What's new
  • Please note members who been with us for more than 10 years have been upgraded to "Veteran" status and will receive exclusive benefits. If you wish to find out more about this or support IcMag and get same benefits, check this thread here.
  • Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!

VerdantGreen's 84W LED Cab. Single plant Organic ScrOG

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
hi boys and girls :tiphat:, 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.
picture.php


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.
picture.php


here is the cab open
picture.php
 
Last edited:

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
this post reserved for more description on the cabinet and build when i get time!
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
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:
picture.php


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


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!
picture.php

nug
picture.php
 
Last edited:

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
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

picture.php


lights on:
picture.php


picture.php


picture.php
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
here is the screen from above after being taken out to harvest, some of the side buds have flopped out a bit

picture.php


picture.php


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


couple of the bigger nugs
picture.php


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

enjoy,

VG
 
B

blue_tick

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

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

VortexPower420

Active member
Veteran
Dude, epic. And I don't use that lightly.

Great color on the finished nugs. They get that purple to them.

They love to flop the last week or two. Just can handle the weight.

Fin awesome.
 

soopy

Well-known member
Veteran
Stunning skills man....my hat is off! I have such a thing for micro grows, they get me all excited when I think about them, lol. I need to get one set up again....

ChemD no less, lol......respect!
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
hi guys thanks for all the kind words

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]flboy - thanks, just a bit of tweaking really, the fan is a bit too big and i might move it to a corner - its taking up the space of a couple of buds!
i will list the soil mix in the next post

bobbo - great to hear you found this place because of me!

H.i.growagain - thanks!

heady, thanks for stopping by, yeah i look forward to the day when i can expand but i much prefer a small grow to no grow, life is a bit dull with no grow and no fresh weed ;)

vortex - yeah the chem doesnt have strong stems and they dont need to be when in the canopy as they all hold each other up, but you can see how floppy they are when the screen is taken out.

soopy, thanks, yes there is something satisfying about an efficient little grow :)
the chem D is still a real favorite of mine and one of the only ones that actually helps me sleep. been luck enough to try out many of the elite cuts over the years and the 3 i have kept are the Chem D, the pre98 bubba and the amnesia haze

rockymtn: cool, i'll try and put on a good show, i dropped a well vegged bubba in there straight after i took down the Chem shown above so i'll grab some snaps of that next week. after that i hope to grow some of my seed lines but that will be moe of a challenge with the height restrictions!

RD, thanks for stopping by mate! :tiphat:
[/FONT]
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
here is the soil mix.

base mix:
3 parts: peat
2 parts: Perlite
1 part: Calcined clay
1 part: aged Bark Chips (fine)
1 Part: Worm Castings
1 part: compost
2 parts: Topsoil/loam
0.25 parts Biochar

ferts given in grams per litre of the above mix:

3g/l High N bat guano
6g/l high P bat guano
2g/l Neem seed meal
2g/l dried garden comfrey
2.5g/l Gypsum
2.5g/l Dolomite lime
5g/l seaweed meal
5g/l rock potash
5g/l rock phosphate

probably not all of the ingredients are essential, i try to cover each macro nutrient with 2 sources, and i think the gypsum and lime are important, straight peat is quite acidic so the lime helps that but you dont want too much.

i re-amend it each time and add 1 part of peat back in every couple of cycles too as peat tends to break down and go powdery over time. i dont do no-till as i think the soil can become compacted during a grow from so much top watering.

many organic growers disagree with me but i like to keep my soil quite 'lean' as in not a huge abundance of nutrients. i think plants tend to take more than they need if it is easy for them and this can lead to a lower quality bud. imo

VG
 

VerdantGreen

Genetics Facilitator
Boutique Breeder
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
the other thing i'm looking forward to messing about with is the colour ratios on the LED array. it has a dial for the bloom and veg spectrums and i turned the red down somewhat during the stretch which seemed to reduce the stretch somewhat. this could be a really useful extra control. also i wonder if one could get good colour balance with 'lights on' photos by messing with the spectrum.
of course they will be both turned up to max after the plant has topped out and stopped stretching :D

i also need to run it through a kill-o watt meter to check on the max wattage. the 84W is the rating from Leoled so we'll see if that is accurate. seems like a great light though and not that expensive for what it is.

VG
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I'm a couple days late, but I'm present! Looking good in here VG. Like the build. :respect:



dank.Frank
 

Latest posts

Latest posts

Top