Narnia Grow - The Lights, the Weed and the Wardrobe

Snickerdoodle said:

ROFL Not exactly. That probably sounded way geekier than it should have, but I do love Fullmetal Alchemist! The story is great! I'm a big fan of a few other animes, but I'm not a manga loving, super crazy, japanime fan (is that even a word). I do enjoy a good non-alien hentai though. And that's totally geeky I think my geek really shows best in my love for documentaries though. I will sit through a documentary, no matter how monotone, just for the info and awesome b-roll film. I love history and nature! How's that for geeky?

I haven't done much for gaming lately. My hubby got Portal 2 for his birthday and we've played the coop mode together, but I somehow find that I just don't have time for gaming much anymore.

So, here is a picture of our grow box. It's not the prettiest thing, but it serves our purpose. It fits our space almost perfect. We have a little alcove in our room where the fireplace is downstairs. We hunted for weeks trying to find something to fit. This was perfect within a few inches in each direction. And I was even able to double stack Goodwill coupons for a total of something like 45% off.... yay!! I like being thrifty

And because you asked, Lordjin, the measurements of the actual grow space, as of right now are 32 h x 32 w x 20 d... the space goes up to 45 inches high but we need to take into account 2 inches or so for cords on top as well as 5 inches or so for our light mounts etc. Yay for being able to raise and lower lighting! We plan for this to be our flower chamber going forward.

Our "veg chamber" is our original wardrobe grow box. It measures 33 h x 14 w x 19 d.

and our lower space left side space on the main box is currently a cloning chamber. We've got some Pez, Sour Diesel and NYC Diesel cuttings that were tossed our way that we're testing the bubble cloner out on. This area will likely become a veg overflow as our current babies get too big It depends on how soon we're able to harvest some of our big girls. The right is storage. All sorts of good stuff in there!

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Well I'm wrapping up the last of my work day, but before I leave the office, I thought I'd respond to this real quick.

Uhhhhh, of course you're not really a nerd....uh, neither am I. No, I'm a big fuckin' nerd and so are YOU! LOL! I love documentaries too. All I watch is Animal Planet, History, Discovery, and Science Channel...and Daily and Colbert. That's it! I love old-school video games only. Not really interested in the 'new age of gaming' though portal2 looks pretty rad.

Snickerdoodle said:

Happy Friday!! Who cares if it's the 13th. It's a freaking Friday and that's the important part. I like Fridays! It means the hubby gets to help me more with the girls. This weekends project: installing our inline fan that came yesterday, and home made carbon scrubber.

The carbon filter was super easy to do. I made mine based on this guys design. I was going to use a solo cup but it turned out to be too flimsy to hold up to the carbon, so now I've got a netted pot to try out


I ended up sacrificing a Slurpee cup instead

We're going to mount it above our box in the top of the alcove in the corner. There's a false wall at the top 12-15 inches or so for some reason. It should fit nicely. If it's too noisy we should be able to install some sound proofing up there. Hopefully the landlord doesn't need to come into my bedroom (he hasn't in the many years we've lived here). We're a bit past stealth now.

Though .... I suppose I could always install a curtain over it and pretend it was a closet.... might work. I'll try to take some pics once we have it installed so you can see what I mean. Installing involves taking out all our plants and pulling the box out of the alcove, which means flipping the bed up and out of the way, etc etc.... A lot of work

I'm going to separate the rest into another post. I don't care if it's double posting, this is my journal and I don't want too many pics on each page lol. My posts tend to be pic heavy. That and I'm long winded today

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Crafty, crafty. I like. You've almost inspired me to make one myself. Almost. Very handy work, tho.

Okay, now that i'm home looking at your pix on a real monitor, it looks vibrant and gorgeous. You should pat yourselves (or each other) on the backs.

that's actually very cool what you've done there, now that I have clear understanding from this latest batch of photos. Honestly, I can't think of anything to add or change, everything fits so nicely.

If I had my druthers, I would built a basic wood frame box from scratch using heavy plywood. But I don't exactly have a machine shop in my apartment and I know how difficult handling the thick heavy duty plywood is. Those things are heavy and huge, so you would need a professional workshop to cut and construct properly. If you're gonna build from scratch, it absolutely cannot be half-assed because the rigors of a high intensity grow is lotsa wear and tear. And if the structural integrity of your box should give out during the grow, just picture the light smashing down on your plants...nightmare.

My thing is a gutted jumbo file cabinet constructed of sheet metal. I got it for free when my office was clearing out a space. It was a nightmare to transport, but I managed to get it to my friend's facility where he cut holes in it based on my specifications. He's a professional so he did it perfectly as I requested, but if I could somehow turn back the clock and do it over knowing what I now know, I would have him cut two four inch holes on either side for a completely enclosed tube light vent system with a fan on either side. But honestly, I can't see myself cutting perfect four inch holes into sheet metal. It's hard enough drilling tiny holes for screw supports and air tubes. Heat is the biggest challenge with such a big light in such a small space. There's another area I can work to improve.

edit:
I see people doing amazing things with tents, but my only concern with tents is the security issue. Let me tell you, it's nice being able to lock a steel cabinet. It's mainly why I went with the file cabinet design choice. I had my eye on it for some time and finally got my hands on it. Tents look awesome and I want to get one, but you just can't lock a tent. What are your thoughts on tents as a low cost enclosure alternative?

BTW, my theory as to why your plants are flowering better than your average cfl grow? The mirror-like mylar.

I am really admiring you set-up as it is very economical! Hopefully I can start designing and building mine this weekend as well as next week.

It's more like early morning, but whatever.... Spent longer than expected playing portal

It's not like I don't give you guys enough to look at... it's not like YOU need this update. This is more for me

I agree that our mirror like mylar is probably a big help. I tried someone's suggestion of carpet tape for the clone box and as much as I didn't burn myself with it, it's already sagging. I put it on tight too! It was a mirror... for the first few hours. Thankfully it's just the clone box and we don't need a mirror like shine in there. But if we plan to use it for veg I might want to switch it out. Luckily the mylar is pretty cheap (yay walmart emergency blankets!) But the work involved is painful! Especially trying to get that lower box. It's just a difficult angle to deal with. At one point I was practically inside the box from just below the shoulders. I do need to clean my mylar in the top though. Noticed some squirty splashy marks on the sides the other day. That'll reduce my reflection.

We're currently running 10, 26watt CFL's. 7 of the soft white 2700k and 3 of the daylight 6500k. Plus we have 2 florescent tubes on the bottom. I think they are 23 watters. So we're not lacking on light. I'd like to add a bit more but like you said, heat is harder with the smaller spaces. If our bedroom goes above 75 we start hitting 90 in the box. Since we have the c02, it acts as a buffer against the heat. I am worried how much of an impact the inline will have on that though. But if it lowers our temps I suppose we achieve a happy medium.

I'm really loving the sparkle we're seeing on some of our girls. Afghooey, MK and Brain's escape are all leading the pack in trich production. Affie is our crystal star... and late bloomer. All 3 of them! They're loading up with trichs but the bud formation is much slower than the rest of the girls.

Maow stood on a bucket to get these pics

Left


Right


Overview - because of the way they are arranged right now, the overhead view is much more impressive. Our taller girls are towards the front right now. They're always rotating around in there. We usually try to keep the bigger ones in the back but we thought we'd switch it up a bit more for light penetration purposes.



We trimmed some more scraggly little branches from the bottoms that were starting to wither and die. I don't know if you call that self pruning, but I figured they were telling me that they needed to go. I wasn't surprised the flower ferts made them start taking those. These were lush and growing happily before. Most of them had some sort of promise to them, lol. We had a nice little pile of more of the same..



Now for what you really want to see.... but these aren't for you! These are for me so that next time these strains go through my garden, I know what to expect from them! The addition of molasses in our watering last night really seems to have cause the buds to plump out a bit more! I love watching them grow before my eyes!

MKA - She wasn't my favorite in veg, but she's growing on me!


Brainey - We love her!! She's a pleasure to grow!





Cali - I know you hated her Mamapug, but she's not really that bad so long as you're willing to work with her. Let me know if you decide you want to give her another try and need a baby! The difference we're seeing in our younger cali is phenomenal. I think we might have managed to alter her pheno's just a bit with some hormone shifting from Maow's incessant battering of LST. It wasn't until the end of veg that we really started go get what we wanted out of her. She's as stubborn as I am



Affie B - Check out that frost!!! I wanna lick it!!!




Affie A - she's SUPER slow to bud up. But dang is she frosty!




MKB - Again, not one of my favorites to veg, but how can you deny the greatness of these trichs?







Random pics... we got snap happy and I can't remember which is which....




Scooby, Shaggy and the gang decided to stop by... and guess what mannnnn, you can totally put your weed in there!



Afghooey S - yum yum! Gimme some! A bit slow compared to some of the others. But all the Affie's seem to share that trait. She's the furthest progressed out of the 3.




This is a super yummy pic! It really shows the level of frost on this girl.






And apparently I AM mad at MTF. I didn't take a single bud shot of her, lol She's still pouting. I give her nutes, give her sugar and what does she give me? Tude!! Actually it was totally on accident. I think she was moved aside to get to the others and we just forgot to snap a few pics of her. By the time I remembered, this post was almost done!

So that's all I've got for you for now. Not sure I'll be able to do another pic update until probably Sunday. Hubby's planning on compiling a flashback post so we can see the before and after of these plants. It's been a long hard road for a few! Affie S has been with us since early to mid December.

Hey, I just did a wake and bake and got back from Starbucks. Your pic update perked up my wake and bake even more. Coming along super-nice. Whatever you're doing, it seems to be working. I think it's your co2 enhancement too. The fact that you can rearrange and play musical plants def helps as well I'm sure. I'm impressed by those trichs. CFL's? I don't think people would believe it with trichs like that so early.

I wouldn't worry about posting too many pics too frequently. It's a journal after all. Even tho your pic posts are frequent, the growth is noticeable. That's the sign of a good journal.

edit:
I just noticed the chubbiness of your main stalks. How did you do that with soil and fluoros?

I'm pleased that you're so impressed with our grow! Looking back at the mothers that these came from makes me realize we've got a great thing going here! They didn't show trichomes until 3-4 weeks. Here we are at 2, goo-ing up! I was thinking about changing the nutes to something with a bit more kick, but I don't think I want to change a thing. I'm afraid I might fuck up the balance we seem to have going, lol!

On a side note, the c02 factory is pretty cheap, if you have a Winco nearby. Bulk yeast and sugar. Can't get much cheaper for c02. I don't have a way to measure to know if the inline fan will suck all of that out. But that's also why were keeping the outake fan above the shelf so it has to go around the shelf before it can make its way out. We're trying to do our best to direct the airflow to where we want it. We also have the fans pushing back across the lights as a cooler, but that also helps to circulate things a bit more before going up and out. We're trying to use a bit of science to make this work with us.

Some of our stalks are rather huge. MK Ultra and MTF in particular. I think that's partially due to the age of the plants as well as the LST. I'll try to take some stalk pics for you next time so you can see. These are some twisted bitches . MTF also suffered some stalk damage due to a paperclip staying in one place for too long. She's healed nicely and it helped to bulk her out a few extra millimeters or so.

You may be surprised with the Afghooey, she will speed up closer to the end. I have seen that girl grown out many ways and she never fails to frost up. She may not get as dense as you would like under CFL's but she will still have her kick

The Cali, well, she has so much sativa in her at the end that she slows down....and doesn't frost up, or didn't much for us anyway. When we harvested, MK was first, then Afghooey, MTF and finally Cali. Perhaps you did manage to alter some phenos?

Sure is looking nice!!!

I forgot to mention.....the lower stuff that is "pruning" itself, good deal....they don't get enough light and trimming off the smaller bottom stuff will allow more goodness to get to the main tops

Well, I was going to post a small update but apparently I have internet of fail tonight and I can only get 1 pic to upload.

The girls are looking fabulous! Cali and MTF are a little slower on the frosting up. They're getting there, slowly but surely. Tomorrow is flush & fert day. Yay..... lol. My current available method makes this a lot of hard work. Haul 8 plants to the bathroom along with 8 gallons of water, flush a gallon of water through each (which takes a while once you've gotten about halfway through the jugs). THEN haul them back to our bedroom and water them in pairs in plastic bins to allow them to soak up the nutrients (so it doesn't just go straight down the drain). All before anyone gets home.


Definitely a disadvantage to growing in soil.

Still, there's something to be said about my results thus far.



It's a bit blurry, and not the most impressive of them all, but I'm sure you get the idea. Still getting sparklyier every day. Afghooey S is leading the pack in sparkle, MK in bud production.

They sure are starting to get stinky too. We didn't get around to dealing with the inline fan this weekend. Chronic pain can be a bitch sometimes!! It's in the plans for next weekend though. I don't really want to push it off much more than that, lol. It's only just starting to permeate our room, it hasn't reached the hall yet! Will try for some great shots to\morrow while I have them out of their box.

Sleep well

Will do a quick morning update of tonights pics once they upload (grrrrrrr). If you're internet savvy and just can't wait you should be able to find them

Here's some more yummy yum bud porn until I can do a real update. Busy day today

Brain's escape


Double bud!


Gooey!

MTF, a bit slow, but she smells so unique!

More goo!

Nice garden you've got there

Just wanted to leave a comment to push you up on the journal list. I think more people should be looking at this.

Thank you, thank you!

Just recently finished my flush & fert, now I'm having muscle spasms At least they held off until I was done.

The girls are looking amazing. I'm truly infatuated with them! It's so rewarding to watch them grow and form before my very eyes! I was joking with Maow last night when we were going over pictures and asked "do you think it's possible for trichomes to grow on trichomes?" Some of these buds are already getting that crowded! Afghooey S is looking super frosty! The other two Afgoo's aren't far behind. I'll snap some pics a bit later, I was a bit pre-occupied and forgot about it when I was watering.

I managed to pop in for a few minutes while the girls were in the tub today. I almost feel bad for them, being so cramped in that box. I know they're doing good, but I think they could be doing better if we had less vegetation (yeah right, that means less bud!) or more light (which doesn't really work in our situation).

Either way, they look good. Maybe I can convince my wife to help me with a video or something. I notice other people doing it, Why not join the club, eh?

peaceloveandpaws said:

Nice garden you've got there

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Thanks man!

You are sure a busy beaver Snicker!!

We have found that if we "lollypop" our girls, that is if we remove all the lower growth...the main cola's produce better yield. The stuff near the base is always fluffy and has no bag appeal, still works but best used for hash.

Snickerdoodle said:

...So this is it, the Narnia grow...

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You're witty, I'll give you that. Good luck in your future endeavours.

MomaPug said:

The stuff near the base is always fluffy and has no bag appeal, still works but best used for hash.

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I was planning on taking all the trimmed leaf from our harvest and turn it into tincture. I love smoking, but there's something about tincture that just does it for me.

I figured we'd probably do the same with underdeveloped buds.

That or I'll roll them into joints

Okay so I didn't get around to posting pictures. I fail! I'll post them now though and go up and take pics again in a little bit. Make up for my suck with a double pic post day? Sounds good to me! I'm going to try something different in the way I post pics. We'll see if you like it....

So this post is all for Lordjin because he's my biggest fan. Stalk pictures as promised.

Check out these twisted bitches!

MK Ultra A - keep in mind these pics are now two days old lol

Afhgooey A - always a favorite lol