Fidel's Organic LED Lab

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hello again ICMag, haven't done a thread in a few years so I figured now that I've moved back to indoor micro growing I'd do a little write up to log my little projects and mad scientist experiments. I welcome questions and advice, I've been doing this for quite some time now but you're never too good to learn something new, and most of what I learned starting out came from this site so it's good to keep the community thriving.

With all that said, this project is in compliance with Massachusetts state law, and since recreational sales will be legal in just a few months I've decided to designate a space to grow the stuff you just can't buy in stores, mostly the long-flowering sativas that are generally too resource-intensive for commercial growers to put in their 9 week rooms. Oh, and it had to be on a tight budget. The setup right now is a 2x2x4 tent and a cheap 300w equivalent LED that I bought on Craigslist for $80 total. I've started with 2 clones of Liberty Haze that I got from a friend. They're in 5-in square pots (about 3/4L) filled with Fox Farms Ocean Forest mixed with a little extra bone meal, and they're on the Fox Farms 3 part nutes. I add mycorrhizal fungi and Myco Chum as boosts and to increase soil life. Enjoy!

[/FONT]Here are some photos of their progress over the last 2 or 3 months.

After about 3 weeks of veg I tied them down, they were pretty sorry looking clones so I never topped them for fear of stunting them even further.


Once I decided to flip I put them under the screen to help me spread the axillary branches apart evenly. Here they are right after initial training, and then about a week or two later.


After another few weeks they had successfully grown multiple apical buds without topping, so I trimmed up a little under the screen and pulled a few strategic leaves

At about 6 weeks of flower I was now giving them pretty much full strength nutes without seeing any burns, I had a nice population of visible arthropods giving me good feelings about my soil life, and everything was looking strong. Here they are over the last three weeks, last photo was three days ago, photo before that was 5 days earlier.


So now comes the stage when they're supposed to put on real weight; I've heard this strain gains 80% of its weight in the last two weeks, so I'm excited to see that. As you can see, I've got some work to do next round when it comes to filling out my space, but this was a trial run and I could really only use about half the grow space.

Just about another week, and they've definitely bulked up. Pistils are starting to brown, calyxes are swelling and I think they've stopped stacking for now, so I started flushing them over the weekend. They'll get nothing but 6.0ph water until I cut them down, which I tentatively expect to be around 4/20. They don't have too strong an odor, I've had to run my fan/filter a few times but for the most part it's not a problem. The resin production has been good, especially for a cheap Chinese LED with purple diodes. So far I'm pleased with the performance of this $80 tent and light, but I'm in the process of sourcing a new, bigger flower tent for future runs.

I did end up harvesting them on 4/20, right as the percentage of amber trichomes hit 10-20%. The harvest was about as exciting as lopping them at the base and turning the metal screen upside down to sit in darkness to dry for a few days. They got a good 48 hours of dark after the last flush, and they've been hanging for the last few days after the cut. At some point on Saturday I snuck in and took a bunch of leaves off, but I'm not going to do much else until they're sufficiently dried to start curing.



I didn't take many photos, I got the first two when I turned the lights off for the last time, and the last one right after the chop. overall I'm happy with the resin development and coverage, but I'm a little disappointed with the calyx size and density, no doubt due to my cheapskate LED. Definitely something with more power on the way for the new tent.

Well time for an update I suppose. The last month or so has been busy setting up the new flowering area and vegging the next round, adapting as I go to the drastic change in season around here, as summer is proving to be very hot.
The old 2x2x4 is now the veg tent, with new fans and two more 15w LED stick lamps to augment the old cheapo purple LED, which is advertised to be a 300w replacement but probably does closer to 125. I don't know much more about the new lights other than that they are designed for horticulture, and they were free. It allows me to play around with the lighting depending on the heat in the tent and my home.
The three in the front row are sisters, and they were all actually cloned at the same time, but the middle one will be kept as a mom so I held her back from up-potting. They're a Hawaiian strain I got as a seed from a friend, and they grow beautiful flowers.
The two taller plants in the back row are bagseed females from a bag I bought recently. They've been topped and up-potted into those 3/4 gal square container which will be their final pots, I'm interested in seeing what they can do with that.
The last one in the middle of the back row is an Amnesia Auto from Canuk Seeds, a freebie that I was interested in. I've never grown an autoflower strain so we'll see how that goes. More to come from Canuk, they were part of a seed shopping spree I did around 4/20.



And I won't introduce you to the flower tent yet, but as a teaser here's what those Hawaiians are gonna do in there

Really awesome. Thanks for posting your work. It really looks so nice and healthy and strong.

Love the simplicity and efficiency!! Thanks for the share!

Thanks guys, I appreciate the love.

It's been a little too hot around here to run the big LED during the day in the veg tent so I've been using the 15w white LEDs more, which is a bummer for the plants but it's much easier on the eyes. It's only been a few days, but the Hawaiians are loving the up-pot and filling out well, while the Amnesia Auto is starting to really explode upwards, it showed pistils in week 3!

I'm still deciding when to move everything into the flower tent, the Amnesia and the bagseed could go right now but the Hawaiians need more veg time and I kinda want to have everything do the early flower stretch at about the same time. I don't want to be dealing with four different phenos stretching at different times, but the Hawaiians don't stretch that much in flower so I'm ok holding them back. I'm just gonna have to play it by ear over the next two weeks or so.



This is what happens when you take a really short clone from a plant that has already started to flower, then top and re-veg that clone. It has at least 10 tops already and it's no more than a foot tall. She's gonna be a beast.


And this is what I took off of those Liberty Haze plants. Probably 2oz or more in dry weight, but it was pretty larfy and likely needed a longer flush. In any case, the smoke is good and I made a batch of brownies yesterday that tore me up so I'm getting my money's worth out of that $80

Everything has made it to the flower tent, so now the real fun begins. The Hawaiians put on some impressive veg growth but they ended up going into flower 8 days or so after the bagseed and the Amnesia Auto. This is what they looked like just 6 days after the last photo.


So now I have them all together in the new tent, which is a 27x51x72. Those are sort of uncommon dimensions, but I like the thinner tent to be able to work on the back plants, and this was the only one that was less than 3' wide but was more than 6' tall. Plus it was $80 on amazon. The light I chose is the Viparspectra Reflector Series 900w, which I am very pleased with so far. I have a 4" 100cfm booster fan running exhaust outside, and a 4" 250cfm blower/carbon filter combo for later in flower. Everything functions pretty well, though I may need to tweak it a little later in summer to account for extra heat and humidity. The mix I'm growing in is a blend of Fox Farms and Coast of Maine products with some Coco and perlite.


I should mention that the Amnesia Auto started to nitrogen claw, so I flushed it a few days ago and it's making a comeback, but I expect to see a slightly diminished yield.

Are you only running autos? When you say larfy s
Do you mean airy and not so dense? What brand led are you using?

Im just curious. This my first indoor led grow so...id like to have a profile of what to expect. Im usually about outdoor organics but thats not an option this year.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=8305522#post8305522

Only the Amnesia is an auto, it was free with my last seed order. Larfy is airy and/or underdeveloped buds, the light I was using is similar to the cheapest 300w led you can buy on Amazon, and it's now in the veg tent. The Viparspectra performs much better.

Ive seen YouTube videos touting its benefits. Hopefully this next cloning session yeilds me a new light like that one.

If only i had a PAR meter...

How was your smoke profile? What color were your trichomes at harvest? Your buds did seem to have an abundance of red hairs.

ColoSpringBudZ said:

Ive seen YouTube videos touting its benefits. Hopefully this next cloning session yeilds me a new light like that one.

If only i had a PAR meter...

Click to expand...

Mine was less than $300, definitely worth the money. I don't have a specific PAR comparison chart or a meter but I can tell you that the energy savings alone has me convinced, not to mention the lower temps and color-specific spectrum options.

ColoSpringBudZ said:

How was your smoke profile? What color were your trichomes at harvest? Your buds did seem to have an abundance of red hairs.

Click to expand...

The psychoactive effect was actually pretty intense at first, it's a hard-hitting sativa and the head buzz just made me feel stupid sometimes. I'd leave the house after a single bowl and forget everything I needed for the day. Once I learned to cope with that it's been very enjoyable. The taste is pretty bad to be honest, but I also let them dry out too fast so that's what I get. As long as I'm not milking giant bong rips with it it's very bearable.
I harvested at about 10% amber, there were still quite a few clear heads but I started seeing withered stalks so I called it.

Right now I'm looking at about week 5 or 6 for these plants, there's about a 10 day difference in them, but I've been learning important things about the logistics of this space. By learning, I mean making mistakes, namely using containers that were much too small. I knew this going in, but I hadn't reckoned with how difficult it would be to keep up with their nutrient needs. Overall they're pretty healthy, but deficiencies in both micro and macro nutrients have definitely shown themselves. I'll be going to my five gallon cloth pots next time. Otherwise, I'm just feeding regularly and grinding out the next few weeks. Colas are forming nicely on the Hawaiians, the bagseeds are going to be more individualized nuggets. They smell great, and the resin is really covering up, so it should be a good harvest.

broke out the dslr for some late flower budshots. Everything looks pretty good all things considered, and even though the Amnesia isn't super dense the resin is impressive, I may freeze it fresh and press it into rosin.

Looks great. I am going to be putting together some LED fixtures as soon as my COB chips show up. I am probably going to be putting two 50W "grow"(purple) cobs and one 50W "cold white"(6000-6500K) chips on each fixture. Do you grow exclusively with the purple lights and have you noticed any weak stems or other issues from using them?