The Lavatory Log - My First Grow Journal

As the title implies, my grow is taking place inside of an unused bathroom. This is my first grow after 20 some odd years of smoking. Although I am doing this to log my own experience, please feel free to comment. I would like my first harvest to be knowledge - and maybe a little weed.

GROW ROOM
I live an old farmhouse that probably goes back 90 years or more. There is a large room upstairs that was once a rented room. Built into the corner of the room is a bathroom no larger than closet - 29 "x 42" on the floor. The roof angles steeply so there is only about 54" of height with the same width and length as the floor with just enough room for an air duct in the ceiling. This time of year the heat kicks on often enough to supply about a dozen air exchanges a day. The temperature stays between 65F and 75F with supplemented humidity around 35%.

BTW, the toilet is coming out this week, but I was too impatient to wait until now to grow.

HYDRO SETUP
Just a homemade set up with a 20 gallon tote. There is room for (11) 3" holes in the lid, only using 8 now. Simple aqua pump feeding a 1/2" black hose with ( 8 ) 1/4" tubes spidering out into each net cup. All of this resides inside the tote reservoir. I have an air pump feeding directly into the black hose. It was feeding an air stone, but this seems more efficient. The air and water go 24/7.

LIGHTING
I went with a high-end, hooded CFL light. After spending a little time here I see I could have saved my money and rigged up multiple bulbs to get an ideal total wattage. I am currently running about 161W (125W @ 6100K + 13W @ 3000K + 23W @ 2700K). It's an odd assortment, but I plan on changing this up next week when the toilet comes out and I make a few other improvements. I will end up around 325W for veg and 400W flowering. The lights are running 20/4.

PLANTS
I've got six plants that I started about a month ago with two more going in a week later. Eight in total. Just a grab bag of seeds from some good, commercial green. Not anything at the level of bad ass buds I've seen around here, though.

I'd like to grow them to about 15" before flowering. Some have grown taller so I am going to top those and try and end up with all plants going into flowering at about the same height.

If you notice, I have straws around some of the stems. I had my lights too far away initially and the plants stretched to where they just flopped over. The roots are taking hold and the problem is working itself out.

NUTRIENTS
Made a huge mistake initially using liquid household plant food in my hydro. I am now running Ionic Grow 3-1-5. It's an all in one formula. I've worked up to 3/4 strength and plan to be at 100% in the next 10 days.

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I think that covers the basics and brings my grow log up to today - roughly day 30.

well i won't be much help to you on hydro but i'll check in to see how things are going. looks like a nice setup. p.s. - don't let the hype fool you. you don't need expensive seeds to produce some great weed. if its done right and males are eliminated at the first sign of balls your finished product will be far better than the bag those seeds came from. good luck to you.

I left for a couple of days and noticed a little new growth. Funny, when you're checking 4 or 5 times a day you don't notice the new growth

Jumping way ahead, I was trying to think of the ideal crop cycle from start to finish. I see some people order seeds and grow for a while and flower. Stinkbud has much more elaborate cycle that allows him to harvest every three weeks without seeds or clone mother plants. I don't know how much I want to grow per crop yet either. I figure enough for me + or the legal limit if I can grow as a Proposal 1 "Caregiver" depending on how they write out the actual law - keeping my fingers crossed.

I could see my crop cycle going like this:
- Keep clone mothers in a separate dark room with minimal lighting and a low maintenance grow - maybe even dirt pots. One mother for each strain. I'd like to grow each one for a year, staggered, getting several clone harvests out of the plant over a year and finish off by harvesting the mother itself.
- Take my cuttings from one or two clone mothers depending on what strain I want to grow. These would go into an aeroponic cloning machine with 24 hours of light. I'd keep them here for whatever the minimum time is needed depending on what standard I set - maybe leave them in until they have a healthy set of roots. Thinking 7 to 30 days.
- Move them into a second dark room set on 12/12 light schedule to flower until harvest. There would be room for two set ups of flowering staggered evenly apart.
- Harvest about every 5 to 6 weeks for the main crop and a mother clone about every 3 months.

Although this could all change 3 months from now.

I picked up a few things tonight at my local Lowe's store. Toggle bolts and heavy duty chain to properly rig my lights. A couple of clamp on lights and new bulbs. I could only find 23W @ 6100K so I picked up a couple. They seem to have a much larger range of bulbs in the 2700K range, so I might need to order the 6100K bulbs. God, I wish I wouldn't have bought the hooded light. I've already sketched out a couple of designs using clamp-ons and some other custom goodies from the hardware store. I'd end up with more wattage and a lot less cost.

I plan on removing the toilet and properly rigging the lights tomorrow. I'll post pics.

Finally getting around to making an update -

• Removed the toilet and some other amenities from the bathroom
• Wiped down the walls and vacuumed the rug
• Caped off the fresh water line and the septic hole where the toilet stood
• Built a little wood platform to set my plants on
• Ended up taking my hooded CFL apart - I had to have it too high to encompass all of the plants, but its not effective more than a few inches away - eventually I am going to get a 400W HPS/HM combo and this light will be used for clones or something
• Added a couple more 27W CFLs and splitters - this gives me (4) 27W + (1) 125W - works for now, but I plan to upgrade before flowering
• Added an emergency blanket to focus the light - seems to be a big help
• And the biggie, I pulled the plants out of the hydro unit and put them into dirt - a little perlite with MG soil

It is a testament to the plants they are not only surviving, but have started to thrive in the new environment of dirt and light. This is transplant #3 in a month. I plan on leaving them to veg and recover for the next month or so, unless they get too tall, and put them under an HPS to flower when I can afford it.

looks good just keep a close eye on your temps. its a blanket...its made to keep heat in.

Yea, I noticed. I used to keep the thermometer on the toilet lid - figured it just needed to be in the room. Now it is sitting right next to the plants and it tells a different story.

lol yes im sure it does.

Man! - This is coming along

The last couple weeks in dirt have had more growth and healthy than the first five weeks in hydro. Even the plants I was sure were going to die because the roots got cut off are doing good. Just Miracle-Grow, perlite, and water. (not knocking hydro, I am noob and dirt is definitely more fail safe).

I can also really see and understand what topping does for the plant. Those tiny little leaves in the crook of the node have shot right up.

I forgot to mention when I pulled the plants out to water and take pictures, I switched the lighting over to 12/12. I was holding out for a 400W HPS, but that isn't going to be in the budget for a little while. I will, however, try and do a little more with my current lighting. It's a bit of a pain to adjust, everything is suspended from a self holding closet, and I know they're going to start growing faster now. I was thinking a DIY hood with a couple more splitters. Should give me close to 300W.

The next step will be sexing the plants. I'll definitely be posting more pictures for help.

Just an observational note: when growing with dirt in a small area the rooms relative humidity is in direct proportion to the amount of water in the soil. The plants were looking a little wilty this morning and the humidity level was quite low. Stuck my finger in the dirt and it was dry. I had forgotten to water before and the conditions were the same. Added some water and the plants perked up and the RH went up. However, I didn't forget to water this time - they just went dryer quicker than I thought. It's only been a week of 12/12 but I guess they're getting thirstier.

My plants are about 12 days into flowering now and I believe all of them have shown their sex at this point. I tossed a couple of males already and posted pics of the other 2 I confirmed today just to be sure - assuming females never have balls I also added a couple of pictures of what I think are females.

I've noticed a couple of things in sexing them. 1) All of the males are taller. It might be just the plant as it was a grab bag of seeds and I don't know what I have or how many different strains.
2) All of them seemed to have pistils or pistils at first and then the pistils grew into sacks or the sack grew right next to them.

I also had a change up in lighting. Still DIY but a step up. I found an old hood for a stove and made some modifications to get my 125W and eight 26W bulbs in. Gives me 333 watts plus I still have a couple of clamp-ons for another 52W. I already noticed an easy modification to double the amount of 26W giving me 595W, but I'll do that another day.

Just a bump - hoping to get confirmation on male or female.

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Confirmation no longer needed. The males, I am about 95% sure they were males or at least hermies, have been disposed of (insert sinister laugh). I will post some updated picture tonight after the grow closet is remodeled one more time

Actually, I am lucky I am still growing. I finally updated the plumbing by installing a drain tray over the septic hole where the toilet stood and hooking up the cold water line from the toilet to a filter and then a valve. I thought everything was cool after a few last minute adjustments and then left the house. The old lady calls about 30 minutes later to tell me to turn around because there is a flood of epic portions in the kitchen. The water line had come off with all of the water leaking through the ceiling - destroyed ceiling tiles and drenched everything on the counter in the kitchen. So much water came in that it continued to leak down into the basement and left quite a bit of standing water.

I am redoing today, but this will be my one and only crop from this closet. Too many disadvantages. The next grow will take place in it's own room in the basement. Just need to do a lot of cleaning and reorganizing and come up with a budget.

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OK - didn't end up having time to complete the remodel, however, I did find one more male. The shortest plant which I think had been behind the others all along on development finally showed a pair of balls on the top nodes. I swear the all had pistils though. Hopefully my three ladies left remain ladies.

Still haven't remodeled - busy and lazy this week. I do have some updated pictures though and I am definitely understanding the difference between male and female. I saw the little hairs on all early on, but the males got one or two tiny balls and I really wasn't sure. The last male I pulled I left out of the room for about 5 days and now I see buds of balls - wow what a difference.

Finally remodeled (last week) and I am now posting an update. I fixed my water line with a simple valve on the end and a cheap RO filter. The drain tray is set up and drains into the septic hole just not that well. It likes to collect on the one end, but it works well enough to finish this grow. I also started adding some Liquid Karma and a DIY CO2 generator (sugar, yeast, and water).

Made one more addition - a feeding system. I had the water line hooked up a few weeks ago but that only worked to water them directly. I was not taking Ph or feeding into account. The feeding wasn't as important as I added the plants to large fresh pots of MG soil.

It's funny, as soon as I add or improve one thing I am looking to add or improve something else. I set up the feeder so I mix and Ph balance 4 gallons on water, plug in, and spray. The idea works well enough, however, the water trickles out and it took a solid 15 minutes to water three plants.

The only problem I have been having lately is heat - especially since I added a few more lights. I raised the light a little, but I can't get the closet below mid-80's. I added a DIY Co2 so I am hoping this compensates.


QUICK STATS
Plants: 3 healthy females from bag seed
Medium: soil in 4 gallon pots
Nutes: MG soil, 50% Liquid Karma
Lights: 10 26W CFLs + 1 125W CFL = 385W CFL
Co2: DIY, yeast, water, and sugar in a milk jug

Dude I have no idea why noone else is posting here. I am very impressed with your journal! Growin pot near your pot LOL. Cool man. What strain by the way?

Thanks for the reply, 420. I don't know the strain - it was just bag seeds. I had a friend who has been saving seeds for several years just out his 'exceptional bags' so I don't know what they are but they should be good.