Organic Hydroponics

Whats up all, this is my first post, journal and serious indoor grow so please bare with me here as we take a 3 month walk down the road to sweet cheeba.

Intro
My grow space is limited to the backroom of my living area, and for ultimate stealth I have chosen that rooms only closet (also my storage closet) as the area for the grow. I will be using two housings for this op a clone/mother and flower chamber. I'm going to be using Blue Mountain Organics line of nutes for this op since they are all organic and can be feed into soil or hydroponically which suits my needs perfectly.

Now this is where I might ruffle some feathers from the pure hydro, pure soil enthusiast. Your comments and advice are welcomed here or else I wouldn't post for all to read; but im sticking to these methods for this first grow just to see what happens (I am a science major after all).

I am planning on filling two net pots with a mix of 50% peralite 50% soil for water/nute retention, then filling 2 individual reservoirs with air stones, good ole H2O and some Super Plant Tonic. The three strongest females will be selected from a batch of 8 clones, the strongest for the mother and the other two for bud. The two for bud will be placed into the net pots soil and grown using LST to maximize the light synthesized from my 150W HPS. I am using the soil to feed the plants, plants roots are designed for a two part feeding uptake. The larger roots will push down into my rez are designed for water uptake and so they will get they're hearts content. Where as the smaller thin roots designed for nute uptake will remain up top growing in the soil/peralite, where I will be feeding them Organic GROW and BLOOM formula much to there liking, theoretically.

I'm going to be using Blue Mountain Organics line of nutes for this op since they are all organic and can be feed into soil or hydroponically which suits my needs perfectly.


Equipment

Clone/Mother Chamber
I have a custom fabricated cabinet that I will be using for my clones and resulting clone mother. An 8 unit bubblecloner with an 12" airstone and pump is housed inside with two 23W cool white CFLs which I will be upgrading to 60W-100W, that provide light for the cuttings until 2 are ready to transfer to the flower chamber and 1 is left alive to be the Mom and cut up into 8 more clones 2 weeks before harvest so I can run the op with maximum efficiency.


0815001139.jpg (73.8 KB)
0815001140.jpg (151.7 KB)



Flower Chamber (Under construction 80% complete)

I have two large storage Rubbermaid containers, the kind you can fit multiple small children in, whose insides I have painted flat white, I will invert one on top of the other and will be suspending a 150W HPS light from a wooden rod that will be ran through the top of the housing for support. I have two smaller Rubbermaid containers that fit perfectly inside the bottom of the storage one, I have DWC'd these two with 6" net pots and they will hold two flowering females(One each) from my batch of 8 clones, inside with the HPS. A 4" exhaust fan will be mounted near the suspending light for heat and ventilation for the girls. Hooks will be places of varying distances around the net pots as anchor points for the shielded copper wire I'm using for LST tie downs.

Close
So in short, I am using a 150W Compact HPS light to flower 2 female plants, whom are going to be Organically DWC'd and LST'd in two 22.2 litre Rubbermaids housed in two inverted vastly larger Rubbermaid storage containers, whom are painted white and vented by a 4' fan. The DWC will contain one 12" air-stone each for rich oxygenated water and a solution of purified water and Super Plant Tonic just below the net pots so as not to soak the soil. The net pets soil will be feed bi weekly a GROW or BLOOM watering solution depending on what cycle they are in. With weekly rez changes so possible algae problems will not occur.
8 clones will be grown in the bubblecloner, two will be taken for bud and one left to stay by herself under 16-18 hrs of light a day and grow nutes and possible LST'd if height becomes and issue. When it comes close to harvest time the mother will be sacrificed so 8 new cuttings can be taken and rooted and ready to flower within 8 weeks so that I can hopefully harvest 150+ grams every two months, SMOKE BLUNTS ALLL DAY haha


I will update with photos of progress when I have some to take, the flower chamber is still being completed; All of my supplies are in now its just a matter of the actual construction. I have some bag seeds from some local dank bud in seedling, prob wont be until the 1st of Sept until they are ready to go under the HPS for some Veg action.

now im going to burn one, peace

 

I have 8 bag seeds that I germinated last Sunday, then planted in a flat the following Monday and placed outside to soak up some sunlight. I have decided to transplant the ladies flat into the clone chamber this week because temperatures here on the east coast are hot as piss and I fear the little ones will get sunburned all to hell if I leave them outside all day. I'm running the CFL's 16-8 right now in hopes of getting some early preflowers down the road and my research on the net has lead me to believe that a 16-8 light cycle leads to more females somehow? I only have two sprouts that have come up so far, one looks like it has downs and the other looks pretty solid; I see the other seeds trying to push to the surface so hopefully after this week I'll have some new kids in the family to look after!

 

Thanks dude, and no sadly I dont Im going to be growing Nirvana NL once I get done with this test run. I have a collection of various bag seeds ranging from some super dank local bud to crappy mids and everything in between, but I have no clue who is who. Im working with, the HPS light at its highest, about 2' of grow space in all which is ultra tight unless I wanna SOG which I have considered. But im hoping that with LST I can train two plants under these conditions and keep the HPS light right on em throughout the flower to make big fat buds, but I have a feeling after all is said and done I will end up only able to flower one lady at a time due to all the horizontal growth kicked up by the LST. But one plant may not be too bad, NBG over at Nat'l Canna had some good results with his one plant 400W HPS Scrog. But until I can build a larger grow cab or move to a house, sadly thats what Im working with.

 

I was out of town for work last week and when I returned home my girlfriend had not watered my seedlings; so they all died. Luckily I had 12 new seeds germinating, I had a feeling this would happen and am back on track only to be somewhat delayed. Other then that things are going well, 8/12 seeds have sprouted so hopefully we'll get some females.

 

No major incidents this week, other then me getting a whip vaporizer. but that's another story. The plants are doing well, the leaves have grown rather large now and remain nice and green. The stems are purple and thick on most seedlings (only need 8) so I decided for this week to move them under the HPS to give the Flower Systems a quick check before its time to use them. I completed the flower chamber this weekend, now I only have to set up the two DWC's that are under the first blue tub in pic 2.

So for space reasons I modified my initial setup of DWC's inside the blue tubs; to DWC's below the tubs. The blue unpainted part in pic 1 the seedlings are chillin on is going to be cut out to accommodate 2 6" netpots, each suspended in one of two DWC tubs located below the big blue things pic 2, it should also make LST easier since I can now install anchor points in the floor of the tub to tie the plants down.

Temps initially were at 100F inside so I cut three holes in the top tub and added that big ass fan to move some air around. I already had that little fan in the bottom with the holes right behind it for fresh air running, but it wasn't strong enough. Temps are holding about 83F right now so we'll see what happens this week.