Moving Indoors - 250W Closet Grow

[OrganicMatter]

Greetings!
My very first grow journal! wohoo!
After two hard summers of carrying dirt and water containers in the forest, I decided to move my playground indoors.
I'm making this journal partly to keep track on what I have done and to see the result of all my actions. But also because I know there are a lot of pro growers out there and if I'm lucky they might give me some advice.

Strains:
This is my first grow of many to come, and later on I plan to get some more interesting strains (these are from last years outdoor).
3 Pineapple express x Blueberry (FEM, Auto)
1 Lowryder #2

Setup:
Closet 2' x 2' x 6' (60cm x 57 cm x 180 cm).
5 cfl 30W each and 250W HPS for flower.
outlet fan 285 m3/h in between a carbon filter and cool tube on top of closet.
2 passive inlet holes in bottom.
One circulation fan.
CO2 bag.
2 gallon (9 liter) pots.
Vegetable soil and perlite.
Hesi nutes.

Method:
Plan is to grow hydroponic in the future, but since I had already started vegging my outdoor plants, I will use soil for this grow.

I'm still waiting for some of my equipment to arrive and I will upload pics when the setup is 100% ready, hopefully next week.
Plants are now 2 weeks old and as soon as I get my HPS i will put it to use.

Question: I bought nutes for hydro and I read somewhere that it's ok to use, but it didn't say what dosage to give them. Anyone have any ideas about this?

 

[OrganicMatter]

I didn't secure my circulation fan properly and when I went to work it decided to chop one of my pineapples to a million little pieces. Noob mistake, but I'm just glad it didn't chop any more or start a fire.

Picture from last night:

 

[OrganicMatter]

I'm no expert, but it looks like my lowryder is male, and one of my pineapple female. No signs on third plant, but it's feminized so yeah...
Would this be a cross worth trying? Pineapple express x blueberry x Lowryder.

 

[OrganicMatter]

Upgraded my closet today. Installed HPS with cool tube. Will connect carbon filter tomorrow. Temp is around 24-25 C but will probably be higher in daytime.

 

[OrganicMatter]

Day 30

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Looks very nice
I think you should use those CFL's for additional lighting and get some more watts in there and take some bigger buds out

 

[OrganicMatter]

Thank you! Gonna check out your 250W grow as well. I've been searching for some more 250W journals, but can't find that many.
Would that help the buds? I thought CFL's mostly helped with the leaves and stems? Or do you mean the 2700K CFL's? I might try one and see what happens, temps are a bit high during the days though, might get too hot.

I've had some smell issues the last few days and I've tried just about everything. I know I have negative pressure, I've sealed up any possible leakage, I've bought some air fresheners and I've increased the fan speed, but it's still there every time I come home. I think my carbon filter is the problem. It's one year old but I've only used it for a total of 2 months. Can the carbon filter become useless by just laying in a closet? Anyways, I've order a new one and it should arrive in a few days.

I've also had a slight problem with some leaves curling like claws at the top of the plant. I read somewhere that this might be an effect from overfeeding Nitrogen. It's a bit strange because I've only fed it twice with 1/2 dosage. I flushed it two days ago but can't really see any change. I guess the soil might still have a lot of nutrition in it?

Yesterday I read a lot of cool stuff about defoliation and I decided to try it out. I couldn't find much info for it on autos, but what the heck. I love experimenting. I regret I did it on both plants though. Here's some before and after pics of the girls

Before:

After:

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Yeah not many people grow with 250 w HPS, there's a couple of vids on utube with people doing quite well with it.

My first 2 auto's did that curly thing aswell but they were in ''hot'' soil so that might have been the problem, not a big one though.

I read a long article about the effects of warm/cold and colour spectre but whether it be warm or cold some more light might help them grow more and better buds.

Is it hot in your closet? - if not you could lower your light a little closer to the plants as long as it doesn't feel too hot on the back of your hand it's probably not too hot for the plants

Looking forward to see what the defoliation does for the plants, I just tucked the fanleaves under the bud sites.

Hope your new carbon filter does the trick - check link below (if you haven't already) there might be something about your smell issue - or any other issue you might encounter.

How to Grow Marijuana Everything You Need to Know

 

[OrganicMatter]

Yeah, I don't think the curling is a big issue atm, will just wait with the nutes and hope they straighten out.
The temperature varies between 25C to 30C. And my space is quite small, so not sure if more than 250W would benefit the grow.
I do however have this 130W led light that I made 2 years ago.

Would like to try it out but I doubt it will be better than the HPS. I might change the lights for some cold white leds and use it for veg later on. Led technology is constantly improving, and I have seen a lot of grow logs with more that 1g/Watt.

 

[OrganicMatter]

Update!
Things are going great. Plants have reached over 60 cm (24") and are producing tiny buds here and there. I got my new carbon filter and I couldn't smell anything when I got home today. It seems to be two different phenotypes, and the darker more indica looking plant on the right seems to be about one week behind in flowering. I can't see any claws on the new top leaves and I might start feeding them again soon.

Day 38

 

[Winno1005]

Grow looks really good man, will be following since ur a bit ahead of me

 

[lootznbootz]

Looking good if i was you i would go over kill on the lights as long as your not hurting your plants why not throw in the led with hps and cfl get as much spectrum and as much penetration as possible? But thats just me i like to go overboard to an extent on something if i can to make up for my shortcomings elsewhere not that tou have any your plants are looking awesome

 

[OrganicMatter]

Welcome aboard winno!

Lootznbootz - Yeah, adding the led panel might get me some more light penetration to the lower bud sites but with all the ducting, fans, filter and cooltube in the way, I don't know if there's any room for it. it's 40*40 cm and space is 57*57 cm.

Plants keep on stretching as well. Description of this strain says they'll get to about 60 cm. The bigger of my two is now 80 cm, the other is 70 cm. The light is 10 cm from the top.

Some of the top leaves are a bit brighter in color and a couple of them are curling up. Might be under watering? I'm not sure.
Other than that they are looking good.
A lot of buds on the one to the left, and a bit less on the right.

 

[PurpleGunRack]

Post some close-ups of the leaves, then we'll figure what's going on with them.
Looks very good though, those flowers are coming along nicely

 

[OrganicMatter]

Hello all and sorry for this late update. My laptop crashed and it took a while to get a new one.

It turned out I had all kinds of deficiencies because of my low PH of 4,5. I tried flushing the plant with huge amount of water but ph wouldn't go up. I added Plant magic silica to the water but it didn't help much. I finally got me some PH+ and managed to raise PH.
Some of the leaves died and the buds stopped in growth for a few days.

Things are looking better now and I've started to flush the plants and will probably chop in one week.

Here's some pics. The closeups are from last week.

 

[OrganicMatter]

Finished trimming! First plant did a total of 176g wet buds and 43g dry. I dried it a bit to much and smoke tasted really bad so I decided to make some butter from it along with the trimmings. Buds on the first plant was very skinny and airy but VERY strong potency.
I let the second plant grow for a week longer and it had much fatter and denser buds. Wet weight on this was 196g and is currently drying, so perhaps 50g dry.
Both plants could have gone another week but I'm after a more energetic and uplifting high, so I cut them down a bit early.

I'm extremely happy with this result. The pot brownies got me more stoned than I've been in a long time. This stuff will last a long long time for me

Here's some photos:

PLANT 1

Plant 2

Brownies

 

[David Bowman]

Hope all is well in your world.

Thanks for sharing this grow with us.

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