SeñorSloth's Perpetual Wardrobe of Dankness

[señorsloth]

So this is going to be my first grow journal, but not my first grow by a long shot...ive uploaded a few pics in the past year, but they were terrible cell phone pics, and i was pretty paranoid about doing it. i have had this camera all along but until now i never even tried to use it, the pictures are still pretty bad, but a lot better than cell phone pics!

i want to warn everybody ahead of time, this is basically the first time i have tried to take decent pics, some day i would like to post works of art like some of the folks on here take, but for now i don't think my camera even has a macro mode, it's very basic, i hope to learn the ropes over the next month or two then buy a much better one and a tripod, so if you have any photography tips i would love to hear them!

i must warn you my cab is in a state of somewhat disrepair, it needs a decent amount of work, money has been tight lately and ive been too lazy so in the veg cab especially you will notice a lot of messyness and hanging cords, old dusty electronics...

my cab is roughly 6 feet tall, by 40 inches wide and 2 feet deep on the outside, the top 4 feet are flowering and the bottom 2 feet are for veg. the cab is 40 inches wide but it's only 30 inches or so wide on the inside, i walled off the left side about 10 inches to hold my panasonic whisperfan 190, as well as a complicated system of vents and light traps allowing air to travel from the bottom of the cab, through the veg chamber, then into the flowering chamber where it gets sucked into my Blazer hood, wich is directly connected to my fan, which is then directly connected to my can33 filter, wich sits on top of my cab in a rubbermaid with a fiberglass inner lining to muffle sound.

in the bottom i have a little 2 foot t5 setup, and a seedling matt for my clones, i only have 2 bonsai moms at the moment so thats all the light i need, when i have more moms i plan to buy a few more single t5's for the back wall. one of the moms is c99, and the other is skunk special, both from female seeds...

i would love to hear any advice you guys have! i am thinking about converting to blumats soon and maybe a few other things, i have a big outdoor this year so i'm gonna really pimp my cab afterward...

 

[señorsloth]

in the top you see the left side bed with 24 plants, 3 rows of 6 c99's on the left and a row of 6 skunks on the right side of their bed, they are about 2 weeks from harvest, i guess that puts them at day 42ish, i harvest every 28 days and the c99 is ripe in 56...the skunk takes a little longer but i pick it early, i only tend to plant it because i can't really grow my c99 mom big enough to get 35+ healthy clones off of it every 28 days, so im forced to put some skunks in, i don't mind though, as they don't stretch as much i put them in the center under the light and it creates a bit of a "stadium" sorta feel.

the right side is 35 plants, its about 15 per square foot, it's going to be the new density for my c99's because they stretch a lot and don't yield a ton. with heavier plants i can't fit more than 24 in each bed and i tend to yield a bit more too overall cause i can really pack the buds in there at 24 per bed, just like i can now at 35 per bed, but with 24 higher yeilders i get my bud to stem/leaf ratio super low, compared to 35 c99's which has obviously 1/3 more stems per the same size harvest of heavier yeilders. with c99 however i seem to average about 5-6 grams per plant, so 35 plants at that yeild and i will easily be near the gram per plant mark, which is my goal for now...

the run that will be done in 2 weeks should yield around 5-6 ounces, it's a little larger than my last few despite only being 24 plants thick instead of 35.

my nutes are maxibloom till week four, then maxibloom plus koolbloom for the next 2 weeks, then 2 weeks of plain water...

oh you will notice a lot of heat stress on the older side of the grow, thats because about 2 weeks ago the light came loose from the fan(now it hangs from ceiling) and fell on my girls, luckily i discovered it an hour or two after it happened but a few top buds got completely dried up and had to be circumcised, and having the hood touching the plants with no air cooling curled up the leaves pretty bad, but the cab has been a pretty steady 75-80 degrees, night and day so they don't normally show those curled leaves.

i forgot to mention, i am running 430w hps on top with a hortilux eye, through a 6 inch blazer hood, i have 430 watts in 4.5 square feet so it's way overkill, like 100w per square foot, but you seem to need that to get decent bud density at 15 plants per foot. i also have one little fan in there to keep the leaves moving. i also take the beds out every 2 weeks and rotate them, so that i get a more solid yield. also you may notice a slightly pronounced stadium effect in the the almost finished side, thats because my light is stationary, and my beds start off about a foot above the ground, on pine blocks, i lower it a few inches every couple days, so they stay right in the optimum budding zone, and when they stop stretching at 2 weeks, i have the beds in there sitting at a pretty steep angle, so that the buds under the bulb are the same distance as the outside edge plants.

 

[5th]

I'm in for the ride.

I'm building something at the moment quite similar to what you have senorsloth. Few inches difference...but same plan. (flowering 400 on the top, moms, clones underneath, side pannel to hide/cover intakes and light traps)

You've got me stumped with the 4' of flower with the fixed light though......containers I'll be using are the same size as yours. 'Bout 2.5". Don't know your depth of container, but mines roughy 8"...

So If ya don't mind I'll ask...

Height of your reflector? (nix that one...I'll google it)
How long are you veggin' these suckers for before you put into flower?

Pic's look great, can't wait to see more.

 

[señorsloth]

in a few weeks i'll be harvesting the left side, the Sunday after this next one actually...when i do that i generally put in a new bed of brand new clones to replace it. i take clones 9-10 days before harvest, i time them that way so they are all rooted the day of harvest and can go right in the new bed and start flowering IMMEDIATELY . i have 3 beds right now, 2 in the cab and one out, i recycle my soil but having a 3rd bed allows me to put the bed of finished buds in a dark closet for a few days if i want while the clones get tossed into flower the day they root.

this gives me a little flexibility in that if my clones root 2 days earlier than expected i can just take my bed that's ready for harvest in 2 days, and give them a 48 hour dark period, which doesn't really do anything that i can tell, but it doesn't hurt them and it gets them out of my flowering cab a few days earlier to make room for new clones.

You've got me stumped with the 4' of flower with the fixed light though......containers I'll be using are the same size as yours. 'Bout 2.5". Don't know your depth of container, but mines roughly 8"...

when you flower from clone you don't need as much height, the stretchiest plants only seem to get about 18 inches tall, then i figure 10 inches of dirt, the light is like 8 inches and i leave about 8 inches between the bulb and the canopy top. i think that leaves like 4-8 inches left over, which is just a useless gap above my light and below the ceiling. since my light is fixed i raise and lower the plant beds, by putting blocks under them, they start off as clones pretty close to the light and as the grow the first few weeks they get lowered into a slight stadium angle, so the buds under the light are the same distance from the bulb as the edge plants. in truth though even my stretchy c99 pheno stays under 18 inches, i'll measure them today but i know they must be because even when they are almost ripe they are still up on at least 2-4 inches of blocks, so 4 feet of height is really more than i need.

if i ever make a new cab i will probably eliminate the gap above my light, maybe bolt the hood right to the roof of my cab, and probably make the flowering cab 6 or 8 inches shorter, so that the veg cab can be a little bigger, it's very cramped in there right now. this cab is made of mdf and is slowly starting to absorb water and swell in area's, it's actually leaning backward because the support that holds the back two wheels is getting moist and slowly giving way, i need to replace that part at least with real wood...

my beds are 15 inches wide by 21 inches long, i don't know how deep they are but the dirt is about 10 inches deep. with beds ive found depth is important, if your beds are too deep or shallow they wont dry out evenly and you will find your outside plants are spindly and malnourished, it seams 8-10 inches is just the right depth for most beds, i could see going to 12-14 inches on a 4X8 bed or something bigger like that..

so does anybody have any tips for getting better pics with a below average camera? i don't think i have a macro mode, though it seems to take decent enough closeups, but mostly if i take 20 closeups only one doesn't come out blurry, and lighting seems to be a big deal too, i tried it in the dark with flash, i tried it with the light on and in the dark with an led flashlight shining on what i was trying to take pics of, that seemed to work the best but i don't know, i'm gonna get a better camera soon but for now i really wish i could show better representations of my girls, cause the above pics don't do them justice at all...

 

[señorsloth]

i came in a few minutes before lights on today to try to get better pics...im having trouble showing how frosty they really are, and they seem to look fluffier than in real life...i suppose lighting and stuff play in that...

my camera seems to focus ok pretty close up but the flash seems to wash out the buds. because of that i only got farther back pics to come out ok today, but tomorrow i'll try again with the flash turned off and led or cfl lighting to see if i can bring out the trichomes...

i took clones today for the next round, cause i'm about 10 days from harvest, included a few pics, ended up with 30 c99's and 12 skunks, could have gotten more but that's all the rapid rooters i had, i only need 35 and i get 100% survival rate usually so 42 will be fine...

as you can see in the pics i like to only put 40 clones in the clone chambers that hold 72, that way i can have one empty row around the outside of the chamber, that keeps the condensation on the walls of the humidity dome from touching the leaves on the clones...

the buds in the pics are at 45ish days, the first pic is a skunk, the rest of the buds are c99, there is a pic of the other half of the cab with the hps on, they are almost at 2 weeks budding, they are actually a week off schedule, but i think i may let them go 9 weeks this round to catch them back up by that one week. also you will see a lone skunk in the 2 week old side, i transplanted him there so that all the other skunks will get 8 weeks, but he will stay in there for 12, or until she is at least 50% amber...probably will be closer to 70-77 days

 

[Ohmless]

some respectable nugs ya got. What is your watts per square foot measure with them t5s?

 

[señorsloth]

the t5's are only in the veg chamber, it's like 100watts total, so watts per foot aren't huge, it's just enough to keep my little bonsai moms happy.

in the flowering chamber i have 430 watts in 4.5 square feet so close to one hundred watts per square foot.

 

[killerweed31]

really excellent job , im in for this one if you dont mind senor...promise good!!
keep the great job up*d*a*t*e*

 

[señorsloth]

really excellent job , im in for this one if you dont mind senor.

haha of course! the more the merrier! today in addition to trying to get a few better budshots, i'll try to get some overall pics of the cab and flowering room, until i just now went back and looked at my pics i didn't even realize they all cut off the light and growbeds completely so it's really hard to judge the size of things in respect to each other...

 

[FunkBomb]

That is a very cool perpetual cabinet you're running.

-Funk

 

[señorsloth]

thanks funkbomb!

i took some more pics, to show the outside of the cab, and the light proof doors, and a few to kinda get an idea of how my light, plants and beds all fit in there...on top you see 3 rubbermaids, the left one hides my can33 and is also lined with a thin layer of pink panther to muffle sounds, the other two tubs aren't grow related, i just threw them up there to get them out of the way...the middle one is full of holes cause i used it for mushroom growing like 8-10 years ago...

i was able to get some slightly better bud shots today, but because only 2 came out out of like 30, i have no clue what i did right to get those two too work.

also you will see that my 2-3 week girls are reaching the height of my 7 week girls, thats because that bed is on more blocks, but at that point i like to lower it an inch at a time as they grow, so from now on most of the canopy will all be the same height till i harvest and put new clones in the left bed next Sunday.

 

[5th]

The pics are stellar dude. Great shot of the cab with the doors open aswell, really shows exactly what you were talking about in the 400w club thread (how I found your grow actually)
I know what you mean about your camera not doing your buds justice. I was on my phone before my computer. Clicked on your second to last bud shot. Then zoomed in on the pic. DAMN its sticky looking. Keep up the good work.

 

[paulo73]

I´m in.

 

[señorsloth]

I know what you mean about your camera not doing your buds justice. I was on my phone before my computer. Clicked on your second to last bud shot. Then zoomed in on the pic. DAMN its sticky looking. Keep up the good work.

thanks! ya very sticky and very dense! i had a few grapefruit/pineapple pheno's, and they ALL yielded more than this girl, but she was ripe at 8 weeks, the rest were around 9 week plants, and she had easily twice the sugar of any other plant in my garden at the time, so picking her as a keeper was a very easy decision...of course none of those are even really reasons that i kept her just...justifications... i picked her cause she has this overwhelming taste of fruit punch/juicy fruit gum...not the dark berry taste you get a lot, not even fruity pebbles, a really sweet tangy fruit, hard to describe, maybe the taste of berries that are just a little bit unripe, as apposed to that overripe fruit taste that skunks seem to all have...mines just like Juicy Fruit gum got together with Tahitian Treat punch to make a designer pot flavor...it's spoiled me from 80% of pot out there, i'll still smoke it, but most of it smells like soap, or overripe fruit...these days it's my c99 and lemon strains, that's all i seem to enjoy flavor-wise...

 

[señorsloth]

well i am having some issues taking pics, lol took about 30 with the hps off and the flash off, but an led flashlight for light, it brings out the crystals more but it doesn't show up on camera, always too blurry or washed out. ended up going through and deleting every single one...

does anybody have any tips for pot pics? all i have is an old sony cyber shot, and i'm not looking to take macro's i just want the trichomes to show up a little more, l have so far gotten ONE good picture, the first picture of my second post, so i know it's possible with this camera, and that pic would have been better had the leaf not obscured half of it. ever since the best i can do is make the buds look grey and the leaves green. harvest is this Sunday and i really want to get better at it before then!

this secrecy thing takes a lot out of ya, it really sucks to do something you are so proud of yet never be able to brag, even a little...i can't say hey guys wanna see the coolest thing in the world? and show off my stinky girls, white with sugar...i mean i have a few people in the know, mostly even smaller growers who run my cuts so it's not as fun to brag to them...finding this camera again, was pretty cool, cause i can now cyberbrag a little bit...this would be much more effective however if i could just manage to get some decent pics of my sugary girls dancing around in their little cab...

 

[señorsloth]

ok enough bitching i got slightly better pics this time, but i would still like some tips! do you think most of it is vibration? do faster cams take faster pics so that there is no blur? would a tripod help maybe?

anyways this is day 50 for my left side, one week left, and i am all screwed up with the exact day of my right side, somewhere between 2-3 weeks old, i'll look it up later...

so i let my freshies on the right grow up into the heat zone, so that i could figure out exactly where it is, where my plants start to curl a tiny bit, then i marked it out with a dry erase marker, i'll now keep my plants 3-4 inches below that line, i might go closer in the winter...i also need to mark out the line in my cab where buds turn to popcorn.

an advantaged to fixed height lighting, is the "optimum budding zone" stays in the same place, i just need to position my beds so that they stay right in there, and by marking the point where they are as close to the light as possible without burning, and the point where buds turn to larf i outline the exact space in my cab that is capable of producing quality bud, so i can make sure no nodes are below or above this zone and maximize yield.

now that my almost ripe girls are on their last week i moved their bed as far from the light as possible, to aid in ripening by mimicking the waning strength of the fall sun and to promote more terpenenes in the final product by limiting the amount that evaporates due to the daytime heat...

 

[señorsloth]

more of the pictures i took came out than i expected, especially after my first try today before the light came on.

can somebody tell me, i have an old magnetic ballast, and a new sunsystem hood with hortilux eye bulb, will pulling the power chord out of the ballast to take pictures do anything bad to the bulb or ballast? so far it hasn't done anything, it starts up again right after i plug it back in, but sometimes i'll unplug the light twice a day now to try and get pics then turn it back on...i'm a little worried i'm stressing my bulb or ballast or something...

 

[killerweed31]

really nice shot nuggs bro, excellent!!!

 

[Ohmless]

Heads!

 

[señorsloth]

thanks guys! im actually pretty proud of a few of those pics!

well it's about 4 days till harvest so i'm not sure if i should bother taking anymore till i make the chop, i mean they are changing a ton everyday, but not really on a level that you would notice with my barely average pics...anyways the final plumpening is happening, hairs are around 60% orange and triches are about 5 percent amber on the calyxes, 98% amber on the leaves. smell is reaching a new peak for me with this girl...before this the summer heat kinda lowered my smell/taste, and before summer my moms were not fully mature yet...i find after several months vegging they start putting out clones that flower much faster than they do right away, and smells/tastes are better, maybe even more potent(but that could be in my head).

again still don't know how old my freshies are but they seem to be mostly done with their stretch, much earlier than before, it could be that adding more plants to my beds, from 24 to 35, did something, though i don't see how it would lower stretch, if anything i would assume it would increase stretch...i am also using a higher ec than last round, which shortens node distance, i also had the clones about twice as close to the light as i used to for the first few weeks, i'm guessing that's mostly it...

i really hope they stay this short cause it means the entire length of the stem will perfectly fit in my "optimum budding zone" and i should get best yield that way. right now my biggest plant is 22 inches, and the average is about 18. if i can keep my crops shorter it will allow me to shorten my flowering cab and lengthen my veg cab even more than i have planned. shortening my flowering cab will mean slightly cooler temps cause air exchange will be faster...my veg cab will be a little hotter but i'll finally have headroom to grow bigger moms.