Gettin' dirt on my hands again!

[Jaden]

Hello everyone and congrats to all of those posting here in the vert forum,
there's so much great work here and it's very inspirational.

I'm not an experienced grower as I have not more than a dozen of cycles on my shoulders, but always looking for improvement; and going vertical is a really stimulating idea.
It would be my first try, so I have a couple of doubts on how to set everything right.

I haven't been growing for some time but started again last month when I tried and germed 16 seeds that were gifted to me as a mostly indica cross (presumably something along the lines of kush). 10 of them were up by the 01/26 and the other six didn't make it.

They are now veggin in soil, 1l (o,3gal) bottles, under 4x 14W plus 2x 23W CFL overhead and I am setting the flowering room.
I would veg them until day 20 from emergence (or a bit more), then transplant to 9l (2,4gal) pots one day or two before flippin to 12/12. I want to use a 250W HPS and hopefully keep all ten plants, in a donut configuration; will a 4'x4'x4' cube be good? Too wide? Not tall enough?

The point would be to maximize canopy extension to use the lamp at its best, and I'm not growing trees; i'd say it's a microgrow compared to what I've seen around!
I'm not going to hang the lamp either as I prefer to let it stand on a solid support over a blowin fan; regular size fan? I've seen smaller ones on 600W bulbs, so what for a 250W which is not as hot? Going bare bulb frightens me a little but I'll do my trials as soon as the base is built.

I'll get back with some pics as soon as I manage to steal some friend's camera...

keep up!

 

[frankenstein2]

I just went bare bulb vert man, and it's awesome. With what you wanna do i don't think your gonna have enough light for a 4'x4'. 50 watts per sq. ft. is what you want. So 4x4=16x50=800 watts. Trust me man i know from experience. I just weighed a pitiful harvest from a 400 over a similar area, and the yield is too embarrasing for me to post lol. I know vert is different, as were not using reflected light as half of our source. Anyway's i know have a 400 and 600, in the space bare bulb vert. The brightness is out of this world. My area is a little bigger, 5x4, and i'm still a **** hair under 50 watts per sq. I didn't stack my bulbs, I wanted some overlap in light pattern, and the bulbs are hung with respective distance for each bulb to it's corressponding walls. I have two honeywells blowing air up . So far after only two day's i'm already beginning to see the benefits of vert. It's actually cooler in my room without the aircooled hoods. The air in my room changes once a min, and temps are staying at 78 f, lights on(in case this dont make sense it like frickin -20 f outside). I was pullin air thru my hood, now it just goes into the room. Sorry about my rant in your thread, a.m. bong rips and coffee

 

[Jaden]

If that was a rant 'twas a fun one to read!

Thanks for the answer, so first of all I gotta scale it down.
I have power restrictions so I gotta stick with the 250W and build a way smaller cabinet.

I'm not looking for huge plants, but just making the most of the bulb I can use.

So the maths that should match would be:

- 75x75x130cm (2,45'x2,45'x4,25') cabinet
- 10x 6,5lt (1,7gal) pots (with good hope that all will survive)
- 125mm extractor over the bulb (with carbon filter)
- regular 3-speed blower beneath the bulb
- extra fan (to mix all air around)
- humidifier

So off to work, will see how it goes..

keep up!

 

[frankenstein2]

Sounds awesome man. Rock it. If i can get some good pics of my set-up i will put em up here so you can see what i'm working with.

 

[Jaden]

Finally I have some time on my hands to get at it. I wanted to update this thread in a while.

So, I built the cabinet, hung the bulb and switched on the fans.



This it the extractor, 120mm, 15mins on, 15mins off.


This was the fan I could use last week, 80x80mm, on all the time. Now I upgraded it to a 120x120mm.


The creatures, the day I moved them there and switched to 12/12.
It was 02/27.


Now, I found out three of them were boys and they've been moved out of the box. Still don't know what to do with them.

Three of them are ladies, showing preflowers.
One of them has a deficiency and I still have to figure out how to solve it. Another one is quite a drinker and I've been soft on her so I guess she needs a boost. The last one seems quite fine.

Sorry for the quality of the shots but my camera is quite crappy...



[continues, image limit]

 

[Jaden]

They have been drinking mostly plain pH'd water, with just a couple shots of veg fertilizer. They'll get water once more, then I guess bloom feeding will be on, though soft.

Since I'll have more space having moved out the boys I'll transplant once more, supposedly in 11L pots or bigger, according to space;
I have four more creatures which share only two pots, and they still have to show sex.





The pot count is up to 5 now, and depending on how the last pair will turn out I still have to decide what to do.

It's day 8 from switch, temp. 25-26°C lights on, 17°C lights off, RH 36-38% lights on, 45% lights off.
I guess it's kinda fine, though I might need a slightly higher RH during lights on and a bit higher temp on lights off.

I wanted to train them on modular screens a la Marlo [of simpler construction] but I'll have to wait till last transplant to install them, wouldn't want to screw everything up with such a move.

So yes, it's quite a micro-setup, and still needs dialing but that's what I'm here for, showing and sharing, commenting appreciated.

And off I go, have fun everyone.

keep up

 

[Jaden]

Hello everyone, we're 15 days after the flip and I can quite say this project has been half a failure.
The only upside I'm seein right now is that I'm scrapin the rust off.

I got only 5 ladies at the end, and they've been suffering from quite everything: pH trouble during veg, burnt tips, too much airflow, too little airflow, high lights-on temps, low lights-off ones...

It's turning a little better now with the plants gettin slowly healtier.
I cropped the slankiest one [which got its head up again in just 24hrs] and did some overall lst to expose the internodes to direct light.
Watered with the first dose of bloom-c and waiting for reaction to decide future watering schedule.

I got the pots off the floor with leftover chips and raised a bit both the lamp and the fan below it.


@14days after switch, just before I started all the upgrading.

This is what is left, and I'll walk through it all anyway just to see how it'll turn out; next run is definately going to go better since the box will be quite dialed.

Any thoughts and comments will be appreciated.

keep up