HOOD SCIENCE: My Bootleg DIY Garage Cabinet Grow project

THE STAGE IS SET
1st Time Grow.
No real Budget to speak of.
CA MMJ Patient and Prop 215 supporter tired of paying for Medical Cannabis!!
Limited space and resources.
Hopes, Dreams, Determination and the power of instructional videos, articles, blogs, books and lots of Google searching and data mining=HOOD SCIENCE

Physical Layout
An old Kitchen Sink Cabinet Set in the back of my 2 car Garage.

• I have 2 separate chambers:
• Vegging/ Seedling propogation area: 18/6 Light Cycle: 2-23w CFL 6300K. 2-18W CFL 6300K
• Flowering Chamber: 12/12 Lights: Multiple 2700W CFLs (about 5-7,various wattage) depending upon plant occupancy.
• All plants in pots with Miracle Grow Planting Soil
• Homemade CO2 Generators (Bio-Organic Sugar/yeast Mix=1 tblspoon: per Gallon of Water)
• Clip fans continuously circulating air. Also open cabinet doors daily to vent in Fresh Air/ Vent our stale air.
• Providing semi daily CO2 Foliar feeding using Carbonated Water, when budget allows...lol
• Semi Daily molasses added to plants for optimum health.

NUTES:
General Hydroponics Vegging and Flowering Solutions. Every other day feeding, strength of solution based on plants age and size.

I have topped and supercropped some of my girls, kind of experimenting and tracking the results.

STRAINS:
Green Dream
Blue Cheese
Abusive OG
Chem/Lem OG

GOALS:
To create plants that grow no higher than 2.5 feet with a decent quality yield per plant.
Provide for my personal medication needs so I don't have to buy anymore from Dispensaries.
Complete multiple grow cycles and not get my broke ass locked up.
Perfect the Micro Plant growing process and duplicate the results if positive.


Any feedback or suggestions are welcome, just keep in mind this is a first time grow. Will get better pics up soon...
Welcome to Hood Science!
https://twitter.com/#!/Cannabeast49

Hey looks good. Can I ask what your room temps are at, and do you know your water/feed ec,ph? Was just wondering cause your tips seem a little droopy. I'm not an expert myself or anything either. Just going from my little bit of experience.

Hey cannabeast. The setup is looking ok for the mo, youll learn heaps on the path to a great grow.

Some tips I think might help.
Your plants may be over fetilized. Do you have a ppm meter (an excellent long term investment) The leaves look very dark, too dark and the leaf tips are showing signs of burning, going yellow/brown. Do a couple of plain waters then get your new ppm meter and keep it round 1100ppm to be safe. Just read your using cfl's, maybe 1100 would be too high.

Dont know if I would worry about any co2 for your first grow especially with cfl's. Get a few grows under your belt then when your confident introduce it. I just think it might add compication.

Get an HPS. It looks like your room would be big enough for a 250 or 400. You wont look back.

Good luck

Hey thanks for the feedback. My box temps avg between 82-90 Degrees. I was over fertilizing my vegging plants, I have since made adjustments, and scaled back a bit. Thanks for the advice Haydoon! The CFLs are getting the job done very efficiently. The CO2 made a huge difference in the growth rate of my Flowering and Vegging plants, it is essential for my grow layout because my Temps can run a little high at times. Will post new pics very soon.

Looking forward to the pics cannabeast

Regards the Co2, I would say the spurt of growth you may have seen while using it was more than likely to be a growth spurt of the plant itself. I'm talking from experience here, I used to use an oil lantern and thought it was awesome, till I stoped using it and realised it really had no effect.

Now to clarify, it had no effect on my grow because I didnt have everything else in check. You see, I had bottle necked. If you do not have all aspects of your grow running at optimum efficiency you will not get the maximum effect of Co2. Just like if you had all aspects including Co2 dialed in...but didnt fertalize it or had no lights...you get the picture.

All I am saying is concentrate on your temperature, humidity and nutrients. You will get a far better yield if you follow these simple steps.

Get your temp to below 83 at all times (somehow) this WILL afffect yield especially during flower
Humidity above fifty in veg, below 50 in flower
Nutrients. LOOK at your plants, watch the colour. Leaf colour tells a lot. 'IF' it is getting the right balnace of nutrients here is a basic guide to follow. Light Green/greyish = more nutes
Dark vibrant green = perfect balance
Dark vibrant green, brown/yellow tips = over nute

Before anyone persicutes me for this guide, it is just a simple guide that will work as a stepping stone. For these are the very basics to a productive grow. Peace