Round 2 - Its about time. A [Soil - CFL - Closet] Grow

keep it up Brokenhope,,your pesistency will pay-off in the end,,and don't be killin off plants,,they may come back,,very resilliant plants,,if they die,,let it be cuz they were wilted to nothing ,,and brown,,or male,,before you get rid of em,,good luck man

Keep on Growin

HoLE

stay away from lowes cheap soil that timerweed stuff, it has sand in it from down south, shot my ph to 4.0

stay away from miracle grow, it's too something, the water runs right through it exposing the roots. and it has time released ferts, in a couple weeks it'll throw off the ph and become full of salts, it over powers new plants.

I bought the miracle grow organic and another brand in a yellow bag at lowes and mixed, both have nutrual ph (sta-green)


i had same prob. with slow grow also , it's the temp.

get them off the floor, they are conducting cold from it regardless of the room temp.

raise them up a bit and place some kind of buffer between them and the floor.

i got mine all straitened out and hope to enjoy a closet grow using cfls, my hps fryed everything so I'm only budding with it.

right now i have 10 26 watt blue cfls. it's working great, but I had an idea and I'm converting 3 4 foot floro' fixtures to hold 9 screw in bulb fixtures and running 27 26 watt cfls.

that should do wonders.

also, i know it's out of season, i did the wallmart also and found x-mas out the bung hole and no garden stuff.

but dollar general has really good potting soil for cheap when it comes back.

i grew 2 awsome white widow plants in florida in that stuff, and no ferts.
had no problems at all.

played hell getting soil this time, spent 50 bucks on crap stuff till i got it right.

i'm stocking up on dollar general soil when it's there.

also, i learned once you sprout them, plant them in the largest pot you got and cut down on stunting from transplanting, also it helps with the watering cycle.

i wouldn't fert at all until they are a couple weeks old and about 4 or 5 nodes high.

but keep them off the cold ground, it'll tell them it's winter, go to sleep and they grow v e r y s l o w . and then turn yellow and die.

keep them warm, not less then 70 and no more then 85.

if you have a low humidity, dont worry about it, it's the high humid you got to watch out fer so you dont get mold.

i never had this much prob before but this time I'm in a drafty house in carolina, not in sunny florida.

My problem was way too much heat, when I started off without the hygrometer, they were under 12 cfls, and temps of 100 degrees, humidity of 20%, horrible conditions, and thats what screwed them up big time. I have the humidity fixed it stays around 60-75% [never gets above 75], and the temperature stays around 77-83 degrees, and I drop the temperature a few degrees when it gets close to 83 time to time by opening my closet for a few minutes.

They are on a board like plywood ontop of a dresser type thing and a stack of buckets, the plywood just kinda acts as my table. But they are in miricale grow, and so was my last grow, and the new sprouts. I dont pay attention to PH or anything... so I dont know how well that is. But I did by the dollar general gardening soil before, it just turned rock hard and to mud, made a big mess, and didnt get anything to even sprout outta it...

I also dont really mess with nutes or feeding the plants... you dont necessarily have to do you?


greenweed420 - thanks for the tips, and damn 27 26 watters would be crazy! id like to see that lol


anyways pictures... day 11 - 12/30/07

first one is chi, its second set of leaves were forming during the mad 100 degree temp spike, and drooped badly, never recovered, but never turned yellow and crunchy either... they just kinda droop like that haha.

Overnight temperatures hit 85.5 degrees, humidity hit 80%, new records with the new setup 0_o. I left the closet open for a few minutes when I woke up and dropped the temperature to about 80, humidity 55%.

I think what is causing most of the heat is the humidifier, the steam it blows out is like freakn 200 degrees or something if I put my hand in front of it it hurts like fuck lol...

my room even has a weird smell from the humidifier in the closet, it makes my room slightly more humid around the closet door lol.

All 3 of them seem to be growing again just fine... I guess they just froze from the hundred degree temps, and then got shocked when I dropped the temp 20 degrees... they also look like theyre starting to get used to the higher humidity, instead of the dry 20% they started with.

It was late and i didnt read all your thread, sorry.

i had the same prob. with my HPS, too much heat, I cooked everything to death, i just received an after market thermostat i ordered, when it hits a certain temp it turns on and off when it drops below that, I'm going to use that for my cooling.

i have had temps of 72 degrees max with my cfl's. funny how you get such high temps.

as for the dollar general dirt, there was one bag i got it looked like it came from someones back yard, it's sitting right here, i didnt even use it after i saw it., must be the crap you got hold of also.

the other bags i got were nice and black, really rich soil. i kinda figured i could scoop up dirt and bag it and sell it to dollar general with the stuff I got in that last bag.

I'm on a farm with acres and tractors and everything I need.
I'm seriously thinking of a side line job selling organic potting soil in 1 to 20 lb bags.

i have tons of horse and cow poop, saw dust, trees on the ground everywhere. i could mix it all up and compost it, even figured i could take the dump truck and on garbage day, grab all the wood and paper i can find, prob several loads full a day and throw that through the chipper and add it to the pile and compost it.

doesnt take much to get plastic bags printed and sell it to stores, maybe even dollar general. ?? might even drop an ocasional horse in the mix, (we have lots here and some are old and ready to be put down.

I'll gather up road kill, there are 100 squirls on the road everyday .

100% organic POTting soil.

anyways, i'd love to find some 42 watt cfl in blue, but all I can find is the other kind.

but i'll tell ya, these things are working so far, can wait to see how it is a month from now, was really disappointed with the hps with blue spectrum.

Yeah, I couldn't imagine a 400 watt HPs in my closet haha, my closet would turn into a oven. But yeah, I might have just got a bad batch of DG soil. But the thing I like about miricale grow is that it has nutes and stuff in it already, so I dont have to add anything... because I have no ferts or nutes or anything... best I could do is add a lil molasseses to the water haha, which I may try on one of the plants.

I have really been getting inspired seeing the size of other peoples grows... and it makes me want to make mine bigger. I already have 3 more sprouts going in soon... that makes 6 in there... I might add 3 more, but I will have to do it quick.

I may put back in 2 more CFLs later... and hopefully the temperature doesn't rise too much.

did ya see that humbolts plants, geeze us christ.

i hope mine look that good, I'll put 50 cfls in my closet If i have to, i dont pay the electric.

I was looking at my closet and i noticed a separation in the wall, it leads to the furnace and then into the hall, that must be why I dont have the temps you do.

i assume i'll get that in the summer though.

by that time i'll have my 600 watt hps budding and I'll vent it under the place or out the stink pipe that runs through the closet.

in another room/closet i have a 4 foot grow box I built but I'm waiting for mild temps. that room is very cold. I recon I'll veg in there and bud in the closet with the 600 watter.

just noticed my boss has one of them barrel / tumbler composters.
might bring it to my place for my garden ( grin) and make my own soil.

we had a very bad drought this summer, didnt rain until 4 days ago, then it rained for 4 days strait. but the horse poop piles didnt compost.

i checked that already, still looked like it was dumped yesterday, there is usually a couple feet of fresh compost under them piles.

I had a prob with the water here also, it's well water and very high in sulfur, it shot my ph to hell. so I started using distilled water, but then i went to the river near by and it's clean fresh neutral ph spring water from the mountains, i'm gonna fill some jugs and use that from now on.

I'm zeroing in on it, I'll get it together soon, I have 60 white widow seeds on the way. and 10 free kahuna..

i have 3 big bud plants that just started veg. and 3 more of them seeds left.

so, it's a matter of time till i get it right.

think I might start a journal myself. but I'll post it on my site.

grow great weed . com and org.

Yeah his grows lookn amazing. It makes me want to add more CFLs back into my grow even though I know it will cause the temps to spike up a few degrees.

But yeah summer time you will probably have higher temps... I will too, I dont know what I will do haha, my closet usually gets pretty cold during the winter, its like in the 20's outside... but my setup gets my closet up to 85 degrees, and about 80 overnight.
Sucks bout the water, but yeah natural waters prolly much better. The water here doesn't seem to have any problems... I let it sit out a day or two to get the chlorine out though.

I would like to see a journal though.

-

I added another CFL back, its a 23 watter with a can reflector, my temperature keeps climbing to 86 degrees now, and I have aired out my closet about 5 times today to get temps back down to around 81-82.

Theres now 2 40watts. 2 26watts, and 1 23 watt, on 3 plants.

The 3 new ones haven't sprouted yet, its been about 20 hours since I planted them. I moved them from the drawer in my room to a shelf in my closet, because the closets more humid and warmer, probably better for them.

try to rig up a hose, that draws in air from outside the closet, even it's at the bottom of the door,run it too your fan, duct tape it to the back of it.

it'll tend to pressurize the room and force the hot air out the cracks.

punch or drill holes in the ceiling, they can easily be plugged with a little dry wall, vent out into the attic, or empty space between floors, what ever you have.

if you rent or something, try and drill a 3/4 inch hole in the floor and run a piece of conduit to the outside or crawls space if you have one. thats nothing to fix, just pull the carpet back over it and no will ever know when/if you move.

there's all kinds of things you can do.

I have even gone through the wall(closet) and run a hose to the other drywall and just drilled a few holes. then put a vent cover over it, made it look like fresh air intake for ac unit.

put a dummy heat vent in that wall, make it look like heat, and guess what, heat will come out it.

easy to patch when you move.

glad im not in the 20's..
brrr, gave that up when i moved to florida for the last time from cleveland ohio., south carolina is as far north as I will go now.i joined navy and ended up at great lakes at 40 below. basturds, i sighned up for a west coast hawaii thingy. I'm allergic to cold now. but florida is the extreme, screw that place.

south carolina is cool.not too hot, not too cold. no-one knows me here, i'm invisible, as long as my mouth stays shut, theres no chance of the law finding my grow. i dont bring people here. made them think I was weird in that way (ha ha), plus I dont want ripped off or robbed by a nut.

world is too dangerous now.

noticed lots of growth on my children, these cfls really work.
had to go and double black plastic my bedroom window over the white shade though. on the outside it's a white shade and inside pitch black dark, but no-one but me see's it so who cares, but before i doubled up, I had light laser beams coming from little cracks in the plastic.

freaked me out. good thing it's in the back of the house.

Haha. Problem is, and problem with me opening my closet door to air out the closet is, my room is normally hotboxed with cig, blunt, and pot smoke... seriously from the time I wake up til the time I sleep its always hotboxed with smoke. Lately not as much, but normally it is. So using my room to cool down the grow closet isn't always an option.

I would vent out of the walls, except both sides of the walls lead straight to the walls outside, and I dont want bugs comming into my closet from between the walls... and plus I live with my parents... I have already done enough damage to my walls by punching massive holes in them when i get pissed... seriously theres like 50 holes in my wall... but yeah dont wanna mess up the closet... it would be even uglier if I got caught haha.

But I am 18, and although I shouldn't be even growing this here its not my house, I can at least take responsibility for it if I were to get caught by the cops, they wouldn't put the blame on my parents, because I am 18, and its obviously my setup, its in my closet.

but yeah CFLs work great, im not quite sure how good they work for flowering though... my last grow I couldn't even get my plant to trigger into flowering... I was on 12/12 for over a month and nothing, and then it just died. I am starting to think I didnt even have enough light, because supposedly for flowering you will need sooo much more CFLs than what you used when vegging.

Yeah, its good to keep your grow 100% secret. My first grow was a secret for the first few months but I needed rides from friends to get supplies so they found out... and they all know about my current grow. I am a little worried about them telling others... but eh, w/e.

Pics in 4 hours. Its been about 23 hours since I planted the germinated seeds. Still nothing, and I wouldnt start expecting anything for another 12-24 hours, so its all good.

Well as you know I am growing juicy fruit right now, from bag seeds. 6 plants right now. For some reason the first 3 look all different... growing differently... weird... they should all be juicy fruit unless my stoner ass mixed up some seeds.

But I just bought some sour apple bud today, so I have some bagseeds from that, I may germinate 3 of the seeds, and plant 3 more plants, for a total of 9. I will have to figure out what ill do about the heat though... and I need more pots and soil to do that. But I do have enough lights, and enough room.

I am counting on half of what I veg will go male when I flower, so if I grow 9, I will only end up fully flowering 4 or 5 plants... wow that would take a butt load of CFLs XD...

but if I do end up getting that far... I could find someway to get a HPs light from the internet... it would be tricky... I have no credit card... and I would probably have to buy one of those loadable credit cards that they sell and you pay like $5, plus monthly fees, and it just acts like a debit card, you buy it right off the shelf at a store... apparently you can order stuff off the internet with em... idk.

pics of day 12 - 12/31/07. they are looking better... except alpha in the biggest bucket.

throw a couple bucks over what your going to spend in a bank checking account, the debit cards are visa's now.
they work the same.

this is the best place there is for lights on the net.

High Tech Garden Supply

this is the best low cost light

175 watt METAL HALIDE GROW LIGHT w 175w MH LAMP HOOD!! - eBay (item 180197997624 end time Dec-30-07 19:30:00 PST)

low cost 250 watt halide

METAL HALIDE 250 watt MH Grow Light w 250w ballast hood - eBay (item 180197998525 end time Jan-06-08 19:30:00 PST)

can also get that in HPS or get the conversion bulb and have both for under 150 bucks..

Might try that...

but my plants are lookn better... well except alpha that still is doing crappy, the 2 others are getting brighter green, and growing, temps been about 82%, humidity 50%, i still need to refill the humidifier, which I will do after this bubbler bowl haha...

1 out of 3 sprouts have sprouted, the 2 others are pretty much touching the surface but not out yet, but 1 is. I will put them under the lights in probably 7 hours.

Hahaha I ended up putting them in now, theres 6 plants under 5 cfls now, 2 40watts, 2 26 watts, and 1 23 watt... I definitely need to add a few more in... and its coming time for the first two good plants beta and chi to get transplanted... how big of a bucket should I put them in? I dont want to transplant again... but I may have too... im planning on growing these for another almost 2 months... and then flowering.

Happy New Year Brokenhope,,hope all is well and good,,looks like ya gettin shit under control man,,good job,,I added 2 more 42 watters too mine as well,,,,good luck man,,and good luck in 08

Keep on Growin

HoLE

Well, they still havent fully sprouted... some of them have, but I will go ahead and call Jan 1, 2008 - Day 1 for the plants D-F.

but yeah the 2 40watts I have work really well, might get 2 more... where do you get the 42watts?

pics in about 4 and a half hours.

greenweed420, about those cards, I dont want any information to be given like I dont want them to have my name, address, etc... I just want to get a card and put money on it so I can use that card to order stuff online... I cant risk anything... hell I will order it under a proxy ip address [making it look like im ordering from a completely different state/ country], and delivering it to a buddies house, and then ditching the card, not worryn about the lil extra money left on it.

I really would like a 400watt HPs, can you give me a link to one at HT garden supply that has the ballast, and bulb, and preferably a reflector, at best price? because I could have my lil bro invest some money he has plenty... and I could give him half the plants... and if I had that light, bam I am gonna have like 24 plants grown!!! assuming half go male when flowering and are ditched. .. so 12 goin the fullllll 9 yards haha.

My lil bro has 1 ak 47 bag seed, and i am gonna germinate that asap and put that in... and maybe add in a sour apple... so far its just 6 juicy fruit... but now i have more bagseeds haha. we also have kind bud, and somethn else... haha how crazy... I never thought I would be grown fire bud... my last grow was being grown with just like regular k bagseeds... nothn special... but now i have juicy fruit... and am gonna try out ak47 and sour apple !

I will find out if I have what it takes in about a week when these sprouts start grown to see how fast they grow, I screwed up the last set of 3, too high temps, this time temps max at 85-sometimes slip to 86.2 -ouch-, humidity 50-76%... not as bad as the 100's the first 3 set had... so hopefully these grow at a proper rate.

i still need to transplant the other 2 plants, they are the good ones, one is doing very well... i would like to only transplant them this one time, and have them stay in the bucket all the way until chopping... how big should it be? please I need an answer... they will be vegged for 2 - 2 1/2 months... then flowered.

Thank you... and as usual the daily pic update... in like an hour... hour and 10-20 min haha.