FIRST GROW EVER! In style w/ BloomBox Royale

[benvegas]

Hi everyone. I've never grown before, ever. With more money than brians, I bought a BloomBox Royale from BC Northern Lights (www.bcnorthern.com). This is my grow log. Its interactive, because most of the logs here I see people show us the work after its done. This one will be different. You'll get a post every day unless I'm unavailable. So, lets say 25 of 30 days you'll see input and photos of how things are moving.

I'll also try to describe what I'm doing each time, and why. If you think another way is better, or my way is wrong, chime in. Also chime in when you think its time for something. Lets keep it interactive.

A little bit about my experience: Smoker for about 6 months, want to grow it to offset my cost. My rep at BC Northern is Blair.

My log began a few weeks ago, but its not daily update stuff quite yet. So, here's the official beginning of the log with the dates at the top.

 

[benvegas]

By the way -- This log is written by an absolute beginner and isnt really meant for the experts. There'll be a lot of redundant information that most of you know. This isnt for you, its to help the new guy.


December 10th 2008

My buddy said to me "You should grow your own shit". Ok, lets give it a go. We're both self employed, so we have the money to do it right. I read a lot of articles on growing, and decided that an uncommon method of a grow box would best suit my needs for low maintenance and ease of use. After a lot of research, I came across Homegrown Hydroponics website (homegrown-hydroponics.com). Holy shit they had a lot of information. Spent an hour talking with a guy there on a Sunday night. He had more knowledge than I could process, so much it was an overwhelming turnoff. I googled their info a bit, and it seemed that rather than ship product, they just advertised a lot. So, a thread here showed a "Producer", and it looked neat. I didnt want the extra time of growing from seeds each time, so I chose the BloomBox.

The BloomBox has a combo version, which comes with "everything" except electricity ($14/month if on 24/7), water, and seeds. All of the other nutrients, ph meters, growing medium, etc., is included. This is called the BloomBox Royale. It was $4400.

Since I'll need to reference these links a lot, these are PDF's to files I'll need often:

http://www.bcnorthernlights.com/manuals/BloomBoxRoyal.pdf (The actual combo)

http://www.bcnorthernlights.com/manuals/BloomBoxGrowManual.pdf (Manual for growing)

http://www.bcnorthernlights.com/manuals/BloomBoxTechmanual2008.pdf (Manual for putting BloomBox together)

http://www.bcnorthernlights.com/manuals/Bloombox.pdf (Spec sheet, doubt I'll need it but why not)

After a few days of consideration, and reviewing other products in addition to this, the BloomBox was the most expensive but it did what I needed and it did it wel from what I can see.

 

[benvegas]

December 15th 2008

One of the little known things about the BloomBox is that the company that makes them only ships twice a month. Their next shipping date was 12/16/2008. At 3:30pm on 12/15, the unit was ordered. Blair confirmed the card was charged.

Yes, they did ask me for a social security number. No, I did not give it to them. I registered a corporation real fast, generated a tax ID number as an employer id (FEIN, you can apply at www.irs.gov). Once the unit arrives, I will dissolve the corporation with a board of directors meeting minuted authorizing such, and then notify that IRS that the corporation is closed and that it had never conducted any actual business. This is 100% legal.

 

[benvegas]

12/16/08

Now, my next job. Seeds. I didnt care about seed prices, I wanted to ensure that the little fuckers actually arrived. Shipping seeds to the USA is a big no-no for most places, but as a medicinal user, they are legal for me. So, I had no issues importing them (nor growing for that matter, since this is for me, not others. (ok, maybe the dogs!)).

The shop I selected for seeds was nirvana-shop.com. If you ever order from them, get ready for email spam galore. They email you no less than eight times for one seed order. My order was 310.50 Euros, which should translate to $436 USD.

So, before we talk about seed selection, lets talk about wtf we even need them for, and then learn what characteristics of them we need. First of all, the BloomBox is only 50" from top to bottom, 50" wide, and 28" deep. Remembering that almost half of the unit is reserved for the mother and the clone dome, we dont have a ton of room to work with.

9 plants worth of room, to be exact.

So, we want weed that will grown to medium or short lengths, and not super tall. We also want weed that is best grown indoors. We also want to make sure that we'll get a good mix of sativa and indica seeds. Some can be sativa only, indica only, or a mix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_sativa and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_sativa#C._sativa_subsp._indica for a description of what they are. In general, they mean two different types of high. Sativas give you a "head" high and an indica strain gives you a "body" high. Mixes, obviously, would provide both)

In total, I purchased ten strains. Of them, around half were feminized.

http://www.nirvana-shop.com/northern-light-p-53.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/hindu-kush-p-44.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/white-widow-p-65.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/white-rhino-p-97.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/wonder-woman-seeds-p-172.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/venus-seeds-p-171.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/snow-white-seeds-p-169.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/supergirl-seeds-p-170.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/ppp-fem-5-seeds-p-101.html
http://www.nirvana-shop.com/northern-bright-seeds-p-79.html

Lets see if these little suckers even get here............

 

[benvegas]

12/18/08

Nirvana shop says the seeds are shipped. BC Northern says the unit is shipped and the delivery date from the shipping company is December 30th 2008. It shall be a good day.

 

[benvegas]

btw -- 12/16's post has to be moderator approved. It talks about seeds and selection. Since I included a link to each seed, my guess is its a check against spam? It'll show up when it shows up....

 

[benvegas]

12/22/08

Holy shit. The seeds arrived from Nirvana. I really wanted to take a photo of them, but chose not to since the stealth packaging would then no longer be stealth. The package arrived in a little padded envelope with a "enjoy your pencil sample" card and a few pencils in a box. Taped behind the pencils were the packages of seeds. Clever little fuckers arent ya?

Here's a picture of the seeds.

They werent all packaged this nicely. See the top right corners of the package with the tiny ass little letters that you cant read anyway? That's how the seeds normally come, and usually 5 per pack. So, these are all consolidated and labeled properly. If it says I/S mix, then its an Indica/Sativa mix seeds. If it says feminized, that means that the seeds are 99% guaranteed to be female plants. We'll talk more about that later, but remember its a good thing.

 

[benvegas]

12/26/08

All posts from here forward are now written in real time and not from the past. The next update should be 12/29/08 when we begin to germinate the seeds. Right now, I need to decide WHICH strains of seeds to grow. Since a mother takes 6 weeks to grow, I just want to plant some junk to begin with to make sure the damn thing works. Probably two strains to start, 6 seeds and 6 seeds.. Then I can keep one as mommy, and use 9 for the main box.

Who has suggestions on which seeds to geminate first? Your choice:

Northern Light
Hindu Kush
White Widow
White Rhino
Wonder Woman
Venus
Snow White
Supergirl
PPP
Northern Bright

(all from nirvana-shop.com if you need to reference them).

I'll go with whatever the forum says!

BC Northern has to get a shipping issue squared away where they have to ship to an alternate address on the credit card. It was annoying to handle, but Blair at BC has it resolved and the unit should be delivered to my grow location rather than office.

 

[benvegas]

Dont forget, this grow thread is INTERACTIVE, which means, POST IN IT! Help a newbie out.

Right now I need help with seed selection!

 

[benvegas]

Unit delivering tomorrow. No seed suggestions? Yall suck!

 

[benvegas]

Unit delivered today without any problems. Extremely easy to unload just with myself and the driver. So far the "everything you need except seeds and water" isnt true, I need to get pH balancer up and down from Home Depot. Aah well. Here's some photos of the unit during construction until it was fully assembled. Assembly took about 90 minutes, it was pretty easy.

 

[dontpanic]

pullin up a chair for this one cant wait to see how this goes.

 

[benvegas]

Seeds started soaking last night. The strains will be Venus and Snow White. Both compliment each other with different highs, have great yields, and are suited for Hydro.

 

[benvegas]

I have more photos from each of the previous days. My import from the camera is broken, and despite being a software engineer I cant figure the fucking thing out. Pictures in the next day or two -- we have some amazing progress so far!

 

[justabigbud]

Man I just got the same package, should arrive around the middle of the month, I will be keeping an eye on your grow, I am excited for ya

 

[benvegas]

My first tech support call was to BC today, via their online chat. Pretty handy because I can email myself a transcript of the chat that way I can reference it again really fast. Their manual sucked nuts for teaching me how to feed the plant. It had all of the nutrients listed with numbers but nothing indicated which nutrients to use or what those numbers meant. Hoping that a newbie can still learn how to grow a bit from this realtime log, here are the transcripts:

Please wait. A representative will be with you shortly.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
Hi Ben. Skye here, how can I help you?
Ben says:
Hi, I just got a BloomBox Royale delivered. Its setup, seeds in rockwool in the clone dome. I left the light on at first not knowing it was supposed to be dark for two days so half of the seeds have sprouted, but the reason for asking a question is.....
Ben says:
I dont know how to feed them or how much. I dont understand the feeding chart.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
ok
Ben says:
So that's what I need help with right now is how to water the seeds with what nutrients and how much. And to know if the seeds that sprouted should be moved into the hydro12 tub.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
how old are the seedlings now?
Ben says:
They were in water overnight and they all had some roots showing. That was on 12/31/08.
Ben says:
So they have been in the clone dome now for 3 and a half days.
Ben says:
And have only had ph 5.6 water no nutrients because I couldnt get ahold of anyone at BC Northern during that new year time
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
wait until they have all sprouted before moving anything. at this point you want to keep them all in the clone dome so that they have 80% humidity. don't worry about giving them nutrients they're not ready.
Ben says:
Ok, the manual said to give 1/3 of a nutrient feed to the seeds to "promote aggression" or some stuff so I thought I had to.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
after about 10 days you can water them with nutrients like the feeding schedule EXCEPT water it down to 1/3 the strength of the regular veg schedule.
Ben says:
Some of the sprouts are about 1"-1.5" tall and the other half of them (12 total) are still in the rockwool
Ben says:
When you say after about 10 days, do you mean 10 days from planting seeds in rockwool or 10 days from today?
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
10 days after they have sprouted
Ben says:
When do I put them in the Hydro12 tub?
Ben says:
And should I do each plant as they meet this requirement or all at once once most of them are average of a certain height?
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
you can do it individually, they'll all even out eventually.
Ben says:
Ok, so when do I put them in the Hydro12 tub then?
Ben says:
Sorry for so many questions, I'm a brand new grower.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
when they have rooted through the grow medium
Ben says:
So when I see roots coming from the 1" rock wool then Hydro12 time. Easy enough.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
then they're ready to spread their roots into more grow medium, so do that, and stick em in the hydro 12
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
yep
Ben says:
My final question for now is about the nutrients. I still dont understand how to feed them -- aka how to mix whatever I need.
Ben says:
The grow manual says PPM and all this stuff, but I have no clue and its very non-descriptive.
Ben says:
So if you have a laymans terms to explain it that would be stupidly awesome.
Ben says:
Its the B loombox Royale package so whatever comes with that is all I have.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
don't worry about ppm for now I'll explain that later. for now, the numbers in the feeding chart are ml of nutrients to add to your resevoir. instead of adding that much nutrient to a given amount of water, add 1/3 that amount of nutrients to the same "x" amount of water
Ben says:
So for the first "week" of the newly transplanted seeds/clones, you feed them 14ml of Sensi-Grow A and 14ml of Sensi-Grow B and that is it?
Ben says:
There's a long list of stuff there but I dont have that many nutrients I dont think
Ben says:
(page 20 of online grow manual, 3gal/hydro12 tub)
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
make sure you're diluting properly
Ben says:
3 gallons of 5.6ph water and then add the nutrients and stir yep
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
if you're watering them with a half litre of water obviously don't put a third of the recommended nutes into just half a litre, right?
Ben says:
Right of course
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
ok cool
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
ya
Ben says:
So its just the sensi-grow a & b and thats it?
Ben says:
Not any of that humic/fulvic stuff?
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
no
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
did you get that stuff?
Ben says:
I got all that was in the Royale package
Ben says:
I forget the names, the box is in the other room.
Ben says:
Just wanted to clarify only sensi-grow A and B and nothing else for now
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
don't worry about it. yeah you're set with that
Ben says:
Ok, so what are all the other things listed there?
Ben says:
Is that just optional stuff if I want to use it thats the dosage?
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
it doesn't matter if you don't have everything. yes exactly what you just said
Ben says:
Excellent. You have been a perfect amount of help Skye, thank you very much.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
haha right on. take care.

Please wait. A representative will be with you shortly.
Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
Hi Ben. Skye here, how can I help you?
Ben says:
Sorry one quick question again Should I keep the vegitation chamber "on" or keep it dark still? I had the seeds that half have sprouted in the clone dome.

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
you can have them all under the light. the seeds that have not sprouted will be kept in darkness (good) beacause they are tucked away under a layer of rockwool
Ben says:
When you say tucked away, I just gently placed each seed in roots down. I did not attempt to "close" the top hole on the rock wool. Is this correct?
Ben says:
The seeds are about 1/2" below the "opening".

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
close the top!
Ben says:
Oops. Close it tight or close it mostly?

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
it doesn't take much

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
just a little smudge on top

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
so it stays dark down at the seed
Ben says:
Ok, I'll go correct that now. The ones that sprouted I'll just "tighten" it around the stem a little bit so its not a big gaping hole and the ones with seeds under the wool top still I will close most of the way.
Ben says:
Thank you again very much! If this is accurate, close the session away!

Skye 1-888-236-1266 EXT 130 says:
ok have fun



Great support -- thanks!

Ben

 

[benvegas]

Man I just got the same package, should arrive around the middle of the month, I will be keeping an eye on your grow, I am excited for ya

Excellent! I'm trying to post things that their manuals dont cover or dont cover well to in order to aid the other BloomBoxers........ My units serial # is 311 and was shipped on 12/18/08. The only thing you should know right off the bat is your box cant be plugged in or the pumps run. Dont connect the pumps to the top until you're ready to use each of the chambers and then always with water.

If you follow their manual, you can start germinating the seeds soaking at the bottom of ph 5.6 balanced water overnight, setup was very fast at about one hour and then the seeds in rock wool took no time at all.

 

[benvegas]

January 1st 2009

All seeds in the jars began to root. Make sure the seeds are below the water not floating at the top, they wont crack if they are. They need to be below the surface of the water.

Seeds were planted in the clone dome. (UPDATE: PLANTED WRONG, YOU HAVE TO CLOSE THE TOP HOLE SO THE SEEDS ARE IN THE DARK). Once the seeds were planted, the Vegitation chamber was activated as you can see on the control panel switches are up. The manual wanted it in 90(f) weather, which I said fuck it too hard to do. With the seeds IN the clone dome, it ends up being that temperature and humid too. Wish they said that the clone dome made it those conditions because I was mad I couldnt do it myself.

 

[benvegas]

January 02 2009

Everything looks the same as before, so no photos.

 

[benvegas]

January 03 2009

I put a temperature gauge in the clone dome to see how warm it was getting. It shows 79(f) in the pictures, but its usually 85-90(f) inside and perfectly humid. Stupid $1.50 plastic box sure does its dome work well. I was surprised and happy to see some of the seeds have sprouted a little.

I also met a chick and got laid, so it was an exceptionally perfect evening when combined with your first sprouts of marijuana. Internet dating DOES work, dont believe all the BS you read.

Ben