My first RIU grow journal

I have an extremely cheap grow area right now my grow room has about $120 invested into it in total. Excuse the "cheap" setup. I do know what I'm doing for the most part. I haven't grown in about 2-3 years now and really didn't even think about growing again until a few weeks ago.

I am doing a soil grow and my pots are improvised I water every 3 days, keep them under 10 lights, 5 26 watt cfls, 2 23 watt cfls, 2 100 watt grow lights, 1 75 watt grow light. I have 2 150w HPS that I will be setting up later after I am able to get my ventilation finished. I will be taking pictures along the way and posting them as much as possible. I use cheap grow nutes right now in very very small doses. I use fermentation for CO2. I plan on starting to add H2O2 soon. They will be getting transplanted tomorrow into bigger pots because they are very root bound right now because I couldn't afford soil. Here are some pictures.
I am really tired right now so this is all I can think of right now haha.
OOPS forgot to mention strains and how old they are. I have 7 ogre 6 early girl 1 kali brains. All started from seeds received from a seed bank and a friend (who got them from the seed bank). I germinated 24 hoping at least half would take and all took!! I used moist tissues in a styrofoam egg crate and 2 seeds per cradle. They were all planted on 12-4-2009 and I think that's it now haha. If there is anything I'm leaving out just leave a question and I'll answer it when I get on later.

http://imgur.com/xaToB.jpg
http://imgur.com/YFef8.jpg
http://imgur.com/QnUyr.jpg
http://imgur.com/PIa13.jpg

I am going to be building my filter today and will be finishing the building on my room. I am adding a cloning shelf above my veg room and painting everything white. I am putting in a better air intake to make sure plenty of O2 is getting in. I will also be adding another CO2 generator. I have to repot them and will probably do that today too.

QUESTION:
I have charcoal from my fireplace's ashes, will this work like activated carbon? Would my nute mix be too strong with 1 drop of floragro and floramicro mixed to a gallon of water? Some of my plants are showing signs of nute burn but I know I didn't give them enough to make it burn them but if you have input on this please post it here. I just checked the plants and they look healthy, all except the 1's I mentioned.

I just got done throwing down the first coat of white paint in my new grow room. I took out the tub and the toilet earlier and replaced my toilet's water line with a spicket and now have a nice watering set up. I will be adding a small sink to where the tub's drain used to be so I can do easier clean up. I made sure everything is air and light tight now and will be building a cloning shelf above the veg room and will have to put my flower room further away from the house I should be starting some cloning in the next 2-3 weeks. I may be setting up some simple bubbleponics soon but that idea's still in the air. I have a stand alone hydro bucket but that's a bit pointless for what I have at the moment. I may consider modifing it later to make it bigger. I will be adding my 2-150w hps to my veg room and placing some 4' T5's on the cloning shelf above soon. I have decided I may need more room so after this I think I will be building a nice green house with some solar panels on top. Not sure how that would work but its worth a try to cut back on some costs. Right now there isn't much more to update on except the room as of yet. Thanks for reading No posts yet but I'm sure after a while you will be posting plenty . Til next time

I just finished my clone cabinet but wont be posting about it until later. I want to paint it all first

Hey just wanted to be the first to wish you luck! you seem like your off to a good start. As for the burning of the plants it may be overwatering, I'd switch to every fourth or fifth day and see if that helps

Thanks for the good wishes
After careful consideration and doing a little research and have come to the conclusion it was in fact a nute burn. I will be mixing my nutes in a larger container instead of the 1g jug I was before.

Note to everyone. I read in more than a few places that nutes tend to get stronger over time like wine.

It has never taken me this long to build anything smaller than a house... How long can the plants be without light? I have a very small light on them and their not growing at all (understandable) but would like to know how long is too long without proper light?

This was everything last night before the watering and placing them back under the light. This picture was taken at 12midnight and all of my plants looked like shit! The yellowing and browning was nute burn and a couple grew into the lights a few times...

http://imgur.com/8IKMk.jpg
http://imgur.com/CkebT.jpg
(Yes I know the date is off... Can't figure out how to change it)


I am going to take some pictures right now and I will post them asap. I have to run out for a bit and I will be back.
Took the pictures before I left and just uploaded them and here they are.
Pictures 12-30-09 (3 1/2 weeks from seed)
http://imgur.com/g2h8Z.jpg
http://imgur.com/cmdy2.jpg
http://imgur.com/8Bg0C.jpg
http://imgur.com/BfVKo.jpg

Some updates and the first pictures and post of the year! HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL AND I HOPE IT WAS GOOD.

UPDATE 1-1-2010
The plants are looking much better, still showing the burned leaves but I expect theyll fall off when their ready and no sooner. I added another fan and refilled my DIY CO2 generator. I made an air stone out of an oxygen tube and placed it in a 5gallon res. I poked a million holes in the hose and for some reason today the mixture looks a bit thick so I am considering changing it out... I dont think it was far enough away from the lights.. Maybe early signs of alge starting. IDK but better safe than sorry. I checked my ladies today and noticed some stretching but I moved the lights closer and hopefully that will slow / stop the stretching. Under construction now is my new flower area which is going to be a refrigerator where the freezer is on top. I am going to cut out the seperator between the fridge and freezer and hang the light in there with a ton of moving air and 2 exhaust points to keep it at an optimal temperature. My girls are stinking of their sweet perfume and it is starting to take over the house so I need to get my filter built asap. Today or tomorrow hopefully. I have (from seed) 12 Ogres, 5 Early Girls and 1 Kali Brains. I did some massive research last night on the ogres because I still didn't know much about them, and found out that Ogre is just another name for the same strain SensiSeeds sells as Sensi Star so I am expecting great things from her Anyway here are some pictures of what I have right now.

Having troubles uploading right now so will post asap.

It has taken a while for me to upload pictures and there was a period I just didn't want to post pictures because I was a bit embarrassed as to how my plants looked... They were just completely unhappy but I do have some pictures to post to bring you up to date with everything. I finally got my carbon filters done as well just need a stronger fan to blow through them now...

Here a picture of 1-1-10.
http://imgur.com/rifW1.jpg
I am only posting this 1 to show the unhappy look of my girls.

Here are some pictures of now 1-7-10. (I fixed the camera's time and date *the wife did rather*)
1-7-10 right http://imgur.com/OzGRk.jpg
1-7-10 left http://imgur.com/oebdW.jpg

Here are some pictures of my DIY carbon filter.
http://imgur.com/Uy0Em.jpg
http://imgur.com/mWBJy.jpg
I used 2 painter mask filters (drawing a blank on the name right now) took the top off and removed the current filter and refilled it with Activated Carbon from Wal-Mart and replaced the lid then bent down the rim and viola. I used 3" pvc and plan on switching that with dryer vent soon.

That's what I have as of now. I switched my watering nutrients to GH and made a mix of 3ml Floramicro, 1ml Floragro, and 5G water. I water every 4 days now and the girls are loving it. I switched their lights to 18/6 and the plants are looking beautiful. I also lowered my 150w HPS down to 4"!! I have had the lights down to 4" for a couple days now and there is no signs of burning. I feel their ready for flowering soon. Any advice on this would be appreciated.

Ok people. I have the opportunity of being able to upload everything I've got so far and I am going to go ahead and post it all here for your viewing pleasures. I hope you enjoy the show. **On a further note** I was able to get my filter made and working now so that is going in place very soon. Here is a link to what and how I did it.

https://www.rollitup.org/do-yourself/291124-quick-easy-diy-carbon-filter.html

I also built (2) 20 pot aerogardens and will be using them to clone as soon as I can take some cuttings comfortably. *No pictures of those yet as their still in the development stage and I forgot* Sorry. Here goes.

The first 5-10 are estimated dates because I couldn't figure out the camera settings. I will post a few of what I have because there are many many pictures lol Photo album Some believe in aerating the water mixture a day before watering as do I and some don't. The lights I am using are (2) 150w HPS because I got them so cheap *$15 each new in the box* as well as ample cfl's and blue spectrum grow lights. Happy looking and hope you like it so far.
First 2 are roughly around 12-12-09 the next 2 are roughly 12-25-09 next 4 are roughly around 12-31-09 and the rest are dated accordingly.

Not many fans here huh? I don't really know if anyone is still following this or not but I figured I would throw out an update.

I just got done topping my girls and took the tops I could salvage and used them for cloning. I trimmed em up a bit, dipped em into some water and then root tone and right now their in a cake container from the store building humidity. I am going to leave them in the dark for tonight then put a light on them tomorrow when I get up. The rest of the plants seem to have a slight nitrogen deficiency so I plan on mixing some bat guano into my soil when I repot which should be in the next few days or so I'm hoping. I need to get a bigger bag of soil so I can just stock them into some 5 gallon buckets and call it good but for now its just another size up... I hope the clones all take so I can throw them into flower and see what my plants are. I'm getting excited and anxious at the same time lol. As of now they are 13" tall and 12" wide. The lights are 4" from the tops of the plants and has been for 2 weeks now and no signs of heat burns. I have 2 fans in there and their giving some good air circulation. The temps are between 80 and 85 and I just put 3 more bottles homemade CO2 generators using Ninjas 2liter bottle diy generator. I have 4 now and the plants look like they have a huge growth improvement. I will post again with some pictures and updates in about a week or so.

ah, here you are. lookin good, off to a great start. gonna be pretty full in there in a month or so. i can tell you that youre gonna want to get those temps down a little before they start budding. i had a crop go to shit last summer cuz my ac blew out and i thought i could finish em without it(temps 80-90). ended up with a big ol bag of hay. icant see if your still using them, but those incandescent grow lights throw out a ton of heat for their wattage. might want to think about switching those with cfls. good score on those hps. are you gonna be venting out of your room through your filter? that fresh air will help with your temps.

CAashtree said:

ah, here you are. lookin good, off to a great start. gonna be pretty full in there in a month or so. i can tell you that youre gonna want to get those temps down a little before they start budding. i had a crop go to shit last summer cuz my ac blew out and i thought i could finish em without it(temps 80-90). ended up with a big ol bag of hay. icant see if your still using them, but those incandescent grow lights throw out a ton of heat for their wattage. might want to think about switching those with cfls. good score on those hps. are you gonna be venting out of your room through your filter? that fresh air will help with your temps.

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I have 2 intake points so when I need to bring down the temps I just turn the fans on and it lowers it as much as I want. I have a thick curtain I open during the light period and they can exhaust into the house for now. I plan on moving them into another area soon so they have more room. The new room I have set up for them is divided into 2 rooms. Flower and veg. The veg room is 4' x 8' and the flower room is roughly 10' x 8' so the ladies should have more room to move. I also plan on moving em to 5gal buckets asap because they have actually stopped growing and need a bigger area to move their roots in now. I topped them and its been 7 days now and the cuttings are just now starting to show root but have some pretty bad wilting going on right now so I'm worried they may not make it. I need to get a better set up going on for me. I haven't grown in about 2 years and before that it was off and on for about 6-7 years. I'm going fully hydroponic and aeroponic for my next grow room and I plan on using a technique I didn't know was already being used by a lot of people and that's having 4 veg areas 1 mother area and a clone area and doing cuttings every 2 weeks and flowering every 2 weeks. I plan on using a large ebb and flow table for a couple flowering areas and aeroponics for the rest. I plan on having my mothers in 5gallon bubbleponic buckets or water farm buckets in full 18/6 veg. I need still a good working ppm meter to be able to switch to hydro/aeroponics. I made a couple totes up from 22gallon rubermaid totes from walmart and plan on putting a dual output air pump into each set up I do. Lot of work to get started back up and I forgot how much getting started was gonna cost me. I figured about $300 but when I got started I ended up running into other issues and financial issues *fucking economy*

Little update though for what is going on now though is most of the plants I topped have shot up some new shoots and are looking healthy all except 1. Not sure what's going on because we had an outage today for a few hours and I think it took a tole on my girls... They all looked good when I checked them last night before bed. The current temp in the room is 78*F and most of the plants are looking great. All except their root bound Their so abused!! lol I was looking for preflower and have found 3 plants so far that look like possible male but the rest haven't started showing signs yet.. We will see very soon. Little anxious here haha. As soon as the weather allows it I plan on moving them to the bigger room and starting flowering on some. Gonna flower the males seperate just incase they do turn out being male. I'm about 90% sure their male though so that's 3 down on my count. I think I will be throwing away a few too or sticking them outside and either let em die or see if they survive. So cruel! 4 Of the plants I have right now are hella small while the rest are way past them in height and width. Bad genes from what I figure. Anyway as soon as I get them moved I will post some new pictures. Sorry I haven't been on. We have had outages and the internet has been horrible for the past week. Til next time

well youre gonna be busy...takes a while to get a new area set up, especially when you keep changing the plans (speaking from personal experience) and the longer youre working on it the more things youll find that you just "need". mines kinda perpetually evolving.
rootbound? gotta pot those bitches up, keep that growth going. thats probably why youre getting some wilting if youve got your temps down to 78. if you dont have one, pick up a small digital thermometer, one that records high and low temp ($6-7) that way you can be sure its not getting up into the 85s again while youre not looking.

CAashtree said:

well youre gonna be busy...takes a while to get a new area set up, especially when you keep changing the plans (speaking from personal experience) and the longer youre working on it the more things youll find that you just "need". mines kinda perpetually evolving.
rootbound? gotta pot those bitches up, keep that growth going. thats probably why youre getting some wilting if youve got your temps down to 78. if you dont have one, pick up a small digital thermometer, one that records high and low temp ($6-7) that way you can be sure its not getting up into the 85s again while youre not looking.

Click to expand...

Na I dont have the money right now for anything else or trust me I would have everything I need. I am hoping to pick up another bag of soil very soon.

**UPDATE 1-21-10**
I just switched my girls to 12/12 and will repot soon so they have more room to move.

**UPDATE 1-22-10**
I just checked my cuttings / clones and they aren't looking too bad but don't exactly look good.. I hope they start working themselves out soon and kick out some roots. Here's a few pics I have of my clones and set up. Keep in mind I haven't done my own cloning in about 4 years. Kinda out of practice I think.

ALMOST FORGOT there are 8 cuttings in the container.

Sorry I haven't updated in a little while, there just wasn't much going on so here is a little update for those who are still here watching.

**Update 1/29/10**
I took some pictures earlier before watering and just uploaded 2 so far. I will take more tomorrow if / when I get a chance and try to upload those too. A lot of the leaves are starting to yellow and some stems are turning a little red and I think it's a nitrogen deficiency so I added just a little more nitrogen to those who were turning yellow. I will check them later to see how their doing. Hopefully I can take care of the N def before it gets out of hand. I measured them today and found most of them are 17" some 18" some 16". I have a few that haven't seemed to grow at all since their first week. Any suggestions? I was thinking about throwing them out but am having troubles bringing myself to do it. I figured bad genetics or something but IDK. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them. Here's those 2 pics I mentioned.

Damn it has been some time since I posted here huh? My internet has been a piece of shit for the past month so there has been no way for me to upload any pictures and still isn't until I can either get a better connection or go to a friends house to upload. Update is that the girls are looking great and the buds are really starting to fill out well. I am not 100% sure as to how long they've been in flower but I will check everything tomorrow and hopefully upload some pictures to keep ya updated. Sorry for the wait and I will see you all tomorrow.

FORGOT TO MENTION... 5 Were male and had to be cut. I have 11 that went into flower and only 3 were topped. The rest have a lollipop look going on.

Update time. Sorry it took so long I really haven't been able to upload shit so I just kept trying until I could. It took days to upload these pictures unfortunately. We are going to court with our ISP about it and hopefully they will fund my next grow and provide us better internet for a healthy cost Here are some updates and pictures. I started some new seeds and they are now in their own cups. I checked the rest of all of the plants and everything is going very nice and very smooth. I switched from MG to FF and the girls are loving it. I cut off the nutrients and feed them only PH'd water with molasses. As for the plants in the hydro tub they are on flora trio and are starting to get their 3's all the way out. The cuttings that turned out to be female are in their cups and the roots are going crazy. I am keeping 1 Ogre male for breeding if I choose to. I am looking forward to harvest but wont get ahead of myself. The carbon filters I showed earlier are in place now. I have some decent filtration in now and 5 small CO2 generators going. I have 2 fans blowing on the plants and 1 fan blowing out of the flower room to a cabinet above the veg room. They are now 4 weeks into flower and I can't wait to see their 6 week explosion I pretty much weeded out the early girls I had in there and kept the 2 strongest looking 1s. I think the seeds I got were shit and didn't grow all that well so next grow I will be going with all clones... When the seeds are gone that is. Here are some pictures of the rooms, buds, and roots... Hope you enjoy and I hope to see more people in here before the grow is up.

Hey Joker, looking Nice. Shame about the 5 Males.
Just out of Curiosity, do u have CO2 going into ur veg room?
I mean from the Extracted air from ur flower room..