[onavelzy]

It's a rainy day in my neck of the woods, so a perfect day to blow off other stuff and put my first try out there.

Info on the set up.

Genetics: This is a clone grow. Of the seven plants, six were purchased directly from a local clone vendor. That's where the Pose2B comes in. I don't really believe they are what they are labelled, that'd be a little too lucky. It doesn't matter really. It's my first grow. If they're not true, I learn how to grow. If they are true and I don't kill everything, well, that's a score.

From the clone vendor, I got 2 teens of Dubtech 7, two clones of Adubb and two clones of Original Glue #4.

The last clone is a mystery clone given to me by one of growers I met at the San Diego's Finest meet and greet last weekend. I'm calling it the Elefino cut. It's kind of more fun not knowing what it is. I don't have any pre-conceptions about it but I'm also flying blind in terms of culture. The other strains have encyclopedic amounts of growers' wisdom already posted. For the gift clone, I'm basically going to be a stress tester: Can this strain handle being grown by an idiot?


Grow space: This will be a tent grow in a Secret Jardin 5'x5'x7' 9". The tent was chosen because it came the closest to my ceiling height of 8'. I'll deal with the mismatch in floor area and typical light footprint later. I wanted to provide the most head room possible as some of the plants I was daydreaming about growing are stretchers

The Tent is in a bedroom near the garage. The overall room size is roughly 15' x 15' x 8', including a small half bathroom. The tent dominates the space, kind of like the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odessey

Lighting: The light fixture will be a Grower's Choice 630 DE CMH. I read about it through Hammerhead in the CMH elite thread.

The bulb is their 3K with a lamp shield to protect against potential badness if there is a bulb failure.


Growing medium: I plan on using coco medium with no amendments. I'm aiming at 2 gallon fabric bags as my final pot size. For now, the smaller plants are in Solo cups. The brand of coco is the one my local hydro guy had. I used bagged version, not blocks, and I boiled it before use to try to prevent gnat hatching, as per Stankybeamer's suggestion

Nutrients: My nutrients will be Veg+Bloom, cause that's what Dansbud uses. I've tried to learn what I can from reading threads and whatnot but sometimes it's easiest to follow a model. He's mine.

Water: I was going to try to "get away" with using tap water and using the Veg+Bloom Tap/Hard version but my tap has 350ppm and I just worried I'd run into more problems with lockouts or whatever using that than if I went with R/O. That said, several of the folks at the SDF get together said they grow using tap water and not R/O.

For now, my volume needs are still low, so I'm holding off on buying an R/O system until I can read more about what i need. It's the item that least fits my grow space. I can set it up in the garage eventually and just haul water in. I can get 1-5 gallon jug fills of R/O water at the grocery store for a bit. Hassle but, it's an expense I can defer for a while.

Ventilation: I'm starting out with a Can 66 with a Hurricane 6" 435 cfm. I had to go get those on the hop because those little-assed closes are already stinking up the room. I newb-ily thought I'd have a couple of weeks before that issue came up. The fan does cleanse the whole room for now. Later it will go in the tent, hopefully hung from the tent beams. I'll need to test the weights of the light and filter/fan. It'll be close to 100lb, I'm pretty sure.. I anticipate needing to get a separate fan and filter to keep the room clean because having that odor drifting through the house is not going to fly with the head of household. If I can't keep it under control, I may have to shift things out to the garage. I don't want to do so in mid grow, but I'll roll with the punches (hopefully figuratively).

I still have learning to do with regards to ventilation, especially on the intake side of things as well as figuring out how to balance odor reducing outflow without ruining the temp and humidity of the space.

IPM: I've sprayed with Spinosad and Neem so far. I was wanting to dip and spray everything twice with a variety of things ("Go nuclear" the local hydro guy told me) over three to five days with anti-fungals and anti-bug-als. I'm still on the fence on how what other agents to use and for how long before putting the plants into the tent. So far, no visible bugs. I haven't gotten a hand held microscope though.

Since I started with clones rather than with my initial plan of using seeds, I decided to stay out of the tent until I could go through a quarantine of sorts.

For now, I have the clones in an open closet space next to the tent on a cheap metal shelf thing you find at any hardware store. I put together a 4' powerstrip with 8 outlets. I put in eight Phillips 8.5W LED bulbs (Immense thanks to Blynx and Terpene for your great information on this approach.) The bulbs put out zero heat. In this immediate case, that hasn't been that helpful, as it's been pretty cool here at night. I bought a space heater when the donated clone started to look like it wanted to die. That seems to have helped.

Accumulating all this stuff adds up quickly. I about crapped when they told me how much the fans and filters for ventilation cost. I wanted to get a quiet version of the fan, and still might--that Hurricane sucker is just too loud--but I can't throw that kind of money down right now with everything else too. I'm having to make "Do I really need that right now?" kind of choices that I wish I didn't have to

I'm already going on way too long with this. I'll fill in more details as I go.

My first try at inserting pics (damn Iphone and its sideways BS):

The Pose2B Family



Pose2B Dubtech 7 teen


Pose2B Adubb


Pose2B GG#4

[onavelzy]

The Elefino cut


The sideways tent, fan and filter


Yes, that Elefino is looking a bit wilty. It's a lot better than I made it look a couple of days ago. After a couple of too cool nights, maybe some initial over-watering and possibly premature up-cupping, i produced this:

[onavelzy]

All the plants continue to look good. Not surprisingly, the Dubtech 7 teens have had the most growth. I had the canopies evened out to roughly similar heights by putting the plants under risers of various heights. I initially set them up with the canopies about 2-3 inches below the light.
In the first couple of days, I had to lower the shelf of the rack a few inches because the taller of the two Dubtech 7 teens grew into the lights.


this pic is from aroud 4-5 d ago:



Of the smaller clones, the Adubbs have grown more than the GG4 and the Elefino cut by a couple of inches at least (blurry hand held pic, sorry. I was squatting, should have just sat on the floor). compare the heights tonight with the prior pic. I was surprised. I just assumed the GG4 would out grow anything


Not to jinx things but I'm happy with how well the Elefino gifted clone has recovered. I was pretty sure I had boxed it the first couple of days. It seems much healthier and happier now. It seems like it has more new growth than the GG4 so far:



in the group shot, it's the clone in the middle.


I've kept them in the closet 'quarantine' space because I wanted to reduce the chance of bringing pests into the tent. I wanted the chance to treat at least twice with an insecticide and miticide as well as a fungicide. So far, i have only done two treatments (spray, not dunk) with Spinosad and one with Neem. All have been applied at lights out. Kind of unnerving putting them to rest with moisture on the leaves and surface of the soil but that's what i've read to do to avoid leaf burning. I have several other treatments on hand I could use but may hold off. They're kind of high end.

Since the initial growth has been good, it might be possible to get them to a point where I can take clones and move the clones into the tent rather than the main plants.

I could probably take clones from the dubtechs right now but I don't want to do too much too soon. They've been here for 9 days and it's been an inconsistent environment the first few days.

I may just say F it and put them all in the tent and release the big light. It would be nice to get all of them to a similar height and state of root development though.

here's a pic or two of the Pose2b gro bro's. Pose to b a border collie, a cattle dog and a pit/cattle dog mutt, all rescue. great dogs and friends.

they're actually not allowed in the room. they would end up wrassling around and would drag everything out into the living room and commence to tear it all to shreds. They love to shred stuff. Can't imagine those bozo's high on ingested weed, god forbid.

[Grow Tech]

Looks lke you're figuring it out. Each application of insecticide / fungicide brings with it the possibility of phytotoxicity....so I would tread lightly unless you see an actual problem. Scope your plants often!
Not to diminish the sense of mystery but here's what the clone I gave you can become=

[onavelzy]

Originally Posted by Grow Tech

Looks lke you're figuring it out. Each application of insecticide / fungicide brings with it the possibility of phytotoxicity....so I would tread lightly unless you see an actual problem. Scope your plants often!
Not to diminish the sense of mystery but here's what the clone I gave you can become=
View Image

Thx for the advice GT.

Hand held scope is the next purchase. Along with some cloning gear

The pic and ID help explain the stem color so far. I thought it was because I cold stressed her the first few days but looks like its her way.

Parentage points to Indica dominance. We'll see how growth compares in veg. I believe my other clones will be more stretchy but no telling.

Her real name is a lot better than Elefino too.

[Terpene]

I like your powerstrip / light bar! And you totally won me over with the Trump-Sad! image.

If you want to get about 2x as much light out of those LEDs:

[onavelzy]

Originally Posted by Terpene

I like your powerstrip / light bar! And you totally won me over with the Trump-Sad! image.

If you want to get about 2x as much light out of those LEDs:
View Image

Thanks for coming by Terp! I looked at the photos of your set up, in Blynx's and some others and they all seemed to have those bigger ceramic bases so i was worried these little plug in socket dealies from HD would be wrong for some reason. They haven't gotten hot in any way though and they required no tools or skills. Plug and grow works for me.

i debated popping the tops. Once i go to flower in the tent, I'll probably create a veg set up in that closet and will look at popping the tops. One of those 'one of these days' purchases for me will be a light meter. I want to know what I would putting out from that strip with a variety of bulb combinations. For example, how much would be too much for newly cut clones or seeds under the dome, etc

Fwiw, the seeds I've ordered were inspired by your grows. I have a package with some Ace Sativas on the way. Hopefully. Order went in 2/7 and nothing yet.

Take care,
Ona

[Terpene]

Originally Posted by onavelzy

Thanks for coming by Terp! I looked at the photos of your set up, in Blynx's and some others and they all seemed to have those bigger ceramic bases so i was worried these little plug in socket dealies from HD would be wrong for some reason. They haven't gotten hot in any way though and they required no tools or skills. Plug and grow works for me.

i debated popping the tops. Once i go to flower in the tent, I'll probably create a veg set up in that closet and will look at popping the tops. One of those 'one of these days' purchases for me will be a light meter. I want to know what I would putting out from that strip with a variety of bulb combinations. For example, how much would be too much for newly cut clones or seeds under the dome, etc

I do ceramic bases on everything because of how well they handle heat. I have run a few plastic / metal cheapie sockets and had no problem with 14w bulbs - but I generally don't trust plastic / metal socket combos. Granted, we're talking about very little heat when compared to a traditional halogen or incandescent 100w which you could cook an egg on.



I have yet to hit the point of too much light. My veg cabinet is 20w per sqft and registers around 1000-1500 on my light meter (a cheap swing style hold-all unit) which I believe is in umol based on taking said meter to various HPS grows. As an idea of brightness, a 600HPS flowering canopy is 1000-1200, 1000w HPS flowering canopy is 1300-1600. My new 250w flowering fixture is brighter than any canopy I've visited, so no idea what that is going to be..

I would be very interested in what a proper meter comes up with in terms of numbers from these little gems.

I think you'll really like the Ace lineup. I have yet to try anything that Dubi puts out that isn't stellar. What did you end up picking up?

[onavelzy]

Zama, OTH, destroyer, Durban, GT. no point in pussy footing around

[onavelzy]

I worked last night so I had the day to get out and catch up on some of the errands i needed to do.

Here's the light fixture:


The bulb and safety sheath:



I put the light and the filter with fan in the tent. I put the plants in and turned on the light.


It took 8 minutes to go from 72 degrees to 80 degrees at 3 inches off of the floor. The the 435 cfu fan creates what looks like excessive neg pressure but even with that outflow and a separate small vortex fan blowing up toward the top, the temp still crept up another couple of degrees. That's concerning. I knew from a prior test run the light would raise the temp in a closed, un-ventilated tent to 97 degrees and drop the humidity 20 percentage points. I was counting on the high extraction rate to counter that. I was even shopping temp controlled fan regulators, so I could maybe keep the fan running at a lower RPM a lot of the time.

First big issue, I guess. Don't want to move the plants into the tent if I can't keep the temps in control. That's not even factoring in the humidity and the air flow stress that might happen. Back to the LED ghetto for now I guess.

I had covered an intake vent with a HEPA filter for passive intake but once the temps jumped like that, I started opening up zippers, un-cinched the closed port holes etc. I took off the Hepa filter from the air intake mesh window and pulled the velcro cover off of the intake window on the other side of the tent. That has stopped the rise I think. If the temps get back down from the current 84, I'll try closing some zippers.

It's looking like I'll need to get an intake fan and filter. I still have to see how the Rh does, It's at 45 now, down around 8 from ambient. I'll save that issue for another time.

It's like they say about the game of golf, "If it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun"