First DWC Attempt with CFLs and Bagseed, Just Entered 12/12 Cycle

Hey guys, I wanted to share a few pics of my current grow using DWC, my first hydro attempt btw. I've grown indoors and out before but always with soil so this is all new to me.

I planted a few seeds back in mid Feb. of some decent skunk seeds I'd put back because it was pretty good stuff for street, very good actually. Anyway, it's a crap shoot wondering what's going to grow. I think I germinated about ten seeds and it turned out that five of those ten survived. I didn't keep records or a journal per se but I did snap some pics along the way.

Here's a shot of my grow tent project:View attachment 1563123

I'm using 5 gallon buckets with 6" net pots, dwc, a bunch of cfl lamps, my home made carbon filter and a 4'x2'x7' grow tent. I'm also using a home made CO2 generator (2 liter pop bottles with yeast and sugar water w/bubbler stones.

I've spent a ton of time on this forum learning about how to do this stuff right and it's been a great read.Hats off to all the people who post and share there knowledge, sucesses and disasters. It's nice not to have to re-invent the wheel!

My day job requires me to travel on sometimes short notice for a day or a week and shortly after germinating the seeds I had to be out of town for a week and I nearly lost all the seedlings due to stale water that got way too hot I think and the ph was very high. I was able to save most plants but a few didn't make it and those that did really struggled for a while until I got my act together. I think the first seeds popped through my SureToGrow starter cubes on Valentine's Day. They got moved to veg and into the 6" net pots w/hydroton pellets about two weeks later as I was trying to save the seedlings from my own stupidity.
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I remember after the plants got their third set of leaves that I could already smell that delicious skunky odor. I was thinking damn.... these little plants are going to stink up the house and they're just babies! I'd grown some bagseed in the past outdoors and recall a few plants that had a slight skunky odor but I didn't notice that odor until they were about waist high and it wasn't a strong odor but these babies were quite pungent. Not a bad thing I suppose unless it causes problems controlling the odor but I had planned on adding a carbon filter system anyway. I just didn't have it made at the time so the wife was a little nervous about the smell for those first few weeks.

Here's a pic of my #1 girl, she was the strongest one of the bunch from day one and proved to be a healthy little thing. I have not touched her or any of the others to make them branch out or control the height. This gal is currently about 18"-20" tall and is almost 28" wide. The node spacing is tighter than I've ever grown before and it branched out early. I didn't pinch the tops or bend them down, I even bought a net to help tame the height but so far haven't needed it as these plants have all been staying compact and dense.
this pic was taken on 4.14. I was happy that the plants are growing short and fairly bushy, the branches are everywhere and she's so frikkin bushy that I've been pruning her fan leaves here and there just to open the canopy up enough to let some light into the plant. It's so dense I can't see through her at all. I'm hoping she'll bring a decent yield out of all those branches.

Like I said, I ended up with five viable plants and two of those five were in so bad of shape early on that when I transplanted them to my net pots I put the two sickly seedlings in one pot because I believed at the time one of both would not survive. As it turned out these two plants were quite different that the others. As they got a little bigger I noticed the two twins were the same strain, both had very dark wide leaves with coarse sawtooth edges, I figured these to be a fairly pure indica strain or perhaps a Kush strain. I'm no strain expert by any stretch but I was tickled to see a variety growing. These two plants didn't want to grow very much in height or width but they were still hanging on and the stalks and stems were huge! Here's a shot of the two plants, I'd love to hear anyone's guess what the strain is. It's not as skunky smelling as the other three plants but there is a skunky odor nonetheless. Here's a shot of the twins taken last week:

The largest leaves are almost 2.5" wide and about 6" long. Easily more than twice as wide as the others which I'm guessing are an indica/sativa hybrid? Dunno but I do know they are the skunkyist smelling things I've ever grown. Just a few days ago I learned both of these are girls, yeah!!!

I had the one large plant I felt all along was a female and sure enough she was. Out of the other two plants I was pretty sure the larger one was a male and it too proved to be a boy and the other one was hard to guess the sex. It was fairly bushy and not too stretchy but it gave me no preflowers to indicate one way or the other. I switched the lighting interval from 18/6 to 12/12 six days ago and in only three days I could see early flowers indicating a male. The pic below shows the second male after a few days under 12/12 and after a nute change to flowering mix. You can see the top stretch a bit and like the other male it had a good spurt of growth stretching taller than the girls.


As it turned out I got three out of five girls and the best part was I had two distinctly different strains to play around with. I've pulled both males out of the grow tent (in my closet) and have them still growing in another room, I want to get some pollen from the larger male as it is super healthy and quite skunky too. I figured I'd do the same with the other male in case it proved to be the more potent to the two boys. Both males seemed to be from the same strains they look almost identical.

I've got some clones rooting now from the females, I've got five clones of the large female and three clones off the kush like twins. The clones seem to be holding their own so far but they are only 6 days old. I also have some premium feminized seeds that I ordered a few months back. I've ordered a few Pineapple Chunk fem seeds, Vanilla Kush, Extreme Indica and one other I can't recall. I dared not to jump into my dwc with my premium seeds so I made a first run with this bagseed.

I'm using TechnaFlora nutes and I've got to do something about my temps, I'm in a warm climate and the room temp is in the high 70s and even with my inline fan and carbon filter I still struggle with temps in my buckets. They like to get up around 80-82 degrees and I know that's way hot for dwc but I don't have an ac in the grow closet nor a chiller. I think I'm going to buy a mini fridge off craigslist for $25 or $30 and pump my nutes through it and back. I didn't expect temp problems using cfls and an exhaust fan venting into the attic.
So far everything is cool but I know I'm not getting 100% growth rates due to the higher temps but the roots still look OK. They aren't as white as they used to be, they have alight tan or beige tint to them but they don't stink nor are they slimy. I bought a few of those cooler bricks you freeze and then add to a cooler to help keep it cold and they are helping keep the nutes temp in the mid to upper 70s, still higher than I want but I'm hoping they are going to be ok until I can get a proper fix.

Here's a few more pics I'd taken, a few were under UV lighting where they show up blue but I remember holding my handheld uv lamp over the plants and when I'd get close to the leaves they would turn red, looked like frikkin poinsettas!

Here's the larger skunk male I've pulled out last week:

here's the other male after I pulled him from the group on 4.20.


Here's a pic of the kushy looking twins taken on 4.20, they have about 5 or 6 days of 12/12. It's starting to bud out nicely, it won't be very bushy compared to the other female but it should make some decent buds or at least a nice main cola. I'm counting on my clones to survive and let me experiment with this strain a bit more.

Here's a close up of the smaller kushy female:


Below is a closer look at one of the males shot on 4.20 it's flowering but they haven't matured yet, keeping them around to capture some pollen, figured a super skunky and healthy growing male would be worth keeping for future seed generation however I do plan on using clones mostly in the future.

Here's a pic of three buckets left growing, I just pulled the large male as I knew it was a boy, it had enough preflowers on it to give me no doubt it was a boy before I switched over to 12/12. The other male is on the left, when I pulled the first male this one had not yet stretched or indicated, in this pic you can clearly the latest stretch right when I changed out the nutes right before switching the light interval.


Here's a pic of the kids on 3.30.11:


Here's a pic taken on 3.27.11



the larger female on 3.21.11:

Here's the roots shot on the same day, they're about triple the size now:

below is the larger male back on 3.22 man they really grew up since then.


Below a shot of my twins (kush twins maybe?) taken on 3.22:


The larger female on 3.21:


Below, the larger female on 3.18.11:


The larger male on 3.18.11 below:


the kids on 3.18.11:


Taken on 3.14.11:


Taken on 3.10.11:


I used drip rings (homemade and lame but they worked) for the first few weeks after transplanting. I'm using SureToGrow starter cubes instead of Rockwool. After testing the STG cubes I found they don't wick up water very well and did much better when surrounded with soaked hydroton. I removed them once I saw roots exiting the 6" net pots and went pure DWC. I think the drip rings probably saved the plants. I bought a 6 station valve unit for nine bucks at Home Depot that allowed me to connect my small water pump to the inlet and I used four of the six outlets to 1/4" tubing, there are valves on each outlet to adjust water flow from zero to full. I had an extra 5 gallon bucket that I used and had the water pump and the valve unit in that bucket. I ran the dripper 24/7, it didn't seem to over water the hydroton as far as I could tell but who knows I may have over watered them and not known it.
Here's a pic taken back on 3.10.11 of my best female and man was she stinky even back then, could not believe how strong the odor was from such small plants, if I had the closet door open and the tent unzipped and the spare bedroom door open for extra ventilation you could literally smell skunk when you were round the corner and down the hall. Freaked me out and made me get on building a carbon filter just thinking about the coming odor during flowering made me cringe...


Here's a few pics taken under UV lighting, just screwing around with some UV bulbs, I've added two UV lamps to my lighting, one is a small spiral cfl and the other is a small 4" long single ended aquarium type bulb. I'm going to check out those reptile uvb lamps and if they are different than the two uv lamps I have I'll probably add one of those too.
UV shot taken on 4.17.11:




A few misc pic of the boys:







I hope you enjoy the pics and my ramblings, they girls are enjoying the end of their first week of flowering today. The dominant male and female both indicated sex prior to changing the photo period. The wide leafed twins didn't indicate anything until about three days ago and that was only a few days into 12/12. They had already begun to start getting more active growth around the main stem, I'm guessing the twins will have more of a central cola type growth than scattered nuggets as it's not very bushy but it is dense and there's a shit load of big leaves on them, maybe they will take off now that I'm into flowering and will stretch out a bit to give me some better yield chances.


Thanks again for all the help this forum has given me to get 2/3rds through my first hydro grow, it's been a trip and I can't wait to grow my premium fem seeds which will likely have to wait until late summer so I'm not fighting the relentless heat of our summers here. Any comments or advice regarding the grow is more than welcome, I'm here to learn and share my experiences with you guys.

Shit looks good.. I grow in the desert with temps reaching 115 - 120 degrees outside. Some tweaks here and there, you can do it!!!

good shit! welcome to DWC. +rep
plants lookin great! you can def see the strain differences sitting next to each other

thanks guys, anyone want to hazard a guess as to the lineage of the wide leafed twins? They don't smell as skunky as the other girl but it has a mild skunk odor you notice first but it's not the in your face strong odor as the hybrid.

Today it's hot and humid and I can tell it in the grow room, even though the house is about 78 degrees now the temps can get up with all the lights on. I dunked some more ice packs into the buckets today, twice actually as these were the smaller red packs. It's a hassle but they do help get the temps down that I'm trying to be more proactive in fighting that chemistry temps. I finally feel I've gotten my hands around my ph and ec. I have Hanna meters for both ph and ec finally and I struggled finding a sweet spot for the plants. I was getting serious ph swings, mostly way high after a few days and the nutes were getting locked out and it snowballed so dropped the nutes, rebatched at about half strength or less and monitored the ph and ec vs water consumption rates and think I've found where they're happy for now. My ph seems to like 6.1-6.2 and my ec seems to keep my ph stable with about 1700-1800 ec. or half that in ppm I suppose. The plants seem happy and aren't freaking me out anymore and it's so nice not having to chase ph everyday, I can only imagine what that was doing to the plants...

I've got a few clones rooting now and I think I'll let them run the course and then take a mid/late summer break during peak heat and resume before fall comes.

BeaverHuntr, how the hell are you keeping things in check with those kind of temps, do you have a dedicated cooler and active CO2 going?
I feel a little better after reading a recent report that hydro can typically take much higher temps than is considered "within the window" today because I know I'm running near the edge of over-temping my nutes but so far it hasn't gotten bloody and I hope it stays that way through harvest!

UVRay said:

thanks guys, anyone want to hazard a guess as to the lineage of the wide leafed twins? They don't smell as skunky as the other girl but it has a mild skunk odor you notice first but it's not the in your face strong odor as the hybrid.

Today it's hot and humid and I can tell it in the grow room, even though the house is about 78 degrees now the temps can get up with all the lights on. I dunked some more ice packs into the buckets today, twice actually as these were the smaller red packs. It's a hassle but they do help get the temps down that I'm trying to be more proactive in fighting that chemistry temps. I finally feel I've gotten my hands around my ph and ec. I have Hanna meters for both ph and ec finally and I struggled finding a sweet spot for the plants. I was getting serious ph swings, mostly way high after a few days and the nutes were getting locked out and it snowballed so dropped the nutes, rebatched at about half strength or less and monitored the ph and ec vs water consumption rates and think I've found where they're happy for now. My ph seems to like 6.1-6.2 and my ec seems to keep my ph stable with about 1700-1800 ec. or half that in ppm I suppose. The plants seem happy and aren't freaking me out anymore and it's so nice not having to chase ph everyday, I can only imagine what that was doing to the plants...

I've got a few clones rooting now and I think I'll let them run the course and then take a mid/late summer break during peak heat and resume before fall comes.

BeaverHuntr, how the hell are you keeping things in check with those kind of temps, do you have a dedicated cooler and active CO2 going?
I feel a little better after reading a recent report that hydro can typically take much higher temps than is considered "within the window" today because I know I'm running near the edge of over-temping my nutes but so far it hasn't gotten bloody and I hope it stays that way through harvest!

Click to expand...

This is my first time using co2 last grow I used a portable AC but things became too cramped so this year I moved the whole grow to a spare bedroom I have. One thing I did was take Bloomer57's cooler idea and ran with it. I wanted to do buckets so I went to Lowe's and bought some 5 gallon sport coolers ( the ones you see on a construction site) These things I kid you not keep the temps down for a good 5 days. When I do a res change I just add the frozen water bottles and until temp is 65 - 68 degrees. Stays that way untill res change ( drain to waste ). I laso bought a small desk fan and have it blowing on the floor at my air pumps so the air pumps are sucking in cooler air. I eliminated the light on heat problem buy using a cool hood and 8'' 675 fan to keep the light cool. Its already in the low 90's this week. Gets hotter here from here on out. By harvest it should be 110 outdoors.

Haiz UV. Looks like a pretty good grow thusfar. Keep up the good work I'm also on my first Bubbleponic grow atm. Happy growing! sub'd

Man the water temps are bugging the hell out of me... I'm having trouble keeping it down so I'm worrying now about the roots failing during flowering or something.

I had planned on getting a used mini fridge to loop in some tubing to cool and recirculate my nutes. At the time I was running a RDWC basically, I had an extra 5 gallon bucket setup with nutes, air stones and water pump to pump out to the drip rings I rigged up when I transplanted the seedling to the hydroton 5" net pots.
I did a nute change and decided I really didn't need or want the water pump/recirculation. I decided to run bubbler lines to each bucket and nothing more.
I like the simplicity of the system and the pots aren't linked together with the half inch tubing that constitutes a drain and filler line all in one and also a side benefit is less chance of water leaks with independent dwc pots. The down side is it's now a bit difficult to cool these pots.

I have half a mind to go ahead and get some coolers and rig them up with my net pots dropping in and maybe with an ice pack a day the water/nutes will stay cool all day long, right now I just need enough cooler real estate to hold the 5 gallon sized 6" netpots. I wish I could air condition the room but it's out of the question so I have to do something else and I think the best thing to get those nute temps under control will be to use coolers or wrap my buckets with some insulation?

I'll figure something out I hope! Anyway, I got a few more pics of the girls, yep they're growing up, now I'm starting to see a stretch and I'm going to have to tame the main top a bit on the larger skunk female. On the two kush twins, I want to tie them back facing outward like rays so the branches that are there now can get some light and room to grow, I think they yield could nearly double if I do some training and bending. The skunk female is so frikkin bushy, it's really amazing, I've never grown anything quite like this. The flowers are coming on now that there's about 10 days into flowering. I'm confident next week will show even further flower growth. Here's a pic of the girls at station!


Here's a pic of the little kushy female main stem. It's already filling in the top 4-5 inches.

This part of the grow is what I've been waiting for, I love when it's flower time and this hydro run is looking good so far, hope they remain good to me through the end.

Anybody adding molasses or other organics to enhance aroma, taste, color?? any input is appreciated.

Below is a shot of the skunk female's top, She's budding a little slower than the twins but that doesn't surprise me, she's packing on flowers on every branch tip and man are there some branch tips on her, hell I can't count them it's so dense I'm surprised the plant doesn't choke itself out of light. This plant has always had a very strong skunk odor since it got it's send set of regular leaves, the odor has increased slightly over vegging and moreso now into flowering. I think this plant's heritage is related to the old school original pungent skunk or skunk #1. Whatever it is I hope she proves to be a strong yielder with all branches and how wide it's gotten. Right now it's about 28-29" wide at the widest spot and she's about 20" maybe 22" now that she's stretched some here the last two days.


This grow is bagseed for a shake down cruise of the dwc setup I made back in late January. I have procured some premium femmed seeds and I couldn't resist planting one of my "free" seeds sent with the order. They send me "a fem FruityChronicJuice" seed and I sasid what the hell, let's plant it to insure we get at least one girl, lol. Well, there she is, just a baby now that she's out of the germination station. I have her in a big bucket so I won't have to transplant it again. She's just visiting her big sisters up in the flower chamber for this pic.

update, I found a used mini fridge yesterday for 35 bucks off Craigslist. It's in great shape, it's only a 1.7CF but that's exactly what I wanted. I guess I'll be figuring out the best way to integrate this into my system that will allow me to chill the water. Originally I had my buckets plumbed for ebb and flow with half inch drain/recirculte lines that have either tees or elbows plugged in at the bottom. After I did a rez change to start flowering I disconnected the rez bucket and associated lines to each bucket. I took any buckets that had a "T" on it and changed it to a 90, then I just stuck a length of tubing that goes up like a water level tube would be. So I guess I may go back to a rez system so I can pump water from the rez into a tube that loops into the mini fridge and coil up a bunch of tubing so the dwell time of the water is enough to enjoy a temp drop while inside the fridge and then it returns to the rez tank. I have a separate pump already for pumping the nutes from rez to fridge and back and another pump inside the rez tank to pump the cooled nutes to the buckets.
I think I'll just cut two holes either in the door of the fridge or the top or sides to run the tubing lines through I have room to put the mini fridge in my closet that has my grow tent.

I'm living on the edge with my water temps too, my temps often get to 80 degrees and even 82-83 sometimes, I just hope I can correct this issue before it takes down my now flowering plants. I guess I've been lucky so far, the roots look pretty good, they're not white like they used to be but I do know that the nutes have stained the roots a bit. I don't want any problems as I'm pushing on through flowering, the closer it gets to finishing I worry more as I have more to lose every day.

thanks to all on the forum who've posted the gospel on getting this stuff right. I'm going to muddle through this first grow then change things up for the next one, I'll be using coolers for sure!

smoke'em if you got'em.

hell yeah, good find. gonna be a cool project to see.
plants are lookin nice, pistils poppin up everywhere!

Haiz Ray. I was just wondering if you figured somethin out with the mini-fridge Your girlz still look pretty good thusfar. I was considering trying coolers next grow as well. I hear nothing but good things! I'll check back. Happy growing mane!

Hey bro, I got swamped today and due to reasons beyond my control (wife) my tinkering plan fell apart before implementation...
well, i do have the craigslist fridge running in my garage converted to workshop/man cave. I think what I'll probably do is at first try a smaller reservoir (Maybe, maybe not another 5 gallon bucket). I've put in one of my small water pumps that I used on my drip rings earlier on the beginning of this grow. I would simply loop a bunch of tubing into a coil in the fridge and have it going back to the reservoir, that ought to chill that water down nicely. I can either add additional coils to lengthen the dwell time or reduce the flow rate to also increase the dwell time, then it would be constantly pumped by a second low flow liquid pump to a valve control manifold that I used to route and control drip rates to my plants. The drip lines would be shooting a light stream of "chilled" nutes/water to each bucket. I can only hope that will be just enough to get me through the warmer seasons we have here. Like I said before, I originally had my buckets setup for ebb and flow so I had drilled a hole at the bottom of the side and popped in a "tee" or an "elbow" and a grommet to seal it up nicely for the half inch drain/circulation tubing.
I would need to re-connect the drain lines so I get at least some recirculation of the nutes in the bucket and the chilled nutes the chiller reservoir holds.

I'm two full weeks into flower now and I'm blown away how much this skunk lady is stretching. All during veg. she stayed squat and super busy, never topped, bent or other tricks used to tame her height and promote bushing, she just didn't need it. Now it's grown about a quarter of it's pre-flower height in two weeks. I worry now about having enough head-room in the tent to contain her. I'm already maxed out on my depth, my tent is 4' wide x 2' deep and 7' tall. The skunk female is nearly 30 inches wide now and about 22-24 inches tall. The side branches are abundant and very leafy. I noticed today that the longer middle branches have flower cluster a few nodes deep and they are growing faster than the tops right now.

I'm hoping those middle branches will fill in making colas rather than give me a few popcorn buds. I'm confident the main stem will give me a decent top cola as well. If this plant ends up anywhere close to its potential the yield should be very good.. I've got plenty of light on it and they are well fed so I'm hoping for the best here but expecting average first grow yields. My roots are huge, I checked them out today and it reminded me of the movie "Alien". On the big skunk female, there are 3 or 4 main roots that are thick as hell where they exit the net pot, then they wrap around the pots in a curving fashion that reminds me of that alien design they used so effectively in that movie. She's got a huge ball of roots in the 5 gallon bucket and they look and smell and feel OK. Sure would be nice if I could coax a quarter pound out of her, she looks like she could give it up if things go well.

I hope the other two twin kush girls sharing a 6" net pot stretch on a lot more as they are both quite small but they are starting to stretch but nothing like the big skunk girl. However the kush girls already are filling in the main stem with flowers down at least 4-5 inches from the top. Looks like it wants to make a nice thick cola, fine with me but I hope to get some loving off these other smaller branches, I think I'm going to train this plant with some string to pull the plants apart to let some light and air in to the branches that are almost hidden under the canopy which is really thick and solid on the kush plants, the fan leaves are huge and wide, I've got a few fan leaves where the center finger of the leaf was almost 3" wide, that's nearly the biggest leaf "width wise" I've ever seen. Testing has concluded the skunk brother males (there were two) are very high quality giving a great buzz with no bad habits from the leaves, the bud tips are even tastier giving a nice stone... Same with the female skunk, she's got game too and the fun hasn't even started. I did a little trimming on the kush twins to open the canopy a little to get some well needed light down into the plant and man those fan leaves got us quite a buzz, can't WAIT to sample some lady bud!

I may head over to the Lowe's in the morning and buy a sheet or two of that thick rigid insulation, they're 4x8 ft. and about an inch thick. It has a foil like backing on one side and a clear plastic sealing film over the white styrofoam on the other, I think it's about $10-$12 a sheet for one inch thick stuff. I bought some a few years ago to install into my garage door to insulate the garage a little better than bare metal doors. Seems to be pretty good stuff and maybe I can form some box like assembly around my 5 gallon buckets that would sorta act like a cooler based system. This may be necessary even with the mini fridge re-circulation system and I'm OK with that if helps cool my nutes down to the low 70's I'll be one stoned and happy camper!
I took some more shots yesterday and today of the girls but haven't even downloaded them off my Canon yet. I'll post some more pics showing the budding flowers coming out and a few more pics of the plants at the end of week 2 flowering.

cheers,
UVR

Supz Ray. Sounds like you had an eventful day as well. I also had to make another rez yesterday. The 4 ladiez I have now were getting a little crowded I like your idea about the LST'ing. I honestly think I'm gonna have to try the same technique later. Sounds like your girlz are doin awesome tho. I'm sure you'll get the temps under control. Grow and learn brutha. I'll check back for surez. Let us know how that insulation stuff goes. I hear foil tape is growing in popularity. Happy growing!

yo Minz, yea buddy it was busy this weekend. I got derailed bigtime with overnight family guest my wife brought home Saturday afternoon with about 30 minutes notice and I had my plants out in the studio room and had the closet prety much dismantled for field mods.. I wanted to redo the exhaust from the inline fan through the attic plus I wanted to cut about 5" off the legs of the shelf I have the girls on to recoup a little more vertical space. While I was at it I redid the lights, got'em up higher now and better spaced plus I changed the way I had everything wired.. Now I have all the electrical plugs, timers, etc. outside the tent and I've snaked the cords through the side. I added a master switch to kill everything quickly, if ever needed. I also redid the clone/veg chamber lighting, nothing fancy, just a few cfls but mounted in a way I can add more lights easily and they are tucked up nicely against the bottom of the shelf.

Speaking of the shelf, I originally had a 1/2" mdf board with maple hardwood support strips. I used a roll of metal tape over the mdf board thinking that would reflect up any light into the plants from bottom up and would help protect the mdf from any drips, etc. well it worked but not very well keeping any liquid off the mdf. I've gotten my share of water spills on the shelf, never real bad but it don't take much to hose mdf. I got some 3/4" birch plywood, really nice stuff I had in the shop for some templates for guitar building and noticed it was actually a little bigger than I needed.

My original shelf was 21.5" deep and 46" wide to fit inside the tent poles. After having as many five 5 gallon buckets on the shelf I realized it the shelf could be a little deeper so I don't have to stagger the buckets as much and to give me a little more room to push'em around when I'm in there tinkering in the garden. So I cut the new plywood shelf so it's 21.5" at the corners and a full 24" in the centers and when I layed it on the old top I could tell that little bit of added depth was quite noticable.

I didn't even get to the mini-fridge, was f'n slammed trying to get my chit done. I feel better about the state of the tent now than before. Like you, I'm winging this shit, figuring out along the way what works and what don't. While ago I put the plants back in the tent and it looks so much better now, the new shelf, better lighting arrangement and very clean electrical now, plus the lower cone/veg area is tidied up and slid to one side so I have room on the lower right for storage or even a mother area. I've got three 5-gallon buckets under the girls now in veg. One pot is a single plant from seed, it's a fem'd seed I got free with my last seed order, it's called Chronic Fruit Juice, hope it's dank and tasty! The other two pots are all clones, I have four small but nice clones from momma skunk in one bucket, the other bucket has three clones from the kush twins I'm growing and a single skunk clone from momma skunk. So far they are rooting well, I put them in SureToGrow starter cubes just like I did my seeds and put it in a homemade cloning/germination tub. I only lost one clone and it was my first try at cloning anything and honestly I think it died just because it was too small and not real healthy, it was a withering bottom twig branch on the kush twins that was probably going to be removed anyway. Same with the skunk clones, I only used the bottom most branch tips on the smaller branches or sub branches. My head was screwing with me whether to pinch a mid-range branch to clone and have it much bigger and that much farther along but I said no way, I want those to make BUDS man.

BTW, I checked out your thread, congrats man, you're fighting the good fight too! I pulled my my two males the other day and they were hanging out in my shop and I was nearby tinkering with something and I felt the leaves and they were just about right for smoking. We fired off a bowl of the trim leaves and a few really small male skunk tops and I was TOAST! The wife and I were like "damn man, that stuff fucks you up good and it's a very young flowering male! This was all bagseed but I'm pretty sure the single skunk female I have is of the same strain as both males, they looked alike pretty much grew the same, smelled exactly the same super pungent skunk that's unmistakeable and the males and females have smelled quite strongly ever since their third set of leaves. This evening the big girl is quite smelly when I was putting her back in the tent after all that work today and last night.

If I get those pics uploaded after dinner I'll come back and post some.
cheers,

why are you useing UV lights

OK, got some pics, the first is the skunk girl, man she really has gotten bigger since flowering! Here's a shot of her sitting in the tent by herself, you can see that she's gotten phat. the tent is 4 feet wide and 7 feet tall and she takes up a good bit of the width. I think she is about 33 inches wide now, those lateral branches are budding like crazy. She's just now getting into the part of flowering where you can see the buds forming bigger every day and gawd she's a thirsty slut.. lol


Here's a shot of the skunk's root system, quite a ball has formed just about filling up that 5 gallon bucket.


Next is a shot of the skunk female showing the lateral branches budding out at each node, sure would be sweet is she filled all of those nodes in to make me a sack full of colas!


Here's a pic of the skunk's main top, white hairs glistening! She just finished the second week of flowering.


this pic is of the smaller kush twins main top, she's a little behind the others but coming on nonetheless.



Last is a pic of the larger kush twin's top:


hopefully I can get that mini fridge project next, it's going to be getting hot the rest of this week warming up to the 90s by the coming weekend so I would love to get it automated and stop toting freezer cooler packs every day and remembering to take'em out and re-freeze them for the next cycle.

hey dutch, I'm using various cfl lamps. I've got a dozen or so 32watt 2700k spectrum bulbs for flowering plus about three 27w 5000k daylight bulbs and about three more 6500k 26 watters plus a big 68 watter that's also 2700k. I do have two black light blue bulbs running with the other lamps for UVB light to increase resin (trichomes). I'm going to go by PetSmart maybe tomorrow and get a few of those Reptile UVB 10 lamps that really crank and that should make those trikes get nice and thick as she matures. I was running some Co2 using yeast and sugar/water through 2 liter pop bottles with a small air-stone in them to get it agitated. I didn't put it back online this weekend after taking everything down and redoing a few things I didn't like and fixed a few things that needed fixing. UV is good for your buds man..

Looking awesome UV! Sounds like you did some serious work my friend. For the greater good to be sure lulz Keep up the good work and happy growing!

I've really noticed a few strong growth spurts with the skunk female since inducing flowering about two and a half weeks ago. I think she's grown about seven inches in the last eighteen days. I'm hoping the little kush twins stretch a lot more than they have so far compared to the hybrid skunk. The lateral side branches of the skunk are blooming at all nodes, nice to see most every branch budding all along it's length, the $64K question is how much those buds along the branches will fill in or just remain popcorn buds.

Here's a few more pics:
The pic above is the top of the larger Kush twins, looks tasty!



This pic is the big skunk girl taken today. The main top is coming on right on schedule. I've said before how pungent this plant is even when it was a five weeks old, since flowering the plant odor hasn't changed that I can tell unless I put my nose right down to the top it smells milder and sweeter. Next pic shows more of the same plant.

The side branches all are well into flowering on pretty much every node except for the very small branches underneath that never seem to get light. Would love to see her fill in the blanks on those branches between the young buds, that could alter the yield bigtime! Below is a photo of the Skunk female's many side branches, this branch is about a foot and a half long and the buds in the pic span the last five to six inches others are budding the full length.



Here's a wider angle shot of the skunk's buds just shy of three weeks blooming:


Here's a wide angle shot of the skunk female taken today, man she's grownup in the last few weeks, she needs to stop stretching, it's the Kush's turn to stretch!


Below is a macro shot of the buds:


Here's a black and white pic, just cause...

Looking good bro!

Damn man grow looks great love how you got a decent amount of plants (wish i could lol) Well any ways subbed up +rep keep up the good work man