1st True Indoor Grow After 35 Years Of Cultivation

[onavelzy]

hey cryo, your girls all look great. I've got a couple of questions about them and about the room you built if you have the time.

it may just be the angles of the photos but it looks like the sensi stars are growing longer colas overall than the bubba kush. is that correct or are they fairly similar? some of the seed banks write ups describe SS as a fairly heavy producer while the posted expected yield for bubba and a lot of other kushes seems to be on the mid to lower end. curious if that is how it is playing out for you.

i went back and read about your room build. why did you put in the raised floor for the flower area? i haven't done a grow so i am completely ignorant of what helps and what doesn't but i can't figure out what advantage it gives.

how far above the canopies do you have your LED's? did you hang them up high and let the plants grow toward them or have you adjusted the height of the lights as the plants have grown to keep them a set distance from the plant tops?

 

[pucker huddle]

I think my daughter and son-inlaw live close to you. Crap I cannot remember the name of the town but it's about 20 miles south of c.c. My son-inlaw had cancer so I wonder if he could get a Nevada medical card. Btw nice plants!

 

[tokersmokeg]

For what its worth i am on a well and have hard water.I do not know the specifics of aything about the content of anything in it.LOL so u could take it with a grain of salt.Either way the water comes out in the 6.0 range after adding nutes goes as low as 5.5I use worm castings perlite lime and fox farm ocean forest.I do not ph the water at all and dont have any issues.ive been growing with the same water and soil mix for 3 years without issue.im no expert its working for me so im by means preaching to you.Great construction and approach i will follow along to learn a few things.

 

[cryodude]

hey cryo, your girls all look great. I've got a couple of questions about them and about the room you built if you have the time.

Hey onavelzy, thanks for stopping and good questions. some i can answer the rest are 1/2 way guesses cause i won't know till the grow is done with these strains.
it may just be the angles of the photos but it looks like the sensi stars are growing longer colas overall than the bubba kush. is that correct or are they fairly similar? some of the seed banks write ups describe SS as a fairly heavy producer while the posted expected yield for bubba and a lot of other kushes seems to be on the mid to lower end. curious if that is how it is playing out for you.

i went back and read about your room build. why did you put in the raised floor for the flower area? i haven't done a grow so i am completely ignorant of what helps and what doesn't but i can't figure out what advantage it gives.

how far above the canopies do you have your LED's? did you hang them up high and let the plants grow toward them or have you adjusted the height of the lights as the plants have grown to keep them a set distance from the plant tops?

To answer your questions, i've no clue on the yield for the plants.. these were clones from a collective in nor-cal. I haven't grown them before. I would say that the sensi's stretched a little more and they stacked a little tighter, but on close examination at this point, the individual small buds making up the colas seem a little larger on the bubba, but the sensi's are longer and both are filling in very well. in 6-7 weeks we will know.. and my next grow are 3 different clones from the same place, 2 cataract kush and a vanilla kush. as for the raised floor, i had a ton of space since my garage has 9' 4" ceilings and i've seen a lot of indoor grows and to me it seemed like a lot of wasted space having 12-14"'s of container sticking up under the lights and then typically you lose several inches from the base of the plant up to real substantial growth so i decided to have my plants start at or actually just below the floor surface. in the beginning, i think it really helps with light reflected back up off the floor, but either way.. i can grow taller plants, not this grow heh, they are like 26-27" max right now. I knew i was going to do CO2 also and with my fans on that floor blowing air around under the plants i think it helps to keep the co2 in the canopy a little better.,. i've nothing to compare that with but it can't hurt.. These LED's while really good, aren't as intense as some newer ones using 5w chips and even 10w (sparingly in some were designs). with my cheesy light meter, at 42" pretty directly under the lights i still get a reading of 2k+., don't know if that is good/bad but they have grown really well. When they were smaller, first couple of weeks, i kept the light at 18-20" above, but when they got bigger and i set the pvc frames in and started moving branches through the screen, i raised it to 22-24". i get better core coverage there and it fills the whole space pretty well. Advanced recommends not less than 18" for possible bleaching of the top growth and they recommend 22-24" and that seems to be working really well. Hope that gives a little insight to the floor design.

 

[cryodude]

I think my daughter and son-inlaw live close to you. Crap I cannot remember the name of the town but it's about 20 miles south of c.c. My son-inlaw had cancer so I wonder if he could get a Nevada medical card. Btw nice plants!

Howdy Pucker, ya they are close, i'm in the reno area, sounds like they are in Minden/Gardnerville.. thats 15-20 miles south of north CC. I get my worm castings down that way from full circle compost.. And if he has a doctor who isn't scared of MMJ, absolutely he can get a card. I did. i have prostate cancer, made my own oil, ate the crap outta it heh, and POOF.... by cancer. its been 9 months now.. i go in for a check up in a couple of weeks.. my PSA is still off but i'd rather have that still than the rest of it. all good.. Thanks for stopping, contact me if you need more info. glad to assist if i can. oh and thanks.. ya its my first indoor rodeo but fun.. way different from outside for sure..

 

[cryodude]

i had issues right off the bat, cause i checked my water and it ph'd at 7.5 7.6 so i thought i was good.. turns out my room is so cool, water evaporates really slowly in those stupid plastic pots. and i ended up soaking em good for 3 weeks and it stayed pretty damp and i had some issues that appeared nutrient related but shouldn't have been with the amount of soil they had to live in. it seems my ph went up cause my water is now in the low to mid 8's and i was making my soil alkaline.. i got a good meter, checked stuff and started some lower ph water flushing on the soil daily for a bout a week. my initial run off was running around 8.2 8.3.. by the end of the week and since then i have checked, its been 6.8-7. it has slowly been going down and everything is good.. for now. should be fine.. i pay attention now heh.. never had those issues in 35-50 gal containers outside or in the ground. it all leaches away, not so easy in a little pot with slow drying.

 

[onavelzy]

hey cryo,

thx for the reply. looking forward to the outcome. if you were to go back and rethink your room now, would you change anything, such as make it wider to allow bigger plants since you're limited to three plants? please don't misinterpret this or my prior question as" why didn't you do this instead" kind of criticisms. i'm looking at setting up a grow spot and any questions i can have answered by people who have made choices and done grows and had the chance to rethink it are invaluable to me. Thanks for your advice and your great pics

 

[pucker huddle]

That's it, Gardnerville! My tapwater is 7.9-8.0. If I water my pots enough to get runoff it comes out of the soil at 6.5 Dunno if that means anything or not.

 

[COorganics]

Cryodude I just was at Barnes and noble and picked up a new book. Teaming with nutrients. Another to read if your bored, lol. Gets pretty heavy but easy enuf to grasp so far. (Read the first chapter sitting in the car).

 

[cryodude]

howdy onavelzy, actually in Nevada, 3 flowering is max..for now.. supposedly some changes are coming but 3 flowering 4 in veg is the limit atm. I'd have done a lot different but i was lucky to get the compromise i did with my wife to take 6x10' area in our garage.. it's pretty big and just full of crap.. I really do like the raised floor though.. my area for the 3 is big enough for now.. next grow, i may make some new frames, 30x30 instead of the 24x 30's i did.. i'll definitely veg a bit longer and hopefully have another 12-16" of top growth and maybe push them a bit more to the front. I am going to take the two small fans i use to push air out and install something permanent that will pull more air out, probably do the same over by the ac unit where i have an 8" oscillating fan that sucks some of the cold air in and blows it around. the air flow through my flower area doesn't pull as much humidity out as i'd like, that's why for now i bought the stand alone dehumidifier so i can keep it at 40-45%; where my ac unit is, it does a good job but doesn't pull as much water from the air because of the oddball design of the room. the flower room including the wall thickness is 4'x8' so that leaves me 2' in the front and 2' on the side where the main door and the ac is hung in the outside wall. i have a little veg chamber under that, 2'x3' and at the other end of the flower area a 2'x2' smaller veg/clone seed starter area. i'll probably build a tiny cabinet over that one for clones/seedlings and use the 2/2 to veg 1 plant and the 2x3 to veg 2. i have 2 cataract kushes and a vanilla kush stuffed in there now in 5 gal geopot cloth smart pots. more space would be nice.. and they are gonna be vegg'ing for like another 6 weeks.. but they will be such a cluster mess that i will probably take two weeks in the flower room to veg 2 more weeks and get em spread out before the flip. as for making the flower room wider, i'd probably make it a little narrower, i'm thinking done correctly with some practice and experience inside.. that you could get 8-10 oz per plant in 30" sq areas where the plants were say up to 48' tall. probably not in 5 gal pots but same size i have now or 10 gal ones for sure.. harvest sort of equates to root mass under ground.. 5 gals of dirt only gives so much root. otherwise, i'm pretty happy with it.it's too bad that the way i have more space is up, but that isn't practical unless i got really inventive and figured out a tier stacking system to to scrogs with low ceilings, and then i'd need to lower my floor. heh.. oh well.

 

[cryodude]

yuppers gardnerville , gateway to hwy 395 in california going south.. to mammoth and bishop. i dunno what happened for sure with the ph. i think a bit of the problem was lack of knowledge, experience with growing indoors.. the co2 so ramps up the growth in veg that i think i burned a lot of the food for the plants.. that coupled with the really high water ph that 1st month, bad me.. but all seems better now and i am doing organic tea ( and ph'ing it down with vinegar to 5.8-6.3 rest of the way at least 2 times a week for the next 3 weeks and then leave em be for the last 2-3 weeks. hopefully i'll do better next round although i am very happy with it so far.. i am going to do a big watering in two days and i will take a reading from the run off again then.. i'm hoping to see mid 6's in that initial drainage.. if so I'm back on track.

 

[cryodude]

I might take a few classes at the university to waste some time and money.. horticulture/botany etc.. just learn some really good basics cause i'm thinking serious about doing a couple of nice greenhouses for organic veggies... being retired for almost 3 years now and not quite 59, i need to find things to occupy my time and keep my wife off my butt... and she wouldn't complain about me spending time back in school

 

[onavelzy]

wow, thx for the reply cryo. man, i would kill to be able to go back to school. back then, it was what i did because that was what you did. now, it would be to learn what i want to know or need to know. there's so many things i'd love to pursue. enjoy it if you have the opportunity

 

[COorganics]

I might take a few classes at the university to waste some time and money.. horticulture/botany etc.. just learn some really good basics cause i'm thinking serious about doing a couple of nice greenhouses for organic veggies... being retired for almost 3 years now and not quite 59, i need to find things to occupy my time and keep my wife off my butt... and she wouldn't complain about me spending time back in school

How cool would that be! You would have a blast I'm sure. I got all kinds of new reading material today. Urban homesteading stuff (all though I live in the mountains), farmers almanacs, and (mentioned above) teaming with nutrients. The last one there I am most excited about. Not a MJ book, it's by the same guy who authored teaming with microbes. I think it is gonna help me get a grasp on the high brix path my brain is pulling me towards.

 

[cryodude]

ya i'm interested in that high bris as well.. took me hours to read Doc's journal/thread in that..

 

[bothteams]

Yeah bubba got short colas. Why noone grows it really. Skywalker is like that too from what I hear.

 

[cryodude]

Yeah bubba got short colas. Why noone grows it really. Skywalker is like that too from what I hear.

ear the colas aren't long but they are getting very fat and i still have a full 4 weeks to go, largest of the so far is pushing 2" across and getting very dense. But all my grows for the rest of the year are going to be experiments figuring out exactly what i want to grow full time, at least 2 of the plants. the 3rd one could be a mystery plant each grow. or maybe nevada will change the laws for plant counts and i can grow more.. that is in debate now on the state level.

 

[COorganics]

Yeah bubba got short colas. Why noone grows it really. Skywalker is like that too from what I hear.

No one grows bubba

 

[cryodude]

well i am... so i guess someone does..... and all over the place, the same strain could have multiple names and descriptions. i know over in nor cal where i get my clones, the collective i deal with does a lot of those clones. At least i will know how good it is once it's finished. and that is my main criteria. Quality is my biggest concern.. that is why i have two flavors for the next grow, cataract and vanilla kush and then Tahoe Gold and Tahoe Blue OG kush.. from the guy at lake tahoe that has developed these two strains for over 30 years.. sort of excited to see how those go.. i'm even getting a male of each and cross pollinating them on a bud each and a bud each of the same pollen so i will have many seeds for years to come..

 

[cryodude]

Nothing new going on, just watering and doing some selective pruning. I did some work on one of my small veg areas, adding a spot for clones, seedlings and even a couple small males for pollen to make some extra seed stock for myself. have a male of tahoe gold and tahoe blue og to cross pollinate with a couple of little females of the same strains. I'll probably pollinate them back across themselves too for more seeds. Maybe get a few new pictures up in the next day or two as well. other wise all well, no water issues.