Thursday's Soilless Sour Stomper & Chilies Grow, 2019

xthursdayx

420 Member
Hey folks, after months of reading and researching I'm just getting ready to embark on my first indoor grow. I figured I'd start a journal here as a way to keep track of everything. This grow will probably be considered a bit unusual because I am growing an autoflower strain (Sour Stomper by Mephisto) specifically because I am also growing super hot chile peppers in my tent (Aji Limon and Fatalii, for anyone interested). Because of this, I wanted to be able to keep the light schedule consistent, so autoflowers seemed like my best bet.

Here is a description of my setup so far:

Grow Space and Climate Control
  • 32"x32"x63" grow tent
  • 203 cfm 4" inline fan (inside tent) connected to a carbon filter (outside tent)
  • 12" Hurricane clip-on fan
No AC or humidity control, which is proving to be somewhat of an issue, as my tent is sitting at around 25% RH with my exhaust fan at the lowest setting. If I don't run the exhaust fan the temperature jumps into the upper 80sF (with my lamp at half strength), so it has to be on. My apartment doesn't have central AC, so I may have to get a portable AC unit during the summer, but that is a concern for later.

Lighting
  • 240w 288v2 Quantum Board Lamp with Samsung LM301b diodes (can pull up to ~280w from the wall).
Right now I'm running this lamp at around 50% power (130w to be exact) at 30" above my pepper seedlings. I'll turn up the power as all my seedlings get a bit bigger.

Medium and Containers
  • Solo cups, 3-gallon smart pots, and 5-gallon smart pots
  • Pro-Mix HP with 15% added perlite
I have also built a 10-gallon low pressure aeroponic box with a PVC manifold, 10 EZ Clone Sprayers, and 4x 5" net pots with hydroton, but I think I may either skip using it this time around or run the chile peppers in it.

Nutrients
  • General Hydroponics Maxigrow and Maxibloom, will probably also pick up some Cali Magic and possibly Amor Si.
  • Green Leaf Nutrients MegaCrop sample pack

Genetics

To begin with I will probably only start one plant - Sour Stomper by Mephisto, a 50/50 indica/sativa autoflower strain with GrapeStomper OG x Sour Crack parentage. However, I also have a couple of Forum Stomper seeds coming in the mail, so I may start one of them as well. I need to figure out how much space I will have in the tent with 2 chile pepper plants and 1-2 cannabis plants.

I'll be starting my seeds sometime next week or as soon as they arrive. My chile pepper seedlings are already about a week old, so I'm having fun trying out the tent, light and temperature control with them. I'll update as things progress, but in the meantime I'd love to hear any advice or experiences from people growing in ProMix HP, using GH Maxiseries nutes, or growing cannabis along with other species of plants.

Thanks for reading
 
Ugh, chemical nutes. If you’re going bottled, at least go organic and pick up the Biobizz line.

Dang, already doing something wrong. The GH Maxi-series aren't bottled, they're powdered. I went with them for my first grow because they seem to be pretty commonly used and I was looking for simplicity and no clogging, as I was considering running at least some of the plants in the low pressure aero chamber I built. I'll probably switch to organics in the future and maybe even living soils one day, but for now, with my small apartment and limited time this makes the most sense.

In terms of humidity, I figured that the humidity would raise when the plants get bigger, but I'm most concerned about right now, as I know that seedlings prefer fairly high RH. For now, there are actually already 4 pepper seedlings in the tent, in jiffy pots, and an open bucket of water, but the humidity is still sitting at 23%.
 
Also, never mix soil and hydro, either coming from or to, as you will murder your plants. Also chemical fertilizers have salts that eventually clog your lines in hydro.

Also get a mondi humidity dome. Seeds shouldn’t be in tents, they should be in domes.

My current seedling area for example:

image.jpg
 
Also, never mix soil and hydro, either coming from or to, as you will murder your plants. Also chemical fertilizers have salts that eventually clog your lines in hydro.

Also get a mondi humidity dome. Seeds shouldn’t be in tents, they should be in domes.

Nothing will be going from soil into the LPA box, or from the LPA into soil. I have a couple of pepper seedlings in rockwool that will likely go into the LPA box, but the Sour Stomper seedlings will be going into Pro-Mix HP with added perlite.

I do actually have a humidity dome and 1020 tray which is sitting inside my tent at the moment on a heating mat. The slightly larger pepper seedlings have already been taken out from under the dome in order to get them used to the lower RH, since I don't really have a way to increase the RH at the moment. Once my autoflower seeds arrive I'll have them under the dome until they get a couple of inches tall.

In terms of the nutes, from what I can tell the GH maxi-series are pretty commonly used in hydro, which is one of the reasons I chose them. Do you have a suggestion of organic dissolvable nutes that won't clog hydro lines?

Anyway, I'll probably be using the MegaCrop for my Sour Stomper plant(s).
 
I built my soil in a 47 gal tuff tote from Home Depot lol. That whole “you need a tarp and a circus tent full of space” is bullshit if you have a shovel and 5 minutes every few days. You can just buy mushroom compost from Lowe’s or Home Depot of any plant nursery or farm and feed in your area. Same for earthworm castings.

Also brewing a tea is a 5 gal bucket and an air stone. You can get bagged compost tea that you just throw in the bucket with an air stone for 48 hours then pour on your plants. I use them about once a month, plus the amended soil has brought my costs down to basically water and light, with about 40 bucks on compost and castings and Promix every 4-6 months.
 
Hey xthurs.. interesting journal. I'm gonna hang around some here.
Lots of folks use Promix HP, in fact @Dutchman1990 has an awesome journal to follow. He and I both use the Megacrop, or at least he is about to, and I've had great success with that product as well. I highly recommend it as it's an all in one nute. Has everything you need in it from veg to flower.
Calmag as you know will be essential and my feelings are go with what you have. No sense in changing now, but you could get ready for the next grow. Never rush your preparations as that leads to mistakes especially if you haven't done your homework. It looks to me like you have everything you need to get you going. Just my .02 cents. :goodluck:
 
A couple of tips on the autos... you want to get them in their final home as soon as possible. I suggest the 5gal smart pot if that's the route you are going. Don't be uppotting those autos, they don't like stress. For new growers there's not much room for mistakes. With photos they are more forgiving as you can keep them in veg longer to work out the issues.

If in HP, there's no nutes. As soon as those cotyledons start to turn yellow it's looking for food.
Start at 1/4 strength and work up from there. If using the MegaCrop go as recommended.

Most of this you may already know, but a little refresher never hurts ;)
 
A couple of tips on the autos... you want to get them in their final home as soon as possible. I suggest the 5gal smart pot if that's the route you are going. Don't be uppotting those autos, they don't like stress. For new growers there's not much room for mistakes. With photos they are more forgiving as you can keep them in veg longer to work out the issues.

If in HP, there's no nutes. As soon as those cotyledons start to turn yellow it's looking for food.
Start at 1/4 strength and work up from there. If using the MegaCrop go as recommended.

Most of this you may already know, but a little refresher never hurts ;)


Thanks for the tips @MrSauga ! I grew photos years ago, some indoor and some outdoor, but it's been long enough and the growing world has changed enough that I might as well be starting from scratch. But I have indeed done a lot of research and reading, so hopefully this one will go well. As I mentioned to @Kongfuzi the main reason I went with the GH Maxi-series originally and now MegaCrop was because I was planning on running at least some of my plants in LPA/DWC hydro, and having nutrients that would completely dissolve in solution was important. This is something I'm still interested in experimenting with, but the more I read and learn the more I think that in the future I'll either go in the direction of making my own ProMix HP-based amended soil or buying a locally-produced living soil. I just found out about a pretty cool soil company here in the GTA that sells pre-mixed soil similar to some of the Build-a-soil/Koot kits, so I'm going to look into them.

In terms of CalMag, do you have a recommendation on brand? My local grow shop was out of stock of the ones they carry, but the guy was mentioning that GH CaliMagic is the lowest quality one in his opinion.

I'm going to check out your grow logs as well, as I have some photo White Widow seeds that I'll be growing at some point.
 
In terms of CalMag, do you have a recommendation on brand? My local grow shop was out of stock of the ones they carry, but the guy was mentioning that GH CaliMagic is the lowest quality one in his opinion.
Hey brother, sounds like you got a real good plan. Nice job!
As far as Calmag goes, I use the GH CaMg+ and it works fine. It's not the same as CaliMagic but the same manufacturer
I actually didn't know there was a bad one ;)

Sensi Cal is another popular brand, and of course you can get the MegaCrop line of CalMag on Amazon ca.
 
Thanks @MrSauga and I’ll pull up and tag along! Tomorrow is actually the first watering with MegaCrop on my critical clone so I can’t gauge it yet but an all in 1 feed is awesome!

Awesome, @Dutchman1990 I'm going to jump over and follow your grow as well. It does indeed sound like we have a pretty similar grow going on, though I'm running under LEDs and having incredible difficulty getting my RH higher than about 30%. The babies are under a dome for now, so it's not a concern, but I'm a bit worried about taking them out. I may go buy a humifier soon.

Are you still using additional CalMag with the MegaCrop? Or MegaCrop only?
 
Are you still using additional CalMag with the MegaCrop? Or MegaCrop only?
From my grows in the past with megacrop, in soil types such as FFOF, Calmag is only needed at flip. Most often plants under LED's will use up more Ca during flower, so it's always good to be prepared.
In mixes like HP, there are no nutes, and most lines, synthetic or organic, don't have enough to supplement the plant's needs.
 
Hey folks! Sorry for the delay, it's been a hectic month, and it took longer for my seeds to arrive than I'd hoped. Anyway, here's an update from my grow so far. I planted two Mephisto Sour Stomper seeds in jiffy peats on February 19th. So far, one seedling has blown up and seems to be thriving, however, there are no signs of life from the second seed, so I'm beginning to fear the worst. The first took about 1.5 weeks to sprout, which is already pretty long in my (admittedly limited) experience, but it's been about 3 weeks now for the second seed. May have to count it as a loss, unfortunately. The thriving seedling was transferred immediately to a 5-gallon fabric pot (jiffy peat mesh removed - thanks @Dutchman1990 ) and is being fed Mega Crop.

My chili peppers are doing great and seem happy in the tent. It's still fairly cool here, so I'm having no trouble maintaining decent temperatures with a much more stable RH than I was previously dealing with (generally 32-79% RH and 70-80F temperature).

I realize now that I didn't mention it in my original post/plan, but while I was waiting for my Mephisto seeds to arrive, I ended up planting two photo seeds I received for free (M39 x Granddaddy Purp) in order to try out the system and see how they responded to the QBs, etc. Well, I can now say that they've been LOVING it in there. I'm only feeding them GH MaxiGro since I'm saving the good stuff (Mega Crop) for my auto(s), but to date, they've been growing like crazy. I'm not really sure what I'll end up doing with them since I don't really want to drop my light cycle to 12x12 to get them to flower, but either way, it's been fun to watch them grow. I did notice yesterday what appears to be signs of a nutrient deficiency though, so I was hoping you all might be able to let me know what you think it is. So far I'm leaning towards magnesium, but (obviously) I'm not really sure.

And, there are some pictures of the low pressure aeroponic tote I built. There isn't room for it in my tent at the moment, so I just have it out in the room next to my Aerogarden. Despite the low light levels the chilis in the tote look pretty happy! The reservoir temp is sticking around 72F for now, and (so far) I haven't had any problems with root rot or anything, but let's see how it goes once the weather warms up a bit.
 
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