First Grow in 25 Years!!!!

[Rellikbuzz]

b is me - How's it going? Thanks for the comments. To answer your question, I am going to cull the males partly to make a little room but mostly to keep the pollen away from my ladies. As it looks right now, I only have 5 of 12 plants that are looking female. Right now, I have moved 8 of the 12 plants into my flower closet (soon to be covered in my next post . . . finally) to veg for another week or so before I will flip them to flower mode. The other four are still in my mother cabinet under the Tek 5 flouro. These four I am pretty positive are male. There are three of the plants in the flower closet that are looking male as well but I have decided to go ahead and start them in flower to be sure.

If I just end up with five females, then that will be okay with me. I am a little disappointed that my 12/12 light experiment early in veg hasn't proved to produce any more females than a normal grow would. Blue Velvet did this experiment and ended up with 90% females although she did it a bit different than I did. I kept all my plants under 12/12 for two weeks where as she started them under 12/12 for a few days and then progressively added an hour of additional light each day until she got to 18/6. I may try that when I start some new beans in a couple of weeks.

If the female to male ratio remains as I suspect, then I will end up with 1 Apollo Mist female and 4 Blue Thunder females. The good news is that my Blueberry pheno Blue Thunder is definitely female! I will take clones of all of these females and, after curing and smoking, I will cull out the lessor phenotypes until I have one really kick ass pheno. At that point, I will have a Apollo Mist mother and a Blue Thunder mother. Then the search will be on for an additional two strains to keep as mothers. I have a rather sizable selection of beans right now to choose from. Not the least of which is JLP's Amnesia 99, Resdog's Sour Mist, Mandala's Kalichakra and White Satin. This is not to mention the freebies from Gypsy's Magical Mystery Mix, the POK crosses and Zepplindood's Robert Plant. The decision as to what I will start next will be a difficult one but a fun one all the same.

 

[rule35sub1]

So many seeds...so little time. Hey bro. i can't wait to see that BT with the BB pheno get done. Are you going to do that pruning method on yours also? I am too stoned to go back and look, LOL.

 

[Rellikbuzz]

My flower closet is pretty much complete now. The only thing left to add is the Cyclestat4 timer for the co2 and the tank and regulator itself. I've been too broke to get them but hope to have those by this time next week, just in time for flower.

As I stated in my last post, I have moved 8 of the 12 plants into the flower closet to veg under the metal halide for a couple of weeks. I did this last Thursday night, so they have been in there three days so far. Because of the increased heat of the MH's, the smell of the plants is significantly stronger now than when they were in the mother cabinet. No doubt I will have to get the carbon filter and some Ona Gel in there pretty quick. If they smell this much now, how F'ing strong will these bitches stink in flower? Wooo weee, it's gonna be something for sure! They don't smell of skunk anymore, thank goodness. It's just a really dank, hard to describe smell. Kinda sweet, kinda musky but really pungent. Can't really smell any fruit/citrus tones yet. Maybe that will come in flower. I sure hope so!!

Now for the long awaited and long promised pics of the construction of the flower closet!

My entry coat closet is the area I chose (for lack of a better alternative) to make my flower closet. This closet measures approximately 23" deep x 67" wide x 107" high.



After removing all the contents, I had to remove the rod and shelf.

The next step was to clean the area thoroughly with a bleach/water solution to kill any bacteria.




Now that everything was clean and sterile, the construction begins. First step was to install a ceiling collar for the exhaust duct to connect to.




For the intake I had to cut a 6" x12" opening outside of the closet on the front wall next to the door.


As you can see in the pic, I painted the inside of the opening flat black to reduce the chance of light getting in the flower closet. You can also see that I did not cut all the way through. That is because the actual inlet of air on the inside of the closet is about 5' below this opening. Again, this further reduces the chance of ouside light leakages. The hole that is cut inside is a 6" round hole that has the Dayton 265cfm blower mounted over.




You can see the small Honeywell fan that is wall mounted over the Dayton intake blower. To cut down on vibration and noise of the Honeywell, I mounted it to the wall with a layer of the foam shelving material to absorb some of the vibration.


Back outside of the flower closet, I thumb tacked some of the electrostatic air filter material over the intake opening to filter the air a bit and reduce the chance of insects getting in.




As in my mother cabinet, I lined the walls and ceiling with Black and White Poly to seal the room and reflect the light back to the plants. Once that was done, it was time to start installing the lighting and controls. For the lighting, I chose two Hydrofarms 400 watt switchable MH/HPS systems. The ballasts have a switch on them that allow you to switch back and forth between MH and HPS. You have to switch the bulbs of course but no big deal. This way, I can veg the plants for the last two weeks in the flower closet before flipping to flower mode, as I am doing right now. My problem was that I could not keep the ballasts outside of the room. Therefore, I had to find a way to get them up high in the closet so as to reduce heat build up down at the plants level. I installed two small adjustable shelves for this purpose.


My only fear was that under the heavy weight of the ballasts (those bastards weigh a ton), the shelves would collapse and come crashing down on the reflectors and plants! So, to shore this up, with plastic anchors I screwed two cletes under each shelf to support the heavy weight. Additionally, I used some of the foam shelf liner on top of the shelves and under the ballasts to keep them from sliding around when I had to reach up and switch the ballasts from MH to HPS. The seems to have done the job. You can see the cletes under the shelves in the pic.


Now that the ballasts were in place, I had to get the reflectors in there and this was no easy job. Remember that the depth of my closet is 23". Rather than a Hydrofarm reflector, I chose to use the Silver Star reflector. This is a Canadian made reflector that tests very high compared to most reflectors for lumen reflection. Also, these reflectors are square as opposed to rectangular. For my space this was going to give my more coverage over the total grow area. And, lastly, the main reason I went with Silver Star is because the have built-in 6" ducts on the ENDS of the hood so that I could tie them in tandem and hook them to my Hurricane centrifugal fan (630 cfm) which had 6" ends.






Being that these hoods are 22" x 22" outside dimension, this would leave me just a scant 1/2" on either side of the hoods by the walls. Can you say tight squeeze? I installed a 1" x 2" board in the ceiling that runs the width of the closet to anchor the hooks to which the reflectors would hang from. Rather than using chains to hang the reflectors from, I used Hydrofarm's Sunrise Lifts which allow you to raise and lower the reflectors simply by lifting them up to the desire position or pulling them down to where you want them. Because of the tight fit in my closet, chains would have been impossible to get to. The Sunrise Lifts work excellent and make this process a piece of cake. I highly recommend them!!

 

[Rellikbuzz]

With the reflectors now in place it was time to hook them to the Hurricane Centrifugal fan that I had already installed. I forgot to put this step earlier, so let me cover that now. The Hurricane I bought is a 630 cfm model. Because I am using this fan to both cool the lights as well as vent (exhaust) the room, I felt I need this extra power to do the job effectively. The problem was that the fan itself was too big to be able to mount the fan vertically like is recommended. I had to fabricate a shelf for the fan to sit on horizontally but the shelf projected too far and was interferring with the hanger for my reflector on that side of the closet. So, I put up the shelf, installed the fan and connected the ducting and screwed the hook for the reflector into the underside of the shelf instead of the ceiling on that side. Hopefully the pic explains it better than I can.


Once all the ducting was hook up and had to run about a 4' length of duct that will eventually be hooked to a can fitler in the next couple of weeks. I will hang the can filter from the ceiling so that the hot air still gets pulled out from the upper part of the flower closet. For now, I have just hung the open end of the duct from one of the hooks in the ceiling with a rubber bungie cord.

Installing the controls in the room was problematic as hell because of space constraints. I kept having to relocate things all over til I could get them all to fit.






Once I got everything to fit, I was able to do a few "dry test runs" to see how it all worked. The Green Air CT-DH-3 Humidistat proved to be a real pain in the ass. I mounted it in three different places before I could get the thing to work properly and keep the room at tolerable temps for the plants. My problem was that temps were getting well into the 90's even when the humidistat was set at 85 degrees as a threshold temperature. The final location for it was right at the plant level, below the light reflectors. This seems to keep temps between about 75 degrees (right after the intake/exhaust fans have cycled) to about 88 degrees at peak (right before the fans kick on). I know this is a pretty wide spread but, honestly, that is about as close as I have been able to get it. The plants seem to like it just fine though.




For the floor of the flower closet, I just wasn't comfortable with using the Black and White Poly for covering the floor. I felt I needed something more durable that could withstand the moving in and out of the plants over a period of time and still be waterproof. I picked up a waterproof, plastic covered fiber Painter's drop cloth/tarp. I cut it to size and stapled it to a 1" x 2" board that I had screwed to the perimeter of the closet about 5" off of the floor. This creates a "pan" to the bottom of the flower closet and protects the carpet underneath.

Being that I wasn't sure exactly how many females I would end up with, I had to transplant most of the plants into 3 gal. pots instead of 5 gal. because of space problems. This presented the problem of the plants being too far below the lights. I can't take the lights as far down as I need because of the Honeywell Fan and the Dayton Blower being in the way. The only thing I could do was to raise the plants somehow. I did this by turning three 5 gallon buckets upside down and putting two pieces of 3/8" plywood across the top of them to raise the plants up to the lights. I still had about a foot of room between the plants and the lights intially but I felt this distance would allow them to get used to the higher intensity of the HID's as compared to the Tek 5 flouro they had been under. In this pic, you can also see the Painter's tarp installed in the bottom of the flower closet.


Now, with the construction done and the plants in their new pots and in the fully operational flower closet, it was just a matter of adding a few more accessories like a hyrdrostat/thermometer with a remote sensor.


A Hot Shot Pest Strip which was added after I bombed the closet with a bug bomb/fogger.


Then, finally, I had to weatherstrip the door fully to keep light from leaking out or in. I used 3/8" collapsable foam weatherstrip all around the door to seal it and at the bottom I will be installing 1 1/2" foam weatherstripping like the kind used around window air conditioning units to seal them.






As I mentioned at the top of this update, the CO2 bottle, regulator and timer won't be installed until this time next week. However, this is the only thing left to install to complete my grow op system, besides the Can carbon filter. I apologize for the length of the posts that have covered the construction of my set up but, hopefully, some of you that are planning a system for yourselves or are actually constructing one right now have benefitted from my trial and error ways!

From this point on in my grow, I will just give updates on the plants as we are on the brink of throwing them into flower. I will keep the pics coming even though I suck at macro pics. I am trying to learn but just not sure that this camera (Olympus Stylus 300) is capable of really clear macro shots. I will do my best though to capture these ladies as they bring forth their fruits! Until then, thank you for tolerating the mistakes and ways of this "newbie" grower. I really enjoy bringing them to ICMag and look forward to sharing more with you of what will be my first harvest in over 25 years!!

Man, I almost forgot! Here's a full garden shot of my eight plants in the flower closet in their 3 gallon pots! Tell me what you think so far! Later!! :friends:

 

[rule35sub1]

WOW!! You really have a nice setup. I bet you will be happy when you get done with everything. The plants are looking good too. One question though, won't the ballasts get too warm to sit on top of that foam?

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Surprisingly Rule, these ballasts run pretty cool compared to what I thought that they would. Doesn't seem to be affecting the foam adversly but we will see how it does over the long run. I had to put something up there to keep them from sliding around and it seems to work really well.

I'm getting a few yellow leaves at the bottom of my plants. I think it may be a PH issue and I have been trying to get it under control. In the 1.5 gallon pots, my run-off was PH'ing between 6.8-7.2 even though the nutes were PH'd to 5.8! Since I transplanted them in Fox Farm's Ocean Forest potting soil, I am thinking that my PH will be lower now. However, I just watered in a full liter of water and didn't get any run off! The next feeding will be just plain water and I'll try to get some run off to test the PH then. I need to get this under control quick before I go into flower.

Thanks for checking in, Rule! I can always count on you to see how things are going. I'll be popping in on your thread ASAP to see how you plants are doing!

 

[b_is_me]

THe flower room looks killer yo, the ph problem sounds like it may be from to much nutes, you should maybe flush the pots with just water sometimes and let it drain out into a sink or somethen. Keep up the great job, PEace Out

 

[agent 420]

once again, awsome set up you have there Rellikbuzz.

I nominate you as moderator for the Growroom design and equipment forum(no offense to the current moderator). keep it up.

 

[Guest]

I think they look healthy...

I think they need to start budding...

I KNOW they going to yeild heavy for you bro!!

keep up the good work

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Hello again, b is me! Glad you like the flower closet. It's nice to hear compliments but, let me tell ya . . . WHAT A F'ING PAIN IN THE ASS THAT WAS!! Every little thing had to be ironed out to get all that stuff in there and then every little thing had to be moved around again to get it all to work right. God, am I glad that is over with!!

Agent 420 - So good of you to drop by again! I am extremely flattered by your suggestion but, based on my last comment, if being the grow room moderator would EVEN REMOTELY involve me having to get in someone's room to help them out . . . FORGEDABOUDIT!!!!! j/k I can say now that it was challenging to do and somewhat fun I guess but I really am glad to be done with. The only problem is that I tend to be such a perfectionist and have to have the best of every damn thing that I end up broke and burned out as hell. But thanks for the very fine compliment and nomination. I am honored.

Dan, my favorite little bro! It's always so cool when you pop in my thread. By the way, saw your grow box and damn it's looking good. Man, I felt as I was roaming the aisles of Home de Pot with you!! Don't worry about the plants my brotha as I will be flipping these bad girls this next Tuesday or Wednesday. I just pruned the hell out of them ala PistilWhipt and they have started to really take off. They are going to get one more good pruning about a week after I flip 12/12. Do you think that's too late to take clones? I hope not but I think the plants will need that long to develop more clone sites. I don't think they will be ready to prune again when I flip them. Tell me what you think? Thanks again guys for stopping by and leaving me a post. It's your feedback that makes this thread worth keeping!!

 

[Rellikbuzz]

You know, after Agent 420's nomination for Grow Room/Design moderator, I got to thinking . . . who the hell is the moderator anyway? Upon checking, I saw that Bramsky is the designated moderator. While I have seen his name a place or two in IC, I really don't know much about this person. I decided to check through some of the threads in the Grow Room/Design forum to see if he keeps up with his forum. After looking through a couple of threads, I didn't see any responses or contributions from Bramsky so I checked some more.

The final conclusion is this. Bramski hasn't fallen down on the job. Bramski hasn't even BEGUN the job!! This guy has not even posted ONE TIME in ANY of the Grow Room/Design threads. This area of our site isn't receiving the attention that it deserves by it's own moderator. Now, let me make this perfectly clear, I am not picking up and running with the nomination for this post because I feel that there are more deserving people. By far and away both Texas Kid and Badmf have posted and helped more than anyone else in any of the threads. Now I know that TK is the Organic Hydro Mod but the Grow Room/Design forum is one of the smaller forums so maybe it would be wise to put him in charge. He is certainly deserving of the post IMHO. On the other hand, Badmf is very knowledgable about most products and design theories with regards to Grow Room Design and would, again IMHO, make an outstanding moderator.

However, if either of these two fine gentlemen are not up to taking on the moderator responsibilities for this forum, then I would humbly accept the post and try my best to make it a top notch forum. Like I already said, I believe by experience and tenor here alone, both TK and Badmf are far more deserving but I will take on the challenge if asked.

 

[Maddlights]

Relikbuzz I totally agree with your point! Bad grow room design = a bad grow. The solution is information. I have personally helped a dozen folks set up grow spaces this year. I have learned a lot and continue to learn primarially from peep's like you. We need details, pictures,drawings and folks willing to be a online resources (like your great thread).

 

[immortal]

Nice looking grow cant wait to see how they turn out. I agree 100% about the grow room design forum. For such an important part of growing it is much too small.

 

[rule35sub1]

Grow rooms, we need more of them...
hey rellik, i totaly agree with you on that. TK and Badmf are both knowledgable and and have many a post to be read.

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Hey Madd - Thanks for the nice compliments. Believe me, it has been a research, trial and error method to get my setup where it is and I'm sure additional tweeking will be required. If you have been able to get something from this thread, then I am flattered for sure. Thanks for jumping onboard my little thread here and I certainly hope that you will stick around for the rest of the ride. Next up, 12/12 and hopefully lots of nice, fat buddage!

Immortal - Welcome to IC, bro! I've seen your posts as of late and hope you find a new home here with us IC'ers. No doubt about it, the Grow Room Equipment/Design forum needs a bit of an overhaul. I think there needs to be some "how-to's", some video links to grow room videos, and some light shed on the requirements for small grow set-ups as well as large warehouse-type grows and everything in between. There are some wonderful growers here that could share their insights and mistakes to make that forum one of the most popular on ICMag.

I couldn't agree with you more, Rule. Both TK and Badmf have forgotten more about grow room setups than most of us will ever know. I think one of us needs to bring the lack of attention to the Grow Room Equipment/Design forum to Gypsy's and Dutch's attention. Then, we ought to nominate either TK or Badmf as the new moderator! What do you guys think about that?

**UPDATE ON MY GROW COMING SOON!!**

The plants are doing really well! Flipping them on Wednesday and I will be doing an update then. Stayed tuned kiddies . . . the real fun is about to begin!!

 

[Rellikbuzz]

And Into The Dark They Go!!

And Into The Dark They Go!!

Tonight marks the twenty hour period of total darkness before I start the plants on the 12/12 light schedule. This is a procedure that I have read in both books and in some fine grower's threads that helps the plants get started more rapidly into the flowering phase of growth. Sunday night they received approximately 1000 ppm dose of veg nutes and tomorrow night, when the lights go on, I will be giving them plain PH'd water. I have followed the feeding schedule of 2 feedings of nutes - 1 plain PH'd water every three waterings since I started giving them food over a month ago. I will give them 2 more feedings of gradually reduced veg nutes over the next week, at which point I plan to take my clones.

I would have taken clones now but because of my heavy pruning, I need to let the new growth stretch a bit more so the clones will be large enough to be viable. If there's been one big mistake I have made so far, it's been that I got carried away too early with the heavy pruning. As a result, I know I will have hurt the yield on a couple of plants because I actually trimmed off what would have been more axial limbs. Luckily, I only did this to a few plants but one of them was one of my females!

Since the transplant in the FF Ocean Forest soil, my PH has been much lower than before. The runoff has been in the 5.8-6.0 range which is much better than the 6.8-7.2 that it was running in the smaller pots. As a result, the plants have a much lusher looking appearance to them. I still am getting quite a few yellow and nuecrotic leaves (5-6 on some of the plants) down low on a few plants. I still feel this may be a PH issue but as I raise the PH of the nute/water mix over the next week, I should be able to get the soil PH up into the 6.2-6.3 range where I want it. Then, as the plants progress through flower I will gradually reduce the PH to ultimately get it in the 5.8-6.0 range again by the harvest.

I will be posting some pics of the plants tomorrow night when the lights go on at 8pm. The have really put on both height and girth since the last update. Thanks again to everyone following this thread. I hope to hear from you as these plants start their journey to BUDLAND!!

 

[Organic Hydro]

Rellikbuzz !!!,
what a great thread !!!
nice construction on the growth chambers , you should get some nice yields from all the thought & hard work you put into this project !!!

i'll be stopping in often to see your progress on these plants and wish you the best of luck on all your future endevours , you seem to have this wired tight bro , i'll be expecting to see many a fine grow come from all your attention to detail !

way to grow bro !

Peace

O H

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Thanks for dropping in OH and I really appreciate the nice comments. Your Cherry Bomb II grow is truly inspirational. Those are some of the dankest buds I have seen on here! For anyone who hasn't seen Organic Hydro's CBII grow yet, you owe it to yourself to check this one out!! Reeferman's Cherry Bomb II is his cross with an original Mowie Wowie strain directly from Hawaii. I have had this strain on my wish list for a couple of months now and OH's run with them has only made my desire to try CBII that much greater.

Once again, I am honored that you stopped by my humble little grow, OH, and hope you'll check in from time to time and give me a few pointers along the way! Thanks, bro!!

 

[Organic Hydro]

Rellikbuzz !
always a pleasure dropping in and saying high to cool folks :wink:
you put so much hard work and attention to detail into this grow & thread that i'm the one that should feel honored that you would want & respect my opinion on something that is so very obviously so well thought out !

and if my CherryBomb plants are any indication of what Reeferman's genetics are capable of , then i say snatch up everything you can from him & his crew and give them a grow ! , sofar i've been highly impressed with his offerings and have afew things from him that i've been eyeing for afew weeks now{ BlueThunder being one of them } i think these guys are going to put the hurt on the dutch in a big way over the next few years

thanx for plugging my thread buddy :friends: , thats a mighty big hearted thing to do on these boards , your a very gracious person :wink:

i'll be stopping back in soon bro , thanx again for everything.

all the best

O H

 

[Rellikbuzz]

Looks like Rellikbuzz and Organic Hydro have officially joined the

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