Thought I could grow well until I tried indoor...

Hey folks, I am somewhat new to indoor growing, but not new to horticulture and cannabis. Here is a little back ground. I have grown my share of outdoor cannabis in the Hawaiian sun. Packing water, nutrients, and soil to guerrilla grows at night through lava rock, glycine vines, and Lantana bushes was what ignited my love for this plant. Years later I live in Oregon and it was a felony to grow even one plant (Hawaii was 25 or less= misdemeanor, and the local cops did not care about small grows, only green harvest). So in Oregon I decided not to grow, also because Oregon herb costs so much less and there is so much dank bud.
At the beginning of this year I obtained my OMMP recommendation and built a small grow room in my house, I've been growing non-stop since.

I had a 4' 8 bulb T5 panel in a closet already for our vegetable garden, so I extended the wall from the closet and made a room within the bedroom.

It is approx. 5' x 8' w/8' ceiling. I used plywood for the wall coverings and sealed it all up, no insulation in walls except the air.

Installed an exterior door. Now I have a sealed room, but even though I wanted too, I could not justify spending so much on a CEA(Closed Environment Agriculture) system for my first indoor grow. I thought I better pace myself. It was going to have to be passive intake.

So I started with a 6" passive intake with a dust shroom near the bottom of the room and an active exhaust 8" hyper fan stealth with a can filter hanging from the ceiling. With the fan on high the door is quite hard to open from the negative pressure. I have a 8" dust shroom and will cut a larger intake before next run.

The the closet area has the T5 panel, so there is the main area for the 1000 watt. I got a 6" air cooled blockbuster reflector and hung it over it's 4.5' x 4.5' grow area.

My first run was autos because I agreed with my significant other to let the vegetable garden starts have their T5 closet again because spring was coming and we needed to have our veggie starts, so only 18/6 light cycle was being ran this spring.

Well my autos which were Buddha seeds assorted pack looked excellent during their 3 week veg despite me having to constantly play with fan speed and heater controls to get good temp ranges.
It was so weird, but I could not keep my humidity up. It would always stay below 30% RH, people said it was a good thing because most Oregon growers were fighting high RH and bud rot, not low RH in the winter. I know that the plants prefer higher RH esppesally during veg.

There are so many factors that could have caused these plants to go down hill.
Geopots used were too big and not good a very dry room.

My first use of NFTG(Nectar For The Gods) bottled nutes and first time ever with autos.

My lack of indoor experience and stale cannabis growing skills.

I am not sure, but I did learn allot and made some ok dry sift with the mediocre harvest.

Summer came and I shut the room down and I am growing outdoor, now it is time to try indoor again with only the expectation of learning more.

I hope to find time to share and post more as I take this path to becoming proficient at some form of indoor cannabis growing.

Thanks for reading! Any and all input, insults, criticisms, and down right you sucks are welcome! Also knowing what I have done well helps too. And help with better posting, like is this post too long to help me or should I break up questions?

I can share some pictures of the room and stuff, but I'm not sure if they are worth sharing.

could you use a tent? not trying to compare you to me but when i first started i started with a tent, pro mix, bio vega, organic guano dolomite lime and got 4 ounces off 2 plants vegged 5 weeks from seed in a 3x3 with 150 watts flowering for the firs3 weeks than 600 watts last 6-7 weeks. it was one white fire og and one cotton candy.

kind of rambling on but the main thing i did was check my ph.
i made sure their wasn't more than a 10F difference between night and day temps.
i had temps go to 85 but always had fans blowing across tops and raised the light in these circumstances.
OH YEAH air cooled hood helped too.
humidity i couldn't control as it was my first grow and couldn't buy much after the setup.
the bud came out amazing and 1/8ths of the white fire OG went for 40-50 an hq.

Genetics is important.

Lets see em. How else can people give u advice on how to improve?

panick503 said:

Lets see em. How else can people give u advice on how to improve?

Click to expand...

agreed.

Thanks for the info Jonny, yeah I already built the room, but kind of wish maybe I just started with a tent, but building it myself cost me way less than a tent I would have needed.

Yes I used a Ph pen every time I watered/fed.

I working on sharing some pics and I'll take more so you guys can get a better idea.

I thought I provided allot of info for feed back?

Is my post too long or not specific enough?

I am not currently in the middle of indoor problems, I'm just hoping for any input of any kind regarding my room build.

I will start a new thread when I start growing in there.

I have pics now, but I must learn the best way to share them on here?

Ok I've read the posts on how to share pictures and it seems I will have spend a little time to get that system set up so it's easier.

Any tips for posting/sharing pictures?

mate, maybe its not such a good idea to grow auto until you get better at indoor techniques as a whole... they do not yield so well unless every single factor is perfect.. if you make one little mistake it can stunt them and they never really recover... you shouldnt even pot them on because they freak out ... may I suggest on your next indoor adventure you try something a bit more substantial/robust.

I'm not saying autos cant perform well, they can and some people will be along in a moment to tell you that autos are amazing.. well thats great and everything and sure they have their uses... good luck

I agree with JamieShoes. If your growing Auto's because they apparently grow shorter, than grow a full indica strain.

I met someone who started with auto's because he didn't want to fork out a lil change for a timer and would plug/unplug his 10 45watt cfls manually everyday. Hope that's not you

I rekon you need a HPS light mate try a couple 600w in there mate you won't get big flowers if you ain't flowering under HPS

Also try and only use that t5 for cuts and veg that way you can use that to start and move to the flower room t5 just ain't got enough red spec to produce nuggs

This is only my initial advice as I need a bit more information to put my finger on it

Don't take advice from a bald man! My 2cents lol

Big-Narstie said:

Don't take advice from a bald man! My 2cents lol

Click to expand...

I would like to know why? This question has become the most important factor to growing fat sticky kolas.

and like bigganjabud said, the hps works wonders for new growers.
Also reading about indoor growing is key. I've grown plants outdoors (not cannabis) before growing ganja and their was a learning curb.
I spent2 months of sleepness nights reading before I started and invested in growing equipment only because the first harvest HAD to be good. I needed whatever I put in to come out, money was tight and investing in grow equipment at the time meant I had to shop for groceries on sale for a few months. But I did it, you can do it.

good luck

Lots of air flow, ditch the bottles and go living soil, let your plants feed themselves. In Oregon you should be able to get well amended soil or mix your own. buildasoil.com system rules. My 2cents atleast.

how are you measuring Rh?

30% Rh in Oregon? are you sure?

Hope this helps. These were only veg for outdoor season. I grew these after the auto flower test run.


Here they are later in their natural habitat.


Jonny thanks you are right man! You got to sweat before you can smile.
I spent lots of time and energy before building this room. It is my baby. And yeah I'm done with autos, the only reason I grew them is because my family grows vegetable starts under the T5 panel when I wanted to flower on a 12/12 cycle.

Eighths-n-Aces said:

how are you measuring Rh?

30% Rh in Oregon? are you sure?

Click to expand...

I know right. I am using a gauge like one would in a grow room. That is measured at the canopy.

Yeah I've had it go down to 23% last winter.
The room is double walled and it has allot of air movement.

I am not sure why, but I think the cold air mixing with the warm heated air being blasted through a fast moving air flow may have caused allot more evaporation.

It's tough growing in a small space.

The plants have trouble breathing.

CO2 can help.

I think if you cut it back to 600 watts and added CO2 (tank, fermentation, or a burner of some kind), you would get some kind bud.

Also, a whole bunch of oscillating fans can help the plants breathe.

St. Phatty said:

It's tough growing in a small space.

The plants have trouble breathing.

CO2 can help.

I think if you cut it back to 600 watts and added CO2 (tank, fermentation, or a burner of some kind), you would get some kind bud.

Also, a whole bunch of oscillating fans can help the plants breathe.

Click to expand...

Thanks, yeah that helps me. I have only a 6" intake and it was too small. The negative pressure is so strong my wife had a very hard time opening the door, it was funny, she was trapped.
I don't have any experience with CO2 enrichment, and I have not been convinced that it would be worth it with a passive intake system.

I understand I can do a timer system and set it up to run intermittently with the exhaust fans off.

Wouldn't this waste allot of CO2 and cost allot?

I will be cutting a 8" intake and sounds like it should help. My rate of air exchange will be at least 2x/min.

I do not think co2 will be beneficial. It certainly is a great thing, but just getting your plain old regular growing down is way more important at this point. Getting some regular seeds of a decent yielding strain would do you wonders as you don't sound that far off from growing acceptable stuff. Good ventilation is important, sounds like you are addressing that.

Feeding and nutes are their own ballgame, just find what you like.