From Window Sill to Basement Operation: My First Grow (Micro / LED / CFL)

Whatâ??s up party people,

Iâ??m pph4ntom and this is both my first post and my first serious grow. There was an ill-fated closet operation in college but I donâ??t really count that half-assed endeavor.

Background

With the arrival of spring, I spent a weekend recently turning the overgrown patch of dirt in the back of my house into a respectable piece of dirt and planted a lawn. So happy was I to be working outside with plants that lo and behold I started planting other shit, and decided, fuck it, just germinate some of the seeds Iâ??ve been saving, throw â??em in a pot on the window sill and see what happens.

Well, they almost all germinated (I put them in a wet paper towel) and I put them in their pots on the window sill. And they grew. So I germinated some more, because why not, fuck it. Then my cats ate two of the latest ones and ripped out the third, which is just now recovering.

I started looking into growing some more, because really, itâ??s been on my mind for years, and Iâ??m actually finally in a position where I can pull it off (living + financial situation). So I read some, and more, andâ?¦

â?¦ here we are.

The Set-Up

Stealth is my number 1 priority. I cherish my freedom and job too much to be careless. So Iâ??ve decided to make this a basement operation and camouflage the grow box into sea of shit littering the floor. You can see what Iâ??ve set up so far in picture No. 1.

The box behind the bed on the bottom is the veg chamber. Basically I took the biggest box I had (toilet paper box no less), measured it, and built a wooden frame for the inside. The dimensions are 18â?� x 17â?� x 24â?�. Hereâ??s what else Iâ??ve done and set up inside so far:

• Light: 32W CFL at 2200 lumen
• 400W Computer PSU power two fans
  
• Intake: ~22 CFM
  
• Exhaust: ~35 CFM
• Power strip and timer
• Painted inside of box with Montana Silver Chrome

Check picture 2 for a whole view and picture 3 for a closer look.

The Plants

Like I said, this started out as a â??letâ??s see what happensâ?� operation without much thought put into things (although somewhere in the back of my mind, I mustâ??ve known that this would get serious). The seeds were from some kind bud a while ago, no idea what they are. I initially got some potting soil from the local hardware store, which in retrospect was pretty clumpy. Later I purchased some seed starter soil for some other plants Iâ??m growing, which seemed much more apt to start growing herb, so I ended up putting another layer of that soil on top of the clumpy shit.

You can see the plants in picture 4 â?? they stretched quite a bit when they were sitting on the window sill in the sun, and are quite spindly, so I decided to tie them to wooden stakes. In the last picture you can see a close up of the 4 best ones so far â?? the 5th was one the cat ripped out that I replanted and is slowly picking up its head again.

Temperature has been around 70 deg. The 4 big plants are around 14 days, and range in height from 3.5â?� to 5â?�. I also started them on a 18 / 6 schedule for the past 2 days.

The Plan

So what weâ??re looking at here is only the veg box so far. Iâ??m planning on making another, bigger box within one of those big wardrobe boxes, which are about 2â?? x 2â?? x 4â??. This will be the flowering box in which Iâ??ll have one, hopefully two plants so that I can harvest a plant every 3 â?? 4 weeks.

The current plants are really just more of test run and Iâ??m looking at buying some seeds; Iâ??m thinking with the space constraints I have, and the lights Iâ??ll be using, Iâ??ll go for an auto-flowering lowryder strain of some sort. The light Iâ??ll be using in the flowering box is a 28W LED Panel, from what Iâ??ve been reading here that seems to be a good choice for what Iâ??m looking to do â?? not a huge grow operation, just a plant to harvest every 3 or 4 weeks.

My Questions

So yea, Iâ??m total newbie at this, but Iâ??m into it. Here are a few questions I have for you all â?? any feedback is greatly appreciated, and thanks for indulging a neophyte:

1. What do you make of my set-up, what am I forgetting?
2. Whatâ??s the deal with the plantsâ?¦ are they too stretched out? Are they fairly behind for day 14?
3. Is training them as I am a good idea?
4. What kind of seeds would you recommend?
5. I have not the first idea about nutrients; I can Google as well as the next guy, but are there any definitive sites / pages that you know of with good information on this topic?
6. Is the light in the veg chamber enough for what Iâ??m doing? Will the LED panel be enough?
7. How much airflow is needed? Since Iâ??m not using a HID, I think it wonâ??t be as much, but in general, how much CFM are we trying to circulate in a box?

â?¦ Wow, youâ??re still reading my post! Thanks for sticking around, and double-thanks for any help or feedback you might have for me.

Iâ??m stoked as hell about this, and cannot wait for my next post.

Happy growing,
pph4ntom
:greenthumb:

You need more light on them!!!!!


I've been told to get my lights about 3-4" off the top of my plant,... and I'm running a 96 watt 4 tube t-5 light rack.

My little girl is much happier now,... and has stopped growing UP, and started growing OUT! :D:smokin:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by canniwhatsis

You need more light on them!!!!!


I've been told to get my lights about 3-4" off the top of my plant,... and I'm running a 96 watt 4 tube t-5 light rack.

My little girl is much happier now,... and has stopped growing UP, and started growing OUT! :D:smokin:

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agreed... your plants are strecthing massively towards the lights, you can see this by the distance between the nodes its large, i cant reali see at the moment on mine as there only 11 days old but mine are alot shorter than yours no bigger than 2inches but they are already pushing there 2nd set of leaves (after the round ones) through so i have a much shorter distance between nodes, try getting your light closer, or seeing as u've sed your financially stable for this grow... invest in some more lighting :thumbsup::jointsmile:

Quote:

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You need more light on them!!!!!

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thanks guys exactly the kind of shit I need to know :D

... going on a trip to the hardware store today!

Thanks again.

That 28w LED isn't going to do much. You need to rethink your lighting.

People here can be extremely helpful but sometimes get frustrated answering the same questions over and over. A number of your questions are easily answered with a few simple searches. Do your homework so that you ask the right questions. A good place to start is by scanning the stickies here: Basic Growing - Cannabis Forums Message Boards - Medical Marijuana, Cannabis Club, Dispensary, News

I'm not coming down on you. I'm a total nOOb too. You've got good energy going. I'm just trying to give you bump in the right direction.

Keep up the good work!

@bigsby: thanks for that link, I hadn't happened upon it yet! Looks like I've got my reading list set for a while :) I know what you mean, I'm a community admin elsewhere, and answering the same damn questions can be annoying.

I had searched and read a bunch about LED lighting, it just seems like a topic people disagree about a whole lot... I figured a 28W panel for a single plant (plus some CFL thrown in for good measure) would do the trick... sad to hear it won't. I'll look through the room you linked to for my LED questions and see what the minimum requirements are for a 1 or 2 plant grow.

In regards to my set-up, I've upgraded the lighting situation and am now running 4 x 27W CFL for a total of 108W. I've also moved them a lot closer, about 4-6 inches from the plants (see picture). Should be better now I hope, and the plant that's just starting out should show a lot less stretching.

Well thanks for the tips, links, and patience. It's much appreciated.

- pph4ntom

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pph4ntom

@bigsby: thanks for that link, I hadn't happened upon it yet! Looks like I've got my reading list set for a while :) I know what you mean, I'm a community admin elsewhere, and answering the same damn questions can be annoying.

I had searched and read a bunch about LED lighting, it just seems like a topic people disagree about a whole lot... I figured a 28W panel for a single plant (plus some CFL thrown in for good measure) would do the trick... sad to hear it won't. I'll look through the room you linked to for my LED questions and see what the minimum requirements are for a 1 or 2 plant grow.

In regards to my set-up, I've upgraded the lighting situation and am now running 4 x 27W CFL for a total of 108W. I've also moved them a lot closer, about 4-6 inches from the plants (see picture). Should be better now I hope, and the plant that's just starting out should show a lot less stretching.

Well thanks for the tips, links, and patience. It's much appreciated.

- pph4ntom

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Bingo on the lights man:thumbsup: Those are just what i used and my first indoor was great. They will get the light they need now and will stop stretching for it. Just keep em close and also you might want to think about one just like it to finish 4 plants. Check out my '10 indoor in my Sig and you will see what to expect. First, so maybe you could avoid my problems.

Keeper green man :weedpoke::rasta:

With the LED you are concerned with wave length - you want a something in the neighborhood of 80% Red 15% Blue and 5% White. The red needs to be in the 680 nm wave length and the other concern is watts per diode. 1w LEDs are fine for some application but 3w is better. Finally, you are also concerned with the lens angle. That is, what is the spread of the lights? Does it come down like spot or is it more defuse. A more defuse lens will allow you to get them closer to the plants. Closer is better. I am by no means well versed. Others here can guide you much more efficiently. I'm pushing the boundaries of my knowledge as it is... You may be fine. You are on your way down the road with that plant. If it fails, you will know to build out your lights.

Keep us posted.

Alright, time for a little update.

Did my first transplant today, and goddamn what a disaster that was.

So ever since I put the additional lights on my plants they became droopy and the leaves curled... since I also watered on that same day, I'm pretty sure it was overwatering. I've been letting them dry out over the past few days (last time I watered was Sunday - today is Thursday), and, well, they haven't really started recuperating at all, even though the soil is pretty damn dry... even put the guys on 24/7 lights to speed up the drying process. Digging my finger in soil down an inch or so it's still vaguely moist but it's kind of like "is this dry or moist?"

In any event, since I got these plants in clear cut-off plastic bottles (wanting to be thrifty), I thought, hey, maybe the roots are being exposed to light and aren't liking it. Since these plants are kind of "throw-away" anyway - they're bag seeds after all - and more for experimentation, I figured I'd transplant one of the really droopy ones into a simple red party cup with hole in the bottom.

Well the plastic bottles they're in were coke bottles, so the shape was pretty crappy for trying to the root ball out - impossible in fact. So I took my razor blade and started cutting the wall off basically, and slid right into my left palm... ouch. Some Hyrdrogen Peroxide and a taped hand later, I continued my quest. Got the wall off, and basically the root "ball" just completely disintegrated when I tried to pull it out. A couple of unsmooth operations later, and I'm looking at the plant and all of what's left of the root system - the tap root and some offshoots. Oh well, lesson learned. I put some Hummus & Compost at the bottom of one of those red cups and topped it off with Miracle Gro Seed Starter, dug a deep whole, and put the plant back in... let's see what happens, maybe it makes it. Growth will be stunted for sure.

The updside of today was that I got 2 Thermometers/Hydrometers and 1 Hanna pH Checker in the mail today so I can finally get some better visibility into what's going on. Temps are around 72F and Humidity at around 45%. pH is definitely a problem right now: the Miracle Gro Seed Starter mix has no lime to offset the acidity of the peat moss, and doing run-off pH water testing shows pH at about 5.4! Now the compost and hummus are, interestingly, alkalic (any idea why btw?) and so offset the acidity a bit, but I'm going to a proper garden center this weekend to get some good shit.

Been reading a shit ton of material online - @bigsby, in addition to the Basic Growing room there's the "Cannabis FAQs" link at the very top of the page, what a wealth of information. Started a "MarijuanaWiki" on my desktop server to take notes and am slowly mapping the knowledge terrain. Now gotta dive into to soil and nutrients for this weekend's garden trip. After all, wanna start things right for the new seed that just popped :D

Btw @bigsby, in regards to the LED's, interesting considerations. The more I read the more this really seems brand-new, since there's little information in any of the guides and whatnot. I think I'll give it a go with some of these prototype plants to see what happens, and switch over to HPS if needed and once I got some free cash again.

For right now, I'll just be trying to keep the plants alive, harder than I thought.

Alright y'all, happy growing.
- pph4ntom

Here's a picture of the yungins.

A) Kinda blurry, but you can see that nothing almost nothing happened since the last pic. Kind of a mystery actually as to what's stunting growth here. Thinking it might be the stake...

B) This was the disaster transplant of today. Droopy as hell.

C) The best plant so far, third set of leaves coming in nicely, but here also you can see some droopiness and curling of the leaves... what do you guys think, definitely overwatering right?

D) Hanging in there, also some droopiness and a bit stunted growth, we'll see what happens here.

E) Little seedling in pure MG which is pretty acidic it turns out (no lime)... this was also the little plant that my cat yanked out. While it has retaken root and is alive, it's a bit lopsided as you can see and hasn't done much at all over the past week.

pe@ce,
pph4ntom

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pph4ntom

Here's a picture of the yungins.

A) Kinda blurry, but you can see that nothing almost nothing happened since the last pic. Kind of a mystery actually as to what's stunting growth here. Thinking it might be the stake...

B) This was the disaster transplant of today. Droopy as hell.

C) The best plant so far, third set of leaves coming in nicely, but here also you can see some droopiness and curling of the leaves... what do you guys think, definitely overwatering right?

D) Hanging in there, also some droopiness and a bit stunted growth, we'll see what happens here.

E) Little seedling in pure MG which is pretty acidic it turns out (no lime)... this was also the little plant that my cat yanked out. While it has retaken root and is alive, it's a bit lopsided as you can see and hasn't done much at all over the past week.

pe@ce,
pph4ntom

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mine looked like that when i overwatered em, if it is just dnt give them any water and they will sort themselves out, but there looking better now man:thumbsup::jointsmile:

For a single plant, if kept short, you would've been okay with just the CFL and LED panel.

Bigsby - 680nm is too deep of a red and is not as efficient as 660 or 670. Also you really don't want white diodes unless you're absolutely sure the diode is peaking in the wavelengths you want - most white diodes are a blue or UV diode with a phosphor on them. They're pretty inefficient as-is and won't last as long as a true single-color diode.

Hey pph4ntom,

There are some great stickies and FAQs on this site. I've read through many of them and I try to highlight them for people when appropriate. I like this place. No flame wars, just people trying to learn from each other.

If you decide to investigate LEDs do your homework. First, the technology has advanced. There is a better understanding of what colors / diodes work for MJ. There are an awful lot of panels out there based around the lesser, cheaper technology. Second, they are becoming more powerful - 3w and 5w as opposed to 1w, although 1w is appropriate in some situations. A decent LED is going to cost you so if you see it listed for what seems to be an impossible price, that's because it is crap. That said, even some of the pricey models are crap. Again, more $$ upfront but considerably cheaper in the long run.

If you can wait, you will be able to watch me do my LED grow. I'll document with a decent grow log. You can also have a look at moody420. She's working through her first LED grow now using the same lights that I will be using.

Definitely worth investing in some proper pots. Make use you have adequate drainage in those soda bottles / cups.

@JS: Good to hear... I just checked on them again and I think I see signs of improvements.

@khyber: good to hear as well! Was only planning on doing a single plant at a time, so maybe the LED with some CFLs will do the trick.

And yes @bigsby, I'll definitely be doing my homework before I commit... thanks for the tip on moody420, I'll check her out.

And yes again, I'll definitely be investing in some proper pots after today's shenanigans.

Thanks all, very much appreciated,
- pph4ntom

glad to hear tthat there perking up abit matey...:thumbsup:

..., but the basic rule of excessiveness is "cram alla the shit in there that'cha can"...

pph4ntom: KUDOS for getting off to a good start! If I might offer a coupla recco's re: CFLs @ wallyworld, go get one or two of the 200w equiv / 45w actual 4100K cool white 'shop light' CFLs, and get 'em in there for a good basic initial growth spectrum (as well as 6000lumens in only two bulbs, with 90w of power consumption..)

Gonna keep'n Ai on thays...

Update time.

In the last episode I cut my hand, which has since healed nicely, as have the plants from the shock of being transplanted. A day after transplanting plant B, I transplanted the rest, because I figured why leave them in the coke bottles any longer, let's just get it over with.

Again, lesson learned: don't plant in coke bottles! The shape is not good for transplanting. The red cups I've used now are definitely superior.

Since I figured out that the MG seed starter soil is much too acidic at around 5.5 pH (since they don't add lime as pH stabilizer), I mixed it with some Compost & Humus I had laying around, which, being basic (is that normal btw, and if so, why?), I used to get the soil to about 6.4.

I also planted another seed that had popped, using the wet paper towel method (plant H), and have planted two more into pellets to give that method a go. Wonder if that'll work, putting the seeds in the pellet without first popping the seed.

I've also now for the first time given the plants B, C, and D, some nutes, specifically Fox Farm Big Bloom and Grow Big, at diluted strength. Here's where I ran into a bit of trouble: running the solution (6.4ish pH) through plant C, the pH on the other side was coming out at like 7.4... wtf? So I flushed the hell out of the plant, and actually ended up mixing some water with some balsamic vinegar I had to get a solution at about 4 pH and kept flushing the plant until I hit 6.8... took a while though. Then fed the nutes again. Plant B and D I just gave the nutes without bothering checking pH, just to see what'll happen. Most of these plants will need to go anyway eventually.

Still clueless as to why the pH was at 7.4... I wonder if the Compost & Humus changed the pH of the soil since the transplant. Any ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.

Since I've planted, plant H has sprouted and is looking like a champ. Because of her (hopefully) I've also taken the light schedule back down to 18/6.

In all, the plants seem to be doing quite well actually since the transplant (because of the more balanced pH of soil I'd say), and plants A and E have actually started growing again after just chilling there for a week (see pic). They're all perked up since the overwatering as well. Pretty soon I'll have to build out the flowering box... can't wait.

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@CC: Thanks for that tip, as I'm short on space anyway those superbulbs might come in handy, been thinking about how to get more lights in there anway, but space is supertight at the moment... and thanks for the props! Gotta admit I've gotten kind of obsessed with this now hehe.

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That's it for now. Thanks for reading and happy growing!
-pph4ntom

Whats up??

Hopefully I dont cover some things other people did...

Agreed with all that they stretched a crazy amount! You got more CFLs which is always better... Next transplant you can bury the long stems all the way to the first set of leaves. Also to fix those thin spaghetti stems all you need is a small fan blowing on them 24hrs. It will thicken their stems and wont need support.

Another thing. I only saw the small fan in the middle of the box. Is that the intake?
Remember hot air rises so keep your exhaust high up on the box and the intake low. Have you read about negative pressure? It would be better if you flipped your intake fan around and put it up top with the other one and had them both exhaust. Leaving an open "passive" intake that draws air in without a fan.

One last thing! That pc psu has got to go. It is creating extra heat and drawing way too much power for only some pc fans. Plus you have all that extra wire taking up space. You would be much better off finding a 12VDC charger like for a cell phone or anything. Match up the mA rating on the charger to the pc fans rating and just splice the wires together and secure them.

You want the air in your cabinet to be replaced about every 5 minutes (correct me if im wrong). So calculate the CFM of your cabinet and find the fans that will do the job.

Ive also grown with MG potting mix. Works great so dont let anyone tell you otherwise. Its not the best but it works fine. Add about 25% perlite to that MG potting mix and it will be fine. My experience with MGpm was it was a tad bit acidic so when I would mix my nutes and water I would just PH the mix a little lower than I would. Think it has something to do with the pieces of pine bark in it.

This is such a fun and rewarding hobby and I hope you do great! Good luck.

...and apparently Sun Blaster now has a CFL that pulls a measly 26w, but puts out 2400 lumens!!! See Jeremy at Grown Hydro if you're anywhere in the Toronto or GTA.

They're a bit pricey at 20bux/ea, but the lumens-per-watt equation puts 'em near MH territory, and they're both small and very-low-power-consumption!

Aaaand, they're 'round the 6400k colour temp, but with a good showing across the whole band you need for, well, everything...

Mmmm... lightbulb porn... arahaghahgahahghargh...