Weckels indoor

weckels world of wonders

By Weckels, the grow specialist from Atami

Professional grow systems from the horticultural world

The ‘giant bucket’ allows us the opportunity of growing a single, colossal mother plant, which can then provide our whole grow space with clones. The pipe system with which the plants can be grown at different heights, perhaps has a rosy future in sight.

In this episode of Weckels World of Wonders we will be taking a look at some of the grow systems that have been used for years now by market gardeners, while they have not, or barely, been available in our specific branch of the agricultural business. Those of you who regularly keep an eye on developments within the ‘straight’ greenhouse and horticulture world, or in any case are just interested in what new grow systems are out there, will often be the first to latch on to the new developments in order to reap their benefits. And you really don’t need to grow tomatoes to keep your fingers green…

There are many growers who get a kick out of raising their total harvest in leaps and bounds, by using technically improved systems. That new grow systems all too frequently do not provide any new surprises and sometimes even produce nothing more than a large sense of disappointment, will not be unknown to most growers. Thanks largely to this phenomenon, the majority of growers in Holland (and elsewhere) are happy to take a ‘wait and see’ approach. Until good results are reported, what’s the point in blowing a huge hole in your pocket on a new growing system? And when we don’t get good results with it in the shortest of times we the whole investment was for nothing..

We are also very curious as to whether new developments in the professional greenhouse and horticultural worlds are also very well suited to growing marihuana. In order to give you a picture of the state of affairs, I’ll be setting out the pros and cons of a number of systems and new developments that will give you a good idea where you might begin.

The plants in the highest pipes may not begin to grow with too much enthusiasm

Lighting system

Many growers often have problems with too high a temperature in the space where they are growing. This is not so surprising given that nearly every grower endeavours to kit out his growing space with as many lamps as possible in order to secure as large a harvest as possible. And it is no flight of fancy to suggest that some of us end up overdoing it a bit and actually lowering our possible yield.

That the problems of too high a temperature regularly raise their heads even among professional horticulturalists (those growing only legal crops), is something that has given the designers of grow systems something to think about. But despite all the good intentions there are only a very few inventions that have actually made it off the design drawing boards.

One of them is a lamp system that has been designed so that the warm air from it is sucked directly away by a special vacuum pump built into a large tube that fits around the lamps. This method really does work superbly in drastically limiting the heat given off by the lamps, which allows a great many lamps to be hung in relatively small spaces. The reason why this system has not achieved any great success to date in the growing of marihuana is that quantity of light, against all expectations, is so drastically reduced that many growers would rather work with the problems of high temperatures (i.e. without this system). But there are ongoing experiments to improve the system, and there are high hopes that the quantity of light that reaches the plants will eventually be just as high as from a normal lamp.

Double suction installation

For growers who plan to raise their plants in two grow spaces next to each other, I have had some experience with a really good method. The technique involves setting the daylight and dark periods of the two spaces out of synch with each other. If both spaces are more or less of equal size then it is simple trick to pump the warm air from one of them (the one in which the lights are on) into the other space, by using a double-connected vacuum pump installation. Okay, so it is a little bit more expensive, but this makes it easier to keep both spaces at a reasonably constant temperature, and this is something the plants just love! You do have to make sure that there is more than enough inflow of fresh air from outside so that the plants have a continuous supply of fresh air at their disposal.

Various heights

A completely different growing system altogether is the construction that allows the plants to grow (and bloom) at different to each other. I can hear all the old lags in the house starting to protest immediately that doing so will make the mounting of lamps above them into a complete nightmare! But I promise you that this unusual way of growing is nowhere near as bad as many might expect at first glance. If we, for example, make sure that the pipes (in which the plants stand) are

erected completely independently, then the lamps mounted at various heights offer the great advantage that the plants are now illuminated from the sides as well as above. In short, the total quantity of light the plant receives can be increased considerably by using this growing method, and thus the eventual harvest can be expected to be larger. We do need to make sure though that the plants in the highest (furthest to the edge) pipes do not begin their growth with too much enthusiasm, or else the plants in the lower hanging pipes run the risk of being overrun, with all the negative consequences that come with it. Should this happen anyway, then you should trim back the plants a little (during the growth phase only), or you can let the whole construction sink a bit, which will move the pipes away from each other. >>