Fidel's Organic LED Lab

Hello again ICMag, haven't done a thread in a few years so I figured now that I've moved back to indoor micro growing I'd do a little write up to log my little projects and mad scientist experiments. I welcome questions and advice, I've been doing this for quite some time now but you're never too good to learn something new, and most of what I learned starting out came from this site so it's good to keep the community thriving.

With all that said, this project is in compliance with Massachusetts state law, and since recreational sales will be legal in just a few months I've decided to designate a space to grow the stuff you just can't buy in stores, mostly the long-flowering sativas that are generally too resource-intensive for commercial growers to put in their 9 week rooms. Oh, and it had to be on a tight budget. The setup right now is a 2x2x4 tent and a cheap 300w equivalent LED that I bought on Craigslist for $80 total. I've started with 2 clones of Liberty Haze (G13 HazexChemdog) that I got from a friend. They're in 5-in square pots (about 3/4L) filled with Fox Farms Ocean Forest mixed with a little extra bone meal, and they're on the Fox Farms 3 part nutes. I add mycorrhizal fungi and Myco Chum as boosts and to increase soil life. Enjoy!

Here are some photos of their progress over the last 2 or 3 months.

After about 3 weeks of veg I tied them down, they were pretty sorry looking clones so I never topped them for fear of stunting them even further.


Once I decided to flip I put them under the screen to help me spread the axillary branches apart evenly. Here they are right after initial training, and then about a week or two later.


After another few weeks they had successfully grown multiple apical buds without topping, so I trimmed up a little under the screen and pulled a few strategic leaves

At about 6 weeks of flower I was now giving them pretty much full strength nutes without seeing any burns, I had a nice population of visible arthropods giving me good feelings about my soil life, and everything was looking strong. Here they are over the last three weeks, last photo was three days ago, photo before that was 5 days earlier.


So now comes the stage when they're supposed to put on real weight; I've heard this strain gains 80% of its weight in the last two weeks, so I'm excited to see that. As you can see, I've got some work to do next round when it comes to filling out my space, but this was a trial run and I could really only use about half the grow space.

Just about another week, and they've definitely bulked up. Pistils are starting to brown, calyxes are swelling and I think they've stopped stacking for now, so I started flushing them over the weekend. They'll get nothing but 6.0ph water until I cut them down, which I tentatively expect to be around 4/20. They don't have too strong an odor, I've had to run my fan/filter a few times but for the most part it's not a problem. The resin production has been good, especially for a cheap Chinese LED with purple diodes. So far I'm pleased with the performance of this $80 tent and light, but I'm in the process of sourcing a new, bigger flower tent for future runs.

How's the harvest coming along, bud? Choppin' today?

Indeed I did end up cutting them down on Friday, which was about as exciting as lopping them at the base and turning the metal screen upside down to sit in darkness to dry for a few days. They got a good 48 hours of dark after the last flush, and they've been hanging for the last 48 after the cut. At some point on Saturday I snuck in and took a bunch of leaves off, but I'm not going to do much else until they're sufficiently dried to start curing.



I didn't take many photos, I got the first two when I turned the lights off for the last time, and the last one right after the chop. overall I'm happy with the resin development and coverage, but I'm a little disappointed with the calyx size and density, no doubt due to my cheapskate LED. Definitely something with more power on the way for the new tent.

Well time for an update I suppose. The last month or so has been busy setting up the new flowering area and vegging the next round, adapting as I go to the drastic change in season around here, as summer is proving to be very hot.
The old 2x2x4 is now the veg tent, with new fans and two more 15w LED stick lamps to augment the old cheapo purple LED, which is advertised to be a 300w replacement but probably does closer to 125. I don't know much more about the new lights other than that they are designed for horticulture, and they were free. It allows me to play around with the lighting depending on the heat in the tent and my home.
The three in the front row are sisters, and they were all actually cloned at the same time, but the middle one will be kept as a mom so I held her back from up-potting. They're a Hawaiian strain I got as a seed from a friend, and they grow beautiful flowers.
The two taller plants in the back row are bagseed females from a bag I bought recently. They've been topped and up-potted into those 3/4 gal square container which will be their final pots, I'm interested in seeing what they can do with that.
The last one in the middle of the back row is an Amnesia Auto from Canuk Seeds, a freebie that I was interested in. I've never grown an autoflower strain so we'll see how that goes. More to come from Canuk, they were part of a seed shopping spree I did around 4/20.

And I won't introduce you to the flower tent yet, but as a teaser here's what those Hawaiians are gonna do in there

Subbed and pulling up a chair. Im running 1300w of led thru two panels. Im super encouraged by your pictures. How was your harvest? The pictures looked dank.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=8305522#post8305522

Hey man I realized this thread is better suited for the Organic section so I moved everything over here:https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=351450