Hello all,
I am currently in the middle of my first grow which spawned out of planting a red pepper seed from a store bought pepper. I’ve always been interested in cannabis and it’s cultivation but have never really been in a position to grow. Well that’s all changed lol.
A couple months ago my wife tossed a red pepper seed into a random window sill growing kit. When it sprouted we both were surprised, at the same time I had remembered I had tons of random seeds left from my MILs harvest last year. She had gone out and bought some decent genetics for her outdoor grow. Unfortunately, with the extreme summer and fall weather we had, almost all her plants Hermied. During the harvest, and for months afterwards I came across seeds from Deadhead OG, SFV, Buddha Tahoe, and a few other strains. Sadly, before I realized it, I had been tossing all of the seeds into a jar together, with no real fore thought about what I was going to do with them.
So while I am running a “bag seed” grow for my first few runs while I work out my deficiencies and shortcomings, I also know that the genetics are pretty decent and stable to begin with so I’m not completely in the dark lol.
Seed origin story complete, room origin story begins lol.
I have a very close friend from my time in the Army. He was actually one of my very first supervisors (NCOs) at my first duty station in Korea. Fast forward 10 years and somehow we wind up in the same state, an hour away from each other. He got medically discharged for combat stuff a few years before I did so he was already deep in the growing game himself.
When I got out he gifted me with a pound and a half of all kinds of sweet strains (veteran friends are different, you’ll see lol) and so I knew he knew what he was doing. Fast forward to my wife’s red pepper sprouting out, it hit me like a ton of bricks, I should try growing cannabis! I threw a seed in the starter stuff and tried to coax it out without any sort of knowledge, just feeling, and it sprouted.. albeit really small and spindly.
This drove me to contact my Friend to ask some growing questions.. he mentions he was getting ready to sell off his growing stuff, he’s done with it, and he’s cashing out. Now, from dealing with him a lot, I knew that whatever he was going to offer I should jump all over it, he’s much more concerned with ensuring a fellow veteran is set, stable, and ready to produce, than he is with anything else, so I took the deal. For 350$ I got:
Growers Choice ROI E720 (has only been used for 2 grows, he picked up an Apache AT600 and never looked back lol)
2x Gorilla grow tent 4x4
1x Grow tent 4x8
12 timers both digital and analog
6 inch ipower 400 cfm blower
So many pots lol
So many more nutrients than I ever planned on using lol.. stuff like 6 gallons of coco sensi bloom A and 6 gallons of the B.. 4 gallons of Micro, Grow, Bloom.. a bunch of canna coco part A and Part B,
Liters of Voodoo juice, big buds, overdrive, rhizotonic, and a couple other nutrients that I hadn’t planned on using or buying but since I have them I’ll work on those as I go along. I chose soil as my growing medium before I knew I was going to be given 10s of gallons of the coco nutes lol so a coco grow will be coming as well.
So after I essentially paid him to empty out his storage closest and haul it away, I was off to the races. I have decided to use my uninsulated attic as a grow room. It affords me the most privacy, it’s out of the way, access is easily restricted, temperatures and humidity can be maintained in the area with a bit of proactiveness, and it allows me to grow through the late summer into spring before it becomes too hot to manage. Michigan winters are rough, especially in a vented, uninsulated attic, but I have radiator heating which will make it fairly easy to maintain a level of warmth and Humidity in the attic, again with a little proactiveness.
So due to the design of the home (old school bungalow) the attic is sloped giving me 8-10 feet in height in some areas, and less than 6 in others. So I had to get creative. It’s an uninsulated attic with 7 roof vents, so in order to avoid being at the complete mercy of the weather/season I pulled out the grow tents and began cannibalizing them.
I took the 4x8 and 4x4 tent and sliced them up into pieces. I took the roof of the 4x8 and hung it from the ceiling. Then I took the wall pieces I sliced and hung those as well. I used the floors and floor pans of the 4x4s and placed them inside. After everything was hung and secured, I used gorilla tape and Velcro to connect the pieces. I haven’t completely sealed the tent.. due to the cannibalizing, and the methods needed to fit my space, completely sealing the tent isn’t really an option, and I’m not really interested in doing it. I’m leveraging passive and active air flow together to keep the air flowing in and out, and to keep my temps stable. As fall and winter creep up I’m most likely going to need to move a portable heater up there, but we’ll see how it goes. The design of the house is such that, when the door upstairs is left open even a crack the heat of the home flows right up there, I’m hoping this will be enough, but I have contingencies if it isn’t.
Once the “tent” was up I hung the light.. I’ve got about 6 feet worth of height from the ground, which will allow me to produce a decent size plant(s). My light says it can flower a 5x5 area, but after lots of conversations and reading I’ve decided to keep it at 4x4.. I figure keeping it below the limit will allow for greater light penetration and absorption than trying to push out to 5x5, plus I don’t really need much more grow space than that, seeing as how this is for my wife and I.
I originally started germinating and vegging outdoors while getting my setup in place.. I was able to sprout all 3 seeds and get them vegging. However, once my room was setup and I began to move them I noticed the pre flowers were out. Sadly, 2 out of the 3 were males. On a positive note, the 2 males were the weaker plants. They gave me problems, weren’t growing very vigorously, and seemed easily stressed. The female plant though was a boss from day one.
So, currently, the strain is unknown (I think deadhead OG but I can’t be sure). I haven’t used any nutrients, only water. My water is tap water run through a camco carbon filter, then the PH is adjusted down to 6.5-6.8 from 7.5. I’ve been using tiny amounts of vinegar (4 ml for a gallon of water) to lower the PH as I read the regular PH down can mess with the microbes in the soil. (Still not completely sure/clear on that).. I started with Coast of Maine seedling starter in a solo cup. I transplanted to a 1 gallon of seedling starter and let it grow some more. Once it started showing signs of deficiencies and the growth slowed, I transplanted into a 3 gallon smart pot with Coast of Maine stonington blend. Still using just water..
I have the coast of Maine plant food if needed, but from my understanding, since I’m transplanting before the nutrients are used up I don’t really need it, yet, anyway. I plan on transplanting into a 5 gallon in another week or so, so she’s settled in for flower. I will probably pickup the Coast of Maine bloom food for flower since I won’t be doing any more transplanting and it’ll likely pull all the nutrients before harvest.
I plan on trying different methods and styles in order to find which appeals to me most, but in all my reading I have to say that organic just add water seems to me the ideal method for me. Once I have my knowledge a bit more secure I’ll look into creating my own super soil for that, but for now, I’m content.
Sorry for the huge wall lol, this is sort of my intro grow journal as well, as I plan on doing multiple journals in the future. As always, any questions, comments, concerns, critiques, suggestions are ALWAYS welcome! I’ve learned way more useful stuff just from one off tips and comments than I have anything else.
(I will post pictures of the room and op in the following comment)
I am currently in the middle of my first grow which spawned out of planting a red pepper seed from a store bought pepper. I’ve always been interested in cannabis and it’s cultivation but have never really been in a position to grow. Well that’s all changed lol.
A couple months ago my wife tossed a red pepper seed into a random window sill growing kit. When it sprouted we both were surprised, at the same time I had remembered I had tons of random seeds left from my MILs harvest last year. She had gone out and bought some decent genetics for her outdoor grow. Unfortunately, with the extreme summer and fall weather we had, almost all her plants Hermied. During the harvest, and for months afterwards I came across seeds from Deadhead OG, SFV, Buddha Tahoe, and a few other strains. Sadly, before I realized it, I had been tossing all of the seeds into a jar together, with no real fore thought about what I was going to do with them.
So while I am running a “bag seed” grow for my first few runs while I work out my deficiencies and shortcomings, I also know that the genetics are pretty decent and stable to begin with so I’m not completely in the dark lol.
Seed origin story complete, room origin story begins lol.
I have a very close friend from my time in the Army. He was actually one of my very first supervisors (NCOs) at my first duty station in Korea. Fast forward 10 years and somehow we wind up in the same state, an hour away from each other. He got medically discharged for combat stuff a few years before I did so he was already deep in the growing game himself.
When I got out he gifted me with a pound and a half of all kinds of sweet strains (veteran friends are different, you’ll see lol) and so I knew he knew what he was doing. Fast forward to my wife’s red pepper sprouting out, it hit me like a ton of bricks, I should try growing cannabis! I threw a seed in the starter stuff and tried to coax it out without any sort of knowledge, just feeling, and it sprouted.. albeit really small and spindly.
This drove me to contact my Friend to ask some growing questions.. he mentions he was getting ready to sell off his growing stuff, he’s done with it, and he’s cashing out. Now, from dealing with him a lot, I knew that whatever he was going to offer I should jump all over it, he’s much more concerned with ensuring a fellow veteran is set, stable, and ready to produce, than he is with anything else, so I took the deal. For 350$ I got:
Growers Choice ROI E720 (has only been used for 2 grows, he picked up an Apache AT600 and never looked back lol)
2x Gorilla grow tent 4x4
1x Grow tent 4x8
12 timers both digital and analog
6 inch ipower 400 cfm blower
So many pots lol
So many more nutrients than I ever planned on using lol.. stuff like 6 gallons of coco sensi bloom A and 6 gallons of the B.. 4 gallons of Micro, Grow, Bloom.. a bunch of canna coco part A and Part B,
Liters of Voodoo juice, big buds, overdrive, rhizotonic, and a couple other nutrients that I hadn’t planned on using or buying but since I have them I’ll work on those as I go along. I chose soil as my growing medium before I knew I was going to be given 10s of gallons of the coco nutes lol so a coco grow will be coming as well.
So after I essentially paid him to empty out his storage closest and haul it away, I was off to the races. I have decided to use my uninsulated attic as a grow room. It affords me the most privacy, it’s out of the way, access is easily restricted, temperatures and humidity can be maintained in the area with a bit of proactiveness, and it allows me to grow through the late summer into spring before it becomes too hot to manage. Michigan winters are rough, especially in a vented, uninsulated attic, but I have radiator heating which will make it fairly easy to maintain a level of warmth and Humidity in the attic, again with a little proactiveness.
So due to the design of the home (old school bungalow) the attic is sloped giving me 8-10 feet in height in some areas, and less than 6 in others. So I had to get creative. It’s an uninsulated attic with 7 roof vents, so in order to avoid being at the complete mercy of the weather/season I pulled out the grow tents and began cannibalizing them.
I took the 4x8 and 4x4 tent and sliced them up into pieces. I took the roof of the 4x8 and hung it from the ceiling. Then I took the wall pieces I sliced and hung those as well. I used the floors and floor pans of the 4x4s and placed them inside. After everything was hung and secured, I used gorilla tape and Velcro to connect the pieces. I haven’t completely sealed the tent.. due to the cannibalizing, and the methods needed to fit my space, completely sealing the tent isn’t really an option, and I’m not really interested in doing it. I’m leveraging passive and active air flow together to keep the air flowing in and out, and to keep my temps stable. As fall and winter creep up I’m most likely going to need to move a portable heater up there, but we’ll see how it goes. The design of the house is such that, when the door upstairs is left open even a crack the heat of the home flows right up there, I’m hoping this will be enough, but I have contingencies if it isn’t.
Once the “tent” was up I hung the light.. I’ve got about 6 feet worth of height from the ground, which will allow me to produce a decent size plant(s). My light says it can flower a 5x5 area, but after lots of conversations and reading I’ve decided to keep it at 4x4.. I figure keeping it below the limit will allow for greater light penetration and absorption than trying to push out to 5x5, plus I don’t really need much more grow space than that, seeing as how this is for my wife and I.
I originally started germinating and vegging outdoors while getting my setup in place.. I was able to sprout all 3 seeds and get them vegging. However, once my room was setup and I began to move them I noticed the pre flowers were out. Sadly, 2 out of the 3 were males. On a positive note, the 2 males were the weaker plants. They gave me problems, weren’t growing very vigorously, and seemed easily stressed. The female plant though was a boss from day one.
So, currently, the strain is unknown (I think deadhead OG but I can’t be sure). I haven’t used any nutrients, only water. My water is tap water run through a camco carbon filter, then the PH is adjusted down to 6.5-6.8 from 7.5. I’ve been using tiny amounts of vinegar (4 ml for a gallon of water) to lower the PH as I read the regular PH down can mess with the microbes in the soil. (Still not completely sure/clear on that).. I started with Coast of Maine seedling starter in a solo cup. I transplanted to a 1 gallon of seedling starter and let it grow some more. Once it started showing signs of deficiencies and the growth slowed, I transplanted into a 3 gallon smart pot with Coast of Maine stonington blend. Still using just water..
I have the coast of Maine plant food if needed, but from my understanding, since I’m transplanting before the nutrients are used up I don’t really need it, yet, anyway. I plan on transplanting into a 5 gallon in another week or so, so she’s settled in for flower. I will probably pickup the Coast of Maine bloom food for flower since I won’t be doing any more transplanting and it’ll likely pull all the nutrients before harvest.
I plan on trying different methods and styles in order to find which appeals to me most, but in all my reading I have to say that organic just add water seems to me the ideal method for me. Once I have my knowledge a bit more secure I’ll look into creating my own super soil for that, but for now, I’m content.
Sorry for the huge wall lol, this is sort of my intro grow journal as well, as I plan on doing multiple journals in the future. As always, any questions, comments, concerns, critiques, suggestions are ALWAYS welcome! I’ve learned way more useful stuff just from one off tips and comments than I have anything else.
(I will post pictures of the room and op in the following comment)
