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Purple Closet of Love - Vscrog LED Hydro

jigfresh

Member
Hello everyone,

My name is jigfresh and I love growing marijuana. I also love the online experience of sharing my grows (and life) with you all. I started researching how to grow at the beginning of 2009, ended up joining a forum and buying some clones. The rest is history. I have made tons of friends from these pages, and not just online friends, but some we’ve taken to the real world. Hopefully I’ll make some more friends throughout this journal.

I’ve had a bunch of different set ups in my little closet. It is 2’ x 3’ (~0.7 sq.m). I live in the mountains so the air is cool all year round helping with temps in the grow space. I also live in southern california, so the air is dry helping a lot with humidity. You should all live up here… ideal growing conditions. We even have amazingly clear tap water. I have tried both hydro and soil now, and I am definitely meant to do hydro. Soil was a horrible disaster. We won’t go there.

So hydro, I have done a 30 gal DWC with 6 plants. I have done 5 gallon buckets. And now I am onto flooded tubes or NFT, whatever you would like to call it. I took the idea from Heath Robinson and made it work for me. There is a brand spankin’ new 27 gallon tank in the closet, and I’ll be using my old 4” soil pipe covered in aluminum tape. The only part to the system aside from the tank and tubes is the water pump/ hose. Gravity handles oxygenation of the water.

I am starting from clones this round. They are supposedly Headband, but things aren’t 100% for sure. Potheads. :/ They were started in soil, so I washed them off when I got them home and put them in netpots. I used hyrdoton to hold them snugly in there. There will be 6 plants, 3 for each of the two levels. I’m thinking I’ll veg for about a month, depending on how fast they grow.

So after all that talk I am finally to the exciting part. I’m trying LED’s !!! In the past I have used MH, HPS, and CMH bulbs. 250w, 400w, 1000w and many combinations of those. This is my first try with LED technology. I have been wanting to try it for a long time, but was hesitant to shell out the money for something I didn’t trust. As luck would have it I got an opportunity to test some lights for a company to see how well they work. I’m really hoping these things work out well… my wife doesn’t smoke and is not a big fan of the huge electricity bills.

The lights are from GrowEvolution.com and are 150w each. I’m going to mount them vertically on the door of the closet to blast the plants against the other 3 walls. I have 3 of the 150w panels. They are truly bright bright bright. I bought welders goggles to wear around them. I’ve run 1000w hortilux eye’s before and they don’t touch how bright one of these panels are to the human eye. I think you could go blind real quick with these things not protecting yourself. Be careful out there kids.

Because of the temperature difference with the LED’s vs the 1000w things are a little different in my closet than they are usually. I took out the 435 cfm and put in a 50 cfm fan. The thinking was too much air movement would keep the closet too cool… however I don’t like that the plants don’t have as much fresh air as before, and I’m also worried there will be humidity issues later in the grow when there’s a lot of vegetation. That bridge will get crossed when we get to it.

Not sure what else to say at this point. I’m sure you guys will have some questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. All input is welcome, I appreciate advice although I’m not quick at taking it always. Be patient with me and we’ll figure this out together.

Thanks for checking things out and let me know what you think.

Peace


I keep the clones in the small DWC to grow their roots long enough to reach the bottoms of the tubes. They are long enough now, so I have to get to work putting the tubes back in the closet. Here is a video from yesterday. The only difference today is I added a second light to the mix.

[YOUTUBEIF]ImbLOOsuUjQ[/YOUTUBEIF]
 

jigfresh

Member
Thanks a lot. I'm really excited about this grow. I'm putting up the tubes right now. The plants have grown quite a bit over the past couple days. Glad to have you along for the ride.
 

jigfresh

Member
The plants are in their tube setup now. They seems happy.
DSC_4524_zps47747196.jpg


Here's the setup with no plants or lights.
DSC_4515_zps0b8d39c6.jpg


And here was the plants right before they went in.
DSC_4522_zpsd8195792.jpg
 
ROOT PORN !!!

ROOT PORN !!!

JIG THOSE AIR STONES ARE MAKING THE ROOTS EXPLODE INSANE, I PREDICT A MINI JUNGLE CLOSET AND IS ABOUT TO START SOON, NICE JOB !!
 

jigfresh

Member
Hello everyone. I hope all the americans had a great thanksgiving. And I hope everyone else had a great late november weekend. :)

I wondered if any of the people looking at this thread have input on when I should flip to 12/12. Part of me thinks I should do it today... another part of me thinks I should wait a week or so, and pull off any extra plant I don't want in there.

Any thoughts from any of you?

Also wanted to say a giant THANK YOU to ganja_hasi for fixing my youtube foul up the other day. Much appreciated my friend.

Take care
 
I've seen your past grows and I know how it gets when flipped, I said wait 3-4 days and then flip, from the pics looks like its ready and tops bout to pass the direct lighting of the leds, but at same time, if that happen you always could tie them to the screen and make an even canopy for your light distribution
 

jigfresh

Member
Yeah, I'll toss up some pics in the morning. I think I'll flip tonight or tomorrow night. Wife's been out of town and I'm taking care of baby alone for the first time (i think I mentioned we have a 4 month old). I did some training on the plants and pulled some of the fluff from inside the 'center' of the plants. THey are looking real good.

I supercropped the tallest gals top. She didn't mind one bit.

Gave them a new rez yesterday, had been 10 days since the last. They seemed really happy, so I didn't drain the left over water, just added to it and added nutes accordingly. I'm looking forward to start flowering these gals.

Thanks a lot for the input and thanks for following along.

.... Actually, I took some pics either yesterday or the day before. I'll post those up.

DSC_4598_zps3ac033fa.jpg

DSC_4616_zps0a9d36f1.jpg

DSC_4602_zps0c9205ca.jpg

DSC_4608_zps724a8d36.jpg


Also, I'll be taking another video on Friday. I'm trying to take one every week.

Take care pal.
 
Looks good and filling canopy, JIG you didn't mention the baby but I already knew, I read your threads from start to finish and I know your story, but I'm glad that you have now a little smile :gaga: always there to make ya happy every time ya look at it, specially on the mornings check ups, I love babies !! :respect: to you Bro
 

jigfresh

Member
Wow, thanks a lot fed. That means a lot to me. It has been a long road here, but it makes it all the more sweeter.

The plants are getting really full now. I'm going to flip to 12/12 today. Really excited to see how things go.
 

jigfresh

Member
So the plants got their first dark period last night. I can't wait to see if they produce worthy buds. They didn't really get much taller, just bushier and fuller (not sure that's a word, oh well). Made me remember, Sam Fuller made some really wild movies, if you are into films and haven't checked him out... do. Totally worth it.

Here's the new video. I hope you all enjoy.
[YOUTUBEIF]9HmqgxRVFeM[/YOUTUBEIF]
 

jigfresh

Member
Here are the gals now... well, yesterday but close enough. I'm really happy with how much they have filled in. A little too much really, but that can be sorted. A lot easier to cut some plant off, then adding more.

I trimmed and trained them a little more last night. Hopefully they are done stretching. Not much room left.

 

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jigfresh

Member
Thanks a lot sahdgrower. I like to think of it as you described. I put in a lot of work yesterday. Took me the better part of the day, but I beleive things are pretty well sorted. I am hoping they are done stretching, so I won't have to keep tying things back. If so, I think things are set. Just buds now. I removed the final 'clones' or little branches that haven't lived up to what I thought they should. It's looking nice.

I also scooted the lights 'back' and twisted them a little. What I mean is I moved the board the lights are on 2" closer to the door... so I scooted it away from the back plants... they were getting a little fried. Because it is 'back' from the center now of the side plants I angled the lights on the sides to aim back at the plants they used to be right in front of. It's great this way and acutally what I had imagined when I started things. Instead of the lights being 3 sides of a box, they are more like 3 sides of a trapazoid. And it's great because the light nearly overlaps from the 3 lamps. Previously there were dark spots in the corners where the lights didn't 'spread' to. Now they are angles and shining back there, really everywhere there is plant.

I took video before I put the lights in... will upload in the morning. I'll also snap some pics of the different light set up. It's the middle of the night here.
 

sahdgrower

Member
Hey Jigfresh,

Just wondering how you like NFT as compared to DWC? Any specifics would be appreciated. I am using RDWC currently but I have another space that would be much better suited to a design similar to yours.
 

jigfresh

Member
I LOVE nft vs dwc. It's great because it takes very little water to keep them happy... just enough to keep running through the pump. The roots aren't in the rez which is nice. The plants seem a little happier in the tubes vs a standard tank... but that may just be my imagination. Gravity does all the oxygenation for me, so I don't have to have an annoying airpump going all the time. My grow is in my bedroom closet, so my wife and I both appreciate not having the airpump going.

The roots the plants get with this setup are pretty sick looking. Real fat things up top and nice LONG spindly fingers. THe roots will get as long as you let them I've found. The plant just before the drop from the top level to the bottom always grows roots all the way to the next plant. At least 2 feet long.

And I like that I can unplug the water pump, let the tubes drain, and take the whole rez out the closet if need be... all without the plants even noticing. They don't mind the water not running through them for a while. I've thought about running experiments to see how often the water acutally needs to run through them. The roots stay nice and soaked even after the water is gone because the slope is so low and the roots get so thick, they hold the water. It takes a good 2 minutes for the water to drain out, and a lot just stays in.

I guess it would be like flood and drain or something. Anyways, that's a different subject.

I also think the roots love the fact they have quite a bit of air in the top half of the tube. Not really sure about that bit though. Just an idea. :)

I love the tubes/ nft. If it's an option for a space I think it's the way to go.

I did give soil a go this year. It was miserable.

Oh, and for background I've done a 6 plant grow in a 30 gal DWC, another 4 plant grow in the same config. I did a 2 plant 2 - 5 gal bucket DWC grow as well. They were two separate buckets. Fuck that lol. Either 1 tub DWC or RDWC for me.
 
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