First Grow, CFL w/ bagseed.

[daihashi]

I've been having alot of problems that I've been posting in this thread under plant problems.

I finally decided that it's probably best just to start a grow log. Here is the room setup.

Room Dimensions: 2.2' x 12' x 9' (maybe 10).

Shelving system: 2 shelves. First shelf is 18" tall, Second shelf can run up to the ceiling. Both shelves are slightly more than 4' wide.

Lighting: These are all daylight CFLs. Should be 6000k-6500k on the color temperature scale. I have 8 27watt bulbs (1300 Lumens, 100 watt comparable) and 4 14 watt bulbs (640 Lumens, 60 watt comparable). The lights are sitting about 2-3 inches away from the plant tops. Total lumen out put is about 13000 over a very small area. Lights are currently on 24/7, but I may change this to 18/6 due to some heat issues I've recently encountered since switching to CFL.

Plants: Plants are bagseed. Been having some major issues with growing which I'll get into later. Currently because I changed my lighting setup over to CFL's once I learned T12's were crap, the plants are in a smaller space. Approximately 15"x15"x18" (I've actually widened the area a little bit than it probably actually is).

Temperature/Humidity: Temperature stays between 75F-83F degrees. Since switching to CFL temps get up into the 90's unless I leave the closet door open. If I leave it open temps drop to about 80-82. Humidity stays about 35-40% regardless of the temperature.

Soil: Currently using soil with a PH of 6.8. Name Brand is Calloways. I bought this from a fairly good nursery/garden center and was told by the owner there are no nutes in it. Previously I was using something called Landscapers potting mix, which I was also told by another garden center that it had no nutes. Turned out it did. 2 of my plants are in this new soil, and 5-6 of my plants are in the old soil (I tried flushing the soil to save them, I think the added shock just hurt them more).

Water: I water about every other day. So I guess that's 2 days? My drainage is really good. Too good in some of my pots, I think I used too much perlite in some of the pots. I just have to stay on top of it to make sure it never gets too dry. I use super thrive in my water. I try to use just a drop but honestly it's more like a quick spill. Maybe 1/4 of a teaspoon per gallon. I've been using it with each watering since I flushed the plants about a week ago. Water PH is also 6.8

Ventilation: This is a closet grow so ventilation is especially hard since I live in an apartment. Currently ventilation is very poor. With the doors closed and just a fan on inside to circulate the air flow and bring temps down slightly. Last night and today have been better as I've been forced to leave the doors open so that the room will stay below 85 degrees. (get's up to 90 now with the CFL's on). I have an idea that came to me in my sleep last night I'll tell in the next post.

Nutes: Not using any nutes yet, except for the bastard nutes that were in my first bag of soil.

Germination: I use seed starting medium in a seedling tray (well now I do). I had tried the paper bag method and the ziplock bag method. Even trying using my back heating pad under the plate they were sitting on to try to stimulate faster root growth. I've had mild success at both. Germinating 2 seeds out of 6-9 each time. I'm trying this new method to see if I can germinate more. I've got about 30 seedlings currently in this tray. Reason for this is that I figured most of my current plants will probably just die out soon. I honestly don't have too much hope for them. With my current track record of about 20-30% germination success. I figured 30 seeds would give me 10 good seedlings that I can keep in these containters for the first 2 weeks of their life before transplanting into soil. Hopefully if there is a soil issue these plants will be bigger and can handle the stress a little better than if I were to plant them directly into the soil after sprouting a root.

I tend to be a little impatient, but I've gotten better about only glancing at the plants to make sure they're not stressing (really I can only do this with the 2 new plants in the new soil. The other plants are totally freaked out and I don't think will recover.). I'm going to try to be patient with my posting as well, trying to post only at every couple of waterings (1-2 times a week) or if something bad looks like it's happening to the plants.

Let me know if I've missed any decent information from this first post.

daihashi Reviewed by daihashi on 12-02-2007. First Grow, CFL w/ bagseed. I've been having alot of problems that I've been posting in this thread under plant problems. I finally decided that it's probably best just to start a grow log. Here is the room setup. Room Dimensions: 2.2' x 12' x 9' (maybe 10). Shelving system: 2 shelves. First shelf is 18" tall, Second shelf can run up to the ceiling. Both shelves are slightly more than 4' wide. Lighting: These are all daylight CFLs. Should be 6000k-6500k on the color temperature scale. I have 8 27watt bulbs Rating: 5

[daihashi]

As for my idea about the ventilation. Well here it goes.

Currently my plants are all crammed in a 15"x15" space. Because I moved to CFL's and they just don't light a WIDE area like the t12 tubes did (albeit not that well). I obviously have heat issues since this is in a closet and I can't get fresh air in unless I leave the doors open. Which I prefer not to do (I have pets).

So here's my idea. Go down to the local office supply shop and buy a box that is 18"x18"x18".

Cut out one side of the box big enough for a box fan, cut out another small part of the box on the other side for another smaller fan.

Flip the little box flappy things up top (I guess the opening). Straight up. Make this very rigid and strength it by joint them all together with tape. (plenty of it).

Slightly below one of the flaps. Cut with a box cutter in the shape of two backwards brackets. It should look like the following: ][. Kind of like a hinged door. This is so I can work in the area.

Line the entire inside with mylar. Plants will have to be watered outside the box to ensure the mylar stays clean and the box doesn't get wet.

Get a piece of plywood that is just slightly larger than the 18"x18" area of the box. Maybe 20"x20" or 22"x22". You get the point. Place it ontop of the flappy things that we taped up earlier.. This is for mounting my lights. Line the plywood with Mylar as well

All of this is so I can take it out of my closet and put it in my actual bedroom where it usually remain much cooler due to the central A/C ventilation, but yet it still gives me room to grow the plants 12-14" tall and still takes up a very small space. I imagine if I get a 2'x2' box I could comfortably grow 6-7 plants if I did LST (this is assuming I can get the most out of a 1 gallon pot/bag and only grew them to 1ft.).

I want to go HPS for flowering, but I'm having heat issues with CFL's and I'm really concerned now with going HPS.

What do you guys think of this grow box setup. It's pretty cheap to create since all it requires me to do is buy a cardboard box from an office supply store. Approximate cost not including the mylar or any of my existing setup: $3-4 for a good strong cardboard box.

[daihashi]

Here are pictures of the Cardboard box setup. I decided to go ahead and make it since it cost less than $10 to make.

Parts:

Cardboard box: 23"x23"x20" - $4.00
Emergency Solar blanket(Mylar) - $1.96
Scrap Plywood: Sweet Talked a hot Home Depot rep - Free


Parts I already had:
-------------------
Fans
Lights
Tape
staples
power strips


Total height with the box flaps pointed up is 30 inches (2.5ft).

Here are a description of the pictures.

Picture 1: Box complete constructed. This view is looking at the exhaust fan hole which is 15" x 12". I left 4" in each direction of the card board to make sure that I didn't sacrafice any unecessary support. You might notice some cuts are uneven. I didn't have a box cutter. I ended up using a steak knife to make all my cuts on the cardboard. oops. Not optimal, but considering what my previous setup was.. it's not horrible either.

Picture 2: Close up of the exhaust hole. The hole no the other side is the intake hole. You might notice the mylar is a little wrinkled. I have a pretty bad back and it was ALOT harder than what I anticipated to hang the sheets inside a completely enclosed area. If I had a second set of hands I'm confident I could've gotten everything smooth. I may go back and do this later. Or I might just say screw it and paint everything flat white.

Picture 3: This is a picture of the doors I said I was going to cut into the shape of brackets so they would fold out. The doors are closed at the moment. You see mylar wrapping around the front. Some of my sheets were much too long. Back started hurting very badly at this point so I just did the best I could.

Picture 4: Picture of the doors open. No the flash is not on. I had one light that is pretty dim on. Looks like the light reflection is fairly decent even though I didn't get to get it all nice and stretched and tight. Other objects you see is my wide screen tv, part of a plant. A red ball chair which is pretty cool, a piece of art, and my lovely shoes I got in Amsterdam. lol.

Picture 5: Picture of the intake hole looking to the exhaust. If you look to the upper left you'll see a poor plant dying. My cat pee'd on it . And to the right are bags of potting soil and perlite. YAY

[daihashi]

Picture 6: Top view of the box. You'll notice that two of the flaps are at an angle. I did this for 2 reasons. To strengthen the maximum weight support of the top, and secondly, to act as a sort of reflector.

Picture 7: This is a picture of the underside of the piece of plywood. I just about ran out of mylar here and pretty much pieced it together using scrap pieces. Do what you gotta do.

Picture 8: This is everything setup and lit up. No plants in there yet. Currently (not shown in the pic). I have my thermometer/humidity meter gauge in there for the next 30 minutes to an hour to see what the peak temperature is with the new setup before I put plants in there.

I'm anticipating at least DECENT results. There was alot of great airflow moving through the box.

All in all total time of making this box was about an hour or 2. Which 90% of that time comprised of me trying to hang mylar with my bad back.

What do you guys think? Any input?

Thanks

edit: Just wanted to note that My camera in the last picture had the shutter speed set as fast as it could go and the aperture almost completely down. Basically I told my camera to let in as little light as possible so the image would come out clear. The actual Light that comes out of that box is BLINDING!. 13000 Lumens Spread out over a 23"x23" area, a total of 8 1300 Lumen 6500k spectrum bulbs and 4 640 Lumen 6500k Specturm bulbs. They are 27watt (100 watt equiv) and 14watt (60watt equiv) respectively.. That's about 6500 Lumens per sq ft. Which is, from everything I've read, Pretty good?

[daihashi]

So I've had the thermometer 1" away from the lights and the Temp is 79F degrees. The humidty is 29% (with nothing in there, it will probably be 35-40% with the plants in there and some moisture.)

The only downside is that now the lights are a little too high. I'll have to boost the pots onto something to get them closer to the lights.

The upside is that if I wanted to I could put some more lights in there and have the temp probably only rise 1-2 degree's.

This is awesome news. A relatively cheap grow box to Veg in. Now I'll have to figure out something for Flowering. Luckily or unluckily for me that's still a ways off.

[DurbanStone]

Interesting, personally I think that's WAY to much air power for small plants. Whats the total wattage?

[daihashi]

Interesting, personally I think that's WAY to much air power for small plants. Whats the total wattage?

I have both fans set on low. the air flow isn't hard/fast persay.. but more of a constant flow that fills the entire area.

Total wattage is 272 Actual Watts, Comparable to 1040 Watts.

[daihashi]

Here are some pictures of my very sick plants. Most of them are actually alot older than they look. For some reason they won't recover and grow.

Picture 1: Group shot of the plants. 7 total, as you can see they pretty much all look sick. The soil I was originally using had nutes in it and I suspect burnt the plants and stunted them. Not really sure what happened. I then flushed them and I think that it's possible it may have done more harm than good. Shocking an already shocked plant. Individual shots below.

Picture 2: This is just a seedling in the new soil I got that has no nutes in it. It's really moving slow to come out of it's hull, I'm hoping it doesn't dud out on me, really this and another plant are my current hopes of survival because I think my original plants are pretty much doomed.

Picture 3: This is the other little plant that I have my hopes on. It was also planted in the new soil I got. I'd say it's about Day 5 or 6 since it's lost it's hull. It's always had that deformed shape to it and that odd discoloration on its rounded leaves.Not sure why. It otherwise looks healthy.

Picture 4: This was my first plant that sprouted that I originally posted about in my "stunted growth" thread in the Plant Problems forum. I tried to flush it to save it, but it looks like it's too late. Honestly it looks dead to me.. how can I tell if a plant is completely dead? Honestly even if it's not dead I don't know if it's even worth saving. This was the first plant that showed signs of nute burn.

Picture 5: This is pictures of the youngest of the plants in the old soil. You can see here that it's got some burn going on. This is after I've flushed the soil in this pot as well. Just can't seem to get it out It's a shame.

[CannabisCarl2134]

Nice job, Good luck.

[daihashi]

Picture 6: I'm not sure what to think of this plant. It's very short. VERY short, I'm talking like maybe 1".. 1-5"... if that. I counted it for gone but it seems to be sprouting new leaves in the middle and it's younger leaves are showing growth. However the original set of leaves still seem to be drooping, they won't perk up. I've let the soil dry out completely before watering again to try to bring them back but I've had no luck. I can only hope that they start vegging better now under this light.

Picture 7: Same situation as above. The two plants look very similar actually. I'm hoping this one recovers as well.

Picture 8: I have no idea what is going on with this plant. At first it was a little yellow, I thought it was just the soil again, then it started turning brown. I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I'm pretty positive it's a gonner, but I'd at least like to learn from what happened here.


Can anyone shed any light on any of my plants. Majority of these plants are... yes.... probably about 21 days.. maybe 28 days

I know, they shouldn't be this small, it's ridiculous. I'm going to blame it on bad soil and the crappy t12 lighting I was using. The tubes I was using weren't even in the right color spectrum, my T12 tubes were 4100K. My new CFL's should be better at 6500K. I'm hoping new soil and the CFL's prove to solve my problem.


In the mean time. I found a Hydro shop here in town and they carry fox farms ocean forest. Which I heard is excellent. My concern is that it does have bat guano and worm castings, which are nutes I believe right? I've read alot of threads of people just using ocean forest from start to harvest. Can anyone else give me insight on how they feel about Fox Farms Ocean forest?

Thanks.