250w cab, 36" tall stealth grow.

Ok peeps. Just a few pics of my latest 250w single plant stealth cab grow in progress.
First, I'm going to grab your attention by showing you my single plant at day 24 of 12/12.



1) The build
250w Security lamp, ebb-flow tables timers, contactor, 6"inline fan&filter, hi-lo thermometer. Cabinet 36Hx26dx48L.

2)Home-made co2/yeast bottle on the intake side. (Doubt if it helps!)

3)Later added a vertical fan and a humidity guage.
4)Was using this to keep humidity up in early veg!

This is a tomato trained up the left side-wall scrog. (Heck, why not use the free light!)

And the right-side gets used for peppers, Aubergines, basil and cucumbers.
This clearly shows the light cut-off point. You can see the basil in the back and the peppers in the foreground.

This is the stem of the weed plant.


So far, the grow has been going reasonably well. The indoor garden has provided us with enough tomato, pepper, cucumber, chili, basil and aubergine plants to fill the back yard. (about 100 decent-sized seedlings in all). The Cayenne peppers have been particularly succesfull. The only dissapointments so far have been indoor growth of basil (which I hoped to continue through winter. I suspect the problem has been to high an EC due to the requirements of other plants) and trasnplanting tomatoes that I had attempted to scrog, (which I put down to my own stupidity)

The weed has been a worry. It was a seed of GHS Big Bang Feminised. It came through Female (fastest plant I have ever seen show sex) but I underestimated it's bushiness. I topped it at four nodes then fimmed at the next 2. Ever since, it has been a constant battle of tucking away leaves to allow the top to reach some light.

Also, I underestimated the weak power of a 250. It's obvious that just 2" into the canopy it's already getting dark.

nice scrog that screen has filled up nicely

Cheers, I would have vegged for another week to fill the screen right up to the edges/corners but the whole point of this grow is to give me some smoke for my birthday and I just didn't have the extra veg time.

Love it man. Looks tasty.

Finally managed to get a proper grow in this cab lol good job though! looks pretty sweet with weed instead of other 'erbs XD

And the 250's penetrate further than you think, just 'cause it looks dark there's still photons and what not passing through the leaves mine penetrated about 20cm (that's only 'cause my buds were 15-20cm) with the light 35cm away from the canopy.

I wish I veg longer in my ScrOG's but I get bored of watching veg, I like budz!

Keep up the good work, see if you can beat my final yield! I don't know how much I have dried and cured yet, but so far dry it looks like 4-5oz and I have another flowering one going still, so try for 5.5-6oz!.

Stay Frosty!

Cheers MB! Yeah, I talked her into letting me grow one for my birthday. Of course, I've taken a clone and when this one is finished, I've got to talk her into letting me grow one for xmas!
I used to get almost bang on 16 oz of kush off a 600 in 4x the area so i'm hoping for 4 oz off this.
I think the penetration is poor because this strain is so dense. There's an average of 2-3 buds in each 2" hole! At the moment, stretch has finished and most bud tips are 5-8 cms above the screen. Next time I'll lay off the fimming I think.
Do you mean you kept the bulb 35cm from the screen or the top of the canopy? Mine's about 32cm from the screen and that's all the room I've got!
About 5 weeks to go.
It's good to be back growing my favourite plant again!

Yeah 35cm from the screen, all the height I have going LED's for my next stealth grow, slightly bigger re-modeled cab (inside this time not in the bloody shed) with webcam and all so I don't need to physically look in there as often.

Cool. Will be subbed on that. I want to see an LED grow from someone independant.
Not saying this site gets overtaken with the manufacturers, but I find some of the LED grows on here very suspect.
I suspect scrog will be ideal for led (although a flat-scrog!)
I want to try a vertical 250 scrog next but the only space I have is the one you've seen. I know it's going to be tight but I think it can be done.
Whereabouts you from? (not exact area, just north/mid/ south etc). I'm right down on the south coast.

I've only seen a few legit LED grows and they seem really good, the plan is to get an LED with the 120* angle so I can still use a dished ScrOG very effectively, thinking of a 370-500w LED panel but they get quite expensive :s

You'll have to mod the box a bit for cooling to mount the 250 vertically or mod the box so it can stand on it's side you'll get more height that way, might be better that way.

I hale from Ye Olde London XD

Stay Frosty!

I heard u can't be to close to the canopy with LEDs so becarfule with watts

Cool MB, I used to work in central London a lot. Lived in Surrey and Hampshire area. Still visit friends up North London (Edmonton) occasionally.
Unfortunately, it's not a box, It's a fitted cupboard. The side and back are the buildings walls, hence the polyshield.
I think you need to bear in mind that 120 degrees is the angle from the indidual LED's (I think), so light will fade faster at the edges than a single point light like an HID. That's my thinking anyway.
Guessing you're in the same situation as me where showing a 'footprint' on the electrical supply is a problem.
It's all good learning though. I can't believe how much attention I am paying to this little grow! I'm always in there pulling fan leaves under, checking pH and EC etc. I guess it's knowing that every gram counts. When I ran a 600 percy grow, I always knew that whatever, I would have enough. Now I know it's pushing it and I am much more careful. Access is far easier on a small-scale cupboard grow too. I guess I'm trying to say I find it more fun having to push it to the limits!

Try to keep your 250w hps light 11 inchs in veg no further and no closer than 7 inchs in flower

This is the optimal distance

Southtexasman87 said:

I heard u can't be to close to the canopy with LEDs so becarfule with watts

Click to expand...

only with really high wattage LED's bleaching can be really bad, the lower wattage ones can be touching the plant with no issues.

cues said:

Cool MB, I used to work in central London a lot. Lived in Surrey and Hampshire area. Still visit friends up North London (Edmonton) occasionally.
Unfortunately, it's not a box, It's a fitted cupboard. The side and back are the buildings walls, hence the polyshield.
I think you need to bear in mind that 120 degrees is the angle from the indidual LED's (I think), so light will fade faster at the edges than a single point light like an HID. That's my thinking anyway.
Guessing you're in the same situation as me where showing a 'footprint' on the electrical supply is a problem.
It's all good learning though. I can't believe how much attention I am paying to this little grow! I'm always in there pulling fan leaves under, checking pH and EC etc. I guess it's knowing that every gram counts. When I ran a 600 percy grow, I always knew that whatever, I would have enough. Now I know it's pushing it and I am much more careful. Access is far easier on a small-scale cupboard grow too. I guess I'm trying to say I find it more fun having to push it to the limits!

Click to expand...

The 120* is the angle each LED is positioned at so the middle LED's would be at say 60* the next set are 90* and the outer LED's are 120* just for maximum coverage and it allows you to have a dished screen seeing as every part of the screen will be within a reasonable distance from all the different angled LED's... Basically it works I'm using a 120* spread UFO at the moment for veg and it has great coverage.

Not necessarily the footprint I use, more that the electricity meter costs so damn much to run anything off of, any energy saving is good

I know what your sayin' about pushing the space to the limits it's really good to have a challenge like micro growing, I've officially aced quality as far as my grows go now I just need to dial it in even more so I can maximize yield! I reckon under my 240w and 90w LED along with my 40w fluoro tube I can get it up to 1gpw eventually, maybe a few grows down the line but I'll get there and beyond eventually! Imagine that 370g from a micro grow that's a lot of weed XD that'd be the day!

Yeah, GPW is my aim, hence the vertical idea. I seemed to get stuck at .75 with my 600 flat scrog. That's why I'm trying parabolic this time.
I love the quality. My last Violator Kush grow, some mates came down for the weekend. They soon realised the weed I had was far better than theirs (one even had a bag that tasted of soap powder!, wasn't even smokable). I didn't say a word until we were in the pub and one asked if I was still experimenting with 'home-grown'. You should have seen the looks on their faces when I told them that was what they had been smoking!
Another time, my Edmonton mate came down for a long bank-holiday weekend and looked dissapointed when I showed him the BHO I had for the weekend (he had never tried it). About a gram and a half for 2 of us for 3 days. He went home with his weed untouched and swears he has never been so wasted in his life!

lol gotta love BHO, I need to make me some of that!

It's weird whenever I used to share my weed, I got comments like it ain't bad... for 'home grown'.

As if doing it at home is any different from whoever else is doing it, in their home most likely lol, always gets me!

Matchbox said:

lol gotta love BHO, I need to make me some of that!

It's weird whenever I used to share my weed, I got comments like it ain't bad... for 'home grown'.

As if doing it at home is any different from whoever else is doing it, in their home most likely lol, always gets me!

Click to expand...

The only thing I will say about BHO is SAFETY FIRST!
I used to do mine in the middle of a field! I've got a mate does it in his kitchen! I keep expecting to read about the explosion in the local paper.
I think the 'home-grown' reputation comes fom 20 years ago when we were all growing bag-seed in the back garden!

fair enough, it seems like a lot of effort but if it's worth it!

And ripped off U scrog pfff fuckin' liberty lol, I just ripped it off the last guy XD.

How far into flower are you now? and how long do you have left?

LOL!
I'm now at day 31 of 12/12 with 32 days left (hopefully). It got 36hrs of dark going into 12/12 and started flowering about 3 days after lights back on. I stopped training (pulling them to the next hole) after 14 days 12/12. I,m getting worried about how close it's getting to the light now. I'm at about 8-9" as it's closest, about 4" above the screen. It definitely doesn't stay as tight to the screen as violator kush. How that will translate into yield, we will have to see.

Little tip, co2 sinks so you want to place the bottle above your plants.

Err, you can put the bottle anywhere you want as long as the exit valve is high and you have good circulation..