Low-cost CFL Grow - My First Growing Attempt

[PottyBear]

OK, here goes... I think I will make this grow log for the sake of anyone else like me who might be trying to do this indoors in the cheapest way possible, short of a pot on a windowsill (or if you already have a full-size greenhouse). I'm avoiding big expenses for supplies and equipment, and trying to keep the power bill under control. I have no idea what will come out the other end but there are not a lot of extras I can add. Iâ??ll try and document what it costs along the way as best I can for those who might be trying to find out how inexpensively they can do this.

First, I am growing some kind of Afghan Indica hybrid. It is a hybrid of 2 Afghan strains, or so the "label" said. Supposed to be something like an 8-9 week flowering period. I donâ??t know much about this stuff, I just know this is what was recommended for my particular illness & symptoms. We purchased 10 seeds for a little under $50.

Now, we join the process already in progress, about a week inâ?¦

6 of the seeds were planted in peat pellets in a simple tray and placed near a south-facing window very late on July 12. In spite of the fact that whenever I plant seeds to grow vegetables or flowers I always pre-soak them, I didnâ??t do that with these because I was afraid of overdoing the moisture since they were going into peat pellets and, to be honest, I REALLY am a total noob at this even though I have grown more traditional plants all my life. The seeds popped up very fast, and by the 16th I was getting worried because they were getting to be overly spindly little seedlings and I hadn't prepared for them to grow so very quickly. I figured when we put the seeds in we would have at least a week before we needed to worry about anything, but the roots were starting to come out of the bottom of the expanded peat pellets by the 17th. So, it was time to start improvising.

On the 17th we bought some cheap potting soil, perlite, and then mixed in some peat moss we already had in roughly 1/3 proportions. I had no decent-sized pots or money for pots, so as a temporary measure I chopped 6 2L Coke bottles in half, drilled numerous small drain holes in the bottom, and put the soil mixture in, then transplanted the peat pelleted seedlings into them. These were then placed into some small windowsill-type flower boxes to catch any drainage and put into a mini (W:80cm D:45cm H:130cm) greenhouse (which I had moved indoors) I use for starting plants in the spring. Why the greenhouse? Because a) I have it b) I donâ??t have a closet available and c) it is portable if I ever need to move the setup someplace else.

I scrounged up some swag chain from an old light, and mounted an old Daylight fluorescent mini-shop light (or maybe it is a grow light) on a piece of wood, stuck a couple of cup hooks in it and hung the chain over the top bar of the greenhouse so I could adjust the height easily. By now the plants were about 7-9cm tall. Since the light is the type that you have to hold the switch until it starts, a timer is out of the question so I just figured I would start with a 24/0 schedule. Since we live on the edges of a very small town and there are not a lot of vehicles or people around, I figured I might need a little boost in CO2, so I took 4 PowerAde bottles, filled them with a sugar-water mixture, sprinkled in some yeast and put pinholes in the lids to let the gas out and stuck them in the greenhouse (might not help, but it couldn't hurt). I pointed a small 6" clip-on fan at the plants to provide some air flow and to agitate the seedlings a bit to strengthen them and closed up the greenhouse for the night.

PottyBear Reviewed by PottyBear on 07-21-2008. Low-cost CFL Grow - My First Growing Attempt OK, here goes... I think I will make this grow log for the sake of anyone else like me who might be trying to do this indoors in the cheapest way possible, short of a pot on a windowsill (or if you already have a full-size greenhouse). I'm avoiding big expenses for supplies and equipment, and trying to keep the power bill under control. I have no idea what will come out the other end but there are not a lot of extras I can add. Iâ??ll try and document what it costs along the way as best I can Rating: 5

[PottyBear]

By the next day (Fri the 18th) the plants were over 10cm tall, I think closer to 12. In the meantime I'd been frying my brain by reading about how much light was needed and was getting worried I had an inadequate supply. Since it was a payday of sorts I had a little bit of cash, and went out to improve the lighting setup.

I bought 2 light sockets, 2 light socket Y-splitters, and a short length of 14/2 house wire, and a small package of 333 size marrettes from Home Depot - about $15 in total with tax. (I also found some 5000K 27W CFL bulbs - a pack of 4 for about $17.50 + tax - but when I got home I found they were broken inside the package so did not end up using them.) At the dollar store, I bought 2 of those "Emergency blankets" made of thin, shiny Mylar-like plastic, some cup hooks, a short extension cord, and a dog leash made of chain (obviously, $5 plus tax). At Wal-Mart I bought another small 6" clip-on fan to replace the one I had stuck in the greenhouse.

The next day, we took everything out of the greenhouse. While the wife lined the interior walls with pieces of the emergency blankets, I used a piece of plywood the size of the 2 sockets, used a hole saw to cut out spaces in the wood for the wires to pass through, wired and mounted the sockets, and stapled down the wires on the back of the piece of plywood leaving some working length. I then cut off the female end of the extension cord and stripped the wires, marked it so I would know which one was the line and which was the neutral, and connected the end of the newly created power cord to the appropriate wires from the light sockets with the marrettes. I then put 2 cup hooks in the back of the piece of plywood, removed the handle from the dog leash, and strung the chain from the hooks over the top bar of the greenhouse and back onto the other hook, and then screwed in the Y-sockets. Since the bulbs were broken this meant a return trip to HD, but those bulbs ended up just being returned when I found 2-packs of 26W 6500K CFLs at another store for $7.50 or so - 2x$7.50+tax= about $17 total. Into the 4 available sockets they went.

I have some timers around which I had received from Freecycle, so I connected the lights to the timer, set it to be on 23 hours and off for 1. Closed things up, and off to bed.

[PottyBear]

Sunday the 20th (today) I checked things and felt that it might be slightly warm in the greenhouse with the new lights. I wasnâ??t sure, but it felt TOO warm, so off we went into town to get an inexpensive thermometer ($2) - stuck it in the greenhouse, and found the temperature was hovering around 35 C/95 F. I have had a ton of contradictory information about temperatures â?? some books and sites claim that the ideal temp is 68-72 F. Some claim that the warmer the better until you are over 100 F. 95 has me slightly concerned, so I put the second fan on the bottom shelf of the greenhouse blowing in and up while the first one is on the middle shelf (where the plants are) blowing down and out toward the door. I clipped the door open with the tieback, and clipped the lower part of the â??curtainâ?� of emergency blanket out of the way of the air with some clothespins. Now there is a small air space at the front-centre of the middle shelf, and large gap in front of the bottom shelf to let air in. Things went down and are stable at about 31 C/88 F and that is likely where they will have to stay.

At the moment the seedlings have some pretty good sized secondary leaves which are beginning to get larger, although the stems seem a little spindly. Half of them are relatively straight up and down and the others lean a bit here and there. Iâ??ve got zero idea what they SHOULD look like right now, but if they were tomatoes I wouldnâ??t be worried in the least about them so Iâ??m choosing to not panic and see where they end up in a little while. They have not really gained much of anything in height (maybe .5cm-1cm) since the new lights went in. If I rotate the plants, they reorient themselves in the general direction of the light again (not as fast as they did before the shiny stuff was on the walls, though).

I will try and keep things up-to-date on a semi-regular basis. I canâ??t seem to post pictures yet but when I can I might put some up. At the moment the inside of the greenhouse looks like some kind of experiment on a space station, though.

As for costs so far (aside from seeds):

Spent:
$17.00 on 4 26W 6500K CFL bulbs
$15.00 on wire, sockets, marrettes, & Ys
$ 5.50 on chain leash, emerg blankets, ext (power) cord, hooks
$ 7.00 on small clip-on electric fan
$ 2.00 on small thermometer
$ 7.00 on larger pots, yet to be used
$ 9.00 on soil, perlite, peat pellets and peat moss
$62.50 cash

Value of items I already had on hand:
$ 7.00 - small clip-on fan
$25.00 - small vinyl/metal greenhouse
$ 9.00 - tape, small piece of plywood, screws, misc other stuff
$10.00 - small lamp timer
$51.00

Equipment expenditures value in total: $113.50 (including tax)

Obviously, if you had a closet that was already white to grow in you would not need the greenhouse and some of the other stuff, and I didnâ??t count a few cents worth of yeast and sugar for producing the little CO2 boosters. This seems to be about as inexpensive as I could get â?? and it is a good thing since I have nothing much more to spend. If I can collect enough empty beer bottles I might invest in a better timer in the near future since the mechanical analog ones sometimes seem to lose time.

Iâ??m not sure if others have found ways to spend less, and I am not sure how this is going to work out, but this is what I have and Iâ??m going to hope for the best I can get with it. Follow along if you are interested in how it turns out over the next few months. Iâ??m still learning as I go along, and I hope I donâ??t mess up anything too drastically along the way.

Thanks for reading so far!

[PottyBear]

My little seedlings were freaking me out - more than one of them was starting to look dubious at soil level - almost like they were getting damped off, but not exactly - just really thing and weak looking. Anyway, some were highly wobbly. Yesterday, I made little miniature "tomato cages" out of garden wire to help out a little but I was not liking the idea of having to stake the plants in the long term. I checked with all the various authorities on the subject and discovered that like tomatoes, you can bury that long spindly stem and it will grow roots.

So, a short time ago I finished transplanting the lot into their new (and final) homes. They are just a bunch of dollar store wastepaper baskets (about 6 litres capacity), but they seem to be about the correct size for what this type of plant is supposed to grow to and really, it doesn't matter if they aren't since I am out of room. I experimented a little with the transplants, a couple I buried half the stem (the strongest stems), a couple I buried 3/4 of it (2 of the so-so stems), and the two weakest stems I buried 1 to about 2cm of the bottom of the leaves and the other so that the cotyledons are just above the soil.

The pots are so large and there was so much exposed earth that I cut circles out of the leftover emergency blankets and covered most of the soil surface to save on a little light absorption. I didn't put drain holes in the bottom of the pots yet since I didn't have anything to use for drip pans. Instead I put a significant layer of clean stone/gravel in the bottoms so water would have a place to sit away from the soil and roots in case of any excess. At some point when I can get some foil pans or something to put underneath I will probably drill some drain holes but for now the stones should do - this has worked with vegetable plants I have grown before.

Had to rearrange the fans, lights and such to make everything work again, probably will spend the next few days tweaking that.

An interesting thing I found was that the plants with absolutely the strongest leaves were the ones with the weakest stems. All the plants have a 3rd node/second set of true leaves, but the one with the weakest stem has the second set nearly as large as the first set of true leaves, and the second most wobbly plant has the second largest leaves on the 3rd node. They must have been putting too much into leaf and not enough into stem.

All leaves are a nice healthy green colour, so I am hoping I don't have to touch them again for a while and probably won't be boring anyone with these tedious near-daily updates for at least a week.

Well, unless they all keel over dead.

[danish]

Sounds like its going the right way for those little ones, im just worried about the 6L wastebuckets as final home ...

Im new my self but i can see that my AK47LR2 is starting to look a little rootbound in a 12L bucket ...

The plants is it fullsize or LRish ? also you might wanna consider flowering them early if you want to keep them in small buckets ...

[hudson88]

Hey pb, you may or may not know stretching is caused by insufficient light, how far way have you got the cfl's? Get them close, around 2" away. Think about getting some more lights too, 30% increase in budget = 100% more lumens

[jakezking]

PottyBear, I like your writing, and I'm interested in following your log. I am looking forward to pictures to help me follow your descriptions a bit, but your language paints a pretty good picture on its own.

I wish you much luck on your grow!

[PottyBear]

danish: From what I understand these should be relatively low, stocky plants. Unfortunately I just don't have any other options due to space. First mistake was, we planted 6 seeds and didn't expect to have 6 plants survive. If they get root bound, then I'll have to be very attentive but in my situation it isn't a tragedy if they end up a little bit dwarfed - I would actually prefer it since we don't have a lot of unused spaces in our house to shift them into.

hudson88: I've been planning on adding a few more lights as time passes and the plants get bigger. Tomorrow, we have to run off to the big city and I am picking up 4 more bulbs and sockets while we are there. However, the seedlings didn't stretch when they were under the artificial light - they shot up out of the peat pots like they had a plane to catch overhead when they were seeds just getting started by a window. Once under the lights they only increased height a little and grew larger leaves. I'll go into a little detail in my update.

jazeking: I have a few pictures today (I've been wondering when the site would come back online) and I just have to figure out how to put them into posts on the site. Thanks for reading! Hope you keep following.

Now for an update...

[PottyBear]

In the days after the last update I found I was not liking the heat inside the greenhouse. It was constantly hovering around 35° C and I wanted to have a little more control than that. So, as soon as we had a few bucks I bought a $20 bathroom vent fan and a $4 piece of flexible 3" ducting. I chopped up another dollar store extension cord to wire it up, put a vent flap in the top of the greenhouse and pointed the end of the vent hose elsewhere (sometimes out the window, sometimes not depending on the weather outside). It moves 50 CFM and since the greenhouse is only about 25-30 cubic feet it changes the air in there pretty well. Later, I plan on connecting the vent up and out through the attic.

[align=center]Vent Fan:
[/align]

Now, with everything closed up and the lights on it remains between 26° and 29° C inside depending on how hot the day is outside - only slightly warmer than the room. Good enough for now.

Since transplanting, progress has seemed good with the exception of one plant (the one with the worst stem). 1 plant is doing extremely well, 2 are close behind it, and the other two look healthy even if they are not as dense with leaves. Heights are between 6-7.5cm and the largest leaves are around 4-5cm. Ever try to operate a DSLR camera while holding something to show a size perspective in something inside a closed space a foot off the floor while trying to keep yourself from falling over? Well, that's why the next pic is crooked.

[align=center]The Healthiest One:
[/align]

I'd show pics of every plant but I think it would get a little tedious at the moment, they are all just about the same. If you are curious you can look in my gallery. They have gained only modest amounts of height, but have lots of leaves. The one I transplanted almost to the depth of the cotyledons I think they have not quite reached the official "5th node" to no longer be seedlings but they're close. The hardest part of this is that I don't know where they "should" be. Comparing day-by-day pics of plants grown from seed in other places, they look to be slightly behind some but at about the same level of others and I don't know if this is simply a trait of the individual strains or due to needing to transplant or what. Of course, sometimes I look at the plants and I start to wonder if they are cannabis at all and someone isn't just having a bit of a laugh. Most of the pictures of young plants you find online are grown from cuttings and they look so completely different that it can really mess with your head. Don't buy seeds online if you have any tendency toward paranoia or it will keep you up nights.

The last plant is another story. It is still alive, but it is obviously going to lag far behind.

[align=center]The Worst One:
[/align]

This is the plant that had the weakest stem but the largest leaves when they were transplanted. It has since fallen far behind - I probably broke the stem when I was burying it to judge by its lack of thrivage (yeah, I made up another word). When they began to show signs of weakness and browning, I trimmed off the cotyledons and the first set of leaves, leaving only the node 3 leaves to carry on. Since then the stem has strengthened (probably root development) and it is developing tiny new leaves, spreading them out in a fan. Looks like it might make it. Maybe. It will definitely be a late bloomer!

Here are some pics to give an overview of the whole thing. Yes, I know the mylar is wrinkly and so on - things need some tightening up, due to some moving around and sloppy work early on when we were rushing. I think the wife and I will tackle tidying things up this evening. The worst plant is front and centre so it is easiest to check.

[align=center]Looking In:

From the Left:

From the Right:
[/align]

[PottyBear]

My apologies for the second post, but I got interrupted when double checking and then apparently my 10 minutes ran out. I can't edit or remove the first post, if an admin can do it, could they please get rid of the duplicate right before this one?

In the days after the last update I found I was not liking the heat inside the greenhouse. It was constantly hovering around 35° C and I wanted to have a little more control than that. So, as soon as we had a few bucks I bought a $20 bathroom vent fan and a $4 piece of flexible 3" ducting. I chopped up another dollar store extension cord to wire it up, put a vent flap in the top of the greenhouse and pointed the end of the vent hose elsewhere (sometimes out the window, sometimes not depending on the weather outside). It moves 50 CFM and since the greenhouse is only about 25-30 cubic feet it changes the air in there pretty well. With the door zipped shut, air comes up through the bottom shelf under the sides of the greenhouse (which I rolled up slightly) and goes out the hose through the fan at the top. Later, I plan on connecting the vent up and out through the attic.

[align=center]Vent Fan:
[/align]

Now, with everything closed up and the lights on it remains between 26° and 29° C inside depending on how hot the day is outside - only slightly warmer than the room. Good enough for now.

Since transplanting, progress has seemed good with the exception of one plant (the one with the worst stem). 1 plant is doing extremely well, 2 are close behind it, and the other two look healthy even if they are not as dense with leaves. Heights are between 6-7.5cm and the largest leaves are around 4-5cm. Ever try to operate a DSLR camera while holding something to show a size perspective in something inside a closed space a foot off the floor while trying to keep yourself from falling over? Well, that's why the next pic is crooked.

[align=center]The Healthiest One:
[/align]

I'd show pics of every plant but I think it would get a little tedious, since they are all just about the same. If you are curious you can look in my gallery. They have gained only modest amounts of height, but have lots of leaves. The one I transplanted almost to the depth of the cotyledons has spread out much more than up and has therefore gained virtually no height at all. I think all of them have not quite reached the official "5th node" to no longer be seedlings, but they're close. They definitely grow faster than more traditional garden plants like tomatoes.

The hardest part of this is that I don't know where they "should" be. Comparing day-by-day pics of plants grown from seed in other places, they look to be slightly behind some but at about the same level of others and I don't know if this is simply a trait of the individual strains, or due to the fact I needed to transplant from the weak stems, or what. Of course, sometimes I look at the plants and I start to wonder if they are cannabis at all and someone isn't just having a bit of a laugh. Most of the pictures of young plants you find online are grown from cuttings and they look so completely different that it can really mess with your head. Don't buy seeds online if you have any tendency toward paranoia or it will keep you up nights.

The last plant is another story. It is still alive, but it is obviously going to lag far behind.

[align=center]The Worst One:
[/align]

This is the plant that had the weakest stem but the largest leaves when they were transplanted. It has since fallen far behind - I probably broke the stem when I was burying it to judge by its lack of thrivage (yeah, I made up another word). When they began to show signs of weakness and browning, I trimmed off the cotyledons and half of the first set of leaves, leaving only the node 3 leaves to carry on. Since then the stem has strengthened (probably root development) and it is developing tiny new leaves, spreading them out in a fan. Looks like it might make it. Maybe. It will definitely be a late bloomer!

Here are some pics to give an overview of the whole thing. Yes, I know the mylarish stuff is wrinkly and so on - things need some tightening up, due to some moving around and sloppy work early on when we were rushing. I think the wife and I will tackle tidying things up this evening. The worst plant is front and centre, so it is easiest to check.

[align=center]Looking In:

From the Left:

From the Right:
[/align]

Oh, one other thing - placing the blanket material in the pots seems to help reduce evaporation a little and had the added benefit of killing an earwig that had somehow got into the pot - guess the air between the soil and the blanket got hot enough to bake him. Might not work for all bugs, but it helped with that one.