Starting my first grow.. Micro stylee

[lostinethereal]

Introduction

Alright ladies and gents, so it begins. Around 7 or 8 years ago, I got my copy of "Indoor Marijuana Horticulture" by Jorge Cervantes, at the young age of 15 I think. Ever since then, and well before then, I've wanted to start a garden and finally grow some herb, but until now it had never been a feasible possibility. At that time I was so young and naive that I was certain by the beginning of Spring I would have a 10 pack of blueberry and I would start guerrilla gardening. Well, so much for that, lol.

Anyway, here I am, still not what I would consider ideal, but I'm starting none-the-less. I was convinced for the longest time that it's just not worth it growing with anything less than a 600w or 400w, not worth the risk, initial investment, etc. I had absolutely no idea people were growing awesome buds in such small paces (PC cases) with cheap and readily available CFLs so easily. Only after the last batch of mushrooms contamed to cobweb mold, I was sort of bored and was checking out some stash shots on IC, and stumbled across Mr. Micros "Nanomachine", that fateful day sent my mind into a raging torrent.. "WHAT? Buds like that??! From a tiny ass PC case? What?"

The cab

The cabs dimensions are 9" deep * 11.5" wide * 16" tall. The lights are about 3" thick and therefor take up the top 4" of the cab leaving a foot for the plants. I have 2x 40w 3000k CFLs. I couldn't find anything but 3000k in the 40w, but I only saw the 40 watters at 2 places. For the ventilation I have a 110cfm 120mm computer fan installed into a 4" dryer exhaust housing ala ** (I forgot the post, but it's from someones DIY carbon filter design) it fits into the square space the 3 vent flaps were perfectly. On the opposite, is a standard vent/atrium grate. In the posters original design he used a small length of 4" ducting and wrapped it with the nylon, some hardware cloth and filled with carbon. I was sort of concerned with the surface area and just used his idea to mount the fan and have an easier means of attaching the filter. There's also 4x 1.5inch holes drilled opposite of the exhaust on the bottom. It could use another, the fan gets a little louder when I close it all up, but I want the back pressure to cool off the lights.

The cabinet is a retired 'phone stand' as I was always told it was. I used it as a night stand for a long time, just a cab thats maybe 2.5" tall with a door and cabinet underneath. I'm using a piece of cardboard as a partition wall to make the grow area of the cab light proof from the benign exterior of the cab. I got kinda lazy and got a little white paint on the exterior, but I used to paint warhammer 40k pieces on it so it already had old primer and various color paint swabs to clean off the brush lol.

The Grow

Well I had always thought "If I'm going to grow, then I wont settle for bagseed, why can't I spend $50 and get some nice genetics?", well yeah that's certainly my intentions, but for now I'm testing it out with some bagseed. I can't receive the seeds here, can't procure a safe addy, and I kind of don't want to bother with a PO box right now, so bagseed it is. Plus there's seeds in every bag I get right now My buddy can get me some Sensi Star clones for sure, and maybe still some Super Silver Haze, so maybe I'll be trying out some quality genetics sooner than expected.

I simply sowed 11 seeds into 11 netted peat starters and placed them in the accompanied trey with lid, within 72 hours there was 4 healthy seedlings, and now at a week later I have 8 good looking seedlings, 5-6 are really nice looking. One never germinated and the other 2 were runts.

Tomorrow I'm going to transplant them into 18oz party cups with roughly 70% Promix and 30% perlite. I have perlite and vermicualte I can use, but I'm all out of coir, I think the promix and perlite will be fine, but any suggestions on the addition of verm? I only have enough room for 6 of the cups, so I'm not sure what to do with the other 2. I have a couple 1oz shot glasses I could put 'em in I 'spose. While I was out the only decent nutes I could find was Schultz 10-15-10, there was some MG 15-30-15, but I remember specifically reading a few threads with good results from just Schultz 10-15-10. I don't think I'll feed with the transplant, but maybe a weak solution for their first feed?

Questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed

I still have a bit of finishing up on the cab, I need to add some mylar or paint the cardboard partition wall and get it reflecting. I also need to put a bit more carbon in my filter and attach it. Other than that I'm pretty impressed with it. So it only took 7 or 8 years of idle thoughts to finally do something about it, but most of that time I wasn't even old enough to move out, so what can I say.

I want to give them another week or so of 24hr and then give them the switch to 12/12.

There are some photos I've uploaded to my gallery,





Please take a look at them and let me know what ya think.

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

Sounds like you're well on your way to a garden!

Good luck, and I'll keep checking in.

 

[messn'n'gommin']

The first step to any successful grow...a thought process. You're thinking things through and it will pay big dividends at harvest time. I agree, you are well on your way.

Namaste, mess

 

[lostinethereal]

Well I transplanted the six best looking seedlings into roughly 75%/20%/5% promix/perlite/verm. The soil was initially moistened with a half concentrate of schultz 10-15-10, then after mixed and potted the newly transplanted seedlings were fully watered with plain tap water. One didn't respond well and was culled a couple days later, now I'm down to five.



Here's a shot each of the two nicest looking on the left:





They were a little dry before the transplant and don't look the healthiest let's say. The edges and tips of the newest leaves a couple of days ago were slightly yellowed and burnt, also curled up. A few look a little mutated but the newest growth is looking a lot nicer. The smallest one in the first picture somewhere on the right got a little close to the fan and was getting chopped for a few seconds before I realized it.

I need to finish the carbon filter, it seems to work nice but theres a few parts that could use a little more carbon as some light shines through, and I need to firmly attach it and once that's complete I'll give them the switch to 12/12. It's probably a little too early to tell but I swear it looks like they all have male pre-flowers at the lowest branch union. Hope not, lol.

 

[Bill O'Reilly]

Yes its definitely too early for flowers, patience my friend.

A good word of advice for those new to cultivation:

"They tend to do pretty darn well, if ya don't love 'em to death"

Everything's looking great, and you could expect 5-15g per plant (my personal estimate) barring anything catastropic, in about 50-60 days.

patience

Oh, I almost forgot might want to consider investing in one of these:

http://www.babyearth.com/safety-1st-tot-lok-four-lock-set.html

 

[lostinethereal]

Yeah, I kind of figured as much. I figured it was too early but they really did look identical to what the male pre-flowers look like, today they are more obviously new growing shoots.

I'm excited to get this carbon filter on and not leaking any light so I can flip them to 12/12 and see how they do.

 

[Bill O'Reilly]

If I were in your situation, I would go ahead and flip to 12/12. If you veg too long, they will well exceed your 1' head room, I guarantee it.

The smell of 5 small immature plants is going to be insignificant for a few weeks. But after that you better be ready w/some odor neutralization.

 

[justanotherbozo]

censorship sucks!

 

[diggity]

cool thread, hope it goes well

 

[lostinethereal]

Yes, I'm familiar with the Doc's threads, as well as most of the current ones in the microgrow forum.

I've been delaying the switch because I haven't had the time (until now, 3 days off baby!) to finish up the cab and make it light proof enough to be able to actually have 12 hours of dark.

I also intend to use these plants to experiment with different training techniques. Once I'm comfortable I'm going to order a feminized pack of seeds and go with a single plant under a screen, possibly using a SWC.

 

[thedarklurker]

The burnt tips are from overfertilization, cut back on the nutes a bit. Otherwise looks very healthy.

Like someone else said, switch to 12/12 soon because your plants will grow 2-3 times their size. Make sure you do a really good job on light proofing your setup, or else your plants will go hermie.

I wish you the best

 

[lostinethereal]

Last night and today I finished up the cab. I installed some weather strip where the partition wall goes in to make it light proof, the foam shit I got doesn't work the greatest so I'll be ripping it up and switching to a rubber one that I should have got. It's not that its not light proof, it just bunches up and the sticky side doesn't work so well so it tends to fall off from where I installed it. I also got the filter on and everything else.

I watered them with a about 1/4 strength 10-15-10 Schultz just an hour or two ago and I got the timer set to flip them to their first dark cycle tonight at midnight. While watering them today I noticed for the smell of skunk/ammonia for the first time, no longer a generic plant smell.

 

[growsmall]

nice im pulling up a seat looks like your well on your way to having your garden

 

[lostinethereal]

Here's a small update. The plants are now on day 3 of 12/12.

Here is a group shot of the plants, and 3 close ups of 3 random plants and another really close up of the node structure of one of the 3 random.












My wrist is sorta fucked up so I'll post with some more detail in my next update maybe at the end of the week.

 

[rcknrllmothrfck]

Things are looking awesome, any idea on what kinda bud it was from?

 

[lostinethereal]

No idea on the strain, just some local generic bud. Definitely more on the indica side though, I love to smoke it all day but I especially love the last bowl or two that I go to sleep on.

The plants aren't growing so fast right now, not only do they get 12 hours of light, one of my 40w bulbs broke so they've only been getting 40w these past couple of days. I got my check early since tomorrow's the 4th, so I'm going to go pick up a replacement tonight.

 

[softy 12pack]

dont forget those cfl bulbs have mercury in them, if broke in your grow room youll wanna clean the mess up propperly. no sence in growin organic herb then poisoning yourself with mercury.

 

[lostinethereal]

Yeah I know, luckily it did break in the cab but while the plants were out so I could work on it. And it was just the tip that broke, so there wasn't really even much to clean up thankfully.

I didn't get a chance to notice without the other light, but they are growing quite nicely. When I put the new bulb back in, the plants are growing into where the bulb goes if I don't take them off the little stand they're on. So I did, and now I have a like half cubic foot of bushy marijuana plants, lol. I'm pretty sure one or two are definitely males, it looks like preflowers and the structure of those plants is taller, lengthier, and sporadic not bushy and squat.

They need to figure out what they want to be so I can cull them and transplant the females into something bigger. Right now most of the plants have huge root systems growing out of the bottom of their cup into the one I have beneath to catch runoff, now is filled with perlite I have to moisten everyday. I'm just going to bury the bottom half of these cups into something larger so the roots can grow freely into the new bottom container and act as a wick for nutrient solution.

 

[lostinethereal]

Here they are at day 8 of 12/12, here's a group shot a couple close ups.



This one is sorta smaller than all of the others but the top of the plant has very dense looking foliage.



Two of the bigger ones.





And heres what I thought were male pre flowers the other day but now just look like new growth shoots. Or do they get long and tall like this?



I've only fed them a few (three now) times, always at quarter strength and then today at closer to half with 10-15-10 schultz. Those lower leaves look like a phosphorus deficiency to me, but I'm definitely new to this. I waited a little over a week from breaking ground to feed and burned 'em a bit I think, so I've been hesitant but now I think they want some food now. Any advice on feeding would be appreciated. All the new growth looks fine and they're growing nicely, definitely stretching a bit now that they're in flower. All in all I'd say things are progressing quite nicely

 

[GrizzleB]

lower leaves look like N deficiency but im new too, but at this point thats my guess, maybe feed more N, 5-1-1 fish emulsion is a good source for veg.