Quasi Ghetto Grow

You can see quite a disparity in size.

They are, left to right:

Mr. Stretchy, Stretchy2, and Lady Luck (I think).

The main difference is this:

Mr. Stretchy got transplanted into 60% Miracle Gro Organic soil and 40% starter soil.

Lady Luck and Stretchy2 were put into more starter soil.

I added nutes to Lady, at 1/2 strength, but she just went slightly yellow and is where you see her now.

With Stretchy2, I added some of the Miracle Gro organic soil to the top of her grow area.

We may see Stretchy2 reap the benefits of this in a few days, as organic is slower to show signs (but also safer-- I believe I flushed Lady Luck once, when she was bright green and slightly yellow).

However, there may not be enough organic elements in there to make a difference.

After doing a lot of research on organic growing, and looking at Mr. Stretchy, who is way ahead of the rest, I am convinced that a good organic soil can make a huge difference because of all the biology and the different factors which seem to be way more complex than just adding nutes to some soil.

My plants are growing very slow, we must be in week 4 or 5 or something.

But I am using all floros, and in the beginning, they had a very difficult start with non 6500k floros among other problems.

I do other things for my plants, I sing to them, play classical music for them (okay, sorta-- I play Wendy Carlos' "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer"-- They love it!

And I send love to them, like my other plants.

Sometimes I forget about my other plants in the presence of my babies and I have to remember that they're all my babies.

I got these ideas from numerous places, but do you ever feel like the plant is talking to you? Telling you things?

I mean, I always felt this when I smoked it, but these babies are waking me up in the morning to attend to them.

The other night, I saw what looked like fem signs on the biggest plant.

I thought, well maybe it's a hermie or something.

I felt strongly, that hot day, that they wanted to rest. Lights out.

Then, Fan Off.

I computed 6 hours ahead in my mind... I had read that inconsistent lighting (I have let them rest a couple times from 24/7 light and fan, I felt they needed it) can cause hermies.

So I said, Okay, turning out lights at 9:30, I need to wake up at 3:30 and turn them back on.

I woke up at 3:15, wondering why I'd awoken.

Then I heard them beckon, but it wasn't 3:30 yet.

This gave me just enough time to take them out, water those who needed it, examine them, talk to them, and put them back on their grow schedule.

I will admit I have been highly influenced lately by the books I am reading:

"The Secret Life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird

"Same Soul, Many Bodies" by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.

"Inner Paths to Outer Space" by Rick Strassman, M.D., Slawek Wojtowicz, M.D., Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D, and Ede Frescka, M.D.

wow. they look good! thanks for the links!

im reading the secret life of plants and that book makes you rethink your whole agenda while growing herb. its crazy how we are all connected on the cellular level, yet everyone passes the idea by without thought, i have been wondering about how music, attention, and essential oils all affect the plant and that book has taught me most everything i wanted to know..its amazing! i will be watching this thread to see if the extra attention pays off...im sure it will

just got your PM.. been out of the country...

passive input



iloveyou

BLOW/PULL air out... "let" fresh air come in

Thanks Brendon, obtuse, Hernandez, and GK.

GK Thanks for the input... a reinforcement.

brendon420, thanks for your input and thoughts.

pics

1)
The biggest plant in lower left is the original Mr. Stretchy. Unlike the others, when I transplanted him he got 40% starter soil and 60% organic and I suspect the richness of the organic (Miracle Grow Organic) helped him take off like this as I'd been rotating them equally under the lights.

The problems with yellow leaves on the bottom were corrected mostly by watering, from what I can tell.

These hadn't been watered for over a week, but the containers are quite big for this size plant and for some time the soil in the drain holes was still wet, though not yesterday-- these babes were bone dry

2)
Mr. Stretchy's stalk appears quite healthy and thick, though the upper part as you can see has some purple, may indicate need for nutes in the future.

3)
This I believe is Lady Luck, the one still in starter soil and which I sprayed with Neem because there were a couple nats.

4)
Lady Luck's stalk is nice and green. These yellow leaves became green again after watering (except for the most curled up dry ones, of course)

Forgot to mention that in the two plants other than Mr. Stretchy, I added Organic soil to their tops, about an inch of soil so this should help a little with nutes

pics

1)
The cabinet is only 4' high, it might seem taller here with the wide angle lens.

Notice there is a hole in the upper side, for blowing out air and a hole in the bottom for passive intake.

Right now it's against the floor but will be raised 3-5 inches when complete.

In order to admit air without light, I will cover this hole with the light baffle shelf which appeared in an earlier post. It will sit over the hole, allowing air, but not light, in. The top of it is painted white and the bottom is black.

2)
Notice my shitty paint job. This was two cans of white spray paint (matte of course) and obviously they didn't really cover the surface. I will probably get some mylar or panda paper at a future point.

I went ahead and painted the bottom black, just to assist the light trap/baffle with potential incoming light from the bottom.

To check for light leaks, I put the lights inside and only saw one point of light showing through a crack in the upper left. So I'll probably just put duct tape over it rather than more caulk

The final design will have passive air intake from the bottom and a fan blowing air out the side with light-tight tubing, and of course some kind of carbon scrubber.

There will be a movable shelf, so I don't have to move the lights although I just bought "Buds for Less" and my go with his lighting paradigm.

3)
The babies in a temporary setup in their new home

i used spray paint on got the same effect on my box last grow. i see you said you added some top soil. are you adding any other nutes?

In the final pic, the plants are sitting on the light baffle assembly and I've installed the tracking for the shelf, not currently being used. Still have to cut the shelf. Basically, you insert shelf holders in the back, north-south, and along the sides, east-west, then you just put your shelf on it. To move it you have to take off the plants and take off the shelf, re-position the shelf-holders, and put everything back.

Still not sure if I will go with this setup as I may just have a light assembly which can be raised or lowered.

However, I am also thinking of installing the lights all along the sides, though I'm not sure this is necessarily better than a moveable light assembly.

I just don't really want to build anymore than I have to, at this point. I can always do that in the next grow-- right now I want to get these things flowering and in a closet with a door so that the light doesn't show through my window any more, all day and all night.

mastakoosh said:

i used spray paint on got the same effect on my box last grow. i see you said you added some top soil. are you adding any other nutes?

Click to expand...

Hey Masta thanks for checkin in.

I have only used nutes once and that was with Lady Luck and she turned yellow. I only flushed her once though, apparently the soil was aerated enough.

That was half the recommended amount of 10-15-10.

I just now realized, I was supposed to buy molasses ages ago.

I am assuming the lack of growth is because of lighting and soil though here it seems to indicate soil is more of a problem since the one plant with 60% organic sprang up way ahead of the others.

Next move is to finish the cabinet. I have to setup a shelf for the fan, and a light-tight air extraction method. I will just the shelving rails I have to put a second, higher, smaller shelf near the top for the fan (just a standalone wal-mart fan) to blow air out through some tubes.

Gotta cut and glue in the wood baffle for the door, and I already have felt to put along all the wood, to help with light blocking.

Gotta get a latch for the door, to hold it closed.

After that, start flowering and will probably have to change my light setup as apparently in flower they grow 2-3x size, and I already don't really have enough light for Mr. Stretchy.

In the future I will be able to start flowering at about the height the smaller plants are, assuring light for all.

For my door, a purcased a gorgeous piece of 4x2 oak plywood. It was 16$ for that one piece, but I figure the door at least should be beautiful and it's only 1/2" plywood, so quite a bit lighter than the 5/8" particle board I used for the cab.

everything is looking good. the reason i asked about the nutes is because the plants are a light green color(which is not that bad) but maybe a shot of nitrogen might help them a bit. i like fish emulsion as an organic nitrogen boost because it is cheap and organic.

2 bucks at holmes de pot

Thanks Masta I like the idea of that fish emulsion being organic and thanks Brendon for pointing out that it's at Home Depot.

Well, fortunately or maybe not so, I got a hold of some Kind and predictably, with it around, sorta let my plants be neglected.

Having a 9-day vacation and a new copy of GTA IV did not help!

As you can see, in the first pic, the babes are too tall for the amount of leafage they have. The stalks are thick and appear healthy, meaning I suppose that they could bear a lot more.

There are a number of problems here.

I have not given any nutes since weeks ago.
The light setup changed because I had to move them.
At one point I had to use tap water straight, instead of letting it set.
I have four lights which are still 5500k, not 6500. I had been meaning to replace them and never did. This pic doesn't show it, but the plant nearest to those lights is just not getting enough of the right spectrum. The lights are only 12 watts.

A few times I have allowed them to 'rest' in darkness of anywhere from 4-10 hours. I've probably done this 3 times, and I don't know if that messes up things... not for growing, but they might get confused and try to be hermies.

The 2nd pic, the closeup is a failed pic. I tried to use my zoom (my little camera kinda sucky) to photograph what looked like pistils... even though they shouldn't exist, but I had read that sometimes females will show these even before they flower?

Anyways, they were these little spikes. Looking at the plant again, I see them again, but they may just be new growth.

At this point the goal is to finish the cabinet which I keep putting off, so that I can put these things in flower and reap whatever benefits are left, the biggest bene's being that I learned some valuable lessons so that the next grow will be strong.

If I move quickly in the next few days I can still save these.

I made myself work on the closet tonight, cutting strips of pine for the inner door frame, but I ran into problems.

I hung the door incorrectly, and the hinges admit about 1/4" light on that side. I had taken a shortcut when I held the piece of wood up to the cabinet and realized it was exactly the same width. So I just hung it that way, but there is a lot of space top and bottom (at least an inch on both, in various ways), and I thought I might correct these openings by placing wood pieces as a frame, around the inside of the door opening.

So I cut the pieces, but I have other issues with this closet: on the bottom, the lowest part does not extend all the way to the sides, so there's always about 3/4" of admittance here, I thought I would cover this with wood.

I can't really think straight right now, been drinking. Can't wait till I'm not drinking anymore and just smoking Kind, then I can properly understand shit like this.

Anyways, after all that crap I decided I can't make it light-tight tonight, I'm too drunk.

So I opted to re-configure the lights in a better manner using the closet.

This time, I ran the cords in through the floor, that 4" opening I had left to create air suction from the bottom.

You will notice in the picture that the closet is suspended on some metal drawers.

That's all I had.

Even though I have a list of stuff to buy at Home Depot, including some "feet" for this thing, I never did it, so now I'm going ghetto as usual and using the metal drawers from my desk.

I run the three-plug line in through the hole, and arrange the cord around the light baffle.

The light baffle is great for keeping light out of that bottom hole.

Too bad I can't keep light from getting in the cracks around this ghetto door I impatiently designed.

I'll fix that eventually.

Anyways, the original plan was to have the lights stationary and move a shelf down as the plants grew.

Well, that design was based on someone else's, and that person was using a 400w single stationary bulb, suspended above.

I'm using floro's.

This is called learning, I hope.

I've seen with flouros that positioning of lights is crucial.

Anyways, I decided to modify my situation, I had these metal things to hold the shelf which would originally sit the plants below the light.

That's not going to work, but I can still use those shelf thingys to position my lights, using the clamp lights that I bought so long ago.

So I took my lights out of the strip plug, and put them back in the grip lights, and positioned the shelf-holders accordingly.

pic1: the cord running up through the light baffle from the bottom
pic2: my non-light-tight box. The white you see around the edges is light-leak
pic3: my babies under a better light situation (notice the wasted light to the right)

This shit is harder than it should be.

I might make a new light thing like in the See More Buds book.

Good stuff! Just checkin in to see how you're doing. I'm two weeks into my grow and its always interesting to see how people who are ahead of me in the season are doing. Good luck! Check out my grow journal if you get a chance.

Thanks Forestgreen, your journal looks great, can't wait to get over there and read it in depth.

I decided to go 12/12 finally, in desperation, with of course, a ghetto fix for the light leakage that I couldn't be bothered to fix.

I've set my timers for 7am on and 7pm off. My fix for light leakage simply involved putting a blanket over the door, as there's no light leakage elsewhere except a negligable amount near the exhaust hole.

In pic 1, you can see the ghettoriffic "vent system"-- the clothes are not blocking the hole, as they appear to be.

This is a passive system in that cool air comes from below (the reason the cab is lifted on the drawers by about 4 inches and I just set the fan inside, blowing on the plants.

This can only be done with floros-- for any other type of light source you would need much more robust exhaust (at least another fan near top to blow the air out the vent, and the vent would need to be airtight with duct tape for maximum efficiency) but I've checked the temps in here even without a fan with the lights on all day in the summer and they've never gone past 90F.

But of course, I also need more lights and will be getting those soon, and that will increase the heat but I'm certain it will still be within a good range and if not then I will implement some... ghetto solution

The 2nd pic, you can see the long, few-leaf-bearing plants, under their lights, and again in the 3rd pic.

Because of time constraints and some part of my genetics that insists on "keepin it ghetto" I didn't go with my original design of cutting a shelf, and moving the plants and shelf downward from stationary lights at the top. That would have required installing the lights permanently along the walls and/or ceiling, and I am not convinced that doing that only with power strips is the best idea, since it is not very configurable.

This system, I use the shelf-holders to attach the lights to, and it's cumbersome but fairly configurable.

Many will be able to point out lighting inefficiencies here, of which I am aware.

I will buy a few more 6500k floros so we can get the plants fully lighted, in the next few days.

Other things which must be done:

Nutes, fish-emulsion, and molasses.

Once sex is determined, I will start some clones. Supathrive.

So there it is. I am once again excited about this as I was really worried about not being able to instigate 12/12 fairly soon and as you can see these plants are way too tall and haven't had enough light, but this will be a fun experiment.

I may also look into that bending/training thing to restrict upper growth? But I may just leave them tall and expect one main big bud.

The only 'pest' issue I have had is a couple nats, and I know that I can use Neem on them, so I'm not concerned about that, at this time.

Now I'm off to read others' grows to see what I need to do more now that I'm not in veg state.

The temp inside the cabinet today showed 102 F. The days outside have been around the 105 range. The closet did not feel that hot, and the babies are looking the same as ever, so...

The first two pics show you my stragglers. This is mostly a light issue, as I still have not increased or corrected the small 12w lights running at 5500K.

Ma bad.

Overall, upper growth appears good enough to get something to smoke, assuming I have a female in there. I almost feel like they're all females, silly me-- but remember I originally planted about 8, so maybe these three... just happened to be...

Watered them a little yesterday and a little more today. Have to be careful not to spill, as the power strip is right there...

Yesterday I added nutes, but very mild... 5 of the 7 recommended drops in a quart, using 10-15-10. I would like to use other things like fish emulsion and molasses, but until I buy them, it ain't happenin, so at least I got this stuff.

At this point the only one I can still recognize is "Mr." Stretchy, who still is taller than everyone else. These plants have seemed pretty damn hardy after all I put them through so when they sex I'll clone.

The 3rd pic is to show the fan I have running outside the closet (there's one inside, blowing on the plants... the bottoms, anyway!), to bring fresh air in through the bottom (which is light-tight for night-time) which supposedly exits out the top opening (I always put my hand under that top opening and never feel any air).

those are some trees