Budget no frills led bs

I'm on my third year,I've progressed from throwing some seeds in dirt outside and hoping for the best to setting up a room where I can try to actually grow some decent bud. Everything is DIY, I'm only growing for personal and to give away to friends so keeping costs down is my main goal. I found RIU last year and have loved the information exchange here. All the lights are thanks to the build threads here and I figured why not document what I'm doing and see what everyone thinks I can do better.
Lights- 1 eb strip build with 8 4 ft strips, 1 eb strip build with 16 2 ft strips. 1 QB288v2 x 2 and a "high bay" light in 4000k that I got to finish off a gift card the in laws gave me.

Popping some Dark Helmet from Ocean Grown Seeds to get this going. 6 of 6 popped but one is looking pretty haggard and might not make it. after one full day in dirt they seem to be doing fine.

INF Flux said:

View attachment 4198219 I'm on my third year,I've progressed from throwing some seeds in dirt outside and hoping for the best to setting up a room where I can try to actually grow some decent bud. Everything is DIY, I'm only growing for personal and to give away to friends so keeping costs down is my main goal. I found RIU last year and have loved the information exchange here. All the lights are thanks to the build threads here and I figured why not document what I'm doing and see what everyone thinks I can do better.
Lights- 1 eb strip build with 8 4 ft strips, 1 eb strip build with 16 2 ft strips. 1 QB288v2 x 2 and a "high bay" light in 4000k that I got to finish off a gift card the in laws gave me.View attachment 4198217 View attachment 4198217 View attachment 4198218

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Way to go!

Here's the grows guardian. She's more orange in person

Part of my IPM solutions, The Bug A Salt !! Very important. It's sitting on a 5 gal fermenter. I brew as well and I figure the extra co2 cant hurt.

This is across from my veg table and will be for plants that need to be inside for the winter. Meyer lemon with flowers, a fire basil, artichoke and some strawberries I'm propagating to give away. I'm sure it will get crowded as fall progresses.

This is the Nicor high bay light, no idea on the leds used or how effective it will be. I had tried using it over some window plants that were failing. It didn't help. Well, turns out the sun was way to intense in that window and the plants were frying under evening sun. So the light gets a second chance over veggies for now.


The 6 seedlings are all still in the game. The one that wont stand up and open it's leaves is still here, and is maybe looking a little more like it feels like living? We'll see how it goes.

INF Flux said:

Here's the grows guardian. She's more orange in person
View attachment 4198406
Part of my IPM solutions, The Bug A Salt !! Very important. It's sitting on a 5 gal fermenter. I brew as well and I figure the extra co2 cant hurt.
View attachment 4198407
This is across from my veg table and will be for plants that need to be inside for the winter. Meyer lemon with flowers, a fire basil, artichoke and some strawberries I'm propagating to give away. I'm sure it will get crowded as fall progresses.
View attachment 4198408
This is the Nicor high bay light, no idea on the leds used or how effective it will be. I had tried using it over some window plants that were failing. It didn't help. Well, turns out the sun was way to intense in that window and the plants were frying under evening sun. So the light gets a second chance over veggies for now.
View attachment 4198409

The 6 seedlings are all still in the game. The one that wont stand up and open it's leaves is still here, and is maybe looking a little more like it feels like living? We'll see how it goes.

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Good move on the fernenter, whatcha got brewing?

Or_Gro said:

Good move on the fermenter, whatcha got brewing?

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Just a simple lager. I'm not into the escalating hops arms race IPA's or drinking black motor oil stouts haha. A nice clear crisp beer hits the spot after work is done. Nothing against more complex brews, I just found myself not drinking those ones. I wonder if anyone has any data on how much co2 these things produce and if they can come close to systems that release co2 from a tank. Regardless, the room is far from sealed but it can't hurt to have the bucket bubbling away in there. I like using the spent grains in my compost too, trying to eliminate waste.

INF Flux said:

Just a simple lager. I'm not into the escalating hops arms race IPA's or drinking black motor oil stouts haha. A nice clear crisp beer hits the spot after work is done. Nothing against more complex brews, I just found myself not drinking those ones. I wonder if anyone has any data on how much co2 these things produce and if they can come close to systems that release co2 from a tank. Regardless, the room is far from sealed but it can't hurt to have the bucket bubbling away in there. I like using the spent grains in my compost too, trying to eliminate waste.

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Love makin lager, going to finish it cold?

Not sure how much co2 fermenter produces, but should be pretty high during initial bucket ferm.

Seen some nice grows where 1/2-1 gal bottles of sugar water are fermented alongside plants to boost ambient co2.

Suds & buds, good combo!

You know what? I'd thought to leave them up there for the whole time, but fermentation slows wayyyy down, and the benefit of finishing the suds right might outweigh the benefit of the last little bits of fermentation for the buds.
I should have called the thread "Suds and buds" lol.

Great choice on the diy Leds, you will be pleasantly suprised...

Mmm lagers that are smooth n clean are tops in my book, how long does it take to make craft beer, interesting

Dirt ! What's in it? Well, that's complicated. I'm using recycled living soil so that can change as I tend to just chuck whatever on top. It started out as perlite, peat moss, potting soil and hardwood charcoal with some growilla that was gifted to me added in.
Pictured above is a el cheapo EWC factory. Red wigglers turn scraps into poop gold. If I had it to do over I might have gone bigger with bins instead of buckets, but this works.
I like to use locally available inputs, on my property there's a bunch of Yarrow, dandelions etc that get compsted into the mix. Below is horsetail and homemade biochar (aka hardwood lump charcoal) that I mix with rock dust, neem meal, Huzhang powder, insect frass and ewc as an occasional top dress. Added to the mix has been Fungi Perfecti's Plant success, nematodes, red wigglers, cucumeris and p. californicus. Spiders are encouraged lol.

SMT69 said:

Great choice on the diy Leds, you will be pleasantly suprised...

Mmm lagers that are smooth n clean are tops in my book, how long does it take to make craft beer, interesting

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I'm really liking them so far. I'd wired up a few guitar pedals and was pleasantly surprised at the ease of building these. I'm even plotting one out for the living room to go over the lemon tree. I've got a plain ole lamp in the corner that could be replaced with a stand for the plant and light. I think it would look awesome with a shade over the top and the green would be a nice touch for the space.
Beer times really depend on the recipe, temps, the type of yeast you are using. It's easily as variable as grow techniques. My recipe goes about a month, although that could get pushed out if I start finishing the lager at a cooler temp. I'd been heating the basement room but with the grow being moved out of there, I can have a nice 60F year round and can take OR GRO's advice on the cooler finish. I tend to be really sloppy with my brewing. Drives my buddy who's way into it nuts, lol. Hygrometer? Nerds! lol. My brew pot is kept in a disgusting state just because it drives him crazy. I may be a bad person.

Water! My plants now drink with the fishes. I don't ph or do anything like that. Healthy pond = healthy water in my book.
This is an IBC tote aquaponics "chop and flip build" that I put together a while back. KOI GET BIG! lol. I water with pond water exclusively and occasionally I clean some part of the system and that black water goes to the gardens as well.

Above the fish pond part is the bed made from the flipped top of the tote. This is a great place to stick cuts of whatever.


It's to cold at night out there now so it's retired for the year, but I added this cloner into the system and it worked great. Recently was full of strawberry runners. All rooted and are being given to neighbors.

Metrics! I like to know things. I really would like to have a par meter, but, budget grow..... Down the road if I can have a month were important things aren't constantly breaking I'll be picking one up. For now, just using a few things to monitor and control temp and humidity.
Out in the greenhouse, the need to keep it cool enough to not make fish stew was solved with a thermal switch for a fan.


It get's way humid in the morning in there! I really like these things. A couple bucks at home derpo.


Upstairs it's right in the sweet spot.

In the flower area I like these cheap thermometers from petco to hang in the canopy.

Lol if you can build a fuzz face, leds are cake.
Single coil guy or humbuckers?Theres nothing like throwing on some delay, with the fuzz, after a nice bowl haha. RnR

Propagation! I like to preserve things, so having used the little cloner with mixed results I went bigger. Had terrible results, added a big filter/pump , had terrible results, added a fogger, had terrible results and finally figured out the whole thing was being baked by afternoon sun coming in a window. It works nicely now.



So I think that's most of what I'm working with. I'll post some baby pics as soon as they are a little bigger.

SMT69 said:

Lol if you can build a fuzz face, leds are cake.
Single coil guy or humbuckers?Theres nothing like throwing on some delay, with the fuzz, after a nice bowl haha. RnR

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Lace alumitones so.... humbuckerish? And hell yeah, I need to add an amp to the garden, something very small, and have some garden jams And yes,having tinkered with some rather involved circuits it's hard not to do a spit take when people are afraid to DIY because they think it will be to complex or dangerous. It isn't.

3rd full day in dirt. 4 of them look great, one is just behind and the runt is still hanging in there.


I'd thought something had gotten to the root on this lil one but it seems to still be trying. We'll see how it goes.

Temps and humidity are looking good.

The gg clones are rooting nicely, maybe one more day? Not growing these out, just replacing mom with the winner of the root race,

The Glue is dead! Long live the Glue!

So the runt finally gave up the ghost. The rest of the Dark Helmets are just now showing their third set of leaves


So I really can't complain, 5 0f 6 is fine with me. They all popped and my suspicion is that the taproot on the runt got nibbled on. Really this is the only time I worry about them in the live soil. At this point they are past the tasty morsel stage.

So I potted a couple of the extra Glues just in case I get 4 males or something. This was fresh mixed soil with castings and compost. I checked in on them early this afternoon and there are two roly polys (wood louse) actually up in the plant munching on leaves. I normally leave these composters alone but at the risk of causing a new cannabis destroying species of roly poly to evolve, they were destroyed. Why did they do this?

They were hungry! I neglected to create any sort of hummus layer and their usual food source was absent.
For a quick fix, I harvested dandelions from the yard, cut em up, and fed the bugs.



Glad I caught it, those lil things are voracious, which is great when they are breaking stuff down for you but bad when you remove their usual food sources and put a plant in what to them, is an otherwise empty fridge.

INF Flux said:

... co2 from a tank. ....

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You can also make CO2 from citric acid and baking soda.