PC grow ready for round two.

Hello RiP community!

Caution: Prolouge...

Now, some of you may have been unlucky enough to stumble upon my previous grow journal, which turned out to be a failure. If so, I would like to express my deepest apologies but it was the beggining of the holidays, straight after my Polish matura (that's the equivalent to the English GCSE's)... and that means every single family member wanted to see me after my tests which had me travelling far and wide.
That lead to my plant being taken care of by my friend who hasn't got the faintest idea of growing even grass (the normal kind) let alone cannabis. He sort of messed up, because when I got back to check on the plant, it looked like a heatwave entered the box. Anyway, I take full responsibility, because it was my plant to take care of, not his. I expressed my gratitude or his help and that was the end of my first PC grow....

BUT, this year I was really experimenting a lot, because during the summer I must have bought ten seeds which resulted in... 10 fuck ups. I was trying out new types of soil, new methods, dosage of different nutes etcetera etcetera. Plus I really wanted to smoke something so I was practically glued to the plants. Thankfully I have completely stopped using the herb due to certain health problems. I didin't like where I was going and what I was becoming so with the help of a few people, the last time I got high was about four months ago (which is an anomaly for me).

You may be asking: well Gregor, what the fuck man, you're on a cannabis forum, GROWING cannabis and you're talking bollocks about not smoking? What are you growing it for then and why don't you just switch to lemons and tomatoes? That's a fantastic question, let me explain... believe it or not, I have found a new hobby of sorts. I LOVE spending time reading through forums, grow journals, leaflets, guides etc. on the cultivation of cannabis. I find it is such a complex (and fun) plant to grow and this journey really gave me a lot of insight, not only on growing, but on eg. light spectrums, PC fans, electricity, nutrients, pH and so on and so forth. I also love building things, so when I saw that I had a chance to build a PC grow box, I didn't hesitate. Now of course a decent amount of yield at the end would be nice, because if I told you I wouldn't care about the outcome I would be telling porkie pies. BUT since this is a micro grow I understand that if I get around 20g, I would consider that as a success. There you have it, another reason for a hobby grow.

On the side note I do have a outdoor autflower seedling. Like I said I want to experiment, and this is the end of summer so I would like to see how the "weakened" sun effects growth.

Ok enough of the ranting, let me give you a bit of information on what I have...

-Standard PC box. Nothign special for the dimentions are 42 x 45 x 18,5 [cm] <----- But dude, why didn't you buy a PC tower? Those things are much better for growing cannabis in such confined spaces! Yes I am aware of that, but I would like to finish this PC grow and THEN I swear I will upgrade the whole setup,

-Four cfls: three have a cold spectrum (6500K) and the other has a temp of 2700K. Each of them have 25W and give off 1520 lumens, so in total I possess about 6080 lumens which is a satisfying score,

-the inside of the tower is lined up with the reflective material you use to keep your car cool on a scorching day. Now I know this type of gadget is actually meant to reflect HEAT instead of light, but like I said, I will upgrade the whole setup (with diamond mylar) once I complete this grow and this is better than nothing innit?

-three 12v 80mm PC fans which are pretty much the very basic you can get your hands on. I have one for intake and one for outtake. The other PC fan is a sort of "backup" in case the temps rise to such a degree that it will start to affect the poor plant,

-a small 3l pot (the long sorts) to maximise the amount of used space,

- unfortunately the soil has a pH of 5,5-6,5 and since I dropped my pH meter from the balcony (I was so drunk I couldn't tell my arsehole from my earhole) I have no way to measure the actual pH... but my girl is thriving, so I believe this is a good indicator of no nute lock outs,

-of course I have the standard humidity/temperature meter and I can't imagine what life would be without it,

As for the acutal seed... it is about one month old and curse my memory (one of the reasons I stopped smoking) I am not positive on the strain. I think it is a Big grapefruit?? It is definitely a hybrid, because I LOVE (loved) sativas, but I was scared of buying a pure sativa strain due to their tendency of growing into monsters. I think it consists of around 60% sativa and the rest being indica (booo). Oh, it is definitely feminized, I am absolutely postive on that.

So I think that conludes all the basic information. I will try to download the pictues from my previous journal to show you all the process of building the box. It will also help anyone who is interested in getting started.

Sorry for my hectic writing but it is 39 degress celsius outside and I am literally buring. I fokin' hate this kind of weather. Peace guys, I will be sending a few pictures in a jiffy.

The gutting got me feeling like a butcher.

My workplace... I swear one of these days when I start making money for myself, I will buy a proper heavy duty "work desk". As for now the floor does the trick.

So by doing a bit of math and research, both of these fans produce (I don't know if this is the correct word to use) around 0,37 A or 370 mA in total. So the sum of these two fans should be lower than the maximum amount of amps the adapter can sustain... and the one I bought has a max of 1,2 A or 1200mA, so I should be fine.

This was the result of the soldering I did waaaay back. I was afraid that I "messed up" somewhere, but nothing ever unusual happened so it is safe to say I did a good job.

The lights. I swear to God, I thought that since Poland is in the middle of bloody Europe, it should have a wide range of items to buy. I had to sweep every corner of the Polish internet (and the actual shops for that matter) to find these socket E27 adapters but in the end I got them (I was really worried that I would have to wire each light together in order for them to work). I stuck the extension cord onto the top part of the box, so that the lights will be situated horiztontally, to get the max amount of light they can give. I also added one more light via a crude cable . Doesn't look very nice I agree, but it gets the job done.

So this is how the whole case looks at the very moment. I am quite content with the work I did (reminder, this is the first ever project I did by myself). I agree that it is not the cleanest PC box out there, but I have to admit I have seen worse ones. If all goes well I will build a proper box soon (no light leaks, everything in tip top shape).

Maybe some information about the star of our show... A long time ago, far, far away (rougly about one month ago) I planted this girl in the ground. She obviously sprouted and I was a really happy new grower and she was meant to be in the PC from start to finish Now, I don't really recall why but I transfered her outside (of course after a week of hardening). Now, maybe it was because of the completely alien enviroment eg. sun, wind, different humidity, etc. but she ceased to grow. And she was outside for about a week and not even a nanometer of growth was seen. I was quite upset and angry with myself for putting her through such a tough time, but I waited a week more... with no results. After those two weeks of torture I came to accept the fact that she would not grow anymore, so I figured out: why not put her back in the ol' box, I have NOTHING to lose anyway... Well I can tell you all that that was the best darn decision I have made in a long time, because two days from the transplant she started to absolutely THRIVE. New growth occured everywhere. Well not everywhere, but you get the idea. She is abotu one and a half weeks old since I stuck her back in her box.
Come to think of it, maybe it started to thrive like that because she finally entered the vegetative stage. Just a thought.

Her 6th node is starting to develop and I was just thinking last night, that when it grows a tad bit taller I'll top it off. I am aiming for about three toppings? I'll just have to see how the plant will be reacting.

This is how she looked after those two weeks outside...

Omfg, I just realized I wrote RiP community not RIU... my bad, my bad.

Watching

Cheers mate, hope this pulls off.

I've decided to top her now. I understand that you basically start topping once a plant ha around 3-5 nodes... and my one is developing her 6th one. Won't hurt to start early since the plant is a bit old.

I wonder if the mainlining method of topping would be good for a pc, either way, you of f to agood start

You know what I was thinking about doing the mainlining technique as it seemed a fascinating way to train your plant. For some reasons I decided not to do it on this one... but that's a method I will definitely try in my new PC box on my next grow. I have not seen any growers use this method inside a small case like this, so I am interested as to the result. Cheers for the input.

So it seems that my plant doesn't really respond well to topping. After three days not much to report. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best, it is after all a shock to the plant.

As for the whitetish spots on the leaves, I think it has been caused when I accidently poured nutrients over the leaves.

Gregor Eisenhorn said:

So it seems that my plant doesn't really respond well to topping. After three days not much to report. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best, it is after all a shock to the plant.

As for the whitetish spots on the leaves, I think it has been caused when I accidently poured nutrients over the leaves.

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they will recoup , i see where they are going to have new tops, looks healthy man, make sure to look closely under those leaves and make sure you dont have bugs,, such as mites, they make white spots too,, also get some of those yellow,, or yellow and blue sticky traps and place in there, and then inspect them daily , if you do have bugs,, or if you ever get them they will show up on the sticky trap first, they are in expensive,, i often use them even if i dont see bugs,, just as insurance

I was kind of hoping you would say, nah man it's not spider mites. Well, good thing you pointed that out, because I bet they are. I went to my local pharmacie and bought some grey soap. i mixed 20g of it in 1l of water and sprayed the under side of the leaves iwht it. Apparently it helps, so I'm just going to have to watch carefully...

And about those sticky tapes, good idea man, I couldn't get my hands on any at the moment, but I definately will have to buy some. In the meantime, I just stuck three sellotape strips inside the box. Two of them are coated with hney and let's hope this will do the trick.

Gregor Eisenhorn said:

I was kind of hoping you would say, nah man it's not spider mites. Well, good thing you pointed that out, because I bet they are. I went to my local pharmacie and bought some grey soap. i mixed 20g of it in 1l of water and sprayed the under side of the leaves iwht it. Apparently it helps, so I'm just going to have to watch carefully...

And about those sticky tapes, good idea man, I couldn't get my hands on any at the moment, but I definately will have to buy some. In the meantime, I just stuck three sellotape strips inside the box. Two of them are coated with hney and let's hope this will do the trick.

Click to expand...

My last grow I got those stupid aphids, , caught them while they where still on just one of the lower buds, I thanked my lucky stars, good job on the preventative measures, keep up the good work gonna pay off

My apologies for not writing in a while, time for an update.

I have been spraying the mite solution for some time now and I must say that I think it helped. I don't believe the situation is getting worse, the new leaves do not seem to be affected at all, so I take that as a good sign.

Anyways, apart from the little critter infestation I have noticed that the plant has fully recovered after the shock and the two new sprouts are coming along admirably. I was thinking of topping them soon, I just have not decided when to be exact...

Since this is my first time topping, I noticed that the new sprouts are not growing parallel to the pot, which is going to be problematic. But I reckon if I top those sprouts once more, then the direction of the new sprouts will be satisfactory for my scrog net. I'll just have to see in a few days and think on it.

Anyways, all is good, here are some pictures. The plant is kind of drooping because of the solution weighing it down.

Peace.