Kshdmn's Inaugural Grow - 2015

[Kshdmn]

First crack at my own grow, with the amounts that I require for my anxiety I figured I would undertake a new project. I jumped in with the goal of two plants and a yield of an oz each. I wanted to create a small portable self enclosed environment and had a steep learning curve to start. I will update this log with more of the specifics of the grow box and some of the challenges I faced at the start along with semi regular progress reports and I'm sure the odd question or two.

As for the important details, I sprouted a pair of seeds of the Crop King feminized Purple Kush. It's 75% indica with a THC of 27.5 and CBD of 0.4. according to the packaging. What can I say I love my purple.. I'm hoping to get my hands on some CBD crew Medihaze as I've found the higher CBD numbers has done a wonderful job of treating my anxiety. Have tried some noodle and thought it was a light clear high, good for the day, but wanted to try something bigger.

OK.. Enough talk for now.. Some pics..

 

[Kshdmn]

 

[Kshdmn]

The Box is made out of 2 120L strong bins lined with airfoil. Made the carbon scrubber with the help of all of you out there on the interwebs, and attached it to a 6 inch exhaust with an old "Radio Shack Cooling Fan" I found laying around. As for lighting I have 1x43W (200w) Daylight CFL and 2x40W (150W) Soft White CFL in addition to 2x5M strips of 3528 LEDs (Red and Green) for side lighting. Circulation fans are the $7 USB specials from your favorite retailer and I have a notebook cooling fan taking fin air from a 2x6" vent hole. I also constructed a four bank bubble cloner and a co2 generator just as something to do while I was baked...

One of my initial challenges after I had drowned 3 of my seeds was temperature, part of the learning curve.. Initially I had the CFLs hanging down, once the seedlings had sprouted they got burnt... oops.. so i rejigged the lighting to the config above. I also only had a passive intake with the exhaust and one circulation fan, not enough considering the air foil was trapping the heat in.. so I added in the 2 extra circ fans as well as the small instake assembly.. I added in the LEDs at the same time i did the fan upgrade and didnt expect the strips to heat up so much (mind you i went from the standard 12V power source to a 20V laptop supply, to push as much light out as I could from the diodes). So after playing around with the fan placement (even changed the direction of the intake from down to up) until I reached the current layout. As of today I have the LEDs and the 45W CFL sitting at 35C in the middle of the box. The soil actually feels cool to the touch so I may switch on one of the 40W CFL for tommorrows cycle.

One of the other challenges I faced when i transplanted the seedlings into the bigger pots. I had made a mixture out of potting soil, compost and top soil. In the smaller pot i used just the mixture and although the plant appears small it looks like its starting to thrive again. In the larger pot i had bought some river stones to line the bottom (standard black pots with the side vent holes) thinking that I could pool the nutrients from the compost to slowly leach back into the soil. After the transplant the larger plant went into shock. Initially I had thought the heat was causing the issue, but after thinking about the steps I had taken nutrient overkill seemed more likely. I flushed out the pot (saved the runoff in a container to reuse, no sense letting all those precious nutrients go to waste) and sprayed the plants once every couple hours for a few days and they seem to be making a comeback.

I was pretty suprised to see how the plants reacted to the LEDs, they put on biomass at a much quicker rate! I've named the girls Padme and Leia. I topped Padme this morning and hopefully I can get the cutting to root. So how much do you guess I can yield from this setup?? Questions and comments are welcome hopefully we can get a good discussion going with some learning for all!!

 

[David Bowman]

Hope all is well in your world.

Is this grow still alive?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

How about posting a 420 Strain Review?

If you need any help with posting photos, please read our Photo Gallery Tutorial.

I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.