9 Strains with a 150w Hps

[Barnt]

People are probably going to call me crazy, but I really like variety. I like it to the point that I have 9 different strains in my little cabinet (24" wide, 16" deep, 35" tall). I'm running:

Sour Diesel
Sour Bubble
Purple Monkey Balls
Purple Urkle x Romulan
Querkle
OG Kush x Mendo Purps
Mazar
Hashberry
DP x Grand Daddy Purps

I grow in soil which is 50% perlite, 25% worm castings and 25% compost. I use the foxfarm line up with the additives. These girls have been vegged for just over 2 weeks. Switched to 12/12 this last Thursday.

Planted (not all were in for this picture):

Few days ago, when flipped to 12/12:

 

[guanito]

pulling up a chair bro!



those pc fans are interestingly placed.
they blowing straight up on the lamp?
and then under the canopy when the plants get large?

 

[Barnt]

Exactly. I've had problems with powdery mildew in the past and ever since I put in the computer fans I've had no problems. I point them up to aid in the direction of air flow. Even with these fans at 5volts they put out enough air to make the plants move while being quiet on the outside of my box.

Btw, thanks for joining the meeting

 

[catman]

Looking good Barnt. Good to see you posting again :]

You should check out my thread when you get time. I'm at the end of week one in flower. I think I've succeeded in creating the most silent cab possible for the conditions :] My fan was probably 5 times the cost of your lasko however. My PC sits 3 feet from the cab and COMPLETELY drowns the sound of the cab. In fact.. I can't bring my 110CFM 120mm fan above 6-7 volts or it becomes the loudest part ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE CAB.

Oh and I've been meaning to ask you where you got your Temperature gun and how much they run for?

 

[Barnt]

Gonna be out of town this weekend, so water and week 1 flower update 1 day early, hope you dont mind

Left to right: Hashberry & Lenom Venom, Purple Urkle x Romulan, Quirkle & DPDxDK

Left to right: OG x Mendo Purps & Mazar, Sour Diesel & Sour Bubble, Purple Monkey Balls & Sour Bubble

 

[ZeusOGrefugee]

nice show man, Ive done 6 under a 250, so 9 under a 150!!!!!Cant wait to see how packed that little room is gonna get with buds!!!! Keep it green bro...Peace

- Z

 

[papaja]

great work
i have too 150 w
16 day 12/12
15 plants
8 models

 

[accessndx]

Nice bro! Always good to see people pimpin the smaller setups, with banging plants!!!
I've got all my moms, veggies and clones under 1 105 Watt CFL...
That's like 12-15 (depending on how I squash) 5 inch square pots as well as a 30 site EZ cloner supplied all happily by my small CFL.
I do have a 250 watt HPS in a closet that supplies all the lumens for my flowering gals.
I've grown with multiple 1000 watters for flowering, but honestly with a bit of TLC and attention...you can do wonders with the smaller lighting setups.

Good luck...I'm pulling up a chair for this...

 

[buffalobubble]

good shit dude, cant wait to see how they turn out

 

[Barnt]

Thanks guys for stopping by...

Little update from last night. Noticed some balls showing on my hashberry and on my sour bubbles And yes, she acts like a girl, but she's got balls too...

I really want SB, but HB is at the lower end of the list so I decided to chop her and replace her with an OGxMP and a bubblegum. Those 2 will be a week behind everything else, but whatever.

Before:

After: This pot now has 3 strains in it. 1 week into flower for Lemon Venom, and the 2 strains mentioned above.

What they look like in their home (pot mentioned above is the one front and center).

And just for fun, here are my mothers and my mother setup...

Door is on the left side (its just a cut in the cardboard that makes a latch)

Inside up. I don't need any cuts now so only 1 light is on to keep growth slow.

Moms all happy. And yes, I have 6-7 strains in 1 pot. I just have to feed every watering and trim a lot and things work great.

 

[Barnt]

Few days late for week 2, but no matter, no one was jumping up and down for updates..

Did a little leaf trimming last night to open up the canopy. I really want the lower bud sites to get some light this round and hopefully bring their quality up.

Middle pot is almost at week 1 flower...

How much I took off...

After:

 

[guanito]

look'in good!
I like the multiple plant per container idea and am using it also.
no plant needs more than a quart container of soil to grow.
learned that from DrBud!

 

[drtask]

lookin pretty. you checked out the 150w club and resource thread?

 

[catman]

Hey Barnt,

I saw this right away when you updated, but coming here makes me too jealous :]

Could you post how you use your FF nutes?

I updated my thread and put up some pictures of what I did with the glass you suggested. It really has helped! Thanks bro!

 

[Barnt]

I contribute the health of my girls to the fact that even at grow #7, the last grow was the only true successful grow in my opinion. I think I finally ran out of ways I could screw up, or at least temporarily.

Catman, I noticed your new piece of glass, very nice. I still need to get mine. As you can see in my above picture the plastic reduces a lot of light (look at the side of the walls). Does your glass do this as well?

On a side note, I was playing with my temp gun last night (like this one) and found a 10 degree temperature differential between above and below the shield. I bet you have something similar. My canopy was around 78 with above the plastic was a steamy 88F. My girls are lovin it!

As for my feeding schedule I pretty much follow what FF recommends (their feeding schedule). This would be feeding once a week, and watering with plain water (or water with calmag) in between if needed. Because I have multiple plants in pots I am feeding every time I water. With these large pots it turns out its every 5-6 days anyway.

Young seedlings/planted clones:
1tsp Grow Big
3tsp Big Bloom
7ml Cal mag+ (I always have calmag def without this)

After one week veg of clones I bump go 1.5tsp grow big.

2 weeks+ veg:
2tsp grow big
3tsp big bloom
7-10ml calmag

Flower:
I've done different things here. Initially I didn't like how the FF schedule wanted to add grow big 2 weeks into flower so I didn't. This resulted in slight N def in late flower. The last grow I did I gave grow ferts all the way into week 2 of flower. That resulted in stretched plants. I ended up doing that a little this round, only giving 4ml (little less than 1 tsp) right when I switched to 12/12.

I think the FF schedule has it right. Don't give them veg ferts while they are in stretch mode, otherwise they will stretch more. Once the stretch stops, give them a little veg nutes to prevent late flower N def.

Otherwise, this is what I do for flower:

First feeding I start of slow especially since these plants weren't huge...
7ml tiger bloom, 9ml calmag, 12ml big bloom, little less than 1/4tsp open sesame

Then basically follow the schedule for the different additives. I use 10ml (2 tsp) of tiger bloom with 1/4tsp of additives and that seems to be a good number with no problems as long as the soil has no fertilizers in it.

One caution though is with Cha Ching. It is hot and will burn plants (as it did with mine a little last grow). Either use less Cha Ching than 1/4tsp (maybe 1/8?) or less tiger bloom. I'd think less TB since the Cha Ching is more expensive and therefore should be 'better' right? Haha I dunno but that's my logic. I'm probably going to go with 6.5ml TB and 1/4tsp Cha Ching.

Happy growin

 

[thebandit777]

Awesome work Barnt, I like the fact that you really take that cannopy seriously, and you get her filled in, better to take away than to have holes in your Cannopy.... IMHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I am Crazy about Cannopy's,

IF you are running 100 watts(just an ex.) in this situation, you have just maximized your wattage to get every singe last gram of weight out of your box, A DARN GOOD JOB, THIS IS A CANNOPY FOLKS, THIS IS A CANNOPY.....

Blessing Barnt, and Love from above and all around!

Few days late for week 2, but no matter, no one was jumping up and down for updates..

Did a little leaf trimming last night to open up the canopy. I really want the lower bud sites to get some light this round and hopefully bring their quality up.

Middle pot is almost at week 1 flower...

How much I took off...

After:

 

[Barnt]

Week 3. Trimmed a few more leaves out. I'll probably leave the rest now that things are spaced well.

Below--Left to right: First pot is Bubble gum, lemon venom, and OG Kush x Mendo Purps.
Middle is more OGxMP
Right is Purple Urkle x Romulan

Below--Left to right: First pot is Purple Monkey Balls and Sour bubble. Middle is more sour bubble and some sour diesel. Right pot has Quirkle and Double Purple Doja x Bubba Kush pre98.

Closeup PUxRom

Closeup OGxMP

And lastly, some PMB

 

[Barnt]

Heat Shield Corrections

Heat Shield Corrections

Until recently, my previous investigations had lead me to believe that heat shields worked and would help prevent heat build up. This can true in some situations and in fact was so in one of my former setups. The shield had provided a proper path for airflow and allowed the heat to be exhausted rather than re-circulated in my computer case. This previous thought of needing a heat shield partially influenced me to continue this trend.

Recently, I found the other evidence I thought I had that was pro heat shield is now flawed. Ignoring all the numbers first, you can clearly see in the picture below that the light is deflected by the shield at the edges of the cabinet. The light that is being reflected and not being sent below the shield is now being reflected above the shield. That is why the edges of the cab above the shield is brighter while below is lighter; as in shield is reducing effectiveness of the light by bouncing it upwards in the wrong direction.

Now to the numbers. As retarded as it sounds, I previously only had used my temperature gun to check the temperature of the two side walls only. I figured that the temperature difference seen above and below the shadow of the shield would maintain under the entire shield. Last night though I ended up taking more temperature points as you can see in the picture below. What can be concluded from this is fairly simple. Directly under the light bulb (where I previously never checked temperature--utter failure I know) where the light would pass through the shortest distance in the shield, the shield did very little, if nothing. On the sides though, the angle between the light and the shield would make the light pass through a greater distance in the shield. This caused the light to be bounced upward of the shield while reducing the light under the shield. This skewed my results of only testing the sides of my cab. With more light being reflected upward, and less downward, of course the top will be hotter than below (making me think the shield was working). Now without the shield, you can see the temperatures are much more linear and consistent to what you would think.

This led me to my second experiment of the night. I decided to directly use an analog temperature gauge to see the differences directly below the light. While the fish tank temp gauge reads a few degrees high normally, I think the black lead base absorbs more heat and thus reports the temp for that color. Green does not absorb as much heat and thus my previous temps of ~86F from above seem accurate. I also used the temperature gun to read the thermometer by placing it in the hole of the sensor for another measurement. Results below.

I did the tests twice to make sure they were accurate. Average for the temperature with the shield was 97.5F on the fish thermometer and 84.4F with the temp gun. Without the shield the temperature with the shield was 97F on the fish thermometer and 85.5F with the temp gun. So if anything, the shield might help a little, but I would account the differences as just caused by uncertainties.



CONCLUSION:
So as I said before, in some situations a heat shield might be good to direct air flow and remove heat more efficiently. In my situation, I have good airflow with fans all pointing upward aiding in airflow direction. I have lots of intake along with a good fan. There is no need for a heat shield for me. It has been removed as of last night and will never go back in place. I feel bad about being so adamant in spreading the word on heat shields, hopefully this will help some people make a better choice




A few notes: Temperatures were very dependent on where I shot with the gun. I used an average of the temps that looked good. Also ambient for the first picture was 70.8 and my room was cooling and by the end of the tests it had dropped to 68 by the second. My heat shield was plastic, but I would imagine glass will act similarly.

 

[thebandit777]

Good Job at making all those observations man, you will be a bad mofo at growing nuggets if you keep in this direction man, Keep your Focus on what you are doing man, I wish I and many more grower's were as good at taking notes as you bro...

I don't just say this to say bro, I mean it, Keep up the Good work... Blessings brother...

 

[guanito]

pretty!
way to max out a 150!