Paonia Purple
New Member
When Colorado voters decided to make it legal for anyone to grow their own six cannabis plants, I decided it was high time to come out of the closet and build a grow setup in a closet. 
I’m an electronic hobbyist and have been making LED lamps for some time. I found a good deal on some red and blue 100 watt LED modules, so I purchased one of each and a pair of power supply modules. Combined with a hefty heat sink and a push/pull cooling fan, they make plenty of light. My light meter shows that at about eight inches, the light is as bright as noonday November sun outside.
My grow closet is just about one square meter floor space, and just under two meters high. I plan to keep the plants bent for extra bud sites, so this should be tall enough. I framed in a corner of my shop, insulated with plastic film, fiberglass, and foil backed foam, and roofed that section with transparent polycarbonate greenhouse roofing.
There’s a sun shade/ heat retaining slat shutter just below the ceiling. This keeps the heat loss at night acceptable, and may help keep summer temperatures down.
On the south wall is a heat sink under a small work counter. The heat sink is stacked cinder blocks with water bottles in the cavities for extra thermal mass. During cooling operations, (when the inside temperature rises above 75*F), hot air is pulled down through the heat sink and out into the shop, while cool make up air enters from the north side floor.
The electric space heater (low temperature type) is set to start heating at about 65 degrees. A max/min thermometer next to the plant keeps track of temperature swings. The performance so far has been encouraging, with a maximum registered temperature of 80, and a minimum of 60.
I just use plain tap water, decently drained potting soil, and Miracle Grow houseplant food. The watering is by a batch type drip irrigation setup. A 20 ounce water bottle has a plastic tube glued into it at the bottom, and a plain deck screw is threaded into the free end, about 6 inches away. The screw lets about a drop per second through. I place the drip end next to the stem of whichever plant I want to water and let it run overnight. So far, a bottle of water every other day seems to be pretty good for keeping the soil just nicely moist.
I’ve fed it twice so far, every other week.
I have four plants at the moment. A fairly big male Purple Hash Plant is providing pollen into plastic bags for future germination and seed production. A small clone, the survivor of three attempted clones, is supposed to be Maui. This clone is showing signs of what look like male flowers.
A very healthy seedling of suspected Bubbleicious stock and a newly sprouted seedling of totally unknown parentage round out the flock. The new seedling is just a couple days old. It sprouted right next to the other, and I had to transplant it for the sake of space. These seeds were from Bubbleicious that my grandson gave me, and took forever to germinate (like a full month). I had given up and stuck three cuttings in the soil just to have a place to put them, when the seed popped.
The tall male is about finished, so I will cut him off and use the soil he’s in for the baby seedling. The Maui clone was not thriving, so I (gently) pulled it. No visible roots. It’s now in a jar of thin rooting solution, to see if it can be restored to health.
I will admit I rushed these cuttings- I had no time to deal with them when they became available, so I just soaked the stems in rooting solution and stuck them in the ground. Feel free to chastise and mock me as needed.
I have another light in the booth- it’s 100 watts of warm white/cool white LED with a good heatsink and single fan. I use it as a photography light, work light, and to fill any portions of the spectrum that the big purple light misses.
The glass jugs on the floor are CO2 generators. (Yeast and sugar water, hee hee. May have to do a distillation run afterwards and make cannarum. :O)
My ultimate goal is to recreate a local legend- the original Paonia Purple bud. It was sticky, strawberry-frankincense-skunk flavored, dark maroon, and powerful as all hell.
I'll keep this journal updated until I harvest and then start another thread.
Thanks to all my mates out there.
I’m an electronic hobbyist and have been making LED lamps for some time. I found a good deal on some red and blue 100 watt LED modules, so I purchased one of each and a pair of power supply modules. Combined with a hefty heat sink and a push/pull cooling fan, they make plenty of light. My light meter shows that at about eight inches, the light is as bright as noonday November sun outside.
My grow closet is just about one square meter floor space, and just under two meters high. I plan to keep the plants bent for extra bud sites, so this should be tall enough. I framed in a corner of my shop, insulated with plastic film, fiberglass, and foil backed foam, and roofed that section with transparent polycarbonate greenhouse roofing.
There’s a sun shade/ heat retaining slat shutter just below the ceiling. This keeps the heat loss at night acceptable, and may help keep summer temperatures down.
On the south wall is a heat sink under a small work counter. The heat sink is stacked cinder blocks with water bottles in the cavities for extra thermal mass. During cooling operations, (when the inside temperature rises above 75*F), hot air is pulled down through the heat sink and out into the shop, while cool make up air enters from the north side floor.
The electric space heater (low temperature type) is set to start heating at about 65 degrees. A max/min thermometer next to the plant keeps track of temperature swings. The performance so far has been encouraging, with a maximum registered temperature of 80, and a minimum of 60.
I just use plain tap water, decently drained potting soil, and Miracle Grow houseplant food. The watering is by a batch type drip irrigation setup. A 20 ounce water bottle has a plastic tube glued into it at the bottom, and a plain deck screw is threaded into the free end, about 6 inches away. The screw lets about a drop per second through. I place the drip end next to the stem of whichever plant I want to water and let it run overnight. So far, a bottle of water every other day seems to be pretty good for keeping the soil just nicely moist.
I’ve fed it twice so far, every other week.
I have four plants at the moment. A fairly big male Purple Hash Plant is providing pollen into plastic bags for future germination and seed production. A small clone, the survivor of three attempted clones, is supposed to be Maui. This clone is showing signs of what look like male flowers.
A very healthy seedling of suspected Bubbleicious stock and a newly sprouted seedling of totally unknown parentage round out the flock. The new seedling is just a couple days old. It sprouted right next to the other, and I had to transplant it for the sake of space. These seeds were from Bubbleicious that my grandson gave me, and took forever to germinate (like a full month). I had given up and stuck three cuttings in the soil just to have a place to put them, when the seed popped.
The tall male is about finished, so I will cut him off and use the soil he’s in for the baby seedling. The Maui clone was not thriving, so I (gently) pulled it. No visible roots. It’s now in a jar of thin rooting solution, to see if it can be restored to health.
I will admit I rushed these cuttings- I had no time to deal with them when they became available, so I just soaked the stems in rooting solution and stuck them in the ground. Feel free to chastise and mock me as needed.
I have another light in the booth- it’s 100 watts of warm white/cool white LED with a good heatsink and single fan. I use it as a photography light, work light, and to fill any portions of the spectrum that the big purple light misses.
The glass jugs on the floor are CO2 generators. (Yeast and sugar water, hee hee. May have to do a distillation run afterwards and make cannarum. :O)
My ultimate goal is to recreate a local legend- the original Paonia Purple bud. It was sticky, strawberry-frankincense-skunk flavored, dark maroon, and powerful as all hell.
I'll keep this journal updated until I harvest and then start another thread.
Thanks to all my mates out there.
