OBXgardener - Bagweed - spring 2009

[obxgardener]

First Hydro Grow - have some in soil as backups - mix of soil, compost & peat moss.

Strain: Bagweed - green & good though, very few seeds in bag.

Hydro: DWC

Nutes: came with DWC from stealth hydro

time: 4 weeks into flowering, six weeks total.

timer: 12/12 - damn thing didn't turn off last night - found it at 8 still on, two hours past the girls bedtime. Hope it didn't hurt.

grow space size: 27" deep, 39" wide, 48" tall

six ladies in hydro (down from too many - at least I've killed all the jimmys)

three ladies in dirt just in case of catastrophic failure, which I understand is possible with Hydro

Lights: 2 70 watt HPS, 2 85 watt CFL (5500K & 2800K), 1 65 watt CFL(3800K i think, good for lower leaves)

Vent: Ionizer blowing into grow area

Pics: coming...

[obxgardener]

[obxgardener]

I have the water on a continuous flow - I'm sure it will burn out the pump early, but I had to remove a lot of roots when I made the mistake of growing more than one plant in each pod.

I hope it's not bad for the plants - they seem to get enough oxygen.

[obxgardener]

I wonder if anyone else uses the Home Depot 70w HPS - I converted mine with a couple of cheap aluminum work light reflectors. The only problem is they concentrate the light a bit too much on certain spots.

These are left over from my first sucessful grow ten years ago... fun starting again.

Not sure what I can add that you all don't already know, but thanks for being here.

[Smokeyjoe]

Hey that's pretty nifty! Thanks a lot for the response Obxgardener
I actually just walked in the door from purchasing the HydroHut 3x3 (40"x40"x78") and a Lumatek 600w HPS.
The hut had to be speacial ordered so probably be a week or so before I see that.
I do however have an extremely bright light here to stare into until it shows up.

Next step is putting together the vent system, need to pick up at least one blower and some ducting, hangers etc.
I am looking for someone else running this set up to see what they use successfully, my hydro store recommended a 6" "doughnut" fan for venting my light(xtrasun vent hood) and maybe a little 4" booster for intake.
What I don't seem to have fully understood is how to hook up my carbon scrubber to the system( making my own to save cash)
I am told you can not pull air through the scrubber or is it you can not push air through I am a little confused.
I had intentions of placing the scrubber outside the tent as I have seen many placed that way but the grow shop says it must be inside the tent, any experience with a set up like this?

Thanks again for the help!

[obxgardener]

No, I just use an ionizer to stop the smell... works pretty well.

[obxgardener]

Things I've learned:

Always go easy on the nutes... add a bit at a time... dissolve first and run through a strainer several times.

Never put more than one plant in a basket when hydro growing... too hard to kill the males without damaging female roots - think I might have made one female go hermy.

Kill the small plants too - too much chance of one developing into a male or hermy and not seeing it. This ruined my grow last summer.

CFLs work great, but they have to be almost touching the plants or they will stretch. They are perfect for hanging under the canopy to get light to lower buds, even in a HPS grow.

An ionizer blowing into the grow chamber works great to ventilate and control smell... trying to put on inside to blow out, not so good.

You can make a pretty good grow chamber out of cardboard, wood on top to hang lights, aluminum foil inside to reflect and block light, and lots of duct tape. Make sure to over lap the "doors" and make a light seal using duck tape with two pieces together like a "T" with the top of the T stuck to one door.

Light leaks are easy to fix, but you must look for them from the inside, not by seeing if you can see light from the outside.

Veg. stage will be over VERY quickly with hydro... two weeks and I had little bushes! I swear the roots grew an inch an hour.

[obxgardener]

Time to change the water... ugh.

[obxgardener]

Used the water change to get some pics:

This is the 29th day of budding.

"Reflecting" -



"The Ladies"








"All the girls waiting to get wet"

[obxgardener]

Day 50 from germination, Day 44 from seedling, Day 30 budding:

Roots look a little darker... maybe I should not have sprayed them with water.

Added second half of nutes to water.

Wondering if I need to clip some fan leaves to get light to the buds.

PH: 6.0

[obxgardener]

Temp is a steady 83, need to get a humidity meter. Thinking about adding two more CFLs, or maybe another low watt HPS... just figured out I can rewire the HPS to move the ballast out of the grow area, eliminating one heat source.

[obxgardener]

Here's a 20day pic from germ.

I germinated the plants to a couple of leaves in a seedling tray, then washed off the dirt and put them in rock wool, then in the Hydrotron clay. I pulled the circ. tubes all the way to top so I could make sure they were flowing.

Dont crowd plants like I did... just let them go three weeks veg, and whatever ladies are left will get plenty big with hydro.

I have to say I like the "Stealth Hydro" system... seems to be decent nutes and hardware for the price, although I think I might have been better off if I'd just gotten two lower spectrum lights... not much need for the veg. light.

[obxgardener]

Best way to grow Bag Seed seems to be germinate a lot of seeds in the little peat pot "greenhouses" you get at WalMart, then use the biggest in hydro and kill the rest. Makes up for the poor genetics since a few of the many seem to be good by chance.

[obxgardener]

Added a couple of small CFL's to hit some dark areas on the lower foilage... I wonder if it's better to have light on the fan leaves or right on the top of the buds...

[obxgardener]

Had to buy big CFLs at HD... $14.99 for 2700K temp 4200 Lumens... wonder how that compares to other lights. I hope it doesn't affect the temp... trying to stay under 85.