Kushqt's First Grow!

Hello GC,

I have been smoking for a few years and have always liked the Cannabis Culture. There was another side to the culture that I didn't know about though which was the cultivation and what comes with cultivating cannabis. The idea to grow for me seemed like it could only be a dream, but it has now became reality. With the changes to the law in my state, it is now legal to cultivate marijuana if you have a medical certification. My back started hurting so I got one I have been researching my ass off by reading this forum and other books while I was building my new grow room. I also read many of the great grow journals on here by people who take a lot less light then I'm using and come out with nice yields and dank buds. So without further adieu I will begin my journal.

Now here's the exciting stuff. The specifications of the room and all of the equipment.

So I had one big room built then I put up a wall with another door to make two rooms. The space that I started with was 18x8 ft. The vegetative room is about 8x6ish and the flowering room is 8x12ish. These are not exact because the room was made a bit smaller with the insulation. There is reflective insulation around the room on the ceiling and walls which is about 92 percent reflective. Floors have a black plastic on them since I first painted the floor white and I heard that would burn the shit out of my plants so I put down the plastic.
Veg: 8x6ft Flowering: 8x12ft

Choosing what kind of lighting to use was hard since many have a different opinion. So with no experience it was just trying to talk to as many growers as I could to sort of sum up what would be the best comparing cost vs. effectiveness. I was planning on throwing a 400w MH in the vegetative room and 1 600w HPS in the flowering room with more later on. After talking to a few guys at the grow shops, I then decided to put in a 6 bulb T-5 Fluoro in the vegetative room which is approx. 324w and a 1000w HPS/MH in the flowering room with a digital dimmable ballast which is pretty tight.

The growing medium that I decided to use since I have such minimal experience is a soil-less mixture "Promix" which was told to be a good one by a couple of the guys at the grow room. It's worked fairly well so far.

For me, this was the most difficult part to the whole building the grow room operation. Air. Since I had 0 experience with heating/air circulation I had to do a shit load of research on how to design the whole system.

I decided to go with a passive intake system where the exhaust fan creates a vacuum in the room and sucks in air from the cold air intakes. When I first moved plants into the rooms I had only one cold air intake in the vegetative room with another one in the flowering room coming FROM the vegetative room. Two problems I ran into was that the air coming FROM the vegetative room was already heated up which caused me to battle with high heat "85 degrees F." I had to turn down the light from 1000w to 600w just to make sure I didn't stunt the plants from the heat, and I heard that high heat can cause spider mites to hatch which all of my plants had when they came >.<.

I just put in another cold air intake in the flowering room from out in the outer area which stays cool all year around so I'm hoping I won't have to get a portable AC since a split ductless ac is way to expensive and if I get access to the window it weakens my fortress a.k.a security.
Also, connected to the exhaust fan is the flex duct that pulls air through the carbon air filter then through the 1000w hps.

Thanks for sticking with me so far.

I forgot about the whole plants need water thing until my grow room was just about done. I still don't have it done, but for now it will work. I have a 100gpd R.O. (reverse osmosis) connected to a 32gallon reservoir and another 32gallon trash can is connected to the waste water which there is a LOT. You guys who have one know what I mean. I also have to run a garden hose out to the room which makes it kinda suspicious (I have few neighbors and live in a wooded area) but not extremely noticeable. We have pretty harsh winters so before summer is over I'm going to have to dig a trench 44' so I can pipe water out without needing to insulate since it's below the freeze point.

I was able to get around 8 plants at different stages of their life which is kinda cool since I already have a perpetual grow going. Here are the different strains with approx how old they are. 2 dame blanch (cloned on 04/28/11), 2 White Berry (cloned on 04/21/11), and No Name (Cloned on 04/14/11). A couple days after the first batch, I got a surprise of two White Widow plants that were ready for the 12/12 photo period approx. 3 ft tall.

I was going to go with a line of fox farm nutes, but instead I got the full line of General Organics. BioThrive Grow, BioThrive Boom, BioRoot, BioWeed, CaMg, and Bud Booster.

The temperature of the first room is staying around 69-79 degrees F depending on what time of day, and flowering is staying in low 80s as of now.

I am checking to water the plants every other day. This has been challenging to me since I have never grown anything and I do not know the best amount of water to give my babies yet.

Pictures will be coming later tonight once my ladies wake up. 5/6/11

If I missed anything else just ask. I will be watching this forum fairly closely for suggestions. If you read this huge chunk of text I want to thank you. Hopefully this isn't my first and last grow. I want this to be a life hobby

Enjoy,

Kushqt

 

Pics are coming soon. I was thinking after I start dealing with more plants I might throw in another 1k watt and get a light mover, and definitly more T5s for the veg room.

P.S: Plants in flowering room just got a good watering which is why they are drooping

 

Thanks Pentax! I'm just getting a portable AC or a window AC I think. Eventually I'm going to need to when I add more lights.

Kushqt

 

Well the ballast I have is dimmable so I can make it 400w, 600w, or 1000w, and I did just water so I think that means they hang low. Why would you say they were root bound? I'm new so I might be wrongz.

Thanks Evil

 

Alright. How big of pots do you normally get up to in flowering? These ladies are in 5 gallon pots that are able to breathe really well or some shit. I think I over watered the shit out of them. I hope they dry out.

 

So I think that I over-watered the plants in the flowering room. The leaves are still drooping. I just watered one of the plants with a little bit of water to see if it perks up at all. Plants in veg room are doing great though. Fast growth.

I have high temps with 30% humidity. Pots dry out pretty quickly. 3 foot plants in about 4 gallons of soil.

 

Waited about 2.5 hours and the one plant isn't perking up. I am going to let the other plant dry for another day then saturate it with water and give the plant I gave water today 2 days to give water.

Getting a scale out soon to start weighing when dry and when they have water in them.

 

Will the leaves pick up after they dry out or will they not pick up until I water them after they dry completely.

 

It turns out that I wasn't watering enough since I was using this sprayer thing and it doesn't shoot out a lot of water. The two WW that I have are on their death bed. I'm going to give them a shit load of water and feed them. Hopefully they come back

 

Oh and I was messing up my ph. Until now I didn't pay much attention to Ph always saying I'll figure it out later. Then my plants got messed up and I bought a digital ph meter. Water I was giving it was 7.3 out of my R.O which may be why my veg plants have random brown spots. The ph after I put nutes in the bucket today was 5.1!! So I went and got ph and I'll update on what goes on in first 6 hours.

 

Within one hour the top leaves started picking up. I'm praying!! Pics soon