The cheapest grow ever?

very nice

OK. Good news. I was not happy with week 8 pics, no lights on made for some serious shadows, almost like double vision. I asked my wife to get in a little closer so you could see the new growth at many of the nodes. In other good news, I topped one of my plants and took two branches for clones as well. I will get to that in the bad news, but first the new pics.

Right on eh? So lets do the bad news now, if it is even that bad at all. The plant separate from the closet, under a single LED bulb was growing up to the light every day, about 2 inches/day. Since it seemed to already have a bend that made it lilt to one side I decided to try LST. It was so bendy and flexible that I got away with myself and while pulling the top down I also tried to get it to curve around the pot a little bit. When I used my thumb to test the ability to curve I inadvertently put a bit too much pressure on the stem midway between two nodes, and it snapped. So I moved on and cut the two longest branches off, then put them with the top of the plant in a glass of water to try and get some roots. I already have some Stim-Root so I am ready to go if they take. Sigh, so I did at least achieve topping and possibly some clones to boot, yah!

Now this is the 5th picture from above but closer up. I seem to be having a problem with some of the leaves on this one plant. It was not as dry as the other 4 so I suspect it may have had some over watering. Does that make sense?

Johnny Lawrence said:

Please stop giving out bad advice.

Click to expand...

Why is it bad advice. Tinfoil wont create hot spots. That's a myth. Maybe with a 1000 watt hid but I still doubt it. Some of the best reflectors are hammer tone aluminum.

I do agree flat white paint is better.

I decided to top the one with the ugly leaves at the top. There are still a few messed up leaves so I will keep an eye on them.

I should update my new total cost so far, excluding hydro was has not seemed to change much.

Potting Soil 2.25
Flower Pots, Soil 49.25
38 Watt LED/4FT 90.40
Litmus Paper 6.79
Thermostat 10.99
Light Timer (x2) 33.86
LED bulbs x 2 4.71
======

TOTAL 198.25

Week 9 pics are in, lots of growth from most of the nodes. The one I broke is doing well, and the one I topped with the bad leaves seems to be recovering nicely. I am going to veg them for another week then flip to 12/12. Need to make space for round 2 so hopefully the will flower nicely within 8-10 weeks.

First three are the GSC from bag seed.

And here are some of my new growers and the one I topped.

Well tonight is flip night. The timer is now set so the lights are 12/12. I am reasonably sure I have 2 males in the corral but I need to see them develop more, could be a hermie also. One of them I am very sure is male and that is the one I accidentally broke. Going to post week 10 pics tomorrow, plus the new ones I already started.

Also, bought 6 new, 4 inch starter flower pots and a pack of 60W LED bulbs.

4 in. flower pots - 4.25
60W LED bulbs - 16.94

NEW TOTAL - 219.44

Any updates?

Well I was not doing well on picture day, which was also flip day. I figured I would just start posting pics again after week 1 of flowering. I will try to get a pick posted for one of my new grows. I topped it at about 2-1/2 weeks and now it is just over a month old. It looks like my other plants did at 7-8 weeks. I will get it posted later when the light goes back on. Cheers!

OK, I took some pics of the vegging plants. In the big pot we have a plant that is about 4 weeks old, it was topped about 2 weeks ago.


The two together are about 3 weeks old, the larger one is the one that I ripped off the helmet and it had no cotyledon leaves. The three together were planted Mar 21st.

OK. As a point of interest, all of the pics above are round 2, and all have grown under a single LED shared with other plants.

Now I decided to step it up again and try using nutes for flowering, Big Bud to be precise. Now to say my wife was shocked that it cost almost $50 for a liter would be an understatement. Once I quickly pointed out that I only use 2ml per litre she realized it was not so expensive after all. So I mixed up a batch and fed/watered the plants this morning. Starting to see a lot of pistils growing out of many of the bud sites. I will try to get some pics up tonight.

This is day 12 of flowering. I sure wish I had a better camera, or knww how to use this one more effectively. sigh

I need to water today. Do I use the nute mixture every watering, or do I switch it up every second time with just water?

And now for my latest crazy idea, that fits well with cheap. I have been scrapping computers for a few weeks now, including but not limited to hard drive disassembly. I have about 80 large platters now and I am going to add some light to my grow using reflectors. I have not started on laptops yet, so that should net me about 50 of the smaller ones. I going to light the place up.

Updating cost with new items purchased. I went to a local shop (recommended by another RIU member) for nutes and square pots. I bought some Big Bug (Advanced Nutrients) for flowering and 5 of the 5-1/2" square pots.

5x5-1/2" flower pots - 7.63
Advanced Nutrients - 50.32
NEW TOTAL - 277.39

So yesterday I asked my wife to have a look at the plants, now 2 weeks in flower. She was somewhat surprised at the progress they are making. I sure hope she likes the end product. This is all for her mainly, I am going to smoke green Moroccan until it runs out. For now the buds are about the size of those burrs that get stuck to your clothing like velcro.

So today is week 3 into flower. These bitches stretched between a foot and two feet. I have to keep lowering my shelf since I cannot raise the light. The short one on the left in pic 2 was the one I topped. It only started to flower a few days ago.



Next I tried to take some flower pics, emphasis on tried.

This is day 30 of flowering. I watered and managed to get some half decent pics, although when I unloaded the camera I discovered I missed one plant. I am just way to tired now to try again, maybe later.



I also installed my reflector system. Homemade from hard drive platters and shiny anti-static bags.

I'm brand new here. Enjoying your thread! Good luck with your flowers.