Okay, so here it is. My first grow journal! Here's a quick rundown of my setup, and pictures will follow. I am using a hollowed out dresser for stealth reasons, but I've run into a slough of problems with heat. My original plan was to use 2 x 250 watt CFL bulbs. Well, 500 watts of CFL apparently produces quite a bit of heat. In retrospect I should have stuck with my idea for LEDs and just spent more to start, but that can be for a future grow hopefully. I have 2 intake fans (80mm and 120mm), an exhaust fan (80mm) attached to a homemade carbon filter, and a 10 inch box fan for circulation inside. With 2 lights on, temperatures were over 100 degrees fahrenheit, and even with only one of them on I'm at approximately 94 degrees fahrenheit. As a fair test I've been including the pots in the dresser, but since they're black I assume they may absorb a bit of heat, which I'm sure doesn't help, but I want it to be as accurate as possible. Maybe I can tape white duct tape on the outside of them. Any ideas for reducing the heat would be appreciated here. I've tried various combinations of moving the box fan around, and aiming the intake ducts toward the light, but so far, nothing has really made a huge difference. To be honest, it's getting rather frustrating. On top of that, I've already started my seeds germinating in peat pellets under a dome, so time is critital. I know that the 250 watt bulb *should* be enough for the 5 plants I want to vegetate, so I'll just save the other 250 watt for when I figure out an ingenius method for cooling, but until then, just 1 bulb. So, soon my concern will be the second dresser, which is going to be used for vegetating. The idea is to have a perpetual grow of a total of 10 plants at any given time, 5 vegetating and 5 flowering. The flowering dresser will have 4x105 watt CFLs in it, so I'm assuming heat might be something I really need to work on. Anyhow, we'll come to that bridge when we cross it (which is soon). The pots I'm using are 2 gallon pots, 9 inches across the top. Originally the plan was to LST, but my grow partners think our first grow should just be growing "normally", so that's the route I'll go this time. I'm using Easy Ryder seeds (Auto AK-47 x Lowryder #2) that I got from Cannabis seeds | Marijuana Seeds. I got some free Dinafem Blue Hash and Blue Widow as well, but those are in a vial in the freezer. I'm using Fox Farm Ocean Forest for my medium with a little perlite added and Fox Farm Trio for Soil as far as fertilizer is concerned. My plan is to follow the fertilizing schedule recommended by Fox Farm. We'll see. As far as water is concerned, I've got an 18 gallon Rubbermaid container which I've drilled holes in the top of to hold water while the chlorine evaporates, etc. Can't afford to buy distilled water every time I need to water, so this will have to work. I'll add more as I think of it.
Sativa.... I am pumped to see how this goes. Will be following for sure. Starting my stealth LR2 grow soon and will be learning from you! Good luck. And if things get stressful, smoke a bowl.
So, I checked my seeds a little while ago, and I have a seedling. Popped up in like 12 hours maybe, but it's still about a cm tall! I put it in a well draining Solo cup (the big red plastic disposable kind) with the FFOF, that way I don't use a more water than I need to when watering. I'll wait until morning (once it gets about 12 hours of light) to take a picture, and will post it shortly after. Hopefully I have more seedlings popping up by then. Be back in another 12 hours or so!
Hmmm man I just started a grow of Diesel Ryder in an eerily similar cabinet, lol...I've used my hollowed out cab once before, to try and grow some bag seed, and all I had at the time for flower was a 75w MH, you talk about "heat issues", Jesus! Well best of luck with the ER, sounds like we'll be done about the same time, I have a grow journal up now too, be sure and check it out! Good Luck! Later!
Nice set up. Best of luck with your grow. I have temperature problems too but the plant seems to be handling it well so far. It is such an easy strain to grow that I think the only problem will be amount of harvest. Will be following your grow. Take care.
So, I checked this morning, and it looks like the temp may be like 93. I hope it will work. I can't think of what else I can do, honestly. I found a second sprout this morning, although it's barely even showing through the soil. I've transplanted it, placed it under the light and watered it some even though you can barely see it. Here's some pics of my two seedlings now. So, with the first seedling I watered it last night with water, Superthrive and molasses, although I'm omitting the molasses for the remainder of the waterings until they're maybe at least a couple weeks old. Only because I'm not sure of how it will affect seedlings. Also, according to Fox Farms feeding schedule, I should start giving Big Bloom to the plants even as seedlings. Anyone have an opinion on this? It is organic, so it might be okay, but if anyone has any advice, I'm always open to advice. Thanks.
My advice (which isn't worth much) would be to give the seedlings just water until around week 3, the soil will have enough nutes for the first couple of weeks. Also, I noticed you have more intake than exhaust on your cab (that's how I read it anyway), this will create positive pressure inside the cab and force air out through all the little cracks. That will lead to issues with smell in a few weeks. In my opinion, you should have the 120mm and the 80mm for exhaust, and the single 80mm for intake. This should help with the cooling too, as the air will be exchanged quicker, allowing more cool air in. My own box has two 120mm fans on exhaust, with a passive intake ( a hole, to put it simply), and it works fine for me. Good Luck Buddy!
^^^^^ This is what I was going to suggest. You need to pull more of the hot air out of the box. That dresser is awesome. You would never know there was a weed grow going on in there. Tee hee Your research has served you well. This is going to be an awesome grow! +rep
So, I changed my exhaust setup, just waiting to see how it works. I have 2 x 80mm fans set up on the ends of 2 ducts, so that after the air is drawn in, it can escape unimpeded from the exhaust hole I have under the lamp on the top of the dresser. I'll be placing charcoal filters on the end of each of these. I'm hoping this will help with the temps inside. I just checked and so far it seems okay; the temp was ~91F. A little high, but better than it had been (94ish). I will keep an eye on it, and determine whether I can add that other 250 watt bulb back in. Okay, here's some pics of the setup I have now.
Nice man! You'll spend the first month or so adjusting things in your dresser to get it working the best way possible, and after that you can just sit back and watch the grass grow!
Totally agree-the fun part-for me- is getting everything tweaked just right.I've got my eye on this grow-great work man!
things are looking great nice setup lord, about the scedule i didint add mine until mine was like 3 weeks or so but, two of my really close buddies started there seedlings with grow big and big bloom in hydro tho' but there thriving growing like crazy makes me wish i wouldof done the same so i guess its up to you wether you wanna start like that or not anyways good luck brotha looking forward to this grow! my hope is in soil and im follwing the scedule to now, useing both "Big Bloom", and "Grow Big" she loves it stay green brotha gooluck!
You need to get some stronger fans if you want to get temperatures down in your dresser. Computer fans can move a little bit of air but they have very low static pressure and cannot push air well through air ducts like an inline duct fan can. Get a 6 or 8" duct fan with 100 - 250 CFM.
Hey man, how's it going? Your dresser does, rule, I wish I could get my hands on a piece of furniture that big to "customize", lol...my Diesel Ryder sprouts look good too, as of today I have 4 out of 5 sprouted, and I got 3 of 4 Purple Wrecks so far...I'm also curious more about the Fox Farms nutrients schedule, I don't think I understand it so well...I bought FFOF and put my germed seeds in that, and have just been giving them tap water only, but I also bought a bottle of Grow Big, and the girl at the store told me that's all I'd need for veg...if I should be giving my plants something more eventually in the Veg state, I'd like to know what it is...eventually I'll have to battle the heat issue with my dresser too, right now I'm unemployed so I'm home all day with it and the dresser can just stay open, but I know that smell will be an issue eventually, and we're in a small duplex with neighbors, I'll have to do something...well I guess this is how we figure this stuff out, work our kinks, good luck, keep in touch man, no friends yet, nobody reads my journal anyways...later bro!
Cool stealth setup! It looks very professionally done, I like!! One suggestion I would make: you may want to consider shorter, longer "pots" (perhaps small rubbermade containers). From the pictures, it appears that about half of your vertical space is lost to the pots. If you had shorter, longer pots your plants would still have the soil space, but also the valuable vertical space required for growing. I personally could not grow in a space shorter then 2 feet without some SERIOUS effort, so make sure you do everything you can from the get-go, you know? Everything looks GREAT! Keep up the good work. I will be watching
Genius idea. I'm looking into it. I'd like to be able to move enough air to maybe add the other 250 watts back in, so this sounds like a great idea. I didn't even know this was an option before. I read a lot about using PC fans, but my guess is people using this method have smaller grow spaces and light usage than myself. Thanks soo much. + rep
I'm subscribed to your journal, so I'll take a peek. Sorry all, I'm recently unemployed too after almost 6 years, so I've been trying to find work while I'm doing this. Anywho, so far 4 of the 5 fem easy ryder seeds I bought have germinated. The last one is still in wet paper towels, but it doesn't appear like it's going to pop. I'll maybe give it another week or so, but who knows. On the plus side, I was also germinating some bag seeds to practice LST on, and one of those popped, so that will just replace my 5th easy ryder if it doesn't ever pop. I'll still have to figure out how I'm going to work my light schedule since I was planning on a "perpetual" type of grow, basically moving from one dresser to another, and thus having a harvest every month...anyway, we'll see. I'll add some more pictures in a little bit. Peace all.
Cool, I look forward to seeing the pics. That's a bummer about your job, same thing happened to me recently. I bet your dresser will end up quite a bit differently than you'd initially imagined, I know my cab looks nothing like I expected it to, but efficiency is the name of the game. You mentioned that you're growing with friends, are any of them members on here?