Taking the plunge! First time grower gathering all equipment needed for 400W indoor!

[Professor Marijuana]

Here's one of the systems in my flowering room.

 

[stbjrb]

Here's one of the systems in my flowering room.

Thats an awesome flowering room Professor. How much do you charge per seminar?

 

[Stri67]

I will add my two cents worth on the setup and perhaps some insight into grow theroy. After 40 plus years of growing I have a couple opinions on what works best for me anyway. The buds in my avatar were grown in a small environment with the plants themselves being no more than 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall at harvest, I'll let them speak for themself. Welcome to the family of cannabis cultivators, they are in my experience a pretty good group of people. Use caution when taking advice because there is plenty of incorrect advice out there. Not folks trying to mess you up(although there is some of that as well)but just people who have themself been misinformed and are simply passing it on. I much prefer a new student/client who has zero experience to one that has six months or a year. That being said here we go.
I'm not big on grow tents but we all must do what our environment allows for. 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 doesn't seem like a lot of room but you would probably be shocked at how much cannabis I can produce in a years time with that amount of space. Certainly far more than I could ever think about connsuming on my own. I'll make the big leap and assume you're going soil for now, hopefully we will change that. And seeing how you've already purchased the equipment "it is what it is." For others in your spot but who haven't spent your money already here is my thought. First I would buy a hood that matches your deminnsions as closely as possible. The Hydrofarm Magnum XXXL is probably damn near a perfect fit. You want to spread your light out as evenly as you can and todays domes are designed to do just that. When it comes to venting always buy the biggest vent you can get. The XXXL comes up to 8" I believe, and even better they put that in a hood that is only 9 inches thick. That's a huge factoe when we have a limited amount of ceiling height. Lighting is the single biggest factor you will have control over outside of the strain you select. The amount of light and your management of it can dramatically impact your yield. Having your light as close to the plants as you can makes venting an important factor. Every foot in distance you have between the light and the plant reduces the actually strength of the light by half. A 400 W light becomes 200W one foot away, and 100W at two feet, therefor every inch you can decrease the distance of your light to your plant becomes important. I prefer the max fan, the black cylendrical guys you see. They have been design specifically for our industry and they do a good job. Move as much of that hot air inside the hood away as you can. Make sure your hoods are sealed well, I almost always add a bit of insulating tape to my hoods and use a sealant around screw holes and seams. Feel around the outside of your hood with your hand when you set it up for drafts, no sense using those fans to blow hot air into your tent. Tape any holes that spring up also. I use motorcycle tiedowns on my hood instead of chains, makes raising and lowering your hoods easy and also safe. I adjust my hood hieght almost every day, being anal about your light management will pay off I promise. Last on venting, the majority of growers forget about booster fans on the backside. If you have more than about six feet of tubing on the backside of your lights you will start to produce backflo which makes a huge difference on the amount of air you're actually moving. It can reduce your flow by half and more. They are cheap to buy and worth every penny. I'm also not very big on adjustable ballast, there is only one setting I use for my lights and that is fullblast. LIGHT IS EVERYTHING. You can not put to much light on your plants. I'll use my avatar as an example again, 4' x 4' closet that had nine girls in it. Two hoods that each had 400w MH and 600w HPS for a total of 2,000. Today they would house 1000w HPS and skip on the MH, I don't veg any more, It's a complete waste of time as far as I'm concerned. The only reason you would want to turn down your lights is to harden off girls coming from a cloning area and then under HID's and I can do that by raising the lights. Remember two feet away and that 400w is actually a 100w light, serves the same purpose. Just like in the movie Spinal Tap I would always have mine turned up to eleven. Going the other direction, turning your lights up to super max is a good way to burn out your bulb, they're rated for 400w not 440w.

No issues with filtration, do what you must to be safe. Will you recirculate or will you be blowing all your C02 out the window? Something to consieder. I didn't see anything for C02, that would be your next purchase. C02 will be important to you for several reasons. First is that you can grow in temps as much as ten degrees higher with 1400ppms than you could with the 350ppm that come free of charge from Mother Nature. The avatar room had an average high temp of 105, yup 105. 2,000w in 16 square feet generates an awful lot of heat. Second it will increase the density of your buds, as well as, shorten the time to mature. Third, and one that most growers don't think about. My grow rooms do not bring any air in from outside, none with the esception of when we enter the room and have to open the door. By providing all the C02 we can eleminate the need for outside air which has one huge plus, no mites. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a mite infestation. No outside air, no pets, no moving from one grow room to the other without washing hands. You may not find that possible if you have heat problems, hopfully the efforts spent on venting will prevent heat problems. A single 400w bulb might be managable even in that limited area.

I have been reading a lot of stuff on all the things people are doing with their soil. It doesn't have to be that hard. Just purchase bags of prepared soil that is called "Cactus Blend" that's it, you don't need to do a single thing to it, like the box says "just add water." Cannabis doesn't like wet feet, you want soil that drains well and a cactus blend will fill that need quite well. As far as nutes people get carried away, I see bottles and bottles of stuff used to increase yields by this much and that. If you saw my shelf while growing the avatar buds you would have seen a bottle of Botanicare Natures Blend Flower for soil, that's it, one bottle. One ounce natures blend for every gallon of water and that's it. You can buy a bunch of other stuff if you don't like your money. KISS, the golden rule when growing, particularly for newer growers. Growing in soil you really don't need any meters, test your ph once and unless your way out of wack you don't have to sweat it. Not until you get into hydro do you need to worry about your metering. Nothing wrong with Foxfarm, I use strickly House and Garden but I also grow exclusively in water.

As far as your strain selection is concerned, it all depends on your goals. As a first time grower I would go with your most stable strain. Hard to say with your selections, the more "fuity Tuity" the more problems you'll have. I do my growing in 45 days, 8 harvests a year but that is dependent on the strain. A pure indica will yield twice as much in half the time as a pure sativa, SCROGS work extremely well with pure indicas. With a thousand watt light I could yield 16 lbs a year in that amount of space, in my sleep. Perhaps twice that. Pick one strain, germinate, veg, clone, sex, and then grow a mother. Use that to produce the clones for your grow. Lots of reasons for using one strain, the main ones would be you won't have multiple needs as far as nutes are concerned, they'll all need the same thing. Each strain will have it's own little things that need to be addressed, one plant will make it easier for you until y ou gain the skills needed for more complex grows. A big one would also be that they will have a uniform height. That makes light management easier, you won't have a tall plant keeping your light farther away from a shorter strain. I'm telling you even four inches will make a profound difference in your yield. My thoughts on Fem seeds is that they are a waste of money. If you are under the impression that all your fem seeds will produce girls then I'm afraid I'm going to shatter that myth for you. Fem seeds will produce more girls then regular ones but only when germinated and raised under absolutely perfect conditions. My guess would be somewhere around 85% girls will be your results. You get 50/50 at half the price and sometimes much more buying good old seeds. Throwing ten seeds down when they're $40 is no big deal, much better then throwing $250 down for an extra three girls. All I need is one girl to get a whole gaggle of clones. Save that money and the money for all the nutes and buy a nice vaporizer or a bigger bulb.

The method you use to grow is a whole new matter. I know how I'd do it but I'm a bit different then the "old school" growers out there. I grow for yield, quality, and speed. The people that pay to attend my grow seminars walk away happy I can tell you and end up way out producing what they used to. I'll see if I can find a picture I've posted here in the past and show you. Had my damned computer crash and have to import my pictures all over, a real pain in the ass and I'm pretty busy.

I hope I have helped you out. Glad to help with grow questions if I can. Prof Mj

Thanks for the insight! I will be posting any questions about my journey in this thread! I will post an update later this evening with pics. The seedlings are starting to get big!

 

[Stri67]

Quick update: Today is one week from starting to germ the seed and I feel proud of the progress thus far. I've taken in a ton of information over the past month of planning and this first week of getting the rubber to the pavement so to speak.



Migrated to a larger pot mostly because I wanted to get the lanky stem buried so it could begin building roots. Another main reason for the transplant is because the solo cup I was using as a seedling was clear. The plant seems to be enjoying its new home and growth is noticeable over night. I can see two new leaves starting to poke out of the center. Temps have been pretty stable. Running a 20/4 schedule now the max temp I've seen is 81* and low is 74* when lights off. Humidity is floating between 39-46% since adding a cloth suspended into a bowl of water with a fan blowing on it. I have also moved the light down to about 10-12" away from the plant top. Heat is not an issue because of my overkill venting setup for this size space. Again, plant seems to be loving every bit of it. I do not see any sign of leaf burn.

When I repotted yesterday I used 1/4 tsp (which is a 1/4 of "normal" strength") of Bioweed per Gal of water. I plan on needing to rewater in two days in which I will start the nutes at 1/8th strength.

 

[Stri67]

Good news today I received my seed order from the Tude! Everything looks great! Order was placed exactly 8 days ago, not bad at all!

I think I've decided to grow out the following for my first round:

1) Bag Seed - (Seen in pictures above). Assuming this to be Blue Dream as I found it in a really sexy bag of blue dream =)
2) G13 - Fem. White Widow

For #3 I'm trying to chose between the following:
3) G13 - Fem. Raw Diesel
3) Finest Medical Seeds - Fem. Northern Lights #5 x Haze

Temps are still holding very comfortably between 75* (Lights off) to 80 (With no AC running in house and lights on for long period). Avg 80% of the time temp is sitting at 78*. Humidity is holding between 38-45%.

I fed my good ol' bag seed last night with the following: __ / Gal H20 (non PH'd).

2.5ML General Hydroponics - Biothrive GROW
5ML Bioweed

The second set of leaves have already gotten larger than the Cotyledon, growth seems to be speeding up. I'm assuming it liked the first round of nutes... Temps seem to be no issue at all so I am able to run my 400W HPS about 10-12" from the top of soil with zero heat issues. Plant does not seem to be showing signs of any heat stress either. Current lighting schedule is 19/5, I have been weaning down to 18/6 gradually over the past week.

Next watering is presumed to be on Friday/Saturday in which I will water with only Bioweed.

How is progress looking so far? I've been digging around forums trying to gauge, but it is difficult to compare apples to apples here!

View attachment 2304740View attachment 2304741View attachment 2304742

 

[choop]

8 days from tude is crazy fast.... east coast? im on east coast and it took 2 weeks for me

 

[Stri67]

Plant has almost doubled in growth over the past two days. Things are looking good! I had a little bit of a scare yesterday when she was having a little bit of leaf claw. Unsure if this was due to running the light so close, or possibly over nuting/watering. Plant was outside for about 5 hours yesterday and she seemed to perk right up. I also was able to pH test my tap water and it came out to be right around 8.0! Next water will be with bottled water and only water. Still waiting on my pH down to come in...

Also moved the germed G13 White Widow and Nirvana Bubblelicious to soil. Hope to see them sprout overnight =) Wonder if these genetics will grow faster than my bag seed which has about an 8 day head start.

 

[choop]

your links dont work for the pics :-/

 

[Stri67]

Watered today for the first time in 6 days. Probably re-potted earlier than I should have, the top 5" was pretty dry however the lower half of the pot is holding moisture. Also, today was the first time I used pH'd water (6.5). Plan on letting her go for at least a week before doing anything. Hopefully she'll be large enough to top at that point.

Any ideas what the drooping/clawing is a result from? Temps are 78* 90% of the time....

 

[SativaMe@420]

Any ideas what the drooping/clawing is a result from? Temps are 78* 90% of the time....

Every plant is going to have their own unique growth characteristics and although yours looks slightly odd I wouldn't say its a cause for concern, Ive had several seedlings exhibit strange leaves at this stage but when they start getting their first sets of true leaves the growth starts to look more normal. Unless you have discoloration, spots, necrotic leaves or severe mutation I would worry about it.

 

[Stri67]

Things are going well. I topped my Blue Dream bag seed on Saturday. Did I do it early? Yes, is it looking OK? You betcha!

Before:


Immediately after cut:


Today (Aprox 36 hours post cut):


Here are my seedlings that I started to germinate 6 days ago. So far so good.

G13 White Widow (Fem)


Nirvana Bubbelilicous (Fem)

 

[Stri67]

Decided to post a small update:

Blue Dream - 3.5 weeks old

This plant was topped above it's first node very early. She seemed to handle the stress well. Just trimmed about 8 large fan leaves to allow light to the smaller nodes under them. -- This plant is going to be bushy!!


Bubblelicious - 2.5 Weeks old. Just topped for the first time this evening! Any ideas why the edges of the leaves are curling up like this? Just noticed it a few days ago and assumed it was stress from being too close to the light? I have raised the A/C hood (400W HPS) to about 20" above canopy. What's odd is other plants are not exhibiting same behavior?


White Widow - 2.5 Weeks old. Topped for the first time this evening.