Budget/Refrigerator grow

[JohanD420]

Funny how one idea can morph into another. I thought about the fridge as I have an old one too. But I came to the conclusion that it just wouldn't work. Went to the clearance section at Menards and bought some wood and a saw and went to work to build my box. I think it cost me a total of about $150 to build the entire thing and that was including the $40 saw. It's twice as big as one you can buy for that. So maybe you should just try to do that. You plants do look healthy, Keep it up!

[bigtopsfinn]

Hey Smurph,

I saw ImageReaper talking about some kind of white boards he found (I think at home de pot) which he was going to use to build his grow room. I think it's like the dry-erase type boards. At least with those, you don't have to worry about paint/mylar. Should be quite affordable.

Second, the size of the container will limit the size of the plant. The roots underground grow almost if not as much as the plant above ground. You might get away finishing in the 1 gal milk jugs, but if they do get rootbound in the milk jug, it looks like a pain in the ass to transplant. But again, depends on how long you plan on growing the plants for. My plants under a 400hps will grow for about 13-14 weeks total (5 weeks veg, 8-9 weeks flowering), so I finish up in 15 liter buckets.

While I have purchased some higher-ticket items for my grow, I try to save as much money as possible buying things from second-hand shops and thrift stores. You might be able to find some good pots/buckets/containers in those kinds of places. It's worth a look. Some gardening shops will also throw out used containers, or set them out back for people to pick up for free. :greenthumb:

[headshake]

how many lights are you running total smurph?


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[Smurph]

how many lights are you running total smurph?

Currently, we're running 8 lights

[headshake]

how many do you guys plan to upgrade to? and you can always clone for sex.


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[Smurph]

we have 3 dank plants (in the red cut cups above), and the rest are from mids. I stole a handful of my mom's miracle grow soil one day when I was at her house for the plant in the clear square-ish container. The tall blue cups are regular potting soil, the tall clear (powerade cup) is dirt from outside somewhere....

There are three of us working on this, I'd really like to see 3 plants survive and we just each get a plant. I know that in the end we're going to split the total yield evenly. Most likely by weight. I plan to keep mine for personal use, I'm not interested in the money, I have too much time and love in it to put a price on it anyway. I'll give my roommate a good bag of it which I will tell him he can't sell (and it having nothing to do with this site's rules, but that I'm not gonna give it to him if he wants to make money off it). I dunno what the other two have in mind.

I'll keep as many females as we get. Probably up to like 4-5. I'd really love to see one of those dank plants be a female, and I'm sure I'll have at least one female from the mids for comparison...

[headshake]

how many lights do you guys plan on upgrading to?


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[Smurph]

how many lights do you guys plan on upgrading to?

I suppose as many as we need.... I have 4 sockets, I don't intend on putting any more than 4 lights per socket, might even keep it down to just two per socket. Everything on this site that I've seen that speaks on how much light is necessary only talks on a two-dimension level. There's 3 dimensions in my grow room, and the light covers 3 dimensions of space as well.

I intend on keeping every piece of plant within 3inches of at least 2 lights, keeping in mind just how modular these are, I'm interested in finding out how tall I can keep a healthy plant on CFLs

[headshake]

what size closet are you working with. and please explain your 3 dimensions. l x w x h?

you shouldn't so much worrry how tall you can get your plant because CFLs have terrible penetration. so the top of the plants will bud nicely but the underneath will suffer greatly unless you use some kind of supplemental lighting. your plant will grow as tall as you let it veg ( i assume, and you know what that does) if you keep the lights on it. you'd be better off working with smaller plants that will require basically no veg (2 weeks if a clone, a week of two longer from seed) and will bascially turn into bud on a stick if you don't LST or top or something.

you want a minimum of 5000 lumens per sq foot.


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[Smurph]

you shouldn't so much worrry how tall you can get your plant because CFLs have terrible penetration.

That assumes that the lights are all together at top. That's something that my system of lighting allows me to easily overcome. I can string them up and down the plant, to allow the light to have some 3" from the bottom leaf, and also have lights within 3" of the top of the plant even if the plant is 3ft tall.

Right now I have 4890 lumens/ft^2, I think. A little low, but I read I need more than 3000, and 5000 is optimum.