2x2 150w HPS Closet Box Bubba Kush Clone Grow Journal

Picked up a Bubba Kush clone from a local cannabis dispensary on June 10th and stuck it in a 3.5 gallon pot under a 150w HPS in the corner of my closet on the same day. Put it on a timer at 18/6 right away.

Got sick of the light bleeding out of my closet. I can't close the closet door or it will get too hot and stale air. So I got out some cardboard and foal and made the most ghetto looking grow box, but it mostly kept the light out, and I had fresh air pulling from a hole in the bottom. However, I just turned my annoyance of light into paranoia of the cardboard catching on fire, and annoyance in the foil blowing around. So I designed a 2x2x4 box, and built it from plywood.

The box is much better than my ghetto rig. The intake fan is extremely load though. It must spin nearly 10,000 RPM. I can turn it down with my voltage adjustable power supply, but I love the turbulent wind. I'm still thinking of getting a larger quiet fan.

As for the Bubba Kush clone, it seems to be doing only okay. I only gave it some B1 starter for the first few waterings, no other nutes. This light doesn't have the ideal color temperature for vegging, but I was told it would work fine. This is my second grow. My first was under just a couple 30 watt fluorescent tubes, but I remember the vegetation being much greener. It's hard to say, as everything looks yellow under a HPS light. The older growth is definitely at least a bit more yellow though. Maybe it needs something? I'll check the PH soon. Also pretty sure I let temps get way too high for a couple days before I had any kind of box, and some of the first leaves browned.

The picture name has the date it was taken. 06-25-12 01 shows brown pre-flowering pistils at the base of the main cola (hard to see with brown dirt behind). Also note that the very bottom fan leaves were already crappy like that when I got the clone

 

Glad to see some responses. I was thinking that nobody would care about my little grow and this journal would just be for me to keep track of things, but it's nice to see that others are interested.

The plant stays about 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the rest of the room. I keep the room cool, but on a hot day it can get up to 90 where the plant is. Most of the time it's about 76±10. Luckily I'm in the SF Bay Area, so hot days are pretty rare. Sometimes my girlfriend closes the closet, in which case temps slowly build up and get way too high. But that is rare.

Yes, that is my intake fan. Brings cool air in from the bottom. The other fan blows at my plant and the HPS light. There is also an exhaust hole at the opposite side in the roof, but no fan there yet.

I have the same question. Flushing, which I think I have to do right now, requires getting it all wet. So obviously I can't just water part. I just figured big pot would mean I need to transplant less, less shock, and so I hoped for better results. Not speaking from experience, just what seemed logical, so please correct me.

But anyway..
I tested the pH today, and it's way too low. I used a test kit with a pH detecting solution. Water running out was pretty dark red when I mixed it with the solution, so pH is 4 or lower! Tested the water I've been feeding it, and it's right around 7. I wanted to immediately dump in a bunch of pH UP to my water and flush it, but I read somewhere that changing the pH too quickly (by over .5) could cause more problems than sticking with the wrong pH. So I used pH UP to get my water to about 7.5-8 and flushed with about 6 gallons. Maybe that wasn't enough water for flushing? Now the water that comes out of the bottom of the pot is kind of an orange-red when mixed with the pH solution, which I think is probably around 4.5. I'm going to do some more research and see how fast I can safely get it up to the correct pH. I also need to find out how often I can safely flush. I only water every 4 days or so, so I guess I'll have to wait at least that long between flushing. My first plant got no nutes, no flushing, no pH testing, and no problems at all. I guess my problem is crappy soil with added nutes. I haven't played with pH since high school science, so I've got a lot of reading to do.

 

Thanks! Next time I'll start small and move up.

Here are some pictures of my run-out water being pH tested. Looks orange from the side, but more red from the top. I know someone with a pH meter, so I'll have them help me out on the next watering. I can at least use his meter to calibrate my eye when deciphering the pH using my liquid testing kit. Not sure to look from the top or side for example.

 

Perfect, thank you! Hopefully it will perk up soon then and stop yellowing. Next watering, I'll try to get it a bit more yellow.. maybe around 5.5 to 6. I couldn't find anyone else that was against changing to the correct pH too quickly, so I guess I won't worry about that too much.

 

It's still slowly getting worse, but I think it could turn around.

When I bought this Bubba Kush clone, the guy at the club told me to bury it up to the first green growth because the main stem was pretty long without growth, and I told him it's going indoors. I think listening to him was my first mistake. Second one was wrong soil with slow release nutrients. Third was too much soil. I slowly started removing soil from the top, and there were no roots at all until I got to the point where the roots started to begin with.

I removed at least half of the soil that was in there. Let it dry out for a few days, then watered again and checked pH. pH seemed good with my friend's probe (6.5ish), but it wasn't a very expensive probe, so no exact measurements. The run-off water looked yellow with my liquid pH test kit, so I think it's 6+.

I don't want to waste light, so I picked up a couple more clones, some much better soil, and some smaller pots. Also planted lots of other types of herbs and vegetables seeds around the outside. PK=Purple Kush, and NL=Northern Lights

 

Little update:

The Bubba Kush clone seems to have stopped getting worse.

The 'decay' cycle was something like- new leaf grows fine and looks good, then the leaf stops getting bigger, usually gets a few small golden-brown spots, starts looking like it's been over-watered (thick leaves kind of curl backwards), and at the same time gets more and more yellow looking overall. Eventually the leaf dries up and falls off (two fell off so far).

This problem started on the two very first fan leaves on the main cola, but eventually all leaves that were not getting bigger were showing these problems. Even a lot of the mini-fan leaves from new nodes were effected.

However, now a couple of the larger leaves near the main cola are staying green. They did get some of the golden-brown spots before I changed the pH, but they never got to the yellow/over-watered looking stage. I'm sure they would be yellow by now if the plant were not getting better. The existing left-over yellow leaves may still get cannibalized, but they're ugly anyway.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there is slightly deformed growth from all this stress. Fan leaves seem to be growing smaller than they previously were, but hopefully that will change. It's got 4 blade leaves in a few spots. And the fact still remains that it's sitting in slow release nutrient soil. I worry that I could get nute burn, and that flushing could just make all those slow release nutes get released at once. So I'm still glad I've got a couple more plants to work with.

As for the Northern Lights and the Purple Kush, they seem to be loving life in my box. Growth for the past few days is not huge, but noticeable. I lowered the light by 4 inches today, though the pictures were taken before I did that. Maybe that will speed things up a bit.

I'm trying to keep things organic with the NL and PK. pH seems to be near perfect with the organic potting soil that I got from Summer Winds nursery. I've read that mixing/adding a tea of guano and molasses once a week, and checking the pH is all that they need to do great. The soil came with bat shit, and some other shit, so hopefully it's got plenty of microorganisms living in it. Like I said before: my last grow was only soil, water, light, and it was very healthy looking.

 

Not much to report; as it's just been a few days.

Purple Kush and Northern Lights are still growing. Bubba Kush still looks about the same, but it's slowly growing. I'm thinking about just keeping the Bubba Kush in the background, and giving all the good light to the PK and NL.

The Northern Lights clone is doing great. It's starting to branch out a lot. Nearly all the leaves on it are only 3 blades, which looks weird. It has one small 5 blade leaf on the main stem, but then a couple weird 4 blade leaves, and new growth is 3 blade. I think the clubs probably use less intense lights than the growers, and maybe different lighting schedules. It looks like the clone was pulled from the mother plant as soon as the first 5 blade leaf appeared. I guess that because it looks like leaf size kept getting larger, then a bit smaller and 5 blade. But now that I got the clone, the leaves continue to get larger than ever with every new set, but they reverted back to 3 blades. I feel like the plant figured it tried 5 blades, but 3 worked better because light was better with 3. Weird thought--plants don't figure!

The Purple Kush seems to be growing great too, but the top first few leaves and new growth is a bit yellow looking. It looks much more green under normal lighting. I added a picture of the top of this plant below. Suggestions? I was just thinking of feeding it a tea with Alfalfa meal and some molasses, but I was going to do that anyway. From what I've read, molasses has a lot of minerals that should control yellowing--like magnesium, iron, zinc, and calcium. Though I've already watered them with 1tbsp/gallon molasses/water last time.

Also-- stems are purple. Mostly just the umbrella leaf stems, but also some purple on the main stem. The very bottom leaf on the PK turned yellow with green veins. It was a deformed looking leaf that was cut from the cloning process. I sprayed them with mixture of 1teaspoon epsom salt to one gallon of water for the last two nights, but I can't say it has had an effect. That green veined yellow leaf turned completely yellow the next morning.

My soil does not have dolomite, so I'll probably pick some up and add it to the top. Not sure if that will help, but most people use it from what I've read.

Here is what is in the soil (SummerWinds Organic Potting Soil), just for reference:
Aged processed softwood bark and sawdust, sphagnum, peat moss, steer manure, pumice, perlite, bat guano, feather meal and kelp meal.

It says right on the bag to add dolomite for pH control; though it doesn't mention anything about the calcium and magnesium it would add.

Still learning a lot, so any suggestions would be appreciated. Or even just to know I'm heading in the right direction would be great.

 

Transplanted into 2 gallon pots today.

I couldn't fit that huge 3.8 gallon pot and all my other vegetables and herbs in the grow box, and I so it was hard to justify keeping the Bubba Kush around at all, as I'm sure it will not yield much if anything. So, I downsized the pot that the Bubba Kush was in to a 2 gallon pot. I'm sure I screwed it up even more by doing that, but I think there is not much left to lose with that one.

Notice how I've had the Bubba Kush for about a month now, and the other two that I've only had for a week and a day are doing so much better.

Purple Kush and Northern Lights are still doing good. Transplanting them from 1 gallon pots to 2 gallon pots went fine. I will probably not transplant anymore, as I don't want these getting much more than 2 feet tall anyway. I'm thinking about starting flowering in just a few days to keep them small.

For transplanting, I mixed some dolomite lime into the soil and some E. B. Stone Sure Start. Watered with 1tbsp molasses/gallon water.

I also started a tea that I will spray the plants with later tonight and tomorrow night. That tea is .25cups alfalfa meal, .25tbsp molasses, and 1 gallon of water.

With this light and my grow space, it seems like 2 or 3 plants are just as hard to fit as 4 would be. So I think 1 or 4 is the way to go with this. If I do 4 next time, I guess it would be considered a sea of green (SOG), as I've read those have at least 1 plant per square foot. With only 2x2, it would be a puddle of green, but the same idea.

Pictures were taken with flash this time to show a bit more color. But the HPS still drowns out most of the flash anyway.

 

So then if I let them veg longer, they won't stretch as much during flower? Of course I'd rather have nice even bushy growth instead of uneven shoots everywhere.

Sounds good to me. I want them to be around 2 feet. I think 28 inches is my max before tops start burning on them--maybe 31 inches if I change the mounts on the light. The plants are about 8 inches right now. I've read that they grow 2 to 3 times taller during flowering, so my simple math says up to 24 inches. Do you think they will grow too tall if I let them veg longer?

I know last time I grew, I didn't do much research, and I let them veg on only 30 watts of tube lighting for like 2 months. They were over 2 feet tall, and I don't remember them getting much taller at all during flowering. But that was an extreme case.

When is mature? A particular height, time, or something else? The Purple Kush has pre-flower pistils, but not the Northern Lights.

Thanks for the help! I think the pot size tip really helped too. Transplanting was maybe the easiest thing I've done so far, but I thought it would be much more difficult.