First Grow - Pro Grow LED Cabinet Grow

[d00g]

Hey ladies and gentleman, this is a grow log for my first ever grow. Prior to starting, I read these forums for months and also read through a very comprehensive book that I bought before purchasing anything so I felt relatively aware of the challenges that I would be facing and the patience required. At this point, I am only in the beginning stages of my first grow and am already salivating at the potential outcome. This grow, and all my future grows, will be for personal use and the satisfaction of nursing a hobby and passion that I've had for a decade.

I am very hands-on and have a hard time not loving my girls to death. Only days after they sprouted from the Rapid Rooter tabs I had germinated them in, I used too strong a nutrient mix of Root Excelurator and Thrive Alive, which caused yellowing of their tiny leaves. I feel that they have recovered well, however one plant is clearly bigger and healthier than the rest. This strain is THC Bomb.

I will be sure to post larger/higher quality pics soon. This is an introduction. Please feel free to ask questions or give me any comments or advice. This is my first grow, I am very eager to learn and share what I have learned.

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This is my cabinet when I purchased it from my a friend that is a carpenter. He had it set up and previously used it with an oven hood with attached fan and light fixtures. However there was no exhaust for the fan so it just stirred the air. There was actually no external ventilation at all, just internal fans to stir the stale air. CFL fixtures were attached to both sides up top and in the lower compartment, which is intended as a seedling/cloning area. There was also a T5 fixture attached to the rear wall.

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This is my cabinet currently. I washed it then lined it with Panda reflective. I removed the hood. I added a T5HO in the lower compartment. There are currently no CFLs in the highest and lowest fixtures because there is no need yet. There are 6400K CFL's in the fixtures closest to the plants. If I'm lucky and the plants grow tall and thick enough, I will put all 2700K CFL's in the fixtures during flowering. I have a Pro Grow LED attached to 2 ratchet hangers. The LED only came with one. I didn't like how it swung freely so I bought another hanger. I have 2 120mm computer case fans fixed to the rear wall - one for exhaust, one for intake. I originally only had the exhaust fan, but temps were too high (85-90) so I added the intake. Under the intake is an ugly HEPA filter that I had planned as a passive intake. I need to find a thin HEPA filter to put over my intake fan.

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This is where the next batch of seeds will grow or my clones will hopefully grow. I have not decided, as I have several varieties of seeds that my wife bought me for my birthday because she's amazing.

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These are the 2 larger plants.

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These are the 2 smaller plants. I was concerned that I was seeing powdery mildew, so I foliar fed with a milk/water mix. Sprayed 2 days ago, results pending.

**Today I looked at the bottoms of the pots and saw roots tips. I went to my local hydro store and purchased some soil and transplanted the 3 healthiest and largest of the 4. It was sad to get rid of my tiny friend, I always "root" for the little guy (or girl), but there was really not room for 4 larger pots, which I had not expected. I will be sure to take pics tomorrow to show the update. I will also update with my nutrients and soil info.**

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Very tough guard dog here! He works for food.

Like I said above, please ask questions and feel free to comment or give me some advice!

d00g Reviewed by d00g on 12-10-2013. First Grow - Pro Grow LED Cabinet Grow Hey ladies and gentleman, this is a grow log for my first ever grow. Prior to starting, I read these forums for months and also read through a very comprehensive book that I bought before purchasing anything so I felt relatively aware of the challenges that I would be facing and the patience required. At this point, I am only in the beginning stages of my first grow and am already salivating at the potential outcome. This grow, and all my future grows, will be for personal use and the Rating: 5

[thenewgrow]

sweet looking system you got there man i like this its clean and tight :thumbsup:

you have a nice set up right there

[d00g]

Thank you! I tried to plan as much as possible before starting, but as everyone learned very quickly I'm sure - things require constant adjustment. It's been a fun few weeks and I really can't wait to start flowering in a few more.

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Yesterday, I threw out the smallest and weakest plant, much to my chagrin. I transferred the 3 strongest to larger pots. Today, I covered the top in generic hydroton. I have noticed occasional tiny flies in the cabinet (fungal gnats perhaps), so I have some fly paper hanging and hopefully the hydroton will prevent soil penetration.

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Closed cabinet!

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Each wall looks like this for CFL setup. I am constantly changing the fixture positions to see what might give the best light coverage. These are currently 6400K for veg stage. I will add 2700K in the higher fixtures when I begin flower stage as the plants increase in size and begin bud production. Anybody have any thoughts on using ALL 2700K in both CFL fixtures on both sides? I know catbuds references using a combo of 2700K/6400K during flower for full spectrum coverage. I'm wondering if this is the most beneficial, or if ALL 2700K is the way to go? For the size plants I'm growing I bet it doesn't even make much of a difference. However, I would like to incorporate more substantial under-lighting somehow by flowering time! I will figure something out.

[Weezard]

Very nice!
You have a class act there.
Really done your homework.

The dumping of the runt deserves no chagrin. (I just love that word)

Save your ire for "occasional tiny flies in the cabinet"!

Very bad news.
If you have a few flyers, you already have choke larvae munching your root hairs.

You need to address that right away.
Fungus gnat, are easy, dryer sheets will repel them and cutter yard spray will kill the larvae.
However if those flyers are mature root aphids, it's about to get ugly.

See if you can get a good closeup of the stuck buggers.
We'll get 'em identified.

Aloha,
Weeze

[d00g]

Thanks Weez! I will check it out as soon as I'm awake in the morning while the lights are on and see if I can grab some pics of the tiny bastards. I actual think there are 1-2 in the water bowls that I put in for humidity, so I will take a pic of a bug corpse. They definitely don't look like the pics of root aphids that I can find, hopefully I can avoid that disaster. I was also given some "Coco Caps" coco coir flat sheets at the hydro store a few weeks ago that I completely forgot about and found today that I will use to cover the hydroton, but I'll grab some unscented dryer sheets if you think the coco sheets won't do. It really helps to linger around the hydro store and chat with the people that work there, I always end up leaving with multiple free samples that are more than enough for my grow size.

[d00g]

Here are a few pictures and related questions that I have for the experts:

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Here is one of the bugs that I see sometimes. This one is dead and I pulled it out of a tub of water that I keep in the cabinet for humidity. I am only seeing maybe 1 per 1-2 days. I don't believe there are any at all in the fly paper that I have hanging, but I know I have seen at least one of these walking on a leaf. Fungal gnat?

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It's hard to see in this pic, but the large middle leaf in the lowest cluster has folded edges because the leaves on either side grew into it. It still appears healthy but is this normal?

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There are brown spots on some of the lower leaves in this pic. Again, possibly difficult to see. Possible nutrient or heat burn? The other 2 plants do not have these brown spots on any leaves.

[CaptainOrganicsCO]

Great job with the grow log. I'm curious about LEDs. U can use woman's nylon stockings or pantiehose to cover your intake, that's a cheap effective way to do it.

Nice to see you using a mulch layer on your containers, seems like most ppl mulch everything but their pot plants.

How about the soil and nutes, what are you using?

Really good first grow. I started my first grow in MG. during veg I began reading stuff. Read MG weed was terrible. Transplanted to FFOF and flowered with no nutes. Got some pretty lame weed. Then I found TLO. And read a lot more. The progression in indoor gardening skills is really cool. The process is the fun part. Smoking the weed is nice too,
Several grows later I can recycle dirt, grow great weed on the cheap. I have spent less than 200$ on growing stuff in the past year.

Keep up the good work. Oh yeah I was also gonna say, I'm paranoid that the grow store will be the source of a pest infestation for me. Hitchhikers. All day everyday guys frantically run in the grow store, "help I have spider mites!" Spider mites fall off there shirt onto the counter. Then I set my arm there while I pay... Then I come home and introduce them to my garden. Paranoid? Never had any bug issues in 5 runs, knock on wood.

[d00g]

Keep up the good work. Oh yeah I was also gonna say, I'm paranoid that the grow store will be the source of a pest infestation for me. Hitchhikers. All day everyday guys frantically run in the grow store, "help I have spider mites!" Spider mites fall off there shirt onto the counter. Then I set my arm there while I pay... Then I come home and introduce them to my garden. Paranoid? Never had any bug issues in 5 runs, knock on wood.

That is an interesting thought - very similar to the transfer of bad bacteria in hospitals (anyone familiar with MRSA?). I try to wash everything before introducing it to the garden, but I will definitely do a better job of disinfecting before foreign objects are near my ladies.

I planted my seeds in Rapid Rooters plugs. I used Root Excelurator and Thrive Alive Red during germination. The plan was to use them at about 1/4 of the recommended dose, based on recommendations from people on any forum or website or book that I browsed. However, I ended up mixing it too strong, and not being patient when I should have ONLY used RO water during germination. I had germinated 5 seeds and all 5 sprouted. However, I noticed only a couple days after they sprouted that at least one of them had completely burned early leaves and that one failed to thrive. The other 4 had very minor burn, so I decided to to plant the Rapid Rooters in soil to disperse some of the nutrient/water-soaked Rapid Rooter plugs into the soil and let the seeds breathe a bit.
So, I planted them in Happy Frog soil. I had planned FFOF, but the nice guy at my hydro store said that the Happy Frog is much gentler on young roots because it's lighter on nutrients. So they sat, happily in the Happy Frog under my LED and 2 6400K CFL's. I watered with a nutrient mix that I made based on the Humboldt Nutrient feeding schedule, because I have several of their products, along with a couple others (listed below). I did the nutrient feeding in the morning, and RO distilled water in the evening - 2 feedings per day. After 1-2 days in the soil, the plants began to thrive. After another day, I started seeing signs of powdery mildew, or another ailment on the smallest plant that was not thriving as the others were. I did the milk/water foliar spray.
This week, I discovered they needed to be transferred, so I transferred to the Ocean Forest. I threw out the smallest plant, that seemed to be very stunted or harmed by the ailment I believe was powdery mildew. It would not have fit in my cabinet anyways. I don't know why I never tried putting the EMPTY, larger pots in the cabinet while the cabinet was empty to test! I have slowly increased the strength of the nutrients in the mix I made. They include:

Humboldt Master A
Humboldt Master B
Humboldt Hum Bolt (got a couple bottles as free sample because I chat up the hydro store)
Humboldt Sea Cal
Great White Mycorrhizae
Thrive Alive Red
Root Excelurator

I am now up to about 50-75% of the recommended strength per gallon of these nutrients. There is still one of my three plants that appears to have been affected by the powdery mildew (or mystery ailment). It is the plant that I mentioned in the last post that included pics with the brown spots. I am ONLY going to feed this plant RO water for the rest of the grow - it is planted in the Ocean Forest, which contains organic nutrients and will suffice. I hope she survives so I can actually gauge the difference between the two nutrient-fed plants, and the soil-fed plant. The other 2 plants appear very healthy, and they will continue to receive added nutrients.

I feel that I'm learning a lot from this. I am learning about soil hydration and how often to water (at least for these specific plants). I am learning what to use for equipment in my cabinet (I need to pick up some individual water-catches under each plant so I can drain excess-water easier). I have learned that proper air-filtration, starting from the OUTSIDE of my cabinet, can prevent bugs. My day, there were 7-8 gnats in my humidity water dish. To this day, I am not getting any at all. I believe the clay pellets also had a lot to do with this, keeping mama gnats out of the soil where they would lay their killer eggs.

More to come soon! My big booty hoes are growing exponentially (it seems)! I find myself smoking and then just staring and reflecting at them, wishing they would grow larger and faster almost everyday. This is an exciting time for me haha.

[d00g]

Just a few pics from a few minutes ago of my ladies' continued growth! It's Saturday and we're having a little snow storm so I'm around watching movies and staring at my plants all day. I swear that if I give about 6 hours between checking on them, there will be new leaves growing and the plants will appear at least a half-inch larger - I love checking them.

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I trimmed some leaves on the plant on the right. That is the smallest plant that I believe to have had powdery mildew, and it had some brownish burn marks of some sort on some of the lowest leaves. I trimmed the unhealthy leaves and the plant already looks healthier this evening. I will continue to only water her with RO water, no nutes, as stated in my last post.

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The bottom pic is a closeup of the 2 healthiest-appearing plants out of the 3. They make me so happy :S5:

Please feel free to comment or ask questions as usual!

[d00g]

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Grabbed a couple 5 gallon buckets full of snow this afternoon. By the time they melted halfway down tonight, there was no water in the bucket - still absorbed in the remaining snow. So I refilled them tonight, the snow is MUCH heavier tonight. I look forward to pH testing the snow water tomorrow when melted.