Revamping the closet grow

[OldeMann]

Through out the years I have remade my closet growroom, from soil to hydro from 1000 watts to three 150 watt hps lights. The last grow the 8 ft by two foot closet was partitioned into 3 small areas, that ran 30 days veg and 60 days of budding,

Not a bad setup, but since AK made marijuana legal I felt a system upgrade was deserved. New 600 watt hps in a 4ft x 2ft area for budding and a 400 watt mh in a 2ft x 2t area for vegging.

Here is a plant that grew 60 days under the 150 watt hps, then it has been under the 600 watt hps for 23 days. The first week to ten days the plant seemed stunted by the light change, greened up but showed little or no growth. After the shock it seemed it get back to a more normal growth.

This pic hps is on and I added a lighter to show actual size.

Here is a pic with flash, excuse me as I have never have taken a pic of a MJ plant before.

Going to pull her next week, i hope she will be ready then.

This plant was in veg for 30 days under the 150 hps, rather than going into shock at the light upgrade she went crazy!

Besides upgrades to lighting I have just began adding soil amendments:

5 gallons miracle grow
2 gallons pearlite
i/3 cup lime
1/2 cup bone meal
1//2 blood meal
1/3 cup charcol
3 cups kelp
4 cups earthworm cstings
2 Tbs Endo mycorrhizae

I plan to add a few more things including coco to my soil mix in the future.


This little girl was transplanted 22 days ago. The top was taken for a cutting and some LST has begun. I plan on letting her veg another 3 weeks before budding. I can go a lot taller with the 600 watt light.

Well now you have an idea of what I am doing I will tell you my goal. I want to harvest a 2 ounce or bigger plant every 2 weeks. It will take me awhile to get the veg plants bigger before budding and planting a cutting every two weeks rather that 30 days.

I am open to suggestions, no hydro please. Maybe another time I will go hydro again.

Dang had to many pics!

 

[OldeMann]

The above pic of the 22 day transplant was in my new soil mix.

This little one is ten days in my new soil mix:

and now a try at taking / posting budshots:

 

[Boyd Crowder]

u got some skillz there oldeman!
Welcome to IC Mag !

 

[OldeMann]

Hey BC thanks for the welcome,

puff, puff....pass

Checking out your photography thread, interesting stuff!

 

[Boyd Crowder]

try and be useful, i do

 

[OldeMann]

I am going to have to play with WB balance some more, it's on auto but did not do much.

 

[OldeMann]

This plant is the one that's 23 days into bud under the 600 watt. It was amended with some rabbit poop and straw.

I notice a lot of folks here are taking off a lower branches, I think I need to try that so its easier to water and to work towards better harvests. No questions or suggestions?

 

[OldeMann]

I harvested the plant in the grey tub.

I had been disappointed in the bag of soil since the day I opened it, but needed to transplant and its all their was. The bag had almost a silage fermenting odour and bark and wood chips were overly abundant in the mix.

I knew wood eats nitrogen while decomposing and had concluded that was the reason the plant was weak in growth and lacked vigor.

While reading around here I saw a lot of ph balance being mentioned. So I hunted up my ph strips and preformed a post mortem on the plant / soil. Dug deep gabbed some soil mixed with water and found a ph of 5 to 4.5!

So not only was the wood stealing nitrogen, the ph was so bad it was nute locked. This would explain the ten day to two weeks the plant went into shock with the brighter 600W light, it could not get enough nutes.

In the end I got 1.5 ozs, but it was not as kickass stoney, nor as tasty as this NYCD x Afghani strain normally is.

1.5 ozs for 2 cf of miracle grow is pretty sad!

 

[OldeMann]

Well its been about a month and time for an update.

Here is a loo at the veg area:

The plants that are not topped are NYCD X Afghani
Short bushy one are a nice skunky strain

The 400 watt digital seems weaker than my old school 400 ballast was, are the digitals less lumens?

The plan is to have 2 short bushy plants in the middle of the 2' x 6' closet with un-topped tall plants on each end.

Here's a NYCD X Afghani that is about to get the ax:

and another that is just starting budding: