First grow in Cab with CFLs - Cali Orange

[headshake]

your plants shoudn't be drying out that fast. no matter how close the lights are.

do you know what temps your cab is running at?

also, you shouldn't take your plants outside. you will be inviting a whole slew of nasties into your controlled indoor enviroment. not a good thing.

keep it up!


-shake

headshake Reviewed by headshake on 04-20-2009. First grow in Cab with CFLs - Cali Orange So I decided it was time to give a grow a shot indoors... I built a cab last week to do it in. The cab measures in at 30" x 28" x 58" - not huge, but assuming I'll have a couple males and prob transplant 1 or 2 outside the cab right now has 6 26w 6500k lamps with parabolic reflectors, though I will be adding either more CFLs w/o reflectors or maybe some flouros.... lights are mounted with chains to adjust the height... only thing I haven't sorted out yet is ventalation... I have the fans Rating: 5

[side00]

Yeah I have a temp/humidty meter in the box with everything... ambient temp in the box, not under direct light, flucuates between 70-75F and humidity is in the 20-25% range... which seems like it could be a little low (humidity) to me, but i;m honestly not sure what a good target would be, and i also suspect that number is going to start going up on its own as the plants get larger.

good call actually about not taking the plants outside, i never thought about the pest problems that that could create... makes perfect sense now that you mention it though :thumbsup:

I think the biggest problem with the soil drying out is the parabolic reflectors... they are obviously getting more light to the plants/soil than would otherwise get there which means more light energy is getting absorbed by the soil, but then there is also the problem that the reflectors themselves get warm and keep the heat closer to the plants instead of letting that heat rise in the air easier...

but..... i also installed my proper cabinet ventalation yesterday and that seems to have helped with the soil dryness problem as well... i previously just had a big upright fan pointed down through the cabinet door basically right at the plants on its lowest setting (which is still quite powerful for the plants) and i suspect that the constant air flow over the soil was also helping to evaporate additional water.

that seems to have helped with the dryness problem... but it very well could be that i;m just over analyzing it as well, i know over-watering is a really common rookie mistake so i;m trying to find a balance somewhere between what my instincts are telling me with what my knowledge from reading all these forums is telling me

[side00]

I should of also mentioned that I added a 7th CFL to the cab yesterday...

i hung a 42 watt (2600 lumens @ 2700k) that is basically in the middle of the other 6, it doesn;t have a parabolic reflector on it though.

I know the 2700k colour temp is not ideal for veg stage, but I figured giving it a little something other than 6500k wasn't going to hurt and I had read about some people prefer a bit of a mix anyways.

This now gives me 6x23watt (1600 lumens @ 6500k) + 1x42watt (2600 lumens @ 2700k)

for a total of 12,200 lumens, which works out to about 2100 lumens per sq. foot if you take into account the entire cab... this is actually still very low, but at the moment all of plants and lights are concentrated into about a 1 sq foot area, possibly even less, which means that lighting situatin should actually be very very good... possibly even too much?... but once those plants start getting larger and i have to spread them out, more bulbs are going to have to go in for sure.

once the plants get larger and I have room for more bulbs, my aim is for somewhere between 10 and 14 CFL bulbs... if I put 42 watt (2600 lumen) bulbs in all of them, that should put me somewhere between 26,000 and 36,400 lumens, or 4486 to 6275 lumens per sq. foot. I should be doing pretty well being anywhere inside that range according to roughrider's post over here: http://boards.cannabis.com/indoor-li...uch-light.html

[side00]

Sadly one of my plants had a bit of an accident last night :\ the 7th light i had hanging from up above slipped and fell on the plant in the middle It wasn;t there very long i think, but the seedling is still so tiny and weak... its not looking very good for it... will give it a little time to see if it recovers but i think she's a goner :\

[side00]

Well, when I got home from work today the plant the light fell on looked even worse... i haven;t given up total hope on it, but i;m not going to put much thought into it... i've decided to take it out of the box and just leave it in a windowsill that gets lots of light during the day and will see what happens to it.

I also caught the other 4 showing some signs of becoming root bound so I transplanted them into some 1 gallon pots with some new soil

the mix for the new soil is roughly 2 parts VGH soil, 1 part perlite, 1 part vermiculite

and wow, i thought the plant seemed to be growing fast, but actually seeing the roots occupying all the soil in those small 4" pots was pretty amazing

[syde00]

Just a small pic update

took a couple of macro's of a couple of the plants today

the first 2 are from plant #1, and the second 2 are from plant #2

Can see a little bit of brown spots from them being a little root bound! but, all the new growth is a nice healthy green.

I find it kind of interesting how plant #2 has much thinner but longer leaves than #1, and also the new leafs coming out of #2 are growing on quite the angle upwards while #1 is staying pretty horizontal.

plant #3 looks almost identical to #1 and #4 looks like #2

[syde00]

mostly just a pic update... here are the plants in there new pots that they got transplanted into a couple days ago... this seems to have really helped with my soil dryness problem, i;m sure the new soil mixed has helped too.

the pics in order are just plant # 1,2,3,4 and then the last is the basic cabinet arrangement at the moment, need to refine some things, but feeling a little lazy atm! all in all, id say things are going pretty well... though #2 has its leaves a little shriveled a bit, I think the one of the lights was a little too close for awhile... and #4 has some tiny brown spots on the first set of leafs, it doesn;t seem to be getting any bigger so i;m just kinda ignoring it.

I've increased the number of liths when i did the transplant as well, here what is what now.

there are 6 x 23watt @ 6500k with 1600 lumens each in parabolic reflectors

then, the kinda X shapped pattern, on opposite corners there are 2 x 43watt @ 2700k with 2600 lumens each + 2x 23watt @ 5100K with 1600 lumens each. I am finding the 2 plants that are directly under the 2700K lights are producing a very noticably brighter coloured green on there leafs

On the plants without the 43 watts over them, they get doubled up parabolic reflectors to try and even it out a bit... i;m going to change it up a bit though as I;m finding it a little difficult right now to keep the lights arranged well... the parabolic reflectors are a little bit tricky to manage.

[syde00]

wow.... i just thought i'd share this as it might be useful for other CFL growers... i just found some General Electric 29watt (125 equiv) CFLs that output 2200 lumens... this works out to around 75 lumens per watt...

these are to-date the most effecient CFLs i have come across in stores... i was a little hesitent to buy them as they do not list the colour temp on the packaging, but googling around with the UPC code and model number written on the bulb looks like it indicates they are 2700K, though all my sources on that info seem to be kinda non-authoratative...

Anybody know anything about these bulbs? they had a product number written on the box - 00861, and on the bulb itself it shows "FLE29HLX/2/XL/SW"

they are going to make excelent flowering bulbs! they were really cheap too since GE has some pretty good instant rebate coupons that are available in-stores here right now... the coupons made them about 1/2 price...

[WeayLay]

wow.... i just thought i'd share this as it might be useful for other CFL growers... i just found some General Electric 29watt (125 equiv) CFLs that output 2200 lumens... this works out to around 75 lumens per watt...

these are to-date the most effecient CFLs i have come across in stores... i was a little hesitent to buy them as they do not list the colour temp on the packaging, but googling around with the UPC code and model number written on the bulb looks like it indicates they are 2700K, though all my sources on that info seem to be kinda non-authoratative...

Anybody know anything about these bulbs? they had a product number written on the box - 00861, and on the bulb itself it shows "FLE29HLX/2/XL/SW"

they are going to make excelent flowering bulbs! they were really cheap too since GE has some pretty good instant rebate coupons that are available in-stores here right now... the coupons made them about 1/2 price...

To Add onto this. They also make a 42W bulb that is equivalent to 150W