No-Cost First Grow

[FoCo(No.Co)]

You considered going micro-vertical? You could hang a 68 watt spiral cfl in the middle of your flowering chamber and place your plants around it, with the pc fan blowing up through the middle of the chamber to cool the bulb. People exceed 1g/w in vertical grows all the time. I could easily see you pulling an ounce from four plants trained around one 68 watter.

You need to lose the aluminum foil! That stuff almost does more harm than good by creating "hotspots". Any flat white paint applied to yer cardboard will be far more effective than the foil.

Have you tried propping your seedlings up to bring them closer to the light? I use old text books to get them real close, then when they grow taller I just pull a book out. Closer to the light= denser vegetative growth= more bud sites in flowering= more bud. Even four inches makes a big difference with CFLs.

How'd the first harvest taste by the way?

 

[kcbudz31]

I have indeed thought about micro vert and there's a non-zero chance I may try that next.

The foil sucks. I know. I'm just waiting till Monday when I get paid and can spend a buck on a can of flat white (yes, times are that tough right now).

I like the stack of books idea. I've got a bunch of old magazines I can use for elevation.

First harvest was pretty good - I'm not one of those guys who can go "hint of blueberry, scent of old leather, finish of freshly mowed lawn" but it was tasty stuff and I enjoyed smoking it. Interestingly enough, every time I smoked it my lips went a bit numb - not sure what's up with that but it was fun

I think next time even without any huge light improvements I should do better. I am working with perlite mix now which should fix a huge problem - drainage (if you guys want when I repot and/or kill the mom I'll show the nasty compacted dirt in the bottom and go SEE THIS IS WHY YOU MIX IN PERLITE), understand the fert schedules better and am keeping copious logs as well as carefully measuring all ferts and water.

Random P.S. I checked the old lady today and she definitely has a little bit of new growth off that little popcorn cola I left on there. I'm crossing my fingers that means we can reveg. At this point given the old nasty soil in her bucket, I may grow a fresh one from a cut if I can get one.

 

[FoCo(No.Co)]

I am working with perlite mix now which should fix a huge problem - drainage (if you guys want when I repot and/or kill the mom I'll show the nasty compacted dirt in the bottom and go SEE THIS IS WHY YOU MIX IN PERLITE)

A free way to improve drainage is to steal some of those rocks that they use for landscaping and put a layer of them in the bottom of your pots.

 

[FoCo(No.Co)]

BTW, I'm exclusively using 'tidy cats' litter buckets for all my container plants now, haha.

 

[kcbudz31]

Yeah I think the litter buckets would be amazing for bigger trees - they are about 5 gallons - 1 foot square (more soil than a 1 foot round pot), and they're basically free if you have a cat!

 

[Diiirty]

happy to see things are steadily progressing Kcbudz31, i would get the 68w cfl and mix up the cfl spectrum. I just recently (2 days) mixed up spectrum in veg and wow did it ever have a good effect on the plants
il be watching and good luck on the next rounds!

 

[thehappyguy]

hey man rep midwest

looks like you got a lot goin on for not havin dough, the power of a dollar can only be stretched so far these days...

 

[kcbudz31]

thanks for the props everybody

ok so i'm experimenting over the weekend, pulled a 23w 2700k up top and replaced it with a 15w 6500k i had floating around. so top is 23w 2700k + 15w 6500k

i think im buying an emergency blanket and a couple socket adapters on monday! i have a power strip and an idea.

edit: but actually if i happen to sell some of the junk i have up on craigslist this weekend i'm tempted to get one of those 150w hps lights for $42 or whatever it is........ gosh i'm so torn and indecisive lol

 

[kcbudz31]

OH SHIT SON

IS THAT MYLAR

HOLY SHIT HE SPENT 20 BUCKS

tahts pretty fucken bright man, whats under the hood?

104 watts of air cooled 2700k fury

the plastic is transparent shrink film normally used for insulating windows

barely warm 1 inch away from it

top intake

just set it up an hour ago but they already look excited

bend ova and lemme see what ya got

so stoked

edit: jesus christ i use a lot of cat5 rofl

 

[FoCo(No.Co)]

Damn KC, yer movin' up in the world!

Did you re-pot the stump and trim the roots?

 

[flat5th]

haha. man this shit is tops!

At first i was like "WTF is this?" Now i'm about to go home and setup my own micro-vert cab.

I love an interesting project grow. props to you my friend.

thanks for the inspiration!
Fifth.

 

[kcbudz31]

Damn KC, yer movin' up in the world!

Did you re-pot the stump and trim the roots?

Not yet. The awful lighting had to go 1st.

Now that I have that sorted and lighting isnt a worry I can deal with that.

will post an update in a day or two. I'm running out of veg room already though! My next round of seedlings need to come out of the baby box sometime in the next 4-5 days and squeeze in here, OR I need to make an 18/6 cab to put those seedlings and the old lady in, because I want to go 12/12 on the current round in about 2-3 weeks - that will be about 8 weeks old

 

[kcbudz31]

No updates today, camera is out in the car and frozen up. Too cold outside!

I moved seedlings from 15w 6500k micro box to the main box. The leaves are huge relative to their height, much stumpier plants than i have grown previously, normally i get 8-12 inches of just plain stem.

Main plants are good, 5 weeks from seed now. Tops and leaves shooting out everywhere. It is a dramatic increase in growth from the single 23w (duh) and amazing to watch. They are all completely different and distinctive strains/phenos, I think I have a genetic mutant or two on my hands.

I repotted mom last night. She had NO rootball to speak of. I'm serious, maybe ten, fifteen little spidery roots and two to three slightly larger one. The hard packed dirt was very detrimental to the root system. No root growth below about six inches - so I wasted about eight to ten inches of dirt.

Cleaned off the roots in RO water/h2o2 solution and got all the old dirt off, replanted in 50/50 dirt+perlite, watered lightly to get it to settle some. She didn't turn into a pumpkin or stab me with a screwdriver overnight, so she's not that unhappy so far.

The saga continues! Next phase: some mylar and 2-3 bulbs of 18/6 6500k in a Rubbermaid for mom and little ones. Then the main cab's going 12/12 once we hit 7 weeks from seed.

 

[stihgnobevoli]

nice grow, i went that route a couple times when i first started, everyone was like eww pee? but it works, and i guess they dont realize that the compost they use in organic grows is mostly humus which is a nice way of saying cow shit. and they dont realize that just about all the chemical ferts are derived from urea ammonia which is piss. anyway keep up the good work i look forward to round 2. any dry pics from the first plant? i skimmed the thread and one day you had a plant the next day it was a stump of branches.

 

[kcbudz31]

sadly no basically im bipolar and had a bad downswing over xmas, and we were so broke and i was so bummed that i didnt even think about taking pics of the harvest, i just wanted to cut that shit down and get ripped

it wasn't really spectacular or anything, pretty fluffy little popcorn basically. but it dried and cured well after 4 days on a wire and 3-5 more in a jar.

i'll be conservative and say it was somewhere between 3.5 and 5g but i know it was more, that's all i'll claim though.

further rounds will have weights b/c i recently found a buddy who has a scale i can borrow

 

[kcbudz31]

trying to differentiate sex -any thoughts?

1: hasnt shown yet

2: i think its a girl

3: the little shorty, again not sure on this one

4: im about 80% sure this is a boy

 

[kcbudz31]

The time has come to wrap this one up because I am no longer "no-cost". I am now up to a 158w mixed spectrum cab that I built up over the weekend. I am now on a 6 week germ schedule and will start doing moms/clones as soon as I can. Old lady didn't make the repot, sadly. Just not enough root mass left to sustain, and I trimmed leaves too heavily at harvest.

Starting a new thread today!