Icemud's dual tent garden under led and using recycled soil, multiple strains.

Hey Everyone!!! Update time!!!

The Budmaster COB Tent: VEG

So I am really pleased to see all the plant bouncing back after their lockout/ph issues and not all the plants are showing nice new healthy growth. I think they still need some recovery to be back to 100% full health so I'm going to be checking PH of feedings for the next few feedings as well as giving them a nice full nutrient drench of earthjuice in a couple days to make sure they have everything they need. I've layed off anything with calcium in my nutrients for the next few feedings but have added epsom salts to the mix to prevent the interveinal chlorosis they still are showing. Its getting better!! but still not 100% yet... I'm happy with how things are going otherwise and the plants really have kicked up their fragarence lately nice!!!

The flowering Tent: Day 48 Flowering!!!
Today is day 48 since the flip, and the plants continue to get more and more trichomes and are starting to get fatter and more dense but still have a while to go I'm probabaly about 3 weeks from harvest but could be longer and the plants are looking pretty good. I haven't fed them much the last couple days as I gave them a good soil drench about 3 days ago to just give some clean water and compost tea to the soil, and the plants seemed to love it. So most likely tomorrow they will need another feeding which will be the earth juice tea I have prepared.

Not too much else to report on this grow currently so here are some photos

Quick updates...


VEG TENT: Budmaster COB tent...

So I decided to flip my veg schedule to the Gas Lantern Routine. I figured I've had such good success with it in the past, might as well sav some money and have happy girls. So if your not familair with Gas Lantern Routine or (12-1) as some call it, its a light schedule that gives the results of a 18/6 schedule, but only using 13 hours of light. (saving 5 hours of energy per day).

How this works is you set your veg schedule (timers) to 12 hours of light on, 5.5 hours of light off, 1 hour light on, 5.5 hours off. So basically we are splitting the 24 hour day into 2x 12 hours sections. By adding the 1 hour of light during the dark period, we are interrupting the reactions that happen inside a plant and tricking the plant to think that in a 24 hour day period, there are actually 2 days.

How does this work?
Cannabis is a SDP or short day plant. With short day plants, the flowering is not triggered by the amount of light, but by the amount of un-interrupted dark. With a short day plant, 12 hours or more of complete darkness is needed to cause flowering hormones to form. (some plants slightly differ in night time length but general its 12 hours) By breaking this cycle up, you inhibit these hormones from causing the plant to stay in veg... So as you can see, the amount of light over 12 hours really doesn't matter much, its the dark that is what control's flowering...

Red light converts the chemical photo chrome Pr (red) into photo chrome Pfr (far red). In the short day plants red light, 660nm begins the synthesis of PR and red light converts this to Pfr. Now this conversion of Pr to Pfr in light is a very fast process but at night, the process reverses and is slow, changing the PFR back to PR... Unless there is more PR than PFR, the plant will remain in veg..

Now by interrupting the dark cycle with 1 hr of light, the PR is converted back quickly to PFR, so the plant stays in veg, because there again is more of an abundance of PFR than PR...typically this process as we know it for short day plants takes around 12+ hours of darkness to achieve a full reversion. So by breaking the cycle up, the plant will not flower.

I've used GLR on many many strains and have had no problems with it in veg, unless its used for extended periods such as keeping mothers, which then I did have 2 strains act a little funny under the GLR, however I would estimate that 95% or more of my strains have done absolutely fine in GLR even in extended veg periods. I switched over to the 18/6 while testing different brands of lights to show the "real world" results as most use the 18/6 and I wanted to replicate the average growers expectations. Now that I have shown these lights can veg in 18/6, might as well switch over to GLR and save myself some money.

at 400w total draw, at an 18/6 schedule it costs me approx $60 a month to run these lights
at 400w total draw, at a GLR veg schedule it will cost me approx $43.68 to run these lights...
GLR will save me almost $20 a month just with 400w running.... worth it to me to switch over




Flowering Tent: Budmaster GOD

I also adjusted my flowering tents light schedule. Currently I was flowering at a 12.25/11.75 schedule and so now that we are getting closer to the end of the grow, I wanted to reduce the daylight to help increase the production of THC-V which typically will produce slightly higher on a 11/13 schedule that the opposite at 13/11, and with THC-V being the precursor to THC-A, I want to encourage this synthesis to take place.




No photos with this update since I just posted some last night, but will in a few days when I water the girls.

Update time!!!!

The Budmaster COB tent: veg

The COB/Veg tent is coming along really nice, and I think that my TLC that I gave the ladies is really starting to show as the tent is growing very fast now, and I don't see many deficiency signs on the new leaves which is a sign of relief to me as I think that a combination of overwatering, too low of PH of my feedings were really stressing the girls out. So now that I have been checking PH every feeding as well as letting the soil really dry out things are turning out for the best nice healthy vivid bright green new growth!!! sweetness!!! Not much else to report on so lets take a look at some pics

Day 55 Flowering (from the flip)


Well the Budmaster GOD tent is looking really nicely in the 8th week of flowering since the flip. I think that within the next 2-4 weeks things should be ready to harvest but I took a look at the bud formations as well as the trichomes and some look much closer to the 2 weeks, where some may go longer than 4 weeks, but no cloudy or amber in the trichomes yet so still have a ways to go The buds really are starting to fill in the lower nodes as well as gaining girth of the buds. Some of the fan leaves have started to yellow and die off which is somewhat typical at this time of the cycle, however I think I too may have caused some of it by being a little too quick with my last watering so I'm going to let the soil dry out completely before giving them just a dose of plain r/o water. Other than that, not much else going on in the tent but the smell is getting really potent

I did find a banana on the black diamond OG the other day, just 1 that I noticed so I pulled it off. The odd thing was that typically when I see banana's (in the past) the bud actually looks different from the others with the pistils usually more curly than normal, and with the Black Diamond OG, the bud with the banana looked the same as the others, so it may have just been a freak thing and hopefully it won't produce any more. I didn't see any pollen spilling out of it or anything so may just be shooting blanks... hahaa

Anyhow... Here are some photos of the plants in the Budmaster GOD tent, along with some trichome shots I took with my cameraphone on zoom, and a 30x lupe held up to the lens...

Hey Everyone...Just a quick video update:

Hey what's up! Love your work and man this is packed with information! I coulda swore I found you out at first through growweedeasy but I could be tripping lol, anywho I just subscribed to your YouTube channel. But yea lots of info here and it's my first time hearing about the gas lantern routine. As well as a lot of the other technical stuff. Last year I did my first grow and it was outdoors in soil, but I have been planning on doing my 1st indoor grow for sometime now. I can't find a solid answer on what LED I should select as I have asked on different threads and gotten a bunch of different responses. I'm on a tight budget at the moment but maybe I could upgrade the lights after 1 or 2 grows. But I was thinking about doing a dwc with 2 plants scrogged in a 4x4 grow tent with 2 Mars hydro 144 reflectors. What's your thoughts? I can play around with tent size and lighting, just the main thing is first batch or 2 is on a tight budget. Keep up the great work tho! Those lights and ladies are looking nice

Dlowsky said:

Hey what's up! Love your work and man this is packed with information! I coulda swore I found you out at first through growweedeasy but I could be tripping lol, anywho I just subscribed to your YouTube channel. But yea lots of info here and it's my first time hearing about the gas lantern routine. As well as a lot of the other technical stuff. Last year I did my first grow and it was outdoors in soil, but I have been planning on doing my 1st indoor grow for sometime now. I can't find a solid answer on what LED I should select as I have asked on different threads and gotten a bunch of different responses. I'm on a tight budget at the moment but maybe I could upgrade the lights after 1 or 2 grows. But I was thinking about doing a dwc with 2 plants scrogged in a 4x4 grow tent with 2 Mars hydro 144 reflectors. What's your thoughts? I can play around with tent size and lighting, just the main thing is first batch or 2 is on a tight budget. Keep up the great work tho! Those lights and ladies are looking nice

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I would go with diy cob build (if you got some time and basic skills).Please don't go the mars route ,it should be a last resort after hps even.

Dlowsky said:

Hey what's up! Love your work and man this is packed with information! I coulda swore I found you out at first through growweedeasy but I could be tripping lol, anywho I just subscribed to your YouTube channel. But yea lots of info here and it's my first time hearing about the gas lantern routine. As well as a lot of the other technical stuff. Last year I did my first grow and it was outdoors in soil, but I have been planning on doing my 1st indoor grow for sometime now. I can't find a solid answer on what LED I should select as I have asked on different threads and gotten a bunch of different responses. I'm on a tight budget at the moment but maybe I could upgrade the lights after 1 or 2 grows. But I was thinking about doing a dwc with 2 plants scrogged in a 4x4 grow tent with 2 Mars hydro 144 reflectors. What's your thoughts? I can play around with tent size and lighting, just the main thing is first batch or 2 is on a tight budget. Keep up the great work tho! Those lights and ladies are looking nice

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Hey Dlowski! Glad that I was able to offer some information that could be useful!

As far as going LED, there are many options, many not good and some are great. Overally it mostly depends on your budget, as LED is more of an investment with a long term return.

I honestly can't recommend Mars Hydro, as I have seen too many issues that people have with them, diodes burning out after a few months of use, sockets/plugs melting and as far as repair, they either make you pay for shipping the light to a repair facility or give you a bunch of diodes and parts and want you to repair it yourself, neither in my opinion is very "customer service" oriented. They also use cheaper brand LED's which are known to lose a large percentage of light quickly vs other LED brand chips which can last double to almost triple the lifetime of the epistar led's they use. Now if that is the price range you are looking at, then I would suggest sticking to HPS as you will get better results for the amount of start up money it costs...

Now if you do have the budget to invest, you can either do a DIY where you build your own with COB technology which many growers are doing now adays, or you could buy a pre-assembled option like the Budmaster COB's I am using. COB is the way to go for 2016 and seems to offer all the benefits of HPS, but with less electricity usage (more efficient) as well as offer a good spread of light for a nice even canopy. the difference between DIY and pre-assembled really comes down to saving a little bit of money with DIY, but also having to have the time and area to actually build the LED. For me as I don't have a workshop, garage or anything, DIY didn't make sense as I have no where to actually build it so getting a pre-assembled COB from budmaster is an awesome choice. I also have used Advanced LED XTE panels and they use osram and cree diodes and the lights did a phenominal job... but all of the "better" solutions with LED do cost much more money.

with a "tight budget" as you mention, you may want to stick with HPS now and save to do a DIY COB build (tons of growers here do this so there is plenty of help). Other than that I would stay away from Mars.. Check out budmaster's COB's though, they are not too high of price compared to DIY, maybe 100-200 more but then you don't have to build it either.

DankaDank said:

I would go with diy cob build (if you got some time and basic skills).Please don't go the mars route ,it should be a last resort after hps even.

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Good suggestion! I too am not a Mars fan at all, so I would suggest the same...either DIY, HPS or buy a prebuilt cob like budmaster.

There's actually a guy on rollitup who replied to one of my threads who lives in the same area as me and he was saying the same thing, to do a DIY COB, I would love to meet up with him for some DIY help as we live in a mid sized city but alas I haven't heard back from him since his initial reply. I really don't wanna go the hps route to be honest. but yep so I was gonna spend about 500$ on 2 Mars lights but with the almost the same money I could get 1 budmaster GOD-2 (or the OD series for a little less) or 1 cob-x-4 for a little more. Or save a bit and have DIY equivalent (not much of a DIYer myself but if could meet up with buddy that would be clutch or I could get my brother to toy around with it, he likes to do stuff like that) one last question is, what would you recommend the size of the tent to be for each respective light? I would like to do a 2 plant dwc scrog 1st time around. Thanks for all the info tho man!

DankaDank said:

I would go with diy cob build (if you got some time and basic skills).Please don't go the mars route ,it should be a last resort after hps even.

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Thanks man! I'm curious what do you run?

Dlowsky said:

Thanks man! I'm curious what do you run?

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Don't want to hijack Icemuds journal, this will be my last post here, regarding this matter.
flower tent = 120cm x 80 cm x 180cm
lights= 2x 1m by 15cm actively cooled aluminum heatsink with 3 x cxb3590 3500k cd bin on each heatsink (6 in total)) run at 1400ma (300watts). All have lidel angelina reflectors except the middle cob of each heatsink
2 x 115cm HO t5 uvb/uva reptile tubes (with reflectors)
1 x 1m(L) by 4 cm(W) aluminium sheet with 15 far red monos alternating between oslon ssl 80's and cree xp 660's
Will be doing a journal soon just need to find a decent camera PM me if there's anything else you need help with .

DankaDank said:

Don't want to hijack Icemuds journal, this will be my last post here, regarding this matter.
flower tent = 120cm x 80 cm x 180cm
lights= 2x 1m by 15cm actively cooled aluminum heatsink with 3 x cxb3590 3500k cd bin on each heatsink (6 in total)) run at 1400ma (300watts). All have lidel angelina reflectors except the middle cob of each heatsink
2 x 115cm HO t5 uvb/uva reptile tubes (with reflectors)
1 x 1m(L) by 4 cm(W) aluminium sheet with 15 far red monos alternating between oslon ssl 80's and cree xp 660's
Will be doing a journal soon just need to find a decent camera PM me if there's anything else you need help with .

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Wow yea sorry Icemud Dank, I don't have the option to start a PM quite yet, but would love to hear more about the lighting

Update Time... Let there be purple!!

Day 61 flowering: Budmaster GOD tent.

So I have been waiting for the purple phenotype of the tangie to turn purple, and almost overnight 2 nights ago...bam!!! all purple its crazy how one day it can be green with a hint of purple and then next day full blown purple Such a beautiful thing to witness! So all the plants are getting near their end for this grow, the Ogiesel I may pull within the next few days as it typically finishes faster than many other strains I have, however I may run her another week to really get those trichomes amber, as I looked today and still a lot of clear and not much cloudy yet let alone purple. The tangies have some time, as well as the fire og so they probably will be going another 2-3 weeks or more before they are ready to harvest, and the black diamond OG I think should be coming down around the next 2 weeks most likely. I'm wondering if the Black Diamond OG is really what it is supposed to be, as it almost smells like GDP and I don't remember blackberry kush smelling like that at all, so we will see. Also it has some purpling which took place a few weeks ago so I'm not sure what exactly that plant is, but I hope it turns out good, regardless of what it is I gave the girls some plain r/o water the other day, nothing else added to it and think that from here on out it will be compost teas to help get that microbe population going for the last stretch of the grow. Other than that not much else to report on in the flowering tent should be very soon to harvest

The veg tent: Budmaster COB tent:

The veg tent is looking amazing and now all of the plants have recovered from their deficiencies and are growing fast and healthy. All the newer leaves look good, no discoloration or issues at all that I noticed so I think as long as I keep making sure that my feedings are within the right PH range things should move along successfully very happy about this I also gave the girls just plain water with nothing added to give them a break from any nutrients and help them use what is in the soil I still haven't decided which of these 8 will go into the next flowering tent, but we will see. I know for sure I will be running harlequin and black cherry soda since it has been a while since I have flowered those out, but the others I'm undecided on still. Since I am only keeping 1-2 of the tangie phenos which most likely will be #3, #6 (purple) the other 1 I have in veg right now also get flowered out just so I don't waste a nice vegged plant, however only time will tell

Dlowsky said:

Wow yea sorry Icemud Dank, I don't have the option to start a PM quite yet, but would love to hear more about the lighting

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No worries about conversation in my journal I'm a lighting enthusiast so I love the convo any questions or comments are welcome

DankaDank said:

Don't want to hijack Icemuds journal, this will be my last post here, regarding this matter.
flower tent = 120cm x 80 cm x 180cm
lights= 2x 1m by 15cm actively cooled aluminum heatsink with 3 x cxb3590 3500k cd bin on each heatsink (6 in total)) run at 1400ma (300watts). All have lidel angelina reflectors except the middle cob of each heatsink
2 x 115cm HO t5 uvb/uva reptile tubes (with reflectors)
1 x 1m(L) by 4 cm(W) aluminium sheet with 15 far red monos alternating between oslon ssl 80's and cree xp 660's
Will be doing a journal soon just need to find a decent camera PM me if there's anything else you need help with .

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Hey Danka, no worries and no hijack at all I appreciate you following along my grow journal and since I love plant lighting, any related convo is always welcome

Awesome man! Your Grow looks like it's coming along nicely. Yea I been talking with Danka recently and he's got a wealth of information, I've been following growmau5 videos on YouTube as well and the dude is killing shit. I'm not trying to advertise or anything but I been thinking about going with this kit growmau5 just released on cutter.com it would run me abt 470$ and would beast in a 2x4 but I'm leaning more towards shelling out a bit more at 700$ for a build like this in a 4x4: what do you think? Or is there some prefab units out there with just as much lighting for the same price and skipping the DIY part?

Dlowsky said:

Awesome man! Your Grow looks like it's coming along nicely. Yea I been talking with Danka recently and he's got a wealth of information, I've been following growmau5 videos on YouTube as well and the dude is killing shit. I'm not trying to advertise or anything but I been thinking about going with this kit growmau5 just released on cutter.com it would run me abt 470$ and would beast in a 2x4 but I'm leaning more towards shelling out a bit more at 700$ for a build like this in a 4x4: what do you think? Or is there some prefab units out there with just as much lighting for the same price and skipping the DIY part?

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The only premade COB companies out there that I am aware of is Budmaster Cob, Optic lighting (if they are still around) and Johnson Lighting. I've only used the budmasters which use CitiLED chips but they are doing an amazing job in veg, and flowered out my last round very nicely... DIY is probably cheaper than buying a pre-made one, but if you consider time involved they probably are about the same cost. The nice thing about DIY is you make it yourself, so if something fails you can just order the part you need, where buying premade, you would have to depend on the supplier.