Rotational Grow Set up, 3 sections, stadium flowering

Hey everyone! I've decided to start a grow journal here of my newest set up. I haven't grown in a few years, and am really looking forward to getting back into it. My grow space is set up to provide for 6 heavy smokers (big community house) I thought it would be really nice to keep this little log, not only for my stoner brain not remembering things, but also for advice and new techniques.

The Grow Room-
I built a flower room 6'W X 6'D X 7'H in front of an existing 8'W X' 2'D X 7'H Closet (for veg and seedlings.)

Veg Room (8x2x7)-
I've separated this into two levels, so 2 compartments 8x2x3.5. The bottom of this room is for our Mother Plants. All surfaces were painted flat white. I'm just starting up the grow, and would like to end up with 4-6 mothers of different strains.
The top section of this room is the seedling/veg/clone room. I will use this from left to right (smallest to largest plants.)
I am building 4 plates with plywood, and I am going to Velcro all the way around each plate to make this area light tight from the flower room. (anyone tried this? still working out the details on the best way to light tight this space from the flower room.

Lighting- I am using 18 - 26w 6500k CFL's with a homemade hood on them (6
bulbs, 'Y' split, per hood) for the top currently, and will probably do the
same set up on the bottom once mothers are well established.
Ventilation- I have air space from the top to the bottom compartment (no
need for light tight, as they are all on 20-24hr veg cycle) and a 105cfm fan
blowing out of the back wall on the top, as well as a 105cfm fan pulling in
(on the bottom) from the flower rooms lighting.

Flower Room (8x6x7) -
I have this room with a corner stadium set-up. 3 tiers, and 1ft clearance horizontally and vertically. All surfaces have been painted white or covered in mylar. The space is rigged with chain all across the top so that I can move lights easily with climbing quicklinks.
For this room I plan on putting the smallest plants on top, and rotating them down the stadium as they get larger

Lighting-
Currently I have one 1000w MH warm set up for flowering. I will probably use
12 more 23w - 2700k cfls for side lighting.
Ventilation-
I have a filtered air intake coming into the room at 105cfm and exhaust out
of the top of the hood into the bottom compartment of the veg room

Extra's
Walls have been insulated (but not the floor, I don't want it too hot!) and I have small 3 gallon jugs of water set up on some insulation for thermal mass underneath the stadium.

Currently I'm running at a high of 79*F and my low (at 20-4 lights) is 67*F my humidity is almost unchanged at 55-62%

Soil Grow, all organic, outdoor 3 yr. manure and compost/perlite/sweet lime/epsom salt. Here's where my growing tehniques differ. I am planning a healthy eco-system in my grow room. I am going to be providing praying mantis houses and add crickets as a food source. I'm hoping to balance the organisms out so that I have many pests in my growroom, but none that will be able to set up shop, that eat my plants!

I am running a 419 strain (420 crossed with Hindu Cush) and I've been germinating 6 seeds every week, so that I can have a harvest every week or two. I'm going to experiment hard on this strain and see what sticks. So you will be seeing a grow journal about the individual plants and what I'm doing with a control group.

I know this is quite an advanced grow, but I've done similar grows with great results before, and am really hoping to get this up and producing really soon.

First Batch - 7 Starts 419 strain, popped on 8-23
Second batch - 16 Starts 419 strain, popped on 8-28 - 8-29
I know I have too many plants, but I'm looking to weed them down to 2 mother plants, and flowering 8

The seed was from a buddy that let a male go too long, the strain is not currently stable, and so I'm growing "lots" of plants in an effort to maximize genetic attributes.

Batch One (420-1)
It is day 11 and 3rd set of leaves have popped, on my second set I am already seeing a 3 petal (good sign for the strain I think). I transfered 5 into 3 gal pots, and left two in 1 liter pots for a control group. We will see if the quick transplant improves overall growth.
And Here's the winner -

Batch Two (420-2)
It is day 5 and 16 out of 17 seeds germinated. They are currently on their second fan leaf prodution and about 3cm tall

Please feel free to comment, advise, ask questions and all that jazz at this discussion forum
Cannatricks Organic Sustainable Grow

Currently working on getting a light tight seal on my veg room, I've had a couple mishaps with sub-par materials. I am looking forward to getting clones in the next few days. I should be getting clones of:

Wonder Woman
Blueberry
White Widow
Grape Ape

and a few others, I should be getting 5-10 clones of each, so I'll be able to veg some into mothers, and send some into flower

Batch info
419-1 Day 14
Onto 5th set of fan leaf production. Very broad leaved, looks like the hybrid came out very indica dominant.

419-2 Day 8
Plants are looking nice, 3rd leaf set coming in.

419-1 Day 15
All seedling sprouted first node leaves today. Very excited, that on my 4th leaf set already at 5 petals. I've never used CFL's for growing before, but it seems like stretching on the stems is almost non-existent. I've grown with MH in veg before, and had a ton of stretching as the plants were reaching for the greater lumens higher up, with the CFL's close on the plants it seems they are happy just bushing out like crazy.

419-2 Day 9
Looking good, I'm really looking forward to seeing how they compare at the different day intervals for crops. I believe that I replanted the seedlings too early on the first go, and all I've successfully done is take up more space for the same plant, but we will see...

I've decided to open this thread to anyone that would like to comment, critique, or question, rather then my separate journal. So feel free to post whatever

So in the last week or so I've been working on light-tighting my veg room, I ended up with some lightweight plywood panels, hung on 1/4" lag bolts, with velcro as an added light tight. I may buy some panda film and stretch a cover over the entire wall, just to be sure. (thanks Lionsroor)
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I also finished fabricating the 8ft sectional CFL hood
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I picked up a couple of Wonder Woman clones, and am still waiting on the big clone storm (should be 10-20 of 5 dif varieties)
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Batch 419-1 Day 17
The girls have been doing great, it seems the early repot did help the growth a substantial amount. The 5 I replanted early are more then double the size of the ones I repotted today. I mixed up a compost tea and fed the ladies their first meal today, epsom salt, molasses, decomposed chicken manure, and worm casings. Checked the PPM at 350. PH - 5.8 100PPM molasses, 50ppm epsom, 50ppm chicken guano, 100ppm worm casing.


Re-poted 10 days agoView attachment 1778690
Re-poted today View attachment 1778691

Very happy with the bushiness and the quick growth on these.

Batch 419-2 Day 11
Re-poted all plants today will see how growth improves.

Wonder Woman-1 Day 2
Clones taken last night, put into sanitized domes and left to gain root.

Mother/clones/seedling closet is almost done, looking for some nice 6 light fixtures for the ceiling. Getting ready for first flowering in about 2 weeks.

419-1 Day 20
I have been experimenting with my compost tea, I tried a 1.5x strength on one of these babies, and got some nute burn. It's nice to know that I'm using the proper nute levels, it's been so long since I have grown!

plants 1-F and 1-G are having their first feeding today, after the repot a few days ago, these two are quite a bit smaller and I think it's just the later transplant. Got a little advice on here as to my plant growth, and it seems that we should be seeing blow-up style veg in the next couple of weeks. I am contemplating topping 2 of this batch in order to test out yields, however I may wait and test on the next wave.

419-2 Day 14
Plants are receiving their first feed today, looking forward to seeing their growth. although they haven't kept up with the first batch, they haven't had the same nutrient levels. These girls (hopefully) are still a few weeks out on the flowering, and it's a good thing, because currently I need to get the timing down for a perpetual harvest.


Wonder Woman Clones Day 5
The girls seem to be taking root, they seem very healthy, just trying to give them a few more days in the dome before I replant them. The plants they came off are less then healthy, so it's good to see them perking up.

Purple Diesel Clones Day 2
Just picked up 2 more clones of 'purple diesel' don't know the genetics of the whole line of these. went into the clone dome with the wonder women, will see how they do.

Still waiting on the rest of the clones, I keep getting jerked around with this guy that has this very 'special way' to clone, seriously you would think that he is a molecular chemist or something. If I have to listen to one more lecture on growing weed from a guy that has 7 mother plants that all look like shit, and hasn't had a crop in 8 months because he's "working to improve the genetics of the mothers" f*cking bull. However I suppose I will be happier when I have 6 dif strains and tons of clones.

Very nice and detailed grow man. Lookin forward to updates.

Stop by my grow thread if ud like. Links in the sig

Thanks for stopping by! +Rep for the nice grow journal!

First off, if your a stickler for sterile soils, don't do your own composting, and are stuck on all the hype about "Brand X soil is the best!" this is not the thread for you. I do things down and dirty, I expect critters, fungi, and bacterias, I actually want them!

Why? Because weed is a plant, and plants deal with this stuff. If you can't control the pests in your garden, then you won't have a garden, no matter how hard you try to keep them out by 'sanitizing' this and that.

First the Ingredients
I start with just a few things, first is rocks. if you have a property there is probably somewhere that has some nice rocky soil you can work with. I have a patch where we had gotten a truckload of gravel, and moved it, however the soil underneath was saturated in rocks, so we are slowly getting them out for use in our garden
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I take these up into little soil screens I have made with a little wooden frame and less then 1/4" holes in the screen
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It comes out to just rocks and a little plant matter (straw, maybe some roots)

Now we head to my compost pile (I have 2 for different compost pile, one is for goat/chicken manure and plant matter for High N. The other is for fruit and vegetable compost which is high in K/P.)
Here is my Vegetable compost that we are pulling from today (I'm getting the babies ready to flower)
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We run this through the screen just as we did the gravel, but keep the stuff that gets strained out, we will use that later!
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We end up with a deep dark black soil that is super rich in nutrients (this is high K/P ratio.)
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Now I combine 50% of this dark rich soil, with 25% manure worm castings for N during the cycle, with 25% peat moss and a dash of sweet lime. The most important thing here is to make sure you get a very very good mix, if there are big chunks of worm castings in your soil you may get burning when the roots get there.
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That's it, you should have a great rich soil ready to use. We now have a big bucket of soil, a big bucket of rocks, and a big bucket of all the stuff we strained out of the compost.

I personally love Pickle Buckets for my plants, they are 5 gallon, and square allowing me to get the most space out of my garden.

I take the buckets and drill them out. All across the bottom, and 3 on the bottom of each side for drainage and airflow.
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Next we fill the bottom up to the top of the holes we drilled with our rocks. This will provide good air intake for our bottom roots, and also not allow the roots to become rootbound in the bottom of our pots.
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And I fill the bucket about 3/4 full of our new dirt.
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I have 5 little ones going into these today, I would normally not replant so early but we need some buds! So I'm sending these into the flower room with a 1000w cool MH to grow another week and then flower them.
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Now comes the tricky part, because I use stones in all my pots, when I replant I want to reclaim those rocks, and be very careful not to destroy the rootball when removing them. I pinch the top between my fingers and flip the whole pot upside down and slide the bottom off. (this works best when the soil is damp, not dry, and not wet)View attachment 1784774View attachment 1784775View attachment 1784776View attachment 1784777

I then push a little soil off the top, and lay it into our pot, i take my hands and massage the rootball a little once it's in the bucket to loosen up some of the roots. then add soil on top to the surface with about a 2cm gap from where roots start.
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Remember that crap we pulled out of the compost? nows the time to use it, I mulch the top layer of my soil with this unbroken down compost, this will break down over time and release a nice slow stream of nutrients to my little plants all through the cycle, if we add molasses to our waterings we will make this break down process go faster and really get the soil alive!

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Now you should have a plant ready to go all the way through flower and it should only require very minimal feedings of nutrients. Good Luck!

So today is a bit of a bother, I decided to repot and replant some of the girls and send them to the flower room with a blue MH, first I walked away for about 30min and burned them a bit No huge loss, it's only slightly it's just sad to see my pristine beauties get hurt at all. So I sealed the room totally up and the temps are way above what I was hoping for, it looks like I need to add an extra exhaust or beef up the one I currently have. Temps reached almost 95%F which is way over where they need to be. Anyways I have a great idea and I wonder if anyone has tried this before...

So evaporative cooler, I set up an exhaust from the inside of my hood to the veg room, but I had a great idea today. I am thinking of disconnecting that from the wall, and building that in as a blower on the evaporative cooler (using the hotest air in the room. I can get those big sponges from home depot and fill a (drilled out to allow airfow 5 gal bucket with them, and then put my drip system (that isn't set up yet) into this big bucket. Anyone else have a similar set up?


Anyways, here's the nitty gritty today

419-1 Day 22
Plants A-E - After the repot yesterday I had some light burning and needed to readjust lighting. They didn't sustain to much damage, and should be good to go. We will see how big the girls get in the next week or so, we are going to start flowering very soon.

Plants F-G - Still have these little ones as a control group for the section. No nutes, no light changes.


419-2 Day 16
Started an experiment with MH vs CFL. I took Plants F-I from this group and put them under metal halide, giving the others more room under the 18 CFL's

Plants J-M held out of main veg room in mother room for space considerations.

Plants A-E - left under CFl's in main veg room.

Here's the specs for the different lighting.
A-E - 18 CFL's 6500k/1600lum/26w = 28800 lumens over about 8cuft. so
3600 lum sqft. CFL's
F-I - 1 1000w Sunmaster Cool MH rated 80000 lumens over about 16 ft so..
5000 lum sqft. MH lighting

Let the races begin.

419-1 day 20...That plant looks nice and healthy...very green....My plant is 20 days old today....Our plants look about the same size....Your's looks to be a darker green than mine...I have yet to give mine nutes yet...Wonder if that's why.

What strain are you growing? that will make a bit of difference, I doubt you have this strain as it was an accidental hybrid I'm testing. I use a deep rich compost soil too. I don't add many nutes at all. Every other week maybe. These are some of the nicest looking that I have grown, so props to you on having plants that rich if it's your first go, My first plants sure as hell didn't look anything like these

Hey man just read through your post with your composting, transplanting, and soil stuff....Have to say I love it ! We just started our first compost pile about 2 months ago...Hoping to use the soil next year....We also will use the soil in our vegetable and herb gardens...They need serious help with the soil so we hope to grow better herb and veggies next year....We also are both getting into the restaurant business very very soon and we will have quite a bit of organic waste at our disposal (no pun intended) to compost...

Just subbed to your thread....Will be interesting to watch....Do you grow all organic ?

cannatricks said:

What strain are you growing? that will make a bit of difference, I doubt you have this strain as it was an accidental hybrid I'm testing. I use a deep rich compost soil too. I don't add many nutes at all. Every other week maybe. These are some of the nicest looking that I have grown, so props to you on having plants that rich if it's your first go, My first plants sure as hell didn't look anything like these

Click to expand...

it's Skunk Haze...Actually it's my second grow....First attempt I almost killed the plant...I started her in pre-nuted soil, gave her molasses at like 2 weeks old lol, put coffee grounds on top of the soil, had too high of temps, gave her superthrive which also spilled on the leaves making her crispy....Needless to say she almost died...

Finally my gf had enough and confiscated her from me....She put her outside in a new pot and has been rehabilitating her...Plant is like 5 or 6 inches high with likeone or two nodes now and is beginning to bud...I'm done with that project lol though I may smoke that one ! (gf doesn't smoke really

here she is at 20 days.

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I just realized that you were the post that I commented on, I really like the speaker grow idea, I'll be interested to find out if you can get good overall results with a plant so skinny and tall, should be interesting to see how the side buds form. I do grow all organic, We own a little nursery/farm and we mix all our own soil and do our own thermophillic composting (it hard to do without a ton of mass. We have goats and chickens so we get tons of manure to get that baby rolling, I can open it up on the hotest day of the year and it just steams like crazy. I will be doing some compost/manure tea DIY's later, and some organic pest control tutorials as well.

Cheers mate, +rep on your second grow, don't give up!

That's awesome that your compost pile will steam even on the hottest of days....We don't have any farm animals to add poop...But we are about 2 hours from the ocean and I was there a few weeks ago....I did fill a 5 gallon bucket with seaweed to add to the pile...I rinsed it first to get salt off it....I have yet to notice any steam or warmth in our compost pile yet...hmmm...I will have to check on that...

Someday I think it would be cool to go all organic...I am actually thinking of getting some worm bins going in my cellar at some point to harvest castings...I just read how you will have prying mantis and crickets in your grow room that's awesome...Do they help kill small annoying bugs ?

Good luck to you with your grow...I'll be watching for sure...Hope to pick up some good habits/techniques from ya opcorn:

Did some very light training on a couple of the girls today, and what a difference! all the side shoots exploded in 24 hours. Excellent...

Before

After

Got 6 more clones yesterday
2 more Wonder Woman
4 Blueberry