New Setup... Hooooooooj plants... first time growing... omg I'm so lost :( *pics*

Ok, well maybe I'm not *that* lost... but I feel like I've stepped off a cliff without a parachute and not sure where I'm gonna end up!!

I tried posting on another forum for help, and completely got ignored...

So here's the scoop. Brand new setup. After almost a year of having my own stash growing somewhere else I decided it was time to cut out the middleman. Benefits: free access to several strains and clones, vegging is done elsewhere, all I gotta do is pop em under lights and go 12/12.

This project has been in the works for almost six weeks. Due to business travel, illness, kids, blah blah it only just got setup.

Okay, enough of the blabber. I'm gonna go into detail about the setup, them post pics, then my questions.

Room itself is 7'10" long by 3'6" deep by 7'7" tall.
The room itself was origonally setup as a storage room with sturdy shelves and the like. WIth some investigation we discovered that there is a power outlet IN the room, with it's own (unmarked) 15amp breaker. Also, there are two outside vents drilled through the foundation to the exterior of the house. We tore out most of the upper shelf to start.

Venting is through two four inch vents. One I have plastic ducting to the lower shelf for intake and fresh air. The other is a mickey moused 6" inline duct fan with a homemade carbon filter. Light is a 600watt HPS. It was a hand me down, the ballast is probably as old as me, but it works!

Plants are BC Sweet Tooth, and the vegged way too long on their own. They're big and healthy and gorgeous... but way too fricken big.

Pictures:



To the left side of the room. In this pic you can see the ducting for intake. Behind that hanging piece of poly is my power outlet, ballast, timer, etc etc. Just outside this shot on the left is a small osscillating fan for air circulation. Intake is passive, no fan.



Again the left side, up towards the roof. You can see the filter setup, directly behind that is the fan. I think I have a problem though, that fan is rated at like 220 CFM... it's too much I think. It's nice and quiet, but holy hell it STINKS down there.



Girls one and two. BIG girls...



Girls two and three from outside the door, might give you a suggestion on their size.


Questions:

1) What can I do about the fan? I tried wiring it to a dimmer, no joy, still blows away just as high as ever.

2) the SMELL... these girls aren't even flowering yet, and they stink! my laundry room stinks!

3) Temperature it's sitting around 90 with the lights on. Dunno humidity. I do have another of those inline 6" fans, should I put one on the intake? will need to get some parts.

4) The plants are HUGE. THese girls really need to kick over, but they're 6" from my lights and they're gonna get way bigger. Can I trim or top them? what do I look for? how much can I chop em back before I kill them? Can I trim them in flower? THey aren't kicked yet, I have them on 18/6 but they're dying to flower. I guess I COULD take out the lower shelf they are sitting on, be a PITA at this point, but I could do it, then I guess maybe just let em go?

Anyone have any advice or help? please?

little girl in northern BC
Cattsy

looks like you will have train it or top it. your distance from the bulb will be an issue with skimpy buds on the bottom. must get the temps down to get good buds i.e. intake and exhaust. Air is paramount.

all the answers to your questions should be covered in FAQ. good luck, look forward to see some nice dank =)

I understand that air is paramount, I get that, but what I don't know is how to most effectively GET that air going...I have 210 cubic feet in my room. I have a 210 CFM fan on the exhaust, pushing air OUT. THe intake is passive, drawing directly from outside. THose fans seem like they're too powerful. My understanding is that the goal is to change the air once or twice every five minutes or so. I do have another one of the same fans I have on my exhaust, but am I going to run into different issues having that much air going through? or is there any such thing as too much? lol.


As for your second comment, I know I have to top or train it... but can id do it when I'm this close to flower? My understanding and all the reading I've done today tells me that you are supposed to do all your pruning or clipping at least two weeks before you flip them to 12/12. I want to flip these guys, like, tomorrow. Can I trim them back and still flip them? how much can I take off the tops without killing the plant? Everything I've read doesn't deal with plants this big so I'm a little lost, which is why I was asking for help.

I have spent all day reading, my concern is, that I chop the tops off, trim them back, and end up with nadda for harvest and waste the next eight weeks screwing around with them.

just tie your plants down, that is almost stressless and you can start flowering immediately. If it's 90 F in there you don't want to slow your air exchange down, but if you did you need a special controller for that.
Your going to HAVE to get a carbon filter to stop that stink from being exhausted or you'll get caught.

frmrboi said:

just tie your plants down, that is almost stressless and you can start flowering immediately. If it's 90 F in there you don't want to slow your air exchange down, but if you did you need a speciqal controller for that.
Your going to HAVE to get a carbon filter to stop that stink from being exhausted or you'll get caught.

Click to expand...

Well there's no stink on the outside and I do have a carbon filter lol ou can see it there in one of my pics... it's just the INSIDE of my house that stinks... I think I don't have the room sealed well enough though so I'm gonna work on that later. Finish the poly around the sides, weather strip the door and tuck tape the hell out of everything.

I'm gonna get that other fan going too... that'll have to wait till tomorrow, I need a couple extra pieces. then I'll have a fan bringing air in and one pushing air out instead of it just being a passive intake.

To control your fan speeds you will need a controller, i run a Primeair Temp controller, you plug in your fans, set your fans idle speed and temp, once it reaches over your set temp the idle speed is dropped and fans kick up to full speed, once it returns below your set temp the fans return to idle speed. This also answers your 3rd question, yes use the other 6" fan, be careful not to create pos/neg pressure in the room, your intake should idle less than the exhaust.
As for smell, where are you venting the exhaust too ??? if you run another carbon filter inside the room and expel it back into the room you will lose the odour, you need to recirculate the filtered air back into the room, so the air within the room itself is free of odour.
If there still in veg, id top them around the 4th node, then leave them for 5 days to recover, do some LST to the remainder branches and wait another 5 days, drop lights to account for topping and put into flower.

Good luck & good grow !!

So I did what someone suggested and just bent the girls over and tied em down 24 hours later and they're lookin good, no wilting or signs of stress. Lights go 12/12 tonight.

I think I fixed my venting issues too. Hooked up my other fan. I'm gonna look at one of those controller thingy's, but that'll have to wait till a bit more money is comin in Temps are sitting stable in the mid 70's

How can I tell about the air pressure being whacky?

START TYING NOW !!!! SATIVA DOM PLANTS. LOOK AT MINE FROM 1.Day1 of clone. 2. Day30 Switch to 12/12 at 1ft. tall. 3. 5wks of flower. 1 View attachment 12742972View attachment 12742963View attachment 1274298 They Grew 2-2.5 ft. from 12/12 switch and thats with Tying.

Yeah I'm expecting another 2-3 feet of stretch :s I'm just gonna tie down what I can and hope to hell I can keep them off the light!! I'll keep y'all posted lol

cool. i used aircooled hoods and for the longest time my tops would touch damn near touch the glass.. then i leard about BLEACHING :O

Those are some beautiful plants btw man, if I get even ONE of these suckers to look anywhere like that I'm gonna be one very happy little girl LOL.

im sure they'll endup looking great. So your switched to 12/12 now? What kinda light is that. Remember the veryyy lowest branches wont produce much bud. I removed 1-2 low spindly branches off each of my plants at the beginning of flower never more than 1 every few days tho.

Yeah they'll switch tonight. Light goes on at 9pm and it'll go off at 9am. I've been running 18/6 for the last couple days.

I clipped a couple pathetic looking little branches off mine too.

I'm running a 600 watt HPS. I wanna switch to a 1000 watt, but money talks! haha and the 600 watt was a hand me down Can't argue with free lol.

600w does it fine.

Okay...

I apologize for the big pictures, my thumbnail postings aren't workin for some reason.

So, My girls are all tied up They seem to be okay with it, but I have some Nitrogen problems I think. THey've only been watered in the last few days and it's probably been a week since they got any nutes. Hubby forgot to get their records when we brought them home and buddy is on vacation so I can't ask.

THey were fed tonight though. Advanced nutrients grow-micro-bloom three part week 1 according to their old online schedule.

Here's piccies



Here you can se that I managed to get some room between the girls and the light. Only time will tell if it's enough. If need be near the end I can bring them down to floor level. I'm not going to tie them anymore at this point, I'm just gonna let em be, lots of light, food and water.





Here you can see some leaf yellowing. THis is brand new, defenitely wasn't like this last night. Hopefully the three part feed will fix em up over the next few days. I am gonna post these over in the "help" section too just to make sure i'm not way out in left field, but I'm pretty sure it's an N deficiency after looking at pics.



Here you can see some slight curling in of a few leaves too... Not sure what that's all about.

All in all despite the few little problems I'm feeling pretty good about it. At least, I'm feeling like alot of the hard work is done now, temps are under control in the mid 80's with lights on, lows 70's with lights off.

Still having some timer problems... not sure what's up with that, something keeps shorting it out, I think it's my intake fan. Switched that around tonight so we'll see if I have to turn the lights off manually again tonight.