Growin in Gotham

Lots of great answers here by the community! We definitely recommend starting small, but darn your setup is inspiring! Even for a perpetual grow, running 2-4 in each stage will be more than enough of a challenge. Love to see the hustle, let's see how we can keep this grow alive and well!

Perpetual grows can be convenient but they are not efficient. You are constantly delaying or rushing things just to fit the schedule of the previous plant. If you are working with clones and a known flower phase duration and known vege time required to get to the size you want, then it can be efficient, but with seeds it is not. That's fine if it fits your needs. Your supply can be filled on a more on-demand schedule with less volume stored long-term. Take notes... Keeping track of 16 plants on different schedules is not ideal, but easy as pie if organized about it. Don't rely on memory so much. If production is more of a concern and storage isn't daunting, you'll produce more per year by just overlapping vegephase in a smaller area while previous crop finishes. you can easily get 5 grows in per year this way. If you break it down into incremental production then forecase out, this will produce more mass per year or whatever time increment you prefer. The loss of productivity caused by a week lost here or there makes a perpetual grow less productive over time and the gap continues to increase the longer you compare. With so many plants you are best off implementing some sort of auto-draining mechanism and push-button or automated irrigation. Even if you flood a pot, it takes 2-3 mins to water ~5 gallon pot. That's 50 minutes everytme you have to irrigate. Or, flip a switch, water all 16 in 3-5 minutes. I've run anywhere from 8-20 plants the last few years. When set up well, the only time it's significantly more effort than a handful of plants is potting up and disposal/clean up at the end. While growing, i inspect for a few minutes and leave... or i turn on the irrigation for 5mins, inspect, then leave, lol. Very little time invested on a daily basis and no more than if i were growing 3-4 plants. setup, potting up, cleaning... obviously has a larger investment of effort due to scale. Basically, any redundant behaviour that takes up significant time due to number of pots you want to automate or make it 'push-button' manual operation that does it all at once or automatically does what is needed - as best you can. Some stuff you have to do by hand. Seriously, the hassle of a perpetual grow vs just doing some basics in regard to longer-term storage is not worth it for most people. Get some 5-gallon buckets with the gamma seal lids and a couple 67-gram 2-way RH packs for each. Store excess in cold basement. This simply method will keep weed good for 1 year minimum. Buy a vacuum sealer for longer-term storage. I'm just incorporating that into my storage methods. Plan to seal up the 2nd-half of year inventory. I'll probably modify that a bit next year.. maybe 9 months vacuum sealed etc... adjust volume of what gets sealed in each bag for best convenience/use. plus, no more consternation over which plants are in which life cycle stage etc etc.. no mixing up 2-3 different batches of fertilizer... just pull from 1 reservoir.

Probably start with learning how to grow 1, then work up to 4 then 20 at a time.