I am just starting my 2nd grow. Actually it is my third but my second turned out to be all males. Here is a description of my setup for those who aren't familiar with my first grow and also to tell of any changes. I am using all CFLs. Each CFL is 23 watt (100 watt equivalent). Color spectrums are 6500K for vegging and 2700K for blooming and flowers. Previously I used waterfarms for my grow. While these are ok, there were a couple of things that I didn't like about them. They tended to get stopped up with salts and crud from the nutrients late in the grow. Every couple of weeks I had to remove the tube and blow it out clean. Also it was hard to check and see if it was actually working. I was cutting the waterfarm kits down to fit how I wanted them to and for this grow I am using much smaller pots. For this grow I have designed my own waterfarm type drip systems that do not have the drip line. For easiness of talking about, this will be called a MiniFarm. It is nothing more than the 3/8" diamter pipe used in a waterfarm, the 3/16" airline and a 90 degree elbow. I don't think these will require as much air to run either. For this grow I am using plastic pots that are 8" diameter X 10" tall. I place an 8" netpot inside. 1 MiniFarm is secured into the netpot using wire then fill the netpot with hydroton. Nutrients are General Hydroponics Flora line nutes. Nutrients will be changed every other week after flushing with General Hydroponics Flora Kleen. It is amazing how much junk builds up in these systems and in the roots of your plants. For ventilation a Honeywell 8" fan is used. There is no exterior ventilation. I normally open the door during the day when the lights are on. The fan is for moving air to make the stems strong. The growspace is a 2' X 6' X 8' closet. I have started to remodel this closet to use for growing. Here is how it will be setup. The closet will have a full size shelf at 40" from the floor to make 2 separate compartments. The bottom will be used for vegging and moms, the upper will be used for flowering. Each chamber will have it's own door, air and power. The plugs and wire have already been run for both the upper and lower compartments. I thought I had an unused wire already connected to a breaker that all needed was to be fished into the wall and connected to the plugs. After getting the plugs all connected, I realized that each side of this wire was connected to it's own breaker making this a 240 volt circuit. Something about aluminum wiring circuits not using a ground wire. I just made sure the breaker was off and am now trying to get the juevos to call an electrician to come out and hook up the breaker. I guess I will tell him that I am going to put a couple of computers in that closet and some home entertainment equipment. Closet remodel will be happening during this grow. All of this will be used in a SOG grow. There should be enough space to put 27 plants (3 deep X 9 long). Technically that would mean I could be harvesting 3 plants a week. That would be a maximum and perhaps one day I will be at that point. For now I will try and set it up to harvest a couple of plants every week or 2. The Seeds My last grow was from some stuff I purchased locally called Hydro but was full of seeds. It turned out to be some good stuff, nice tops and from seed to harvest was 90 days (60 days of flowering). One of these plants developed a couple of male flowers, it was just a little bit hermie. I never knew it until I was harvesting it. Strangely it didn't pollenate itself, only it's sister. Enough pollen to make 2 seeds. These should be female seeds. I accidentally crushed one of the seeds but the other one has been germinated and placed into a pot. During the last grow this stuff was called Pegleg. This seed germinated just like its mom did. Its mom took over a week to germinate. This seed took awhile also. After several days I had given up on it. Saturday I happened to look at it for the first time in a few days and it was a sprout maybe 2 or 3" long. Her mom did the exact same thing to me but her pollen supplier sprouted in just a couple of days. This sprout was long enough that I just placed it into the hydroton without using any type of starter cubes. She appears to be fixing to make her appearance above the top of the growing medium pretty soon. This will be one of the moms I use. I purchased some Dutch Passion Skunk #1 from Rhino Seeds. They took a week to get here and I started them germinating last saturday. These are tinly little seeds. I noticed little white tips on 2 of them this morning. By tomorrow they might be placed into a pot. I am seriously considering letting these sprouts get quite long too and placing them directly into the hydroton. In my last grow I placed the sprouts directly into the hydroton but wouldn't recomend that to anyone else. It was way too easy to lose the sprout. By letting it get a couple of inches long might be a good method of starting them. Otherwise I will place them into some rapid rooter plugs. I hope to be harvesting about the end of the year. As soon as possible, pics will be posted. I am fixing to head down to see the Geek Squad again to either get this camera fixed or to purchase a new one.
