New closet setup, please comment!

Hey all,

I'm just looking for comments on my setup. Growing 4 white widows, but will be going down to 1 plant as I'm giving the rest away. I am not setup for 4 plants in here (plus the smell).

Using two 6400K 26W CFL's (full spectrum, 5000 lumens) with one 75W incandescent agro-bulb (blue spectrum, 800 lumens)

Using 75% reflective sheets along the walls and inside the closet door. not sure what this stuff is called, its not quite mylar, but its way better than tin foil.

Using a large oscillating fan on the lowest setting, however i still tied up the stems to sticks because originally i had everything under the incandescent bulb only, which caused the stems to grow towards the light too much. As soon as I moved it to the closet with the CFLs, they stopped moving up so fast, and started to work on the leaves.

Using Schultz potting soil with time-release nutrients (i know i know, i shouldn't have, but i didn't know better at the time so this is what I've got). I wont be adding any nutrients until the flowering stage i guess, since there is already stuff in the soil.

Purchased bud boom (0-40-23) for the flowering stage. not sure if thats bad or not. it was supposed to be good for flowers (didn't tell them what it was for...) contains 2% magnesium and 2% sulfur on top of the usuals.

Purchased a negative ion air purifier with fan. its not here yet but it will be here in time for smelly plants.

As you can see in the photos, its an ok space, with plenty of ventillation caused by the fan (and i leave the doors somewhat open anyway). It can be closed completely and if the lights are turned off, noone can tell. if the lights are left on and the doors are closed, it looks like a poltergeist scene from a movie.

Anyhow, the leaves are looking very green and healthy, hopefully the stretch to 3.5" of stem wont cause the plants to be total crap. This is my first grow, and i have plenty of other seeds to use anyway, so i dont care if it botches, its just a lot of time and money (electricity).

Please comment away, any suggestions on how I can improve this closet setup? How to improve on the nutrients and how to move forward from here having used potting soil with time-release nutrients? How to deal with the stretching that was caused initially by low light during seedling stage? etc...

thanks

Get your lights closer to the plants they will not stretch as much and they will love you for it. I have had similliar problems with the stalks shooting up too high too fast. Move the lights closer. And when 12/ 12 comes, you might wanna seal off that closet a little better so they dont herm out on ya.

deliott said:

Anyhow, the leaves are looking very green and healthy, hopefully the stretch to 3.5" of stem wont cause the plants to be total crap. This is my first grow, and i have plenty of other seeds to use anyway, so i dont care if it botches, its just a lot of time and money (electricity).

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When/if you transplant in a week or two you can bury the plant up to about a cm below its first node to reinforce the structural stability provided by the roots.

So I'm thinking of getting more cfls to provide more light. I wonder if I have tubes going up along the corners. Same 6400k types, but long tubes. And perhaps another 2 above instead of the incandescent bulb. The air flows quite a bit in there. It doesn't really stay warm. It's always breezy. Should I get a smaller fan?

The soil dries every 2-3 days. At this point it's been 9 days, since they came out of the soil. Is that bad growth speed?

I figured they would be farther along with some branching.

Day 11

Now on one of them I can see the second leaves splitting off the second set of big leaves. starting to look like what it should. But i still feel its going slowly.. I'm still going to add another 26W 6400K CFL instead of the red spectrum incandescent agro-bulb (i'm using it for heat, it doesn't get very warm in the large closet with the oscillating fan).

Anyone can say if they think its moving slowly?

I've done some enhancements, like sealing the edges of the closet doors, using duct tape flaps. keeps the light in and seals the air inside somewhat (keep air warm). i do leave the doors a little open to get air flow from the room, which has a window open for fresh air. also the light inside is 100% dark when closed door, so night cycle will be complete darkness (with fan still going if needed).

Hmm lookin good so far

Damn, I should have bought similar clip/desk lights, I got the ones with the plastic clip and they are all breaking >.< I would tac a sheet or something infront of the door on the inside so all that light isnt escaping

i'm not sure why it looks like light in the photo (i can see why you think that). its actually just shiny duct tape that you are seeing there. the light barely escapes it. It makes no visible light anywhere in the room when closed (other than the small little holes that i may have missed on the edges).

I've added a stronger 55W CFL in the middle, so now I just use the 3 CFLs, 2x26W and 1x55W.

I've also suspended a sheet of cardboard from the top, which is covered with the reflective material. should shine the light in this enclosed area more effectively from the top.

I finally got a temp/rh meter. It says I'm at around 80F and Low-20% RH. I added a small humidifier below the table to attempt to get that number more up to 35% RH if I can (I dont want to cause mold in the closet or anything). Alas its a heat based humidifier so it raises the temp. i need to get a cold air one, since its already hotter than I thought in there. it says its 80-80F but it feels way less than that since there is the huge fan blowing. I switched up the oscillating fan with a large square fan (stronger) which is also doing nicely for the air flow inside the closet.

Also got some 20-20-20 fertilizer (with the other traces required) to start adding once the soil dries again. The plants are growing nicely as far as I can see.

u want 6500k cfls but 6400k work alrite 2

Yeah, this is all they had at the store I go to near my house. I've already spent like 400 bucks for everything so far. I'm kinda stopping at that point. The only money I'll spend after this is for 2700K CFLs for flowering and the proper nutrients for flowering.

buy a halide

cheafinkush1721 said:

buy a halide

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yeah thats a bit too warm for my closet. I'm already at 80-82F and with keeping the humidity level at 40%.

This is what I've got now, hopefully the plants like it.

They have grown a LOT in the last 2 days. Several new leaves are showing up next to the big ones that were there before.

Lots of growth since I got the extra light, raised the humidity to 35% and got the temp down to 80F.

This is after one day. Looking at the last shot, its a lot of growth in the center.

Here are shots of the two different plants. One is farther along than the other, but both show improvements.

Day 13

I know that there's tons of people in the newb zone putting up pics of new setups, probably very repeating but I wanted to have a journal so-to-speak of my first grow.

After 20 days now, somewhat delayed from improper lighting the first few days, but now hopefully things are moving along.

I'm starting to see a couple yellow spots on a couple of the leaves of one of the plants. probably nute burn (i have been fertilizing every time since i've had over 8 leaves instead of every other time with 20-20-20) 1/4 strength first, then up to 1/2 strength. will do a clean water next time to even things out hopefully.

Lots of branching and new leaves in between the existing ones. All at the top of the long hard stem that was built up from the fan (and the bit of stretching from my original lights). stem is peeling a layer of skin too.

Still keeping 40% humid, and hovering between 80-85 F.

Some phone camera pics below.

I've looked at many of the images from the other posts for nute burns etc.

I'm having a hard time making a match to these spots i'm seeing on these plants.

Some of them have lots of small little gold dust looking particles, surrounding what looks like a small gold burn mark (images below).

The images are taken with a good cam, should be mostly clear. can someone identify these as nute burn? I have potting soil with .08-0.12-0.08 already in (not sure i understand the small figures.. is that the same as 8-12-8? Anyway, i've been slowing adding 1/4 strength 20-20-20 but it seems this is too much still. I've been actually watering with clean distilled water for 6 days now, and still some new spots showing.

Also, they seem to not have grown much in the last few days... lots of new leaf bunches at the tops, but not sure if they are growing too fast.

Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.

So the sunhut is pretty sweet, and the vortex fan/light tube/600w mh and hps bulbs and all the room you would want.

I'm growing carrots, lettuce, columbines and several other types of flowers.

The white widows sure make things look green.

So my problems with nutrients seems to have stayed to the bottom leaves, and i've still got some bottom leaves that die to yellowing and then fall off. I think about 8 leaves for both plants total in 47 days.

The tops are grandiose (sp?) but the plants are only 13" tall. They dont seem to be growing as big as some people have shown.

So to finish this post off, instead of leaving it to become an unfinished post.

A closet grow to me in a way is kind of inconvenient. The best thing to do is keep it in a tent of some kind.

These are the pics about 4-5 weeks into flowering at 12/12 with a 600W HSP bulb.

Overall i grew the plants for 45 days vegetation under CFL's for the first 30 days, then 15 days under 600W MH bulb. They were 15" tall when i started to flower.

In retrospect, I would have started under the MH right away, and grown them much bigger before flowering. Also I find that a lot of the leaves hide too much of the light for the branches underneath them. I'd really like to figure out a way to get the branches to grow better, than just the main branch of the plant.

The pictures are at day 80 and 86 days from day the seeds sprouted above the dirt.

Try LST'ing or SCROG to get more light penetration.

I did try it on the small tiny plant in the middle, but it was started really late and didn't get much time to veg. Its only going to produce 2 small buds in the end, but its got an amazing citrus sweet and strong smell (ak47) while the other two have a more bittersweet smell.

Next time things will be much better, since i've got more experience under my belt.

I thought that iwth 600w i would get enough light that it would penetrate the leaves and be bright enough to make the plants grow extremely fast. its already costing almost 60 bucks a month to run 20/4 and then 12/12 for a total of 4 months thats like 240 dollars! not including the distilled water and nutrients...