400 watt HPS + CFL continuous closet grow startup

Hi RIU,

Early last year, I decided that I would try my hand at growing. I started to read about it every day, always learning new things and always reading about new opinions. I finally started growing in September of last year, but my first two plants ended up being one male and one hermie. So I bought some fem White Widow seeds from Nirvana and started again.

The setup at first was just a small pantry that I moded into a grow chamber. The cooling was done with 4 120mm pc fans hooked up to a computer power supply. The lighting was a series of 6 fixtures with Y adapters in them for a total of 12 lights. I used 6x23 watt and 6x 42 watt lights for a total of 390 watts.

In early december I decided to start a pc grow. I have 92 watts of lights and the cooling is done with 2x 120mm pc fans. I'm growing Russian Rocket Fuel in the pc.

Last week I ordered a 400 watt HID setup, so I'm going to finish my current closet grow under an HPS lamp and turn my old grow chamber into the veg chamber so I can have a continuous grow. I plan on updating this thread at least every 2-3 days, but maybe every day. I just started trying to germinate 2 more white widow plants last night, so we're going to be starting this at the beginning of my next grow's life.



Flower Setup:

light: 400 watt hps
cooling: 18 inch oscillating fan
temp: 68 at night to 83 with lights on
soil: 60% potting soil, 30% perlite, 10% sphagnum peat moss mixture
currently flowering: Nirvana White Widow

This is my first grow that will actually make it to harvest, so I'm not expecting anything mind blowing. They went 39 days under CFL lights, and they are now in day 41 of flower(pics are of day 40). Veged them for 28 days. One plant is significantly bigger, so either one is a runt or one is a giant. Guess I'll know with my next grow.



Veg Setup:

Light: Starting with 138 watts of CFL, will gradually increase to 390 watts of CFL
Cooling: 4x 120mm PC fans
temp: ~80
soil: same as flower setup
Currently growing: Will grow 2 more White Widow from Nirvana once the seeds germinate



PC Setup:

Light: 92 watt CFL
Cooling: 2x 120mm PC fans
temp: ~75
soil: same as others
currently growing: Russian Rocket Fuel by Short Stuff Seeds

Pics are from day 19 from seed. Wattered yesterday. Will be feeding in 2-3 days with 30-35% solution of 20/20/20 nutrients.



I'll be posting more as I go along. I'll also update with the pics I had taken earlier. They're on another computer right now, so that'll be later. Feel free to comment, criticize, or ask questions!

Now day 42 of flowering my white widows. The whole grow wasn't done with HPS, so I'm not expecting anything amazing, but at least they're getting a couple weeks under an HPS lamp. I would guess that these plants are ~3 weeks away from harvest. I don't think it will go 10 weeks because there have been brown hairs growing for a while now and I spotted a couple milky trichomes here and there. In pic 11 it looks like I'm gonna get a HUGE nug from the cola on the right. Will be watering them in 1-3 days.



Here I am using my veg chamber to warm up my next batch of seeds. 2 more white widows from Nirvana. They just recently cracked so I'll be planting them tomorrow and starting up the continuous grow. I'm not going to start flowering them until they're 12 inches tall though which was 28 days for this last batch that's flowering right now. So if my current grow doesn't go long enough I'll just use the MH light that came with my setup for another week or two then switch to HPS.



Here is day 21 of my pc grow. The Russian Rocket Fuel is coming along very nicely. I tied it down to the side because the max height of these plants is 4-5 inches more than the height of the case. Just being careful. I can tell this plant is going to be bushy. There are leaves growing all over the place inside this little plant. Pistils are starting to show already as well. They're too small for my camera to pick up but they're definitely there. Another 5-7 weeks for this strain to finish. Just fed her a mixture of 40% strength nutrients.

Update time! One of the new White Widows sprouted last night. Here's some pics.




The RRF is now growing upward again. Nice to see it recovering well. I might have to tie it down again, but we'll see. I watered her today. Looks like the little bucket dries up every 3-4 days. Impressive considering how I have a fan blowing almost directly onto it.




The buds on my flowering plants seem to be getting thicker under the hps lamp. No idea if that's just wishful thinking, though. The orange of the hps lamp really makes the heat damage that happened a couple weeks ago look worse than it is. I forgot to move my CFL lamps a couple weeks ago and it burned a few leaves. Anyway, here are some pics from day 45 of flowering.

Looks dank nice one!