My grow setup

Discussion in 'Grow Room Design/Setup' started by passthatbong, Nov 8, 2014.

  1. I know shitty. I don't really care if I get decent buds or any at all.. I just want a plant to look at and enjoy.. all i did was get cheapest soil at frys and plop seeds in.. here they are 5 or 6 days later cant remeber... what I do to make it thrive.. help me out homieS.. just want it to grow
     

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  2. In the milk gallon there's 3.. and one behind it 2.. The bottles are singles
     
  3. really all you need is like some foxfarm or roots organics soil...that way it wont be too difficult...I think its like 20 bucks at a hydro shop and its all you need to get started...that and light.  the better the light, the better it will grow so dont cheap out in that regard.

    sorry, genetics is also very important
     
  4. And you'll want to give them each a pot before their roots get tangled together. Other than that the guy above me has the right idea, get good soil and you could get by without nutes
     
  5. What kinda light Is that?
     
  6. It's GOING to flower...or die, if you won't let it, when it's time. Like any other flowering plant.

    Outside of that, Growhydro's spot on with nutrients...I swear by Fox Farms...and I've had to do dwarf plants through manicuring in my indoor setups, yet yield an ounce to an ounce and a half dried flower per plant, flowered at 24-30 inches pre-flower height, under a CFL Solar Flare 220, 40 watts UV reptile bulbs, and a set of CFL grow bulbs. Plus, being dwarfed, about a pound and a half of wet sugar and water leaves, which can be used wet to make butter, milk, cooking oil, BHO, hash....and lots of it (a pound of butter takes about 2.5 ounces of wet leaves and trim...do it more intensely than most recipes call for, you get some hellaciously powerful products...a quarter pound of butter made from 2.5 oz of wet leaves and buds too small to smoke made 2 pounds of 32 mike per gram buttermints).

    You just want one "to look at", you can discard worries about strains...or yield, potency, or even sugar/water leaves. At which point, your concerns are only light and nutrients, really. Soil pH, too, but that's not AS important, unless it gets so out of whack it's toxic to them.

    Plain old grow bulb and Fox Farm GrowBig vegging nutrients will do that for you.

    But a single plant needs a 5 gallon space for roots, if you want to grow it more than 2 months old...especially if you want it to thrive. And if you're using cheap soil, you'd be smart to go to the local sporting goods store and buy nightcrawlers...about 10 of them per 5 gallon bucket.

    Also watch for fungal infections and mites...they'll kill your plants in a heartbeat, but if you're not planning to smoke anything off them, not really that big a deal, is it? But Greencure has an antifungal powder you mix in water I'm fond of (mix it up, spray it on leaves once a week), and you can buy ladybugs or organic essential oil based liquids for mites (for instance MantisBe from Dominion Organics).
     
  7. Couple days ago
     

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  8. Today
    Earlier
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  9. #9 passthatbong, Nov 18, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 18, 2014
    I used uni gro potting soil fom frys.. I'll get some fox farms but how do I replace the soil am using with new soil? I have 2 cfl bulbs on them. I also take them out for a couple hours of sunlight a day.. wouldn't the circle leaves fall off by now?
     
  10. What's a good budget grow bulb? Also I got couple iguanas so I got uvb bulbs is that any help?
     
  11. If you do it gently you can knock most of the soil off from around the roots, and remember go only one plant per new pot when you transplant them. And not necessarily on the first set of the leaves they can stay on all the way to harvest. And a budget light they have big CFL grow lights that in my local shop sale for around $120 ish for fixture and bulb but I'm sure amazon has them cheaper
     
  12. Thanks a lot everybody
    I got them in separate pots now also
     
  13. Can I just add fox farm without knocking current soil off roots? Seems a little risky exposing bare roots..
    Like just get plant out with little bundle of soil on roots and just replace soil in pot with Foxfarms?
     
  14. What do you mean by "budget", first off?
    I mean, go through the right places, you can get a 400 watt MH, a hood hood, and ballast for about $150 as a kit...but you'll be buying another $50 HPS for flowering.

    But at 50K hours average for each, on average, that's not bad. I mean, that calculates out to 92 months on your vegging light (not that you actually get that, that's just a rated average), same on your flowering bulb.

    Dat's-a whole lotta crops, Vito.

    But at 400 watts, that's 7.2kWh/day in electricity for the light during veg, NOT counting inefficiencies...which is almost a quarter of a normal house's electrical use, so your electric bill just went up about 25% just for the light. This is true no matter WHAT light you use, 400 watts is 7.4kWh/dy on an 18 hour cycle, counting inefficiencies.

    To me, THAT is "budget", since you still get nowhere near sunlight intensity, and light energy is life, for these guys.

    Others will tell you LEDs are budget, because you can spend $400 for a GOOD full spectrum with a footprint that will do a couple plants...up to 2.5 foot by 2.5 foot proper footprint during flower (to me, I've USED that as a main light in a 4 plant 4 by 4 tent, but I used a BUNCH of other light so I had full coverage), which uses around 165 watts true (2.97 kWh/dy on an 18 hour cycle, counting integral inefficiencies), which delivers a light intensity of 400 watts...all targeted wavelengths the plant uses. manufacturers claim it's EFFECT is 3 to 4 times true wattage, but since you lose a lot of microband wavelengths the plant ALSO gets under wide spectrum bulbs, I stick with intensity by light meter. The plants behave like that's what they're getting, anyhow. You pay a lot up front, they need replacing less often, your ongoing bills are a lot lower. But you also lose penetration, so only do this as a primary if you're growing short plants.

    Fluorescents and CFLs are cheap to run, and pretty cheap to buy...but regardless of ratings, check them under an actual light meter at the distance the plants stand from it...light falls off by the square (if you want the same intensity at 10 yards you have at one yard, you need a source 100 times as powerful--increase the distance by 10, increase the power by 10 squared). But they have bandwidth issues to deal with...lots of bandwidths the plants actually use are either far too weak in comparison to natural light at the same number lumens, regardless of the rating (and the light spectrometer to prove this is an expensive piece of equipment, so most growers never truly know this, they go off what the box the bulb comes in says).

    I personally swear by using small amounts of reptile bulb light. Where is your iguana's natural habitat? Where do the plants grow bets outdoors? Why do you need to buy those bulbs for the iguana for it to stay healthy? No other light delivers a small balance of what their natural habitat's light gives them, right? The plants are native to the same conditions, they want the same thing, for best conditions). That's only been backed by scientific evidence for a short period, now, as applied to growing MJ indoors most effectively, but it also is supported by plain old common sense...you're doing the best you can to give it what it wants from nature, right?

    Personally, I used 2 20 watt hood lamps, mounted with machine screws to the light hood, in my 4X4, and now use 4 of them in the 5 by 10. I get great potency and quality, and decent yield. Couldn't tell you for certain how much of that is the UVA/UVB influence, but I figure anything the plants get in nature, I want to do my best to copy, to get the best from my plants.


    What I can tell you for certain...if someone tells you to use normal incandescent grow bulbs....slap 'em upside the head. You can do that while germinating, or even for hydro-clones, if you're careful. But you need close to 400 watts to do it, and that's a lot of heat for rather low light yield that's missing a LOT of proper spectrum light. Doesn't mean it can't be done (and I HAVE done it), but relying on it is flat out foolishness, for the plants themselves.

    The rest of it...personal taste, budget, study, and "what works for the conditions I have to work with". Everyone will tell you something different, because it works for them, or they've seen it done that way, or heard about it done that way, or someone explained it in a way that made sense to them.

    So the best advice anyone can really give you is "look at the science, look at the conditions you have to work with, and come up with the solution that works for you."...and the science is "what's found in nature where you believe your strain grows best in the outdoors with minimal help? How do you come as close as possible in your conditions to matching the aspects of those conditions the plant USES?"
     
    By By "aspects it uses", I mean the plants don't use green wavelengths of light. That's why they're green, they REFLECT those wavelengths.
    They veg most energetically with excess blue spectrum...because blue spectrum is short wavelength, high energy.
    The use more red in flower because red is lower energy longer wavelength, they still NEED energy, but not as much...which is why a shorter light cycle triggers flowering...the lower energy wavelengths feed it "gently" so it still gets enough to make flowers, but not so much it grows like wildfire, and puts the energy into THAT rather than flower formation and growth.
    They use higher amounts of UVA/UVB than most lightbulbs will provide, because those wavelengths are more highly present in sunlight where they normally grow.
    Depending on if they're "high land" plants or "low land plants", the amount of CO2 they ideally want changes (400ppm at sea level is "normal" in nature, at 14.7 ppsi pressure. At 1 mile (Denver, CO altitude), gas balances are the same, since you only lose 1.5 ppsi, so it's still 400 ppm, but for the VOLUME used, less actual CO2 is present, so the EFFECT is as if there's only 332 ppm. Which means if you're growing a high land strain inside a beach house, you calculate your balances for 330 or even a bit less, since natural CO2 presences will still exist to some extent, if you're growing a low land tropical strain, you balance for 400 ppm by volume).
    Similar with heat..."rule of thumb" rules work. But ideally, you go by where your strain grows best with least interference...for instance, while normally, if you get 2 feet into soil, average soil temps hover around 50 degrees F, anything that grows well "just about everywhere" will do fine if the bottom of your pot is 50 degrees or cooler, as long as the top 3 or 4 inches comes somewhat near the atmospheric temperatures. But in places like the Afghani deserts, surface soil is around 85 degrees in high summer (best part of growing season), and 2 feet down, it's 70-ish, consistently. If you can manage to mimic that for your Afghan Gooey, that's what you want to do, for best results.
    But atmospherically, "rule of thumb" is 70-85 degrees air temp. That's nowhere NEAR average for a desert, or even a lot of tropical strains, and way too high for many high land strains. A desert strain might drop to 70 OVERNIGHT during prime growing season, and spend most of the day over 100 degrees. A tropical strain, on the other hand, has little deviation in temperature of air from noon to midnight. A consistent 75-80 degrees is prime for it. A high land plant isn't going to see anything over 80 degrees, and THAT it will see rarely, in most places, but at night, it can get below 50 in July after a clear day (ask anyone who's gone camping in mountain country...or lives in it). But it has WILD variations in temps between days and nights, and even day to day. So you're goign to have a hard time killing it with uncontrolled temps, unless you consistently let it get below 50 for extended periods or above 80 during main vegging period...come flowering, they want even LOWER temps...call it a bottom threshhold of mid to upper 40's and daylight of upper 60's, at best.



    Yes, complicated as hell, and "too much trouble" for most people to go to, both in research and practice. After all, what we want, really, is just good smoke off happy flowers we raised ourselves. But DO the research...figure out which aspects YOU can manage that are proper for your strains, and manage them.

    The plants are your "babies", are they not? If this was your child, you'd do your best to give him/her the healthiest possible environment, in whatever way you can, and probably read parenting books, child psychology books, about health for youngsters, about childhood illnesses.....why not try to treat your plants just as well? It's not like you truly have anything preventing it...you have a computer, and time to be on here...so you have time to be hitting college sites, science sites, meteorological sites, looking up climate and soil and altitude for where your strain grows (looking up where your strain grows best, to begin with).

    And then, armed with the proper knowledge, use your head. Study the products out there, test your grow room conditions as best you can. Think about how YOU want to provide for health or eliminate unhealthy problems, even if the solution you come up with is ENTIRELY "out of the box".


    Basically, if someone tells you they have "the one and only solution" or "the absolute best way to grow is like THIS"...it might be what THEY are wedded to...or they may have a history of getting THEIR best results that way, or they might have read, heard, or seen someone else do it that way, and thought it cool as hell, and that it made sense...but that's all it is...opinion and personal experience. YOU are the one growing, and getting all the knowledge you can, especially supportable knowledge based on demonstrable science. Take it that way, educate yourself, find YOUR ways to attempt to handle it, and tinker until you find what works best for YOU.

    What you'll get from US is, at best, an amalgamation of what works for us, for people we know, for people who've shared THEIR experiences and preferences with us. We can tell you what we think and why. What we've done, and how it worked for us. That's really all we can give you.
     
  15. Put the blunt down and read a book, huh?
    I just read the first chapter of yours. Unnecessary capitalization and poor use of punctuation.
    Maybe you should read more. I'm sure it will help your writing.

    Why don't you show your grow Mr. Pro?

    You sure know what "most growers" are doing nowadays. Must be nice to be so tapped into the growing world.

    You talk about growing like you do it for a living. Lets see. Post a journal.

    Proof is in the pudding. Anybody can talk about it. Lets see what you got.

    Somebody asks a question and you write a novel.

    Lets see what you got cupcake.

    And don't show your "coach's" work.
     
  16. #17 Indie-Kah, Nov 19, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 19, 2014
    Hmmm...improper capitalization and spelling...could that POSSIBLY be because, due to a degradive neurological disorder that has me on MMJ to begin with, I have to use a TTS/dictation program to read and post, so it was the program responding to my spoken word?

    As for growing for a living, actually, no, I assist at a co-op for the outdoor grow, and do my own indoor grow that is not especially large, but has been consistently unusually high yield and high quality.

    Knowing what "most growers are doing" is a result of being active in the growing community here in WA, as a result of being as heavily involved with the co-op, dispensary, and MMJ activism we've been HAVING to do, as the state tries to convert the whole damn system to recreational use rules.

    So I basically spend 4 hours a shot, two times a week, EVERY week in a room full of people who DO grow for a living, or run dispensaries for a living, "talking shop" as much as they talk activism. And since those meetings are hosted by different grow owners or dispensary owners, anywhere from here near the Canadian border down to Vancouver, WA, all the way from here on the water to the Idaho border...yeah, I have plenty of exposure to see EXACTLY what's going on, and to LISTEN to the pros in the second freest state in the nation in this respect, and in many cases, inspect their setups and ask them why they do something this way, or that way, or the other way (and the one with the highest number of plants allowed for a private OR professional grow, with medical).

    THAT is on top of, as I said, working as close to full time in the co-op outdoor garden as I can as a volunteer (which is why I'm not a "pro grower", it's not my living, I make NO money off that), and working my ass off, but spending much less actual time on it due to lower numbers of plants, for my home setup.

    Not to mention, since I habitually study the HELL out of anything that interests me, having gone to just about every serious pro-sponsored blog, guide endorsed by "the names" (Simpson, Herer, High Times, NORML's site), studied the botany and biochemistry behind it, studied how and why cannaboids function as they do (to the extent of subscribing to 5 different for-fee international peer reviewed journals...you know, where doctorates in fields relating to it publish for other doctorate holders to compare, challenge, reject, or attempt to disprove?), already knew the science behind the equipment, due to having, as I said before, worked in construction right up until I sold my GC company to go back to school for a damn engineering degree...which believe me, requires a shitload of physics, chemistry, and maths classes (my minor, by the way, was applied maths)...I'd say yeah, I'm a bit more qualified than you seem to think, and one HELL of a lot more dialed in than you're showing yourself to be.

    Beyond that, I'm even, currently, auditing (attend, take tests, do homework, but receive no credit, and no degree to be awarded) the botany degree courses up here at WWU, which has a very highly rated botany and biochem program, and HOPING that I acquire the level of knowledge I want before this disease progresses too far for me to be able to USE it. With any luck, I'll have time to get to the point I can challenge the required course tests, get the degree, and proceed to post-grad studies (it would be nice to die with a master's of science or PhD on the wall, but I'm not likely to have that much time).

    So..unless you can match those qualifications, I suggest you go back to that nice cozy spot under the rock, or, as I suggested, crack a book and learn.
     
  17. As for showing my grow...you want to try to take a decent pic when your hands shake like they're attached to an eccentric cam on a high RPM motor?
     
  18. You sure talk a lot of smack behind your computer. Surely you walk with your head down.
    My grow is in my sig. Mylar. 70 degrees.

    Like I said, put up or shut up.
    So you can shut up now.
     

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