single plant trash can grow

Hello Roll It Up,

This my little project that I've been working on. It is a trash can that is lined with a linear fluorescent every sixty degrees. I cannot take credit for the original idea, the link is at http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=92259 I chose this design because it is fairly compact, easy to manage, and efficient.





The can sits on a resevoir with a pump inside that drips the solution onto the hydroton above. I mounted the air pump onto the exterior of the resevoir.




I have 3 inches of hydroton in the bottom of the can which has a diameter of 20 inches. The bottom of the can has two holes. One acts as a drain and the other currently has a hose through it for my drip system.



These two drains can easily be converted to a flood and drain system which is what i plan on doing once the plant ages a little bit.

The lights are 2 foot, 4100 K, 55 watt linear fluoros that put out 4800 lumens each. All six lights are the same and I think I'll stay with them even for flowering.



Each light is inside of a clear plastic tube that is fitted to a 90 degree PVC elbow. The PVC elbows are fitted into holes drilled in the can. This way, each individual light is cooled by fresh air being pulled over it.



As you can see there is adequate space between the bulb and the tube that it is in.



The bulbs are wired with these fixtures. These little things were cheap and made my wiring job an absolute breeze.



The cooling of this operation is done by a 50 CFM bathroom fan with a fan controller wired in. The fan has been mounted onto a hole cut into the lid of the trash can.



Attached to the lid of the can is a "false top". Basically it is a circular piece of foamboard that is mounted about an inch away from the lid. The diameter of this "false lid" is about two inches smaller than the top of the can.




The purpose of this "false top" is re-direct the path of air into the fan up top. The air only gets pulled along the walls of the can which means that more air gets pulled through the cool-tubes for the lights.

I've been building this thing slowly since around August. Last month I got the resevoir, hydroton, and temp and humidity sensor. So for the last month I've been running the hydro system to stop the pH fluctuations and doing temp runs in different locations to find the ideal place to put this thing. pH is steady at 5.5 - 6 and temps from 68 - 75, depending on ambient room temperature. The humidity seems to stay anywhere from 35 - 50 percent.





Earlier today I put a plant into its new home. It seemed a little shocked by the omni-directional lighting and proceeded to droop a little. I'm sure it'll pop back in a couple days.



I'll have more updates as things move along. I'm so glad to have this thing functioning and have a plant in it. I'm also eager to get some input from you guys. So let me know what you think. New ideas and criticism are welcome!

wow dude thats kinda cool I subscribed I want to see it in action.

me too that looks real sweet. how are you getting freash air in?

Subscribing, very novel idea and will be interesting to see how the plants respond.

guitarzan420 said:

how are you getting freash air in?

Click to expand...

the whole can is airtight except for the eight air intakes. There are six for the lights and two passive air intakes for the plant. You can see them in some of the pics. The fan pulls enough air in so that the lights are absolutely cool to the touch. I'm actually planning on the plant growing on top of the lights.

duuurrrr! now that i put the toothpicks in my eyes i see! this is really cool can't wait to see the results! good luck!

very cool set up!!!!

Cool indeed. +

The lil girl looks good today. The light schedule has been to turn them on at 6a for eighteen hours. i'm going to decrease that period by an hour each day or else i don't think that i'll have enough room. so yesterday, the plant's first day in the can, i turned the lights off at the regular time. tonight they will be off at eleven. i've been feeding for six minutes every two hours. I know it doesn't seem like that long to feed for but i think that its frequent enough to keep roots moist and humidity up while still allowing roots some time in between feedings. i'm not completely set on this feed schedule so if anybody has any suggestions that'd be great. I'm about to go to walmart to find a surge protecter. i'm going to shorten all the power cords today and plug them into the surge protecter. this way i'll only have one main plug into the outlet and everything will look a lot neater. i don't think this should be a problem because i'm only pulling a bit over 400 watts total. I'll be posting pics later of the changes i'll be making and the girl. So what do you guys think?

alright i went to walmart and got my surge protector and another digital timer. I took the wiring from my fan and the surge protector and switched them. This way, i've got a surge protector with a pretty long cord on it.

I velcroed it onto the exterior of the can and then cut all my other cords so that they fit nicely.

I really like this over what i had previously. Before i had my lights and air pump plugged into an extension cord which took up one electrical plug. The other wall plug was alternated between exhaust and water pump manually by me. so now i've got it all nice and neat and on timers! These digital timers are sweet, i can program for as little as one minute, and on any day of the week.

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this plant is around four and a half inches tall.




the seed that i used to start this was taken from a BIG sativa tree. the tree had an indica growing next to it. the plant's leaves appear to be an indica, but the seeds taken from a sativa, so obviously there was a lil action going on behing the scenes. we think that the indica went hermie first and pollinated the sativa. then the sativa went hermie because we found a banana on it. so basically i'm growing this thing knowing that i have less than three feet to work with but i'm hoping for the best cause i know she's got good parents. Hopefully, it'll stay short and bushy and not too tall for my can.



i was wondering if you guys could look at this pic and tell me what you think. do you notice the lighter tissue in between the veins. is this the beginning of interveinal necrosis? obvioulsy all i can do is wait.

yep. the best indor grow room for one plant I have ever seen.I'm very excited to see whats gonna happen
+rep

Very cool idea! Can't wait to see the end result. Nicely done!

thaat is pimp. i like it. very clean

hey everybody,

i think that everything that i can do has been done. it all seems to be under control and functioning well. it appears to me that my next main concern is the plant itself (obviously). its mama was huge! i'm going to need to control its height. I understand that there are many techniques that i could use but i don't want to change the plant that much. so i guess factors that would impact height are light (where is it coming from and how far away, spectrum), nutrients (nitrogen etc), how long did i wait to start flowering, etc.

well, my lights are coming from everywhere. the plant, i'm assuming and hoping, will grow outward and spherically towards the lights. another advantage of these lights i think is that they are linear fluorescents. i believe this is better because it covers more inner surface area of my can. this way, the plants grow out to the lights and then up them. i'll never move my lights and the plant can grow touching them because they are completely cool.
the spectrum of these lights is 4100K. they are tri-phosphate so they should have a nice range across the spectrum (they sure do look pretty).

next is nutrients. i'm using greenhouse nutrients at quarter strength for seedlings and cuttings. from my understanding of plant biology, if i limit the uptake of nitrogen in flowering it will restrict vegetative growth? please correct me if i'm wrong.

the plant is currently three and a half week old and i'm slowly switching to flowering. its only five inches tall but i'd rather be safe than sorry. today the lights were on at six am and will be turning off at 930P. tomorrow they'll probably be off around 830.

please people i'd like some more feedback. this is my first grow ever and i'm absorbing information like a sponge. please tell me about what you know, what won't work, what you've done and advice. looking forward to it!

i've switched the watering schedule to every three hours. the plant gets watered at 7 am, an hour after the lights turn on, then every three hours. so 7a, 10, 1p, 4.

i'm also thinking about topping or crowning the plant to see if i can more tops. anybody got suggestions? i'm trying to get a nice yield that'll last till next harvest. you know how it goes

i would suggest flowering very early because your definitely going to run out of room in there. i dont think i would top the plant because then its going to grow wide and be touching the lights on the side of the can. just flower at 12-18 inches. thats just my opinion. good luck bro i like your style!

oic the lights wont burn.... interesting. what kind of lights? they arent t5 fluorescents?

socalrippin, and everybody else,

thanks for all the great compliments! this little plant is just reaching four weeks old. its around six inches tall right now. for a bit over three weeks this plant was on 18/6. the last couple of days i've been slowly bringing that time down to 12/12. should i be doing this (bringing it down by an hour or so each night) or just switch it to 12/12? i wasn't sure if i would stress the little one by abruptly switching the light schedule like that. today the lights are on at 6a and off at 8p, so i'm nearly at a flowering schedule.

these lights that i'm using are two foot 55 watt, 4100 K, 4800 lumens, T12 fluorescents, with a four-pin 2G11 base. basically its a four foot T12 folded in half so that all four pins are at one side. these lights are awesome! they are super bright and don't run warm at all. i can have my 50 cfm fan on "low" and temperatures remain optimal. on medium the lights are cool to the touch, on low they are slightly warm.

i'm essentially planning on having this plant growing in close proximity to the light. i don't have much room anyway so i didn't want to waste any, especially needed space so close to the lights.

i'm still not sure what i'll be doing with this plant. i'm curious to see how it grows, and if i'll be needing to step in and help to control its height somehow. i really think this side lighting will promote bushy outward growth instead of upward growth.

the only reason i was even considering topping is because of the genetics of the plant. i'm uploading some pics of its parents so you guys can see what i mean. the mother was the huge sativa with buds as big as my growspace. apparently the "father" is the little indica, who went hermie on us. in these pics that sativa is around eight feet tall, the indica around four.

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i hope that now you guys can see why i may be a little worried about my finishing height.

I hope that you guys all stick around for the ride!

wow bro ur set up is looking really good i like what u did with that trashcan u made it into a money making machine loll i got my very first grow going on rite now im going to b doing an update later on today check it out if ud like the link is in my signature. How long have u been flowering those big ones for now?

thanks newb farmer!

actually i'm not even trying to make money with this thing, just save it. overall, the can cost me around $250-300. but thats just what it cost me not what the parts would cost. a lot of the things i got for free which helped me out so much...

the big ones were from last winter. that was a grow of a buddy of mine. he harvested over a pound from that sativa - and he only used CFL's! my plant is the offspring of the sativa and indica. so i have a hybrid sativa/indica cross growing in my trashcan that only has a height of three feet. if i factor in the hydroton and the rockwook then this plant has around thirty inches to thrive vertically. i hope all goes well with this

has anyone done breeding between sativas and indicas? do you have any information on it? i'm really hoping i chose the one with the most indica-like phenotype...

ok. i guess the more i use this thing the more i know about it and what could be improved. my next improvement is with the resevoir. the can sits on top of the res, so its difficult to lift it to check on the water. i'm going to add a ninety degree plastic elbow to the bottom of the res on the outside. this elbow is going to be connected to a hose. this way i can tell what the water level from the exterior of the res. Bonus: with this design i'll also be able to pour water directly from my res into my pH test kit!



i know its a shitty drawing but i hope that it gets my point across.

this is going to be great!

Happy smokin