Box populi

Hi everyone.

I've been studying about growin for year or so, and always told to my self:"ahh, you'll build a box when you have more money to start it". but month ago i told my self screw money. i don't need it to build a box, so i tried to build my pc box as cheap as posible. before i start big shout-out to mr. Micro and his nanomachine. a lot of my ideas came from there.

pics are taken with webcam so sorry on lausy pic quality.

lets look how the pc case looks like:





it pretty ok i think, i collected pc case for free from junk yard with everything inside, cd rom, motherboard and everything.

lets look on the inside

Size of the grow area is 17x31cm, height till heat protective glass 32cm. i taped whole interior with some reflective tape, and fixed everything with ducktape and cardboard. a lot of ductape. on the pic you can see the 120mm pc fan used as intake, in the bottom of the pic you can see the exhaust fan, glued on the piece of cardboard used as a divider from grow area and electronic area. intake vent is running on 6v, and on exhaust vent i can control speed from 3v - 12v. on the opposite side of cardboard divider a active charcoal filter will be mounted. you can also see the glass which divides two low-cost 23w philips lamps cca 1300 lux. (i know, not the best choice but thats all i had, pics later)



and some pics of divider with fan and heat protection glass.




these are the lamps, they have their own 80mm running on 12v (quite noisy) vent to take care of the heat. you can see a piece of cardboard for stopping the light go out. temps in the box are around 22-26C with lamp on and as low as 19 with lamps off, depending on the room temp.





inside of the covering piece is taped with reflective tape.



and now some pics on how i made the filter. i think pics are enough, if anybody has some questions feel free to ask.





















i have one plant inside, when i will have a camera i'll throw some pics for update, i'm running 12/12 from start. i have some problems but for now its going ok. it's my first grow.

Wow! Nice work! Real nice. I never even thought about mounting lights diagonally like that. Does any light leak out of the case? That has to be the cutest filter I've ever seen.

Mad props, my friend, and good luck.

Awesome work GP! That's gotta be one of the cleanest low budget Micro grow boxes I've ever seen man!

You did a great job, seriously. I sure hope you'll keep us updated with pics as your grow progresses, I'd love to see what you're able to pull out of this little box. My only suggestion would be to work out some kind of ScrOG screen about 5-8 cm above the top of your planter to help keep the height down. Even on 12/12 from seed you'll need some really good training to grow a plant in a limited height situation like your box, and I think ScrOG is the easiest method for little PC cases like this.

But anyhoo, once again, great job GP! I'm really glad I could offer you some inspiration and you should be proud of what a great little growbox you created on limited budget

@scrubninja:
Thanks for the good words, yes, light leaks out a little bit, but it's because of the way pc box is built. covering metal is made out of one piece so light leaks on the sides of the front panel. i have a big piece of ducktape i tape all arond it to stop light. some light leaks on the back, but the box is under the table so it is very discreet. my girlfriend comes every night and she never noticed a thing, so it's working so far. lights are mounted diagonally because it was they didn't fit in any other position, but i think light is evenly distributed this way. filter is nice, and really simple to build but only problem is that the filter is glued, so when the active charcoal stops to work, i'll have to tear everything down. that's something i'll have to improve for my next grow.

@ Mr. Micro:
Hi! it's really an honor that you think that way of my box, i hoped you'll come to my thread and check it out. when i took the pics the box was still in construction, i'll try to make some photos so you can see my little baby (hopefully female baby) and fully operating box. i planned to build scrog screen from the beginning but had some problems with germinating seeds so i didn't hurry too much with building it, and i was tired a little bit because i didn't sleep normally 5 nights in a row, when everybody fell a sleep i started to work. but i have to start building it now. thing is, i dont know when to put the plant under scrog screen, at what size of the plant? well, first i'll try to post some pics as soon as posible, so you can see where i'm now.

thanks for the feedback people, i'll try posting new pics as soon as possible. Bye!

edit: i found a pic of operating box with lamps on so you can see the light leakage. i think this was taken before i mounted that cardboard in front of that 80mm fan used to cool lamps so it's a little bit better now, but you can see where it leaks and that big piece of ducktape i was talking about.

Hi!

Got camera and just made some pics, so please check them out and give me some advices... plant is on water only, no nutes, watered every second day with cca 1,5 deciliter of water, 17 days old, 12/12 from start. plant is 10cm high. those two damaged leaves were bitten by my cat while i was fetching water, so they are in not so good condition. but who could blame him, he is really really curious cat. but on the good side, new leaves are in much better condition, and i've learned my lesson: never leave your plant alone, the cat will eat it.

the plant stretched when it started growing, but i raised it so it nearer to the lights, so now it's much better now, any advice on that issue?


here are the pics of the box with lamps on:






and some pics of the plant... please let it be female, please...
















i've got three questions:

when to start feed them with some nutrients?
when to put it under scrog?
when i will be able to determine sex?

any other advice will be helpful if you see any problems i dont see...
thanks for watching, see you all soon!

Update time!

Update time!


Hi folks...box populi continues... it's been four days since my last update so this is day 21 since my little baby sprouted. i made some pics so look at them and see how's my grow going... i watered them twice, cca 1,5 dcl of water.











i found some nice wire today, and i'll be building a scrog screen tommorow...

bye!!!

Hey man nice little set up! Thats cool the way you have it I like your ideas. But I just wanted to let you know a Scrog is when you veg a plant until you get a lot of bud sites from off shoots that grow in between the leaf noads some people top the plant to get more shoots some people do low stress training there are a million ways to grow pot and to each his own but going 12/12 from seed I would think you would be looking for a budcycle. But I am not a know it all and maybe you know some stuff I don't. are you making a budclycle type plant and want to hold it down horizontally to get more light from a flat canopy? good luck with your plant I hope you get a female you should know in the next week. peace

12/12 from seed. pinch the newest little set in the very middle two will grow pinch those two 4 will grow etc. but don't stress it to much

think them pic where 2weeks ago. i like to top very young. gives more main stems later on. peace

Gday ganj. I skimmed back up the post but I don't think you've mentioned what medium/potting mix/nutes you're using, but I guess it's a hydro medium?

When to scrog it? I'm on my first scrog now and I used a cutting. But essentially I started feeding (hydro nutes) and vegged for about 2 weeks, after the roots had taken well (that took about 2 weeks too) then added the screen and went 12/12 a day or two after, and continued training. The 2 weeks is only a figure. It might have been 3 but it's not important because:

What you're trying to do is grow and pre-train the plant so it will cover around one half to three quarters of your screen, when you do actually put the screen in. This depends on a lot of things like the stretchiness of the strain, and indeed, the strain. The stretch will hopefully fill the rest of the screen.

So in short, scrog it when the plant is the right size, but start training well beforehand. I noticed most, if not all, go 12/12 from seed though so.... maybe it's all different for you. From cutting at least, I am very glad I vegged it and I still have many inches of unused height and unfilled scrog squares.

Your plant is looking great so far! I would perhaps think about cutting the tip off after three sets of multi-pronged leaves form, and after that, crush and bend the stems where you need them. Should get something like:



I probably shouldn't be taking it out of it's "cage" so late but that was the last time! I paid $8 for a small modular wire screen box/rack kit that can be rearranged into lots of arrangements. It's perfect for scrog screen, has a lot of strength but easy to cut, is white, and will supply screen for up to 10 cases.

Only my opinion of course, but I think if you used bits of wire as a screen, it would kind of bring down the professional look of the whole thing. No offense to the wire users out there! I like the clean clinical look achieved with a good screen and they feel pretty solid.



Not sure about seeing the sex since mine was known female, but I think it's a few weeks under 12/12? Maybe someone has a more accurate answer.

Good luck with it all!

Hi people, i'm in a little hurry so just a quick response:

@Georgiagreen: thanks for the feedback! i'm new to this whole growing thingy so i really dunno what a budcycle plant is...but, general idea is to do something like mr micro did in his nanomachine... force the plant to grow in a u-shape through the scrog screen... but yes.. i wanna mak a flat canopy so the plant gets more light and not to allow it to grow too high (height of my growing chamber is around 30 cm)... but anyway, thanks for the intro to scrogging, anything new i learn is precious to me

@wishbone420... hey man, nice lookin plant you got there. hope you get some nice smoke out of it... I'm kinda nervous with damaging my plant in any way cause i don't wanna ruin anything, for my first grow I'll go simple, but ready for some pinching in my next grow. I'm still reading about different growing tehniques so i have a lot of time till then... anyhow, thanks for the props, hope you'll come and check how's my baby doing...

@scrubninja well, i'm using Substral terra magma (ph 5-6,5) soil (pre-mixed with some lava granulate)mixed with some ?(well dunno how you call it on english but that white foamy thing used for protecting stuff in transport but i grinded it so it's in small pieces and mixed it with soil, i hope you now what i'm talking about)... i water it with normal tap water, but i let it stay in an open canister so all the bad stuff evaporates from it and let it warm to room temp. well, i like clean and clinical look, but i couldn't find something like your scrog net, so i made my own trashy scrog net... i think it will do the thing but it look like a disaster here's the pic:



yeah, i know, it looks trashy but it's quite sturdy and fits my box like a glove... ah well, whole box looks trashy so actually it really fits in there surounded with a ton of ducktape and stuff collected from junkyard...

unfortunately, i dunno what strain is this, i found seeds in some weed i had for smoking... this little baby is the only one that sprouted, so it will be a suprise! we'll see, maybe it's some interesting strain... and yeah, i started with 12/12 from start... i'll let my baby one more day in peace and tomorrow i'll start scroging it...

thanks people for the props, i'll think a litlle bit more about that whole topping idea, maybe i'll do it but i need to learn about it in more detail before i start to cut my plant...

Wazaaa!!

well,ispent last two days making improvements to my box cause i felt like my box needed more light and better protection of the plant from fans so here are some pics with short description on what i did so far... i plan to work on light-proofing the box in next week or so... it's day 26. since the plant sprouted, watered with cca 2,5dcl of tap water every two days... sex still unknown.



pic 1.

i added another 23 watt low cost phillips lamp, dunno is it 2700k or 6500k or what, but they worked so far... its aditional cca 1150 lumen, making it 3450 llumens total on 527cm2, if i calculated it right...









metal net covering was mounted on vents and intake holes to prevent from dusty stuff flying in over the plants or on lamps.







that's the plant under the scrog net... when it grows a little bit i plan to bend her through next wire square and try to achieve a u-shaped plant.

that's it folks, till next time

ganjaPeople

Lookin' good mate!

I love that funky ScrOG screen, all those twisty multi colored wires kinda make my head spin just lookin' at em. Must have been fun to put together

Anyhoo, plant is lookin' great but based on the experiences I've had ScrOG'ing in PC cases I'd suggest just continuing to train the main stem underneath the screen rather than weaving it through. It will make further training much easier later down the line and won't put so much stress on the stem I think.

But hey, plenty of people have had good success weaving the stem into the screen so if that's what you want to try than no worries. There's no one right or wrong way to grow great weed

And as far as topping or pinching or any of that other stuff goes... I never really saw the need to mutilate a plant to get it to fit in any specific space, LST or ScrOG always seemed to do the job just fine and never caused the plant any harm in the process. I mean, I know it's just a plant but still... I guess I always felt like if you wanted something to be good to you and give you good things you probably shouldn't go needlessly hurting the poor thing.

But like I said earlier, there's no real one right way to grow great weed so if you want to experiment with odd pruning and training methods than feel free to give it a go.


Anyhoo, lookin' great and keep up the good work mate! I'll be watchin'




(P.S. ---> might want to wrap those light sockets and the board that they're held to with some duct tape rather than electrical tape. I think it would hold better and pose less risk of having the light socket come loose and fall down after prolonged exposure to the heat from your CFLs. Just a friendly tip ya know. )

@mr.micro... thanks, man, i really like to hear your opinion... and, yes, it was quite fun to make my srceen, rolled my self a joint, and started to play with wire a little bit to see how i'll do it... it took around half an hour to build. well, i decided to put the plant under the scrog (done) and replace the electrical tape with duck tape to hold lamps (as soonas i get some duck tape).

well, as much as i respect mr micro opinion, this post is here beacuse another thing... new lamp really made the diference and the plant looks nicer already and it started to smell and the filter works!! yeeeey!

well, new lamp and workin filter is really cool, but there is another reason for this post to be here... my little baby is in fact a girl... at least i think so... and i'm fckin really happy about it!!!! please tell me am i right, here's the pic:



here are some pics on how the whole plant is going:





well, that's it... i'm going to sleep now!

till next time,

ganjaPeople

ganjaPeople said:

and i'm fckin really happy about it!!!! please tell me am i right, here's the pic:

Click to expand...

Yep, you are right, that's definitely a female !

Congratulations ganjaPeople yes that is a girl just watch out for it being herm I have had those They show you the goods then they start making both. But those are few and far in between. I would say your gonna be making some sensamelia flowers!

Coming along great! Is she any particular strain?

@ScrubNinja:Unfortunately i dunno, most likley it's some outdoor strain from south of europe, balkan area...

Thanks greenman and georgia green, for now only female flowers have shown up, it day 29. since the plant sprouted, no nutes. well there's nothing really new, i'll just post some pics.










till nex time,

ganjaPeople

just a quick photo update on how the things are going:
















till next time,

ganjaPeople

Hi people!

well, things are going in a good direction, it's something like day 36. since the plant sprouted, if i calculated it right. added cca 15 drops of Compo nutes with guano, N 4% P 5% K 6% and some microelements... here are the pics:












that's all folks, c u soon!

Outstanding grow.... i did one as well, but i gave it a couple of weeks for veg and today i put it to 12/12...

I´ll be around... take care and congratulations

Cheers !