[VerdantGreen]

hi boys and girls , its been a while since i posted a grow diary, but i recently built another small LED cab and have just finished my first grow in it.

The cab is 18" square and 4' high, sited in an unheated garage, hidden in 'plain sight' - and this has presented a new set of requirements and problems.


you can see the size next to the 4 drawer filing cabinet, i keep a few sheets of stirling board/osb infront and some other stuff leaning on it and it kind of recedes into the general mess and clutter!

First off it needed to be as quiet as possible so as not to attract attention, which led to me needing a passively cooled LED light. The company i usually use doesn't make them so I searched around and found a unit made by a european company called 'leoLED' . they made a square unit that used mostly cree chips and looked ideal, rated at max 84watts but the grow and bloom spectrums could also be dialled up and down.

Also i needed quiet extraction that was not too high in capacity because i was going to have to heat the air before it was pulled into the cab. if the air is being pulled in too fast then it is impossible to heat it up enough. also a 4" inline fan is way too loud - so i made my own carbon filter and extractor using a high capacity computer fan, this is separate from the cab and sits on top in an innocent looking cardboard box. Air going into the cab is heated up by a few 40W 'pipe' heaters, one inside the cab and 2 in an open fronted box attached to the outside of the cab over the intake. with the air travelling through the cab fairly slowly this has been enough to warm the cab through winter where temps in the garage can drop to almost freezing. you can see these bottom right in the cab photo
filter, seems to work pretty well, i'll have to show you how it's made at some point, the grey plastic case is just to add stealth and deaden sound.


here is the cab open

[VerdantGreen]

this post reserved for more description on the cabinet and build when i get time!

[VerdantGreen]

the box is has 2 levels, flowering at the top where i am scrogging a single plant in a large pot that holds about 8 gallons. I used a Chem D for the first round.
soil is my recycled organic mix, and i re-amended it with dried garden comfrey and High N bat guano, both at just 1 gram pre litre of soil, and some compost at 5%. will talk about the soil more later, as we know that's what its all about!

below is a very height restricted veg/mum cab that uses 4 x 10W cob LED footlights. i am having to use sawn-off pots and some training to keep mums and veg plants in there but it is possible. i could have made the cab taller but i wanted it be discrete and the 4' height means it doesn't look huge in the garage. having the filter sitting on top means i can change that up without having to carve up the main box.
below:


Moving on to the flowering chamber, here is the only shot i have with the LED unit


we jump in to the first round at almost the end, but hopefully next round i'll be able to post pics of earlier in the cycle.
couple of pics taken at 8 weeks, like i said a chem D. Not the best training job ive ever done as i went away for the last week of the stretch - and it was too late to even it up when i got back, but still it is good enough to do the job and the canopy is pretty full of buds.

8 weeks, starting to fade out which is fine by me!

nug

[VerdantGreen]

the plant was harvested yesterday at around 10 weeks. The buds seem a GOOD size for 84W of LED... i would be happy with these if they had been grown with a 250w Hps



lights on:

[VerdantGreen]

more nugs

[VerdantGreen]

here is the screen from above after being taken out to harvest, some of the side buds have flopped out a bit





here is the harvest minus the popcorn: looks pretty healthy to me


couple of the bigger nugs


still some tweaking needed and room for improvement but im very pleased with this for a first go.

enjoy,

VG

VG

very impressive with the small cab. . the flowers look on point. can't imagine what could be with the little change's you speak of.

would like to hear more on the soil mix you have

peace

[Bobbo4200]

Looking good Verdant! Did you know you were the first I saw on here, ICmag-and your skills are still amazing!

[HereIgrowagain]

Very impressive.

[heady blunts]

you're always pulling beautiful flowers out of the nooks and crannies.