First time. Cheap, discrete, and effective

Ok, so this is my first grow and the first thing I want to say is I am having crazy amounts of fun with this. I'm a hobbiest at heart and thoroughly enjoy the art of self-learning and this is such a sweet project to get into.

I like to think I did my research and you can be the judge of that. I'm looking for feedback, of course. There's some really smart people on this forum and I'm thoroughly impressed at the wonderful minds who take part in something that should be legal to take part in. Your knowledge is key to my success! I've definitely made mistakes already but you'll see for yourself.

Anyway, on to the grow!

My main objective is cheap, discrete and effective. I have limited money and space but of course I want the best outcomes for what I can come up with. Sorry, I didn't keep receipts and don't have a good estimate of total setup cost (I still don't have a full set up anyway) but like I said cheap was part of my goal.

Here's what I got;

The grow box:
I decided to use a shelving unit I bought from Walmart. It was made of cheap pine and the shelves could be adjusted to different heights. So I made it to be a box measuring 30" tall, 30" wide, and 15" deep. I wrapped all the seperate pieces with black/white poly (white facing out), put the pieces together then wrapped the box in poly with the black facing out and white in. I bought a 10x10 piece and it was more than enough. For access I overlapped the entranced and fastened snap buttons on to the poly material to snap it open and closed.

I went with poly because it was cheap and reflective. But I would recommend against this. I found it gets holes in it fairly easy. At one point my cat actually decided to try it as a scratch post but then found it unfit for the job, thankfully. So i patched it up with black duct tape. Next time I would say the effort spent wrapping the poly around everything would be easier put towards hammering together something a little more solid

Lights:
I'm using 3 26w 6500K cfl's. I feel this is my best option with the space. I don't really want to deal with the heating issues of mh or hps lights. They're on 24 hrs and come flower time i'll change out the middle one to a 55w or 105w 2700 cfl, keeping the 2 26w's on the outside for a balanced spectrum.

Ventilation:
If you look at the one pic, you can see a diamond shaped hole right beside the power bar. This is where my ventilation is supposed to be set up. I'm still working on that and I feel it's not a big issue right now because lights are always on and there's no confusion to the plant until 12-12 schedule, by which time i'll have it set up.

I bought a DC 120v Rochetfish pc fan. I got crazy lucky because I went into home hardware and eyed up a pvc connector piece and turns out the bolt measurements were exactly what I needed! Eventually I'll figure out some sort of carbon filter (the main purpose of pvc connection). I also need to wire it to a plug-in adaptor.

Soil, water, seeds, and temps:
I've looked into nutrients and thought about doing hydro but for simplicities sake I've decided to to soil this time around. I practiced the paper towel germination method on some tomatoes, brussel sprouts, parsley, and dill. This was 5 days ago. Some of the tom's and sprouts sprouted after 3 days, the parsley and dill STILL haven't done anything. Two days ago I germinated Nirvana's Northern Light's seeds. I was happy when today I found they had all sprouted at the exact same time. I burried them into Hordibec's Organic Seed Starting Mix. Eventually they will get transplanted into an all-purpose mix and bigger pot. I'll weed out the best female and focus on that, genders still unknown.

My tap water is ph 6.8 so I added ph decreaser and got it down to 6.2 this time around. Feel free to laugh but here's a testament to my excitement for this project; come time to germinate the seeds i had everything except ph decreaser. And I wasn't willing to wait until the next day to visit the garden centre! As it was evening my only option was Walmart. I browsed the isles and found my only option was Brilliance for Spas ph Decreaser with sodium bisulphate. The concentration was so strong I could only measure out .05 grams to add to my small watering can. As far as I've looked into this stuff isn't harmful to my buddies in the amounts i've measured out. I know patience is key but I just want these guys poppin' out of the ground already!

I only just added the vent hole today but before that the temps were in the 92 to 94 degrees F range. Now with the vent hole it's dropped down to 82 to 84. And it's night time right now so come day when the house warms up a it I'm sure it will be perfect temps.

Grow method:
With the limited space I'm thinking of going low-stress training and hopefully I can make it short and bushy. I was thinking scrog but the screen just complicates things I feel.

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So this is my grow. I'll try to keep it as updated as possible but no guarantees. Let me know how it looks and feel free to give your opinion. I'm posting this all for feedback so please let me know your thoughts.

Happy growing!

Looking great dude! LST as you said would be most effective. You look ready and good to go. What strain are you growing? Also what range of Soil nutes are you using?

Very nice box man I'm subbed up

Thanks guys. I'm growing northern lights because I've heard they're a good starter strain. And I can't find a nute profile for the soil i'm using. Like I said for simplicities sake I won't delve into nutes much this time around, I'm just trusting the soil I got will have what the little guys need. I picked up hordibecs organic seed starting mix, anyone got info on that stuff?

Ok, so I'm happy to report that after only a day and a half the little guys are peaking out of the ground and are photosynthesizing as we speak! I planted 5 seeds and so far I'm at 100% with all of them above dirt now.



So, now a question on watering. Up until now i've been keeping the soil fairly moist but now that they have their first leaves do I go to a regular watering schedule? Like should I be letting it dry out a bit before watering again?

Thanks for the help!

I don't always run soil,
but when I do I like to let it dry up a bit before watering again. It causes your roots to stretch out and search for a water source.
Also a lot of newbies like to water until you get runoff. While it can be beneficial (flushing salt build up) I would not recommend it for every watering unless you are using a medium with lots of perlite or vermiculite for better air circulation.

One thing that I am concerned for with your set up is your height restriction.

Scrotie Mcboogerballs said:

One thing that I am concerned for with your set up is your height restriction.

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Ya? Well that's why I'm going LST but your right I'm a bit worried too that as a first time grower I'll kick it into flowering too late and BOOM I'll have weed growin where it's not supposed to... which you would think shouldn't be a bad thing.

Anyway, thanks for the tips Scrotie.

Ok, so during germination I had a few other plants sharing the grow space along side my "budz" but today I decided to get them outta there and devote the space to Numero Uno. I adjusted the hight of the lights and at first had them about 2 inches away from the little guys. This shot my temps way up. I raised them a few more inches but still couldn't lower the temp to what I needed. At one point during this my temps were up over 100*F (FYI, I've got a small thermometer sitting right on the soil beside my budz, so it should be accurate to what the plant is experiencing). So... my conclusion to this was because I didn't have any air flow yet. Installing the exhaust fan was going to happen after next payday (I still didn't have an AC adapter) but I couldn't risk this sort of thing going on for the next week. I dug into my pockets and managed to grab the adapter I needed.

As mentioned before I have a 120mm 12v Rocketfish gaming fan. I jimmy wired it to an adapter with adjustable voltage, makeshift intalled it onto the box, and voila! we have air flow!


I was curious to see how the flimsy poly walls would hold up to this and so far it's doing quite well. The vacuum it's created actually sucks in the walls just a tiny bit and even seals up any spots that light can escape from the seams. Temps are a much more manageable, hovering around 85*F.

I don't have any intake, right now it's just passive. But what do you think? Intake? Or not to intake?

Next week i'll fit a carbon scrubber onto the white pvc fitting. And eventually I'll need to light proof the entire exhaust. Any ideas for this?

JayDiggz said:

As mentioned before I have a 120mm 12v Rocketfish gaming fan. I jimmy wired it to an adapter with adjustable voltage, makeshift intalled it onto the box, and voila! we have air flow!

Click to expand...

Oh and just an extra note on this; not sure why this happened but I hooked up neg to neg and pos to pos (I was certain to make sure what was what) but nothing happened. Then I reversed it (neg to pos and pos to neg) and sure enough it worked... but in reverse. So I just installed the fan backward and it works fine but I'm curious as to why this happened??

Looks good, I am subbed. Good luck.

I would go ahead and make an area for some fresh air to come in. Doesn't need another fan necessarily with the suction that you seem to be getting with your exhaust. Also take the house plant out of the box. Keep it cannabis.

It looks like you did a real good job securing your light leaks. I hope i didn't miss you saying this already, are you doing 12/12 from seed? Prob your best best. Or some auto flowers?

No, I've been going 24hrs. There's still a few light leaks I need to work out, especially with the exhaust. Lights just flooding right out from there! So I'm reluctant to go 12/12 at the moment. But 12/12 from seed? I didn't know that was a thing?? Makes sense I guess. And no, not auto.

Lol, ya took the house plants out today. You're right, purely cannabis now.

MRy last batch was clones but kept em under 12" tall in 18"x24" under a 400. Top em quick and strap em down. 12/12 from seed is successful. Idk how much fan was but I'd double it or get a 6" fan for under $10. Heat will ruin you -80 pref 75 your ok now while in veg.

Get this, I've been have temp control issues. Like that's something new on this forum, right? But I couldn't figure out why. At nights the temps in the box would soar to above 90F. Daytime would drop to high 70's. What's the deal?

I started to pay attention to the temp I have set in my house, it's fairly new and should be able to maintain consistency. I'd even gone to the extent of keeping an hourly log recording house temps and temps in different areas of the box. I had my house set at 70F but during the day my meat thermometer would read as low as 61F. The reading on the thermostat would say 75 to 78F. First thing I thought was that the heating in my house was screwed up and I was gunna have to deal with warranty companies and crap like that.

Then I noticed the heat lamp for the snake's tank was sitting directly below my thermostat. Turns out we'd have the heat lamp on during the day, the thermostat would pick up higher temps then the house actually was and kick out the heater, so the house got cold. At night the heat lamp would get turned on, the heater would kick in, and the whole house would heat up, effecting my box's overall night and day temps.

So now the heat lamp is far away from my thermostat, it's picking up lower temps, and temp balance will be restored... I'm hoping.

You think this is overkill now? I realize my dreams of producing a plethora of smoke are far from being realized this go around but honestly I think I just got a little bit closer to those dreams today.

Yesterday I went a little crazy and picked up a few more things. If you're keeping up you'll know that I'm growing while still putting a lot of finishing touches on the set-up.

(1 week in, roughly)

First thing you see is I added more light, WAY more light. What was 3x26w 6500K cfl's is now 3x45w 2700K, 2x26w and 2x32w 6500K cfl's. Man it's bright in there!

Then of course there's the fan. I couldn't find a small enough osc fan to fit in there but this small heater fan let's me turn the heat off while still moving air. Does the trick, I say. Also splurged with a new power bar that has a built in timer.

I decided to pick up nutes. Figured it couldn't hurt. It's a tomato and veg formula at 2.5-1-4. I gave them a 1/4 dose yesterday, 1/2 dose in a week? Today I'm thinkin they find it pretty tasty. Funny thing is that up till now I've been so paranoid about overwatering (noob mistake #1, right?) that i think i've actually been underwatering. Leaves were drooping when I was watering once every 3 days(apx). So now after feeding/watering them last night and the brilliantly bright day they've been having, they've perked up quite nicely. I'm upping the water schedule to apx 1.5 days now, hoping to find a good balance. When should I transfer to a bigger pot?

The temp has been good. Anywhere from 75-82. The thing throws off so much heat now that when I leave for the day the whole room it sits in heats up slightly, causing the inside box temp to creep up. I have a cool place in my basement that will dissipate a lot of the heat though. It'll be fine there now but I'm worried about when I go to flower. Temps down there can get down below 60 and I'm worried that lights-off will get a little too chilly. Humidity in the box is at 25. This seems lower than ideal to me. Tried throwin a bowl of water in there but didn't do much. Suggestions?

As you can see I've pumped up the juice with a few things. Makes it a little less discrete but what the hell, why not?

Doin good almost up to 300 watts adds up quick. Kick up feed and watch close,bad signs splash w/water to rinse roots a bit,good or nothin she's an eater keep it goin. If your media/soil is draining well pot size good for a bit,let root mass build foundation then repot. I personally like nights cool +52* was my best run so far. Hang a sock to wick water from bowl to increase humidity.(just saw this never tried makes sense) good luck

Any updates?

Neat little grow. Subbing.

herbbilly said:

Doin good almost up to 300 watts adds up quick. Kick up feed and watch close,bad signs splash w/water to rinse roots a bit,good or nothin she's an eater keep it goin. If your media/soil is draining well pot size good for a bit,let root mass build foundation then repot. I personally like nights cool +52* was my best run so far. Hang a sock to wick water from bowl to increase humidity.(just saw this never tried makes sense) good luck

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Thanks herbbilly, ya already had a little yellowing on a couple leaves, thinking that's nute burn, right? Like you said, splashed water to rinse and it looks like they're bouncin back. Already repotted actually, think they like the new home. But they're squeezed into the space pretty tight now. Once they're sexed it'll free up some space, unless they're all pretty ladies..... wouldn't that be my luck, swarming in ladies but nowhere to put them.

And love the sock idea. I'll have to try it out.

Thanks deephouser, I'll try get pics soon.

I'm actually bumpin them into flower as we speak, I'm kind of on a time restriction and hoping I can have them finish for end of April, early May. Plus with hight restrictions I figured it wasn't a bad idea.