Help me design my new grow cab

[Dawn Patrol]

Thoughts

Thoughts

Still learning and figuring things out. Case in point, now that there are about 30 days to go, I dropped the humidity setting so the fogger doesn't run as much. Immediately saw the soil get drier and the need to water more frequently, especially the four plants closest to the A/C unit.

Will probably want to add another 4 COBs at some point down the road, and wish I had room to add a rez for the Blumats or some sort of hydro setup as it is really hard for me to be there often enough to water as much as they should be watered. Definitely had some of them that were not wilted but would have been in another 24 hours.

Full update with pics soon, plan is to strip all fan leaves tomorrow to try to help the smaller lower buds gain some size and take another round of pictures. Never tried this before but I saw Krunch do it in his LED thread and he seemed pleased with the results.

 

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More thoughts

More thoughts

Also need to do a better job tying these ladies down. As much time as I spent training them horizontally, a lot of that work was undone during the stretch.

Also need to be ruthless trimming out the lower and side branches as they are just a waste.

So I pulled them all and pulled off the majority of the fan leaves. Had some second thoughts about half way through, but went ahead and finished the job. Here is a cement mixing tub full of the leaves I pulled off

 

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Carolina Bag Seed Plants

Carolina Bag Seed Plants

50 days of flower, 30 days to go

 

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Sour Hazy Jones

Sour Hazy Jones

50 days of flower, 30 days to go

 

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More SHJ

More SHJ

50 days of flower, 30 days to go

 

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And the rest

And the rest

50 days of flower, 30 days to go

 

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Update

Update

So about 20more days to go. Pulled all the plants and sprayed organic Cal/Phos. Growth is decent but nothing overwhelming. I knew I was shy on lights and this pretty much confirms it.

I have clones of all the SHJ except B (that one was nothing impressive) and the two that look the best are C & E so I plan to run one of each outside this fall for comparison.

Not sure what I will do about lights right now. Money is tighter than ever but I really want to add about 6 CXB3590's in there - I think that would get really close to the sweet spot.

But since funds are limited I may cheap out and grab a 600 W HID and use that in the short term - just have to do some business math and calculate ROI vs Expense.

The two Carolina plants are ripening faster than the SHJ, but also showing new white pistils at 60 days. Buds are nowhere near the size of the ones I grew outside but to be fair, they are also in much smaller containers.

Been sorting out my newest camera so no pics right now, I figured I'd probably wait until harvest time and just do one big photo shoot.

 

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A little bonus

A little bonus

12 Days til harvest - snuck these pics cause they were easy.

Carolina bag seed

Could probably harvest these now as they are showing a good amount of amber trichs. I may just regret letting this one go as I have no cuts or seeds.....

Sour Hazy Jones

Frosty but still doesn't look very ripe to me. I'm going to cut the lights back to 10.5/13.5 and hope they finish up in the next two weeks.

 

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Chopped the two Carolina plants

Chopped the two Carolina plants

at 72 days - the buds were not gaining any more mass and it stretches out the trim work for me.

 

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90+ freakin days

90+ freakin days

Yeah that's right, I finally chopped at 92 days. The wait was worth it, the best of these girls added a lot of mass in the last 10 days and the worst just made the analysis easier, at least until they are dried cured and sampled.

Still working on the pics, will post them up in a day or two. Can't believe anybody has hung around for this ride, surely hasn't been worth the price of admission.

 

[Dawn Patrol]

And for all

And for all

the opining I did about needing more light, I think these COBs acquitted themselves rather nicely when all is said and done. I'm sure yield would have improved with more light but the A/C was already busting ass in this heat (and not from the COBs) so I'm not sure that increased yield would have paid for the electricity to run it or cool it at this point.

Exclusive sneak peek for anybody still paying attention

 

[Dawn Patrol]

So here we go

So here we go

Three plants were mostly green and three were mostly purple. Not sure if this is a phenotypical expression since the three purple plants were closest to the A/C. That said in a 4x5 space I can't imagine that there was that much environmental difference

Here are the three green plants

 

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and the three purple plants

and the three purple plants

gonna keep cuts of two of these

 

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Beauty shots

Beauty shots

and macros

 

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and some more

 

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and the final dump

and the final dump

it was fun taking pics of these plants - so many cool buds and colors!

 

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More deep thoughts

More deep thoughts

more observations - wow the last 30 days turned me completely around on a couple things.

*30 days ago I was convinced I needed more light in there, now maybe not.

*gotta turn both fans around and point them in the opposite direction to even out airflow and temps

*read recently in another thread that LED growspaces should be run at higher temps than HID lights. I have no idea if this is true or BS but it bears investigation as the A/C keeping this box at 70F in the summer was a major use of electricity

*still on the fence about the Blumats - they would enable me to go without opening the cab for close to a week but that's enough time for things to get way out of shape if there is an equipment failure or a pest explosion. Then I still have to figure out what to use and where to put the res.

*All in all I'm pretty happy how everything performed in the first run. I'm sorting out genetics and sexes right now but I'll have 8 Triangle Trips ready to flower in here Sept 1.

* I need to redesign the far red bars, they work just fine but when moving the lights up and down they tend to catch the cooling fans on top of the COBS and the break off the blades. It either destroys the blades or knocks them out of balance. Just bad design all the way around, but if that's the worst of it it's not bad for a first go round.

 

[unregistered190]

Nice follow up DP
Anxious to see what you do on the TT run!

 

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Yeah, me too unreg. I have 6 candidates, still verifying sex as that's what hosed me the last time.

So far one is heads and shoulders above all others in vigor, clonability and overall durability. Hopefully it turns out to be a female plant and a good one at that.

Still deciding if the first run will be all clones of one plant or a mix of the females to get a grip on what each is capable of. I'm leaning toward to the latter just to be safe, have been cloning my ass off lately.

Plan was to get at least 3 rooted cutting of each plant, determine sex with one and still have two for additional cuttings then a mum and a backup just in case.

Struggling with a couple of them, they are really hard to root so that immediately makes them less desirable in my eyes, but I also hate to dismiss them without flowering them to see how they perform in that arena.

I've had limited experience with TT, but I have not seen a bad plant so far.

 

[Dawn Patrol]

Final report

Final report

8 plants growing under 8 100W Cree CXB3070 COBs yielded 10oz of top shelf well formed buds and 9 oz of larf/sugar trim. These plants were all lolipopped and defoliated so while light penetration was probably not as good as HID lights, a split harvest could have helped the lower growth enlarge in size and ripen as well. Definitely a plan for the cooler months but not one for summer.

Further research also leads me to think that adding lights with more red spectrum could have sped up ripening as well. I will start the next cycle in here in about a month with no planned change to the setup other than reversing the fan setup. I want to get an indica dominant grow finished before I start changing things up and unlike past years, money is a huge factor right now so I don't have the spare change to build more COBs or throw a cheap HID in here right now.....