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Inaugural Grow

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downhill21
, 07-07-2012 at 08:42 AM (131 Views)
Soil is Root Organics Original and I'm alternating between plain (distilled) water and water with nutes (R-O Buddha Grow, R-O Trinity and R-O Ancient Amber). Following the R-O feeding chart.

Bloom Room is ready to accept them and it's 11'L x 4'W x 5'H (220 cu ft). Only plan to use about half of this for grow and other half for storing of grow-related stuff. (1) 600 watt H.I.D. Hut "complete spectrum" HPS in a Sun System Blazer sealed and ducted hood. Room air is scrubbed through a "no name" 6" can-type filter near the ceiling, through the light hood, out of the room via a no-name but so far quiet and powerful 6" centrifugal fan & out the roof...about a 10' total run beginning at filter. House is a rental so I'm limited in my ability to punch holes + I have very limited $. Room draws fresh air passively from roof vent via lightly insulated 10" flexible duct 25" away. I plan to buy a CraigsList dehumid for $40 or so but its gotta wait and I don't need it yet anyway. No CO2, no AC, no $. I could really use a successful inaugural run here.

I'm on city water but I draw it through a decent "whole house" capacity filter (but it runs only through one faucet). Not activated charcoal and def not RO, but cheap and better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Using distilled water so far, but plan to use tap water and let it sit with the cap off for a bit before using. Maybe it's mumbo jumbo but I've read that this approach will "leach out" many of whatever chemicals are present in the city water.

A couple of the 4" pots already show tap root at the bottom. Planning to re-pot into (perhaps) 1 gallon size in another week or two, then right into the 5 gallon final pots. I've read some solid-sounding advice about several step ups in pot size but again, limited in cash. Recyling pots when I can from vegetable plants - sterilizing them first.

Planning (again, I'm a noob so way open to guidance here) on moving to Bloom Room at about 1.5' to 2' plant height. I intend to take some cuttings / clones prior (properly labeled) and flower them ASAP so I can ID girl plants and execute the males. Then leave at least one mother and the rest of the original fem beans into Bloom Room.

I have the 600w HPS positioned so that the grow area (of this room) is about 4' x 5 or 6' and if I ever have two nickles to rub together I'll hang some CFL's on either (long) side of the HPS. I switched out the breaker in the service panel to 30 amps, still single-pole. The standard Romex house wiring is rated to 30a so should be safe and adequate to run all this stuff. I'm not an electrician but I have quite a bit of experience with this stuff anyway, including building a house from foundation up, service panel install, etc, etc. Everything is clean. No exposed wires, etc. Putting the ballast outside the grow area really wasn't practical for me so it's mounted to an OSB panel along with a good surge suppressor and timers. The exhaust fan will run intermittantly off a Hydro farm timer. No speed control at this time - just on and off enough to clear the air out 20x per day or so. It's my hope that this will be adequate for CO2. I may invest in a C02 bucket or bag at some point.

With the exception of a small amount of escaping light around doors, both rooms are 100% stealthy (even though this is a legal grow, with my permit pinned on the Bloom Room wall). Noise is minimal and cloaked by normal ambient noise in the house. Air transfer was routed through existing fixtures with no external change / construction and I like to think that the 6" activated charcoal filter will be adequate to address smell. Also, as exhaust and intake are both vented through attic / roof vents, they're 20'+ above the ground and natural air currents should blow some residual odor away (or so the philosophy goes, applying my deer hunting "skills." Hey, if a whitetail can't smell me, neither can you!).

Goal is 2 ounces dry per plant from (I hope) 6 plants, after weeding out the boys. Will prolly top, tie down and lollipop. If I don't manage to kill all of these, will proceed to start clones when healthy to do so, getting a slight start over the seeds for Batch 2. Then order early in the month to get some good seed deals (not as many this time) and get some variety going.

Thanks for reading!

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  1. downhill21's Avatar
    Haven't been able to upload pix in my journal. I click on the "upload photo" icon and it offers me only the opportunity to upload from a url...no option to upload a "file" photo. Plants seem to be overall happy and doing well. I've been watering about every 3rd day, depending on how light the 1.05 pint pots are. I think I've got a pretty good feel for whether they need water or not based on a)weight of pot dry or wet and b)sticking my finger about 1/2" into the soil at the rim of the pot. As I'm growing in soil (Roots Organics Original) I alternate water with nutes and straight up water (always room temp). A day or two ago I upped the nutes to (per gallon of water) 2 TBS Ancient Amber and Buddha Grow. I stopped including the Trinity catalyst because the directions on the bottle seedlings and cuttings but mentions nothing about plants well into vegetative. This is contrary to the Roots Organics Feeding Schedlue which recommends continuing Trinity through all stages. I guess I'm going to stop following the bottle and focus on the Feeding Schedule. Looks like they're starting to drink more so I may soon spool up to every other day for water. My process is to pretty thoroughly drench them, let them drain and let them get pretty thoroughly dry before watering (or feeding) again.

    Growth seems to really have accelerated in the last 24-48 hours and I've got a couple plants I consider rock stars (BB4,5 and 7). The Northern Lights x Big Bud is also starting to kick into gear. I've got a couple issues. BB3's growth is kinda slow and it's got definite purple stems and purple lines or stripes up the primary stalk / stem. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think I'm seeing some folks say this is healthy (and it IS a blueberry) and some folks saying definite deficiency. BB's 8, 4, 7 &5 have reasonably few and fairly small brown or tan papery areas on a few leaves. So does the NL x BB. In the latter case, the papery spot is very dry and almost transparent (can pretty much see through the leave top to bottom IN THIS SPOT).

    Just now I began spraying them (foliar) with 2 TBS of 3% H2O2. Only once so far but plan to do so daily.

    Temps run a bit higher than I'd like (upper floor, July and unseasonably high temps) at PEAK 84F to 90F. Many nights the lows outside are around 64 so I'm turning off the air at night, opening windows on the upper floor and exhausting air out one window which draws in this cooler air and cools the whole floor and gets the veg room down to about 69F on a good night / morning.

    The plants are beginning to smell...not a lot, but enough that I notice it. Veg room isn't vented (lit with fluoros), I keep access to the upper floor restricted and I use a large "box fan" to blow conditioned air into the grow area. Looking forward to moving the plants to the Flower room and that room has a 6" carbon filter in line before the room air is exhausted outdoors every 15 minutes, 24 hours per day. I worry a bit about the outside air temp when I do that because I won't be blowing conditioned air into this room. It's 82F in there right now without the 600W HPS on. The light is in an enclosed hood and the exhaust air travels from the carbon filter, to the HPS hood, out of the grow space and out the roof. Will in the next few days fire the light up full speed (switchable ballast), leave it on for a few hours and see what the room temp does. The exhaust fan seems to work well 'cause it'll suck the glass lid closed on the light hood and if I put my hand on the filter, I can feel the air being drawn into it (as it "hits" the back of my hand).

    Planning to re-pot to 3 gallon pots pretty soon and maybe some 5 gallon pots (not enough 3 gallons and planning "final" pot size to be 5 gallon - already sitting in the corner waiting for soil and plants). Space is limited so wish I had more 3 gallons until such time as the plants are big enough to "need" the 5's.

    RH continues to sit around 42. Still wishing I could raise this to 70 or so in veg, but need a $12 filter / wick for my humidifier and yes, cash is that tight. Will soon need Flower nutes, could use a loup / magnifying glass and would like to get a cheap air pump to oxygenate my tap water as I let it sit for a day or so to evap any chemicals (city water). I DO use a decent (but not activated carbon or RO) water filter so maybe I'm making more of this than is necessary. Hey - I'm a noob. [shrugs] Would also consider some mycorrhizae.

    I have not done a flush at all yet.

    I don't think anyone's reading this but me, so i may post something asking some of the board wizards to take a look and share their experience / guidance soon. I think things are going pretty well, but the papery spots on some leaves have my interest and if I have a real issue, I don't want to wait too long to address it.

    Thank you for any help.
  2. downhill21's Avatar
    Oh, balls. My PH test strips claim the PH of my water is about 5.4. Was all about to add some "up" but tried a vial of liquid PH test fluid and IT came back suggesting a PH of 7. From what I've read, I'm shooting for 5.8 - 6.2. Methinks it would be good to have a digital PH tester.