Jeebs' - 600W HID - 4'x4' Closet Grow - First Timer!

[Jeebs]

Hello and welcome to my first attempt at growing and consequently, my first attempt at a grow journal.

I've been reading and learning about growing cannabis for approximately 10 years, but have never had the resources or space to start a legitimate grow. Now is the time. I finally own my own home, and have complete control over my space.

So here it goes.

Space: 4'x4' closet, light sealed, 8 foot ceiling.

Ventilation: 6" 440cfm inline fan with speed control, also indirect circulating fan

Light: 600w dimmable HID with both MH and HPS bulbs, may supplement with CFLs when the time comes

Medium: Soil. My own home composted soil amended with coco fiber and perlite, along with some gypsum. The soil is very rich and full of life (The red worms are very happy and abundant).

Bucket size: 6x 3.5 gallon buckets, 2x ~5gallon storage totes

Strains: Unknown bagseeds. Many different phenotypes in there right now, some more tolerant of my soil than others. I really thought bag seed would be a good test run, but we'll see if I come to regret that.

I germinated the first plants on 1/12, the others were a few days later. Transplanted 2/2. Some of the seedlings looked like they may have become slightly rootbound/overwatered but since transplanting, theyve really come around. There's still one plant that is recovering but has some leaf tip burn.

I will really appreciate any help I can get once I start posting photos and progress.

Thanks for everything you've already contributed without even knowing it!

 

[Jeebs]

Here they are!

I did have a small problem with fungus gnats, but Neem and bT did the trick I think. Let me know what you think about the size for less than a month in. I feel like they should be bigger, but again I think that might be my fault. They have lots of tight nodes, which I find preferable to height.

 

[nugwrasslin]

Nice looking setup man. Your plants look fine for their agealtough I'm no expert haha.

I was just reading that diatomaceous earth solutions can be used for fungus gnats.

 

[Jeebs]

If anyone cares, all of the equipment is on a high quality temperature controller (not sure if I can state the brand) that is set to shut off and hold off after 90*F. I also installed an automatic fire extinguisher and smoke detector ( just in case). I was very concerned with fire in the beginning and so I took extra steps to over-engineer everything down to hardwiring the closet with power. 12 gauge wire, 20 amp circuit, No problems. I never plan on using all 20 amps, but hey, why not.

(Side note: I look forward to honing my forum skills. It's been years since I've been active online and I'm not sure that my communication skills are all they could be. I've read a lot of content on these forums that is incredibly articulate and I could only hope to emulate some of the most helpful people here.)

Thanks again!

 

[nugwrasslin]

It sounds like you already have a setup to be envied. I wish you good nugs with this grow! Come check mine out if you're interested.

 

[JuanCarlos]

If you want to give the gnats the boot, let your soil dry out before watering again. This will also promote root growth which will pay off in flower.

 

[nivek]

good stuff. the journaling,, siggy up and running, journal up and running,,grow up and running,, extremely well done,, reps friend,

 

[MrCatNaps]

Mr. CatNaps >^.^<

Congrats on your first grow! Seems like you are off to a nice start


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Come and Check my grow out!
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I am a friendly new grower, looking to sustain myself after 8 years of medicating. Cannabis helped me transition off harmful stimulants and turn my ADHD into something manageable :3. Now I spend my time happily gaming, programming, and caring for my ladies in sunny California. I love to talk, feel free to say hi!​

 

[mb5200]

Nice set up, everything looks great! I'll be eagerly watching how things go here

 

[Jeebs]

Hello again, everyone!

Here are some updated pictures. Not a lot has changed but I have constructed a small area to flower/sex cuttings and hopefully clone with later. I'm not talking about a whole bunch of clones, but maybe 10 or 12 eventually.

I also have a question; does anybody have any experience with pheno-hunting with bag seed plants? I know my plants, even females, are supposedly genetically 'inferior' compared to F1 hybrids and more likely to become hermaphroditic given any stress. However, I am wondering how I should proceed to keep my grow going even after my first harvest without buying any seeds. I am thinking of taking the cuttings when I top each plant and putting them under 12/12 in my little clone room to determine gender so that I can cull the males early and save space, potentially allowing me to up-pot to a 15 or 20 gallon container in my main room to flower in (of course, if all 8 are females that would be great, but not a likely scenario I understand).

So, of the plants determined to be female I would then be able to continue vegging and taking clones off of my "mothers". Hopefully, timed right, I can use these clones to perpetuate my grow indefinitely. Maybe.

The clone box is an old Jagermeister "Ice cold shots" cooler I found on the beach that has been retrofitted for my purposes. We'll see how it works.

 

[nivek]

No idea about hunting,, fishing maybe,, some idea on this tho,, bagseed,, the fact that it's bagseed says something, right there,, unless someone specifically pollinated that plant, that seed is from a hermie, only reason it would be there, these days, mostly, so,,

I have read, read only, that hermie is not so much genetic as a 'trait'. Not really important, unless one wants to know the details. So the hermie trait is passed on, as you stated, it is inferior, as I have read. That does not meat the plant will hermie, not at all, just has more of a tendency to,.. So, if one eliminates the stresses, mostly from light, I believe, remove the stress and the plant should not hermie.

I am plagued by hermies, so i finally eliminated light leaks, hundred percent of em, not ninety nine, a hundred, so if I get more hermies, I at least can eliminate light as the cause,, extremely important, imo.

Let me know your thots, its a timely topic, indeed,, cheers

P.s., your other ideas are sound,, you can theoretically keep one plant a mother for years, folks do it,, and clone all day long, ever day, ha,,

One more thing, I have not seen pics posted like that before,, how you do dat?

 

[Jeebs]

One more thing, I have not seen pics posted like that before,, how you do dat?

It's an option in a drop-down menu when you upload photos from the gallery to the thread. Select "thumbnail, linked to original".



Hey all!

Here are some photos of progress. I topped 6 of my plants yesterday. On most I removed all the lower growth as well, except on 1 plant that is a little behind. I had intended to go with a full "manifold", but am having trouble cutting off that laslt node, so I should at least end up with 4 colas with this method.

After topping I watered them all pretty well with some sprouted seed tea (it had been a week) and misted them all to wash the leaves and moisten the top layer of soil. Even the clover seems happy under the MH light!

It was discovered yesterday from one of the tops that the plant in the 3.5gal bucket, stage-right front, is indeed female (at least from my amateurish understanding of preflowers). It looked a lot like a pistil, not at all like a banana or a sac. For some reason I neglected to take a photo. Forgive me.

Thanks for watching!

The photos are from topping/watering day, and the next day (They look pretty happy!). Sorry they're jumbled.

 

[mb5200]

Looking good, keep it up

 

[Jeebs]

Updated photos ahead!

Not a whole lot to report. Still a few fungus gnats appearing, but very few. The mosquito dunks and neem seem to have it under control. I haven't watered since my last post which was with seed sprout tea. I am watering today with RO water. Soil was fairly dry.

Preflowers are starting to appear, though I am too inexperienced to know exactly what I'm looking at.

Group shot:

A:

B:

C:

I'm having a bit of an internal conflict. I really want to switch to 12/12 and leave them under the MH for a good while before switching bulbs, but I know I'll have at least a few males and some room to spare, so more veg time could be my best bet for a bumper crop.

Thanks for watching!

 

[Jeebs]

Here's a better shot of the room. Is it time for flower, or should I wait it out another week or two?

 

[nugwrasslin]

Looking awesome man! Your soil seems so alive.

I'm still not sure if I regret going for a long veg period or not. My plants are giant now given how much longer I vegged for but it also means even longer to wait for crops.

I would say veg for long enough to fill all of your space into a full canopy.

Also, why not tie some branches down to spread them out as well?

I read somewhere that transparent containers can be bad due to the possibility of algae growth. So you might want to paint or tape those up as well.

I'm totally not experienced but these are just some thoughts. Take em or ignore em I dont mind

 

[mb5200]

Looking healthy

Plants mature around 6-8 weeks and probably wouldn't flower til then. Your right around the 6 week mark so use your judgement.

Yeah some LST would open up them bud sites and help it along, I'm a big fan of LST

 

[Jeebs]

Hey guys!

Took some of your advice and did a little LST.

Also did a little male chopping. Found 2 plants with immature pollen sacs at each node. One of my fastest growing, favorite plants. Would've liked to save him for breeding, but I don't have a spare veg room at the moment and I really feel like focusing on my first harvest.

Alas, many of my remaining plants have visible calyxes, no pistils yet.

Here's the room before chopping and training:

And after!

Some pollen sac close-ups:

There's 1 more plant that I believe is going to show more pollen sacs in the coming days, which would be great if that's the last one. I would like to have some space to let the girls grow, but I don't want to end up with only 1 or 2 females!!

I guess that's just the way it goes!

No fertilizer of any kind has been used so far, only seed sprout tea and regular RO water. The plants have really been taking off in the last few days. It's getting exciting. Can't wait to see how the LST will help the lower bud sites develop.

Thanks for watching!

 

[Jeebs]

Greetings. Quick Update.

Day 53 from seed. Flipped to 12/12 on 3/1.

5 Plants remaining from 10 at the start. All confirmed males. 4 of the remaining ones are confirmed female, 1 TBD.

So sad to see these 2 go. They were nice plants.

What's going on here? You'll see in one of the clear pots I have 2 plants. Both are females...We'll see how that goes. These plants look nice.

Then there's this one that had a pot-mate up until 2 weeks ago. I bent her over and now I have this fairly spindly lime-green thing. It looks like there's some problem even though it's growing very rapidly. Could be the soil. It's my first try with my homemade compost.

These are my Black soldier flies. I'm interested to see if they'll breed under the artificial light. Doesn't seem to be happening yet but we'll see. If you don't know what soldier flies are, google it. They're very interesting and totally harmless to people and plants.

 

[Jeebs]

Update: The yellow plant has become a much more pleasant shade of green.

All plants are flowering nicely. Last week I cut the bottoms of the original 3 gallon pots off and added about 3 more gallons of soilto the bottom of the root ball. They were pretty tightly bound, so I loosened them up a bit and placed them in a little extra soil. Roots were poking out the new holes in the new pots in like 3 days.

I started giving them 1 tbsp/gal blackstrap molasses yesterday, but will continue through flower. I think this will be just the ticket to keeping them strong through the next 5 or 6 weeks if necessary.

I love having so much variety, but they are flowering at very different rates. Probably due to my late transplant. I've also done a little light leaf picking and bending and tucking.

Let's see:

Not sure how this time everything rotated on me?

Here's one of my favorites:

Of course my 2 favorite plants were planted in the same damn pot. I was really sure that I would have to cull at least one from every pot. I'm going to try desperately to reveg both of them in the same pot and make them mothers for my next grow.

There's one that's just so vigorous. All the tops are pretty much at the same height, the buds are already sticky and they smell like LEMONS! It's definitely the odd one out.

Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised by the rest of them when they get to the sticky stage.

Thanks for watching