Closet Grower

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This was a glass bread pan that I extracted BHO into. I used about 1 OZ of slightly mouldy buds.
After extraction I cooked the pan in the oven for 45 minutes. The oil turned from sticky paste to
liquid and would actually roll across the pan. This solved the how do I clean up that sticky mess
problem very well.

After heating at 230 F for 45 minutes, the extract was dissolved into everclear and sucked up
into a syringe and squirted into a dropper bottle. Typical dosage was a half to full dropper.
It takes about 1 -1.5 hours to come on and lasts for up to 6 hours.

The resulting liquid is a light golden color. Not even a hint of green. Since it is in an alcohol
base you could dribble it onto a joint or whatever and let it evaporate. I call it Golden Dragon.

In most cases before making tinctures or extracts I will use the dry ice process to shake off
as much keif as possible. I would have to say that there is nothing better than the kief.

Now on to my next grow. In the previous grow I filled my tray with about 3" of coco coir. This had some rather interesting effects, one of which was to cut my watering schedule down from 3 times a day to 1 minute per day. The roots were able to grow out of the net pots and into the coco filled tray. Unfortunately this made it impossible to rotate the plants. Given that my light could not be moved my yields suffered.

This time I'm using 5 gallon smart pots and only 6 plants. The plants are clones I took of the previous crop and are Black Jack, Aurora and some other stuff which I have forgotten. I'm hoping the 5 gallon pots will allow for adequate root growth while still allowing me to move plants around.

Some people top plants. I'm not one of those people. Rather than top, I use baling wire to tie the plants down and force branching. Since I have limited head space I need to finish off my plants no more than about 3" high. To keep things as low as possible I have transplanted the plants sideways twice now. This gives them a footprint which is more or less rectangular.

I'm really liking how the sideways plants are fitting in my garden. They are easy to lay out and periodically rotate and I'm able to get more of the best budding sites directly under the light.

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You will notice some hydroton in the coco. My first grow I mixed 50/50 hydroton and coco since I was worried about the soil staying too wet. As it turned out, that was not a problem with coco. I really love coco. I re-use my coco. The method of cleaning is to throw it in a big tub of water and then with a piece of coat hanger and hook, swish the hook around and pull out roots. When I can no longer pull out any roots I drain the coco and let it dry. On my first grow I did not PH my coco and had problems with the PH going up. Now I add some acid to the tub and PH the coco when I rinse it.

This next picture is a bit more current. The plants are growing well and are now into their second week of budding. I noticed that in my last grow, 4 out of 11 plants were responsible for 3/4 of the weight and the best buds. My new theory is that it is better to have bigger buds in a smaller space than have mediocre buds in a larger space. Now I can carefully position the plants so that the best tops have plenty of light.
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Time will tell if my modifications result in a bigger better crop. So far it is looking better. I'm loving the smart pots. For those who are interested I have a 40 gallon rez. for my 4x4 table. Currently I'm draining into a 5 gallon bucket.

I'm about to try a new product. Knowing an organic chemist has it's benefits. I just received some mystery material which I'm told will take care of all my PH issues. The material is white and granular. I've been instructed to add about 1 gram per gallon in my resivoir. In theory the material will prevent PH changes as water evaporates and the plants absorb nutrients. I will be seeing how well this works and monitoring my PH carefully.

I've seem some rather large PH shifts in the past when I was less than attentive. No one likes seeing their PH drop to 4.7 because they weren't paying attention. If this stuff works I should be able to just top off my rez with tap water periodically and have my PH stay rock solid the entire time somewhere around 5.8.

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Doesn't look like much, just some white granules. Will see how it works tonight when I do my next rez change. PH adjustment is something I could learn to live without. I'm horribly paranoid and don't trust my meter much. I calibrate it on a regular basis but I always have this fear that it's telling me lies. Before I tried using indicator liquid and boy was I way the fuck off. The plants didn't much like that. If you don't get your PH within range nothing else is going to work right.

I'm hoping some day to automate my grow to the point where I can go away for a few days. I'm not keen on the idea of paying hundreds for some sort of equipment to automatically manage my PH.

Today I re-mixed my rez. I'm running about 660 PPM. There is an extra 5 gallons or so in the tank which will evaporate or dissappear into the bags and no doubt a bit of nutrient that will leech out of the bag so I'm starting a little low. In the past I tended to keep my rez at 1000 but I think this was overkill. I can always add more, easier than taking nutrients out eh? The auto ph material I'm using needs salt of some sort in order to work so I added two tablespoons of epson salt. I add epson salt anyway. The material is a little heavier than water and sinks to the bottom unless agitated by the pump. I covered my pump with some knee high nylons so the material doesn't end up in my plant. I'm told it is harmless even when ingested.

I added about 30ml of auto PH adjustment powder and left the pump on to circulate water around the tank. If necessary I can add a bit more later. The tap water runs about 7.8 and 200ppm. So far the PH has dropped to 6.3, I'm hoping to get it down to 5.8. I'm told it takes awhile to work so I'll check in the morning and add more if necessary.

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None of the plants have been topped, they have only been transplanted sideways and on occasion pulled down with baling wire. About a week ago I went through all the plants and cut off lower branches which were not destined for greatness in the hope the plants energy would be channeled into the remaining branches. Since there are some leaves on the bottom dying from lack of light I should probably do another snipping run and chop off some more.

The two gallon pots were much too small, the seven gallon smart pots much too big. The 5 gallon size seems to be just right for the 4x4 table with 6 plants. The amount of training I have had to do is minimal compared to previous scrogs and I still get the benefit of some mondo big top colas.

Current pictures show the plants about 2 weeks into bud. I'll start flushing during the last two weeks. I've decided that there isn't much need to adjust PH when flushing so when the time comes I plan on flushing with massive amounts of tap water until the ppm's coming off drop down to around 200. In the past I would often fill my tank with water and flush every rez change and often the rez would wind up going from 200ppm to 400+ppm. I suspect coco can hold a lot of nutrients.

Amazingly, in about the same time period 6 plants have filled the table almost as well as 11 did previously. To anyone who has ever written that "A 1000 watt light will cover up to 8'x8'... you're fucking dreaming and shouldn't be writing books about growing weed. 3x3 Yeah, great. 4x4 not bad if you don't mind spinning your plants around all the time.

pH didn't seem to shift much so I added more pHtastic, that dropped the pH down to about 6. As per a suggestion from the chemist I added two teaspoons of salt. Yeah, thats right table salt. I'm told not to worry that the pHtastic will react with it to make it immobile while dropping the pH. Sure enough the pH dropped to 5.8 where I like it shortly after adding the salt.

I'm at about 2 weeks of bud now. They are starting to show nicely and hopefully will fill in. Upward growth has mostly stopped and I still have a foot and a half of room to lift my light. The last time scared me and I wound up with the light all the way up.

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With summer coming heat is always an issue. Even running at night it is starting to get a little warm.

I have several plans on how to deal with July and August. This crop should finish out July 1st. At
that point I may drop my plant count down to two and spend the hot months vegging and waiting for
cooler weather to bud.

Personally I blame Obama for making me waste electricity growing in a closet when we have a
perfectly good sun outside. He has the power to end this war yet he chooses not to. Come election
time I'll be writing Ron Paul all over my ballot with a magic marker and sending it in. Obama has
dissappointed me and Romney is a fucking toad. I don't care which of the fuckers wins at this point
because neither represents me or has ever grown weed. (I think)

Thoughts on DTW vs Recirculating. I really like DTW but without drainage it is a pain having to drain into a bucket and empty. I only have to empty about twice a week but there is always the spectre of overflowing. One advantage of recirculating is that I can just flood the hell out of my plants. In a perfect world I would have a 250 gallon tank and some place to drain to. In one grow a bath tub was used and that worked pretty well.

PH appears to be steady at 5.8. I've been adding tap water to EC around 700. Last night I added 5 gallons of water and nutrients un ph adjusted at about 6.5. I'll check tonight and see if it has automatically gone back down to 5.8. So far, no complaints with the pHtastic. The material is denser than water and sits on the bottom so I think I will be able to do a rez change and save the material.

Just looked at the electric bill. Looks like the power company jacked my rates up 30%. We could save so much electricity by legalizing it.