How to Create a Perpetual Harvest for Your Grow Room
How to Create a Perpetual Harvest for Your Grow Room
Increased yields are always on growers' minds, and we spend a lot of time towards that end. No matter if it takes using different kind of nutrients, installing grow lights, throwing CO2 generators or outright fiddling with new ways to nourish. There is no shortage of things we would do to get the most out of our grow room.
The number of harvests can also be increased as you see the value of more annual harvests. In fact, forcing your plants to do too much in a single growing cycle can be counterproductive.
If you have been trying to learn about perpetual grow rooms, look no further. We have gathered all the information you need to increase your annual harvests. Let's start with the basics first.
Understanding the Meaning of Perpetual Harvest
As the name suggests, switching to a perpetual harvest style requires regularly harvesting plants rather than in blocks of time. It is a way to circumvent the 8-12 week period that harvesting cycles usually take and supercharge your growth.
While one batch of plants is flowering, you have another vegging and another set of clones or seeds preparing. As one cycle ends, another is already taking place!
To harvest in this manner, you will probably need to divide your grow room to accommodate each stage of the growing cycle. You will need chambers for vegetating and flowering, at the very least.
Growers serious about perpetual harvests are better served to have separate chambers for:
- Clones or seedlings
- Mother plants
- Vegetating
- Flowering (should look into multiple chambers for this)
What do you Need for a Perpetual Harvest?
Given the above, I'm sure you can tell that perpetual harvests require more careful planning, commitment, and resources than a typical one-by-one growing method.
Besides money and time, let's see what you will need to invest in getting the most out of your grow room.
Enough space
While you may not need to build an extension to your home to prime your grow room for perpetual harvesting, you will need to devote more space to it.
Having more space will just make things easier to handle. It is possible to banish your perpetual harvests to a closet, but not recommended.
At the very least, consider increasing the space available for vegetating and flowering.
Enough time
Perpetual harvest cycles require constant maintenance and upkeep, so you don't get to experience the kind of breaks you would in a normal cycle. Batches trail each other closely and become available for harvest quickly.
It means you will need to spend most of your time in your garden, grow tent, or other cultivating space. You will need to periodically plant new seeds, obtain clones from your mother plants, train plants in vegetating, and harvest. When you're not doing that, you'll be drying and curing your flowering plants.
Extra growing supplies and equipment
When you usually harvest, you don't have to buy nutrients or related growing supplies in bulk or often. That changes with perpetual growing. You will not only need more of the good stuff but also more frequently.
Things to stock up on include:
- Nutrients
- Storage for buds
- Grow lights
Perpetual Harvests with a Multi-Chamber Grow Tent
A multi-chamber grow tent will simplify things for you considerably. They come ready with different chambers for vegetating and flowering, making them an excellent choice of growing gear for a perpetual harvester.
These tents spare your garage or cupboards the undue stress of being partitioned for perpetual harvesting. Not only will they short-circuit any light contamination, but they also keep any photoperiods you have from stepping on each other's toes.
Another creative way to go is to use multiple grow tents for different stages of your growth cycle. Any increased space allocation that you make can be best put to use towards vegetating and flowering tents.
Setting Up Your Perpetual Harvest
Your first perpetual harvest will be easier to get together than you may suspect. It begins just like a regular growth cycle because the initial steps for both types of growth are essentially the same.
Perpetual harvests diverge from a regular cycle once the first plants are well on their way to vegetating. That is when you get the most out of your grow room.
Begin with your seeds or clones
You begin with your clones and seeds in a dedicated space or in seedling and cloning grow tent. If this isn't possible in your growing space, store these in an empty corner of the chamber you use to vegetate. You can get away with this because both stages require similar conditions.
It would be best if you let your seeds and clones develop roots for at least two weeks before moving them over into the vegetating cycle.
For this, you'll need to provide a warm and extra-humid environment. Like your vegetating plants, you will also need to keep them on an 18/6 lighting schedule.
Move your plants into the veg chamber
Congratulations! You have successfully grown your infant plants, and they are now in the growth cycle. At this point, you can move them to a vegetating chamber for an even faster turnaround time than before.
The lighting schedule will remain at 18/6,
and you will need to make sure that your plants get lots of leaf growth.
Supplements that can help your plants, and this stage, include silica,
micronutrients,
cal-mag,
and growth
enhancer.
One of the beautiful aspects of perpetual harvesting is that you get more control over the growth schedule. You can let plants vegetate for as little as a few weeks or as much as multiple months.
Timing is key. Your clones have to be sufficiently hard with a root system that is at least two weeks old before introducing them to this phase of the growth cycle.
As you move seedlings into this chamber, move these plants out and onto the next stage of your perpetual harvest.
Move veg plants into the flower chamber
Check to see if your plants have a healthy size and a good amount of budding. When you feel that they are ready to start flowering, move them to the flowering chamber.
This space needs to be slightly larger than your vegetating area. You want your plants to bloom to their fullest without blocking light for each other and interfering with each other's growth.
You will also need to alter the photoperiod to 12/12. Increasing yields at this stage will require things like various sweeteners and sugars, bloom boosters, and flushing agents.
Ensure you move the next batch of clones into the vegetation chamber as you bring vegetated plants into this chamber.
Harvest your first crop
If you've made it this far, your plants will be ready to be harvested. So, get your garden shears ready and get busy. After you cut and preen them, it is time to dry and cure your first crop. As you do this, move your second batch of vegetated plants for flowering and the third batch of clones and hardened seedlings into the vegetating chamber.
In this manner, you can replicate the cycle and enhance the number of yields you get per annum. Our essential guide for harvesting, drying, and curling has all the information beginner growers need, so check it about this phase of your perpetual harvest cycle.
Sample Perpetual Harvest Schedule
Here's a sample perpetual harvest schedule that you can follow to avoid confusion and keep your growth batches in order.
- Start with ten clones from your mother plant. Let them grow roots over a two-week. Separate the healthiest and move them over to the vegetating chamber.
- Let them vegetate in peace for a further two weeks before the training and pruning them to get them ready for the remainder of the growth cycle.
- Then it is time to let them vegetate for a full month before transferring them over to the flowering space. As you do this, get your next batch of clones ready.
- Your first batch will probably need a month to six weeks to flower. Obviously, this varies between plants and between different strains of the same plant.
- When you are at the 4-week flowering mark, your second batch of vegetating plants will be due for flowering. You can also go ahead and start preparing your third batch of clones.
With this easy-to-follow schedule, you can have up to eight annual harvests. Please read our article on Tips and Tricks to Setup Indoor Grow Room and Grow Tent Ventilation, for more details.
Advantages and Disadvantages of a Perpetual Harvest
As amazing as the perpetual harvesting method is, it comes with its own set of pros and cons. Know the following things before starting this journey.
Benefits of a perpetual harvest
Pros of a perpetual harvest cycle include:
You get to enjoy yourself more: Perpetual harvests engage your mind and body, keeping you focused, learning, and growing. You can even challenge yourself to beat your own growth records from year to year!
It provides safety and security: You can rest assured that you have replacements ready to step in with this growth cycle, no matter what calamity hits your grow rooms.
You get as much bud as you like: By their very nature, perpetual harvests always have you happily busy, picking off buds. You are sure to get all the flowering you could want and then some.
Greater control: As you learn to focus on each phase of the growth cycle, you will discover many ways to optimize and supercharge it and get exactly the kinds of yields you'd like.
Drawbacks of a perpetual harvest
However, there are some cons to the perpetual harvest cycle as well. Let's take a look at these:
It is labor-intensive: Whether you are cloning, feeding, pruning, or harvesting, this growth cycle keeps you on your toes and busy. A lot more focus and physicality are required, so you better get ready for it.
You need to invest more money at the outset: Because you will need more of everything (space, nutrients, and bills due to increased utility spending), you will incur a higher cost up-front than in a traditional growth cycle.
You will have limited strain options: This may be the biggest challenge, as different strains will grow at varying rates. You'll have to be ultra-focused to stay abreast of the facts of the strains that you are growing and work around them.
Give perpetual harvest a shot!
Ready to start the wonderful journey of getting the most out of your grow room with perpetual harvesting? Head on over to our multi-chamber grow tents to begin as GroIndoor.com has all your requirements!
These tents are custom-made for perpetual harvest enthusiasts such as yourself, and to top it all off, they won't bust your pockets while you're at it. So, let's get started today!