Phase One

What`s up Grasscity?! Been lingering and reading up a bit; there have been a lot of advances in the years I've been away from the garden! Great to see everyone as passionate as ever about Cannabis!


Anyway, the reason we're here today is I am slowly progressing with Phase One of my new "Microgrowery." I am starting this thing in my closet(s) to get a head start on what could turn into a Green Rush in the future. Everyone's got to start somewhere right? The important thing is that you take action.



I haven't picked a name yet, but when I do you'll be the first to know. Until then, welcome to my garden!

I had initially planned on starting with a pretty much bulletproof lady (Industrial Plant aka Northern Lights) but decided that I should lay the foundation of my nursery with something a little more "me." Northern Lights is a great first strain to grow when dialing in a system because she is so forgiving, but I decided after much deliberation to go with Vanilla Kush from Barney's Farm and Blue Dream from Humboldt Seed Organization because I wanted strains suitable for Sea of Green (SOG) that were full of flavour. We shall see!








In choosing my lights, I conducted a lot of research and understand that I only scratched the surface of what is happening in the world of LED horticultural lighting. For Phase One I decided to go with three SolarSPEC SS150CR from Amare Technologies to illuminate my 2'x5' closet because I had committed myself to LED technology but didn't like what I was reading about blurple LEDs. Also, I didn't have the time and inclination to learn the technicalities of DIY LED COB lighting. I have since had time to learn more and Phase Two will include the fabrication of more advanced COB LED light fixtures for future expansion.


I've got quite a bit of work to do to get this up to my standard, the lights here are setup just for testing. Still to be installed: Ventilation, Panda Film, Air Circulation, Pot Prep (Milk Jug Hempy), Medium Prep (Some straight coco, some 3/1 perl/verm, maybe others). I'll be hand watering at first, maybe for the entire duration of Phase One. I'm flexible, especially when upgrades are concerned.


I also plan on using some less common techniques, such as foliar feeding with oat milk and fulvic acid (oats are high in silica), as well as applying botanical teas and fermented plant extracts. As I live in the PNW, I have a wide variety of plants to source my botanicals from, and I am going to take advantage of that, but that'll come in the near future. Until then,

 

I'm curious too. My motivation being an attempt to foliar supplement silica from an organic source.


I'm going to make oat milk with distilled water and check the ppm. The desired final output of my foliar spray is 400 ppm @ pH 7, which I've read to be the best pH for silica absorption. I will also be adding fulvic acid to this spray to increase mineral and nutrient mobility.


I am also going to spray with alfalfa tea @ pH 9 to try to get some benefit from an organic source of Triacontanol. This will probably be a heavy weekly veg spray, with a break while she flips, and then another couple doses few weeks into flower.

 

Guardian by Senseimillan posted Mar 3, 2016 at 1:29 AM

 

Two days ago I mixed some MaxiGro, pH 5.8 or so, and poured it all in the tray so my 4 inch pots could wick it up.
When I visited them today, the water had a layer of 'metal' floating on top. I have never seen this before, nor can I find anything with google. I will continue looking.

 

My humic acids arrived in the mail yesterday. Excited to try making an oat milk foliar for silica supplementation.

 

Oo so I take it Blue Dream's got legs? Haven't bothered to look up what she'll turn out like, I want her to tell me her own story.

Ceiling is like 5 feet, the closet is horizontally divided in two, offering me interesting opportunities for expansion. If I need to make vertical space, it's there.

I added a fourth SS150, but I've seen others with 4x SS150s covering spaces twice as big as mine. I'm debating just running 2x SS150s in the 2 x 5, and doing two tiers, effectively doubling my growing space. I am having a difficult time figuring out if adding the expense and labor to build two identical flower spaces will give me an appreciable increase in yield over just bombarding the single 2 x 5 space with a ton of light.

Opinions?

 

6 feet! That's wild. Well my plan is to mainline them to four colas and switch the lights on them. Hopefully keep the canopy depth between 18 and 24 inches. We shall see.

 

AHHHHH need a break!

Original plan was one 2x4x7 closet horizontally divided to create two 2x4x3'6. I was going to do one 2x4 and one 2x2 flower with a 2x2 for a small mom and clones.

Said **** it, made more space, and was going for two 2x5x8 closets, one a nursery and one for flower. I had four Amare Technologies SolarSPEC 150CRs that I bought for the original space. Three of them ended up in one of the 2x5x8 closets for bloom and one SS150CR in the other for the nursery. Three became four and I realized I was intending on running 600W of LED in a 2x5 space.

In the past I've run multiple setups, including various 600W HPS, typically 4x4. So realizing I was running 600W of LED I recognized I was just wasting it, and a 4x4 would be just perfect.

Putting this up today with the leftover shit I have lying around.

Now that I have the height, I've definitely got room if the Blue Dream stretches. But I'm still going to run this round with hempy milk jugs so the results should be about the same.

 

Put a 4' x 2' piece of plywood across the top to make it more stable and provide somewhere to attach the light and fan mounts, etc.


Hung the poly and fixed light leaks.

Next in is ventilation, tonight or tomorrow, same with lights. Then some black poly for the floor and the ladies will be ready to move into their new home.

And I need to get a poly zipper or something for entry, but right now light tightness isn't necessary so not a big deal.

 

This last one a full size shot of one of the Vanilla Kush seedlings.

 

It has been a couple of weeks since my last update, and a busy couple of weeks it has been outside of my personal garden. Some talks I have had leave me with the opportunity to do some good work for the cause outside my garden, but competes with my time for writing and sharing.

Quick update: I am fully engaged with planning for Phase Two of my garden, which is looking to be No-Till in custom fabric pots/beds watered with an automated SIP. I just built a 4x4 but I think I'd rather have two 4x2 for ergonomics and ease of use. I feel like spider man or a yogi when I'm messing around with plants near the back of my 4x4, and the time consumption of moving plants in and out of the space for maintenance is wasteful.

Out with the old, in with the new.

As for the current state of my garden, I have been too busy for picture taking, although I topped the Vanilla Kush girls as they were a week ahead of the Blue Dreams. When the VK develop two shoots large enough for cloning, I'll take those off and put the plants in flower.

The Blue Dreams I am giving a little longer before I top as I want to clone them instead of waiting for new shoots to grow, should be some time this week.

I'll be building the first 4x2 in the near future, and I intend to daisy chain them with one ventilation system, making for a modular design.

 

So, I fell off the face of the Earth for a while. *Ninja: vanish!* Long story short: was living in a rental, the owner sold and I had two weeks to relocate. My apologies to those who subbed up to support my grow.

Unfortunately for me, I still haven't been able to get the garden re-established since I have not found an appropriate location which is up to my privacy standards. With that in mind, I have decided to go stealth. I'm currently in the research phase and looking at the new Quantum Board LEDs and will be reviving this journal and reconnecting with the community.

The plan is to build a custom cabinet with passively cooled DIY QB 288s or QB 304s and flower in SOG to reduce the vegetative time and keep the height down. I want to stack two tiers within a 7-foot height; 2.5`x4`x3` + 1.5`x4`x3`.

See you soon!