But What Do I Know?...

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by PsychedelicSam, Jan 20, 2013.

  1. #1 PsychedelicSam, Jan 20, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 24, 2013
    ...By the time I'm finished with this journal, you'll agree on just how little that is. I smoked my first joint as a freshman in college in 1969 and haven't looked back since. I've made all major decisions in my life while under the influence and it has led me well on this journey. No regrets.

    So I have all this experience with marijuana but I've never really grown it. I've tried a couple of times. Went out to the forest and planted a patch but the birds, rabbits and deer wiped it out before it could get a good start. There were no lights then and outside was the only way to go. A few years later, you could get halides, carefully, but special nutes and the other items that the growing community have enjoyed for years now just were not there yet. I got together with some friends and I started a grow operation. It was me because I had the little growers handbook. They had the money. The only seed was Columbian bag seed. Indica was kind of unknown, a mystical strain. I got everything up and thriving and then my gypsy blood took over. You see, I was born under a wandering star and have never been able to stay put for long. Too many things to do, too little time.

    Having wanderlust is not conducive to long term projects, needless to say. I have never gotten a plant to flower stage, any plant. Thumbs pretty green, though. So it got to the point in my current situation where I realized I was unable to go anywhere anymore even if I wanted to. Age and disability have knocked the wander out of my life, leaving behind just the lust with no way to satisfy it. I can't afford to buy enough pot anymore to meet my medical needs and I don't like to do without. So, I germinated a couple of seeds that I had collected from some Tangerine Dream, not expecting anything to come of it.

    The reason I didn't expect much is because I have absolutely piss poor conditions in which to do it. It was just going to be an experiment to see how far I could get. Well, lo and behold, they responded well and I really started to get into it. Now that they're budding, I realize that what I've done is extraordinary in it's own right and that I should share it with others in my situation. If someone like me can do it, others can, too. Some may know me from the edibles forum and my tincture thread and realize that the last sentence is one of my unofficial mantras.

    In upcoming posts I'll explain my "situation" and how I've overcome that to confidently take the improvement of that "situation" into my own hands. Please bear with me, though. I'm having problems typing with my left arm this evening thanks to too much shaking my alcohol extraction the other day. (It takes a lot of shaking, just ask noobwannB, and can wear down an old man pretty bad). I wanted to get this started, though, so that I'd have no excuse not to post. Once started, I have the responsibility to keep it relevant so I shall try.

    Now I know that if there ain't pictures, it didn't happen. So I'm adding some here to prove that there is some growing going on.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    :wave:
     
  2. I'm not an invalid but I am sufficiently disabled to cause much inconvenience in my life, as well as pain. I'm unable to bend very far or do any type of lifting above a gallon of milk, and that's pushing it. It's really tough psychologically because I've been a handyman of sorts, construction and maintenance and just plain fixing things. Now I can barely turn a screwdriver or even tie my shoes.

    My income has taken a nosedive and marijuana expenditures have pretty much come to a halt except for a few bargains. It looked like my source for the trim I use for a lot of stuff was going to dry up. So on a whim I decided to try to grow some pot in my 400 sq. ft. apartment and just see how far it would make it. Pretty much a half-assed endeavor. I had no lights and no money. It looked like failure from the beginning. I don't take kindly to failure, especially mine. This will be the story of my climb out of the hole and into the light, literally.

    The picture below was taken today, 3 weeks from flip.:)

    [​IMG]
     
  3. The Setup

    As I said, I have a small apartment. However, I have a large walk-in closet, almost as big as my bedroom and the only closet I have. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of stuff, lost a lot of weight and donated to Goodwill.

    [​IMG]

    The table is 24"x24" and about 24" high. That is as low as I can bend and lift, although the pot as shown is about too much for me. Now I can't lift it at all. The top of the picture is my height limit. It's a shelf that runs around the whole room. Even if I could remove part of the shelf, I don't have the ability to mount anything higher. The only light in the room is a socket in the ceiling, no other electricity.

    [​IMG]

    Also as I've stated, I have no money so I can't get any of the new fancy fertilizers and additives designed specifically for cannabis or special soils. This was a 3 dollar bag of soil from WalMart. You saw the 8" terra cotta pot. During the first few weeks the only nutrients were the soil and some Miracle Gro fert spikes. After I flipped them I got the Miracle Gro Bloom Booster. I had to sacrifice some other necessity to be able to fork out the 5 bucks. Right before I bought the spikes I noticed some issues with the leaves and was able to determine it had a potassium deficiency. The soil had good nitrogen and phosphorus but negligible potassium. I knew I didn't need a lot and the spikes' 2 dollar price tag had some influence. Plus I really didn't expect much at that time. So I flushed them well to remove any toxicity and to get the fert better distributed. It seemed to work. I don't check ph. I use water filtered by activated charcoal but not RO.

    [​IMG]

    You've seen this above. When I first started this as just to have something to do, all I had was the pot, 3 Tangerine Dream seeds and the 20" fluorescent grow light, about 1200 lumens. Oh, and a 75 watt incandescent bulb in the ceiling fixture. When my 2 surviving seedlings started to show some decent growth, I figured I needed more than that tube light. I also realized that I needed more reflective area. All I had at the time was some aluminum foil on the wall, kind of half ass. That is what the box is for. It allowed me to place reflective foil on all 4 sides. That really made a difference. The box was free when I got my computer, plus it gave me a higher platform to work from. It was hard picking things up from that table - too low. Then I realized that I was going to need more light. I had been seeing journals with cfl's and I had a few, so I bought a cheap reflector fixture from WalMart (again) and set it up in my little corner. From this point it started to take off.

    Expenses to this point:
    • Potting Soil.............$ 3.00
    • Tube Light..................$20.00
    • Miracle Gro Plant Spikes.......$ 2.00
    • Box....................free

    Oh, yeah, a 26w cfl costs about a buck at Wally World.

    I'm sorry that I didn't take any pictures of the earlier stages but it wasn't that different than any other and I had no clue that I would be doing this journal. I don't belong here and I feel like a stranger. I'm a cook. I know edibles and tinctures, not nutrients and spectrums. Hopefully, by the time I'm finished, I'll be as knowledgeable and polished as my idol, noobwannB. :D
     
  4. Oops, I left off one major item. I bought a small bag of pea gravel, commonly known as ornamental rocks. So that gives us

    • Small bag of ornamental rocks....$4.00


    You'll see the bag of rocks in a future picture. Using the rock as an aerator. :)

    Since I'm here let me leave a few more pics. These were taken a few minutes ago. I apologize for the lighting but I'll get better. It will be a month since flip in two days.

    [​IMG] [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]
     
  5. Daaaang Sam! You're doin everything 'wrong' and your TD looks way better than mine ever did! You're my hero now, well done sir!! :hello:
     
  6. nice plant bro
     

  7. You're my first customer! I wish I had a door prize for you. Thanks for the kind words. If It looks as good as yours when it's finished, I'll be happy. Thanks to reading other threads (yours) I started it at flip on 11.5/12.5 for the lights. I've just dropped it to 11/13 and plan two more reductions until it gets to 10/14. Like nature.

    I'm excited because this morning when I got up I found some color mixed in with the snow white pistils (?). It was green but all throughout the buds which had been blinding white before. These are my first buds and I find myself just staring at them throughout the day.:D

    Thanks for stopping in, 'B, and please drop by often. :wave:
     

  8. Thanks, kayakush, and thanks for saying it, but it ain't true. It's two plants but I only had 1 pot, so all that growth is shared. But I think it's pretty. :D
     

  9. You gave me the door prize of GD a long while ago, so done! ;)
    I'm subbed, so build it and I will come.
    You're gonna love growing as is evident already ...it really is good for the soul!
     
  10. Wow man, inspiring story and awesome grow. Goes to show how much of a weed, marijuana is. You dont need all them fancy nutrients r/o water and MH/HPS lighting. Well done!
     
  11. #11 PsychedelicSam, Jan 24, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 24, 2013
    I feel paternal and at peace when I'm in there. I already love it and don't know why I didn't do it before when I had more money. :rolleyes:
     

  12. Thanks, Tyrae1. In my day, this is all there was if you wanted to grow inside. So, I figured that I would regress to what I'm comfortable with, especially considering my situation. And since a situation is fluid, this will give me good practice for the time when the fluid in my situation carries me to a better one.

    Thanks again and stop by anytime. I try to keep it entertaining. ;)
     
  13. Something New

    This morning I started a new phase to my growing system and I want to get your ideas about it. Mind you, I'm going forward with it until I notice something bad happening, but any opinions are appreciated. Nothing here is written in stone.

    I'll be mentioning more on the genesis of the lighting setup a little later. It got cold here for a couple of weeks last month which is unusual for Arizona and my grow area has an external block wall that stays cool and during that time, it dropped my temperature down to 65 overnight. And because there is no way to use a heater in there - for my safety's sake - I'd have to turn a fan blowing from a warm room into there to get it up to just 72 a couple of days. I was thinking the cool temps would hinder growth so I was looking for a way to get it warmer by the plants with what I had.

    I was using all cfl's and they do not put out much heat at all. In some places the leaves are only an inch away. So I decided to put an incandescent light bulb in there. I wasn't doing it for spectrum but for heat. It would have been adequate and I planned on using 100w. Well, just as I thought of that, the law banning them went into affect. 75's still available but 100's were pulled. The law allowed for a merchant to be able to sell what was in stock so I was hoping to find some yet at WalMart but to no avail. So I saw these boxes of bulbs that said 100w and it wasn't a cfl. I assumed it was the leftover stock because it was on the bottom shelf and because it was down so low that I couldn't bend down far enough to read it, so I just put it in the cart without further notice. I also picked up a single light socket.

    When I got home and got my socket wired up and a couple of hangers rigged, I opened the box of bulbs (soft white, btw) and hung it about a foot above the tallest branch. I started to put the box away and noticed that while it did say 100w, it also said "equivalent of". That automatically means to me that it was an energy savings non-incandescent. I thought that was just LED and cfl but this box said "halogen". A lot of people my age think of halogen flood lights and know that those buggers were hot and short lived. Of course, nowadays halogen is the standard for headlights and flashlights and other products that require intense light in small packages. I grew a plant with one of the 500 watt grow versions in '83 and it worked great but used a lot of electricity and produced a lot of heat. It was just a Columbian bag seed but that bugger responded really well to that light. It grew and vegged like crazy. I had inherited it from someone at my rooming house and when I left, I passed it on. I doubt that it did well after I left.

    So, where was I? Oh, yeah...halogens. So I had a box of "100w equivalent halogens". I left the bulb in the fixture because I didn't think it could hurt and it didn't really put out much more heat than a cfl. Since then I've started checking out halogens for growing, looking for experiences, looking for successful experiences. Lots of negativity out there but it was all based on the old school 500w floodlights. I found a few successes and learned some things that I thought I could incorporate. Some say spectrum is good for veg only and others who say it's spot on for flowering. We'll see.

    I had also seen cfl journals where the grower had the bulbs positioned at various heights surrounding the grow, about the size of mine, with the intention of getting as much light as possible to the lower canopy. That looked like a good idea so I did it. I got another single socket, screwed in another cfl and attached it to the same cord as the halogen and strung them along the side and with one lower to stimulate the lower branches. This may be the secret to my success, but idk, yet.

    Well, my plants are budding and filling out so well and after further research that this morning I decided to replace that cfl with another "100"w halogen and position both halogens 6" above the tops and on each side of the reflector cfl's. That was a few hours ago and it seems like every time I go in there to ensure I didn't screw up, there's more frost on the buds. It's almost as if I can see them forming on the leaves. :)

    Now here's my reasoning on this move and tell me if it sounds feasible or completely off the wall. Every negative response to halogen growing included excessive heat and stretching. The stretching was caused by the need to keep the hot light far enough away to prevent burning. My reasoning is that the heat issue is resolved by a) lower wattage cool white bulb instead of high wattage flood and b) by splitting the wattage, with each light about a foot away. My lighting setup now has the 2 halogens offsetting the cfl reflectors and allows my plants to get an even amount of each spectrum as I rotate them throughout the day. Plus, by having my cfl's within 2 inches of the leaves, the stretching trait is greatly reduced.

    So whadya think? Totally loony tunes or has promise? :D

    [​IMG]

    I hope you like my garnish. Since this is a forum about growing pot, I'm going to try to garnish many of my pics that aren't directly of the grow. It may be buds or it may be an edible or tincture, but it will be bud or things made from buds. ;)

    [​IMG]

    The large reflector on the left contains a 6500 lumen cfl and the other one has 2 2500 cfl's and you can see the bare bulbs positioned on either side. Btw, "100"w is actually 72 watt. Each is about 1500 lumens.


    Additional expense:
    • Box of 4 100w Halogen bulbs....$ 3.00
     
  14. #14 noob_wannaB, Jan 24, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 24, 2013
    Hey Sam. Good to see you excited about the grow ;)
    I'll spare you my thought on halogen lighting (since I've read that plants can't process/use the spectrum) but I will say NEVER pay attention to equivalent watts when it comes to growing....it means less than nothing.
    If a 23 watt bulb say 100 watt (or whatever) equivalent, it's still a 23 watt as far as the plant's concerned.

    Almost forgot...65 isn't ad for growing at ALL. Start worrying when it dips to 60 or below ;)

    Added: here's a little sump'n interesting
    Per Ed Rosenthal http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4530.html
     

  15. I don't think I'll have to worry about the temp in AZ for a while now. Winter's over. But I wanted them to be comfortable.

    I read all the stuff on halogens when I decided to do this. Originally it was just for a little extra warmth. While researching I found all the negative info, but I also found a fair share of info stating just the opposite and showing great results from it. It seems that all the negative stuff was hearsay with no one actually speaking from experience, just regurgitating book stuff. I don't want negatives, just positives. If I had listened to the naysayers, I would have never tried my tincture method. If that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this conversation. When this is over, we'll know for sure - just like decarbing.:D

    As far as the wattage is concerned, I only mentioned that in relation to the halogen as part of the progression of the story. I've been at this for quite a while. I've worked with all kinds of lights in situations where intimate knowledge of the electrical draw is critical. The halogens are 72w so that's close enough. However, with cfl's, lumens are the critical measure and not wattage, but if they don't show improvement I have more cfl's. After all, this journal is about success with minimal assets and using those assets that are available. We'll see. ;)
     


  16. My mistake :confused:
     

  17. Don't be confused. I want your input and opinions and advice, good or bad. Just like over in "edibles". When I say that I didn't want negatives, I meant that when I was researching, I was looking for success stories. There was plenty of info why it wouldn't work and if that was the only outcome always, that would have been fine with me. I would have just nixed the idea. No, I was trying to find some reference to a different outcome. So I started reading all of those and they all had critics. But they also had pictures and complete documentation and credibility. That's what I wanted - the possibility. I started analyzing all the different info, good and bad, to determine how I could bend it to my will. Knowing the negatives, I had an idea of what wouldn't work and how to adapt everything into a working hypothesis.

    I understand that the way I tackle things is baffling for a lot of people. I ran into the same trouble in edibles. Post after post after post, people called me crazy, stupid and all sorts of other things. It took a long time for me to start getting any respect for my methods. It will probably take a while here, too, with mostly strangers to how I think. I'm used to it, though, and it's ok.

    But, noobwannB, I want you to tell me what you think, all along the way. You and everyone else. Everything said will be absorbed and used in the continuing saga. I mentioned at the beginning of the post, " Mind you, I'm going forward with it until I notice something bad happening, but any opinions are appreciated. Nothing here is written in stone." You never know. The things that you and others advise here, + or -, is assimilated, to be used when needed (no Borg sightings).

    So, please keep it coming. If you recall, the beginning of the GD thread had a lot of wordy posts to get at least some people on my wavelength. I expect the same here.:D
     

  18. Can I get 4 hps for $3? :) And sometimes a small harvest is the only option. I'm already happy with mine plus I don't pay for electricity.

    This is the same bud as the last pic in the post above. 2 days difference. I hoped to get a look at the frost for you but the camera over a magnifying glass just didn't do it, but I can see that it has started filling.

    [​IMG]
     
  19. I'm not going to be able to do much here tonight. I had a really bad night and day and expect to have the same again tonight due to some severe cervical spine issues. Anyway, I can't sit at the keyboard for very long so there won't be another installment of actual journal tonight and maybe tomorrow, not that anyone will notice. But I do have a couple of nice shots that I just took before the lights went out.

    I think they look pretty good for what they are, but what do I know.....:D

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Flipped one month ago today.
     
  20. Holy fuck! They are getting.... Brobdingnagian in size. Looking very good my friend, whatever you are doing. That plant is loving it, Awesome. How old is she from seed? if you know.
     

Share This Page