Ok, So back in the first week of october i shared with you guys my first ever grow. It was outdoor, started from seed, no nutes. Just lots of tender love and care. It turned out amazing and i got really inspired. After doing alot of research i decided to do a stealth CFL grow box. The old lady allowed me to do this, under the condition that it remains stealth. Once i get the basement finished i am going to turn this cubbyhole into a nice HPS room. But until then, this is what i can do. First, here are the results of the outdoor grow, just to show you a quick look at my first attempt. I'm really proud of how that turned out. Now to my CFL box. I took some design ideas from several different rubbermaid grows. I used 27 gallon strongboxes from home depot. $12 a peice! Here is the cubbyhole that it is in. Storage in front to keep it inconspicuous. The grow box intake is on the bottom with a stretched dark sock over it so air flows, but hopefully other stuff stays out. The box coming out of the top is a lightrapl/intake for the lighting unit. I have the lights isolated in the top with a peice of acrylic that i cut to size and mounted in there. Air is sucked through creating somewhat of a cooltube. Even after 12 hours of running, the top of the box stays cool. The wires coming out of that box are two additional sets of lights for flowering. I just plug them in when i'm read to flower. These are the exhaust fan tubes. One for the light box, one for the grow box. Just case fans wired to 12v dc adapters. They do a wonderful job. Two surge protectors. One with main power and grow box fan. Other one is for lights and lighting exhaust fan. Digital timer in between. This was on day 4 when i took the photo's. I had a disaster on day 5.... I had the cups sitting on the lid while i put another box in there to prop them up closer to the lights. Long story short......The cups fell about 4 feet to the ground, the plants shot everywhere, the soil went everywhere. I lost one plant in the disaster but i was able to replant all other 6 and they have since taken off quite nicely. It was a minor little bump in the road. The seeds are unknown. I've got 2 realy nice dank seeds(the ones that say wally) and the other 4 are some incredible bagseed. Same strain that i grew outdoors(in the first couple of photo's) This is the lid/lightbox. You can see the acrylic seperating the lights/grow. The black duct tape was not what i wanted to use but i ended up needing it at the last second and i figured it wouldn't hurt. If there are any problems i may pull it apart and redo it. Everything is looking good for the most part though. 8-27W 5500k for veg and 4-26W 2500k that also get kicked on during flowering. I may need a few more of those. I'm going to see how it goes. This is the other side of the light tube with the fan sucking out the heat. This keeps it incredibly cool, yet i keep 75-82 degree's in the box. Not sure of night time temps. I need to check that out though Now here is where i have some questions if anyone has advice. This is day 9 in the box(today). A couple of the plants have some brownish areas on the leaves. Particularly the one on the bottom left and the top right. I just used some basic Scotts organic (.07%NIT .03%PHOS .01%POTASH) just to get them started. I will be replanting in Fox farms or perhaps regular promix. I'm not sure if something in the soil is causing the weird discoloration, or something else altogether. This is my first indoor grow ever, and i didn't have this problem outdoors, so any advice would be much appreciated. I'm going to try to keep this updated throughout the process so maybe someone(including myself) will learn something. Thanks to anyone who might participate. Happy Thanksgiving folks! Edit: i think the brown leaves may be from lack of water. I went back down and checked it out and the tips were curling up and dry/brittle on those two. Soil was looking dry in those cups. I watered and brought the plants down another inch. I'm hoping this solves the problem
Kudos for the creativity of the box....The inspiration you get from seeing other people's ideas in action is great! The discoloration looks like it could be light burn (or maybe nute burn) or possibly over watering. Its kinda early for such a problem, but it could be from the soil, especially if it has nutes in it. Flush them out gently, and wait another couple of weeks before adding any nutes. You can get CFLs pretty close to the plants, but you might try backing them off about 6 inches for a bit and see if it makes a change. On a side note, do you have any idea what strain those might be?? The leaf shape is odd, and makes me curious. Good luck, and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Thanks for the quick reply. I had a feeling the lights could be a part of it since those tips got a little crispy. I had the plants sitting up on boxes VERY close to the plexiglass. I backed them down a bit and will see how it goes. I'm going to just keep a very close eye on them over the next few days. As far as the strain goes... I'm not sure. 4 of them are the same as the plant that i grew in the first 3 pictures. it produced really fat buds so i was hoping i could get similar quality in the box. The two that are labeled "Wally" are from a buddy who used to grow. He couldn't remember what strain they were but had saved them for some reason. I wanted to do a run with some already available seeds to try to get a little insight on how this box is going to work. Once i get it tuned in right i will order some good genetics and i might make a second little veg/mother chamber. Once again, i guess i'll just have to see how my pothead engineering turns out! lol
This. I doubt your burning Your plants with those lights. Especially with the "cooltube effect" you have got going. You can get a cfl literally one inch from the plant with no I'll effects.
topped all but one today. we'll see how it goes. i'm trying to get to the garden store for some pro mix etc... i need to transfer these babies pronto. might have to wait a few more days until i get paid perhaps a MOD can move this to grow journals? there are so many sections on this forum that i overlooked it