Well guys, it's most of the way through the summer and I've finally pieced together most of a highly functional grow room, one bargain at a time. My goal for a long time has been to fully fill my medical card with as high of quality medicine as possible, for as little work as possible. I wanted to learn DWC when I first started (and have done so), but now I'm more interested in learning about brewing compost teas and minimizing effort. My last grow ended pretty sadly, so here's to a full and successful thread and season! I am building my new grow box. Because of my lease and to stay on friendly terms with my landlord, I'm building a box inside my room instead of screwing anchors into the walls and celing. a minor inconvenience and expense, but worth the effort. I'll need about 8 pics to fully cover the finished box, since the room it's in is only 11'x12' with an attached 5'x6'x7'8" walk in closet/veg room. I am going to leave my 2nd story balcony door cracked, bolt it in, and set a burglar alarm on it. That will be my air exchange for my AC outtake and light intake and outtake. I'm getting PVC pipe cut exactly to height and stretching Panda plastic around it for the walls, then sealing with more plastic and tape. It should be fairly stealthy if I can keep vibrations to a minimum... if smell becomes a problem I'll stick an ozone generator in the outtake box. I also have a small carbon filter... need to get a bigger one soon. The box is 8'Lx8'Wx7'7"H. it is framed out of about $30 worth of 2x4s, and is wrapped most of the way (part open to allow for air circulation) with panda plastic, which costs roughly $1 per foot. I stopped working on it when the sun went down today, so the box is halfway done. I'll post the finished box tomorrow. I have to get it finished and the new girls in there ASAP to reduce the impact of stress on the flowering process... the earlier the better. I'd have waited to start flowering at all, but they simply got too big. My lighting starting this run will be 2 1000w air cooled HPS, one with a dual spectrum bulb in it. in two weeks, I have to switch the dual spectrum 1000w for a 600w HPS and 600w warm spectrum MH. I have 2 6" inline fans to cool the lights, and a large AC unit to cool the room. The first two plants will only cover half the box, but as I add light I'll use more floor space. I have a CO2 regulator and am renting a tank for it tomorrow. By my calculations, a 20 lb tank will last 47 days injecting to 1500 PPM twice a day. The first two plants to start this run are my old mothers. These have been vegging in 18 gallon DWC buckets since my bust in Christmas, and had their first night on July 15... meaning they vegged for 7.5 months. They have been trained through 4'x4' trellis nets. The first is White Gold, and the second is Skywalker. They used to have a perfectly even canopy, but let's just say my most recent reservoir change should have been a 2 man job. About half of the plants that came off of these hermied, so it's possible I'll get some seedy bud. Oh well, I have Afgoo and White Rhino on the way, so I'm not going to save these ones anyway. I have 4 air stones and a tiny fish pump in each bucket, and am adding 2 more air stones to each tomorrow. they are both light-tight, and the PH usually hovers around 5.9 I have been using Floranova veg, and will be using Floranova Bloom, Dark Matter, a little Big Bud, B52, Overdrive, and Floralicious Plus starting tomorrow. I'm also getting a big thing of Michorrizae soon, which I'll add with a little molasses to each res change. It's dark, I'll take pics of the flowering girls tomorrow. about 12-18" of thick canopy across a 4x4 square, with a little more stretching on the Skywalker due to lighting. In the veg closet I have 6 Euphoria in Hempy buckets, and a just recently transplanted and sadly abused Euphoria mother in soil. The hempy buckets will be put into flowering one at a time in two week intervals, starting next Thursday. The first ones will be small, but the plan is for whatever plant is going in to flowering to have 8-10 weeks of vegetative growth. In other words... big plants. Mom under 2 26w CFLs Most of the 3-4 wk old veg... 4 bulb 4' T5 A note on the veg room... since I'm doing all these flower box upgrades, I'm just going to slip the veg room in at some point too. I'm buying an old door and mounting a 4" inline fan in it... already have the fan, and the door should be $20 tops.
7 days flowering The White Gold trunk White Gold root mass (about to change res's) Skywalker White Gold The light cuts out the top of the plants, but they probably have about 1.5x the vegetation shown. The lumber frames on the bottom are 4'x4' and are the base for the trellis netting. sorry about camera quality... I'll have to see what I can do about it come closer to harvest time. The plants are transitioning into flowering nicely.
Two weeks in to flowering and they have stretched considerably. They're not growing as fast as I'd hope either, since I have no CO2 in that room right now. I don't have the damn wrench I need to get the regulator on the tank. Pics tonight with a better camera, under a green light. I'd have had way more pics by now, but the room is just too bright for my cell phone. I'll look in to borrowing a good camera tonight. I'm doing the veg door this coming week as well. My veg cab has consistently been like 90 degrees... it's doin some damage to my girls. just need the ventilation and I'm good to go there! I'll be placing a third 8x4 net square this week as well over the flowering plants as a final support. the first one really isn't supporting anything... it was to help the plant grow in a spread manner. most of the foliage around the first net is dead due to stress and a lack of light, anyway. I also placed my third plant, a euphoria, into flowering a couple days ago. It's absolutely dwarfed by the other two plants... I've boosted it's 1 gal hempy res off the ground close to 3 feet to get the plant even with the canopy. Hopefully the one 2 weeks from now will be bigger, and the one after that bigger yet! I'm also cutting myself clones this coming week to ensure a nice healthy stash of giants to fuel my 8x8.
sorry to leave you all in the dark on this one... I have been incredibly busy this summer and haven't gotten my damn camera yet. I have a couple pictures of my harvesting to share... I had a very successful run. the skywalker had to go at 6.5 weeks because I was heading out of town and didn't want to lose everything if I got robbed. I still ended up with a good haul of great bud... unfortunately it wasn't well flushed, but it still smoked very well. This plant is looking to be bigger and more potent. It's the white gold, and it grows basically like a more indica dominant version of the white widow my caretaker grew out last year. Smells like it too... I need new odor control stuff if I grow this out again to say the least. I'm dumping about 3 grand into a 100% secure new box after this run... this setup was a good idea but didn't go in to practice well. too much smell leaking out. one pic was the fresh pile of what was basically popcorn on this plant, the other is a prime nug. you can't tell because the lighting is so-so and the weed is fluffy, but when it's fluffed out it's as wide around as the tequila bottle. unfortunately... I did too good of a job. Had to donate some of the first plant to stay under my limit for the seconds projected weight. the first one weighed in at 10 z's, and most of it is gone. I'm not posting the weight of the next, but you can imagine I'm a happy camper!
