genetics. I had a strain that was weak and when stressed the slightest, hermed to hell and back, and all but ruined the whole crop.

Stabilizing the herm trait is actually what breeders are doing today to get "femmed" seeds. If they try to get by it too quick or make shortcuts then the strain will end up herming half of the time. I had that happen with Short's MK Ultra a while back. It was decent smoke but threw nanners as soon as it began flowering. I am sure there are plenty of nightmares to be told just among the peeps here about hermy seeds. :)
 
I have been using my own hermie seeds for over 25 years and I have never had a male plant from any of them. When I crossed the hermie sativas with the new indica seed I got 10 years ago, the hermie trait went to the indicas as well. Been using a mix of sativa and indica seed ever since. It's always nice to have both kinds around.

Never really thought about it but, I guess I have been femming seeds longer than the seed banks. LOL
 
That is amazing that it hasn't taken over the strain. It must be a strong genetic line to hold up to repeated "self pollination", but its certainly possible. That's cool for you that it worked out that way. :)
 
The original strain was nature's own. It all started with a seed from a bag of Columbian somewhere around 1970 something. So, being a natural strain from nature, yeah, it's probably stronger than the newer, "inbreed" strains that we have today.

I don't recall how many years I was growing before the strain started to hermie. And, I don't really remember if I did it on purpose or if it just happened. I vaguely remember spraying ground up aspirin on plants but my memory is for ****. LOL

Later on, as growing became more and more sophisticated, I always wondered why people would complain about having a hermie in their garden. I have always looked upon this as a good thing (since good seeds and seedbanks were nothing more than a myth in those days).

It wasn't until this thread, just now that I realized something....... about a year or so ago a friend of a friend of a friend who was a grower was talking about hermies and I asked him what was wrong with having hermies. He pulled out a tiny bud and gave it to me to smoke. When I broke it up to twist one, I realized this tiny little bud had about 50 seeds in it. It was more seed than bud. He laughed as I was cleaning it and said, "That's why".

Now, I can see that being a major problem. Plus, the weed quality was not great and he said that was why. Now, if my example of a few seeds from hermies is rare and the more typical result of a hermie is a bud that is more seeds than smoke.... OK, I can see why people complain about hermies.

Mine hermied perfectly this year. I have plenty of the sativa seeds and I have not seen any of the sativa plants hermie. I used my very last indica seed on this grow and I have 1 indica that hermied very nicely (the pic above).

I guess my plants just like me. LOL

He gave me those seeds from that tiny bud and I grew a crop from them. I think he called it Shark's Breath, or something like that. The resulting weed was OK. Not great. But, OK.

Thanks again. Only 10 AM and I learned something new already today. LOL
 

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