Crossed strains 400W HPS 2 person cabinet grow

Hello, Ive had lots of CFL grows here but never had the space to use an HPS. Now through partnering up Ive (we've) got a one person flat to finally do the type of grow Ive been wanting to do for years.
So now its time to do this thing right. Bought a 70x24x35 inch cabinet, installed a lock and got some real equipment:
-400 watt HPS with hood
-papst ventilation system, moves 225m3/h
-cabon filter
-6x 18watt CFTs
-plus thousand other small fun/usefull things

The cabinet has been made 100% light proof, coated with mylar, ventilation installed on top shelf (air get sucked in passively at the bottom and pushed out at the top) and built a setup out of 6 18 watt CFTs for vegetation (3 blue, 3 red spectrum).
So for vegetation its going to be the fluorescent tubes and for flowering the 400 HPS. Ventilation + carbon filter will be turned on when flowering starts, for now just a small pc fan is blowing air out (its not much but its just to ensure some fresh air gets circulated).

Seeds are from an earlier grow where I polinated a bunch of different strains with pollen from Power Plant and Bubblicious. I know the strain of the plant that was polinated, but I dont know if a seed came from the power plant or the bubblicious pollen. For this grow I germinated seeds from:
AK48 x Power Plant or Bubblicious (PP or B)
Sugar Haze x (PP or B)
Purple Bud x (PP or B)
Jungle Wreck x (PP or B)


Now its ready to go. To make things less complicated Im going to spare you the story and just say that 4 plants are 2 or 3 weeks older than the rest. I didnt officially write down when the plants germinated so for now Im just going to refer day 1 as the first day they were put into their real cabinet.

We ended up with 3 Purple Bud x (PP or B), 8 Sugar Haze x (PP or B), 3 AK48 x (PP or B) and just 1 Jungle Wreck x (PP or B) sprouts. Goal is to have around 6-8 females at the end.
Even though we have, for example, 8 Sugar Haze, they are not all the same strain in the end. 4 Sugar Haze might have been pollinated with Power Plant pollen and 4 with Bubblicious pollen. I guess not knowing exactly is part of the fun.

"Day 1" (1. August) Plants move into new home (seedlings are 1-few days old, taller plants are 2-3 weeks old)

6 CFT setup


the 4 taller ones (2-3 weeks older) werent in great shape because we didnt plan on keeping them at first and gave them hardly any light


5. August


400w HPS is hanging above the CFT construction but currently not in use


9. August

growing


open/closed


11. August



Im pretty happy with the setup, finally able to do a real grow after all this time. Details will come in future posts.
Feel free to comment, its always a lot more exciting to have people join in on the fun.

16. April

All is well, weve topped some of the bigger ones so that they wont tower over the rest. On the left are the smaller plants, on the right the bigger ones. Their standing on two trays at different hights in order to have their tops at one level.

Light raised to take pictures


Tallest plant (topped)


The smell has become noticable in the apartment, 1-2 more weeks veg and then the HPS with carbon filter will be running to take care of that.

looking nice man, i just started using a 400w about a month ago you'll love it...if your still having problems with a little smell invest in some ONA gel, works great! Sub'd..

letitgrow77 said:

looking nice man, i just started using a 400w about a month ago you'll love it...if your still having problems with a little smell invest in some ONA gel, works great! Sub'd..

Click to expand...

Yeah, Ive always heard everyone say if youre going to get a 250w HPS you might as well go for the 400, so thats why its now hanging in our cabinet (instead of a 250). Little smell is ok, it just cant reach outside of the apartment in the hallway. Not sure they sell ONA gel here but we might take a look into that so thanks for the tip.

Heres some updates
Ive topped some of the older plants again, they are just too much bigger than the rest. Started feeding them nutes a few days ago, think they will be switching to 12 hours of light in about a week.

18. August



19. August




22. August

Roots, theyll be getting new pots some day soon


Older plants next to a younger one. They would probably be the right size to flower now but theyll have to wait a bit longer till the younger ones get bigger


Left-young plant, other two are older and topped





Currently feeding them half strength nutes

24. August
They are really exploding in growth. The biggest plants (already topped or else they would be much bigger) are already 21 inches tall. With that hight I should actually start flowering right away, however the rest are only about half that size. Thats why I was staring at them wondering what to do, switching between the decision to flower and to wait. Then what seemed to be a great solution popped in my head, Ill go for a Scrog grow. That way I can give the other plants some time to grow for a few more days and not have to worry about the difference in sizes. Otherwise the big ones would soon grow into the light during flowering.

Pics for the day:


Left topped older plant, on the right one of the taller younger ones


Heres a little experiment. In a grow a from a while ago I already tested twisting around the stem 360 degrees making a loop in order to make the plant smaller. Because one plant was already too tall and I didnt want to cut off the nice branches I basically looped them to make the plant smaller. Only instead of a real loop I made two bends, one down and one up again. The red line is to help see where the stems are. It might look a little chaotic but (s)he should recover quite well.






http://imageshack.us

Also, it started at least a week ago but today I really noticed the smell walking into the apartment. So for anybody doing a stealth grow, 15 plants after 3 weeks wont be easy to hide.

Man they are looking killer! I would do some lst before I put them in flower.

GEt the gallon size ona gel from the internet, its done a Hell of a job for me.

Looks good.Are you trying to breed strains?

@letitgrow77
Ill basically be doing LST by doing Scrog. Once they get big enough Ill add in a screen and tie them down.
The smell isnt a problem and once we switch on the 400w HPS we will start using the carbon filter

@wyteberrywidow
We might cross some strains. The seeds were using now are already a cross between different strains (more details in first post) but we might keep a male or two in a seperate box to pollenate with later just for fun.

Ok I will stay tuned grow.

August 26.



August 27.
I fixed up some yeast/sugar mixture. Built a little hose system to distribute it better. The hose is now sitting on top of the plants.


I think Ill be doing 48 hours of darkness tomorrow to start off flowering.

looking great bro, you should have a great harvest,...+rep!

Started flowering on sunday, kicking it off with 48 hours of darkness.
Yesterday the 400W HPS was flipped on, they should be loving it.

Day 4 flowering (Aug 2.)


Carbon filter and fan (top shelf) are also now on

I wouldnt add the c02 until you start flowering thats when it affects most.

nice looking grow
think ill sign up for the ride

@wyteberry: Good to know but adding some now couldnt hurth either

@odlaw: nice to have you on board

Day 7 flowering:

4 plants have shown their sex already after just one week, 2 males and 2 females. One of the males (jungle wreck) was a really nice slim plant with two great main colas (topped), oh well.



The males


Also: will be on a roadtrip to amsterdam the next week, updates will come when im back

So, back from Amsterdam, finally got to taste some blueberry. My tip: the Hillstreet Blues cafe (on the right in the pic) has good and cheap juice drinks, smoothies etc...



Back to the plants:
Day 17 Flowering (Sept 15)

The result is 7 females (out of 15 plants), something like 2x purple bud, 1 Ak48 and 4 x Sugar haze, Ill have to double check some time to see if thats correct.
As expected they grew a whole lot in the time I was gone but they were looked after by the friend at whose apartment they are growing at so they werent in danger of drying out or growing into the lamp. We also switched from vegetation nutes to flowering nutes. One plant seems to have gotten burned a bit on the top cola but otherwise all seems to be going well.
Today we installed a screen, tied down the plants, repotted them in their final big pots and added a bigger bottle for the CO2 mixture.






Day 18 Flowering (Today)

Trimmed some of the branches at the way bottom to redirect the energy to the top colas. Dont know yet how much would be optimal to cut away, might cut some more in the next days.


The leaves are now also a nice dark green. We were adding too little nutes at first and had a lighter color but after doubling the dose they are now looking great.

Looking good.