New BBC coco grow progress report

[Aelool]

This Thursday I will be starting week seven of my first serious grow ever in the new grow room I built specifically for the purpose. The room is five feet by ten on the second story of an out-building. It is completely insulated, sealed, ventilated to the outside with the air filtered through activated charcoal. I have a light lock curtain hung inside the locking door, so you cannot see, hear or smell anything related to the grow. I bought the quietest fan I could find and since I don't have an enormous amount of cubic space in the grow room, I can run the fan on low and get complete cooling of the light hood and turnover of air without transmitting any sound outside of the room. For now everything is vented to the attic space but I plan on modifying the exhaust and intake in order to heat the building this winter.

For water I used a food-grade white plastic 55 gallon barrel in the room that I fill with the hose as I need to. I have a Harbor Freight hand operated barrel pump to dispense water as I need it. Since August 1 I've used about 40 gallons of water.

I got six Big Buddha's Cheese clones on August 1, still in their starter pots and all showing great starter roots. They had been fed nothing and leaf-watered once. I am using a 50/50 mix of coco coir and pearlite, and it drains exceedingly well while retaining moisture. With this mix it is impossible to over water the plants. I planted them in 1 gallon nursery pots and started them on General Hydroponic's Flora Series nutrients. Initially I had them under a four bulb flourescent light and sitting in a drain tray to a bucket on the floor. I have been mixing nutes one gallon at a time from the beginning.

I started them out using flood, drain and recycle until half of the volume of the nutrients was used, then mix up a fresh batch. The plants did extremely well and I finished veging them under a 400 Watt MH bulb. Now that I know how hearty this species is I will put them under 400 watts from the start.

I built a drain table to put the pots in, that has a sink drain in it to a plastic catch basin underneath. Once the plants went into the table I converted to drain-to-waste. I veged everyone through week five on a 18/6 photoperiod, then transplanted everyone up to 3 gallon pots, switched to bloom nutrient formula, went to a 12/12 photo period and triggered the bloom. When they went into the three gallon pots I also began some gentle LST bending and securing, and that has worked out extremely well with multiple tops on all of the plants.

So bloom has been underway for about ten days, and with the LST and some selective pruning I've managed to get 7-8 heads on all six plants. I use bamboo skewers to help bend the side branches out into the clear spaces, and they readily fill in the 4x4 light footprint of the hood.

I took a rough census yesterday and counted over 240 flowers on six plants. The best ones are on top of course but all of them are quite round, and very evenly fuzzy with pistils and starting to get frosty with trichomes. The largest top flowers are about 5/8" in diameter at their bases and about the same in height. Even the lower flowers are 1/2" right now and are not that far behind the top ones. All of them are very dense and are pretty impressive to examine under a hand-held magnifying glass (which I do regularly...).

I have no way to judge what the yield on this grow will be, but I am taking careful notes and already have a "Lessons Learned" list started for the next time.

This is a coco coir grow using hydroponic nutrients, and it is small enough that I hand feed everyone. I use a 160CC plastic bolus, similar to what doctors use to irrigate wounds, to evenly dispense the nutes. I can give just enough to get that 25% runoff, and put the liquid where it will do the most good and where it is most needed to avoid dry spots in the media. I feed everyone three times, which is one gallon of nutes, then water the hell out of them with 2 gallons of water and 2cc's of Sledgehammer. I work it so that they get a heavy watering in the early afternoon so they can drain thoroughly before lights out. So far it has worked out very will with no signs of root rot, stem rot, no drought stress and no signs of fertilizer burn. I've been feeding a bolus of nutes at lights on, one at noon and then the last feeding or watering around 4:00. My light and cooling fan are on timers so the fan comes on at 5:45 and the light at 6:00; then the light goes off at 6:00 followed by the fan at 6:30 to provide cooldown time.

Under the 600 Watt HPS the leaves all have excellent color and some show golden centers framed with green. the plants are incredibly vigorous. Considering the size of the grow, 600W is more than enough and I don't think I need to go to 1000 Watts any time soon. Everything I have read about BBC says you can harvest in 7-9 weeks using hydroponics, and I am very curious to see how I do using hydro nutes in coco coir and pearlite.

So far so good, and I will update this thread again as events warrant...and here's to an early harvest in two weeks or so.....

 

[Aelool]

The tallest plant top is at 17" and the rest are right behind. All 6 plants have 7 or eight major tops and all of the flowers are developing very nicely. Top flowers are bulking out in diameter and have doubled in size in four days. All of the emerging sugar leaves are covered with growing trichs and all of the flower tops look frosted.

I did another major pruning this morning. I look at it more like cannabis bonsai than merely pruning. I've been systematically removing the primary leaves (the ones with five leaf blades) now that the flowers have emerged and are growing rapidly. The result is that almost all of the flowers have equal exposure to the light and the difference between those and the ones that are not directly lighted is stark. The ones in bright light have many more calyxs and all of their surrounding leaves are frosty.

I've switched the formula for nutes to "Late Blossom" and I'm enhancing the bloom nutrient by 50%. To clear up my previous post, I feed three one gallon pitchers of nutes and then use Sledgehammer and lots of water to purge the media of salts. I give supplemental water whenever the pots feel light and dry on top. I can flood them with three or four boluses of water and they drain pretty quickly. The bottom line is I have been feeding them strong nutes from the very start and monitoring them closely for any signs of burning, and so far everyone has done fine.

The Low Stress Training is extremely effective if you start early and are diligent about planning what you want the plant to do. Again, this really is akin to Bonsai, so if you are familiar with that technique, then LST will come naturally to you. Once you see the results it makes perfect sense. LST is why my plants have so many tops and the next set will have even more now that I have some confidence with this variety. Big Buddha Cheese is great for growing multiple tops and it really does well in coco coir and reasonably aggressive hydroponic nutes.

I'm halfway through week 7 of the grow and so far these plants have done very well. I wasn't sure what to expect the first time through with this system, but it sure is shaping up to be a winner.

 

[BigIrishDoode]

Sounds like a well planned and successful grow

 

[Aelool]

Thanks BID...still not sure how successful, but there are good signs that harvest will be bountiful. I'm into week 8 and everyone is in full bloom. Top flowers are 2" high and 1" in diameter and swelling. Everything is sticky, and the aroma is just amazing.

On a side note, the weather here has transitioned into Fall, and the temperature dropped into the mid forties a few nights ago during the Harvest Moon. That forced my hand on ventilation because my system was drawing in cold air from outside and exhausting it along with all of the heat into the attic space. That has worked fine during the summer when temperatures were much higher but suddenly we have a 40 degree temperature difference between night and day.

So, down to the hardware store I went, and $17 worth of materials later, my ventilation system is now recycling the air in the whole building and keeping it quite cozy in the process. I built an air intake out of plywood and 1x2 lumber that tightly fits a 16x20x1 furnace filter that feeds fresh air into the grow room from upstairs. The cooling fan draws grow room air in through an activated charcoal filter, blows it through the light hood for cooling and exhausts it to an air vent downstairs. The fan moves about 280 CFM on low, and that changes the air in the grow room about every 1 1/2 minutes. I have to calculate the volume in the building to be certain, but I think the air in the whole building cycles through several times during the 12 hour period the fan is running. It also makes the air downstairs a lot cleaner and practically dust free.

I'm currently using a 600W HPS bulb for blooming, and a 400W MH bulb for veg. It's a small grow with only six plants but it is working extremely well and the next batch will do even better. The real bonus is that the light uses less power than the space heater I used last winter to heat the shop downstairs. On high it draws 1500 watts, so the HPS is less than half that, but still very efficient at warming a small (and very well insulated) building over time. I'm certain that better air circulation is why.

They say we are in for a bitterly cold winter this year so this system will get a thorough testing....