day one

High people,

OK to start off I have just placed my White Widow seeds in paper towels and moistend. This is my first grow using this box below and seeds from a bank, and I am looking foward to this experiance.

I have done my reserch and this is the set up. I have made a grow box out of white panel boards and 2x4s. size 4'x4' x 7 feet high total 16 sq ft. Inside of this I have a 600w digital ballast that will take mh and hps bulbs. I sealed all cracks with aluminum tape. I made 4 vent holes 2 on top 2 on bottom. Then atached aluminum dryer hose that I painted flat black inside. I then made 2- 90 deg bends in the tubing and nearly 0 light excapes from this box. I then mounted a box fan at a 45 deg angle from the ceiling after all said and done $550 total cost including seeds.

I am starting of with 10 white widow seeds and 5 mystery seeds that came with the ww seeds. I got them from amsterdamnseeds.com
Has any one bought seeds from them? I am wondering about the MYSTERY SEEDS anyone tried them before? and what did you get?

I started this thread to give progress reports and any advice.

Sounds good... What kinda of fan are you using for ventilation? You are gonna need a good inline fan to keep up with the heat from the HPS. Try to keep the temps down around 75-80. It sounds like you are off the a great start. I want one of those ballast... They are more efficent and can also use a Metal halide... They arent that expensive either.. Is there anyway you could get some pictures?

thought of that with the fan and did a dry run for 24 hours with a recordable t-stat and physics did its work, at plant level it never went above 80F. This was with mh only you might be right with the hps bulb though. If I do need an in line I can one easily put one in.

to add to this I am thiking of doing the brewers yeast trick to suppliment co2 duing the vegitive growth cycle and an inline fan would defeat this trick.

Day 4

Ok off to a good start. I have 100% germination at this point. the mystery seeds only took 24 hours to germinate and the whitewidow seeds took 32 to 48 hours to germinate. I think heat had something to do with it, I put them in a cabinet to start but it was not warm enough so I placed them on top of my cable box and presto 12 hours later they all had little white fingers comming out.

I then placed them in miracal grow potting soil and this moning I have one spout up and waiting for the others to come along. They should all be up within 24 hours.

Also you were right about the exaust fan. I had a hell of a time trying to get the temp under control. Finally I had to put 4 inch axil fans on all 4 supply and exaust vents and got the temp down to a managable 85F, it was going up to 97F at one point. Glad I caught this befoe I did any damage. Thank god for remote thermometers. I highly recomend one of these so you can moniter your grow box at all times without opening the door.
thats it for now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jerry Garcia 2007

to add to this I am thiking of doing the brewers yeast trick to suppliment co2 duing the vegitive growth cycle and an inline fan would defeat this trick.

---

The plants won't really need any extra Co2 until they are flowering. But it won't hurt... And a good tip is to use alot of sugar... The more sugar you can use the longer/more the yeast will make little bubbles. Yeast and sugar water is a good alternative to expensive CO2 generators and it has the added benefit of making high proof alcohol. :cool:

Really,

I will take your word on that co2 is for flowering, I was under the impression it was more for Vegitive stage. The reason I say that is I would think you want the explosive growth in the vegitive stage to get the plant as big and healthy as possiable before flowering. Correct me if I am wrong please.

You might say I am doing this sog style but my intention is to veg untill 2/3 of growspace is full then induce flowering, also I read somewhere where you can sex a plant during week 2 of veg switch to 18/6 for 2 to 3 days then carfully inspect each plant for sex and eliminate the males then go back to 24/7 the rest of the veg stage. Is this true and do you recomend this.

my ultimate goal here is to get max out of each plant and space, time is not a factor.

Hey,

What's the Brewers Yeast Trick?

ok, I am going to do my best to explain this.

The brewers yeast trick is done by getting a gallon jug, make a water sugar solution using as much sugar as possiable that you can disolve in water and have it remain clear to slightly cloudy. leaving the jug 3/4 full, you then add brewers yeast to this mixture and place it in your grow room and leave it, within 24 hours you will see tiny bubbles forming and rising to the top, these bubbles are pure CO2 and is a byproduct of the yeast converting the sugar to alcohol. ( this is how rum is made) depending on sugar content this will continue for up to 30 days. Oh yeh do not put a lid on the jug or it will explode due to presure buildup.

If you place 1 to 4 of these in your grow room and it is fairly sealed it will feed CO2 to your plants 24/7 for up to 30 days or when you no longer see any bubbles, the peoblem is if your ventilation system has a high rate of CFM to pull out the heat in your grow room you are pulling the CO2 out before your plants can absorb it. This really works great in flowering when you go to dark and you can shutdown the exauhst fans due to you do not need them for climate control. You will need to keep your circulation fan running due to CO2 is a heavy gas and will accumulate on the floor of your grow room if no fan is running.

This is a very cheap and effective way to suppliment the CO2 to your plants.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jerry Garcia 2007

Really,

I will take your word on that co2 is for flowering, I was under the impression it was more for Vegitive stage. The reason I say that is I would think you want the explosive growth in the vegitive stage to get the plant as big and healthy as possiable before flowering. Correct me if I am wrong please.

You might say I am doing this sog style but my intention is to veg untill 2/3 of growspace is full then induce flowering, also I read somewhere where you can sex a plant during week 2 of veg switch to 18/6 for 2 to 3 days then carfully inspect each plant for sex and eliminate the males then go back to 24/7 the rest of the veg stage. Is this true and do you recomend this.

my ultimate goal here is to get max out of each plant and space, time is not a factor.

---

You are actually right. The plant uses CO2 for both stages, veg and flowering. But they use alot more in the flowering phase when they start exploding with buds. Typically the ambient air flowing around your house has 200 -300ppm of co2. Which is plenty of vegetating plants. But if you grow in a cabinet or a smaller space.. that level would be much lower.

As for growing space... I don't think it would be a good idea to use 2/3 of you growing space. Plants stretch alot during the first 3 weeks of flowering. Some times (especially for SOG plants) they stretch three or even four times their height depending on their genetics. So I would suggest if you have 4 feet to work with... flower them when they are about 8" tall and you will have plenty of room. It sucks when you flower them and they are too big and the grow all the way up to the lights and get burned. As for sexing the plants ... don't worry about it... They will show sex when they are ready. They usually show sex for me right as i put them into flowering. If you do anything... I would just give it a mild dose of some bloom nitrients. The Extra P-K will help the little pre-flowers grow alittle bit so you can recognize it.

B.T.W Good job explaining the Sugar-water method. You know... After you have used up all the sugar in your jugs... All thats left is pure alcohol and water... All you have to do is distill it...:thumbsup:;):)