Vaping Buddha's 1.4 sq.ft. 92W CFL Stealth Micro Cabinet

[blynx]

It appears that strain needs some veg time.

Not all strains are big stretchers and if you throw a low/no stretch strain into flower at a couple inches, you will end up with what you are seeing.

Dense soil can also slow down growth. If you have a light soil mix then I would suspect genetics as to the reason you are producing such short plants.

Try vegging the plants for a week longer than you are. If you aren't vegging them, then veg for a week and then flip to 12/12.

Have you tried running 26w cfls instead of 23w? At the wattage you are at, every extra bit helps. IMO, optimal wattage for cfls growers is around 100+ watts/sqft.

 

[Sgt.Stedenko]

If temps are an issue in your bloom room, you could try placing a computer fan or two in the cab blowing across the bulbs.
Do you do have air circulation besides the exhauster?
Air will follow the path of least resistance, and you can easily get hot spots in your cab where you dont have much airflow.

 

[LoKey]

It appears that strain needs some veg time.

Not all strains are big stretchers and if you throw a low/no stretch strain into flower at a couple inches, you will end up with what you are seeing.

Dense soil can also slow down growth. If you have a light soil mix then I would suspect genetics as to the reason you are producing such short plants.

Try vegging the plants for a week longer than you are. If you aren't vegging them, then veg for a week and then flip to 12/12

i agree, i was gonna say how long do you veg them for before throwing them to flower and whats their start height, and blynx does make a point about dense soil causing plants to slow down, getting my soil mix loose definitely help tons as far as good root growth goes.


as a suggestion i would probably have a taller flower section especially once you get things more dialed as it will be a pain to keep them under control, but if you shortened the veg chamber to 14" tall you will still have more than enough room and you will get another couple inch in flower

 

[VapingBuddha]

Thanks.

As I mentioned I've been experimenting with optimizing the starting heights, and I showed a few of my less successful attempts.

The first strain I ran most of the phenos grew too tall for the space, which set me off on a particular bias.

One thing I've noticed that has thrown me off (I'm new to growing from clones), is that the first clone of a given plant seems to stretch much more than subsequent cuttings. Maybe it's because I'm taking the clone off before the mom is mature enough, but for a while that phenomenon caused me to veg cuts for a shorter time.

For example, I'm running some Herijuana right now, the first cut hit the roof of the flower chamber, subsequent cuts spend ages in veg and yet don't hit the same height. BTW, I love the Herijuana high, my favorite indica so far, like a velvet pillow, although I wish it had more yield and taste. I've had Black Domina that was very strong, but it didn't have quite the smoothness of the high.

 

[VapingBuddha]

This set was vegged a little longer, but still not long enough:

 

[VapingBuddha]

Bottom of the cabinet - I have a typical air diffuser covering the intake opening, same as the top of the cabinet. The louvers point towards the wall.


Intake area - notice you can't see the louvers on the air diffuser, because I put a piece of AC filter paper under the air diffuser to filter the incoming air. You can see the power strip and 2 timers. Just behind the timer on the right you can see part of the hole where the power comes into the cabinet.


Light trap detail - doing some testing, I was not satisfied with the amount of light coming thru the traps (which are painted flat black on the inside), so I put a flat black disk on the wall opposite each trap to cut that down a bit. Might be more prudent to design with 2 bends in the trap instead of one. You can also see the electrical wiring going through a small hole in the shelf, these are caulked from above and below to make it light tight.

 

[VapingBuddha]

Air Flow, Temps, Sound, Stealth:

I use a 120 cfm inline fan with a Speedster fan speed control, and I generally don't have the fan running anywhere near top speed. During the winter I actually run it at the minimum speed. It is relatively quiet, but there is definitely a kind of diffuse hum that sounds like there might be some kind of air conditioning system in a nearby room or behind the wall or something. During the warm season I have to run the fan a bit faster and there is more air noise. When I'm in a situation where somebody wants a house tour, I may dial the speed down for a while, and/or turn on the nearby bathroom fan.

FWIW, I have also read here that so called mixed flow fans provide the most static pressure and air volume per amount of noise.

With my previous cabinet I ended up having to go in and cut more holes for airflow, and while I attempted to avoid that with this design, I think I still managed to underestimate my airflow needs and could have done more. For this cabinet the airflow bottleneck is two sets of 4 x 1.5" diameter holes. At both these points the total area for airflow gets down to around 7 square inches.

Maybe I could have looked into making some linear channels along the back wall or something. Also, I notice that with the ventilation holes being in the grow space floor it somewhat limits what you can put on top of the holes, and if you raise up off the floor to avoid the holes you're limiting your vertical space.

Temperatures are not awful, about 5-10 degrees F above ambient at the top of the canopy, which means I'm pushing 85-90 F in the summer, but it does mean that I can't go any higher with the wattage.

For temperature and humidity I use a cheap combo thing that was part of a light switch cover. I just cut off the light switch part:

 

[Sgt.Stedenko]

VB,
Thanks for the update. I was really confused about the black discs on the walls next to the pvc elbows. I thought they were holes in the outer cab wall and I was having a WTF moment trying to figure out how this cab was lightproof.

 

[VapingBuddha]

Typical flowering cab pic:


I cut up a number of pieces of wood to use for height adjustment, they were all ripped down from a 2 x 6 (tip o' the hat to my friend with the table saw). Most of the pieces were ripped so that they are the same width as the bottles, with some larger pieces that act as a base and are short enough to fit between the air holes in the floor.

I was on the lookout for the 20oz bottles (for cutting down to 16oz) as recommended by Dr.BudGreengenes, but ended up using 24oz bottles and filling them up a bit less. A 24oz soda bottle cut down to a logical point will hold about 20oz, and if you fill it up about 1" less, it will run 16oz. The standard 24oz bottles are 2-7/8" diameter at their widest point while the 20oz bottles are 2-3/4" diameter.

I put 20 holes in the bottom of the bottles. I melt the holes in the plastic with a small nail rather than drilling. I hold the nail in a visegrip and put it in the flame of a small propane torch.

 

[blynx]

Very nice flowering area! Good to see you really pushing the plants up into the lights.

I don't know if i'd cram the cab full, but I'd definitely add more plants in that flowering chamber each round.

 

[LoKey]

going a full 20oz for soil isnt a bad thing, just means a bit taller plant, but also more root space which mean more potential for more bud, personally i liked using the 710ml bottles over the 591ml, heck even upgraded to liter bottles before going to my diy smart pots


as for doing the holes same thing i did except i just used a soldering iron, alot quicker than a nail, but use what you got

 

[VapingBuddha]

@blynx, the 26W is possible (vs. 23W), as I recall the lumens were better on this 23W, although it shouldn't be. I definitely push up into the lights, it seems you can get within about 1/2" without burning.

@sgt. stedenko, the idea of adding some crossflow ventilation is interesting. In my last cabinet that was part of the design, in this one the vent holes are right above each other in veg, but I guess in flower there's at least some movement because the air has to cross to the center for the fan intake. Although that might leave some dead spots all around the edges.

@lokey, as to filling up to the whole 20oz, that would make sense, particularly with a slow strain. To some degree I was just dogmatically following DrBGG's advice.

 

[VapingBuddha]

The growing media I use is a bit unusual, Turface MVP, a fired clay product that is crushed for use as a soil additive for drainage on athletic fields, and also is marketed more expensively as Schultz aquatic soil for aquariums, although I've never seen it. MVP has the largest particle size of the Turface products, around 1/8". I first heard about it via Delta9nxs (now a member here on IC) on another board where there was a very long thread (now gone) about it.

I liked that it seemed like a pretty good grow medium, functioned pretty much like soil, and was reusable. I figured the Turface was going to be completely uniform and trustworthy, as opposed to the ubiquitous locally mixed big brand potting soils (which I've had problems with). I picked up some 50 lb. bags of Turface locally after getting supplier info from the manufacturer. I paid $12 for a 50 lb. bag which is 10.5 gallons of media. It's a slight hassle getting it, mainly the guys seem curious as to why I want so little, and they have to arrange to bring it closer to my intown location. I just tell them it's for residential use, that I have a little drainage problem on a dirt path. Before using it, I run it over a window screen to remove the smallest particles.

It is heavy as compared to hydroton or something like perlite or even potting soil. Reusing it is a bit of a hassle, the main job consists of working the rootball apart over a 1/4" screen to get rid of most of the roots, and then running water and chlorine throught it. I may just begin throwing it out, as 16 oz per plant is not a very big deal. Also, I've had algae several times, not really sure why, or if it's a problem.

Along the way I did give coco a try, and i probably will again. Coco coir sounded great, but using a brick (GH CocoTek) left me with substantial leftover wet coir, which was messy and as it turned out, susceptible to mold, and in fact several of the plants ended up with mold on their coir as well. Even worse, I found that in coir the plants seemed to act like there was some kind of deficiency or pH problem (could have been an overwatering problem, as coco retains water really well), but I didn't really want to get into diagnosing that whole thing and so I went back to Turface. I realize that coco seems to work great for a lot of people, maybe I just had some bad luck.

I will probably set foot inside a grow store for the first time sometime soon and pick up some loose coco coir to try again. The coco definitely made cloning easier.

***edit add:
At this point I have gone to coco coir. I was having unresolved difficultly with cloning and I remembered that the coir was better for that. I went with loose Canna coir, and I'm very satisfied with the results - plants seem better off at all stages of growth.

 

[Trev]

First ive read of someone using Turface in planting..

Very cool, i have used the line of products in the past with my freshwater planted fish tanks. Its basically high grade cat litter

fired clay chips. most cat litter is the same thing.. difference is turface and shultz products are fired at higher temps for longer periods wich makes them not turn into mud under prolonged wetness.

it worked good for me in the aquarium world.

interesting to see!!

ill be lurking.

btw LOVE ikea.

 

[LoKey]

interesting growing media

Sound like you might be part of the "MUST CONTROL EVERYTHING" hydroponic crowd , im joking im joking lol.

But seriously, nothing against those people who try to get everything to the finest detail under their control, and some do damn well, but were human, were never perfect no mater how hard we try, so why try to be perfect, why not just let a bit of mother nature do the work, who btw has been at this a bit longer. She has developed so many way to prevent things like mold, algae, pests, nutrient supply problems, high/low concentrations, temperature swings, sporadic lighting changes, and the likes, that why not go to at least a partial organic medium, where alot of all those issues will be taken care of and all we have to do is tweak it to make it better.

I guess it depends a bit on what strains your wanting to run, as if a strain was bred to be good in a hydro environment, it will evolve and be selected to be good in that environment, vs say a strain bred to grow the best it can in a organic outdoor environment. To me its just alot less hassle when trying to get things dialed in and producing well, as we will be tweaking everything eventually to get the best we can.


But different strokes for different folks

 

[VapingBuddha]

@Lokey, I'm not married to the idea of hydroponics, but to me it's kind of six of one and a half dozen of the other. I had problems with the common pre-mixed soils. Not always composted enough, batches vary one to the other, or they add too much water retention stuff. And I came to realize that, back when I could get Promix (that stuff seemed pretty consistent), that was basically a hydroponic media.

BTW, Turface is great, but it's not convenient to obtain, and it's heavy. The current plan is to try coir again. I'd go back to soil, but I've been burned more than once on the mix du jour that the big boys package up. And I don't plan on mixing my own soil up for a 1.4 sq. ft. grow. Trying to keep it simple.

 

[VapingBuddha]

I use the Dr. BudGreengenes method of dunking the plant in an ebb and flow manner, every other day.

MaxiBloom is mixed up in a 2 quart pitcher. I have a 1 liter bottle cut down to a size that I use for dunk watering. The plants are in cut down 24oz bottles, and I put the plant into the cut down 1 liter bottle, and pour until full. I set the watered plant into another cup (the blue one) to drain for a minute, and recycle the runoff back to the pitcher. By doing that, I can water a total of around 15-20 plants with 2 quarts of solution, 3 quarts in the summer.



I glued a little plastic shot glass into the bottom of the blue cup so I could get full drainage.

 

[VapingBuddha]

I'm still working out my cloning technique and am trying a variety of methods, but mostly I use a simple method, pretty much what Rez recommends in Cloning 101, Reservoir Style. I root in the actual cup that the plant will grow in its whole life, so there is no transplanting. I wet the media with my fertilizer mix at half strength, wet the clone (and recut the end underwater), dip in cheap powder rooting hormone, put it in a hole I've made in the media, place it in the veg chamber and I'm done.

No misting or bubblers, and sometimes no watering until I see roots at the bottom of the cup and the cup is dry and light enough. The bottles I am using have the sides covered, but there is some clear space at the bottom where I can see the roots. I guess for a "good" cloning plant it takes an average of not quite 2 weeks to see roots at the bottom of these containers (that's like a 3-4" root). So far it varies from 10 days to 30 days, and some seem to fail entirely.

I have had some trouble with cloning, certain strains drying out, and so I am now experimenting with domes. I make the domes from the bottoms of 16.9oz/500ml bottles (i.e. one "size" smaller than the plant container). I noticed that some plants sometimes show a little wilt come watering day, and I had been taking clones on watering day. So I now take clones on the 1st day after watering, when they should be better hydrated, and leave the clone in plain water overnight (in a small vitamin bottle) for planting the next day.

I try to get rid of as much water as possible by shaking the cups (actually more like strongly rocking them up and down). I also use that technique on any young veg plant that doesn't have much leaf. That reduces the starting amount of moisture, and then I cover the top with the makeshift humidity dome to help keep the surface moist. But I have suspicions that the humidity dome may actually be keeping things too wet, still have to work that out.

This winter I had problems cloning and eventually realized it was a temperature issue. I ended up putting a small seedling heating mat in the lower compartment where the air comes in, and this seems to help.

I noticed during my coco experiment cloning was no problem, then again it was warm weather, seems to be harder with Turface, although I was only using one strain with coco and several now with Turface.

 

[bucketbrah]

Better to setup veg/flower side to side or on top of each other?