Tent, cold conditions; 5x feminised snow white

Being the steady smoker I finally figured its time to run my own grow as it would be well worth the investment,
So, having read up on dosens of guides, journals, logs, bibles and what not ...
I did a couple of grows in the past, but that was over 15 years ago ... and, after reading up, considered primative for indoor grow xD

aaaanyway

The location is far from ideal, a single layer stone wall shed with a flat roof where during winters the temperature would be around or below 0 and coming summer likely around 20 to 30 degrees <_<
I dont want to put up extra isolation and want to be able to move it if need be, so im giving one of those indoor tents a go.

I'm the type of guy who likes to feel stuff and see how decent it is when I spent relatively a lot of money, so I went round a couple of grow shops seeing what they had in inventory and ask for a list of abbout the same stuff.

So, ... eventually, (the satsified smokestress ??)
I thought myself well equipted with 650,- investment finlaly getting me:


dsr120 (1,20x1,20x1,80)
canfan 125l and some tubing
vsa with 400w hps reflector and some hanging
5 times feminised snow white
5 small pots
5 11l pots
atami coco soil mix 50l
400w electic oil heater
bottle biobizz grow
bottle biobizz bloom
bottle biobizz topmox
bottle root stimulate from hesi (they were out of biobizz >_> )
Next to that some electra and some timers.
temp/hygro combi meter
some cables
a cheap drip system
big fan
smaller oscilating fan
fire hydrant thing

and off I went ....

I ditched the seeds in a glass of water and started making space in the shed.
Surprisingly, a couple of hours later I was already admiring a fully setup tent.

I had in mind that the 400w would be a bit small for the tent, but simply thought I would just place the plants a bit more to the center...
A day and a half later and the seeds already showed little roots.
Took them out, and placed them in the little pots.
first day:


I thought placing the heater in the center was smart ... but it didnt work all that effective.
First couple of days the lights were on 24 when the little ladies came up (4 / 5 days)
After that 18/6 and roughly two weeks later the ladies were looking nice
During the dark the temperature dropped quite quick.
The shed was 4 degrees, the tent during light 22 / 23 but when the lights went off, around 17.
This also had to do with a lot of moist already being in the shed wall, and with the tent heating up the place,
all sorts of changes happen, so climate fluctuations were bound to happen.
With a fear for too low root temperatures, I arranged a couple of those floor heater matts, worked a charm, from there the pot temperatures always around or above 19 degrees.

I was worried about the temperatures and the fluctuations, and figured I should get me some sort of automated system, the simple timers I used were not adeqaute enough for me. I ordered a special mini computer online and some temperature senors, and a couple of humidity sensors.


day:16


Couple days later the mini computer and other stuff arrived.
A couple of hours later I had a running mini linux server with webhosting capabilities with 8 temperatures sensors connected (5 intended for the plant pots, 3 for other) and 2 temperature/humidity sensors and 8 switch relays. Total investment: 150 bucks not bad
Seeing as Im familair with webdevelopment, I build my own web application with a direct interface with a whole bunch of options. (from a journal to wiki to inventory list etcetc)
I created something I call the digital gardner, its a list of settings and variables on which certain measerured values triggers devices on or off which gets checked every minute and everything gets logged to the mysql database.


The setup you see there is nearly the setup as in the tent, the values show a terrible humidity level, but that due to the extra 400w hps light I added recent.
the elements are clickable, and show graph logs and such

And as a nice addition is that I added a load of classic adagio mp3 music and hooked up a couple of pc speakers in the tent too

I also added one of those diy bio c02 generators (1L water, 200g sugar, couple grams yeast), and had the dispensor tube between all the plants.
It worked damn fine, also started adding biobizz growth (aprox half suggested on label)

day: 23

here you can see the Ph meter I use, I hardly check it, with my tap water when I feed the plants, is always at 6,7 / 7, ok for my soil, so i dont mess with it
And kept up with the co2

9 days later, day 32.




That was starting to look nice

To surpress strechting and promote wide growth I attempted to fimm, ... I lived up to the name and only really succeeded with 1, and the other simply had the top effect. The middle plant shows the one that went welll

Day: 41



In the beginning of this week I noticed leafs turning a bit yellow on the bottom and followed a couple of these leaf issue topics and came to the conclusion it was a magnesium deficiency.
Epsom salt was advised, or as an alternative, bitterzout (bittersalt I guess) but that stuff was no longer available and somewhere I found information pointing to kieseriet. It also contained sulfur, which was a nice addition.
I did some in a spray for folliar spray and mixed some in water and gave that as well.
Within a couple of days, even the leafs that had turned yellow already started to get new color.

On day 48 I gave the plants 36 hours of darkness to kickstart the flower and the digitl gardner now handles 12/12 lighting.

day 50:



I figured the co2 amount would become less effective as I was getting bigger plants, so added a second bottle to the co2 bio generator.

2 days ago I added an extra 400w hps light.
It looks to work well apart from that its not working really well for my humidity, it seem I should replace my nifty diy humidifier for a real one or add one of those ultrasonic foggers to it.

Anywas, two days later the plants dont really seem to mind, but monday I'll be getting a new humidifier just to be sure.
The high temps induced a bit of stretch, but its something I can use really well atm, the plants are dense and this gave a perfect uppertunity for bending the branches out a bit.

day 60 (yesterday)




Thats it for now, more in a couple of days.

Suggestions, questions .... feel free

Day 12 of the flowering.
The ladies are doing quite fine

day: 62



I placed half a bucket of water with a towel in the tent for the humidity level.
Worked somewhat ok.
This is a graph with hourly averages from the last 24 hours 15cm down in the leaf deck.



(blue is temperature, brown is humidity%)

So its exactly day 14 of the flowering now.
shots are made in the minute after the lights come on.



is that purple-ish glow on the right side an indication of perhaps the bulb nearing its life end ? (becomming less effective)

Plants are doing great par 1 (relatively speaking), its the one in the left bottom corner on the next pic which I feel is catching some sort of draft or something making it transpire less then the others (retains more water in the pot / moisture) ... could be other things, if someone has suggestions I would love to hear it. (the plant in the bottom left)



the bottom right one here also has less flair to it, but still doing great but no water retaining or lots of moisture in the pot, lots of side branches a bit out of view making their way to the top.





bud shot lower right plant

Perhaps the bottom plants (nearest to the opening of the tent) require more heat applied to the pots ?
Those two are generally between 1 and 2 degrees lower then the rest, they are on smaller heat mats.






figured I would give a bit of information about my automated climate controller I got running.

Its a raspberry PI, somewhat like the arduino, but more of a complete system.
I got the B model, which has ethernet connection, 2 usb ports, a whole bunch of GPIO pins able to used for various circutry actions.
I hooked up a wifi stick to it, so I can remotely connect to my wireless router.

The operating system is wheezy, its the default linux operating system which works just like any other linux like distro. It even has its own desktop and such and a hdmi connection for high quality direct hookup of a monitor/screen.
The raspberrry pi B can be found online for something around 40 bucks.
I ordered a strong power adapter with it, to support multiple usb devices and attach stuff to the GPIO pins.

Sad thing about the raspberry is that it only supports digital input and output, and connecting something analogue to the gpio pins gets you a high chance of frying the motherboard. so caution is adviced during experimenting.
there are some solutions in which you can connect an adc convertor to make use of an extra analoguein system, making it workable to use all sorts of sensors which have an analogue voltage for indication.
i still need to get one for my Co2 sensor (not even 20 bucks hehe) but will have in due time.
The same applies for EC and Ph measurement probes, all in the reach of 20 30 or 40 bucks.

further more, I use temperature and humidty sensors.

for temperature I found that the ds18b20 models work da bomb around 1 or 2 bucks a piece.
These thing support parasitical connections, meaning, you use 1 gpio pin and connect as many ds18b20 probes on them as you want, with dosens dosens and dosens of meters range if you use appropiate resistors. I hookep up a total of 8, used RJ11 (old telephone plugs) connecters and phone lines. (finally some use for the stuff I was dragging around for years haha)
Note that these probes are bare, and I had to make my own container/protection for sticking it in the soil.
Its rather simple, just get some aquarium tubing, cut off couple of cm's solder the telephone wires to the unit and stuff it in the tube, glue gun both ends and voila.
Each probe requires at least 1 4,7k ohm resistor, connected between the plus and the data feed of the probe.
These probes require the one wire protocol library installed in your Os, there are lots out there, and can even be installed automatically from the command line.
After this with 1 simple command, the raspberry checks ALL the devices on the data line from the gpio pin (#4) and gets their values.



For humidity I use the DHT11 sensors, sadly these can not be used parasitic and requires a gpio pin per unit. (roughly 3 bucks a piece) I've read that an more expensive modelalso supports parasitic modes, (one wire like connection) but it would have cost 5 fold or something, and seeing as I did not need more pins then were available, I went with the cheaper ones
The 4,7k resistor is also applied here, per unit, between the plus and data feed.
Adafruit has made some script, the Adafruit_DHT drivers, fromt he command line, with a single command you can request data from the unit.
Now these units require a a few seconds heat up time before they reply with a good crc value giving you humidity and temperature as well.
In my php code I simply perform the command a couple of times and only use it when I get actual values.

I got myself a small relais board with 8 channels. (under 20 bucks) it supports 8 relais which can switch anything between 5 and 230 volts on or off with max 8 amps or some per relais. Each relais requires 1 gpio port, so this board used up 8 gpios in 1 go.
But with very simple command you can check the state and or switch it on or off.


With these I use a script I made myself which runs every minute to fetch all the values from the units and stores the values in the database.

As for the application, I'm also a php web developper, and made a web application that reads all its values from the mysql database.
I added a section where I can add triggers and actions, when a certain list of triggers meet their conditions, the action gets performed.

Well thats it for now, next time I might add some pics, but, the thing is so small, you can hardly see anything

I am so annoyed, for the last couple of days i keep getting to my tent too late to take decent pictures, I should get a good camera or webcam

anyways

Total grow days so far: 70
Flower days: 21



Some attempts at bud pics




Here's the mini computer (raspberry pi) in some casing I build from one of those kitchen boxes to store fruit in ... ugly, but hey, it works haha.



The box on the right is the casing from an old ADSL modem, I stripped the inside and stuffed my relais board in there.
The three phone connectors are the one wire d18b20 parasitical line and the other two my dht11 humidity sensors.

The inside.


A shot from the inside .... yes, thats duct tape, no .. I soldered, lol, duct tape is a great insulator.
Pretty, no, functional, hehe, hell yeah

Really good bro i new some one once who was growing in a cold place and he split the grow room dwn the middle and had two sets of plants flowering so when lights where off for 12 hours the other light would be on jus vent each room to each other if u get what i mean lol looks like u doing weel tho bro

Thanks
The winter is over and summer is coming, I managed to keep most of the warmt in the shed by simply exhausting/venting in the shed in stead of straight out, upping the sheds temperature as time progressed.
I simply added a pc fan to suck in air from the outiside of the shed and blow it in.
Only downside I experienced with this that when it got too moist I got some mold on cloth fabrics within the shed, and it started to feel a bit tropical.
So now I vent the shed too and it seems to work well.

It worked out pretty good I must say, currently I have:


lights on:
top of tent: 83 (28.3)
under the light, top canopy: 86 (30)
within canopy (~8 inch down in the leaf deck): 78 (25.6)
pots / soil: 74 (23.3)

lights out:
top of tent: 72 (22.2)
under the light, top canopy: 72 (22.2)
within canopy (~8 inch down in the leaf deck): 76 (24.4)
pots / soil: 72 (22.2)


The temperatures have been going up a few globally as the summer got closer, but the temps are generally around this last week.
Its the first time for me in this location, and am finding myself tweaking climate settings relating to outside temperatures and the state of the plants (bigger plants more moist, easier to warm etc)



23 days since 12/12 flip

Last weeks I have been seeing more and more smaller, insignificant growth at the bottom of the plant and several buds and which were too small and buds being deprivated of light/space/ventilation.

I took an intrest recent in defolation and the various symptons included in it and figured I could perhaps trim some. (ohw the controversie here on the forum, yikes)
Going by various statements of my type of lights being able to penetrate 40 cms into the leaf deck. (betting that is something thrown in by a commercial sized production plantation).
Seeing as I have a realy bushy leafdeck and had widly vigorous growth of a good 60 cm height I figured I would trim some of the leafage and bend a couple branches a bit more to prevent more trimming then needed, but giving way more exposure to light and make room for ventilation.

I ended up taking a bucket full of trimmed leafs and super small branches which were yellow and plain ugly looking, together with a wide range of leaves surrounding the buds making way for the light to penetrate deeper in the leaf deck.
A day later and the ladies look as perky as ever, and seemed to have totally no downside to it.

A good thing was that I ended up getting about 15 relative big buds sites in more optimal light and actually was able to retrieve a few near lost buds whom actually got shaded too much. (good example, top view, top left plant, there is a light green colored bud to the side)

Apparently I have a very thik healthy leaves, and being so dark as they are, they likely block more light too.


One of the things I had read about the symptons of defoliage, was that better ventilation and temperature control, I was hoping a bit for this as summer is approaching and my temperatures were slowly but steady increasing.

A day later:
Checking my logs and temperatures, i was surprised that my devices had run about 50% less to maintain the current humidity and temperature, and even was able to hold a few degree lower temperature with ease.

I know this trimming could influence my yield negatively in the end, but with the things to come with the climate, I was very willing to take the risc.
As the opposite could also be true, a better yield due to better climate circumstances.

we shall see

top view


left view


right view




The next three days will be good to see


Also, I should be getting my new light by monday or tuesday. Hoping that will help the right side plants a bit more with their color, though the buds all look the same with an increasing growth of crystals

thats working out pretty well.

did a few bud shots too this time












pff half way through bloom.. or rather ... well, in the 4th week of max 11 weeks

Following is a graph from the last week from the DHT11 humidity/temperature sensor which is within my canopy/leaf deck.
The far left has most recent hours, far right 168 hours ago (1 week).

I removed quite a few leaves top and below which resulted in a better air flow.
Notice last week the higher level humidity with bigger spikes, last two days its more and more stabilising lower.
Admittingly, there is a slight higher difference in the average temperature.







took a shot for my siggy yesterday, made me think of following the yellow brick road

nice level canopy. i need to do that on my next grow.

80 days from seed
31 days since 12/12



bottom left one is still lighter then the others, is a bit behind but coming along nicely with the new leafs being greener and buds forming swell.



Buds shot

Last week the right light bulb has been replaced, it does its job well and the effect is noticable.
Camera shots are more normal and the overal coloring of the plants changed more equally since the replacement.

I trimmed again a few days ago, the increased airflows realy helps the climate controle.

Upon closer inspection of my plant pots I found the cocomix soil heights a bit low,
and the lighter colored plant on the bottom left was even worse (~20% down).
I read up on that coco can have some sort of sink in where the cocos part of the mix sinks in a bit.
A refill / new top up it is ...

Getting new stuff:
With an eye on future endeavours, I needed to stock up wise as I needed material for the next run too.
I'm not too sure about the coco mix so I'm doing a plagron light mix soil for the next run.
Got a set of new 11L pots (~2,9 gals), 2 feminised afghan and 3 feminised white widow.
The seeds have been germinated 24 hours in a glass of water, and potted as soon as the roots showed.

Within 5 days of being dropped in the water, the ladies already popped up.





I got a bit of extra plagron and carefully removed the hydroton from the current grow pots and topped it up with the plagron and placed the hydroton again.

As for feeding / nute changes:
Now this should become a bit tricky, as the plagron already has nutes in it and my bio bizz is already firmly present in the coco mix, I could easily overfeed.
But one simple thing to do, just water ^_^

After roughly 4 days of adding the plagron soil mix I can see a nice meaty, thickening effect on the buds, must be taking some extra roots .
The ladies are liking it and the smell is becoming nicer every day.
I'm just a bit curious of when to add some bio bloom again ... perhaps even not,as the plagron mix should already give a nice boost for some time.




The grow is going well, the ladies look lush and each plants has some kinky characteristics.


The top right plant has a slighty different bud forming





the other plants look like this:

Been giving the ladies just water the last week because of the added plagron light mix.
The middle plant is showing a slight nute burn effect on the sides of some fanleaves.
Should be ok so I'll just continue the watering

Day 93 of the grow, 44 since 12/12 flip



This is the main bud from the bottom left plant. (shame about the sharpness)

I trained the branches and main cola of her far less because she was/is troubled a bit.
Not too shabby.














I got some pics from a couple days ago too which I forgot to add -,- mustve been smoking

Again the bottom left.
The color has been returning slowly but nicely.

Day 50 of flower

De middle plant is getting eating tried to keep it green like her sisters but failed .
I think its due to its size, it has most bud sites and really huge, long, buds.
Perhaps that plant should have gotten more extras.

Anyways, she is still doing good, and the buds' pistils still forming and the buds themselfs fattening.





I love the big main cola from the troubled girl.
It seems she's taking off in buds too and getting the same sizes as te others, nice.







Still following the yellow brick road.






Buds galore






In the jungle .... the quiet jungle .......

automated said:

View attachment 2643911

Click to expand...

Awesome grow so far man!! Everything's looking very clean and proper. In the above pic did you trim a leaf in the lower right? I see a stem... I think. Also do you trim all the way up to harvest?

automated said:

Day 50 of flower

De middle plant is getting eating tried to keep it green like her sisters but failed .
I think its due to its size, it has most bud sites and really huge, long, buds.
Perhaps that plant should have gotten more extras.

Anyways, she is still doing good, and the buds' pistils still forming and the buds themselfs fattening.

View attachment 2667526



I love the big main cola from the troubled girl.
It seems she's taking off in buds too and getting the same sizes as te others, nice.

View attachment 2667524





Still following the yellow brick road.
View attachment 2667527





Buds galore

View attachment 2667525




In the jungle .... the quiet jungle .......
View attachment 2667528

Click to expand...

The Lyon Sleeps Tonight! good lookin for sure Thanks for sharing, might tap ya later love the programable concept!

Nice!
I wish I had your knowledge re: arduino and linux etc. You are truly a sudo! (my knowledge is limited to aircrack etc but at least I get free internet and don't have to worry about what I do on the 'net, lol). You could make a living out of building this stuff.
I'm surprised you haven't gone hydro though. Is that a plan for the future?

Thanks
I'm offering some tech help too, anyone willing to give the tech a try, I'll try and assist
I am actually trying to get some people interrested in this material, but I need a lot of data showing it works.

I have been looking into the various techniques of growing, but I have some experience with soil based from the past and I wanted my own stash of smokables first.
The next run will be a soil based too, but after that I'm doing an overhaul in techniques.
I want to do automated watering too, which will have per pot based moist testing and each pot its own water supply valves.

I had build this kick ass (what I believed to be) Co2 sensor with servo for opening and closing my valves for my simplified co2 supply.
Well, there was a lot of confusion and misguidance in the documentation, and ended up with a perfectly good working Carbon monoxide senor
I've now found the unit I want (carbon dioxide sensor), but its triple the price of the wrong sensor

Anayways, thanks for stopping by

n0tmycupoftea said:

Awesome grow so far man!! Everything's looking very clean and proper. In the above pic did you trim a leaf in the lower right? I see a stem... I think. Also do you trim all the way up to harvest?

Click to expand...

Thanks

Yes I did trim a leaf there, I trimmed up to max 3rd week of the flowering.
The first two weeks of flower a lot of growth happens, and a lot of extra leafs form.
After that I'm more carefull as to not to disturb the girls too much.
I trim to get a better airflow and better light penetration.
But as you can see, I dont over do it.


Thanks for passing by.