[Kit Kat]

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping in!

This is my first time posting after lurking for a long time and I'm hoping ya'll can help keep me from making too many mistakes. I've been playing around with growing for a few years now, mostly in organic soil inside and out; after trying a whole lot of things I've never really gotten the results I wanted. Always my fault, I kept getting in way over my head. Reading tons of threads and books doesn't beat out actual hands on experience.

So this time around I don't have the luxury of yard space to get the whole organic cycle going, so I decided to try something entirely new and do a coco grow from seed. After a lot more reading I put this together:

Substrate
* BioBizz Coco in 2 gallon Air Pots fed by Tropf Blumat auto-waterers
* House & Garden nutrient line, Coco A&B, Drip Clean, Roots Excelurator, Bud XL and Top Booster

Room & Light
* GL145 4x4 tent holding an 8" Magnum XXXL hood with a 600w HPS (I don't actually know the bulb type, just had it) on a Quantum dimmable ballast.
* The whole tent is exhausted by a TD-150 Mixvent fan pulling through a 6x24 Phresh filter and dumped into the garage the tent is in

I have most of the tools I think I'll need to manage a grow like this, ph pen, ppm meter (coming) along with various ways to measure stuff down to 1ml syringes.

I've been running the 600w on for the last 3-4 days on a 20/4 cycle and not externally exhausting the air, just letting it dump right into the garage. A probe that sits on the floor under the light shows the tent to rest at about 80F, and the entire garage stays at about 72. These temperatures haven't budged much so I haven't picked up an A/C yet, but have budgeted for one. Think it'll be fine just letting the garage act like a big heat sink?

Here's some pictures of the completed set up and workspace, I'll have some more tomorrow after I plant 20 Kalichakra seeds in 16oz cups of Light Warrior! I've tried to think of everything... if you could let me know if I've forgotten something or am totally off base it would be greatly appreciated.







Man, I had to pull all my other pictures and smilies out 'cause I'm only allowed 5. Bummer!

[Endur]

Nice clean setup.
I'll be setting up my tent this week
peace
Endur

[Harry Gypsna]

Kalichakra is a nice smoke, not super potent, but lively and stimulating without being racy. It increases in size massively when you start flower, like it trebles in mass so take that into account. I got 2 phenos, one was a more airy sativa type bud, and one was denser hybrid buds, the airy buds had the livlier smoke.

tagged

[Kit Kat]

Originally Posted by Endur

Nice clean setup.
I'll be setting up my tent this week
peace
Endur

Thanks a lot! I tried to make everything tidy and slimmed down, my work space before was a horrible mess of random jars of amendments and I could never find anything.

Originally Posted by Harry Gypsna

Kalichakra is a nice smoke, not super potent, but lively and stimulating without being racy. It increases in size massively when you start flower, like it trebles in mass so take that into account. I got 2 phenos, one was a more airy sativa type bud, and one was denser hybrid buds, the airy buds had the livlier smoke.

Awesome, this is great info. I had an online buddy kind of say something similar, but stressed that I really would need to make sure I could get rid of humidity because the buds would get so dense during the flower swell. If you had a choice would you go for the airy pheno? What were the denser hybrids like?

Originally Posted by DTF

tagged

Some advice from a helpful friend online in starting my seeds (I've never done this part before) that I was going to follow. The only difference being I was going to go straight from party cups into the 2g Air-Pots.

Sprout them all into party cups. Let them go ~10-14 days until they have enough of a rootball to transfer into 2 liters (or 1G pots). They will jump in growth after a few days in the new containers and I will take a 2 cuttings from each plant and do the clone process. At this point I would switch to 12/12 lighting on all the plants in their 2 liters (or 1G pots depending on how many plants). By the time the clones show roots the plants have usually shown sex ~10-14 days. At this point I will kill any males and the corresponding clones. If a female is too stringy or something looks weird they will be killed at this point too. Now I would take all the females in 2 liters (or 1G pots) and put them into larger 3G pots and flower them out to get the final verdict on which is your keeper. Make sure you keep your clones labeled to the plant they come from ex: K1-K1clone K2-K2clone, so in the end you can be sure that you are killing everything *but* the keeper.

[Harry Gypsna]

The denser bud one was still a nice smoke, but a bit less mentally stimulating than the airy one, a bit more body buzz but still firmly on the sativa side. For personal smoke, I liked the airy one best, but remember it's all subjective, and what is best for one guy, may not be best for the other. They are both still a good smoke if you want something that a few tokes put you on the ceiling instead of on your arse LOL.
You may want to reconsider starting 20 seeds to fit in that tent, even if you only end up with 10 females, by the time you've sexed them, they will have grown to the point that they will become too big in the flowering stretch period. No exaggeration, Kalichakra triples, maybe even quadruples in size in the first couple of weeks of flower.

[Kit Kat]

Hmm, my thinking on doing all 20 was to only keep the best 9 (hoping they all turned female) and then from there turn the cuts from the one I liked the most into mothers and start a new cycle from there. How tall/overrun do you think they're going to end up being provided I don't stunt then by doing something stupid (best conditions)?

Thinking about that some maybe start with 10 as described above, flower them out, keep the best from the first pack and do the second 10 as soon as I chop the first? That'll let me turn around kind of quickly and I can bush out the 'best' from the first into a Mom then do a final show down later. Maybe an airy pheno and a dense pheno? HMM!

[Harry Gypsna]

I can't really say how tall they'll get, because it depends how long you veg them for and how big they are when you flip them.

[Desert Hydro]

the tent looks great. i run almost the same except mines 4'9"X4'9" and i run 2 600's. cant wait til it gets all filled up for ya

[Kit Kat]

Harry Gypsna, gotcha, that makes sense. I think I may just do all 20 and keep 9 as originally planned. The first run should be knocked out quickly I'm thinking so I can get the keeper and start producing some clones. I'll have to keep the veg time really short to do that, just enough to get them above ground then flip.

Desert Hydro, thanks man! Hopefully that'll be pretty soon. Mine's a 4' 9" as well (probably the same one?) I just see everyone call it a 4x4 and went with that. ;p How does yours work out with 2 600's? I have a buddy who just did the same with two bell hoods in his tent, but he has an AC and I wasn't going to push it this first time around without one.