budhisattva
New Member
Hi Everybody,
Long time learner who finely grew some cojones and am going to start a journal. I haven't grown for over 15 years and at that time I was quite naive and not successful. This year, armed with all the data from this site, I'm trying again.
Setup:
Inside of what is essentially a very large garden shed attached to our house, I created a small stealth closet which is approximately 4' x 2.5' x 8'. The room itself is covered with pegboard as is the rest of the room, which makes it appear nicely like nothing is there...move the towel out of the way and there is a deadbolt installed with a key that I keep with me at all times.
I have not been able to find any local source for an HPS light and have not worked up the courage yet to order one online yet. I am trying to not break the golden rule of "loose lips sink ships" and so I don't really want to have something delivered to a friend just yet. Therefore, I am using CFLs for this first grow.
I have 16 CFLs most of which are 27watts and a couple are different. I can't, at this time, recall the details of those bulbs but I can figure that out later if there is curiosity. I put a Y receptacle inside of each standard clipon reflector and built a small light rack out of 2x4's and hung this via chains from the ceiling so it can be lowered and raised as necessary (thought it turns out to be heavier and more of a pain than I anticipated so in the future I'll be redesigning the lifting/lowering system.
On the ceiling of the closet I installed a bathroom exhaust fan that moves approximately 120 cfm. The room is about 96 cubic feet. There is a 4" duct attached to the lower portion of the wall which is used for pulling in fresh air.
On the floor I have created a small table from the legs and one shelf from a 5 shelf plastic shelving system. This gives me a little bit of room to store my paraphernalia locked up tight.
Current Status:
I started this grow from bagseed just under a month ago in Jiffy pellets and amazingly all germinated just fine. Unfortunately I did not know that cannabis has difficulty punching through the wrap at the time, though this doesn't seem to have really caused any issues here. I have 5 plants currently growing 18/6. The were originally in small pots about 6 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter. Today I transplanted them into much larger black pots (10" diameter, 12" tall approximately).
The plants have had maintained a healthly looking (to me) color, but they had been growing relatively slow (at least in my comparison to posts by masters such as Medical Marijuana), which I believe was the result of two mistakes. One, I was underwatering. I know, I know, nobody underwaters. Everyone on here had me scared to death with the overwatering, so I was basically giving them water in their dish ever 2-3 days. I would basically fill up the dish twice as long as the soil would soak the water up quickly. I also had, due to initial mid 90s heat, had the lights approximately 18" above the plants. The seemed to be healthy but not growing all that fast (though it was steady). Eventually I lowered the lights to approximately 8" from the plant tops and I watered them enough (from the top) to where a little bit of water was coming out of the bottom. I did this once every 4 days for the past couple of weeks. I had also trimmed off some of the lower fan leaves and growth...and I probably did that before I should have. I have since stopped doing any pruning for the moment. They began to grow much faster after this.
However, I then became worried that they were getting root bound but I was a little scared to transplant them. Today I did the transplanting, and while they may not have been completely root bound, they were quite a lot of roots around the edges and bottom of the pot. I believe I may have damaged some of the roots on one of the plants trying to get them out (and not having much experience), but I learned quickly and the rest went pretty smoothly. Today was the day they would have been watered, so the soil was pretty dry and came out easily. My initial soil mixture was primarily an organic potting mix that I purchased and seemed to do fine. During the transplant I mixed new soil which is 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/6 pete, and 1/6 potting soil (I was really going for 1/3 pete as is used with Square Foot Gardening, but didn't quite have enough so I improvised). The soil drains really well and seems quite nice.
I have yet to use any ferts, though I did pick up some fish ferts today (neptune harvest, 2-4-1), and will start using that in a week or so I guess (unless someone tells me better).
Anyway, enough of the jibber jabber, lets submit this, and then I'll read the post about uploading photos and upload photos of the room and the plants as they stand now. I appreciate any and all comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc
Budhisattva
Long time learner who finely grew some cojones and am going to start a journal. I haven't grown for over 15 years and at that time I was quite naive and not successful. This year, armed with all the data from this site, I'm trying again.
Setup:
Inside of what is essentially a very large garden shed attached to our house, I created a small stealth closet which is approximately 4' x 2.5' x 8'. The room itself is covered with pegboard as is the rest of the room, which makes it appear nicely like nothing is there...move the towel out of the way and there is a deadbolt installed with a key that I keep with me at all times.
I have not been able to find any local source for an HPS light and have not worked up the courage yet to order one online yet. I am trying to not break the golden rule of "loose lips sink ships" and so I don't really want to have something delivered to a friend just yet. Therefore, I am using CFLs for this first grow.
I have 16 CFLs most of which are 27watts and a couple are different. I can't, at this time, recall the details of those bulbs but I can figure that out later if there is curiosity. I put a Y receptacle inside of each standard clipon reflector and built a small light rack out of 2x4's and hung this via chains from the ceiling so it can be lowered and raised as necessary (thought it turns out to be heavier and more of a pain than I anticipated so in the future I'll be redesigning the lifting/lowering system.
On the ceiling of the closet I installed a bathroom exhaust fan that moves approximately 120 cfm. The room is about 96 cubic feet. There is a 4" duct attached to the lower portion of the wall which is used for pulling in fresh air.
On the floor I have created a small table from the legs and one shelf from a 5 shelf plastic shelving system. This gives me a little bit of room to store my paraphernalia locked up tight.
Current Status:
I started this grow from bagseed just under a month ago in Jiffy pellets and amazingly all germinated just fine. Unfortunately I did not know that cannabis has difficulty punching through the wrap at the time, though this doesn't seem to have really caused any issues here. I have 5 plants currently growing 18/6. The were originally in small pots about 6 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter. Today I transplanted them into much larger black pots (10" diameter, 12" tall approximately).
The plants have had maintained a healthly looking (to me) color, but they had been growing relatively slow (at least in my comparison to posts by masters such as Medical Marijuana), which I believe was the result of two mistakes. One, I was underwatering. I know, I know, nobody underwaters. Everyone on here had me scared to death with the overwatering, so I was basically giving them water in their dish ever 2-3 days. I would basically fill up the dish twice as long as the soil would soak the water up quickly. I also had, due to initial mid 90s heat, had the lights approximately 18" above the plants. The seemed to be healthy but not growing all that fast (though it was steady). Eventually I lowered the lights to approximately 8" from the plant tops and I watered them enough (from the top) to where a little bit of water was coming out of the bottom. I did this once every 4 days for the past couple of weeks. I had also trimmed off some of the lower fan leaves and growth...and I probably did that before I should have. I have since stopped doing any pruning for the moment. They began to grow much faster after this.
However, I then became worried that they were getting root bound but I was a little scared to transplant them. Today I did the transplanting, and while they may not have been completely root bound, they were quite a lot of roots around the edges and bottom of the pot. I believe I may have damaged some of the roots on one of the plants trying to get them out (and not having much experience), but I learned quickly and the rest went pretty smoothly. Today was the day they would have been watered, so the soil was pretty dry and came out easily. My initial soil mixture was primarily an organic potting mix that I purchased and seemed to do fine. During the transplant I mixed new soil which is 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/6 pete, and 1/6 potting soil (I was really going for 1/3 pete as is used with Square Foot Gardening, but didn't quite have enough so I improvised). The soil drains really well and seems quite nice.
I have yet to use any ferts, though I did pick up some fish ferts today (neptune harvest, 2-4-1), and will start using that in a week or so I guess (unless someone tells me better).
Anyway, enough of the jibber jabber, lets submit this, and then I'll read the post about uploading photos and upload photos of the room and the plants as they stand now. I appreciate any and all comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc
Budhisattva
. Things are going pretty well still. We are 7 days into 12/12. Everyone is 10-14" tall. Two look like they are males, but the others I think (maybe a little hope too) are turning into sexy hippie chicks. I was going to take pictures tonight, but when I got to the room I realized I had forgotten my memory card. Wonder why things like that happen..?. 
