Jeds 30w LED PC

[dead head jed]

Howdy Ya'll

Been a while since I've had time to work on any projects, but things finally mellowed out a little bit and have had some time to recently to get to tinkering again. Little bit of hacking, sawing, and trial and error and the new case is up and running.




All the wood bits were salvaged from a dresser I hollowed out to keep the cats litter box out of sight.
Light traps were made from some pipette tip holders again salvaged from work.

 

[dead head jed]

Light is a 30W LED ordered from the amazon, can't remember which brand off hand but I think it was "STASUN 30W LED Flood Light, 2700lm Outdoor Security Lights, 3000K Warm White"

The fan was another amazon buy. Had a built in speed controller and could plug right into the power outlet. https://www.amazon.com/GDSTIME-Powered-Control-Receiver-Cabinet/dp/B07R7VS6HX?ref_=ast_sto_dp
Its nice since I can turn it down if need be, though I did almost fry the seedling because I had it turned down too low and it wasn't pushing enough air though. Currently I have it set at about 1/3 of max on the dial and the top of the case never even gets warm.


Lastly the filter is an a recycled ice cream container. Landscaping fabric glued onto the bottom to hold the carbon and some wire mesh for re-reinforcement. On top was a 3mm piece of black foam and some more mesh to hold it in while I screwed it into the lid.


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As for the grow

Strain is Malawi Gold, started from seeds acquired from a friend. It wasn't my first choice just because I knew it would be a challenge to keep it contained, but the other strains I was given never sprouted so its what I had. Got lucky and was 1 for 1 when it came to sex.

Soil is what ever organic potting soil they sell at whole foods mixed with some extra worm castings, hand full of perlite and a hand full of playbox sand. All loaded into a cloth pot that I made out of landscaping fabric to fit the kind of awkward size/shape of the grow chamber.

 

[dead head jed]

Time line wise... Seed popped around 10/26. Got lucky and was 1 for 1 female.


Did a little LST to try to keep her down, just took a long stiff twist tie and pinned it into the soil. Here she is around a month later (she got stunted b/c I turned the fan way down trying to warm the soil to get her to sprout and forgot to turn it back up and almost fried her)


And here is about a week later.


One more week. So about 2 months in (-minus the slow start and recovery) If I remember correctly this is when I switched to 12/12

 

[dead head jed]

apparently I'm going to have to work on my editing on this site.
Is there any way for me to go back and edit my own posts? Also how do I rotate my pics? they are facing the right direction on my PC but seem to turn when I upload them

Anyho...

Lets try this again...
Here she is about 1 week after switch, but before showing any preflower (right before Christmas, she again got a little burnt over the holiday when she got a little too dry while I was out of town. Totally my fault, but what ya gonna do..)


And again a little over a week ago. The main stem was getting way too tall and had grown past the light, so I took her out and gently folded her down till the stem buckled but didn't snap.


I have been watering about every other day, and switching back and forth between filtered tap water and the respective grow and bloom bottles of Age Old ferts.

If I am remembering things correctly I think I saw the first pistils pop up around 12/27, which means I'm currently at a little over 3 weeks of flowering. So far all the bud sites look disappointingly airy, though in the last week or so she has finally started to show some decent trichome growth some hopefully she'll fill out in the coming weeks

 

[dead head jed]

Its been fun to be back in the saddle as it were with my 2nd attempt at this. I'm sure I'll have some questions for you guys going forward, but thankfully things have been pretty smooth sailing so far, well besides me trying to roast her twice. I'll try to get more pics and track progress a little better now that the holidays are over.

 

[pongster]

hello brother, awesome and interesting setup!
really neat and well done, excellent job!
please keep updating =)

 

[q3corn]

Nice job! I love how you separated the grow from the electrical area and are able to have everything in the case

 

[dead head jed]

thanks for the kind words.
I am pretty happy with the way this case turned out. I'm not sure if you can see in some of the pics but I had set it up so that I could mount the light from either the top or the side. I was going to use the top mount to get the light closer (b/c of the holding bracket) during the early stages, but she stayed pretty compact until the switch. If I took that top mount out I could move the light up almost to the within an inch of the ceiling, maybe I'll consider it when this run is done. Another thing I would do next time is use a smart plug for the timer, or if I wanted to commit to autos I could just remove the timer all together, that would have bought me an extra 1-1.5" worth of width. Which would have made getting the filter out much easier since right now i have to take down the light to do that, which is not difficult so much as just a PITA.


Still working on finding a better way of getting pics. My phones camera thinks it is way too bright in there. It gets these black lines going through the picture if I don't take it from the exact right angle and distance.



As of right now she is still just rolling along. I'm somewhat confused in that she is kind of just now starting to develop trichs, but something like 5-10% of the pistils are already turning orange. Given her genes and what I've read she should still have a solid 4+ weeks left, if using pre-flower as the "start" time flowering.



Is it normal for the pistils to be turning orange before trichomes have even really started to develop?


I guess on top of the camera I'll need to find a jeweler's loop this weekend too to keep a better eye on things.

 

[Swanson]

Clean build Jed! Looking forward to your grow.

 

[dead head jed]

Was able to procure a better camera and a 10x jewlers loop, but feeling like I need a 30x.
Picked up some molasses at the store this week and started adding a few drops to each watering.
At this point I think i'm just waiting for the trichs to turn amber? This will be my first grow all the way through since my last on (first grow) got cut early due to a move.

Day 37 of flower.

 

[q3corn]

Yep, wait for the trichs to turn. But I would say you have a few more weeks since you have so many white pistils still. Usually you won't see amber trichomes form until the majority of your pistils have turned orange and the calyxes have swelled a lot more. Your plant and buds look great, but as far as I can tell the buds aren't ripe yet.

 

[dead head jed]

glad to hear they probably have a few weeks. It would be nice if they would fatten up a bit before the chop. Plus it gives me time to figure out what I want to do with post harvest.

 

[dead head jed]

Plant update... week 5 of flower... looks pretty much the same

I did a bit of pruning and training the other day to get that one branch back under the light, and trimmed off a few leaves that were shading out other flowers

I was also reading a bit in the infirmary and realized that I think my little gal is suffering a bit from some nute burn. I say this because I noticed that almost all of the leaves and especially the new ones were curled or cupped under like a claw. From what I was reading it is probably Nitrogen that is the issue due to the very light green new growth and the very dark green older growth.

I think what had happened is, I had been cycling the waterings between plain filtered water and nutes (@~2tbls/gal). My normally watering was just pouring ~100ml around the top of the soil at a time, until I saw a good bit of run off in the tray (cloth pot is sitting on some pea gravel so it has ~1/4" clearance from the tray). I think my issue was I was just letting the run off sit in the tray. Anything that still touched the pot would eventually get wicked in, and anything in the tray would just evaporate, leaving the salts. So I think what had happened was the catch tray was basically turning into a salt bath that was then getting wicked into the pot after watering.

This also prompted me to pull out my PH test strips and test my filtered water I was using... It was between 5.5 and 6. So I mixed some filtered water with a tiny bit of baking soda to a PH ~7 and poured about 4 cups worth of water through the pot. This time I sucked up the run off with a syringe and tossed it (PH was still around 6). My plan is to do this a few more time before feeding, and continue using baking soda adjusted water until I can get the run off to be ~6.5-7.



Does this sounds like a solid plan? What do you guys thing about my diagnosis?

Last question is what do you guys think of those soil PH/Moisture/light probes like this https://www.amazon.c...80526163&sr=8-6 ,