First Cabinet Grow! 2x23Watt CFLs in less than 1 Sq ft

Hello folks.
I used to grow when I lived in a caravan a few years ago.. I had an HPS 400watt filling one of the bedrooms, on a pulley which was hand moved to almost double the grow area. Hydroponic setup which 'evolved' over the years into a simple ebb & flow type of thing...and a separate veg room with Flouro's in there, same hydro setup and some just in pots with hydro nutes poured into them daily..in clay pellets. I got used to growing and got pretty good at it -with the spider mites and occasional hydroponic disaster. I usually ended up with nice big buds.
I still have the lights in a cupboard somewhere but not switched on, packed away.

Move forward to life in 2010.
At least I live in a house now hehe.
Responsibilities now. So no grow room.
Untrustworthy neighbours. So no grow room.
A son. So no grow room.
Then I discovered microgrows!


OK I'll get on with it now


I have here a wooden box which was originally the case for a Japanese antique microscope. the microscope was fudged so I binned it all and got the box.

The specs are:
Width 10"
Height 17"
Depth 12"

Not much room. Yet more room than many other grows I see here so I think it must be enough!


The box!


As you can see I've only just got started. Put the cabling for the two CFL's up through the bottom.


Getting the mylar prepared..

and the final pic for now just to show the scale of the box, with a roll of tape heh.

This is my first ever attempt at this so I will probably be bugging people, asking for advice but I will try to find it on the site first of course

The CFL's I plan to just fix inside the top of the box, one each side and there is room for a possible increase to two more later.
They are 23Watt bulbs each so it isn't very much but, again, seems enough to get it going.
Oh and I just cannot afford to buy anything exotic like Lowryder this time so it will be some pretty old seeds I have from the odd bag of weed. Most of the weed these seeds will have come from is African bush so I wonder what that could be like...?

I will update when I do more...

Thanks for all the info so far from these pages, very insightful!

lookin good so far, what are your plans for filter/exhaust?

I used to grow when I lived in a caravan a few years ago think you meant cavern good luck with your stealth grow, I am going to start mine soon too.
I only have to worry about odor going to my neighbors, I live alone.
I wonder if a 42 watt bulb would be better for you, maybe not as that is tiny cab. I will be using a 42 watt cfl and led unit together.

grow1620 said:

lookin good so far, what are your plans for filter/exhaust?

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Hi grow1620, I have a few PC fans around the place and I was just going to have an inlet at the bottom, front I think and an outlet through a fan and a carbon filter out of the back/top.
It will be home made from the info found on this very site so I have high hopes for it!
I am just going to hope I can control the smell with a home made carbon thing cos if the neighbours got a whiff...hmm not good. I WILL control the odour

yesum said:

I used to grow when I lived in a caravan a few years ago think you meant cavern good luck with your stealth grow, I am going to start mine soon too.
I only have to worry about odor going to my neighbors, I live alone.
I wonder if a 42 watt bulb would be better for you, maybe not as that is tiny cab. I will be using a 42 watt cfl and led unit together.

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Hi yesum. Yeah growing in a full family berth caravan is a great fun thing to do. I was living in it at the time though and so the whole of my very being smelled of sweet green all the time.! I had no neighbours to worry about and so smell was never gotten rid of, I just let it stink hehe!
Good luck with your grow too, I do wonder about getting more bulbs or higher wattage but, as this is what I have lying around for now, I will get started or I may put it off too long..
You should do well with the 42watt CFL and LEDs.

Finally an update... Week 11 is upon us.

Finally an update... Week 11 is upon us.

Wow. It has been a while. I'm not sure if anyone is following this but I hope so, your expertise would be invited. any advice is good!

Right. Obviously a bit of time has passed since I first posted and so, the box is now being used to grow one plant.
I started off some 10 or so year old seeds and out of quite a handful I got a couple of viable results. I ended up with one plant which I have named Yella on account of me almost killing it with over-fertilisation in the early weeks (yes, I know just how BAD that is but this box is hard to work with at first!).

I have kept the lights on at 24hrs. I always used this regime with my Sodium or MH setup so I stuck with 24hours. At first it seemed so difficult to regulate things in such a small area. If I didn't overwater it I would be over fertilising it, then it would seem too moist in there, I'd adjust it and then leaves were drying/curling and it was seemingly too dry...one thing after another is what it seemed for the first few weeks.

Things have settled a bit now.

Getting to about week 9 I decided it was time to do something: Flower or try to clone and then grow/flower the clones and I would be off to a start with a mother for my perpetual cloning idea.
I took 2 clones and, against my instinct(!!) and a first time for me, I put them straight into 12hour cycle so they would show sex ASAP thus giving me the least time to wait to see what I was going to be doing. obviously as the mother was now looking nice and ready to flower I had to know now if it was male!! I should have known already!!

That leads me to where I am now. And why I may need some advice from you experts heh..

Now at WEEK 12 I have one clone that hasn't died and it is STILL not showing its sex although it has been in 12hr cycles since it was cut on the 17th of April!!? The books I have tell me it should show within a fortnight.

The mother plant is now so big that it hardly fits in the little growbox so I have been tying it down since about week 5 and now I don't really want to do that any more as it is just becoming tied over the top of itself and so blocking light to itself too. It's basically time for it to be flowered or ditched but not just sitting around any longer waiting for the non show clone!

At first the tying I did was really looking good. I've done a lot of this in the past and I had it so that the plant was growing sort of circular, around the dead space edges of the round pot. Four main horizontally tied branches and they then grew lots of bushy bud sites at the nodes all along each branch, however then ?I had to tie the growth down just to fit it in the box and so now the growth is covering those lovely bud-sites I just mentioned. Everything is crowding everything else!
My plan is to hack a bit before putting it to flower, to expose what I select to be the best looking potential bud sites on all the branching I have now.
Or would you suggest a better idea?
I am still toying with the idea of cloning lots from it and then growing them first, then flowering them (like I wish I had done already instead of trying to clone for sexing as it has failed so badly...).
Sorry if this is a bit random but I'm in a bit of pain and just smoked something and well...concentration is...but a distant memory. Heh.

Pictures!
There is a nice easy album here if you can be bothered:
http://imgur.com/a/17158/week_6_to_week_10

I'll just pick out some of the pics for here too..

Week 6 when I hadn't really fed it yet and I didn't have a clue what it was needing. It turned out to be deficient of nutrients.
I hadn't fed it properly yet!



It recovered after a foliar feed and a bit of time.
Due to my space restrictions I had to start training and tying it even when it still looked a bit sickly! Although new growth had already begun and it was healthy.


See the potential bud sites coming on as the branches are exposed to the light with tying them low.


Trying to form a sort of canopy effect so that no space is wasted:


Here is what it looks like with a few more weeks of that:


and...


I need to take some more recent pics but I'm glad to have just updated!

As I said the single living clone is just not doing too well and I need to ask why... I was going to post a thread just to ask the question but, no harm in including a pic here and asking if anyone has any ideas... I just wanted to know what might be the cause of the obvious problem...also there has been mould, white fluff, growing around the base of one of them for the past two weeks and that is the one that just gave up and died. So I am thinking it is humidity related? I also thought I may have over soaked the peat pot too and waterlogged the newly forming roots. Killed them. Like I said, any advice would be helpful.

OK here's a couple of pics of them and I'm done.
This is the one that died. It went yellowish at first, like clones tend to do but then slowly over 4 weeks it just didn't change much until one day it looked a bit sickly and withered, then each day it got worse and then the top went lighter and lighter then finally curled up leaves (which had also been happening off and on!) and then the centre/top went almost white/grey and it died and shrivelled up.


This one is healthier the one on the RIGHT that is, (its living for a start!!) but I fear it is going the same way...help!


OK I think I've written far too much already.
Phew.
Thanks if you managed to read this far

NeverGlidB4 said:

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what is that light colored stuff on the soil? are those bugs? or is that dried salts from the water?

Hi there blynx. It's just some sand that's all. I used a mix of sharp sand and peat based compost as it's really all I could get a hold of at the time. I'm really ill so often that doing this can be difficult and so I just went with what I could find in the local shop.
It works

I have now totally abandoned the idea of cloning for sexing. I just put that last clone in with the main plant on 24hr cycle and within 1 day it is looking so much better. It obviously suffered damage to its new roots and the 12hr cycle wasn't conducive to it's recovery.
Wow you have done this a few times I see!
Excellent stuff. I have lots to learn. this is nothing like growing in a room, these little microgrows are more difficult I see now. Just wanting to learn more and get good at it
Thanks for stopping by..if you want to tell me anything you think I'm forgetting or messing up on, go for it!

nice grow man.... im getting ready to start a grow about the same size as yours ill be watching closely

heavyhands: Great stuff mate. Well feel free to talk over some of this between us as it's new to me too. It really is different to growing in a large area, something I am now realising...it's fun though, a learning journey, the best kind.

Is anyone reaqding this just now?
I have never used Carbon filtering before and am making my own scrubber but... I need to know, is this the right stuff?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Activated-Carbon-Grade-Aquarium-Filter/dp/B003ELN4L4/ref=sr_1_41?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1274172388&sr=1-41
If you know, then let me know and I can order it today, thanks