1st True Indoor Grow After 35 Years Of Cultivation

[cryodude]

OK folks, haven't been on or posted in ages, but here is an attempt at bringing my 1st indoor grow by myself into public view. I am always interested in feedback and have lots to learn about indoor grow spaces since i was predominantly an out door grower. I did try this with some help a few years ago but i was long distance from the garden and discovered that i wasted a lot of time/money assuming other parties would be responsible and do their jobs. So i just did my outdoor thing legally the past 3 years in California and finally got myself legal for my own grows in my home state of Nevada. So i will have tons of picts showing the space going together and my plants, and the soil etc.. so first things first if i remember the routine here.

Plants:
Clones of Sensi Star and Bubba Kush (2 and 1) all you are allowed to flower for now in Nevada, 3 mature babies at a time.

Medium:

7 gal containers with my own version of a super soil.

Full Circle organic compost (50% worm castings) 50% of the soil mix in the 7 gal pots
50/50 mix of FFOF and light warrior (the other 50% of the soil mix.)
Organic amendments:
Blood meal
cottonseed meal
alfalfa meal
bone meal (fish steamed and regular bone meal)
rock phosphate
Humic acid
mychorrizea
Espoma bacterial/fungal colonies
Azomite
Glacial rock dust
N2 and P bat guanos
Epsom salt
Fine Dolomitic lime

all these items were used at about 1/2 rate of a conventional super soil so my 7 gal containers are almost full with this mix, 2 inches from top, ( watered 3 times over a week with 2 gals water each time to compact the soil some before use and the mix sank another inch or more), and i then extended the top of the containers another 3 inches with some FRP i cut and made rings to allow more softer soil (just a mix of the FFOF/light warrior and the full circle compost for the top 5-6 inches to transplant into. The complete mix was aged for 60 days before use, lots of time to breakdown goodies.

The actual room is 9' 4' tall and i constructed two walls to seal off an insulated area in my garage and made a 6' by 10' space for cloning/starters, a small (too small veg area) and then the flowering chamber. The flower chamber is 92" long by 40" wide with a raised floor off the ground of the garage by 14". I thought that wasting space for the containers in the light area was a bad idea so i cut 3 holes in the floor so my plants actually start out of their pots 2 inches below the floor surface. that space under the floor gets a fan blowing under it at night time to help move moisture around and push it so it doesn't stay stagnant since no air flow there during the day really.

I set up an efficient heat pump/ac wall unit to control temps in the whole space running on 220v and when i did the electrical, i ran 220 for the lights as well and a new 115v 20 amp circuit for smaller lights, pumps, fans, the dehumidifier, etc.. I know, i have an ac/heating unit that pulls moisture out, but the rooms design doesn't give way to super free air flow escaping the flower room so the additional moisture removal was needed at flowering time to keep things at 35-50% humidity at crunch time.

I run one fan close to the ac unit that pushed air into the top of the flower chamber and then down a bit and two small fans that push some hot air out on the other side. I run 1 oscillatingfan from the top that moves are from above down towards the plants and 1 more oscillating fan that moves air around at floor lever. I keep the co2 well stirred up this way all the time in daylight at least, even though all these fans run 24/7 for circulation.

I installed a 20 lb co2 system with flowmeter and timer for co2 injection into the space, Since it's an enclosed recirculating air system, i've discovered that i needed 15 minutes one hour, 30 minutes the next hour to maintain 900-1600 ppm in lights on. So i go through a 20 lb cylinder in about 2 weeks. not bad for 7.50 a cylinder ( that 15 a month is sure worth it.)

My lights are from a sponsor here, Advanced LED and i had 4 from 3 years ago on the aborted indoor california grows and i purchased 2 more for flowering and 1 for my little veg chamber. So i have 6 DS 200's covering a 25' grow space, roughly 3.5' wide by 7.5' long, hoping that about 50 watts a sq foot would be adequate. The veg chamber which is only 24" by 30" has a DS 100 and my little clone/starter space has a couple of short t5's that supply about 140 watts of blue for beginners.

Now i need to go back and figure out how to upload about 3 months of picts to show what has transpired.

 

[cryodude]

ok here are the 1st shots of my adventure.. nothing exciting just shots of the room going together.

 

[Richard Richardson]

Hi Cryodude

Nice pics. Your soil sounds great.

 

[killuminati99]

Kewl dude wish you good luck

 

[cryodude]

those above picts of the grow space coming together were shot from nov 3rd thru nov 20th. Since that point i have added the carbon filter set up and the dehumidifier and the co2 system. I'm sorting through grow picts now to create a time line up to today. I think you will enjoy them.. i certainly am having fun with them for sure!!

 

[bigjack]

quality construction there

 

[cryodude]

Hi Cryodude

Nice pics. Your soil sounds great.

Thank Ricorico, i forgot what fun it is to create and run a journal. My only downfalls to this point, not enough research on the CO2 effects, i.e., not enough nutes in the soil.. that and i had my water softener system run afoul of me as i only initially ph'ed the water i was using and discovered that i run through the salt way way faster in winter than i was told. 40 lb bag only lasts 3-4 weeks and i was told i'd get like 8-10 weeks before having to add more. so i really messed up the soil in the big containers with really alkaline water in the first 3 weeks.

 

[cryodude]

Kewl dude wish you good luck

thanks kill, its coming along.. had a few minor issues that i caught quickly but still took 10 days or so to get the correct rhythm back into my routine.

 

[cryodude]

quality construction there

thanks bigjack.. ya it was truly a labor of love and a lot of fun working and tweaking on it. still making lots of small changes, the little nuances inside are many....

 

[CO Finest]

Very nice home build. Hats off to you.

 

[cryodude]

ok so these picts coming up are from around thanksgiving.. I got the 3 clones that you will see in flower and the 3 i am vegg'ing on nov 26th. the ones in flower ( the bubba kush and the sense stars) were transplanted the first week of dec and i only had 2 of my 4 lights that first week in operation. i had to send two back to advanced for issues and they just warranty replaced them. So up until xmas eve, i only had 4 lights, day after xmas.. the other two went up to my full total of 6. ok enough bs, onto what everyone enjoys the most, green pictures!!! So here we go.. these are shots of the 3 clones that are in veg now, the vanilla and cataract kushes, taken with the bubba and sense's on dec 10th and the bubba and sense's in their new big pots first day on dec 3rd.


there is one additional shot of the bubba and senses 5 days before transplant sitting on a drain pan on top of one of the big 7 gal pots

oh man this is too much fun.. it must be illegal, NOT!!! haha!!

 

[cryodude]

Very nice home build. Hats off to you.

Thanks CO, ya it's comfy and i found out 1st hand how good it really was the first week they were in their big containers. It went sub zero here in reno from like dec 6th to dec 11th. My room was never below 60 degrees even with it being -6 to-10 degrees outside at night. only got up to low 20's even in the day at best. Even the main part of the garage stayed in the low 40's at night cause it's completely insulated including the roof and the roll up doors.. it was awesome.

 

[cryodude]

ok now lets move forward a little bit to the middle-end of Dec. I was amazed that CO2 could cause such insane growth. I'd planned to veg for like 6-8 weeks but from Dec 10 to Dec 28th the plants grew from about 6-8 inches high and maybe the same around to like 18-20 inches high and about 24-30 inches in diameter. And right at xmas i got a gift for me.. some method 7 glasses designed for LED lighting.. So pictures should be much nicer going forward cause i used the lens of the glasses as a filter over my iPhone camera so you can actually see things in normal light, well way better than these purple picts above. So this next set of pictures will be from dec 10th to Dec 22nd and i flipped em them at 3 weeks of veg on dec 28th. i am going about this a bit different than most people doing indoor. I'll explain about that after these shots and now more green photos!!!! and some might still be purpley but in a couple of days from these picts i got my coooooooooooool glasses for seeing in LED lighting..

the next stuff will be after i flipped the lights for a lil stretch action and some interesting issues i encountered due to my newbness with CO2... but for now everything is really pretty!!!

 

[onavelzy]

nice grow and nice space. the time put in at the beginning to make a good grow room will pay huge dividends at the end.

 

[cryodude]

So now we get to january 2014, and i had flipped my gals on dec 28th, from 15 1/2 hours to 13 1/2 for like 4 days.. then on Jan2 i went to 12 1/2 hours. At this juncture, i noticed a problem with the plants, actually it ended up being 2 things.. When i had hooked up the co2 and gone about getting it set to maintain 1000-1600ppm for lights on, i didn't pay enough attention to my soil nutes and also bad me, small containers, limited evaporation in my environment, i discovered that my water that i only bothered to check when i very first started the grow.. the ph had jumped to the mid 8's and i hit em all 2-3 times a week for almost a month and then i noticed some leaf issues. My soil ph had jumped into the low 8's cause of my water and i didn't plan out well my co2 use. My conditions in the garden are really nice. I maintain 74-78 degrees in lights on, with good circulation/air flow humidity was low mid fifties at first and co2 was good all day long staying in that 1000-1600 range. So i was burning my soil goodness like crazy from the enhanced photosynthesis. you can see from the pics that the plants exploded over a 3 week period with the co2. but combined with burning up the available food in the soil, my ph got whacked and it took me like 7-8 days of flushing each plant with 5.8-6.2 water daily and sucking it off the drain pans to get my soil back into the 6.8-7.0 range. and i was washing away goodness in the soil at the same time. So i started a regimen of using my now better ph'd water with my softener doing its thing and giving me 7.5-7.6 water that i now PH every day.. i have 3 5 gal buckets that i am now rotating with 4 gallons of water in each and making a tea with 1 qt of fresh worm castings, supplemented with pure organic tea (30 mils per gallon, plus 3 mils cal mag a gal and 5 mils thrive b1 a gal. i give this 24 hours or a little more aeration and am feeding them ,5 qts every 3rd day. this seems to have stopped the low nutrient situation and they are thriving and the water is consistently coming in at about 6.8 before feed. So i hit it with some vinegar to get to 6.0-6.2 and then feed. after every 2 waterings with tea solution, i give them 6 qts of plain ph'd 6.0 water and vacuum them outta the drains as well. so buff bad stuff.... more photos!!! woot!!! and my method 7 glasses are so awesome and they really help with filtering the light for taking pictures too.these photos were taken jan 7th and jan 10th and there is one shot in here of my clones for the next round, a vanilla kush and 2 cataract kushes.

You'll notice on some of the close up shots some yellowing that was a combo of my ph getting to high and blowing the nutrients out of my big tubs to a point. I am hoping that the organics are getting back in rhythm again. you'll see as we get to the nice lil bud shots in the next phase. i called jan 10th 1st day of budding so as of this writing i am 3 weeks to the day into true flowering

next round will be 2nd 1/2 of january and some nice little sugar shots.. and the nute issue seems to have stabilized as well as my ph problem......

 

[cryodude]

nice grow and nice space. the time put in at the beginning to make a good grow room will pay huge dividends at the end.

thanks and welcome to my journal more stuff coming.. still catching up with pics and explanations of what is going on now.

 

[cryodude]

ok some questions for the audience on a couple of things. will my tea solution i am using cause problems that i think are now corrected in my soil. The pure blend tea i use is botanicare, along with the thrive b1 solution and the cal-mag that also has a small amount of nitrogen. My fresh worm casting, come from the full circle compost place that is about 35 miles away. I just know that i have been doing that now for like 3 weeks, since that first day of flowering and the N2 that gets added from the bottles is low, i imagine that i am getting more from the worm castings.

Also I have done a ton of reading on using CO2 and comments and info are all over the place so i think its one of those things that as you do it and track what is happening you will get a better feel going forward, but now that i am into flowering pretty good, i wonder if i should shut it down completely or use just enough to maintain 5-600 ppm during the light time?? or keep it where it is now which is lower than it was the 1st 3 weeks of 1000-1600. i am running now at about 550-900. I have read so much conflicting information that i just don't want to end up messing what is turning into a real nice 1st indoor grow. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[cryodude]

ok finally we get to the flowering shots from the past couple of weeks. Things are developing nicely and with the relatively cool temps that i keep my room at, the sugar forming on the buds and leaves is amazing so early, at least to me. Not being familiar with indoor it's all new for me still.

Picts coming up are from jan 25th a few close ups and a couple of multi cola shots. sounds odd saying that cause they have only been in flower for 2 weeks at this point.

But they are coming along pretty good, that was why i mentioned that my ph/nute issue i had seems to have repaired itself now, still things are a little pale but growth and flowering seem to be powering on.

i think there are 14 shots there..so this was 1st day of the 3rd week in flower, 15 days since jan 10th.

 

[cryodude]

Finally up to date. Now that i went through all this for about 6 hours it seems, i can just do this for 15-20 minutes a week and stay caught up for anyone observing the grow.

And a reminder, if anyone has thoughts on the tea i am using , water ph'ing and the use or lack of my co2 now at this point, please feel free to chime in!!

So here are a few shots of the buds at day 22, start of week 4. These are the bubba kush shots.

Now the sense shots from 2-1-14 are here..and it's time for sleep.. cya all in a couple days, maybe sooner..

 

[COorganics]

Wow, great set up! Impressive plants as well.
Subbed.