Twigsnapper
New member
Hi all.
Im posting this thread in hopes of getting creative input and ideas and maybe a solution or five.
I have tried to grow in closet before with no result. The reason for this was that i was doing it with another guy who refused to educate himself at all. He ended up destroying it all over a period of three days while I was away. Quite impressive in my opinion.
Anyways, this time I am going solo. I have also gone and spent a little more time on planning, reading up on stuff, saving some dough to spend on it and kept it a stealthy secret.
My grow is in a spare bedroom, no natural use of the room and so far it has gone great. My equipment is roughly this:
-Homebox XXL tent. (200x120x200)
-Two digital prewired 600w ballast.
-Adjust-a-wings and socket.
-Two Philips 400w HPI-T plus bulbs (MH) for veg. phase and two GIB 600w (HPS) for flowering.
-Systemair K160M ventilation fan. The capacity is easy all the air in 5 minutes.
-"soundcatcher" on one end and "coal-filter" on the intake end of the ventilation system. All the ventilation is hanging freely from the tent ceiling to avoid sound travelling in the house.
-A circulation fan that exceeds the need for circulating the air.
-Measurement device for temp. and RH.
-Controller for the ventilation fan with temp. control.
-Analog timer with capacity for 4x600w. This was bought late, after burning through enough cheap timers...
-18 Ladies.
My grows story is that i started with 20 seeds from Barneys in Amsterdam. 5 LSD, 5 Acapulco Gold and 10 Tangerine Dream. Here I did my first noob mistake, at least in my opinion. I bought the expensive feminized seeds when my plan is to make strong mothers. Worst thing is that I was totally honest with the guy working there that this was my first serious grow and that the purpose was to make mothers to take cuttlings of. He should have pointed me in the direction of getting normal seeds, and not the hormonstressed made-to-believe-its-a-bad-year plants that pollinates itself to get all female seeds... Doesnt give the most reliable result with a new grower wich unintentionally will at one point stress the plant a little of being unexperienced.
Made it safely back home with the seeds, without any problems. And decided allready from the beginning to make my first run a learning round to get as much know-how as possible and learn a thing or two. I sprouted 5 seeds directly in Jiffypots, 5 directly in soil, five with wet papertowel and 5 in a glass of water. Everything sprouted except two of the seeds in the glass of water. My experience is that the Jiffypots was the best way. Mostly since you dont have to move around on a sprouted seed and the jiffypot is slightly easier to handle than a pot of soil. Less work, better result...
I also spent some time wondering if I should convert the room to a grow room or if I should do as I have done, buy a tent. The reason why I decided to go for the tent solution was actually mostly two factors. One factor being that I rent the apartment, and in a case of unwanted visitors (landlord, maintenance guy, chimney sweeper, etc) the converted room would transform to a pile of trash behind the house. A tent would be packed and reassembled. The other main factor was money. The price of the tent was slightly higher than the materials needed to build it, but I will be able to reuse it anywhere and if I stop growing, not likely, I will be able to sell it and get some money back. The tent is more of an investment than the buildingmaterials would be.
The medium I am using is Canna seedsoil that I mix with perlite (3/4 soil+1/4 perlite) for the seedlings and BioBizz All-mix for the bigger plants. I will also be using BioBizz nutes, but as I experienced, with care.
After about a week I bought my lamps and started using the 400 watters. But before I got it up and running the first seedlings had allready started to grow really bent because of lack of light. These ended up as great LST plants later on. Here I also did a rookie mistake. I am almost embarrest to say that I managed to measure the hight from the edge of the adjust-a-wings instead of from the bulb. This resulted in my only loss that I really feel I could have avoided. All of the plants took the rough and early light quite good, but here I think I stunted two plants. They never recovered and even now the leafs that grow out look funny and curled. I have kept them into flowering where I am now, this also done for educational purposes. If they turn out to be herm. or guys they are removed ofc.
In the fourth week of veg. I had a small nute burn, but managed to see the tells before it went to far. No damage on my plants except for a couple fanleaves here and there. Never underestimate the value of a flush was my lesson.
And again, easy on the nutes.
When it comes to training I found myself lost in the jungel of methods. I read up on the subject to see what is possible and found out: Quite alot! So to not start up more than I can handle I decided to go for a plain topping, once, and pruning on most of them. Tried the FIM method and with luck, ended up with four tops on all three with one cut. Still I think that on all the three plants I have tried it on, which all differ in phenotype, it tends to make the tops to close to each other. But hey, I could be mistaken. I have not tried to ScroG any of them, but coming back to that I think. SoG will be tried at a point, but not now. LST I wasnt able not to try. Look to sick to be a method of use. I did it on two plants for a while, but ended up covering the pot to fast, so I transformed them back to regular plants by slowly untying them. Maybe I invented a new method.
(Not likely) The result is anyway more tops than on the guys I used FIM on.(!) And the plant is standing now, can almost not see that the stem have been curled all over.
I have sadly not taken any pictures during the first phases of my plants life, but will come strongly back with some nice looking ladies in flowering.
At the end I have a few problems I cant seem to be able to solve by myself:
-I live in a cold, cold country. Right now the oustside temperature is -17 C, and the RH outside is 18-20%. This makes temp. control real easy, but with it comes a problem which to me seems unsolvable. I cant get the RH in my tent above 25%, and that is with slowest rpm on the fan as I get and with a humidifier. My experience so far is that the humidifier is alot of work to refill and uses 170w. In total the gained 4% RH isnt really worth it. Anyone have a super trick up their sleeve? Tried buckets with hanging towels and all!
-I wonder If I can ScroG a plant that has entered flowering? I have been a little generous with the time they got in Veg., 9 weeks, and I think they gonna outgrow me... :s
-Is there anyone who has experience in separeting a tent in two compartments? May be needing that for having the harvest more often.
i am now in the first week of flowering and cant wait to see my babies develop to fine ladies!
All input is greatly appriciated. Hints and tips is also valued! Just ask questions if you are curious of something. May be easier to help out when the pics come.
-Let us grow so much of our finest herb as we can, spread it and make it impossible to kill.-
Im posting this thread in hopes of getting creative input and ideas and maybe a solution or five.
I have tried to grow in closet before with no result. The reason for this was that i was doing it with another guy who refused to educate himself at all. He ended up destroying it all over a period of three days while I was away. Quite impressive in my opinion.
Anyways, this time I am going solo. I have also gone and spent a little more time on planning, reading up on stuff, saving some dough to spend on it and kept it a stealthy secret.
My grow is in a spare bedroom, no natural use of the room and so far it has gone great. My equipment is roughly this:
-Homebox XXL tent. (200x120x200)
-Two digital prewired 600w ballast.
-Adjust-a-wings and socket.
-Two Philips 400w HPI-T plus bulbs (MH) for veg. phase and two GIB 600w (HPS) for flowering.
-Systemair K160M ventilation fan. The capacity is easy all the air in 5 minutes.
-"soundcatcher" on one end and "coal-filter" on the intake end of the ventilation system. All the ventilation is hanging freely from the tent ceiling to avoid sound travelling in the house.
-A circulation fan that exceeds the need for circulating the air.
-Measurement device for temp. and RH.
-Controller for the ventilation fan with temp. control.
-Analog timer with capacity for 4x600w. This was bought late, after burning through enough cheap timers...
-18 Ladies.
My grows story is that i started with 20 seeds from Barneys in Amsterdam. 5 LSD, 5 Acapulco Gold and 10 Tangerine Dream. Here I did my first noob mistake, at least in my opinion. I bought the expensive feminized seeds when my plan is to make strong mothers. Worst thing is that I was totally honest with the guy working there that this was my first serious grow and that the purpose was to make mothers to take cuttlings of. He should have pointed me in the direction of getting normal seeds, and not the hormonstressed made-to-believe-its-a-bad-year plants that pollinates itself to get all female seeds... Doesnt give the most reliable result with a new grower wich unintentionally will at one point stress the plant a little of being unexperienced.
Made it safely back home with the seeds, without any problems. And decided allready from the beginning to make my first run a learning round to get as much know-how as possible and learn a thing or two. I sprouted 5 seeds directly in Jiffypots, 5 directly in soil, five with wet papertowel and 5 in a glass of water. Everything sprouted except two of the seeds in the glass of water. My experience is that the Jiffypots was the best way. Mostly since you dont have to move around on a sprouted seed and the jiffypot is slightly easier to handle than a pot of soil. Less work, better result...
I also spent some time wondering if I should convert the room to a grow room or if I should do as I have done, buy a tent. The reason why I decided to go for the tent solution was actually mostly two factors. One factor being that I rent the apartment, and in a case of unwanted visitors (landlord, maintenance guy, chimney sweeper, etc) the converted room would transform to a pile of trash behind the house. A tent would be packed and reassembled. The other main factor was money. The price of the tent was slightly higher than the materials needed to build it, but I will be able to reuse it anywhere and if I stop growing, not likely, I will be able to sell it and get some money back. The tent is more of an investment than the buildingmaterials would be.
The medium I am using is Canna seedsoil that I mix with perlite (3/4 soil+1/4 perlite) for the seedlings and BioBizz All-mix for the bigger plants. I will also be using BioBizz nutes, but as I experienced, with care.
After about a week I bought my lamps and started using the 400 watters. But before I got it up and running the first seedlings had allready started to grow really bent because of lack of light. These ended up as great LST plants later on. Here I also did a rookie mistake. I am almost embarrest to say that I managed to measure the hight from the edge of the adjust-a-wings instead of from the bulb. This resulted in my only loss that I really feel I could have avoided. All of the plants took the rough and early light quite good, but here I think I stunted two plants. They never recovered and even now the leafs that grow out look funny and curled. I have kept them into flowering where I am now, this also done for educational purposes. If they turn out to be herm. or guys they are removed ofc.
In the fourth week of veg. I had a small nute burn, but managed to see the tells before it went to far. No damage on my plants except for a couple fanleaves here and there. Never underestimate the value of a flush was my lesson.
And again, easy on the nutes.When it comes to training I found myself lost in the jungel of methods. I read up on the subject to see what is possible and found out: Quite alot! So to not start up more than I can handle I decided to go for a plain topping, once, and pruning on most of them. Tried the FIM method and with luck, ended up with four tops on all three with one cut. Still I think that on all the three plants I have tried it on, which all differ in phenotype, it tends to make the tops to close to each other. But hey, I could be mistaken. I have not tried to ScroG any of them, but coming back to that I think. SoG will be tried at a point, but not now. LST I wasnt able not to try. Look to sick to be a method of use. I did it on two plants for a while, but ended up covering the pot to fast, so I transformed them back to regular plants by slowly untying them. Maybe I invented a new method.
(Not likely) The result is anyway more tops than on the guys I used FIM on.(!) And the plant is standing now, can almost not see that the stem have been curled all over.I have sadly not taken any pictures during the first phases of my plants life, but will come strongly back with some nice looking ladies in flowering.
At the end I have a few problems I cant seem to be able to solve by myself:
-I live in a cold, cold country. Right now the oustside temperature is -17 C, and the RH outside is 18-20%. This makes temp. control real easy, but with it comes a problem which to me seems unsolvable. I cant get the RH in my tent above 25%, and that is with slowest rpm on the fan as I get and with a humidifier. My experience so far is that the humidifier is alot of work to refill and uses 170w. In total the gained 4% RH isnt really worth it. Anyone have a super trick up their sleeve? Tried buckets with hanging towels and all!
-I wonder If I can ScroG a plant that has entered flowering? I have been a little generous with the time they got in Veg., 9 weeks, and I think they gonna outgrow me... :s
-Is there anyone who has experience in separeting a tent in two compartments? May be needing that for having the harvest more often.
i am now in the first week of flowering and cant wait to see my babies develop to fine ladies!
All input is greatly appriciated. Hints and tips is also valued! Just ask questions if you are curious of something. May be easier to help out when the pics come.
-Let us grow so much of our finest herb as we can, spread it and make it impossible to kill.-
