Gastanker's 1000w Veggie Tent

[Gastanker]

Hello everyone,

I've previously posted a couple grow journals. The first being an immensely successful CFL grow followed by a second successful CFL grow and then an incomplete 2kw tent grow. I must report that the tent grow went quite poorly as I was not afforded the time necessary to take care of my plants.

I have since then relocated to a county with a much smaller limit and tighter medical laws and therefor will be growing only a small crop of marijuana (6 plants total) along with (hopefully) a large crop of organic veggies.

I currently have 2 large Mr Nice clones going as well as 2 White Rhino, 1 Blue Diesel, and 2 Goo x Kush F1 hybrids.

In addition I have recently germinated the following veggies: cow peas, collard greens, mustard greens, chard, broccoli, jalapeno, bell peppers, cantaloupe, tomato, green onion, butternut squash, zucchini, cucumber, and snap peas. These will all be transfered outdoors after the last frost.

I am growing in a $70 ebay 4x4x6.5' tent utilizing 12w and 23w CFLs screwed into $8 vanity light strips as well as shoplights with Y splitters. (also running a few 19w bulbs i just picked up for 12 cents each - gotta love sales) I am using both 6500k as well as 2700k with the majority being the 6500k. I plan on vegging until I can relocate my veggies outdoors and then will flip to 12/12. I plan on flowering the first 3 weeks with 2700k CFLs and then transition to a my 1000w HPS - I see no reason in spending the energy on my big light until I have a solid canopy in my 4x4 tent.

I have included a few pics. The first show spidermites that migrated with my plants. They were exterminated after a few doses of Captain Jacks and then a room fogger. Picks were not all taken on the same day.

And a bowl to kick things off.

Anyone may post with comments/questions.

 

[Gastanker]

Everything is growing well and I have started two 'something special' due to two of my blue diesel seeds being bad (one popped and never grew a root and the other currently has two leaves and is refusing to grow any more).

I rotated the two bigger plants today as they were developing very a-symetrically. I'm really looking forward to flowering the low LSTed one but not expecting much from the other tall one. These plants were both highly abused for a very long period. If i remember correctly they were originally cloned last summer and kept in a hybernation for many months. If i had the space I would save up the rootballs and repot but I don't have anywhere to do that.

If anyone cares the plants are all in Happy Frog soil being watered with a tiny amount of blue juice, superthrive, high nitrogen bone meal, and earthworm casting tea. pH at 6

As you can see the tent is a bit of a mess with cords everywhere and a partial partition of mylar. All of this will go when I switch to the HPS along with the instal of my exhaust system (right now I'm benefitting from the extra heat).

The pot plants are as follows - Blue Diesel on the left, this is the smallest plant looking very indica with an almost purple tinge around the leaves.

In the green pots are the White Rhinos which are taking off very well.

The other two cups are the F1 Kush/Goo hybrid. These are super big seeds and tend to really take off so I'm pretty suprised that the W. Rhino is keeping up.

 

[hardroc]

looks good man, that's cool to have the veggies in there too lol Can't wait to see the outcome of both
Scribb'd

 

[Gastanker]

looks good man, that's cool to have the veggies in there too lol Can't wait to see the outcome of both
Scribb'd

Thanks hardroc. That orange mass of yours looks beautiful. I'm hoping after a few weeks of recovery my bushy one will start to resemble it.

Don't be a stranger.

 

[hardroc]

Thanks man, I'm sure it will. I'll keep popping in to see your progress

 

[Gastanker]

Just found out that the new addition to my yard is a coca plant. My neighbor says it's been in the family for years but she has grown an allergie to it and thus it is now in the yard. Cloning a piece now and brewing myelf some tea as well.

 

[Gastanker]

Decided to finalize my move in by cleaning up my tent and the room it is in. Moved my plants around a bit and hooked up my big light and a temporary exhaust. My fan is hooked up to a speed controller thermostat (pretty cool device you can find at pet stores for maintaning reptile enclosures.

Also decided not to be lazy and cut my tall plants root ball in half. You can see how it has started to recover sinse i've had it - the top roots are much healthier and a nice white comapred to the bottom roots. I'll be curious to see how long it takes to make a recovery from my hackjob. Decided not to do this to my bushy plant but I think I might regret it.

Pics are in the following order -

1 - Tent before I started
2 - Tall Mr Nice before root trim
3 - Close up of roots
4 - Post root trim
5 - Close-up of post root trim
6 - Tent once I was done
7 - Close-up of veggies and seedlings on left side of tent
8 - From front to back: W.Rhino, Spider Goo, Blue Diesel
9 - Two other seedlings. W.Rhino in the front and Spider Goo in the back.
10 - LSTed Mr Nice
11 - Center of the previous plant
12 - 1kW Light
13 - Exhaust fan
14 - Variable speed controller with built in thermostat, attached to the exhaust fan
15 - $8 light strip
16 - Heavy duty ceramic light fixture (tool of the trade)
17 - Test firing big light

 

[Gastanker]

So I test ran my 1kW last night for the last two hours of lights on and forgot to have my exhaust plugged in. Supposedly went from 65 to 95 in a two hour time frame. Today I ran it again with exhaust on and it only hit 80 with a room temp of 65. This isn't bad at all; actually the same temp the tent stays with CFLs on and exhaust off. I'm a little worried about this summer though. Temps hit 100+ here at the peak which means I might need to pump C02 or steal my girlfriends AC unit.

 

[Gastanker]

Cut the bottom off my bushy plant and gave her some fresh soil. Both seemed to really like this and have responded very well. My younger plants are doing great - I love growing from seed! Nice and bushy with beautiful mid sized serrated leaves. I really with I had larger pots to put these in as the roots are bursting through the bottom of the pots and I hate to know that they are now going to start wrapping around the inside.

My veggies have been outside the past week but we're having rain and possible snow tonight so I brought em back in. Have also started quite a few more veggies in six packs under the humidity dome as well as in a plastic cookie container.

Humidity is staying around 40% with temps at 65 with lights off and up to 85 with lights on. I'm running the 1kW about half the time now and my flourescents the rest - I think the smaller plants are liking the CFLs and the big ones the HPS but what it really comes down to is me being cold and preferring to heat my place via HPS than turning the heater on.

Currently watering with indonesian bat guano, tar honey, 2 different organic bone meals(6-9-0 as well as 1-11-0), superthrive, and earthworm castings from the yard.

 

[hardroc]

Where's the K coming from if not the nutes?

 

[Gastanker]

Where's the K coming from if not the nutes?

Not receiving any K right now other than what is in the soil. If I can find it i'll be purchasing some MaxSea 16-16-16 kelp fertilizer. Although I don't particularly like the high nitrogen it does an amazing job durring flowering.

 

[skme9]

wow man ive grown a few but they seem to get tall and skiny(females with noobie setup) yours are nice compact and bushy how do you get them like that, bending? i have a few pics if you wanna see

 

[Gastanker]

wow man ive grown a few but they seem to get tall and skiny(females with noobie setup) yours are nice compact and bushy how do you get them like that, bending? i have a few pics if you wanna see

My plants tend to grow pretty bushy from seed until I switch to 12/12. I think it has to do with using more CFLs than necessary and getting them really really close - they receive pretty equal lighting from all angles which helps them not want to stretch. The big bushy one in there underwent some LST and supercropping.

Update:

My girlfriend asked to me stop at a garage sale yesterday and I reluctantly agreed. It was a young hippie couple throwing the garage sale and I noticed quite a bit of gardening materials not for sale in the background so jokingly asked where the lights were. And luckily for me he grabbed a box from the back and let me go through it. He had a large cool tube w/ 1000w magnetic ballast and 2 hortilux bulbs for $200 that I turned down but I did pick up a 440 CFM 6" inline fan for $40 and a 24,000 btu AC unit for another $40 + a gram for delivery.

The fan running at 1/4 speed is much less noisy than my ducting fan and bathroom exhaust fan and blows much much harder. Definately pleased about the find.

The AC unit however was a gamble. It's a huge AC and way overkill to cool my entire dwelling not to mention I don't have the correct 220 plug anywhere in my house. But at $40 it was hard to turn down.

I screwed up yesterday and cought myself running both the flourescents with my HPS. Really surprised I didn't throw the breaker or my powercord. The plants seemed to really love it. If only I had the money to spend on electricity...

 

[Gastanker]

I broke 2 big branches off my tall Mr Nice the other day while installing my fan If i had noticed right away I would have wired them back but I cought it a couple days later...they are barely attached and wired back up. Ill give em a 10% chance of recovery.

 

[hardroc]

put some scotch tape around them, and they will heal. That's what I do when I super crop, but I've never snapped 'em right off

 

[Gastanker]

put some scotch tape around them, and they will heal. That's what I do when I super crop, but I've never snapped 'em right off

Thanks. They were barely attached and broke off at the attachment point to the stem. Usually wiring or taping back in place works but the exposed area dried up a bit and I'm concerned that they might be lost. After wiring yesterday they do look a bit better so who knows, maybe it wasn't too late.

I'm going out of town for Easter and a bit worried about the veggies in my tent. they are in tiny styrafoam cups and require watering daily or everyother day. Hope they survive under my HPS for a couple days unattended.

 

[Gastanker]

One of my Goo x Kush hybrids is showing sex already...kinda miffed about why... These plants are less than a month old so unless I stressed them with the flip from CFL to HPS they shouldn't be showing sex for another couple weeks right?

 

[hardroc]

It all really depends on the strain and how fast it matures

 

[Gastanker]

Plants are doing ok. Really need to get those veggies out of the tent. My big plants look alittle droopy but they always have so I don't think that I'm going to change anything. My younger plants look great. In the pics they appear a tad droopy but thats due to an afternoon foliar feeding. Temps are in the mid 60's in there right now so I'm not too worried about the water evaporating too quickly.

 

[hardroc]

That could be the prob, your temps are too low.