First Entry 1/29/2009:
Hello everyone! I wanted to wait until I was sure I had stable plants going before I started this up. I now have seedlings and maybe clones(they're still trying to decide if they want to live.
My soil mix is 25% Pro-Mix Ultimate Organic, 25% Pro-Mix for containers, and 50% Perlite. I can't say I'm 100% happy so far with the mix. The Ultimate Organic Mix is probably best used more like a compost and not a soil. As for the container mix, it containers water-retention polymers, which are great if mixed into the soil properly, but the plant you will see with watering damage is a result of a large clump of this polymer forming a jelly center to my planter. I am in the process of seeking out sources of coco coir.
I've been studying managing root mass, and have stumbled upon a trick today. I can remove the plant from the pot, clean up the roots very carefully, and then replant it with fresh soil in the bottom. I just spread the roots out a bit in the middle and bury it. This keeps the plant from becoming root-bound so fast. I thought they'd react stressed to this, but they're showing clear improvement since doing it. They were already trying to grow out the bottoms but were not nearly filling the space they have. I will use this technique and careful progressive replanting to reach a final size of 8 inches wide and about 7 tall. They're those 88cent plastic pots from Walmart. They fit my cabinet very well. I plan to put a total of 5 of them in my flowering chamber.
I'm starting under 4 17W T8 tubes and 1 23W daylight CFL. I am intending to replace the 23W CFL with a 17W T8 "Grow Light" since it will fit the available spot perfectly. I will either ditch the CFL or rig up one of them on each side.
The veg chamber is about a foot wide and 19 inches deep. The floor has two thick layers of Styrofoam on it to insulate against the cold. The plants are currently raised up on a couple cardboard boxes so they're away from the cold floor even further and close to the lights. The temperatures are in the low 70s now, and should improve a lot as the weather does.
The humidity is horrible really, rarely above 40, but usually 30ish. I keep a container of water in there but it doesn't do a whole lot.
Here's a picture of my Colombian Trainwreck(Colombian Gold X Trainwreck), and a Purple Haze(foreground)
Here are two other Purple Haze plants. The one in the foreground is the one that had that problem with the water-retention goo.
Here are 3 of my clones and a Trainwreck x Sour Diesel seedling in the background. There's another seedling just like that too. I've actually had worse clones than these pull through. We'll see. I keep them under a baggie to avoid humidity losses.
Here's the other one:
In the following posts I will discuss the rest of my grow cabinet plans. Thought I'd start this one with an introduction to the plants and a rough idea of how I am vegging them.
Hello everyone! I wanted to wait until I was sure I had stable plants going before I started this up. I now have seedlings and maybe clones(they're still trying to decide if they want to live.
My soil mix is 25% Pro-Mix Ultimate Organic, 25% Pro-Mix for containers, and 50% Perlite. I can't say I'm 100% happy so far with the mix. The Ultimate Organic Mix is probably best used more like a compost and not a soil. As for the container mix, it containers water-retention polymers, which are great if mixed into the soil properly, but the plant you will see with watering damage is a result of a large clump of this polymer forming a jelly center to my planter. I am in the process of seeking out sources of coco coir.
I've been studying managing root mass, and have stumbled upon a trick today. I can remove the plant from the pot, clean up the roots very carefully, and then replant it with fresh soil in the bottom. I just spread the roots out a bit in the middle and bury it. This keeps the plant from becoming root-bound so fast. I thought they'd react stressed to this, but they're showing clear improvement since doing it. They were already trying to grow out the bottoms but were not nearly filling the space they have. I will use this technique and careful progressive replanting to reach a final size of 8 inches wide and about 7 tall. They're those 88cent plastic pots from Walmart. They fit my cabinet very well. I plan to put a total of 5 of them in my flowering chamber.
I'm starting under 4 17W T8 tubes and 1 23W daylight CFL. I am intending to replace the 23W CFL with a 17W T8 "Grow Light" since it will fit the available spot perfectly. I will either ditch the CFL or rig up one of them on each side.
The veg chamber is about a foot wide and 19 inches deep. The floor has two thick layers of Styrofoam on it to insulate against the cold. The plants are currently raised up on a couple cardboard boxes so they're away from the cold floor even further and close to the lights. The temperatures are in the low 70s now, and should improve a lot as the weather does.
The humidity is horrible really, rarely above 40, but usually 30ish. I keep a container of water in there but it doesn't do a whole lot.
Here's a picture of my Colombian Trainwreck(Colombian Gold X Trainwreck), and a Purple Haze(foreground)
Here are two other Purple Haze plants. The one in the foreground is the one that had that problem with the water-retention goo.
Here are 3 of my clones and a Trainwreck x Sour Diesel seedling in the background. There's another seedling just like that too. I've actually had worse clones than these pull through. We'll see. I keep them under a baggie to avoid humidity losses.
Here's the other one:
In the following posts I will discuss the rest of my grow cabinet plans. Thought I'd start this one with an introduction to the plants and a rough idea of how I am vegging them.