My first grow journal!

Hey RIU,

I'm posting my first ever grow journal for my indoor grow set up that I just built up. I have many reasons for deciding to post this journal. I figure that if I post everything about my grow on this forum it would be a lot more useful of a way to keep notes on everything. Also, if I'm lucky I'll get some great advice and people to steer me in a direction I otherwise would not have discovered on my own. I am a medical grower who grows not only for myself, but I've also become a caregiver to a handful of people that are also patients that can't afford to pay $300-400 for an ounce or 40-50 for an eighth of quality meds. So without further ado




So these are the best photos of the frame I was able to get due to it being kind of an awkward angle due to the sizes of everything and how much crap I had on the floor building this thing It's just your basic frame really. I made the side frames with various 7ft-10ft 2x4s. The roof is some 10 footers set on top of brackets and nailed in for stability. The room is built into the room itself so it's nice and sturdy. I spent about $80 on the wood total and the door with frame was another $50.



This is after I mounted my AC and the drywall onto all the walls and the roof. I spent like $70 on 7 sheets of drywall for the exterior of the box. So I spent $200 in total to make this box, not bad considering how much those tents sell for and they aren't even insulated! The white ballast is the one I have the 8 inch hood connected to now and the other one you see there is the one I'm gonna connect once my fans come in sometime in the next few days. That duct you see right there is my intake for the hood, there was an 8 inch hole in the ground right there and everything due to an AC line that used to go there.



This is the inside of the box. I have a 6 inch booster fan connected to the intake you saw in the picture before hand. That pushes air from underneath the house straight into the hood, which is then pulled through a 430 CFM fan and out of the box. The line of insulation you see next to that window (yes a window, someone built the room I built this room in onto a mobile home) is where I'm going to have my other hood. I have 2 8 inch inline fans I'm waiting on before I set that other hood up. Once I get those in I'll be able to set up a passive intake for the box and use one of the new inline fans to blow air out of the box. I figure that should be good for a 10x6x7 room? I also have insulation in the frames as well as in the roof, I had 1/2 inch insulation board from when I made a drying room out of it so I went ahead and used those. I have my AC but believe it or not, the thing is usually off and usually only turns on when I open the door. My temps have been no lower than 68 and no higher than 80, usually sitting around 72-75 degrees though. I have a humidifier in there which I use to keep my humidity around 40-50, I do my best to keep it around 45 though because I have to turn it off and on manually. I have two oscillating fans blowing the canopy and I'll likely pick up two more when I get more babies under the other light. Another thing I would like to point out is all of the plastic in the tiny crack of my frame next to that window. I shoved a bunch of my used grocery bags in that little crack and believe it or not it's been doing a good job or insulating the room. Who knew?

So here's the cast of characters.



I've been having a tough time finding clones so until my seedlings I'm growing out decide to sex and get tall enough to clone outside I'm out of luck The reason I bring that up is that's why I only have 5 plants in here right now. I have 3 in 7 gallon pots and 2 in 2 gallon pots. I put the ones in 2 gallon pots outdoors thinking they would veg but they started to flower instead, so rather than wait for them to reveg I just stuck them inside the room. I'm trying to experiment with various training techniques so that I can maximize my canopies and yield, I'm still learning I got all of these strains from craigslist so I'm taking it with a grain of salt until I finish it out. LA Cheese is the only one with verified genetics from an old delivery service that used to be available.


White Widow

So as you can see this one has been topped and low stressed quite a bit. My first time making a plant like that, too bad I couldn't veg it out as planned. Regardless I'm still interested to see what happens with it since it's in a 2 gallon pot and not a 7 like I had originally hoped for.


Girl Scout Cookies

Or so he said, I'll see what happens.


Herojuana

I topped this one a few times but I had a little accident and one of the upper branches got knocked into and I accidentally ended up supercropping it (I believe that's the name?) I'm really excited for this one, beautiful canopy and this one isn't stressed at all.


LA Cheese

I topped this one and attempted to LST but the branches were so damn stubborn that it didn't really do anything. The stems on this thing were so thick that I wasn't able to supercrop it without being afraid of snapping the damn thing off. This is another one that I put outside that looked like it was starting to flower so I threw it in here too. I'm sure it's still a bit stressed but I'll be thankful for anything I get.


AK47

As you can see one of the branches on this one almost snapped off but it looks like it's doing better now. I went ahead and tied the other branches down to get the same thing going on with the rest of the plant without stressing it as much as that other branch must have.

So a little more about the grow, I'm an organic guy because the results I get from combining that with the mediums I use have been more than enough. I use geopots exclusively now, my last indoor grow I did 2 geopots, 2 smart pots, and 1 plastic pot and the 2 geopot plants yielded more than the other 3 combined. I have a ton of used fox farm soil from an outdoor grow last year and I've been using that combined with some coco to make supersoil which I water with EWC tea. My other soil mix is a whole block of coco mixed with half a bag of soil. I usually do 1/4th OF and 1/4th HF bags and mix that in with a coco block though. I water with simple veg and flower teas that FresnoFarmer was gracious enough to share. The only thing I do differently is add 1-2TBSP of molasses max because when I was doing the recommended 5 it was smelling kind of bad so I think 5TBSP was breeding too much bacteria and not enough fungi. Link is below for anyone interested in them, there's also a ton of other great tips in there for anyone into organics.

https://www.rollitup.org/organics/510995-organic-feeding-101-a-2.html#post7914959

So that's pretty much it I guess. I'm really looking forward to any advice or replies anyone has to share with me and thanks for stopping by!

Hey guys,

Got a few updates in just these past few days. I picked up 2 720CFM in line fans on Amazon, they were $100 a piece compared to $220+ that my local hydro stores were wanting I put one of those bad boys on my hoods exhaust so now I have a booster fan for the intake, a 720 fan as my exhaust and the 430 in the middle of both hoods.



First thing tomorrow I'm gonna set up the exhaust for the box itself now that my hood ventilation is taken care of. I just need to figure out how and where I'm gonna hang the damn thing but I'll likely have to go to Lowes tomorrow for some hooks to get it going. Then I'm gonna drill in 4 inch passive intake holes on each side of the box for the passive intake and once I do that everything will finally be done. I've got both lights set up now so all I need to do is put my new plants in there after I get the ventilation for the box sorted out. I'm also gonna build myself a table to set the plants on until they get too big. Speaking of, here are some photos of the new babies I just got.



I got 4 Jedi Kush and 2 Blueberry Diesel and I'm very excited for all of them, especially the Jedi which I've read/heard great things about. I thought I had 6 7 gallon pots but turns out I only had 5 so I had to put one of them in a 5 gallon pot but that shouldn't be a problem. I put the supersoil I made on the bottom and the rest of the soil is an entire coco block combined with half a bag of this new Victory soil I'm trying out. I also got myself some mycorrhizae because I've had amazing results putting that in before I transplant.



And here's how they look now



As you can see I went ahead and supercropped them because I plan on throwing these bad boys in my flowering room first thing when the lights come on. I didn't think topping them would work as well because I didn't want to wait for them to get over the stress as I'm not vegging right now. As a result I went ahead and supercropped them and I'm thinking that should be just enough to improve my canopies before they start to bud out.

I'll take pictures of the box itself when it's full of all the babies when the lights are on. I have my cycle at 1:30am-pm so I can avoid the hotter parts of the day, also my electric company gives discounts if you don't use a ton of electricity between 2-7pm I'll post new photos sometime tomorrow after I'm done with all the work I need to do in there.

Nice job on your grow room and journal. Looks like you have everything in order and should have excellent results.

I ordered 8 of the geo pots today. Thanks for the recommendation.

prosperian said:

Nice job on your grow room and journal. Looks like you have everything in order and should have excellent results.

I ordered 8 of the geo pots today. Thanks for the recommendation.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind works man! You're gonna love those geo pots though, there really isn't any other pot as far as I'm concerned. I've tried the Smart pots and they kind of suck just like plastic. But the results you'll get from the geo pots are really going to shock you. The pots air prune the roots as they approach the end of the pot, so these pots essentially create a way more efficient root system than any other pot could dream of creating.

Got some updates on my set up though! I finally finished everything up, I drilled 4 inch holes for my passive intake which I put a little ducting in. I put the ducting in so that light can't leak into my box via the intake holes so that's why I put ducting in both my intake holes. I also set up my exhaust fan as well which is blowing 720CFM so my box's air is being refreshed constantly now.


Thank you RIU for suggesting bungie cords for hanging my fans up, never would have thought of that!

Anyhow, onto the updates! The 6 plants I just threw in here are still adjusting to the supercrop, I built myself a little table for now so that they can be closer to the light for the time being. I'll see what happens in a week with them. The ones that were already in the box when I started this one are starting to do really well though!

White Widow


GSC


AK47


Herojuana


Jedi Kush and Blueberry Diesel


The box


Those are panorama shots from my phone so they may look a little weird. But so far everything is going really well, my temps are always in the 75 area, never below 70 and never above 80. My humidity is 50 at the highest but it's usually around 40-45%, I do my best to keep it under control but I'm doing it manually, I've managed so far though. I just started feeding these bad boys some compost tea about two days ago and since you can't burn your plants with teas, I will be watering with teas every day until harvest. And once my plants hit the supersoil they'll really start to take off, especially in unison with the teas.

In case anyone is curious about what tea I'm using I'll go ahead and write it all down

I've got a 5 gallon bucket filled with water, I put some De-chlorinator (for fish tanks) in the water and bubble it with 3 airstones for a good part of the day. Then I pour in 5tbsp liquid seaweed and 1-2 tbsp molasses and let it bubble for a bit while I prepare the dry ingredients which are as follows.

- Seabird Guano 12-11-2 (1/3 cup)
- Indonesian Guano .5-12-.3 (2/3 cup)
- 1 1/2 cup Alaskan Humisoil
- 1/2-2/3 alfalfa meal
- 1/2-2/3 kelp meal

Then once I get further into flower I plan on eliminating the seabird guano altogether from the tea so that it's high in phosphorus and doesn't have as much nitrogen. I'm thinking I'll cut back on that anywhere between 1-3 weeks, the plants will tell me when it's time so I'll wait for that moment. Can't wait to see what happens!

Hey guys, decided I'd update you all on my progress as of now. So far things are looking as good as they can, despite the damage from the mites the White Widow and AK47 before they came in the box they're doing great now and look like they'll be the first to harvest. I've done a lot of improvements to the box in terms of ventilation and pest control lately as I finally figured out why my box exhaust wasn't working well. At first I was running the AC AND an exhaust fan at the same time and wondering why my temps were rising. The first problem as you may or may not be able to tell is in post #4 where my exhaust fan is improperly connected. I only have tubing going on the exhaust and just sucking air straight from the fan with no tubing around it. I read on here that exhaust fans should not only have ducting on both sides, but you want the footing of your flex duct to be proportional to the size of your fan.

So if you have an 6 inch fan like I do then that means you'll need 6 feet of ducting on each side for efficient airflow. Ever since I hooked that up I barely need to turn on the AC, sometimes in the last 2 hours of lights on I have to turn it on but now that I got my ducting right my AC is only on 2 hours a day, should be even better than that once I hook up the 8 inch fan. I used to run the AC 24 hours a day until I got that ducting right and my electric bill has since dropped 40 bucks and may even drop a little further! I ordered some 8 inch ducting as it was hard to find some until now, so I can hook up my hood and fans to the 8 inch ducting their meant to be hooked up to instead of having to use reducers.

I also got some new things for the garden, I got some Neem oil, ladybugs, and Protekt. Here's some photo updates



Whole room


Jedi Kush




Herojuana


LA Cheese




White Widow




Girl Scout Cookies




Herojuana




I'll update in another week or so once the buds swell up a bit more