Hi everyone, I had a lot of fun during my first grow, it was successful and encouraging! I am still enjoying all my hard work!! I am attempting to build a working, viable grow cabinet, that is super stealthy. I want to make it so stealthy that someone could literally walk by it and not have a clue. I am growing 2 automatic White Russians. Although I am using exactly the same technique I did during my first grow, these plants seem to grow very slowly. They seem healthy, are getting fresh air and lots of light. Just growing very slowly. They also seem very small, everything about them are tiny. Clueless. I even began giving them a weak solution of GrowBig and BigBloom. It was 1/4 strength, with a couple drops of Superthrive. It didn't burn them, but it also didn't seem to do anything. Very weird. Maybe it is indicative of the strain, perhaps when they show sex, they explode in growth. I hope.
I used a fan out of an old air purifier, the design is 2 small squirrel cage fans, side by side. It blows a good deal of air, but I am still having major heat issues when the doors are closed, I think my intake is lacking, I am going to try to rectify that. I am still trying to properly lightproof it as well, it is a work in progress. Home Depot has a reinforced mylar tape, called FlexFix, it's in the ducting section. It works really good, and doesn't fall off. It's not cheap, but a roll lasts a long time. The following pic is of my first grow, after the bud has been cured for awhile. Don't know the strain, but I think it is pretty pure indica, it can couchlock you.
My auto stayed small until a week after it started flowering, then it blew up. Its almost doubled in size this week.
I was going to xplant them as soon as they showed sex, so I wouldn't have to waste soil and time on a male. If I must though, I could plant them both in my giant pot, and use a cardboard divider, and if one is male, I can easily pull it and replace the rootball with worm castings, which would give the remaining plant a boost of nutrition. The divider would keep the roots from intermingling.
I'm suprised giving your plants nutes didn't make them grow faster than last time. I didn't feed my plants any ferts until 3.5 weeks in and was wondering how much bigger they would be if I have. Glad to see a poor man can grow good buds. I'll definetly follow this one as closely as the last!
Thanks, I need all the help I can get. I have no idea why giving nutes to baby plants doesn't burn them, or cause faster growth. It is like the twilight zone. They are quality foxfarm nutes and when I gave BigBloom to my last plant, she would have a growth spurt everytime. Why does my cabinet get over 85 degrees with the doors shut, when it is blowing out tons of air, and I put a 6in inline duct fan in the intake hole for even more circulation. I know the 278w of cfl is pretty warm, but i am exchanging air very fast, I really don't get it. Should I cut back on the light a bit? I could probably lose the 68 watt big lamp, that would put me at 210w. Might help temps a bit. Just some strange goings on. I think one of the babies is a male, crazy how a 2 inch plant is showing preflowers, but whatever. I will know soon if it is male.
Yeah thats crazy that the auto strain shows sex so quickly. Sorry about the male. I've also sometimes been seeing my closet get warm from only 180 watts even with the fan blowing on them. I turn the AC to really cold in my room and that usually does the trick. Maybe if you put a fan close to the lights it would keep the temps down?
I tried that, had the little fan right in the damn pot, blowing upward toward the lights, no help, 94 degrees. I have massive airflow, it's irritating. My thought, I used emergency blankets instead of regular mylar, perhaps they are retaining the heat of the lights because of their nature. I should go get real mylar, but I hate to spend 30 bucks on mylar if it doesn't work.
Hey Hambone Good to see your 2nd grow set up so quick. Will be following as usual, the cab looks good, a bitch to hear of your temp probs, only thing I can suggest is to have your intake hole twice the size of your exit hole, if you haven't got that covered already. Have a good one
Hambone! Nice to see hear from ya again! Looks like you got a nice cab for a 2nd grow. Just started on my 2nd attempt. It's on my sig. +rep for good Karma on your second grow. Best of Luck! -Kyung Yi
Hey ham, Thoroughly enjoyed your last grow and am looking forward to this one. As far as your heat problems are concerned I have read grow upon grow that started in a stealth rubbermaid and always had to switch out due to heat problems, I believe that it is due to the plastic container which retains much more heat than wood. Your cab looks like its a thick plastic and I think this may be the problem. If you could switch your cfls with a 1ft floro setup it would also work. The long floros generate nearly no heat, cfls can get a lil hot, specially that 64w (using 2 of them as supplemental light in my grow and use another fan just to blow on them). I know there are cheap floro fixtures at Home Depot but i think they may be too long, I think Fryes or your nearest major electronic store would have a fixutre for $20 or less. If you can get a fan blowing hard enough on the cfls and still have active exhaust that may also do the trick. I saw that you said you tried having the fan blowing on em but wasnt sure if u still had active exhaust. Sorry for the long post, smokin some Orange Kush just harvested stay lit
Thanks for checking in guys. I wish I had bought a wooden cabinet instead of this plastic one, it gets hot no matter what I do. Not only do I have Hurricane force winds from my exhaust fan, I also have a 6 inch inline duct fan on the intake, and a small fan inside the box for air movement. It still gets too hot. I made my intake hole bigger when I installed the fan, I guess the combination of cheap mylar and a plastic cab makes it get way too warm.
yeah my plant is starting to really flower (autoflowering) and it's not even 10" high yet, probably like 7", but it's very healthy and the nodes are beautiful... it looks like it's going to get a lot bigger a lot faster now especially since the last day it grew quite a bit. best of luck with your grow, man
Thanks Jay, I think instead of switching all my lights, I will just start over with a wooden cabinet. I have all the fans, and hardware to make a great cabinet, it blows shitTons!! of air! But I think the plastic cabinet, combined with cheap emergency blanket mylar, is creating a box with insulating qualities of an antarctic quality sleeping bag. I think a wooden cabinet, with the interior spray painted flat white, would be much cooler and easier to ventilate. Goodbye another 50 bucks, dammit. I just bought that plastic cabinet, after looking at a wood one. I had no idea the plastic one would hold more heat.
Hi, been stingy with the updates, very busy. But I only have one plant now, the male is confirmed and isolated, I might try some selective pollination. The girl has been transplanted into her final home, 12qts of love. I am still using my Miraclegrow Organic, Wormcastings, and perlite. I was going to get the 20 dollar bag of FFOF from the grow store, perhaps next time. I had pretty good luck with the miraclegrow blend, no bugs, no burning, nice drainage, robust growth. I am very curious to see how big this auto gets. It was tiny until it started showing sex, now the growth has exploded. I also gave her 3/4 strength GrowBig and BigBloom, yesterday morning. No nute burn at all, just an accelerated growth pattern. She really is growing quickly now, and I see some white hairs. I switched the daylight Cfl's with softwhites, but I still have 54watts of daylight on them, for a bit of a full spectrum thing. Next feeding, I am going to use like a 1/2dose of Growbig, and a 1/2dose of TigerBloom, in addition to the BigBloom. I think my last plant was lacking proper nitrogen at the start of flowering, because I suffered a very quick yellowing of my plant at the late part of flowering. I would like it to stay green a bit longer so the buds don't turn yellow before they are ready for harvest.
Hey, just dropping in, things look like they're going well. As for your temps I was having the same problem not matter what I was doing I couldn't get the temps to drop. I think the emergency blankets will be part of it but the Intake fan will also be causing you problems. When you just have an exhaust fan and a passive intake you create negative pressure. Providing you intake is higher than your lights and youe intake (which should be approx 2 x the sixe of your exhaust hole) is at the bottom of the cab it will draw cool low lying air in and push hot air out, it keeps the overall airflow in one direction. If you have an intake, particularly one that is mismatched then you create all kinds of strange air flows within the Cab and the heat isn't removed as effectively. I didn't belive any of this because I though more cold air in must be better but it's just not true. By removing my intake fan, and using a larger exhast fan 50% more CFM (but you only need enough to clear the box 3-4 times a minute as a minimum) I was able to drop my temps from 90-93 to 78-83 which is a big old drop. Not sure where you setup is but is can duct the exhaust away fro the intake then you'll be laughing. hope it helps (it did me) J