First Grow - 300watt CFL - bag seed - firehazard

I've been reading through the CFL grow logs on here for the last week or so. It has made me think that I could pull something like that off.

I mostly use MJ medicinally. It helps alleviate some of the side effects of my post transplant meds. I had a kidney transplant in 2001. I have been on predinisone and two other anti-rejection meds since then. They all have psychological side effects. Psych meds just exacerbate the symptoms. Smoking pot 3 nights a week helps keep me even and fends off depression.

But it's nice to smoke socially too.



Since I am a poor, sick person, I only had a budget of about $250 to work with.

My hopes are to create a sustainable 2 plant grow - clone as often as I can to keep things moving. If these plants take off, then in a few months I can justify ordering some seeds, but it just wasn't in the budget this month.


So far, I have four seeds germinating, but only two have shown taproots. I probably need to pick up more seeds to increase my chances of getting two females, but I'm just not in the habit of keeping seeds around.


My grow cabinet is 4'x2'x4' it's made from 3/8" plywood with a 2x2 frame. It is lined with reflective emergency blankets.


My lights are:

4 26w (100w equiv) 6500k CFLs.
2 26w (100w equiv) 5500k CFLs.
2 68w (300w equiv) 2700k CFLs.

I may add two more of the 5500K CFLs, I have the bulbs and sockets, but I need to see what my temps do first.

I will probably replace the 6500k's with 2700k of the same spectrum for flowering.

I plan to ScrOG it.

I have an Oregon Scientific Weather Station 500 keeping an eye on temps. It has a remote sensor for temp and humidity and it has high/low temp and humidity memory.

I have a digital vacation timer running my light cycle. I plan to run 16/8 for veg.


These are picks of my cabinet under construction.











The lights are way brighter than this pic makes them look. My camera adjusted for the light so they look dim, but they are bright.



My GF and I starting calling it the firehazard today while we were building it because the lights are hung up a little sketchy, but I plan to finish it up - make it less ghetto in the next few days. I also have some extra metal ductwork laying around to make light hoods out of, but I need to get them mounted better before I put that in.

I also have not addressed airflow, but with my temps in the mid eighties, I probably need to do something.

Still I wanted to run it for two days straight before the seedlings go in to see what my absolute max temp gets to. That might give me some idea how much airflow I need to get the temps to something reasonable. Mid eighties aren't reasonable are they???

My humidity has leveled out at 16%. Might need to address that too...


Since the two seeds that have germed were just put in soil today, no pics to show there.


So far my outlay looks something like this. These are estimates, I need to gather receipts to get exact figures, but I'm dreading that because I know I blew the budget.

Lights and wiring - $70.
Cabinet and hardware - $90
Timer and temp monitor - $60
Soil, pots, test strips - $40

So just from that I know I'm about $10 over budget, but there may be something I left out.

And I still don't have anything for airflow/filtering so that's going to take me way over budget.

I have some PC fans laying around that I was planning to use, but I don't know how to wire them up. They're 12v DC. I thought I could just plug them into an extra PC power supply I have laying around, but it occurred to me as I was working today that PC fans plug into the motherboard, not directly to the power supply. Maybe I can just splice into some of the molex connector wires on the power supply. Or maybe just scrounge up some cash for real fans.

The cabinet is in a closet now, so even though it's not completely light sealed, I can seal it off more my closing the closet. I'm pulling the lights out of the closet itself so I won't have any accidents. I might also put some weatherstripping around the doors to seal the light out better.


So there it is.

Any advice, recommendations, comments, etc. are greatly appreciated.

I'm still a little overwhelmed with all the information I've digested over the last week and I'm still at the steep end of the learning curve, so let me know if there is anything else I need to be doing, looking at, should have done differently.

Thanks for looking. Hopefully in the next few days I'll have some green sprouts to introduce to the world.

For your fan problem, you can take an old cellphone charger or some type of wall adapter and connect it to the fan. If it spins crazy fast and wines then its to powerful. you could either add another fan to the circuit or find an different charger / adapter.
Its probably not the "correct" way of doing it but it worked for me

Happy Growing

is that aluminum foil?.....bad news

is that aluminum foil?.....bad news

No. It's a reflective emergency blanket.

My max temp has been 87 degrees. My low temp was 66.

My humidity has been beteen 12% and 19%.

Still nothing from my seedlings.

Woohoo! I have sproutage!





It's wierd. I'm really into this. I feel like a proud father.

I wonder if it will be hard when the time comes to cut them down. I feel like I have the start of a bond going on with them. I've put a lot of work into this so far, I can't imagine all the work to come and how that will strengthen the bond.

Day 2 after breaking the surface.





My lights are adustable - but not adjustable enough to get them down right over the seedlings, so I put them on top of some 5 gallon buckets and moved the lights to be 2" above the plants.

I put a pan of water in the cabinet hoping that it's evaporation would up the humidity. It seems to have worked, the humidity if up to 30% and it seems to have had a side benefit of lowering the temp a few degrees.

Grow babies grow.

I'm going to look into getting a real humidifier as soon as the roads are passable - we got 4" of snow so far today and it's still coming down and they have not salted or scraped my street yet.

So my first two plants died...

I had four more seeds to try again. Bagseed again.

I upgraded, de-ghetto-fied and de-firehazarded my lighting. I made a thread about my CFL reflector fixture at the link below.

http://forum.grassci...-reflector.html

I also added a GREAT cheap oscillating fan.

http://forum.grassci...-enclosure.html

The new seedling are about 3 weeks old from punching their heads above the surface.

I also started some tomato, cilantro, catnip, cat grass, and serrano pepper plants in my grow box. Those will go to window sills and then out doors in the spring.

I'm pretty happy about the results to far. I was a bit discouraged when the first two plants died, and having more than just a couple of pot plants in my box is helping me keep my interest and I am learning things from those that will translate to the MJ as well.


So anywho, here are a few pics from today.









Holy Taproot! This seed went in the soil 5 days ago!



Vanity shot of the littlest girl - fresh in her new pot!






This one stretched to 2" tall as soon as she popped the surface. Before I even saw her, she was almost knocking on the lid of the nursery tray to get out. She has trouble holding her leaves up for a little while so I tied her to a stake. She's still a little weak kneed, but improving and maturing nicely.



The catnip. When I transplanted this, her first leaves (after the cotyledons) drooped and where they touched the soil they burnt up. I was worried that that would be the end of it, but it kept growing. It's about 2 weeks old.


The shortest of my 3 weekers. It's from bagseed that a friend gave me so it might be a different strain than the other three.





Tomatoes.



More tomatoes.

let me guess, your girlfriend made you put the cilantro and tomatoes and stuff in there right, lol i have 3 sour diesel plants that i am lst'ing the shit out of...there a little stressed right now but theyll perk back up, anyway yeah dude my g/f made me let her put her damn bonsai tree and a tomatoe plant in my grow cabinet lol.

Looking Great Renaldo!! the only thing i would suggest, is getting all those wires above the water line. i know you have everything double-potted, but just as a precaution.

Thanks for the replies guys! My GF didn't make me plant the other stuff, but they are for her. She tries to grow tomatoes in her garden every year and I think she over-nutes them. I figured I'd give them a shot since I now have a place to put an outdoor garden and have really enjoyed the indoor gardening I've been doing.

I moved the power strip to the back. It's sitting on a couple of 2x4s now so it's safer, but I need to pick up some short screws so I can mount it on the back wall.




Some updated pics. Nothing exciting, but I have 'em so I thought I would post 'em.












Peppers.



Tomatoes and catnip.



More tomatoes.



A recent sprout. I'm not sure what's up with the tips of the leaves. Maybe nute burn???

I took most of these pics yesterday.

The latest sprout is from some bagseed that my GF got from a friend. I soaked them for several days and only a few showed me any taproot love. The littlest sprout is one of those.

Just so I could be done with the cup of water BS, I decided to take the rest of the dozen or so seeds that hadn't popped and throw them in my seedling tray. I'm almost done with the tray altogether but I'm still waiting for the cilantro to pop up, so I figured it wouldn't hurt.

When I checked in on things this evening, I was met by this smiling little face.



I had just about given up on these seeds, but I guess it just shows that nothing is ever completely hopeless. We'll see if she flourishes.

Not much to say about these pics.

The big plants are four weeks old (from breaking the surface) today.

Just for laughs, I took a cutting from my tallest plant today, put some TakeRoot on the cut, and stuck it in a mini-hempy bucket.

Hoping maybe it will take off and catch up to the other plants at least enough that they can all go through flowering at the same time.

If it dies, it's no big deal. I have no idea if a clone will even take root in a dixie cup hempy bucket, but I figured it was worth a shot.



Ghetto.



My two taller plants.



My two smaller, but more lush plants.



My plant with deformed leaves, but monsterous growth compared to the other four at his age.



My cat's high grade catnip. He told me he's gonna get all the ladies once this stuff gets out to the street.


I move all of my plants up because I found I got better airflow and lower temps if I raised the light all the way up, even if they plants were still right under the lights.

I currently have 10 27watt (true) 5500k and one 63watt (true) 2700k for a total of 333watts and about 18,000 lumens at 83 degrees during the day and 77 at night when I turn my furnace off.


I read up on lumens and it makes sense to me to use that as a reference instead of watts. Watts are just too unreliable of a number and don't relate directly to the light output.

Nice. I planted catnip in my greenhouse with a few others too...though the catnip sprouts are itty bitty....I had hoped they'd match up to my ladies but that isnt happening fast. I planted the veggies for home use and a mix to the eye...most people that have seen all my plants so far have no clue whats a weed from a corn stalk.

My catnip was really slow to get going. It took like 10 days to germinate and crept along in the first couple of weeks after that, but it's taken off in the last couple of days.

I'm just feeding it the leftovers from the water and nutes I feed the MJ and it seems to be taking it well.

I think I may need to rethink my grow on the other things. It's making my grow area crowded really fast.

It's kinda funny, but getting into growing MJ has made me want to build a second box and do some Hempy bucket tomato and pepper plants. I've found I really enjoy gardening which I never thought I would.

looks nice.

Thanks!


Update for today...

The big plants are 31 days old today from the day they popped up.



The taller two and the catnip.



The shorter two and my clone experiment.



My mutant. 11 days after popping above the soil.



My little seedling. Poor little girl has to live in the shadow of her older sisters, doesn't get much light. She popped out of the soil 6 days ago. Her only point of living is as a backup in case something happens to her sisters.



My Hempy Dixie Cup Perlite clone experiment. Not much development, still a little limp looking, but I'm sure it's hasn't developed much in the way of roots yet.

Looking very nice. I'm surprised i have overlooked this for over a month? =/

Ill be tuning in man. Keep up the good work and keep us updated.

Thanks!

I like to read grows that have a lot of pictures, so mine log is mostly pics.



I've been reading up on SCRoG tonight. It's been in the back of my head to do since I started.

The problem is it seems like a lot more time before going into flowering and a lot of work for unknown quality seeds. I don't want to scrog ditchweed, and the seeds were given to me so I didn't even smoke the stuff it came from...

I have an opportunity to visit friends out of town in early May, and I just realized that's like 9 weeks away. I really don't want to bother my GF with having to tend to the crops - she doesn't live with me. She doesn't have a green thumb.

So I think I'm going to skip the SCRoG this go around and just be happy with whatever I get.

I lowered my plants today. One of them was getting into the lights pretty bad. Before I lowered the light, I took some pics. They show better when they aren't hugging lights.

So, about those pictures.






The plant that was getting into the lights. This poor girl. She got beat up when she was smaller by a fan with too much blow. Now she's all wrinkles up top from getting into the lights. She's my tallest, but not my prettiest.


The three prettier sisters.


Just an upclose pic of the last uncut top.


Catnip. Hearty little plant. Been feeding it nutes, probably not the right nutes, since it was little. It might be a little light colored, but it's growing up nice.



I wish all my plants grew like this one has.



'matoes.



This is my clones experiment. Not looking so good this evening. The top looks alright, still perky, but the big leaves are completely limp. Maybe that's expected as part of not having not much roots? Should I trim the droopy leaves? Does it help to even flip them over so the right side is facing up?



Looks like a green bird with some sort of crazy headfeathers.



This plant has been droopy since day 1. Always a nice green color, never any burn. I've played with the PH and it helps for a day or so. I tell myself it's those nice fat leaves pulling the branches down. I should probably try to figure it out.







The tall one.



Full size Bic for size comparison.

i love the post it remids me of how i use to do the stealth cabnet with the cfls i had some damn good sucess with it too. good luck looks liek everythings goin good

Im no pro grower in fact i don't grow at all (wink) (wink) But i know that flat white paint reflects light better then emergency blankets.... other than that your stuffs great