Hyena's Never-Ending Adventures In Growing

Hope it goes smoothly this weekend for you!

Thanks, Penny...Gonna bust me some ass. And get high a lot. I actually get a lot done when I'm high if I like what I'm doing.


At least I think I do.

Peace, Hyena
 
Love this stage when plans are made there's work to be done, and dreams to be lived. Always my best times. Hope it goes well! Cheers
 
Hey baby it's


and also a HYENA'S GROW HOUSE update!

So I spent three days up at the new grow house and what was accomplished is all how you look at it...I feel like I only got half what I wanted done but I did an awful lot more than I thought I could. Makes sense to me. I'm a stoner. :ganjamon:

The first challenge was the actual house, and more specifically, the yard. This place hasn't had anything done to it this year pretty much, so the grass was 8 inches long and the overall place was in need of a lot of polishing. I spent a whole day on buying a mower and using the thing plus various repairs like fixing a roof leak and reattaching some trim. By Saturday evening I had the entire property looking very respectable. This is an important aspect of my security; I have to keep this place looking neat and tidy because it's smack in the middle of a 150-unit community that doesn't have even one shitty yard. Even though it's perfectly legal I don't want anyone to ever, ever know I'm growing...the only real threat is getting ripped off and that's an equal reality in legal states and illegal states. So I have to make sure the place is always nice. It was a surprising amount of work to do it the first time but that will level off.

After the outside stuff...I had to equip the house with literally everything needed to sustain life as I know it. Dishes, small appliances, cleaning supplies, towels, personal care items, various staples and condiments, it all added up to hours of bullshit. But all necessary.


So I really only got the tarp down in grow room number one before my yard-busting day...Sunday morning I tackled assembling the first grow tent.

First, these 10x10 Agromax tents are monsters. There's a lot of different poles and brackets but it's very easy and straightforward to assemble the framework...the bitch is the tent itself. This is about sixty pounds of material that has to be unfolded and figured out (incredibly difficult in a small space with only one pair of hands) WITHOUT tearing or otherwise damaging anything. I worked for an hour plus just unfolding and trying to unzip and orient this massive skin.

Finally I got the bottom separated from the rest enough to assemble the framework which went pretty fast.


But the absolute bitch of a lifetime was pulling the tent skin over the framework, orienting everything properly and zipping it all back together...without hurting the tent. It was painstaking and took over two hours but I did it!


It really is an awesome thing once assembled. It's got a TON of room and I think I will get a lot out of 12 plants in here. It's set up so I can get in from either side and I should be able to fit everything in nicely. A major thrill to finally stand inside a grow tent this big, knowing I'm about to start growing a freaking forest in here. I will literally be able to hide in my own garden of weed...


Ahem. Back to reality I'm a little high as I write this.

The engine of all this is the lighting. So next I opened the first of my three uber-expensive but awesomely-named Quantum Boards. For $2,500 bucks these babies better outshine the sun or I'll be pissed. These 3 boards combined are rated to emit as much light as FOUR 1,000 watt HID bulbs...while using UNDER 20 amps...total! The cost savings of 50% on electricity, combined with such a low heat output that they don't even have fans, was too much to resist and so I sold the farm for these babies and my hopes are quite high. The first thing I noticed is they are packed amazingly well...


A box in a box...impressive. I was wondering how such a fragile item could survive FedEx's tender handling.


The unit is, in a word, impressive. It's immediately apparent this thing is an industrial-grade beast. It's HEAVY, a LOT heavier than I expected which to me is all good news...I want this thing to give me the full 50,000-hour projected lifespan. That would be something like thirty 20-week grows...I could produce enough weed to buy an airliner.

Hanging this thing was the next major challenge...there's only so much ceiling height and I wanted to get this thing as close to the top as possible without touching, plus be able to lower it when I want. I hope it's so bright I can keep them all the way up all the time, and it might be...but if not I can lower them. Plus, they each have a cool dimmer built in so I can dial them back to suit the needs of the plants. It was super hard because you really need two people for most of these operations and figuring out how to use two hands as four was an amazing challenge requiring some on-the-fly Homo Sapien ingenuity but I finally managed without dropping the damn thing.


Not too bad. At this point it was 5 pm and I had to cut out and drive the three hours home. As tired as I was (literally beat) I still hated to stop! A dream will drive you and this one is driving me. Maybe crazy. :oops::eek:

So I left it like this.


Next trip I will get the other two lights hung, then I will wire their power. I have a master control box that I will connect individually to the lights, I'll have to get wire and plugs and fashion and run each separately, then timers attach to the control box. When all is done I will fire them up and we will see!! After that I'll begin to build the ebb-and-flow setup. God, so much work to do!

But today I will be working in my attic lab, changing it over to a flood table setup and starting my first crop of seeds! I have a month before I will have plants big enough to take up there...got to get going on that part right now!

Okay enough writing I got so much shit to do...

Peace, Hyena
 
Looks like you had quite a time! That's the nature of a new project. But, once in place, the maintenance will be much easier! Very nice job so far. Also looks like a great plan! Persistence and perseverance. Cheers
 
Working on the new-look mini lab...gonna be sweet!

Today I popped in the local Hydro shop for some small stuff and saw a Grower's Lights brand quantum board hanging, ready to sell. I asked about it. The guy said they sell well and that that one (one single 10x10 board with a driver) would effectively light a 4x4 tent, two even better.

It gives me pause to realize EACH of my lights contains EIGHT of those. That means 24 per tent! Whoa! We are going to have some serious light I think.

Probably going up at first light tomorrow to do the other two lights and the wiring. I can't wait to turn them on for the first time...! Excitement that reminds me of the very early days...


The truth baby.

Peace, Hyena
 
I personally don't know how you put that tent up by yourself. I put up my 4 x 4 alone and it was bitch and I thought I'd never stop sweating. I had to do it again about a year later when I had to take it down for some reason and it was worse as I didn't quite fold it properly. It was almost as bad when I added the 3 x 3.

Anyway....great job getting that thing up. Looking forward to seeing the whole thing going. Cheers :bongrip:
 
I personally don't know how you put that tent up by yourself. I put up my 4 x 4 alone and it was bitch and I thought I'd never stop sweating. I had to do it again about a year later when I had to take it down for some reason and it was worse as I didn't quite fold it properly. It was almost as bad when I added the 3 x 3.:bongrip:

I don't know either. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Or just hard work. :laughtwo::yummy:

I can't believe what I have taken on but it's happening. Another detailed post later today...

Peace, Hyena
 
Happy Sunday!

Here's another episode of HYENA'S GROW HOUSE!

When we left our hero he was building the new Northern Grow Command, but before anything can happen up there a lot has to happen down here! The old secret grow lab is now designated as a perpetual nursery. So, a lot of work over the past three days but also success. Here's how it went...

The old setup of 9 Dutch buckets is out, and a new scheme of 12 1-gallon milk jugs on a flood table is in play.


It seems simple enough...just get a 4x2 flood tray...


Add a drain...


It should just catch all the overflowing solution and let it drain right back into the reservoir by gravity. So next, the feeder tubes, each with a nifty adjustable valve on the end which allows me to pretty much fine tune the flow everywhere so everybody gets roughly the same. Took some work but it works...


Going to use the good old original Mars 300s of which I have about a half-dozen laying around for my lighting...they don't produce much heat and they work great. All I'm going to need to get a dozen plants to around 10-12 inches tall.


Here's the finished nursery setup...


So meanwhile, beans went into water a couple days ago...


And this morning, less than 48 hours after they first touched water, 16 out of 16 with tails! Hats off to Seedsman Seedbank, they give you seeds that GROW! Even with my legendary talents :oops: it's an amazing thing to have 16 seeds all show that kind of vigor. I will be a customer for life.

I started 16 even though I only need 12...now I have 15 in rooter plugs to allow 5 of each variety, hoping for 4 of each in the end. You have to play the numbers game to reduce the chance of an open pot...that would totally suck. I just didn't think I would get them all to pop (AND so fast) so I sadly discarded a perfectly popped seed and will have to cull the smallest of each variety if they all come up. Then a dip into 5.8 PH water with just a few molecules of GROW in it...and it's showtime!!


Now we wait for little girls to emerge. The waiting. Gosh it's like Christmas Eve when I was 8 years old...


Only better! Stay tuned!

Peace, Hyena
 
Highya HM,

Great idea for the attic nursery. Starting things at home is much better. How often will you need to start seedlings in a year? Too hot in summer, too cold in winter? Just questions I'm sure you've raised yourself. Things are getting good! Cheers
 
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