Tales of making money

[bufo marinus]

Was chatting to hydro shop dude the other day not about how to make profit, but the easiest way to grow.

In the course of the conversation he told me a story of a guy who came in, one of the few he knows of that have 'actually made it' using hydro.

This guy only bought 4 inch cubes and Optimum nutes, Flower only.

Seems he had a shed with a large concrete slab beside the shed, out of town.

Shed was set up to veg only, but flower nutes were used the whole life cycle from clone to flower

Clones were taken continually and put into the 4inch cubes

The cubes sat in trays on trolleys and were wheeled outside at 3 weeks

The rooted clones began flowering straight away and were flowered under the sun, hand watered, in the 4inch cubes.

Harvest time the short fat cola plants of around 3-4 oz each were wheeled off the concrete into the house to be trimmed

Two and a half years of that and he came in and announced he was shutting down, job done

[2dogs]

Thats a nice story but I don't see how using flower nutes would keep costs down. You just use more flower nutes. Other than that it sounds like a good system.

[bufo marinus]

He used the sun to flower his plants for nothing and he made enough money in two and a half years to retire

He could have very well used one 400MH to clone and veg under, but I doubt it

No fancy nutes, just a system that worked for him

[jimbojones5678]

How could a 4" cube be big enough to sustain the mature root system?

 

Jimbo

[Luke Skywalker]

If you only allow it to develop to a very small size before flowering....

[123abc]

yeah ive seen guys who do that on top of roof tops in high buildings in asia.. no surroundings... similar system.. just they get like 16 hours a day (at lowest 14-) so they have a large black tarplin tied over at around 13 hours..kept small.. a few cuttings.. started inside then moved out at differant times... 1/4 flowering at each time.. near complete and the rest just one step back.. every 25 days or so he has a harvest

 

wasnt using hydro nutes.. but using a semi hydro medium

[jimbojones5678]

If you only allow it to develop to a very small size before flowering....

 

But can you seriously get 3-4oz of a plant that small???

[Luke Skywalker]

Perhaps not, but some strains produce more from a small flowered clone than others.

 

The idea is that you may only yeild perhaps 1/2 oz per plant, but if you have 30 of them, so you end up with a pound or so. It's a turnover time vs size of yeild thing. Many small plants can be flowered quickly with little to no vegetative time, but yield per plant is way down whilst plant numbers go way up.

 

The other way to go is to veg them longer, say a month, and grow a big plant (maybe 4-5ft) which yeilds more, but crop turnover is increased. It also takes a large plant a slightly increased time to flower compared to cutting flowered immediately, with perhaps a difference of up to two weeks on maturation time between a SOG (sea of green) plant and a monster 6 ft christmas tree. Usually the difference is less than that, but it can reach that much.

 

Look up SOG and ScrOG in the forums, you'll find some interesting posts regarding the methods used by various growers.

 

Main disadvantage to many small plants is if the shit hits the fan, you'll be busted for a much larger amount of plants (which the law looks at differently in terms of numbers rather than quantity of finished product) and could have a much larger problem than you would if you had one or two plants which yeilded roughly the same or even more.

 

There are many other threads on the subject here though, so I'd suggest looking through the search for info.

[Stoney]

sounds like a good story bufo and good luck to the fella but i would be wondering why he didnt use a light during the time of year that the sun hours are more than 12 hrs

 

cheerz :Dj:

[freddie]

I read somewhere that if you grew plants under 24 hrs of light indoors then put them outside that regardless of the time of year that they go straight into flower. I have never tried this but that sounds a bit like what is described here. Anyone done this? I would have thought that the day length, if in summer would have kept the plants in perpetual veg? Hope i'm making sense.