First time Grower - 150w HPS small cab Aurora Indica

Hi All -

First time grower. Not the best with tools. Documenting my mistakes and problems hoping others can learn from a first time grower who did NOT listen and did not follow the K.I.S.S rule. I am going to make this grow and this cab work, and I finally decided I needed a place where people can comment and help and I just had to get over my hangups posting here.

Equipment
SunCoast 2 Door Cab 36Hx30Wx20L.
1 Florolux 150w mini w/ connected balast. Has Glass shield, reflector.
1 active drip hydro in 2 gallon bucket.
Outtake 1 Inline 4" Fan w/ ducting to a carbon scrubber
Intake air is 4 Regular PC Fans I wired inline and connect from under the box, through the table in the back of a pc that sits below the table.
Mylar for grow area reflection
1 2" deskclip fan on the roof pointing down at light, 1 6" self standing fan on bottom to rotate air.

Enviornment
Heat is about 87 degrees after lights have been on for 6hours.
Temp coming in 70-71. The air is ALWAYS on 70 here.
Humidity is ranging between 25%-40% depending on the day.

Misc
Clone/staging area is a normal ATX PC case with a 35watt CFL.

Good things that have happened in this grow:

Nutes were a care package from a site I bought the CFL from, more of a hey its your first time grow here is an easy to use nute pack for you to follow. They didn't give me any product names just labeled bags w/ a type out instruction list that came with the pump I ordered. These for the most part seem to have kept my baby green and healthy with no real problems once I dialed it in.

Space and Security. Lockable Cab, looks like any other normal tool cab and the location I have it, very secure.

Easy of getting to the plant. Lots of room but I have not flowered for long I am sure it will get a lot more cramped as they grow. For now, with the lighting rig I setup, its very easy to drop the light 5 inches over plant, or bring it up to 10 inches. Very easy also to get the hydro system out for flushing. Very minimal maintenance.

Problems!! OHNOEZ!!

HEAT!! wow, with the air pressure I am pushing in and through this thing I figured I would have temps around 76 (which is the night temp in box) This is a side issue caused by what I think is the next issue!!

Cab was a mistake!! Next grow I am building something. Now when I say I am not good at tools, I mean it!! I was cutting the 4" hole for the inline fan and like a nard cut a 2inch gash in my forearm because I forgot the other simple rule "Cut away, not toward". The biggest problem was this thing is NOT air secure. There is little holes and plugs and little airways all over this thing. what a pain. I Think this has a huge part to do with my heat issue. It has been very smell proof though which is odd, I unplug the carbon filter and the room fills with a musky smell, with it hooked to carbon filter no smell.

Humidity.. man, I have tried 3 water bowls, 5 water bowls, small water basin (Cookie sheet) ive tried every combination of water in the grow area to bring the humidity up a little and the air evaporates and the humidity never goes above 35. is this that big of a problem?

Places to "attach" things I need. Since the cab is plastic, I had to screw in from the outside with wood screws into wood on the inside to use as anchors. This does not help stealth factor, this also does not help when I have a lot of those wierd spaces I want to tie something down and no wood to do it on.


Things I am changing next grow

Building something out of wood. I suck at tools, but I have an engineering mind which means I can come up with something better then this, I just have to not hammer my finger a couple times to get it built. How can I have a great mind for design, yet lack the skills to see it to complete.. dunno you be the judge.

Ditching the Inline, going with squirrel fan. Inline pushes decent CFM, I just could design an air flow system better around a squirrel fan do to the shape. I might use an inline fan for cooling the light.. will have to think on this one.

Ditching Mylar. Yea, No thanks. This stuff for non hands on skilled people is like trying to change a tire with a toothbrush. Hard for me to keep in place, keep strait and clean looking. I will go with white paint. I can paint.. at least I hope.

Turn the Clone/stage area into a mother box.

Pictures and Questions!! (question/comment at the bottom of each picture)




Was this normal or a case of rosetting?



also curious if this was due to rosetting?



Had to top early due to a wife looking and grabbing a little to hard on the top growth, she said sorry and I forgave her =)



Is this new growth on the left, and pistils starting on the front and right?



same question as above, new growth and pistils?




Better picture of growth near stems




I like this picture, don't ask me why, maybe its the first time ive gotten a real nice upclose with my camera.


Final Thoughts and a couple questions

1) I can't tell if this thing is male or not. I have been flowering I think for about 10 days (I would have to look it up later) Everytime I see something I think is a bean sack, it just turns into new growth of leaves. Anyone able to tell from these pictures or am I just being the typical newbie and being over zealous?

2) This plant has been through a lot. Moving in and out of a place caused some branching to get pinched or broken so tonight when lights go back on I will take more pictures of how big it is now (A lot bigger) and you will be able to see the couple I had to remove. Should I leave broken or pinched branches on? I Figured the plant might be tryign to hard to recover with it still attached so I removed them.

3) Had to flower way to early, I was not ready to do it but inlaws are coming to stay and my wife wants it done and curing before they get here. I will be down to the DAY BEFORE if I timed it right but heres hoping.

4) After bucket, (Scrog will be used on next grow) and light space I have 15-16 inches of empty height. This should be enough in scrog yes?

So anyone have suggestions? Sorry for the long winded post, but this is both for you and I so I needed to be as exact as I can to back track so I don't make the same mistakes =) I appreciate the time and helpful critisms you can give me so that I can become a better personal grower.

hi koroz
my what beautiful little girls u have there..
ur post is really damn long so i couldnt really read it all, being im so fried off this "green crack" but ill give you some k+

later
pux

NOFpuXnk said:

hi koroz
my what beautiful little girls u have there..
ur post is really damn long so i couldnt really read it all, being im so fried off this "green crack" but ill give you some k+

later
pux

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Thanks pux! Yea im out of stash so I get long winded. Most of the post is just info on the grow and equipment. Most of the meat or questions is the pics. Thanks for stopping bye

you wont see it for a while at least wait another week, when they do show up there going to be TINY azz hairs if female and male little nut sacks, but my wishes for a female

Koroz,

The first 2 pics look normal to me. I don't see any signs of sex yet in the other pics. Durring vedge and the stretch in flower dont worry about pinched or broken branches. They will either heal or die. If they die, trim them off.Blooming before the plants are mature {alternating nodes} can extend flowering times by a week or more.With proper training 16" will work for scrog.

If you can get your heat problem straightened out I would add a few cfls to suplement the florolux. Ideally you want to have 50 watts per square ft. of light for blooming. You can bloom with less without loosing quality but yield will suffer. The buds will be more airy and light.

By the way, in vedge mashing of the stems is called supercroping and is actually a good thing. It will make the stems stronger and shorten internode lengths. Hope this helps and if you have any more questions just ask. Everything looks good so far. Keep us posted.

Floroscroger

Heres one of my shorter scrogs. It is from a bag seed plant that was so good I've kept clones from it for three years now. It is still my favorite smoke. It has about two more weeks to go and is only 19" tall measured from the floor. The screen is 10" square. My aveage yeild for a plant like this is 26-30 grams.Flowered under t8 floros at 72 watts psf.

floroscroger said:

Koroz,

The first 2 pics look normal to me. I don't see any signs of sex yet in the other pics. Durring vedge and the stretch in flower dont worry about pinched or broken branches. They will either heal or die. If they die, trim them off.Blooming before the plants are mature {alternating nodes} can extend flowering times by a week or more.With proper training 16" will work for scrog.

If you can get your heat problem straightened out I would add a few cfls to suplement the florolux. Ideally you want to have 50 watts per square ft. of light for blooming. You can bloom with less without loosing quality but yield will suffer. The buds will be more airy and light.

By the way, in vedge mashing of the stems is called supercroping and is actually a good thing. It will make the stems stronger and shorten internode lengths. Hope this helps and if you have any more questions just ask. Everything looks good so far. Keep us posted.

Floroscroger

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I Want to thank you for your post, I was being a first time grower and typical basket case was worried and started to over protect my plant (I know, I ve read it a thousand times and I didn't learn) The questions you have answered have really been the ones that worried me the most.

My 12/12 light schedule should kick on soon so I will be posting pictures of the cab and the plant as of today in about 30 or so.

took a couple of the cab, and one of the plant. I had to move the cab to a table to get good pictures so I didn't take many because I am in a hurry to get back to my other vices =)

Here is the Baby itself. Sorry for not more close up, and quality like I said have lots to do still tonight so I made it quick. Will post better ones later. This is from the side of the plant, the left side as you can see is where I thought I had to remove a branch from being pinched / broken just like I did with the top.



Here is one of the front of the cab, I do not have it locked, but its lockable with a master lock.




Here is the intake, I took the light trap off. The dust is cleaned out every day when the lights flip on, as you can tell I still need to do that tonight =)



I have not done any training on this plant. I wanted to get a good grow under my belt learning the other aspects like nutes, light, heat and how it will grow in my enviornment before I move on to the next step. This plant was a test run, I just hope I can smoke her as a way to say thanks for the knowledge of letting me grow her in such harsh ways.

Couldn't leave you with a side image like that.

Had to crop my belly out of these (Damn beer belly getting in the way of my pictures!!)

Anyways these are from the topview, hope they are a bit better. Sorry for the flash on mylar, trying to keep as much HEAT out of the water as I can with temps so high its scaring me.

the white paint will do just fine.
i am going to suggest removing the in-cabinet fan which, i presume is just pushing air sideways; it may actually be hindering your air-flow, rather than helping it. if i am wrong you can just put the fan back in .
when you see those first fuzzy white hairs you will know you are looking at a female. female. shouldnt be long now.

thank you green, yea I am messing with a few different ideas on keeping the heat down, I have come up with something that might work, there is an AC vent real close to where I really keep this thing, so I might just put a makeshift air funnel from the vent to the side where the intake is behind some boxes.

Thanks for the tips, ill be sure to remove that fan and see if there is a difference!

What are those plants in? I mean what's surrounding the pots? What's the Material?

mylar, I Was hoping to push some of the heat back up with the reflection to keep the water cooler in the 2gallon bucket im using for my hydro setup.

Wanted to say thank you for the advice on the Fan in the cab. That was the problem. Its not running around 77 degrees in the cab during mid 12hour light cycle, and dropping to about 72 at night. (My house never goes above 73, and never under 70)

I did see something new on my plant I have never seen before. Usually I mistake what I think are ballsacks, and it always turns out that its new growth. I need to really read up on where nodes will grow, and where new growth will form during flower. I am now worried I might have a male since this is the first and only type of growth I can find that looks like this. If its not male is this where the white pistils will show up after a few more days in flower? The most bottom branch where you can see my finger, right at the intersection of that and the main branch there is what looks like a little bb.

hey, glad the fan thing worked out !
i'll let some of the more experienced growers comment on whether they think thats a male pre-flower or not . prolly too early to tell.

hmmm male?

hmmm male?

hEy man i could be wrong but that baby is a male! when it comes 2 females you'll see a string like pistill shooting straight out the top of a pre flower, males often come in looking like new growth. It can be confusing so the best thinkg to do is 2 let it grow, it looks like a male tho sorry mate!Prolly from the extreme heat exposure when it was a lil baby.Everything looks good tho mann im loving your detailed posts keep'em comin !


actully! get a better pic from a different angle that ones a lil confusing now that i look at it again...

I Will do so tonight, I will also take it out of the grow area so that its not showing the light tint from the hps.

here is two new shots of that same node outside of grow cab and its light.

I have REALLY bad eye's so I am sorry I keep asking for you guys to check it, but to me with no camera looks like a beansack, on camera it looks like maybe new growth and I really can't see well enough to tell the difference I guess. I can tell the left and right of the sack are new growths, but the more I look at the way this plant is growing the more I am worried I have a male.

Thanks all for any input. flowering time 15 days

yeah sorry bub thats a Buh Buh Buh Boy! I see no pistill and soon enough im sure its balls will drop much like ours at our state of puberty lol. he's gonna have 2 be choped down! don't feel bad tho i had 2 pull three males out of 5 seedlings kinda sucked cause the seed were ancient! anyways best of luck my friend can't wait 2 see some females now that ur heat is under control!

dude thats new grown, let it keep growing and wait until you REALLY see balls.