Q3corn's dank mini adventures

[q3corn]

Hey, folks! I'm back in action after moving and such. I only have space to grow in my micro cabinet, so I've got that up and running with a nearly endless supply of seeds to experiment with.


Space:
1ft x 1ft x 2ft hand built cabinet painted white
3x e27 light sockets, plenty of chopped LED's to use. I've maxed out at 42 watts though
1 120mm pc fan for exhaust
No carbon scrubber, don't need one yet

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It took me a while to hunt down the parts for the lighting housing, but I really like the socket and bracket method I have, and the wago connectors are a dream to work with! Here's a close-up:

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Started to pop some seeds just to see if some new ones I made last year were up to par, and I got 12/12 on germination in less than 3 days! I got some babies to take care of! I'll probably gift about half of them out, though. Can't keep more than 4 in here realistically.

Strains:
top: 9lb Hammer x Sour Urkel Vulcan
bottom: Jack Herer x Purple Goat

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So now I've got them all in rock wool cubes and ready to sprout. Just 4 days after putting them in paper towels and I've already got plenty of seedlings to take care of. Currently under 14watts of LED from Philips. 2700k until they get their first real leaves, then I'll switch to a 5000k bulb for veg

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Some of these bulbs are 4 years old and still going strong! I'm sure the e27 LED tech has improved a good amount since I got these, but I'm so pleased with the value I've gotten that I'm gonna keep them until they shit the bed. Each one of those bulbs was less than $6, so the math checks out to this being a killer deal.

This being such a small grow, my nutrient and soil costs will be minimal too. Thinking of going with Biobizz for nutes again as I've had good experience with them in the past. A sampler pack will get me through a cycle without issue. I still have some soil bagged up from my old space, so that'll be useable still.

Happy growing, folks! I'm happy to answer any questions. Stay chill

 

[blynx]

Are you going to flower all the females you get or do you have a certain number of plants you would like to run in the cab?


I'm using 4yr old led screw-ins and they are still going strong too. I plan on using them until they stop working.

 

[q3corn]

Blynx:
I think I'm gonna keep 6 and sex them, and then flower whatever females come from there. I can repot them into quart-sized pots I made so I can fit 4 easily, but can't realistically fit more. I may keep 8 plants just to see if I get 4 females.


You were the dude that blew the lid off screw-in LEDs for me, so thanks!

 

[q3corn]

Everybody is out of their shells and above the soil! I raised up the base so they could be closer to the light, but I'm not sure if it was enough. Some of these seedlings are still stretching a bit. What do you guys think?

 

[blynx]

Switch to the 5000k bulb

 

[q3corn]

Blynx: done. is 2700k not good for seedlings?

 

[starke]

The 5000k is better for veg growth. The 2700k is better for flower.

 

[blynx]

The 5000k is better for veg growth. The 2700k is better for flower.

^What he said.

I use daylight (5000k) bulbs for veg and soft white (2700k) bulbs for flower

 

[q3corn]

Noted!

 

[q3corn]

Well, 2 seedlings died last night, not sure what happened. Maybe they got over-watered, I'm not sure.


Anyway, today the remaining 10 will be potted into 16oz solo cups, and since my cab can realistically only fit 9 plants, I will have to choose which runt gets tossed and/or gifted away. Starting to think running this cab at 12/12 soon will be good if I do all 9. Having some variety will be nice, and since I'm running the odds of 50% being females, then I'll at least have some breathing room with the 16oz cups vs the 32oz pots I was planning on using.


Pics to come after repotting!

 

[q3corn]

Ok after re-potting I decided to ween it down to 7 plants. Mostly because I forgot the dimensions of this cab are a *tiny* bit smaller than I remember, and can't quite fit a 3x3 grid of solo cups.


5 9lb x SUV plants and 2 JH x PG plants got picked based on either surviving, or root development. I have 2 of my 5000k bulbs on, and they're lifted up to about 6" from the bulbs, so a good distance for growth without too much stretch problems.

They were in rock wool cubes a little too long, so you'll notice a little yellowing on the tips of them. I'm hoping they'll clear up and really start showing off here in a few days.

 

[q3corn]

Well, after a few days I've determined that these little babies are too young for their lighting, so I moved them back down to the bottom of the cabinet and turned off one of my 14w lights. We're now at only 14w of lighting and the plants are a little over a foot away from the lighting.

Plants were drooping in a way I hadn't seen before. I really don't think it was from over or under watering, so I suspect it was lighting. After a few hours there's really been no change, but I'll report back.

 

[q3corn]

Well that must have been it. The babies are perked up a lot more now!


Note to self: 2-week-old plants don't need much light.

 

[q3corn]

Ok so I busted out my *other* 1x1x2 cabinet from storage and moved my plants into that. I liked the framework better on it, and how the pc exhaust fan was outside the cabinet rather than mounted to a vent on the inside. It opened up the ceiling a little better and overall looks nicer. It's also about 1/4" wider, which would have allowed for 1 more solo cup plant. Alas, it didn't happen.

I'm gonna keep both 1x1 cabs around. The other will be for when I decide to expand into veg and flower spaces. Currently I'll just be running this one cab, but I'm prepared to pop a few more beans if I get the itch.

 

[q3corn]

I was digging through my hard drive to look at old pics of previous grows, and I found a really nice shot of both of my 1x1 cabs. This was back when I was growing with just those 3 years ago. I had a cool little thing going on then. Costs were next to nothing, and time invested was minutes rather than hours per day.

On the left is the veg cab, which has my moms and little clone babies. On the right is flower, which has 4 plants, 2 of which are my own seeds. We've got Northern Lights, CItrus Sap, and 2 Northern Lights x Citrus saps that I made. They're not fem, I happened to have a CS male and female. Sadly, I didn't cross the 2 CS male & female, so those genetics are lost to time.

It wasn't too long after this picture was taken that I took the plunge and moved to a basement that gave me basically free reign to grow as much as I wanted. It was a total dream and a curse all wrapped up together nicely. I guess I'm gonna go into story time here, and give a little background to my personal growing adventure... I'm a bit of a rambler, so bear with me

...

After I made my first seeds, I got the bug. I got big ideas of making all of my own strains, with the intention of focusing on attributes that thrive in small spaces. I wanted to make plants in small spaces for myself and for other people who grow in small spaces. With the expansion to a full basement, I felt like I had enough space to really exercise that idea. As many of you know: strain hunting in micro-spaces is a pain in the ass! No room to pop enough seeds to really dig, and no room to keep moms and dads around for generations to experiment. So many struggles with restrictions out the window, I decided it was time.

Now, I had NEVER grown any plants larger than 1/2 gallon pots, so to start growing 30+ plants was a big learning curve. There was an instant change in tech that I had to develop, and the investment needed to take advantage of the space was daunting. But I did what I could, and hustled my ass around and got a bunch of COB leds made, and got to work. I grew as many plants as I could get a hold of. I took clones from people, I took seeds from people, I took everything I could get my hands on! I wanted to hoard genetics for myself, so when the time came to make a new strain, I had packs of seeds ready to go.

Unfortunately, when you start taking plants from friends, you also start taking pests from them! I had my fair share of every problem. Some were brought in with sick plants, but a lot were because of just nature being nature. I've fought spider mites, thrips, ants, and fungus gnats. I've had bud rot, powdery mildew, algae in soil, and mysterious mushrooms coming from my pots. I've had low temps, I've had too high temps. I've had badly ph'd water. I've had bad ph meters. I've had power outages, brown-outs, light failures, timer failures, and vent failures. All of those problems on a micro scale, although devastating, are not nearly as time-consuming as when you have a full-sized space. Full-sized rooms with problems can add hours of work to a day, whereas in micro you're maybe adding some extra time every morning.

But through it all, it allowed me to focus on which plants were managing the problems well, and which ones ultimately were too finicky for my liking. And honestly, lots of the most hearty, sturdy, resistant plants I've had have been males. And with that in mind, why wouldn't I throw pollen from those guys onto some ladies and try to preserve whatever pest-resistance traits they possess? And if the whole room is having PM issues and I'm gonna have to BHO-blast it anyway, why not fill the room with seeds first? So again, pollen chucking was a way for me to feel like there was a second purpose to my cannabis growing. If I couldn't smoke it, then I should make seeds. Now, making seeds still isn't easy. You still need to make sure the plant is healthy enough to reach the end of flower. I've had plants die with maybe 2 weeks to go, only to find every single seed in that plant was immature and worthless. The amount of dead plants I composted through those years is embarrassing. Learning is an expensive, time-consuming endeavor. Sometimes you just want shit to work, and shit just doesn't want to. You just have to roll with it and move on to the next day.

All of that went on for almost three years. Ultimately, though, the costs of growing was too much for my pockets. Even though I was doing all of this work, I hadn't felt there was value in the seeds I'd made yet since most of them were still only F1's. Coupled with the fact that I'm in a legal state where store-bought flower prices were dropping like rocks, there wasn't even any incentive to sell bud. And whatever friends wanted to buy, the supplementary income wasn't even close to power bill prices, and I had to swallow my pride, and shut the whole space down. I lost all of my mother plants in the process. Some of which I'll really never be able to find again. Genetics lost to time.

I transitioned from living in a 20x40 basement, to packing all of my life and equipment into a 10x10 bedroom and a storage unit. And that's where I am now. Back down to 2 1x1 cabinets in my closet, just keeping the hobby going. Maybe I'll get back into breeding when I have a real space and better funding, but for now I'm really happy to be back in the micro growing zone.

So if you read this far, thanks a ton. It was cathartic to get this all down. I look forward to keeping up with everyone's logs on here. There's some true masters of the micro here that I have a lot to learn from still.

 

[Cmoon]

fine looking plants buddy, keep um coming

 

[q3corn]

Thanks for comin buy Cmoon!



So anyway, I think the problem was airflow rather than lighting. I found a little white fuzzy mold on tops of the pots this morning, so i cleaned those out with some lightly vinegar'd water, and looked at my ventilation. Turns out the blackout fabric I had on my fan had clogged up with dust and wasn't letting anything through. I decided to take that out and put in the framework for a carbon filter, since I'll need one of those soon anyway. Parts and activated carbon are on the way and should be here next week!



Fed the plants their first little bit of nutrients too, since they needed it. Just a teeny bit of biobizz grow.


picture for tax:

 

[q3corn]

Extra update for the night:

2 days ago I put some Gelato33 x Purple Goat seeds in paper towels, and 48 hours later 4 of the 4 beans got their tap roots out. I put them in rockwool cubes and imediately realized that I don't have enough room for them! So I decided now is as good a time as any to pull out the runt 9LBxSUV plant. You know the one. I could spend the time nurturing it back to health, but with so much seed stock to go through and so little room, I can be picky. It's not going in the trash just yet, it'll sit on my desk and see if anything new happens.

The light, however, is definitely too bright for little babies, so I'm trying to come up with a good way to diffuse it a bit. I discovered I have enough room for 32oz yogurt container, so I put the rockwool down in the bottom of that, and put a clear top on the container to let some light in and act as a humidity barrier. Maybe it'll work?

Anyway, my problem will continue to be that I'm out of room, so I gotta get the other cabinet back in action. realistically all I need to do is get a power adapter for my usb fan, and redo the weather stripping on the door to manage light leaks. it'll just be veg, so it's not that important, but the piece of mind is good.

Pics:

 

[q3corn]

I know I need another fan for airflow in my cabinet, and I decided to dig around for info on what fans I currently have. Turns out the 120mm fan I have for exhaust is moving roughly 45cfm. I found a few other 120mm fans on amazon that are *not* usb powered that are rated up to 110cfm! So I'm doing the obvious and ordering one of those to see if it helps. I'll move the current exhaust fan into the cab for air circulation.


Which fan models do you guys use for air circulation? I know we're all counting cubic inches when organizing our spaces...

 

[Killkingkong]

I know I need another fan for airflow in my cabinet, and I decided to dig around for info on what fans I currently have. Turns out the 120mm fan I have for exhaust is moving roughly 45cfm. I found a few other 120mm fans on amazon that are *not* usb powered that are rated up to 110cfm! So I'm doing the obvious and ordering one of those to see if it helps. I'll move the current exhaust fan into the cab for air circulation.


Which fan models do you guys use for air circulation? I know we're all counting cubic inches when organizing our spaces...

Delta Electronics makes some of the strongest PC shaped fans on the market, mostly used in servers. That's the only brand I use for my exhaust/carbon filters. They're also powerful enough to not need a fan to blow air in the case, the exhaust alone keeps the plants dancing in the wind and their stems strong. Search ebay for "120mm delta fan" and pick one based on the amps. the higher the amps the more power and the more power you'll need to supply.