Twist1
Active member
So I am finally getting around to documenting my current grow. I previously grew one round of AK47 about 10 years ago, but that ended up in the hands of the po po - kinda funny story, but i can't be bothered to tell it right now. I just started growing again about a year ago, and have (for the most part) been self-sufficient ever since!
I would like to start by saying thanks to everyone here for the massive amount of information and inspiration. Without even posting, I read so much in the first few months I was here, and learned so so much. I hope in turn to help some others along the way, as I continue to learn more about how to grow this wonderful plant. It has been a beautiful journey so far.
So I should initially explain that I live in a place where it is very difficult to source many of the types of gardening products that many of you guys take for granted. There are no Hydro stores, and even garden/nursery type stores stock a very limited inventory of products. I am therefore somewhat limited in my options. I am also rather frugal in nature, and take pride in how cheaply/efficiently I can do things. I am also committed to doing as much recycling/repurposing of resources as possible, and keeping my grow as organic as possible - as the situation allows. So far I learned that it is difficult to maintain the organic system if your pots are small - so i have been forced to supplement with feeding salt based fertilisers so far. Since I do not have much space to accommodate large pots, this is kind of inevitable I guess. Where i do feed with ferts I tend to feed on the light side of the scale, and prefer my plants to be a little underfed rather than overfed. No doubt this will be evident from my pictures lol.
Anyway... I started again last year by chucking a few bagseeds into some dirt out on my balcony. I did a few rounds like that, and got some ok smoke. But since I live in the tropics, most of the year plants will go straight into flower without vegging. So, next I built a minifridge setup so that I could veg plants before I put them outside, and subsequently grow bigger plants. The fridge also gave me the added flexibility of being able to bring the plants in on a rainy day etc. The original setup consisted of about 160w of CFLs at the top, and a couple of PC fans at the top for exhaust and air circulation. It worked pretty well and temps remained a degree or 2 above my (rather high) ambient temps.
I have since modded the fridge, but here it is in it's original incarnation.
Although I loved growing under the tropical sun, it became a little stressful. The balcony is easily accessible from the living room, so I was forced to hide the plants away every time I had a visitor, or at night to avoid exposing them to light. Needless to say this got tiresome very quickly. So I made the decision to move everything inside. I now have a 150w HPS installed in my closet, and my current flowering girls have been moved in there out of the sun.
I intend to properly section-off a portion of the closet soon, but until then the girls seem happy enough in there beside the fridge.
The fridge is currently operating as a sort of early flowering room, and as you can probably see I decided to go vert with just 2x42w CFLs. This was down from about 160w of CFLs previously.
The girls currently in flower under the HPS are a mixture of bagseeds - mostly commercial outdoor (the only weed that is available here), but does include 2 special bagseeds gifted to me by a friend visiting from the US. They were flipped to 12/12 about a month ago.
Apologies for the poor picture quality - I will strive to improve this for future posts!
So far everything I have grown has been bagseed. I think this is a great way to start off, and I would not change it. I do start to yearn for some good genetics to work with, and a plan has been hatched for how to get the seeds over here. Until then I will keep searching through bagseeds to find keepers. So far I have only found one, but i think there might be another one or two in this current run.
Thanks for taking a look. Peace.
I would like to start by saying thanks to everyone here for the massive amount of information and inspiration. Without even posting, I read so much in the first few months I was here, and learned so so much. I hope in turn to help some others along the way, as I continue to learn more about how to grow this wonderful plant. It has been a beautiful journey so far.
So I should initially explain that I live in a place where it is very difficult to source many of the types of gardening products that many of you guys take for granted. There are no Hydro stores, and even garden/nursery type stores stock a very limited inventory of products. I am therefore somewhat limited in my options. I am also rather frugal in nature, and take pride in how cheaply/efficiently I can do things. I am also committed to doing as much recycling/repurposing of resources as possible, and keeping my grow as organic as possible - as the situation allows. So far I learned that it is difficult to maintain the organic system if your pots are small - so i have been forced to supplement with feeding salt based fertilisers so far. Since I do not have much space to accommodate large pots, this is kind of inevitable I guess. Where i do feed with ferts I tend to feed on the light side of the scale, and prefer my plants to be a little underfed rather than overfed. No doubt this will be evident from my pictures lol.
Anyway... I started again last year by chucking a few bagseeds into some dirt out on my balcony. I did a few rounds like that, and got some ok smoke. But since I live in the tropics, most of the year plants will go straight into flower without vegging. So, next I built a minifridge setup so that I could veg plants before I put them outside, and subsequently grow bigger plants. The fridge also gave me the added flexibility of being able to bring the plants in on a rainy day etc. The original setup consisted of about 160w of CFLs at the top, and a couple of PC fans at the top for exhaust and air circulation. It worked pretty well and temps remained a degree or 2 above my (rather high) ambient temps.
I have since modded the fridge, but here it is in it's original incarnation.
Although I loved growing under the tropical sun, it became a little stressful. The balcony is easily accessible from the living room, so I was forced to hide the plants away every time I had a visitor, or at night to avoid exposing them to light. Needless to say this got tiresome very quickly. So I made the decision to move everything inside. I now have a 150w HPS installed in my closet, and my current flowering girls have been moved in there out of the sun.
I intend to properly section-off a portion of the closet soon, but until then the girls seem happy enough in there beside the fridge.
The fridge is currently operating as a sort of early flowering room, and as you can probably see I decided to go vert with just 2x42w CFLs. This was down from about 160w of CFLs previously.
The girls currently in flower under the HPS are a mixture of bagseeds - mostly commercial outdoor (the only weed that is available here), but does include 2 special bagseeds gifted to me by a friend visiting from the US. They were flipped to 12/12 about a month ago.
Apologies for the poor picture quality - I will strive to improve this for future posts!
So far everything I have grown has been bagseed. I think this is a great way to start off, and I would not change it. I do start to yearn for some good genetics to work with, and a plan has been hatched for how to get the seeds over here. Until then I will keep searching through bagseeds to find keepers. So far I have only found one, but i think there might be another one or two in this current run.
Thanks for taking a look. Peace.
I would love to add Alfalfa, but I have yet to find any locally. I did find Alfalfa seeds (so that I could grow my own), but have been struggling to get them to germinate reliably.
