[repuk]

Hello,

I have really loving memories from my other grows, links in my sig:

1. First one was the "easiest" (stealth cab + regular sized tent (1x1x2m) in a basement).
   
2. Second one, the understairs stealth micro grow, was a nice experience, but I'm fond on "high performance" sativas, and the HML didn't really cut it. Ventilation was lacking, so HPS wasn't an option.
   
3. Here comes take three: I'm setting up everything inside a garden shed, and will use HPS+HML Cree COBs for flower.
   
   
   The twist for this take: using Mycodo for PID environment control and remote monitoring/management of the veg, flower and drying chambers (control humidifiers/dehumidifier/intraction/extraction/circulation/CO2/Lights). Will open a seperate thread to log all the build phase (including sourcing parts, etc) and progress and link it from this post.

The grow space



Space is limited, garden shed (2m/6,5' length x 1,2m/4' width) has typical house angled roof, lower height is 157cm/5', so will need to prop the tent (whose height is 160cm/5,2') by not positioning it against the back "wall", or try to add some height to the shed. Probably will go with leaving space from the wall for better heat isolation.

Temperatures here are around 30C in Spring and early Autumn (40C in Summer), so heat is going to be a battlefront. Will possibly stop flowering on Summer, and keep the moms the best I could during summer periods.

I've already run a cable from main house to the shed (stealthy) to bring electicity, will probably set up a wood panel hung on a shed (which is metallic) "wall" with DIN mounted power sockets, protection, etc.

Seedlings/Cloning/Vegging tent.

This is a 60x40x60cm Secret Jardin tent (23x15x23in).

Lightning is provided by using a 55W Fuorescent PLL fixture, will probably suplement or replace it with the previous 140W HML; PLL to keep moms, PLL+HML for vegging clones and mature seedlings.

Ventilation: DC fan.

Ultrasonic Humidifier.

Hand watering.

Flowering tent

80x80x160 (31x31x62in) Secret Jardin Hydro Shoot 80.

Lightning:
Gavita Digistar Dimmable 250/400W electronic ballast
Gavita 400W HPS Enhanced Flower Lamp
Prima Klima Spudnik 125mm cooled hood
4x CREE COBs on HML fixtures mounted with repurposed clamped gooseneck holders at the corners (about 160W, 40W each)

I invested on a quality dimmable ballast, and a cooled hood, as temperature will be tricky. This way I can play with 250-440W HPS (which will provide between 33000 - 55000 lumens at canopy level) along with the 4 COBs, which should provide about 17000-21000 lumens.

Possible combinations:

- Combo full blast: 160W + 440W = 600W, 81000lumens
- Full combo: 160W + 400W = 71000 lumens
- Mid combo: 160W + 275W (435W)
- Low combo: 160 + 250W (410W)
- HPS alone: 250W
- HML: 160W

Ventilation:
RVK Sileo 125 A1 (5", 240m3/h)

Mounted following this: Scrubber -> Extractor -> Cooled Hood -> Exhaust to Outside. No heat through the inline FAN, lesser odour probabilities in case of a leak.

Culture: 100% coco in pots, Jungle Juice nutes 6/9 Micro/Bloom (H3ad), automatic watering using passive Blumat system.

Grow
Currently seedling three regular Mandala Seeds' strains:

4x Beyond the Brain
3x Krystallyca
3x Kalichakra

Intend to veg them, cut a couple micro clones of each prior to putting to flower.

Once girls show sex, will cull male clones, and keep the rest; once girls are smoke-tested, will keep the worthy moms, then run their clones in SOG along with seedlings in the flower tent to keep searching for exceptional moms.

Waiting eagerly for your suggestions and / or opinions!

[repuk]

Update: Will be using a Raspberry Pi plus an amazing project, Mycodo for a PID environment control of the veg and flower chambers (control humidifiers/intraction/extraction/dehumidifier).

Weather is abnormaly hot for this time of the year here, keeping manual control of RH and temps to make up for it; so far the seedlings don't look stressed at all.

Will post pictures once there's something to see.

Only worthy event so far: one of the Beyond the Brain seedlings (BB#4) is a triploid:



Hope is a girl!

[repuk]

Not too much to be seen around here, having problems to dial in temperature and humidity. Temps have been abnormaly high for the season (not using any fan control).

Learning about VPD and testing/building up the control/monitoring system.

PLL:





Swapped PLL for the HML:



Sadly this have caused a temp increase, I'm around 34C at 85% RH, but struggling to keep RH constant, hopefully the control system will be able to dial it in.

Waiting to receive some stuff, including 1L pots, going to repot and finish the flowering tent.

[repuk]

I kept struggling to keep RH and temps on optimal and constant levels, but managed to fix it.

Fixing Lights

Swapping to the HML introduced problems, The plants looked "cooked" with very pale green turning to yellow.

After analyzing it I came to some conclusions:

- It generated too much heat
- HML had too much red LEDs (as I designed it to flower sativas)
- It was too close to the plants canopy (around 10cm/4")


To fix two birds with one stone (heat, and too much red) I disabled the red LED strings: I simply disconnected the 24x XP-G's (about 60W) and left the 10x XM-L (around 90W). As I put inline fuses from the drivers to the LED strings, I simply removed the inline fuses for the red LED lines to disable them.

To gain distance to the canopy, I attached the HML as high as possible, had to be on a fixed manner, to let about 12"/30cm to the canopy, as the XM-L are rather powerful (10W) with lots of penetration.

I don't think there will be any need to lower the LEDs, and hopefully this will have the added benefit of creating more stocky plants, something good as I'm very fond of sativas. If it still too powerful for seedlings, I may just simply prop a "shade" using translucent plastic for seedlings once I have seedlings / moms / cuts mixed in the vegging chamber, or add the PLL back between the two HML bars for seedlings if temperatures allow.

Temperatures finally turned to optimal values.

Fixing Humidity

I had a mist humidifier constantly on. RH was not steady, now that temps were in good ranges I needed to fix the RH.

The fix: repotting the plants to 1L pots. They needed it anyway, and having 10L volume of moist coco keeps humidity closer and stable to more optimal values.

I have found dialing in RH in the grow area is most times a matter of finding the "sweet spot" for pot size/plant number, specially when running coco. De/Humidifiers help, but cannot keep such "steady" levels and struggle.

I use U-Gro 11L coco bricks, I have found it to be really good quality. I just add 3L of tap water to it. I repotted all the plants and gave them a 2/3 strength dose of rhizotonic and B52 (0.9EC/PH 5.8). For curiosity I measured the runoff after watering: 1.3EC, PH 6. Looks pretty good IMHO.

Right now I haven't finished to build the mycodo/raspberry/sensors rig, so humidifiers/extraction are run from timers. After letting them alone for 6 hours, I found RH lower range was spot on 60-70%, but RH had peaks of 95%. Not good...

To fix this, I went from having the humidifier 24/7 and extraction 15 minutes each 1 1/2 hour, to run both from the same timer, 15 minutes each hour, so that humidifier "makes up" for the lost humidity.

Now RH hovers between 60-80%, great!

Girls started turning greener and surely will recover soon perking their lovely leaves towards the HML! They had healthy root balls, so I'm positive things are going to take off.



They're one month old now and look clearly underveloped and droopy (my fault, I cooked them with lights too close with too much red) but... these things happen on new spot first stealth grows I was too confident but truth is I'm rusty!

Coming Next

Taking the big jug with the humidifier mister out of the tent, and re-purposing it on an external jerrycan-like sealed container, will use an aquarium air pump to bring humid air through a couple hoses to the vegging tent.

I'm not happy running humidifier/extraction each 15 minutes, is too much for the size of the tent but that's the minimum I can run on my mech timer, my digital one supports only 1-minute resolution & 8 daily programs; I may try it and run extraction/humidifier each 3 hours for e.g. 1 minute until raspberry is deployed.

I have to fix an issue with electricity going there (no neutral), then will deploy the raspberry.

[repuk]

Definitely the HML is not cutting it , I think these LEDs are too powerful for vegging in this small tent, so went back to what I know it works great for vegging and ordered a 2xPLL fixture. Thought on getting a dimmable driver, but why bother... the fixture is cheaper and simpler.

Temps are all the way around now, hitting 12 degrees, so a 10meter, 60W iguana cable will be deployed too, I will route it from the sides and between the tent bottom fabric "tray" (U shape).

I will be modulating the heat it produces by using mycodo PWM output.

[repuk]

It's been 24 hours since the CFL fixture went in, glad to notice plants are bouncing back.




At first I noticed like white pistyls at plant tops and thought maybe they have shown their sex as are about 1 1/2 month old, but placement wasn't right and looked odd; upon closer inspection I found definitely problem was LED power; new leaves growth tips white color (bleaching) become more noticeable as soon as the rest became greener (tricky to get on camera):

[repuk]

Temps are lowering even more (reached 9C/48F degrees today). I'm thinking adding weather isolation to the shed will be a good enhancement as outside weather has a very strong impact... but that will be for next year.

I installed the 10meters/60W heater cable: about 4,8 meters are underneath the tent bottom mat, the rest goes vertically on the corners, if we consider 6W/meter, this means I'll have 32watts on plant "feet", and 28watts vertically to heat the rest of the tent volume.

Set it on a timer to power on for 10 minutes each 1,5 hours. Let's see how it goes. Willing to finish the mycodo setup!

Plants are bouncing and happy. CFLs are unbeatable for vegging in small spaces!

[mushroombrew]

Feed them. They are hungry. N and some Calmag will do wonders bro.

Get your water to pH 6.5 too.

Foliar feed to get quicker recovery @ 1/4 strength nutes. Once or twice a day.

[mushroombrew]

They grow so fast when well fed. This is only 3 wks old from seed. Leaves bigger than my hand.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php...tureid=1800525

[repuk]

thanks for the tips mushroombrew!

Yes, they're clearly underdeveloped, dialing in the shed has been tricky and I screwed too in other areas (lightning).

I'm using 100% coco, PH 6.5?

Some of them are already recovered, showing turgid, perky leaves parallel to the CFL: BB#3 and KRY#1. BB#3 is the tallest one, hope is not a male...

You're right, I can user foliar feed to recover them quicker. Just did so!