2'x4'x5' Tent, AeroGarden, 2x300W COB, 2 GrowPots, GH Nutes, Monster Crop

[DutchDude]

Hey fellow growers!

Back from an extended absence . I have started this post because I got some seriously awesome help from forum members before, and it is really cool to read your old posts again, and keep a log of what, and how I did. I moved houses twice since growing the last times, and now that I am finally settled, I am ready for this journey again. The basic plan is to use a spare bedroom's walk-in closet (nice ability to secure with a lock) on the second floor, and cut a hole in the ceiling to the attic the for ventilation.

While my last couple of grows were more DIY, and more about doing the most with a little, this time I want to just K.I.S.S. No elaborate setups, tds meters, no untested methods, and hopefully - no fuss. I have sold/lost/broken most of my equipment from the last couple of grows in the old houses, and this means "Amazon, here I come". The simplicity of General Hyponics nutients is hard to beat, worked well the last few times, so I am sticking with that. Still going to play around with topping, super cropping, scrog, monster cropping, etc. just because that is fun and relaxing to me .

Shopping list:
- Jock Horror seeds (just because we liked it the best from the last couple of grows)
- Grow Tent, H600D, with metal corners, 2'x4'x5' (fits nicely into the space)
- 2 of Pamelina Autopot 1 Pot Module System
- 20g Black trash can for the automatic watering system
- 6" Air Carbon Filter
- 6" Inline Duct Fan
- 3 x 300W LED lights with IR and UV (Will check for 130W of actual power like the Mars, too bad there are no 5W IR of UV chips yet?)
- General Hydroponics Flora Series Performance Pack
- General Hydroponics pH Control Kit
- Watt meter
- Gardening Hand Pruner Pruning Shear

Approximate schedule:
- 3/24 Started 24h soak of the seeds into water with a couple of drops of bleach
- 3/25 Planted seeds horizontally into hydrated Jiffy pellet (Peat), covered
- 4/1 Transplant into 20oz cups, with Cocogro coir (55%), Perlite (45%), a hole 1.5" from the bottom, and 19/5 light.
- 4/16 Transplant into 4g Autopots, with same formula
- 5/27 Eight weeks of veg, time to flip to flower (12/12 light)
- 7/1 Take some cuttings for monster cropping, put them into the 20oz cups with some root grow
- 7/26 Flush pots, defoliate large fan leaves, leave lights off for the last 3 days
- 7/29 Nine weeks of flower (according to my last grow) - time to cut
- 7/29 Rough clean the buds, leave drying on stems, hanging upside down in grow tent.
- 8/5 Plant the best two monster cropped cuttings.
- 8/5 Finally clean of dried flower and transfer into glass pots for curing - Have a vape, rise and repeat.

I will edit the above timeline if I need to. Please let me know if I am forgetting anything.

Lots of pictures to follow, once there is something interesting to see.

Welcome on board!

Dutch

 

[AKgramma]

I like the Jock Horror's, too. Am growing autos, which are in late flower now. The buds dry small, but potent. A favorite with the smokers in the family.

 

[DutchDude]

Nice grow you got there AKgramma. Mine always had some very large buds (see my "First Grow"). Perhaps it could be the topping/scrog/super cropping?

 

[DutchDude]

Ok - now I am adding "super lazy" to the mix:


Why? Because I can I love the wifi tech, seems like a decent cloner/seed starter. And, for $350 - selling Harvest $110 - selling Sprout $90 = $150 and that is half the sales price!

Just having some fun

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• DutchDude
• Mar 30, 2018

 

[AKgramma]

Nice grow you got there AKgramma. Mine always had some very large buds (see my "First Grow"). Perhaps it could be the topping/scrog/super cropping?

Nope. No supercropping. No topping after the first two levels at 4 nodes from seed, then again at 4 nodes on both branches. And all that occurs within the first month or two. Might be the size of bin (3 gallons) or only feeding on Sundays.

 

[MRXC]

subbed

 

[DutchDude]

Well - never mind on the 3 eBay lights mentioned before. I knew it was too good to be true! They measure 38.8W, so they are on their way back to the scammer, with a scathing review to follow

So, just ordered 2 very well reviewed GalaxyHydro 300W, which measure 136W according to several sources. I specifically didn't want the Mars 300W lights, or any 5W chipped lights due to the lack of UV or IR.

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• DutchDude
• Apr 3, 2018

 

[MRXC]

yes they sell a lot of useless crap online

 

[loomis420]

In for the updates. Thanks for the heads up on Mars

 

[DutchDude]

Update with some pics. Things are going a bit slower than I expected, but I guess that is alright, I am not in a hurry.

Started out two seeds in Jiffy pods like stated before. One popped, the other has not yet. When the Aerogarden arrived yesterday, I carefully washed off the Jiffy pod from the root of the sprouted seed, cut the Aerogarden plug lengthwise, placed it inside, and put it in the machine. Seems to have had no negative effect in the last 24 hours. The other seed I place in a plug to the left of the seedling, and put another fresh seed to the right of it. Lets see if either one still pops, otherwise we will go on with just one.

My wife wanted so try some of the herbs that came with the unit, so those are the ones with the colored labels.

Hopefully this system will work out alright since I am frequently out of town, and can have little hands on during those trips.

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• DutchDude
• Apr 6, 2018

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• DutchDude
• Apr 6, 2018

 

[DutchDude]

So - both the lights arrived today. MUCH better . After startup they settle at about 138W, which is perfect. These sure are tough to beat for $76

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• DutchDude
• Apr 6, 2018

 

[DutchDude]

Wow - has it really been three months since I updated this? Criminal! Or maybe it is criminal how I have neglected these plants . I know that I said that I wanted a simple, no fuss grow, but this might be considered child abuse.

Anyway, obviously lots of things have happened, so I'll try to put them in order.

- I had hidden the AeroGarden in a closet, and it was a recipe for forgetting about it. Luckily it beeps at you very sternly when it is finally out of water, so that is probably what kept me from killing these plants (the first time).

- The following picture I took on May 12th. The left side plant had gotten 5 times larger than the right side plant in the AeroGarden, and it was about a month past due for a new home in the grow pots.

I put the copper mat in the grow pots (copper side up). Got some Vermiculite and Perlite at the local Walmart, and gave each pot 1 bag of Perlite, and 1/2 a bag of Vermiculite. Mixed it up thoroughly, then sprayed it down to let the dust run out.

It was hard to untangle the overgrown plants out of the AeroGarden! I have to say, that I am quite happy with the automatic AeroGarden, it did it's job much better than I did. I cut about half the roots off, laid the rest of the roots into a deep hole, and covered them up. The roots should be alright because the media is moist, and should keep moist because of the wickening effect of the grow pot.

 

[DutchDude]

The following picture is taken three days later, May 15th. There were no signs of shock to the plants, in fact they were quite healthy and growing, no limp branches or leaves.

You will notice that the lights are off. On purpose, because they were extremely pink. This annoyed me so much, that I ended up returning them, and exchanging them for some COB lights. I know, I changed my mind again

I looked into building the COB lights myself, but for $99 ea (amazon), this is hard to beat. They both measured 289 W (actual), so around 50 W ea chip. TONS of light, let me tell you. Three nice silent fans as well. I don't know how these are going to last, but as of today, they still work excellent,

 

[DutchDude]

I was going to put the tent in a walk-in closet, but there was too much random traffic at that location, and I had a problem with the exhaust. So the grow moved into a 2'x9' closet with sliding doors. The doors were not ideal, but I put some locks on them (top and bottom), and the bottom of the door is in between L brackets so that the door cannot be easily removed.

It is hard to see, but the screw heads are filled with superglue - so the doors won't be able to be removed for a quick peek by curious people. At least not without 20 min of work, and damage. I think that most people would just leave it alone if they ever came across it since it is obviously locked, and not easily opened.

The 6" exhaust is cut into the ceiling and just vents out of a 4' pipe sticking into the attic.

 

[DutchDude]

So far so good right? Well, this was back in mid May. I set the timer and wrote myself a reminder on my iPhone to refill the reservoir with fresh water + nutrients (following the recommended GH doses)

The white 5 gallon container is how I transport the water, and the tub that it is standing on is just a storage container ($8 at HD). The one below it is just to raise the the other container of the floor, and has no other function. The container holds about 12 gallons total. So I fill the white container twice. First dump in straight water, then add another one which has nutrients for 10 gallons, then check the over the mixed total.

The line you see coming out of it goes through a little rubber grommet (electrical isle HD) then through a T, and into the grow pots (drip line stuff from HD). See also the previous post for picture.

 

[DutchDude]

So far, so good. Now for two more big-time screw-ups!

This is the timer (do you feel it coming. . .)

Just a super simple digital timer, with 12 programs, etc. Something like $8 at Amazon. No big deal - until you don't read the instructions, and realize how to program it. . .

So, I setup all this stuff on a Sunday, programmed it, filled it with water, left it alone. Like I said, I trusted everything to do it's thing, water, light, growth much follow - right?

Well, yeah, it grew alright, drank water alright, and I refilled it every Sunday for several weeks. Also took a nice vacation in between, and was not even worried about the setup. But, due to the vacation timing, I had to do the water addition on a Monday - and. . . the lights were off. Upon investigation, I set the time and day of the week alright, but I only had the light on on Sundays! I was amazed that the plant was still green, alive, and healthy. Must be a weed or something! So, I fixed the light to turn on all days of the week.

By this time the left plant was huge (sorry, no picture) and the right one still 1/5 it's size. High time to flip them over to a 12/12 schedule and start flowering.

Another three weeks go by, and I am starting to wonder why it has not started flowering yet. I used femenised seeds, so I should have a hermie. The COB light is 3500k, so that is plenty of red in order to flower, it is alive, healthy, so I was stumped for a while. Until last night.

Now for the sad part.

 

[DutchDude]

Yes - I had done it again. Same mistake, different program on the timer. So, I had adjusted the first program to turn on at 8:00 am, every day of the week. And the second program to turn off at 8:00 pm. BUT, I had never adjusted the second program to run every day of the week, so it was still doing Sunday turn-off only. Yes, I am the worse dad/caretaker - somebody call DCFS!

All told, the plants are doing fine, they are just 2 months behind the schedule which I laid out in the very first post Best laid plans, right?

It might be tough to see, but the plant on the right, is now about 1/4 the size:

I know that I have not done any maintenance, topping, super cropping, scrog, monster cropping, etc. And I probably won't for this grow. The plant is huge, I wouldn't know where to start. It does have plenty of tops though, so I hope it will be alright, production wise. But then again, after so many stupid mistakes, I will be glad to get anything at this point

 

[DutchDude]

And voila - we have white pistils. Funny how that works when you actually do what you are supposed to do. . .

 

[DutchDude]

Took 4 clones on July 20th. Dipped them in Clonex rooting gel, and Hormex rooting power, cut some empty AeroGarden plugs length-wise, then covered them with misted cups. I have been misting them once a day, and they are still perky 3 days later.

I cut the bottom out of a storage box, and place it over the AeroGarden - move on, nothing to see here folks!

 

[DutchDude]

Finally did some maintenance on the plants in the form of some trimming. No sense of wasting energy not related to bud production, right? Here is the largest plant as I took it out of the tent:

I am doing the trimming in two phases. I am probably stressing it out plenty, but at least it will have a few leaves left to recover with the first trim.