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ОглавлениеThe Symbiotic Rotation Process
For our purposes here, symbiotic rotation is essentially the practice of having all stages of your plants ready exactly when you need them. On the day of harvest you must have vegetative plants ready to install in the flowering room, and your clones must be ready to be moved to the vegetative room. After cleanup and decontamination, the clone room should be ready for more clones, taken from the plants in the flowering room. Empty space is a waste of time, resulting in a diminished supply of bud at your disposal.
For all practical purposes, you don’t want plants ready before or after they are needed, but exactly when you want them: thus creating a symbiotic rotation! Refining the variables is key. Catering to the plant’s every need is the first priority. Second is maximizing its full potential.
Understanding the parameters and limitations of your chosen cultivar is also paramount. You must experiment and investigate all possibilities and options. All plants are different. Here we discuss the two basic cultivars and their strengths and weaknesses in regard to symbiotic rotation; for their fundamental differences, see the chapter on choosing a cultivar.
Cannabis sativa typically grows tall and lanky with long internodal spacing, creating long, airy buds. They grow too tall for most indoor situations and take far longer to finish flowering than cannabis indica; sativa can take 8 to 16+ weeks to finish!
The symbiotic rotation style is more labor-intensive if you are growing cannabis sativa. It can be done, but you must skip a vegetative cycle, meaning your flowering sativa plants won’t be finished for (probably) 12 weeks or more, so you will have a quandary! By skipping a vegetative cycle the next cycle of vegetative plants and clones will be ready when you need them.
While you are waiting for the flowering plants to finish, your vegetative plants will grow too tall and lanky. The clones will quickly root and deteriorate because of overcrowding and lack of proper lighting, causing internodal (the space between the branches) stretching or slow growth development, and stunting.
This Blueberry Haze is an example of a high-yielding sativa. It eventually produced two pounds of bud.
Photo: Mel Frank
Juicy Fruit in full flower. This wonderful cultivar derives its name from its unique smell and taste. She is sativa dominant.
Photo: Andre Grossman
The way to overcome this situation is to eliminate your vegetative plants after you’ve taken clones. Wait for clones to root, then install them in the vegetative room. By eliminating the previous vegetative cycle, you have allowed the slow flowering sativa to finish flowering, but still have vegetative plants and clones ready exactly when you want them. Essentially, you are skipping a cycle to wait for the sativa to finish flowering.
MIRV from Trichome Technologies is a truly fantastic indica-sativa hybrid. It is a highly stable, and very resinous cultivar.
Ultra Violet bud from Trichome Tech has Purple Kush in its lineage. It has a 60 day flowering period.
Washington, named after America’s first president, is an indica-sativa hybrid stabilized and backcrossed to perfection by Trichome Tech.
Photos: Andre Grossman
Sun-grown cannabis.
Photo: K
Cannabis indica and cannabis indica / sativa hybrids are perfect adaptations, and so adapt to a symbiotic rotation flawlessly. Starting from seed or clone, you will grow your plants to approximately 10 to 12 inches tall, depending on your chosen genetics / cultivar and internodal length. The plants will have many branches available for clones. Strip the donor plants of all available clones and place donor plants in the flowering room. Clones can take from 7 to 21 days to root depending on environmental conditions and genetics / cultivar. Ideally, you want the plants to finish at approximately 24 to 36 inches tall, so you will induce flowering when plants are approximately 12 to 18 inches tall. So, if you take clones (which take 14 days) and you then vegetate for 14 days, you will have both ready before your other plants have finished flowering. This would create a problem.
Pruning the bottom branches for rotation garden.
Photo: Mel Frank
This is an adaptation of Trichome Technologies’ schedule for starting new facilities. In this scenario, the grower needs four rooms / chambers / areas: one for clones, one for vegetation, and two rotating flowering areas. Again:
Area 1: Clone area
Area 2: Vegetative area
Area 3: Flowering area
Area 4: Flowering area
(Area 3 and 4 are also used for vegetative growth and for producing more available clone material.)
The rooms / chambers / areas can be a closet or part of a room sectioned off, whatever you like. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them simply “areas” from now on.
Step 1. Start with eight plants from the same cultivar. Grow plants to approximately 12 inches tall and completely strip off any clones. (This process can yield about six to eight clones per plant; about 48–56 total.) Allow 14 days to root each clone.
Step 2. After the clones have rooted thoroughly, 14 days later, install the rooted clones into the area 2 vegetative areas with 18 hours of light.
Step 3. Seven days after installation of the clones, clean plants up. All lower leaves and vegetation should be removed to allow the plants to concentrate all available energy into developing the next batch of available clones. Any unhealthy leaves should be removed. Only healthy clone stock is left on the 6- to 8-inch plants. All healthy upper vegetation and leaves are left on intact.
Step 4. Twenty-two days later, again strip and remove all available clones and eliminate the donors. (This time, you could get up to 400 clones from 64 plants.) Fifty percent of these will later be eliminated; only the best are kept and installed into the vegetation area.
Step 5. Move the remaining half of the plants into the area 2 vegetative room with 18 hours of light. Take only the best plants, and dispose of the other half. This ensures that you only grow the best plants.
Step 6. Clean off all the unhealthy leaves and unwanted lower branches, as in Step 3 above.
Step 7. Twelve days later, transfer vegetative plants to the stage three flowering areas. Put the best one-quarter of the best plants in each room. Keep the lights on at the 18-hour cycle. Dispose of the leftover half of the plants. (In one example, 50 plants were placed in each flowering room and 100 plants were discarded.)
Step 8. Two days later, turn flower area one into a 12/12 light cycle. Area 2 remains 18/6.
In this photo you can clearly see two different stages of plant development.
Photo: Freebie
Clean off all the unhealthy leaves and unwanted lower branches.
Photo: Freebie
Step 9. Two days later, take clones from plants in area 1 and 2. The plants in area 4 are topped (the tips taken off to prevent the plant from getting too tall) and only a few branches are left on them while the plants in flowering room 4 are allowed to finish flowering. Light schedules in areas 1 and 2 remain the same (i.e., area one at 12/12 light cycle and area two at 18/6).
Step 10. Twenty-one days later, turn flowering area 4 to a 12/12 light cycle.
Step 11. One day later, transfer rooted clones to area 2.
Step 12. Vegetative plants in area 2 should be grown to approximately 12 inches tall and completely stripped of all available clones—preferably as many as possible. However, leave plenty of viable material to finish flowering.
Step 13. Eleven days later, turn the lights in area 3 to 10 hours on / 14 hours off and significantly lower the ammonium and nitrate nitrogen (nutrient) levels (this process is fully explained later in this book). Eliminate all ammonium nitrate by the end of the growth cycle. (This is the N in the NPK ratio, or the vegetative component in nutrients.)
Be sure to stake your plants at an appropriate time so they are prepared for flowering.
The tool used here is the HT-B2 Tapener Max. It utilizes green gardener’s tape for tying up plants.
Photos: Freebie
Step 14. Six days later, clean up / strip area 2 (the vegetative room). Remove the lower leaves and vegetation, as well as any unhealthy leaves and material unsuitable for clones, as in Step 3 above.
Step 15. Eight days later, harvest all plants from flowering area 3 and immediately clean and decontaminate the room in preparation for reinstallation.
Step 16. One day later, transfer area 2 vegetative plants to the empty flowering area, changing the light schedule to 12/12. Transfer all area one clones to the area 2 vegetative area. All of this should be done only after a thorough cleaning and decontamination of all empty rooms and systems.
Step 17. Two days later, take the clones from flowering area 3 that have been on 12/12 cycle for 2 days and place them in area 1 for rooting.
Step 18. Fourteen days later, strip / clean up stage two vegetation room. Clean off any unwanted / unhealthy material, as in Step 3 above.
Step 19. Seven days later, harvest flowering room two, immediately clean and decontaminate the area in preparation for reinstallation, and transfer stage two vegetative plants from area 2 to flowering area 4.
Step 20. One day later, transfer area 1 clones to area 2 vegetative area and turn light to a 12/12 cycle.
Step 21. Two days later, take clones from flowering area 4.
Step 22. Eighteen days later, clean up / strip vegetative area 2.
Step 23. Four days later, harvest flowering area 1.
Step 24. Two days later, take clones from flowering area one.
Step 25. Sixteen days later, clean up / strip area 2 of any unwanted / unusable material.
Step 26. Six days later, harvest area 4, transfer area 2 vegetative to area 4 flowering, and turn lights to 12/12.
Step 27. One day later, transfer area 1 clones to area 2 vegetative area.
Step 28. One day later, take clones from flowering area 2.
Step 29. Twenty days later, clean up / strip area 2 vegetative of any unwanted / unusable material.
Step 30. Four days later, harvest flowering area 3 and transfer area 2 vegetative to flowering area 3, leaving the lights at 18/6.
Step 31. One day later, turn flowering area 3’s light cycle to 12/12.
Step 32. Two days later, clean up / strip area 2 vegetative of any unwanted / unusable material.
Step 33. Fourteen days later, clean up / strip area 2.
Step 34. Seven days later, harvest flowering area 4 and transfer area 2 vegetative to flowering area 4. Transfer area 1 clones to area 2 vegetative area.
Step 35. Two days later, take clones from area 2.
Repeat this scheduling process over and over again—it is cyclical.
Every step of this schedule was dictated by growing methodologies, environmental conditions, and genetics. We used four different cultivars, all indica / sativa hybrids yet each rooted at different times. Each had a different growth rate and pattern, and each finished / matured at slightly different rates also.
Compact fluorescent lights used in a cloning chamber.
Photo: Freebie
All of these factors must be considered when creating a working symbiotic rotation. The same symbiotic rotation cycle can be used for three room rotations or by using mother plants instead of constantly rotating clones and vegetative plants, but in my experience, the above schedule is much more efficient than any other method, period!
The Eleven Steps of Symbiotic Rotation
The detailed instructions above can be boiled down to the following eleven steps. You might not understand every step that follows yet, but by the end of this book, you will. In practice, a symbiotic rotation works as follows:
1. Take clones or start seeds for donor plants.
2. Grow donor plants to a height of 12 inches.
3. Strip off all available clones.
Make sure to have good lights in the flowering chamber.
Photo: Freebie
4. Transfer donor plants to flowering room. Clones will take 7 to 14 days to root.
5. After clones root, hold them in the clone room for approximately 21 more days.
6. Install the rooted clones in the vegetative room for 14 days.
7. On day 12, induce vegetative plants into flowering (with 12 hours of light and 12 hours of complete darkness).
8. Two days later (day 14), take clones from new flowering plants.
9. Move new flowering plants into the flowering room. (The original donor plants will by now have already finished, so the room will be empty.)
10. After approximately 46 to 53 days into the flowering stage, turn the lights to 10 or 11 hours of light, eliminate CO2, and slightly increase the potassium and phosphorus levels.
11. Eliminate ammonium nitrogen and dramatically decrease nitrate nitrogen or eliminate entirely.
Steps 10 and 11 sound complicated, but they basically have to do with aiding the flowering plants to finish in approximately 50 days, allowing you to install the vegetative plants in the flowering room sooner, thus allowing the installation of clones and the beginning of the process again. They are covered later in this book.
No schedule is set in stone; it is flexible and you must refine it. If you clone and it takes 15 days for them to root, then hold them for 21 days, and vegetate for 14 days; that equals 50 days of vegetative growth and allows the flowering plants to finish in approximately 50 to 55 days. You must experiment and practice to achieve a perfect symbiotic rotation. All the while, make sure you’re harvesting your buds at peak potency, and not before.
The same rotation cycle can be achieved by using mother plants. Simply follow the same principles, except take clones from mother plants instead of the vegetative plants. It can sometimes be difficult to get large numbers of clones rapidly from small numbers of mother plants, so it makes more sense to simply clone from the vegetative plants (unless, again, you are only growing a small number of plants with limited space).
As stated above, it is necessary to refine the variables and understand the limitations of your chosen cultivar. Working backwards, examine the flowering cycle length. Most cannabis indica and cannabis indica / sativa hybrids finish flowering in approximately 60 days. But, as explained in the cloning section of this book, you can induce flowering in your vegetative plants two days before you clone. You can run lights for ten or 11 hours a day during the last one or one-and-a-half weeks of flowering. Both practices are meant to shorten the flowering cycle. Finishing these plants earlier means being able to induce the vegetative plants into flowering sooner, thus enabling the clones to be transferred to the vegetative room earlier.
After clones have been rooted and installed in the vegetative room, they will grow for approximately seven to ten days (depending again on genetics / cultivar and environmental conditions). On day seven, or whenever they are approximately 8 inches tall, strip off all the lower foliage except the top four leaf and branch sets. If they are not approximately 8 inches tall, wait and then strip them. Four to seven days later, induce flowering two days before taking the next batch of clones—again, shortening the vegetative cycle.
If the vegetative cycle must be lengthened, simply leave them in that stage longer. The clone stage is difficult to manipulate—in this situation you do not want more clones, faster! Because you will be waiting 50 to 60 days for the flowering stage to finish, you want them fast, but also at the exact right time. To achieve this goal, you must be able to hold clones in a form of suspended animation, in perfect health in every way, without them stretching (growing too tall), stalling, or becoming unhealthy. The result is that you will have shortened the flowering cycle to approximately 50 days. If the vegetative cycle is maintained for optimal health, stature, and vigor, plants will be 12 to 14 inches tall, finishing at approximately 24–36 inches tall after flowering.
