First "serious" grow - Rubbermaid stealth

Sexologist420 said:

your space is fine. Im growing in a single 22gallon rubbermaid with 3 42watt cfls and my temps are between 78-83. I hvae 2 computerfans for intake, 1 4"massey fan blwing over my plants and lights and I have another 4" massey fan. It is in a closet. Just do that and you will fix ur heat/ventilation problem. You could get away with 1 pc fan on bottom and 4" over plants/lights and another as exaust. Pretty plants btw. Perfect sterotyped Ganja leaves

Pce

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Yeah, I was pretty surprised at how perfect some of the leaves are. Well, at least when the plants were healthy. C still looks good, though!

So, I did all kinds of maintenance last night.

First, I installed the 2nd fan on the new intake. It's a 73 CFM fan that blows across the lights. That, coupled with the 73 CFM fan on the exhaust, seems to have made a big difference. The thermometer says that the temp maxed out somewhere around 78 (maybe it was 79, I'll have to confirm), but the top of the box, which used to be warm in the past because of the lights, was actually cool. Obviously I'll be keeping a close eye on things, but I'm pretty confident that I've got the circulation and heat problems solved.

Second, I finally got to measure the pH of my soil. Looks like I'm down in the 5.8 range, so I'll be buying some lime today and will start feeding it to the soil.

Third, in preparation for the pending switch to flowering, I installed the hoods that I've been putting together over the two air openings. I've got some pictures of the constructon process that I'll post soon.

Fourth, I've started tying down the plants. I've probably started this much later than I should have, but better late than never, I guess. I tied them last night and already this morning they were starting to right themselves.

I thinking that I'm going to go the full 4 weeks of vegging. The plants have had a rough few days, so any extra growth would be a good thing.

what light are you using?

hope that works...keep us posted.

hotrocks17 said:

what light are you using?

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I'm currently using 4x43 soft white CFLs and a couple of smaller daylight CFLs (3500K - I forget the wattage).

I added the lime a couple of days ago. I added about 1.5 teaspoons of powdered dolomite lime to 1 gal of water (pH adjusted to 7.0) and watered the plants. When the plant dries out, I'll be able to test the soil pH again and see how things are moving along.

In the meantime, the plants seem to still be growing quite a lot, which is nice to see. In fact, I had to tie down plants A & C again. Some of the new nodes are starting to grow very quickly and reach for the lights. Some of the stems grew an inch in one day.

I know that the lime will take a bit of time to kick in, so the plants are still showing signs of problems. I'm pretty sure that what I'm seeing is a calcium deficiency (which the lime will take care of), but it kind of looks a bit like nute burn, too. I'd find the nute burn odd, since I haven't been feeding the plants anything. I'm wondering if I should flush the plants...

Here are some pictures. We'll start with A:

The top of the plant is the at the top of the picture. You can see how the new stems are growing fast and reaching for the light.




Here's B. It definitely looks the worst of the lot, since it suffered the most damage. It looks thin because I trimmed away a LOT of dead leaves. The mostly dead leaves are hiding a bunch of new growth, so although I've been leaving damaged leaves that still have some green, I'm thinking of cutting them in favor of the new stuff underneath.



See all of the new growth hiding under those dying fan leaves?



And finally here's C. C always looked the best and even a couple of days ago was still looking great. However, the last couple of days haven't been kind. Most of the new growth looks ok, although there is still some slight spotting. C is also developing some red stems. Dunno if that's a problem or not. Again, notice all of the new growth on the right of the pictures from stems that were hidden before tying.





Today is also the day that I switched to flowering (12/12). I'm hoping I get the pH problems worked out soon so that the flowering stage is fruitful.

So, two main questions for those much more experienced than me. 1) Does that look like a calcium deficiency and 2) should I give the plants a flush? If I need to flush, I should do it now, right?

im not an experienced dude but I would give the the lime some time to see what happens. I dont know if a flush would be good if you havnt used nutes. is it a good idea to flush any time one thinks it needs to be? or should it be a last resort?

I was thinking would takin the powerstrip out of the box help take some heat out of there?

eyesdembleed said:

im not an experienced dude but I would give the the lime some time to see what happens. I dont know if a flush would be good if you havnt used nutes. is it a good idea to flush any time one thinks it needs to be? or should it be a last resort?

I was thinking would takin the powerstrip out of the box help take some heat out of there?

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I was thinking the same thing re: the lime - I'm going to wait a few days. For the next watering I'm going to measure the pH of the soil. Doing the lime like I have speeds things along a little bit, so I'll be around 4 days by the time the plants need more water. Hopefully I'll see some sort of difference. If things are still not so good, I'll do a bit of foliar feeding to move things along.

Interesting thought about the power bar. Certainly the bar itself and 2 power units are adding to the heat. However, with the second fan installed my max temp is about 82.5 during the absolute hottest part of the day.

What I am noticing, regarding heat, is that the temp drops down to the high 60's overnight, which is probably a little too low. There are two ways I can handle this.

The first would be to light during the night and go dark during the day. However, I wanted to make sure that there is NO light getting to the plants during the dark cycle. I've got the box sealed up pretty well, so it could probably handle being dark during the day.

The second would be to attach the intake fan to the light timer so that when the lights are on, the fan is on and when the lights are off the intake fan is off. I'll likely experiment with this option first tomorrow for the next couple of days.

I don't have any pics, but the plants seem to be doing well today. I haven't paid close attention, but I didn't notice any spots on new leaves today, which is a start. The tops seem to grow fast whenever I tie them down. I'm going to be aggressive about keeping them short, so I'll probably get out the string every few days. Seems to be working so far.

The plant was dry enough today for me to give it a good soaking and measure the pH of the run-off. When I said the soil pH was about 5.8 before, that was because 5.8 was the lowest value the litmus paper can register. Knowing that I had a likely serious pH problem I finally dropped some coin on a digital pH pen. So today when I measured the run-off, it was showing about 5.6. And this was 3 days after adding some lime.

I watered the plants again with lime added to the water (about 1 gram per gallon). I also sprayed the leaves a little bit (really, just a little bit) with the lime/water mixture, just to help deal with what I'm pretty sure is a calcium deficiency.

Hopefully the next couple of days will show some improvement.

If it is a calcium deficiency let me know. My tap water has plenty to spare!

Just thought I'd post some pictures to show how the plants appear to be improving. B is still looking pretty thin, but A & C look like they are finally turning the corner. Lots of nodes have really started to take off now that I've been trying the plants down.

Group shot:



Here's A:




Here's B. Poor B, always the straggler, but LOTS of new growth coming:




Finally, here's C:




Hopefully only another week until the plants start to reveal their sex.

A bunch of stuff to cover today.

I measured the soil pH again yesterday. After two lime waterings over the past 1.5 weeks, I figured for sure that I'd see some improvement. I soaked the plants with pH balanced water and measured the runoff. 5.4??? How is that even possible?

I put together a stronger lime solution and watered all of the plants. And perhaps I should start looking into something else.

The plants still seem to be showing signs of calcium deficiency, even though I've been spraying them with a lime solution a couple of times a week.

The plants have basically received no nutrients (well, nothing of consequence) since the beginning and it looks like it's starting to show. I can't add anything to the soil when it's all out of whack, so I put together a 1/4 strength nute solution and sprayed the leaves. We'll see what that does.

Given the soil situation, I'm wondering if I should risk a transplant into better soil. I'm thinking I should.

Here are some pics:



Here's A. Most of the reddish-brown spots are old, but there are some new. Lots of growth from new nodes, though. The LST certainly makes a difference.




Here's B. It's still pretty small and thin.




And here's C. Still the bushiest of the lot, although showing signs of ill health.




I'm going to give the plants another couple of days. If I don't see much in the way of improvement, I'm probably going to have to transplant to better soil.

It looks like the plants have revealed themselves.

Here's A:




Here's B. It's a little hard to see in the picture, but if you look closely, you'll see the little curl right in the middle.



Here's C:




So that's two girls (A & B) and one boy (C). Figures that the nicest plant turned out to be useless.

In any case, now I've really got to try hard to rescue A & B. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

the last ones definately a man....let hop that burn wont effect them....

Maybe they need nutes? Looks to me like its eating its own leaves for energy...Im not a very experienced grower so you might want to wait for a more experienced response but...ive read alot and to me that looks like shes hungry and trying to let you know. 6x degrees at night isnt going to hurt your plants. In the wild it gets in the 60s. Hope you get it figured out.

Pce

The two girls are continuing to deteriorate, especially A. Since it's likely that I'm going to lose them anyway, I'm going to try transplanting them to better soil.

Great Setup. Good Luck with the two Ladies.

Have you ever thought of switching to hydro? You could bring those around really fast with a DWC system.

diggitydank420 said:

Have you ever thought of switching to hydro? You could bring those around really fast with a DWC system.

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Interesting that you should mention that. I've been given permission to build a more formal grow room, provided I try growing some veggies and/or flowers at some point too. I'm already into the design process of the new room and I'm going totally hydro - mostly I'm trying to figure out what sort of lighting I want for the two areas. I'm going to use the Mr. Green video series for inspiration.

I'm leaving in a couple of days for a week, so I don't think I have time to throw together a quick-and-dirty hydro system.

Having said all that, the plants, which I'm pretty sure are suffering from lack of nutes, may (MAY) be turning around. I sprayed them a few days ago and gave them a bit of a watering today. I'll wait and see how they look before I go on my trip. If they look good, I'll leave them be. If they don't, I'll transplant.

Hey Wor,

Quick question...

What did you use to cut all the holes in the Rubbermaid tubs?

landoficensnow said:

Hey Wor,

Quick question...

What did you use to cut all the holes in the Rubbermaid tubs?

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I just used a regular old jackknife. It took quite a bit of work to get started (the plastic was pretty thick), but it wasn't too bad. Keeping in a straight line was pretty easy, but doing circles was tougher.