My First Botanical Cannabinol Experience! LED & ORGANIC! :)

Hello all!

I don't know if anyone will care enough to read this, but I'm excited and wanted to tell someone about it. And who better than y'all!?

I'm a regular toker, scientific name "Ganjas Majoris", and I'm happily located in the beautiful dirty south. THIS WILL BE MY VERY FIRST ATTEMPT AT CULTIVATION!! I have decided to overshoot regular soil/hydroponic growing and go straight to the "source", if you will, with Organic. It just feels so right! Anyways, I'm going to list the supplies I've decided to go with, and any feedback from y'all would be great!

Instructional Source
Well, there's you guys, of course. These forums could seriously have a 5 year old growing in two weeks-- they're so helpful! However, I am also using an alternative media source: The original 2001 Edition of "The Cannabis Grow Bible" by Greg Green. Although it's a little outdated, the botanical information is still accurate. It's here I'd also like to accredit rhapsodyrcks, jerry111165, and InTheGarden for their assistance in booting up my interest, and thank them for their generous wealth of knowledge.

Light Source
I purchased my grow light today, and the rest of the supplies will be purchased later on this evening. I went with the Calirfornia LightWorks brand, SolarStorm 400w! I am extremely excited about this lamp, as I plan to grow in a 36"x36"x72" space. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this ought to give a VERY sufficient amount of light to 3-4 plants, if I'm not mistaken. Its best selling point, IMHO, is the 2 18" T8 UVB lamps that can be switched on/off based on photoperiods. ANYWAYS, this isn't an ad for CLW, but I'm anxious to see how using LED's without ever having grown before will affect my crop.



MORE LATER!

 

ITG, I am curious…

I have pored over these forums, but I just cannot seem to decide on the best container/pot for my babies. I'm about to have a soil mixed up, and I want to be able to have it cook in the individual containers.

I have been thinking either 2x #3 Smart-Pots stacked on top of each other, or, one #5 Smart-Pot--- per plant.

Wat do? :\

 

And this is for a 36"x36"x72" space. The Secret Jardin DR90.

 

Yeah? That's also what I'd been thinking about, but, does that mean I'm going to need to make MORE soil mix, to compensate for the wider base??

I've got the supplies to make 3 cubic ft. of soil, and was planning on putting about 5.5 gallons into 4 separate 7 gal. smart pots. How 'bout it?

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to set up one like mosesnumb has going. A simple, self-wicking Smart Pot setup.

I will be posting a HUGE update soon with a VERY detailed guide to what I did, using InTheGarden's "Easy Organic Soil Mix for Beginners". So pumped.

Also, what's the difference between the T8's & the T5's??

 

The point of this is to create a Self Irrigating Planter. I am using Smart Pots as grow containers, and they are incredibly absorbent of water. By using lava rocks, or perlite as a "wicking" material, you fill it 7/8 of the way with water, and let the plants water themselves from the bottom up! Check out mosesnumb's thread on SIP.

I plan to do 4 at a time, and I want to go with all Cinderella 99 as my first grow.

Thanks for the interest! Welcome!

 

Okay y'all! Sorry it has been so long since I've updated, but I've been busy in my absence! I decided since InTheGarden has been AWOL for a while now, I would do a detailed pictorial explication of her "Easy Organic Soil Mix for Beginners" in her honor. So hopefully your consideration for her genius can be a little keener, by means of illustration.

As I said before, this is going to be my first grow, and I plan to cultivate 4 plants-- "Female Seeds' C99"

Everything that I used was sourced locally from shops and farms that are well-known organic enthusiasts. This ought to be the real deal… So without further adieu:

Supplies


Tent- Secret Jardin DR90 II

Light- California Lightworks' 400W SolarStorm LED

Fan- 4" Soler and Palau TD-100X

Filter- Phresh 4"x12" Carbon Filter

Pots- 5 Gallon Smart Pots


Buckets in the Bathtub: 25 gal. & 5 gal.




Soil Mix

Ferti-Lome's Organic Canadian Peat Moss


Rice Hulls


Organic Red-Worm Castings

Soil Mix Ammendments


Dr. Earth's Probiotic Alfalfa Meal


Dr. Earth's Probiotic Kelp Meal


Pure Lava Dust


Earthsafe Organics' Dolomite Lime


Rabbit Hills Farms' "Minerals Plus"


Hi-Yield's Bone Meal


Hi-Yield's Blood Meal


Happy Frog's Organic Tomato & Vegetable Fertilizer

The Mixing Process
I went ahead and stuck very close to the beautiful guide that InTheGarden has graciously given. I did add a little bit more rice hulls than it said to, but only because the surface area of rice hulls is very strange-- they seem to break down a little bit in moist conditions, but not too bad. Anyways, I followed these ratios pretty closely:

For 3+ Cubic Feet of Organic Soil


1/3 Organic Canadian Peat Moss -- 7.5 Gallons


1/3 Rice Hulls-- 7.5(+) Gallons


1/3 Red-Worm Castings-- 7.5 Gallons


3 cups of Dolomite Lime (1 cup per cubic foot}

This is before mixing:


This is after mixing:


After this "dry mix" was nice and even, I made an interesting mixture of Lava Dust and Minerals Plus:
12(+) Cups of Mineral Amendment




For those of you wondering what Rabbit Hills Farms' "Minerals Plus" consists of, well, here ya go:




After mixing in the minerals I made a concoction of nutritional amendments within the suggested ratio, but it's a little confusing. Hope this is simple enough to understand:

<9 Cups of Nutritional Amendments

In a bucket, mix:
2 Cups of Alfalfa Meal
2 Cups of Kelp Meal
2 Cups of Blood Meal
2 Cups of Bone Meal
+2 Cups of Organic Fertilizer
10 Cups Total.



I then added ~2.75 cups of the mix PER CUBIC FOOT, which was a little less than 9 cups total.


After Mixing:




So after everything was mixed together I decided to let the mix "cook" in individual Smart Pots, and this also proved to simplify the process of moistening the mix.





Notice the massive color difference? The wet soil is on the left, and the dry soil is on the right. After the soil was thoroughly moistened, into the tent they went for the next 30+ days. In fact, they're still cooking in the exact same place! I added an ACT on Day 3 and Day 32. I will be waiting about 2 more weeks before planting! I will let y'all know what's up! Thanks for reading!



One Love!

[[P.S.-- I plan to post this independently as well, just as a pictorial guide to ITG's thread!]]

 

Appreciate it, man. I planted some cat grass seed in them yesterday afternoon, we'll see what comes of it.