Welcome to my first grow journal!
I've never grown before, but have done a lot of research on this and similar forums, so I hope nothing too major goes wrong.
I'll be updating this thread every few days with progress, including any issues I run into (I'm sure there'll be a few!) and how I get around them.
First things first, I made the decision to buy one of the ready-made grow tent kits available on the internet instead of building my own. I found on for £130 on ebay which included a 250W HPS bulb, reflector, ballast, bulb timer, 4" inline fan, carbon filter, and ducting. When I added up the cost of all that not including the tent, I found that I would have spent almost as much buying it all separately then building my own grow box, so it made sense to just buy the kit.
The tent is 50cmx50cmx100cm, so quite small, but this is what I wanted as I have a small stealthy place to put it, and I only intend to grow 2-3 plants at most.
For the growing medium, I did a lot of reading on the forums and decided to go with a mix of 70% coco coir and 30% perlite. This is supposed to be an efficient and fairly easy to use medium, ideal for a first time grower.
The strain I'm growing is Dynafem's "Big Kush" which is a 50/50 indica/sativa cross. I bought 3 feminized seeds from a local retailer.
Now on to the grow!
I planted my seeds on 02/04/16 directly into the final growing medium/pot (70/30 coco/perlite, in a 5 gallon pot). For the first few days I kept the medium moist and left the pots on top of a radiator to keep them warm, mainly because my tent hadn't arrived yet.
After 3 days (05/04/16), the first sprouts broke ground:
Luckily on the same day, the tent arrived, and I set it up according to the instructions (which was very simple). I hung the HPS and reflector in there with the adjustable ratchet straps so the light can be raised or lowered as needed.
For ventilation, I mounted the carbon filter to the vent hole top of the tent, then ran ducting from it from the top of the tent into the inlet side of the inline fan. On the outlet side of the fan I put a few metres of ducting which I routed away from the tent. Next, on the bottom of the tent I put some ducting from the inlet hole out to a cool air source (shaded outdoor area) away from the tent.
I put a thermometer in the tent at plant level and set the light schedule to 18/6. When I next looked in the tent a few hours later I noticed the temperature was 30+C, so decided I needed better ventilation.
I wired up two old 3" PC fans to a 12V power supply from an old laptop and put them into the tent. The first one I put inside the end of the inlet duct to pull in cool air. As the PC fan is much smaller and less efficient than the inline exhaust fan I can still maintain negative pressure in the tent to control smells later in the grow. The other PC fan I mounted on the tent frame facing up towards the HPS bulb in order to cool it directly.
This reduced temps to about 26C with the lights on overnight, just about perfect. During the day however if the sun was out and the light was on, temps would rise to as much as 31C, which is unacceptable. I set the bulb timer to go off at midday, then on again at 6pm (avoiding the hottest part of the day), which helped to control the temperatures. The maximum temperature I hit was about 29C at about 6:30pm, when the outside air was still warm. This is still too high so I resigned to keep the bulb a little higher away from the plants for an hour after turning on, which reduced the max temp to about 27.5C. This is still higher than I would like, and I am also now losing some light power at plant level, so this needs more thought.
09/04/16 ---------------------------
I started mixing nutrients into the water at this point as the first set of serrated leaves were starting to show. I used General Hydroponics FloraGro, FloraMicro, and FloraBloom, then a generic CalMag supplement. I followed the instructions from grow weed easy for using these nutrients with coco coir, and mixed in the correct amounts before testing and correcting the pH.
11/04/16 ---------------------------
Noticed some yellowing of the tips of first serrated leaves:
After posting on this forum for some advice (here: New Grower - Seedling Issues), I was told that it was most likely to be nutrient burn. The consensus appears to be that young seedlings do not need any nutrients at all until they are a little bigger, as they get all they need from the cotyledons (first rounded leaves). I did a full flush using pure pH'd tap water, and decided to continue watering with just water for the next week, until the plants are a little stronger.
12/04/16 ---------------------------
After reading some information on humidity, I ordered a wireless temperature/humidity sensor (from here: Homdox Wireless Weather Humidity Monitor Indoor/Outdoor Modern Design: Amazon.co.uk: Kitchen & Home), and set it up with the sensor in the tent and the receiver outside, so I could monitor the environment without actually going in there. I found the humidity to be quite low, around 30-40% with the light on, so I did some more searching and posted again on this forum (same thread as above). The advice I was given was that low humidity will not seriously damage plants, it will only slow growth, but high humidity can cause all manner of problems, such as mould.
I was given a suggestion here by Vestrimatrik, which was to suspend a small towel in the tent with the bottom few inches sat in a container of water. This should serve to raise the humidity due to evaporation. I did this and the humidity has raised to ~45% with the light on, which is in the acceptable range, though still a tad low.
13/04/16 ---------------------------
Plants are now recovering from the nutrient burn with pure pH'd tap water. The yellowing is receding and new growth is showing no signs of problems.
14/04/16 ---------------------------
Some good growth over the last couple of days (still with no nutrients), minimal stretching going on (from the look of the 2nd node coming in) which is ideal as I'm after short bushy plants (only got ~70cm to work in — 100cm tent minus light & plant pots).
Temperature and humidity is still an issue, especially as the days are getting longer. After speaking my grow partner we had the idea to suspend a piece of plexi-glass the same width/depth as the tent below the bottom of the bulb reflector, then drill a few holes in it. This should stop a lot of the hot air from the bulb reaching the plants, as it should bounce off the plexiglass and be taken straight up the exhaust in the top of the tent. The inlet will come in below the sheet, meaning a cool air supply direct to the plants, and the holes in the plexiglass should allow the air to be extracted from the bottom of the tent through the carbon filter and vent. This should also raise humidity slightly as more water vapour will be trapped below the plexiglass.
I've ordered a 50cmx50cm sheet of plexiglass and will hopefully be able to put it together in the next few days.
I've never grown before, but have done a lot of research on this and similar forums, so I hope nothing too major goes wrong.
I'll be updating this thread every few days with progress, including any issues I run into (I'm sure there'll be a few!) and how I get around them.
First things first, I made the decision to buy one of the ready-made grow tent kits available on the internet instead of building my own. I found on for £130 on ebay which included a 250W HPS bulb, reflector, ballast, bulb timer, 4" inline fan, carbon filter, and ducting. When I added up the cost of all that not including the tent, I found that I would have spent almost as much buying it all separately then building my own grow box, so it made sense to just buy the kit.
The tent is 50cmx50cmx100cm, so quite small, but this is what I wanted as I have a small stealthy place to put it, and I only intend to grow 2-3 plants at most.
For the growing medium, I did a lot of reading on the forums and decided to go with a mix of 70% coco coir and 30% perlite. This is supposed to be an efficient and fairly easy to use medium, ideal for a first time grower.
The strain I'm growing is Dynafem's "Big Kush" which is a 50/50 indica/sativa cross. I bought 3 feminized seeds from a local retailer.
Now on to the grow!
I planted my seeds on 02/04/16 directly into the final growing medium/pot (70/30 coco/perlite, in a 5 gallon pot). For the first few days I kept the medium moist and left the pots on top of a radiator to keep them warm, mainly because my tent hadn't arrived yet.
After 3 days (05/04/16), the first sprouts broke ground:
Luckily on the same day, the tent arrived, and I set it up according to the instructions (which was very simple). I hung the HPS and reflector in there with the adjustable ratchet straps so the light can be raised or lowered as needed.
For ventilation, I mounted the carbon filter to the vent hole top of the tent, then ran ducting from it from the top of the tent into the inlet side of the inline fan. On the outlet side of the fan I put a few metres of ducting which I routed away from the tent. Next, on the bottom of the tent I put some ducting from the inlet hole out to a cool air source (shaded outdoor area) away from the tent.
I put a thermometer in the tent at plant level and set the light schedule to 18/6. When I next looked in the tent a few hours later I noticed the temperature was 30+C, so decided I needed better ventilation.
I wired up two old 3" PC fans to a 12V power supply from an old laptop and put them into the tent. The first one I put inside the end of the inlet duct to pull in cool air. As the PC fan is much smaller and less efficient than the inline exhaust fan I can still maintain negative pressure in the tent to control smells later in the grow. The other PC fan I mounted on the tent frame facing up towards the HPS bulb in order to cool it directly.
This reduced temps to about 26C with the lights on overnight, just about perfect. During the day however if the sun was out and the light was on, temps would rise to as much as 31C, which is unacceptable. I set the bulb timer to go off at midday, then on again at 6pm (avoiding the hottest part of the day), which helped to control the temperatures. The maximum temperature I hit was about 29C at about 6:30pm, when the outside air was still warm. This is still too high so I resigned to keep the bulb a little higher away from the plants for an hour after turning on, which reduced the max temp to about 27.5C. This is still higher than I would like, and I am also now losing some light power at plant level, so this needs more thought.
09/04/16 ---------------------------
I started mixing nutrients into the water at this point as the first set of serrated leaves were starting to show. I used General Hydroponics FloraGro, FloraMicro, and FloraBloom, then a generic CalMag supplement. I followed the instructions from grow weed easy for using these nutrients with coco coir, and mixed in the correct amounts before testing and correcting the pH.
11/04/16 ---------------------------
Noticed some yellowing of the tips of first serrated leaves:
After posting on this forum for some advice (here: New Grower - Seedling Issues), I was told that it was most likely to be nutrient burn. The consensus appears to be that young seedlings do not need any nutrients at all until they are a little bigger, as they get all they need from the cotyledons (first rounded leaves). I did a full flush using pure pH'd tap water, and decided to continue watering with just water for the next week, until the plants are a little stronger.
12/04/16 ---------------------------
After reading some information on humidity, I ordered a wireless temperature/humidity sensor (from here: Homdox Wireless Weather Humidity Monitor Indoor/Outdoor Modern Design: Amazon.co.uk: Kitchen & Home), and set it up with the sensor in the tent and the receiver outside, so I could monitor the environment without actually going in there. I found the humidity to be quite low, around 30-40% with the light on, so I did some more searching and posted again on this forum (same thread as above). The advice I was given was that low humidity will not seriously damage plants, it will only slow growth, but high humidity can cause all manner of problems, such as mould.
I was given a suggestion here by Vestrimatrik, which was to suspend a small towel in the tent with the bottom few inches sat in a container of water. This should serve to raise the humidity due to evaporation. I did this and the humidity has raised to ~45% with the light on, which is in the acceptable range, though still a tad low.
13/04/16 ---------------------------
Plants are now recovering from the nutrient burn with pure pH'd tap water. The yellowing is receding and new growth is showing no signs of problems.
14/04/16 ---------------------------
Some good growth over the last couple of days (still with no nutrients), minimal stretching going on (from the look of the 2nd node coming in) which is ideal as I'm after short bushy plants (only got ~70cm to work in — 100cm tent minus light & plant pots).
Temperature and humidity is still an issue, especially as the days are getting longer. After speaking my grow partner we had the idea to suspend a piece of plexi-glass the same width/depth as the tent below the bottom of the bulb reflector, then drill a few holes in it. This should stop a lot of the hot air from the bulb reaching the plants, as it should bounce off the plexiglass and be taken straight up the exhaust in the top of the tent. The inlet will come in below the sheet, meaning a cool air supply direct to the plants, and the holes in the plexiglass should allow the air to be extracted from the bottom of the tent through the carbon filter and vent. This should also raise humidity slightly as more water vapour will be trapped below the plexiglass.
I've ordered a 50cmx50cm sheet of plexiglass and will hopefully be able to put it together in the next few days.