CaptainOrganicsCO Midwinter SCRoG

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Hello all, I am preparing to log my second grow on this forum. My indoor garden is located in my attic. I grow organically in soil using the TLO method. I will be doing a scrog again it works well in my space. I generally run 6 plants at a time and this run will be no exception. I took clones for this grow tonite. I will veg for a month under 150w MH, tucking and weaving as the plants grow. For flowering I will have a 600w MH in middle of room and 2 150w HPS on either side of the MH. I like the mixed spectrum for flowering.

I will very briefly explain the feeding process I'm using. The guy at your local grow shop probably doesnt want you to grow this way...Originally I started with roots dirt, it's great(and expensive!) now I use amended recycled dirt. I build my pots with layers AND spikes of OMRI stuff. I add myco fungi. I top dress with fresh living worm castings from the worm farm I have. I add a clay ball mulch layer. I will liberally brew and use ACT's using different stuff for different stages of the plants life, but they are always pretty similar in recipe. And that's it for feeding... Not a single bottle of anything ( except cal mag ill get to that). Pretty darn easy and amazing quality smoke. I have not had a stellar yield in the 4 runs I have done TLO, but I am trying to yield a lot more this run. Really though, I grow for myself, and I love smoking high quality product. Yield is no where near the top on my grow room priority list like some hydro cash cropers, no offense to anyone.

Water is important. I won't get into why here, but it certainly is. I would only use rainwater or RO water for my plants. I have been using rainwater/snowmelt for a year or so now. It's a pain in the ass. :) I'd like to buy a small boy RO unit or similar soon. Basically if I just watered from my kitchen sink I would kill the most important part of my grow... The soil! Yes the soil, my soil is no where near sterile, there is or will be millions of micro organisms and beneficial bacterial and fungi residing in the soil. Long story short I will build my pot, introduce a micro herd of tiny gardening buddies, and its on!

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Alright, on to the actual plants. I will be growing 4 bubblegum plants and 2 SLH this run. I really like the both of them and they grow nice in my dirt. I guess I'm assuming all 4 bubblegum clones will survive. Hope so.
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This is my tiny seed popping room
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The 4 in front are the BG clones doing good.
Usually takes about 2 weeks under the dome

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

This grow log will take a while to complete, I wanted to log it from the very start this time. I will be slightly reworking my existing flowering room and doing the scrog better and different this time. Please follow along. I'd love comments, questions and critiques.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Here is my worm farm in full operation. The bottom tray is filled with fresh castings, the higher trays are full of food at different stages.
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I use these fresh castings on the very bottom layer of my pot, in all my teas, and as a top dress. The plants love this stuff.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Room idea for next time. I would have to just grow 1 strain. That would be fine.
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I could Have room to water still and move around. Have a huge screen. And utilize my lights fairly well I would say. Hmm well have a few weeks still flowering last run before have to figure out.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

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I'm pretty sold on this design here. Allows me access to all sides of the screen and that's an advantage.


As far as ventilation goes. I have forced air intake into the room through the bathroom exhaust ceiling vent via ducting. This is nice pulling warm air in the winter and cool air in the summer from the house. I have another inline fan exhausting air to one of 2 places. In the summer I ship the hot air outside, and in the winter I keep it in the attic. Growing in an attic is a challenging. I have 2 oscillating fans also in the room also. I have a little space heater set on low with the led blacked out. I don't have a humidifier or a dehumidifier. Low humidity is the deal here. I have a unique solution I think. What I do is draw the fresh air from the bathroom vent right? So when ever someone is taking a shower...humidity blast to the room for 15 min. Seems to be working just fine. I have a huge daily RH range, usually the same time of day they get a humidity blast. (I have never recorded higher than 65% and as low as 16% frequently)

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Cleaned out the attic and amended my old used dirt and threw them in the recycle bins to cook. I have 60 gal of soil cooking now and half a tub of unused roots still. For my indoor grow, I will not need to buy soil anytime soon or maybe ever. My attic was really nasty. I gotta have a nice clean tidy attic outside my grow space as well as in. I was being lazy. Smack myself! Plans are finished for the screen. Im gonna do a slight curve to it and put in middle of room. I will be adding insulation to grow space as well as switch out inline fans. I will only be using one inline fan and switching to passive intake.

As far as insulation I was gonna extend my grow room frame and put another layer of plastic. There would be a few inches of air between. Or hang blankets, idk, any ideas?

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Here's a view of the grow room from the attic.
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Here's a pic of the plants inside the room that have to finish before I can do this bubblegum scrog
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They were in a screen and I had to hack the others free to harvest.
Now they look cool, like little bonsai trees.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

This cold snap is a bitch. Today is the first day the ice on my roof is even thinking about melting. I kinda depend on snowmelt and rain water and I have no water available atm. I buy distilled H2O sometimes when I have too. I am melting some icicles for tea making and to fill my sprayer. Kinda ridiculous. I need to order a RO unit.

[d00g]

Hey man, nice log! Are you like me with your diagrams and you sit around drawing them while bored at work? Sometimes all I can think about while I'm at work is a tiny modification that I want to make to my cabinet.

Have you seen the price of reliable RO filtration units? Insanely expensive for a water filter IMO. I see that you have plenty of experience so I assume you already know that you can buy gallons of RO purified water from CVS for like $1-$2? If you don't have any stocked rainwater or snow-melt water, that's always good for an emergency last resort (plus you could keep 5-10 gallons on-hand, Doomsday Preppers style)! But judging by the size of your healthy-looking plants, you know what you're doing :rasta:

I love to read your ingenuity regarding humidity up through the bathroom ceiling, that is the type of unique challenge that most indoor farmers don't face, and the type of solution that I strongly respect! Your worm castings look tasty (for plants, not me!), and I am envious regarding your home-brewed compost tea. Please keep this log updated because I will be VERY happy to follow it and monitor your progress!

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

dOOg,
Thanks for following along and the comments! I think planning a grow at work is great, u are getting paid for it!

After some homework I think when I do get an RO unit I will buy the small boy With the 6K gal filter. Around 100$ on amazon with free shipping.

That would pay for itself pretty quick for me. I am starting an indoor heirloom organic veggie grow soon. That will have a lot of 1 gal pots. Ill be using way more water. Ill go nuts trying to harvest snowmelt for that.

[d00g]

Tomatoes for personal use or selling at a farmer's market? I hadn't seen that unit in the brief searches that I did, I'll have to check it out. We're about to get some snow here on Saturday they're saying, maybe I'll fill a few large metal pots and let it melt down then put it into empty water gallon containers and use that for the first time. I am interested in pH testing that.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

I have 12 different heirloom veggie varieties. All for me and for sharing.
It will PH at or near 7.0
Unless maybe ur in the city and u have acid snow? Like acid rain? Idk?
Mine is 7.0

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

PPMs are ultra low as well so adding calmag every other watering helps me out. I use 10 drops/gal every other watering. And a little calmag in each tea. If u go the snowmelt route...

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Some roof shingles are bad. I have a metal roof so mines fine, FYI.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

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Some tea brewing for my recycling project.

I like brewing the teas over the worm farm, if they spill over, well great.

See all the leaves in there? The worms might have the munchies!

My clones aren't doing so well. I am doing like I usually do:
Sprayer, dome, heat mat. It's been so darn cold. I really would like all four BG's to make it.
Checking temp and humidity in the dome now. I think temp is gonna be low and the problem.
Shitty...

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

81 degrees on the floor in the clone box, 60% RH in the clone dome. And I sprayed again, so what gives? Guess I'm just waiting and seeing how they fair. I tossed the mother too, lol.
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If your looking real close at the temp/humidity highs lows are for upstairs, ( just put it in the clone dome)

[budbro28]

hey man maybe this video can help....

Weed clones dry, fried, burned,curled in the sun, and rescued time lapse part 4 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVKeP67ugSA)

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Thanks will check out tomorrow.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

That time lapse is really cool. Those clones looked like shit! I would guess they had already sprouted roots before they got dried out like that, idk. Pretty cool to watch them come back like that. Thanks for the link.

[d00g]

Hey Captain, do you think your clones look too humid? In that pic to me, it looks like temp could be a couple degrees higher and humidity should be a few more degrees lower. I know you are working in unique settings and circumstances, so it may even be far beyond your control. But, maybe correcting those factors the best you can might help the clones flourish. Have you cloned in this manner a lot of times before?

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

I thought I had it down lol,
They are all looking better tonite which is cool.
I like to put cuttings in somewhere close to 80 degrees and 80% RH. And give them some fresh air once or twice a day.
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I don't use any rooting hormone or anything, I think that's all marketing hype personally. I have clone about a million basil plants by simply throwing cuttings in a glass of water in the window. That takes forever.
I do the ganja cloning in mellow dirt with lots of perlite.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

I'm open to suggestions :)

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

I may have to abort this log. Ppl should look for me under COorganics
I think there are some wonderful ppl here but I am moving elsewhere.

[d00g]

Moving elsewhere to other sites, switching names to COorganics and staying on this site, or...?

I will surely and happily continue following you. Let me know, homez!

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Moving to another site, obv can't name here. Plz follow!
I feel it's for the best for my continuing Ed.
COorganics can google it

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Pm's, innovative growers by the hordes, why not?

[Shovelhandle]

420Mag. keep up the good work, captain.
I have been here the longest of all the herb forums I post. I also replicate my grow logs on Mr Nice Seeds forum, as I use those strains a lot. My favorite is the cannacabana, very active and many professionals. There are no newbies spewing out bogus advice because they wouldn't get away with it for one second. It is invitation only. I'm also a member of IC magazine but I'm very inactive there, no grow logs, I feel the three I do are enough. But IC mag does have lots of knowledgeable growers and they will usually answer any questions to your satisfaction.

Bon voyage!

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Gracias,
Hey wanna invite me to canna cabana?

Is that to much to ask???

[budbro28]

I may have to abort this log. Ppl should look for me under COorganics
I think there are some wonderful ppl here but I am moving elsewhere.
shaddy dude!!! i just joined and you weez are my go to fellows whats the deal?