1st Grow Room, 400 W Ceramic Metal Halide (10 Chem Dawg, 1 Blue Dream)

The Room:
Its in an out door shed, about 5'w 4.5'd and 8' at the highest point of the ceiling. It has a concrete floor, and is insulated all around with 1.5" thick insulating styrofoam from HD. Im hoping during the winter that will help me stay warm and stay cool in the summer.

I just ordered my Ceramic Metal Halide lamp today, I thought I would be able to get one from the hydro shop, or even an electrical supply company, but everywhere I went looked at me like I was crazy when I told them what its called and that it has to be used in an HPS ballast. So if you are looking into trying one of these like I was, plan to buy it online. Currently I have my 400 W HPS ballast running a MH conversion lamp in a hydrofarm reflector.

For exhaust is a 70 cfm bathroom exhaust fan, currently running only when the light is on. For circulation is an 8" oscillating room fan running 24/7.

All the plants are on a 4' diameter homemade lazy susan, so I can rotate the table 360 to access each plant from the doorway.

The Plants:
Blue Dream- (1) I got her on 2/28 for another project, but changed my plans there, so now she is in this room. Before this she was in a small cab I made under a 100w HPS in soil in a 1G pot for about a week.

Chem Dawg- (10) Today marks day 5 since I received these lovely ladies from a guy that didn't have the room for them. It turns out he also didnt know how to care for them very well. They were in about 1/2 gallon grow bags, starting to get pot bound and nute deficient.To the best of my knowledge they have been under 18/6 for about 2 weeks before I got them.

Quite a bit has happened in the past few days so I'll catch you up:
This was extremely last minute as I was rescuing the Chem Dawg from certain death.

Night 0- My room is not complete. I have nothing but an insulated room. I borrowed a 1000 W HPS light from the guy I got the plants from to use until I could buy my own light. Luckily my sisters bf knows the guy who runs the local hydro shop and got him to wait an extra 2 hours after closing for us to get there. I only planned on bringing home 9 plants, so I bought 9 5 gallon Geo Pots, and 5 bags of Roots Organics Soil. Then I went and got the plants. Ended up bringing home 10.
When I got home I got to work transplanting. Filled all 9 GeoPots and one other plastic 3 gallon pot I already had and got them in the room. Then I decided I had room for at least 1 more 3 gallon pot, so I transplanted the Blue Dream from the crappy soil and 1 gallon pot she was in to the larger pot and much better soil.

Day 1- They are all lookin pretty good considering the transplant and all. I took some rough measurements, they are all between 23.5" and 25" tall. Got a little Great White from the guy I got them from too, so I gave them that today. Since I don't have an exhaust fan yet I'm going to have to keep the doors cracked to keep the temp from this 1000W light under control.

Day 2- Since the majority of my plants are the same strain I want to LST some And ScrOG atleast one. I'll do that today.

Day 3- Finally got my exhaust fan and light today. I installed them and left alone to see what my temp stabilized out to.

Day 4- Temp is averaging mid 70's during the day and mid 60's at night.
I should have expected this, but upon close examination I discovered a few of the girls have SPIDER MITES! I heard the guy complaining about them a few months ago now that I think about it. This is my first time dealing with them, and I'm doin what I can with what I can afford, so I took each plant outside individually and gave them a good spraying with water to hopefully knock some off. Then as best i could i went through and smashed each one i could find. damn they are small. The eggs are even smaller. I know I could never get them all so I went to HD and bought one of those No-Pest Strips. I'll give that a few days and see how it looks.

Day 5 (today)- Last night I closed off my intake and turned off my exhaust fan to let that pest strip do its job. Crossing my fingers...

Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think...
Its time for a and maybe a


HF

ps- The Blue Dream is the one that's different from all the others if you were too stoned to notice

The first 2 pictures are using the 1000w HPS, but right after it turned off. You can hardly take pictures under those. The second 2 are after the switch to a 400w MH conversion lamp. And the addition of the No Pest strip of course.
I WILL kill those mites

My light bulb came in today! One brand new 400 Watt Philips MasterColor Retro White Ceramic Metal Halide. Needless to say, I'm excited. Also in the shipment came my very first cloning gel.
So I waited until lights out and switched out from the MH conv. to the CMH. Tomorrow will be day 1 with the CMH!

Does anyone know how close I can put this light?

I have humidity domes, coco plugs and everything, but dont have my clone room set up yet. I couldn't wait to try and take some clones though. So I took a couple plugs, stuck them in soil and stuck a cutting in each one. then I stuck a water bottle over each one to act as humidity dome and stuck them in my room off to the side to get 18/6 under the CMH to see how they do. I've seen it done with less... The first is Blue Dream, and the second is Chem Dawg


And these are pictures after one week of veg in my new room.
First the Blue Dream- She has exactly 2 weeks veg time, the first week as part of another project under a 100W HPS, then she was moved to this room when it was completed.

And then the Chem Dawg- I have had these lovely ladies 1 week today. So I think they have had about 3 weeks veg time total.





Its sooo tempting to flip the lights! I'm going to wait at least a few days longer since I just put in my new light bulb, how much longer do you guys think i should go?

Oh yeah, the No-Pest Strip has seemed to work great! I havent seen a spider mite in a couple days

Very nice going man...I'd love to get my hands on some chemdog...I also used MH conversion for my HPS ballast , check out my grow link....

Went out at 5AM to watch my own personal sunrise (first day with the CMH lamp), then I got to smoke a bowl and watch the REAL sun rise!

Started to get my Veg room built. I put in 2 shelves, the top one for a future veg or mother spot and the lower for clones/ seedlings.
I already had 2 small light fixtures I hung for the clone spot. They are just 2 lamp 13w fixtures I got off a job. So a whopping total of 52 watts. (I will be upgrading these when I get paid)

I havent done a whole lot of research on setting up a clone/ mother room so I have some questions-
What the consensus on fluorescent lighting for clones or a mother?
How long do clones usually take to root?
And any estimates on how long you would have to veg a plant to take 6 or 8 clones from it?

Here's the room- the clones are under the dome with the CFL's above them. The upper shelf is the future mother site.

Status update-
The girls are lookin good, this is the third day with the new lamp. I want to say it has made a difference, but I am too inexperienced seeing as this is my first time. So all I have to compare it to was last weeks growth, but there are too many factors; i.e. transplanting and all the lighting changes ( Days 1-3 with 1000W HPS, 4-8 400W MH conversion, 9- 11today 400W CMH).
Regardless they do seem to have exploded with new growth. Its starting to look more like a field than just a couple plants in a room.


This is a seed I found while cleanin up my room. I have no idea what it is or even how old it is, since I started labeling every seed I found a couple years ago. I don't know if it's genetics, just old, or what but its got some crazy lookin leaves.


This is another seed I found, it took a day longer to germinate, but looks much better.


My "Field Of Green"


Here's a close up of the stem of the Blue Dream that I LST'd.



Comments please people!
HF

Today marks 2 weeks veg for the 10 Chem Dawg, and 20 days for the Blue Dream.

Tonight I will turn the lights off early and give them a full 12 hours of darkness before giving them the first day of 12/12.

Let me start by saying not having Internet sucks ass.


The last time we spoke was the last day of vegetative growth. So as of today, we are 24 days into flower.
Despite not having updated in almost a month I dont have a lot to say. Things have been pretty uneventful, which is good I suppose.

Here are some excerpts from a physical journal I have been keeping-

3/25- Day 5 Flower- Today I had to move the light up, they have already grown ~4". I have been super busy the last couple days and just checked my soil moisture and it was pretty dry. Probably could have used water yesterday or the day before maybe. Today I bought some nutes; Roots Organics HPK, and some Botanicare Cal/Mag. I watered with 8 ml/g of the HPK and 5 ml/g of the Cal/Mag. The HPK calls for 15 ml/g but I wanted to start off slow.



3/31- Day 11- More water, mixed at 10ml/g HPK and 7ml/g Cal/Mag. The cal/mag says you can use up to 10ml/g for the "accelerated" formula, but I dont want to over do it, so next time I'm gonna drop back down to 5ml/g I think.



4/7- Day 18- Watered today! HPK @ 15ml/g, Cal/Mag @ 5ml/g, Silica @ 2ml/g
After doing some more reasearch, I bought some silica to supplement with. While talkin to the guy at the hydro shop he said he uses silica regardless of lamp type, so take that into account next time you're there.

4/13-Day24- TODAY- Goin to take more pics now, talk to you later tonight

Watered and took a few more pics today. Same nutes; silica, cal/mag, and HPK @ 2, 5, 15 ml/g respectively.

Updates? I am thinking of going CMH as well, but only a 250w since I have height restrictions. Last pics look great!

Sorry for the lag time, been busy and didnt think anyone was watching.

I got back from a week long trip 2 days ago to find my girls had put on a bunch of weight. So much so that I had branches falling over everywhere. I built a fence all the way around to keep them off the walls and am adding stakes as needed in the middle to hole em up. I gave them more water, same nutes, same strength as before. Also I am still battling the fungus gnats. last week was the wrong time for me to take a vacation, but thats the way it went.

Heres some pics

Looking good. I have been thinking about throwing a CMH in my flower room. What do you think so far about its performance?

So far I love it, and I think the girls do too. They are all super frosty and so fat they are falling over. I'll be posting more pics in the next couple days.
Any suggestions on how many days to flower Chemdawg #4 and Blue Dream?

After a full 8 weeks, and close examination under my microscope, I let the lights go out Sunday and gave them about 20 hours complete dark before harvesting. I am VERY satisfied with the performance of the CMH lamp. They guy I got the ChemDawg from said my buds are way stickier than they normally get from their HPS. But there are also a lot of other differences in our growing techniques. I forgot to take pictures prior to harvest (sorry) but here are some I took very shortly afterwards:

Very nice! I have a CMH coming next week. I'll be finishing up my current crop and the next round will get full spectrum! Looking forward to seeing the difference.

Final weights are in. Got 17g off the Blue Dream, and 130g off the Chem Dawg 4. A total of about 5.25 ounces off 11 plants. Not too bad for my first time, not to mention it taught me everything I couldn't learn from a book. I WILL get more next time!

They look really good. Not the frostiest buds I have laid eyes on but not the worst by any stretch of the imagination. You came out to .37 grams per watt so there is definitely room for improvement. Not trying to kick you in the teeth..just saying. My best grow so far was .87 but it depends allot on strain. I seem to recall chem dog not being a huge yielder. I don't know how tall your room is but judging on the pics you could veg them a little longer. If you only have 1 400watt I would also suggest scrogging them. You can get a nice even carpet of buds which is ideal if your using a bulb with a little less penetration like the 400's.

happy growing.

I've got no arguments, I agree actually. I had a real problem with fungus gnats, and I know that really hurt my yield. I could prob list 10 more things that also hurt it though. But in the end I learned a lot and got enough pot to last me until the next harvest.
As for next time, I was debating on either a ScrOG or SOG. As of right now I think I'm planning on more of a SOG approach.