First Journal - Ghetto Closet Grow

[Lester Freeman]

Hi All, I'm sure you've all seen quite a bit of ghetto, household, DIY small little grows here on this website, if not other websites. So after reigning in the new year with last years first grow ever and harvest, I had the luxury of experiencing the growth of 6-8 foot tall plants during the summer. Now it is time to enjoy the flipside of that, as I would like to have something to keep my mind at peace during the winter time.

So the plan is to experimentally vegetate a couple of plants indoors with the set up that I'm about to show, and then when it gets warm enough again I will put them outside to finish. Even if I get males I will be happy because I'm interested in breeding. My seeds were acquired in a medical dispensary mid-grade shake/trim ounce. Although the exact genetics are unknown, I'm fairly certain that they are sativa.

Again, this is just something I threw together without having too much stress/money, although I did have to go buy 3 CFL lights and a dual socket adapter.

What strain is it? Unknown genetics
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? Sativa dominant (percentages unknown)
Is it in Veg or Flower stage? pre-veg
If in Veg... For how long? 24 hours
If in Flower stage... For how long? N/A
Indoor or outdoor? Indoor
Soil or Hydro? Soil
If soil... what is in your mix? Post-rain soil from the backyard
If soil... What size pot? Currently 1-2 gal apx.
Size of light? one 55 watt CFL (2700K, 3860 lumens) and two 23 watt CFL's (5500 K, and 1200 lumens)
Is it aircooled? Yes with a fan
Temp of Room/cab? apx 77-78 degrees F
RH of Room/cab? un-regulated
PH of media or res? unknown at this point
Any Pests ? Not quite
How often are you watering? After the first 1-3 inches are completely dry
Type and strength of ferts used? None yet


Note: the total amount of wattage being used by all three CFL's equates to 101 watts. The amount of light being emitted is equivalent to a 400 watt incandescent lamp.

Germinated two seeds using the paper towel method, at sign of tap root they were put into a 1/4 deep hole into 2 jiffy (biodegradable) pots. I saw the root coming out of the bottom of the little pot, even before the seedling broke through the soil.

One seed popped up on New Years Morning, so it was transplanted and placed under the light, at this point I was weary of using the 2700 K, but eventually I adjusted things for dual spectrum.
DAY 1:

So I just went ahead and transplanted both, and threw the pots under the light.

DAY 2: Seeds acquired cotyledon, growing first set of true leaves, and are pretty much successfully rooted. Added some foil to help contain the light.

I should note I am leaving the lights on 24/0.

DAY 3: Over the night, their first set of true leaves surface area increased noticeably. As well as the first signs and development of the second set of true leaves. Hopefully I minimized the amount of stretching, since I moved the lights as close as I possibly could without burning their tender tips. The quick sign of their second set of true leaves hopefully indicates that it's not going to stretch like crazy.

Any opinions anyone has, or if you just want to rag on my shitty set up, all is well!
We will see what happens, this is just an experiment.

 

[Grand Daddy Purp]

I am excited to see this grow. I think you will be adding lights soon. Keep em green. Check out my first indoor grow. I had Royal Haze sativa dominant strain under 150w HPS and it stretched a ton. It will give you an idea of what to expect. Subbed.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Thanks tac, good to see you here! Like I said, this is gonna be a neat ride, interested to see how they respond with (only) this much light.

 

[Lester Freeman]

DAY 4 Quick Update: Continued growth of true leaves overnight, and a bit of stem stretching. However, second set of true leaves clearly coming in like a little bow tie. I noticed the lights were drying the dirt out pretty quickly so I added some sphagnum peat moss, and also acquired ferts for when they reach a larger size.

But I did dilute 5 mL in a gallon of water and gave them a little taste of the good life. I'm not gonna be mad if this doesn't work, but at least their growing at a decent rate right now!

 

[FlyCultivator]

im liking this interesting little setup, i too am doin a ghetto closet grow with a berry bomb seed ive aquired. i may decide to make a journal soon to comapre with this but im subbed my friend

 

[Lester Freeman]

Hello mate. I will be interested to see all ghetto, little set-up because I also am looking for a comparison to their growth rates, etc!

Thanks for stopping by! Let me know if you make your journal, or I will see it in the Lounge!

 

[Lester Freeman]

DAY 6 small update: The plants are growing like weeds, no surprise there. One thing I did notice was that since the pots are different sizes, there is different evaporation rates for the water. Meaning, one needs to be watered twice as much. I will supplement this with some poly-acrylamide crystals, which absorb water, and when the surrounding environment is dry, they release the water back out. Hopefully this will minimize the amount of watering I need to do.

 

[gairbud]

you said bag seed , way cool. looks like a sativa dominant strain in the orange pot. the others look 50/50 but could just be pheno types. bag seed from trim[never know what ya get. from dispensory proboly good stuff]. you mention crossing and growing seed. hmmm any parameters you after. strain type traits ect or you just happy to cross and grow a frankenstien. yippee i love doing that. i love doing bag seed. it is so fun. right now i am on a mission to develope some special stuff and traits for some special stuff. you can see my grow if ya want . keep me posted as ghetto grows bring back lots of my past grow memories. lmfao. right on brother. go for it. you can flower thoose lil suckers and then rejuve them and clone for next summers grow. find a killer girl. if ya get a male keep the stinky one that shows flowers right away shoots up fast and slows at about 1 month. thoose are awsome traits in males. i can definatly help you pick your best male. i have a few questions.
do you want tall ,medium or short plants.
do ya want big buds or good size ones.
do you want study stems and lots of nodes .
theese are important as the males have more determination of the f1 hybred then the females do.
i have done tons of pot over the years[tons] and have crossed my best males with my average females and got better stuff then my average males with my best females and i am talking about 100s of plants and thousands of seed.
so pick the smelly one 2 to 3 hrs before lights come on. to pick good traits mj needs a regular light cycle. 13 on max. or like i do when crossing 12 on 5 off 1 on and 6 off[thats a 1 day cycle]. keeps them in veg for less money and they show traits much easyer to see early on. and they dont strech like when starting flowering. the males will flower on their own almost like autos do. they will pump flowers if kept in veg. they 'jerk themselfs off bro' lol . just an fyi , the alpha males show early. they are 95% of the time the stony ones. and they even sometimes show tricomes in the first 3 nodes on the leaf[a couple crystalls here and there.[and stink before females do]. that can go away as they get older. but males can be very killer stuff. they put out hormones early to cull and slow other males and makes the females horny. true shit man. i keep 1 alive almost every grow in a super closet and filtered for pollen. i keep them in seperate room till the females are starting to fill out [last 1/3 of flowering. then roll the lab into the space. the females really react to a males hormones. they get explosive growth. in every area.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Yeah my first season of growing began in 2012 in April. Everything I've grown is from bagseed, however all outdoors. This is just my little indoor experiment. First I found two seeds in some dank ass OG Kush ( the pheno was fire or diablo, but I forget). With those two seeds, both became female with after 3 months veg ( thank god), luckily they were probably naturally feminized.

Those were my first two plants, yielded about 2 ounces of stinky dank OG from each plant. However my only issue with outdoors is corn boring worms, they destroyed a good amount of my crop. I'm resistant to spray anything on my buds, especially since my distance to the ocean (very humid). So I'm going with a natural insecticide ( SNS-209) which is mainly rosemeric acid. Supposed to make the plants smell like rosemary to ward off insects, and hopefully any moth that wants to lay eggs.

So while the ounce of shake was holding me over until the harvest I found about 20-30 mature, viable seeds from the dispensary shake. Little did I know they are a bunch of different strains! I really hit the jackpot. I planted 6 in July, 50% were male, the males were really nice but I decided to throw them out, maybe a bad choice. Anyway, after about 30 days they began to sex ( was late in the season), and so I had 3 different flowering plants, all of different genetics.

Ended up getting a bit less than 2 ounces per plant, not bad for planting in July and harvesting in October! One was earthy , one I think is GDP and is really fruity, and one is very lemony. We'll see other genetics are in store.

Here is a link to a previous thread I made and you can see what I'm talkin about Glorious (completed) First Medical Outdoor Grow

I'm very proud of them. Hopefully next season will be even better! Its those damn worms that are really busting my nuts!

 

[OneWheelDrive]

Looking good my man! The "Ghetto Grow" is the way to go. The ingenuity used in cobbling together these little projects is the same ingenuity used to by moonshiners during the prohibition on their products. Their rebellious and DIY blood flows all throughout this community. Grow with pride!

Sub'd.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Indeed, Welcome to
Glad to have you aboard mate!

 

[Lester Freeman]

Quick little day 8 update, last one for 6 days until the 14th ( At the two week marker )

Note: Plant in the black pot seems to be healthier than the one in the tanned pot.

Note #2: Plant in the tanned pot seems to have a slight "wrinkle" to its leaves.

I'm a bit worried because the seedlings were started in some generic DIRT from the backyard that the hibiscus plants are thriving very well in, and have lush green leaves and no deficiencies. So hopefully it doesn't go downhill while I'm gone. When they get big enough to transplant ( which will be quite a while ), then I'll put them in some uber soil.

I've read around, and I don't think I've seen anyone try to veg 2 plants under only 101 watts of CFL? Seems like I'm way below the bare minimum! However I keep the lights pretty close to the plants themsevles, and I feel as though they are growing quite well for the moment. I will adjust the light footprint as the plants increase in diameter. The grow space is like a 2x4x6(feet) space.

Hoping to get away with as nice growth as I can with as little effort and money, I find it hard to go out and spend a bunch of money, and invest a bunch of time for such a small cause, when outdoors in the spring/summer the Sun and free air will do all the work for me!

P.S. Maybe one day if I hit the lotto I can build something great!

 

[Lester Freeman]

Hi Again, time for the two week update. They grew quite a bit when I was gone, and they may have enjoyed a bit of a dry spell, just the way they like it. I gave them their first topping, as well as fed them their first moderate dose of the Liquinox "GROW". Some of the leaves don't seem to be standing as tall as I'd want, but we'll see what happens. Waiting for a little more growth before I start tying down branches.

Here is what I opened the closet door to find, A lot could have happened in 6 days!

I was worried they might have stretched for the light, or that the tender leaf tips would be dried out, but that was not the case.
They're growing pretty well and according to their surroundings.

I'm planning on setting up a vessel to have yeast perform alcohol fermentation for me, I will channel the CO2 through a tube as I have seen other DIY growers do.
Here's a kilo of activated yeast

Also, I decided to pick up some things to make the grow better, I will be setting them up in the near future.

 

[OG1969]

Very nice start there will be checking in on this one.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Thanks!

 

[JamaicaHerbs]

Lookin good mate, MY WORD!?!?!?!?!ur plants are huge at 2 weeks from seedlings ^^. ill be checking in for this grow as i love CFL grows

 

[Lester Freeman]

Haha thank you Sir ! Glad to have you here MoN!!

 

[Grand Daddy Purp]

Awesome looking grow! Nice upgrades.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Awesome looking grow! Nice upgrades.

Thanks TG, same to you mate!! We both share rapid growth in the vegetative state, I hope mine are as big as yours on day 19!!
We can also share this virtual joint!

 

[Grand Daddy Purp]

Firing a bowl here in a minute.