Bloomin' In A Box

Sonora;2851523 said:

It's Friday, which means updates! Happy weekend from The Box!

Last Friday all three girls had popped, and had just gone under the 400W Metal Halide. All 3 girls were basically just stem and cotyledons (the round baby leaves), and they were in a very diluted nutrient mixture. They've had a really good week, as you'll see below, although I have a few issues.

First issue - temps. My box regularly gets up to 90 degrees on the inside. I've increased air flow all I can, but ultimately I'm growing in one of the hottest places on plant Earth, and those temps are making an impact.

Second issue - cleanliness. The box's design makes it really hard to keep things clean. I had a fishy-aquarium smell when I changed the nute solution out today, and WWI (my biggest girl) had some brown on her long taproot. I've ordered some H2O2 and will need to start running a regular peroxide bath to keep pythium at bay.

Third issue - changing out nutes. Holy cow, this box makes that such a messy, pain in the a$$. I'm really unhappy with the hydro-setup in the BloomBox. The box itself is very nice, but the hydro system is just a cut-rate homemade...well, it's crap. No better words I can use for it. However, the good news is I can move all the hydro stuff and still use the box to grow soil, which is what I think I'm going to end up doing (or maybe 3-gallon hempy buckets or something). I'll finish this grow out, get me a mother (which I'll grow out using a 1-gallon hand-watered hydro bucket with coco), and then future grows will be in some soil or soilless mix that don't rely on water reservoirs and pumps.

Anyhow, with all my griping, I do have to say, the girls look good for being above-ground for basically a week. To the pics!

White Widow I (WWI): the oldest girl, also the tallest. She has one long root dangling in the nutes that got a bit of brown on her. I tried cleaning her with a gentle spray of some H202 (not food grade) and some water, cleaned out the res with bleach, and am hoping that will intercept the issue until I can get the 35% H2O2 here and start cycling it through the system.

Above the water

Below the water

Next, White Widow 2 (WWII). She's the one with scoliosis. She's growing fine, she's just funky. Her roots don't dangle in the nute stream quite yet.

The roots

And finally, White Widow 3 (WWIII). She's interesting - she was "born" last, a full day after WWII and 3 days after WWI...but she's caught up almost all the way, and her root structure looks best. I'm hoping for great things from her.

Top

Roots

Family shot up top

Family root shot, with a view of my ghetto res chiller (frozen water bottles, changed 2x daily)

Click to expand...