Small White Widow & Blue Mystic Soil Grow In The Attic

[bobinca]

This is a perpetual grow. I have 3 plants in the 4th week of flower right now. They were the experiment for the setup, they had a rough time and saw wild temperature changes, sometimes as low as the 30's F. There were weeks where they didn't grow at all. I'm surprised they all lived. Now I'm starting a grow journal for the next set of plants. I planted two seeds and am trying my luck with 4 clones. I would like to have 2-3 plants in this grow. The trick to this grow is that I will be gone for 3 weeks near the end of July. So unless I start flowering super early, they will be in the middle of flowering while I am gone. I haven't implemented automatic watering yet, but I plan to before that trip.

This grow is in the attic in California, as such I will expect to see temperature in the 120s in the attic at some point. The tents are not insulated so I'm not sure how well this will work out. Because this is in the attic, I also only have a single 15 amp circuit to work with. My goal to make sure I am never using more than 1200 watts at any given time.

The tents are all connected via ducts to maintain a closed system (as much as possible considering the tents aren't exactly air tight). A single fan is run 24/7 to circulate the air around all 4 tents. The veg and flower tents each have their own carbon filters and since these tents have their air sucked out, they maintain a nice negative pressure to aid in odor control.

Setup:

20x20x48 inch TopLite (600D) tent for veg
20x36x60 inch Virtual Sun (600D) tent for flower
16x16x48 inch Hydro Crunch (300D) tent for drying
20x20x48 inch TopLite (600D) tent for air mixing

Lights:

1x hlg 100 v2 LED 4000k for veg (95 real wall watts)
2x hlg 100 v2 LED 3000k for flower (95 real wall watts each)

Soil:

Fox Farms Ocean Forest, will add 33% perlite
Nutrients as needed during flower: General Organics GO Box

Full climate control with

humidifier: Air Innovations MH-408

dehumidifier:
currently - InvisiPure Hydrowave Dehumidifier (100 Watt)
future - EcoSeb DD122EA-SIMPLE Desiccant Dehumidifier, 15-Pint (330 Watts on low setting)

heater:
normally - Cozy Legs CL-2 (200 Watts)
emergency, if Cozy Legs can't maintain temp - Brightown 400-Watt Portable-Mini Heater Personal Ceramic Space Heater

A/C: Frigidaire FFRA0511R1 5,000 BTU (400 Watts)

controller: multiple arduinos

fan: ac infinity cloudline s6 (40 Watts)

CO2: exhale CO2 bags

For more setup pictures, see my other thread: Arduino Climate Control

 

[bobinca]

The seeds were planted on Friday. By Monday they already sprouted, so I'm going to assume they sprouted on Sunday. So that would make today, day 2.

This is in peat, for the initial soaking I added some nutrients, after than I've just been keeping it wet with a spray bottle.

The left one is white widow and the right one is blue mystic.

And just because I love graphs, here is the graph for the flower tent for the last 2 days, it shares the same air so it should be close. I plan to get things set up soon so that I can graph the veg tent too. The big green spikes for temp/humid happen when the a/c turns on.

 

[bobinca]

Day 7

The seeds are doing well, the clones don't look so good. 1 seems dead, the other 3 still have green in the leaves, but they have fallen over. I think I need to revisit some how to's for cloning

 

[bobinca]

They had a rough night. I was messing around with a firewall on my network last night and it knocked the arduino's offline around midnight when their DHCP expired. This prevented my relay arudino from talking to my arduino's with the sensors, so it never turned on the heater. It got down to 55 F in the tent.

Looks like they handled it ok

 

[bobinca]

I thought for sure one of the clones was already dead (upper right in picture), but now they are all standing back up a little. I guess this plant is more resilient than I gave it credit for.

 

[bobinca]

Day 14. I didn't see much growth in the seedlings. Maybe they were working on the roots. In the time lapse (see below), today saw a lot more growth than any other day this week. Overall the seedlings seem a bit yellow. I'm not sure if I'm over watering or if they don't have enough nutes. I've never started a seed in peat before so I guess this will be a learning experience. I water them every other day. And as for nutes, I've only given a light amount once in the last week.

White Widow

Blue Mystic

The whole group

Blue Mystic time lapse Day 9 to Day 14

 

[bobinca]

Day 20

I transplanted them today. Perhaps it was too soon, when I pulled them out I don't think there was enough roots to hold it all together and the root ball just crumpled.

I'm using Fox Farm Ocean Forest mixed with 1/3 perlite. From left to right, Blue Mystic, White Widow and Pinapple Chunk. I believe these are 1 gallon pots. There is no more room in this tent so these pots will have to do until the flower room in ready in about 5-6 weeks. After than I will move up to 3 gallon fabric pots.

 

[bobinca]

Some high res close ups. Blue Mystic and White Widow were from seeds, Pineapple Chunk is a clone.

 

[bobinca]

Day 28, things are going well, definitely had a lot of growth this last week. I haven't watered them in 7 days since I transplanted them. I guess I gave them too much water at that time because the pots are not very light yet.

The pineapple chunk is showing a lot of new growth. But the leaves are pretty weird looking, maybe it is because it is a clone. I don't know. I don't have any experience cloning.

 

[bobinca]

11 days since I transplanted them and I still haven't given them more water yet. Based on the sensor readings they are getting close. This is my 2nd grow with this arrangement, the first grow I watered them every 2 days until realized how wrong that was. No wonder I had so many problems with that grow.

 

[bobinca]

Day 35, where does the time go?

I watered them today, first time in 14 days. I think I gave them 1/2 the water I did last time, maybe 32 oz per plant. Hopefully it will dry out faster. The 2 seeds are growing quite well. The clone still looks funky.

 

[bobinca]

Day 42. The Pineapple Chunk clone is finally growing leaves that look good. I went 7 days without watering this time instead of 14. Probably should have only gone 6. You can see that some leaves started to go limp. I also see some bleached spots on a few leaves which could be burn spots from the light because water splashed on the leaves. Just a guess.

 

[bobinca]

Day 49. Not much going on. One of the plants needed water before the other two this last week so now they are all on different schedules. Maybe it is because its closest to the fan? I suspect the plants need bigger pots now, but my flower tent is not ready. Hopefully they can stay in these small pots for another week or two.

 

[bobinca]

Day 63. I decided to stop this grow. I was overly optimistic to think I could handle 120 degrees in the attic while growing, plus I just don't have time to get it ready to automatic watering before I go on vacation in a few weeks. It was sad to pull the plug on them, they were doing pretty well. Hopefully I will start up again in October or November. From what I learned this year I will focus on running just 2 tents, one for climate control and another 3x3 for growing. Next time I will also plant just one strain, 3 strains at once was a little difficult when it came to harvesting at different times. I would prefer to dry them all at the same time in the grow tent.

 

[Amadeus Forzin]

Hope all is well in your world.

Thanks for sharing this grow with us, we look forward to your return.

I’m moving this to Completed Journals now.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.