Dual PC Stealth Grow -- Aurora Indica & Mazar x Afgan

Alright guys I have decided to start my grow journal since I literally just got done ordering my equipment. Thus, far I have ordered two PC tower cases, 8 6500k CFLs, 8 2700k CFLs, and a batch of Aurora Indica and Mazar x Afgan.

I am very excited to finally be able to start my own grow journal. I have set my personal goal of a Qp in one harvest. I think that I can get it. I might not get it on the first try, but even if I get close I will feel very accomplished. I have, also, been thinking of ways that I can increase yield in such a small grow and I have decided to go with LST and will be looking into hydo products in the near future. I think that the hydo will give me the boost that I will need to really get this grow kickin'.

I will be picking up the rest of the appliances when the shipments start to come in.

My expected planting day is: June 8th
My expected harvest day is: August 17th
My expected smoking day is: Sept 1st/Sept8th*(birthday so i might let cure longer)

This is allotting two weeks for veg and 7 weeks for flowing.
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Pricing:

*rounded up to the nearest US dollar*

PC Case x2 $125
Glue Gun x1 $15
Glue Stix x1 $5
Car Reflector x1 $15
30W CFLs x16 $71
Power Strip x2 $20
Outlet Converters x8 $25
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Sub-Total: $276
Seeds: $40
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Total: $316.00

Welp, that is about it. I will get back to the journal when the equipment starts coming in and I start putting it together. Wish me the best of luck!

--X

Color me interested! We have very similar grows, by the way. Subbing. Pics soon?

Thanks for joining me in my quest, ER. Your grow journal was very inspiring to me when deciding on a PC grow. Thank you for that. I will, also, have be adding pictures as soon as I start to build my PCs.

edit* ER, your experience is very welcome and if you ever see me making a newbie mistake feel free to correct me

Thursday, May 21st 2009

Well, I got my first run of bad news yesterday. As I said previously I ordered all the necessary equipment Monday night. ATX power supply e-mailed me yesterday stating that my 'skyscraper' (8x19x22) case was out of stock. I frantically looked across the entire internet looking for the same model or at least the same dimensions for roughly the same price. None, no where. Before giving up I decided to take a look at the ATX power supply line up and found one with the same measurements, just different dimensions (9x20x20). I then e-mailed my sales assistant that gave me the refund notice and asked him when he would be getting more 'skyscraper' models in and that if it is past next Friday to just send the other one.

Today, he e-mailed me back saying that he would have more 'skyscraper' models in Monday or Tuesday and will ship them immediately. Although, this is a delay and set back it will not effect my plant date, flower date, or smoke date. That is all I am worried about. Should have everything that had to be ordered by next Friday. After that I head off to Walmart and will start getting some pictures up!

-X

Friday, May 22nd 2009

Got my lights in today. All eight of them and they look like they are in good shape. I compared them to my current small desktop pc and they will easily fit in the server towers. However, I will say that there will probably only be about an inch from the light and the shutting side. Is this to close? I hear that CFL's do not produce heat unless touching, but is that true?

I will be running to the hardware store tomorrow to pick up some socket converters and other small items that I will need for the construction. I think I will get the glue gun and glue sticks but if I can find some cheap power strips I'll grab those too. It is looking like I am going to need about an extra $75 or so after buying the medium, carbon filters, nutes, and heat and humidity gauges. So make sure you guys plan in for that if you are thinking about a pc grow or any grow for that matter. I know I forgot to put it in my introduction at the top, but every one of these things are extremely important to have right at the start especially with a PC grow.

I have decided to not start with perpetual and just go for the big harvest. I have a personal goal of a Qp/ harvest, but duelly noted that I am going to be running two PCs for this grow. With the measuing stick I can imagine 3 plants/unit (8*19*22H). The only question is do you guys think that there will not be enough lights or it'll be a slow grow? I would like to hear opinions on this issue because even if I have 6in circumfrence pots that only adds up to 18 inches. Thus, I think it is very plausable with this sized case I morely finding my self questioning if 4x30W support 3 plants with quick and dense growth?

Thanks for all the help guys,
-X

i can grab a hold of my 26 watt cfls and 42 watt cfls for longer then 10seconds with out needing to stop. and not heat from a cm away

I'm running 8 26w CFL's right now in a 2x2x4 grow tent. They make plenty of heat if not exhausted properly. It sounds like you're worried about how close they're going to be to the side of your case though - it won't matter, they do not produce enough heat to do anything to the metal.

Look around at other people's reported harvests from PC case grows to get a good idea of what to expect. One thing to note - all of the good PC grows I've seen run 12/12 from the start. 20" may seem like a lot of room but after lights and pots you're not left with much and there's not a lot of space to LST in a case. Nothing wrong with aiming high, you definitely are planning things out better than most (myself included!).

I would personally find some square pots for better use of space to help get the yeild you want. Let's do some quick math - 3 pots per case, 6" diameter (3" radius) (circumference is actually the distance around!). Height does not matter for this comparison, but let's plug in 8" high. pi x 3² x 8 = 226.19 cubic inches. Let's see what we gain with a square pot 6" on a side and 8" tall! 6 x 6 x 8 = 288 cubic inches. That's over a 25% increase in volume. You could fit four 4.5" containers in the same space as 3 6" rounds and lose only 8.333% per pot. Take your pick - bigger pots for less frequent waterings/extra rootspace or an extra pot for another plant per case.

LT, Thank you for the accurate information and quick reply.

dontcopenone, I was worried about it wearing in the metal on the side. I have ordered 3x80mm fans to go into my units. I was just going to have two fans in each unit, but I think I am going to use the third fan as an extra exhaust. Do you know or not if you can hook all three fans up to one wire then one outlet? If not I think I will just hook two up and see what the temps average at with the carbon filter. However, I do know what you mean about heat. I started off with a halogen bulb for about 3 days *lol*. Then ordered a either T5 or T1 fluro and man did that thing produce heat in a closet. Killed my first ever grown babies.

As for my expectations, I utterly understand that it is quite high. Although, I have been checking around the past few weeks and most people seem to pull around 15-22g/plant depending on genetics and conditions. Most of the journals I have read are doing perpetual starting with 12\12. I was thinking about doing one unit with two weeks of veg and the other starting from a 12/12, however, the only difference will be the genetics. I will say that the 12/12 from start does offer a great deed by taking away the 2-3 weeks of veg that I was going to do. Thus, I think that it is defiantly an option that I would like to investigate. I do believe though, that if I can get at least 2 plants from each unit to average an ounce a plant that I'll have it.

I will confess, I am not expecting to reach this goal on my first grow with current conditions. There are things that I think I can grow into that will help me reach this goal such as: hydro, larger/more cfls, LSTing (which I am going to do from the first grow), or just buying more pcs j/k

The square pots is a genius idea! However, with this finding I must ask will 4CFLs/unit suppot four plants? Thank you for the idea, and extremely informative post. Hope to see you checking in on my journal.

-X

Somehow, my sub on your thread didn't take! It's there, now, though.

So.. having read my grow, you can imagine I may have had a thought or two regarding large harvests, etc. Well.. if you want to know how *I* think it could be done in a pc case, I'll tell ya (and I'm getting up another cab to test this 'big harvest' theory w/ 6 ryders). SO.. With Indicas.. you want to veg under maybe 50W for slow (sometimes), trainable growth in veg. So.. I think you're on the right track w/ 3 plants to do this, by the way. So.. 3 plants.. keep them @ 18/6 and top them as soon as you can. Then, top all new tops. This should give you 12 top colas total. ScrOG it.With 12 tops, I think you can get 1/4 lb. or close. Your genetics should be OK for that.. and your veg. time will be approximately 40 days. If each top is 10 grams, you have a cupe and change, my friend. You may want to research whether or not cutting sattellites off will help main bud development, as well. I'm not sure if intentional lollipopping is possible.

Great work making sure ou got your case, by the way. A tower is soooo much easier to work with.

ElephantRider: I would think that LST, if done right, would easily produce similar or better results in a cramped PC grow. That and I wouldn't want to slow the plant down ever by topping or using low light. Seems kind of counter-productive. I don't have a lot of experience but in my current (first) grow, LST seems to give me a very good control over the canopy height while producing plenty of new bud sites. Again, I'm a newb, so just my highly uninformed opinion!

Xander: I'll admit I thought your goal was kind of high. I'm on my first grow though, so what do I know! I could not remember how much other people pull from PC grows, which is why I said to compare results from PC grow reports. If their results support the idea, it should be possible! Keep up the positive thinking, it's half the battle and will keep you going if you suffer a setback. Sorry to hear about the last grow not working out, seems like you learned a lot from it. Oh, about your lights - I'm currently flowering out two small plants under 8 x 26w cfl and everything seems to be going just fine. I'm going to hook my 250 HPS up soon though, so I won't be able to tell you how they finish under the CFLs. I just found my tape measure and just as I thought, my square pots are exactly 6" on a side. Found some online - LINKY. They hold about 3.8 liters. Let's see 30 watters are going to give you about 2000 lumens apeice, 8000 lumens per case.

I pulled this from the internet: Current theory holds that the minimum amount of lighting needed to sustain growth is around 2,000 lumens per square foot. Mid range is around 5,000 lumens per square foot. Optimal is 7,000 to 7,500 or higher lumens per square

So if you have 8x19 that's pretty damn near exactly 1 cubic foot, which means you should be just fine with 8000 lumens. The thing that I've found with CFL's is as long as you have a fan pulling the air right off of them you can easily put them 2" off the plants. You can go closer but they will still burn plants if they touch the light, so the 2" is a safety margin.

on the note of wireing your fans.

i just hooked up my fans to my PC

you need to get a cell phone 120w 12v charger strip it and connect it to the fans


the fans have Red black and sometimes a yellow. red and black connect to your cellphone charger wires. they arn't labled so if it doesn't work switch red to black and black to red. i ahve 3 fans on one charger atm

dontcopnone.. LST won't do it alone. Commonly, people are seeing 15-20g - 12/12 from seed - per plant out of pc cases, with 3 being tough to manage, sizewise. I think the only way it can be done is with veg. This is precisely why my uber-topped Citral will be going 12/12 in a pc case in about a month. It should have about 8 main tops by that time. I'm thinking this might mean an 80g harvest on one plant (conservatively speaking) and only 2 plants of that size fit-able. So 160g.. 5.7 oz.

If you haven't checked my grow.. it's a little odd and scientific, pc-wise. Lotta unneccessary rambling, though. I've got 8 plants in pcs now.

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

So no real changes, yet. Called the hardware store to make sure they carried the outlet converters and they did. I expect to receive an email from the PC Case business confirming my order and hopefully shipping soon. I do not think that I have received a shipping confirmation for my seeds yet, either. However, I think last time I had to email them once or twice before I got my shipping confirmation, but then again last time I sent the wrong money order .

Anyways, I have been getting great feedback and I would like to address you guys. Honestly, I have read over your guys posts a few times and some of the techniques I either do not know about or just don't fully understand. Anyways, here we go:

ER, I am glad you subd to my journal it will be an honor to get advise and have your experience at disposal. I will not lie, I currently have only skimmed through your journal looking at 'preset up' try research; case set up, lighting, harvests, etc. I have went back and read 10 pages, but not totally caught up yet.

I, too, believe that this 'personal goal' is possible. I agree with you on some issues, some I don't know about, and others I can't do. For one I can't support a 50W bulb in my case (sideways anyways). I don't know how to 'top' them. I haven't heard of this before (newbie), but I am willing to look into it. I will say that I will not SCroG. I will, also, have to question the 40 days. I do think that I want to have one unit have 3 plants that go through 3-4 weeks of veg, and have the other unit start from a 12.12. I only question this because it will effect my 'smoke' date and that lands on my b-day. So I hope you can feel me on that one ))) Anyways, I do see where you are taking it, and I wish you the best of luck with your ryders. I am trying to subd to your thread, and I hope that we can both reach this goal together!

DCN, I am glad you questioned my knowledge. Everyone needs to do their homework or it will end put costing 'em in the end. That is basically what happened with my first grow, but you are correct I learned quite a bit. I still have a lot to learn, but I am finally willing to sit down and do it. Positive thinking does help quite a bit! That is sick to hear you got a HPS bulb, if I had the room that is exactly how I'd go! Thank you for the lumens chart and link to the pots. I hope you stick around and see the journal through. I think we're going to have a fun ride.

LT, Thank you for that information! +rep man!

ER, damn...can you tell me more. I will continue getting caught up on your journal, but would love the advise. However, like I said I do have a pretty 'set in stone' schedule. But I would like to see what my options are. Oh and before I forget, please let me know how that Top44 works out for you. I was looking into it and the Smoke Report rated it kinda low so I was gonna wait and see how you felt about it. I will say it sounds PC perfect, but quality is the name of the game.

Thanks for all the feed back guys. You are giving me faith, hope, and provoking my excitement with each day. I can't wait to sit back on my 23th birthday and smoke a blunt of my own creation(s). Got one more weekish of the 'waiting' game for shipping and handling. Thanks again guys.

-X

Topping Link
You basically let your plant grow out a little bit then chop the top off. I haven't topped myself but LST proved to be very easy once I did it. Topping is way less complicated, you just snip snip.

I will most definitely be sticking around to see how you do.

Well.. I don't expect my journal to be gospel, by any means! I'm happy you've read some of it. I'm a bit too verbose, in most cases.

Anyways.. as dontcopnone pointed out, topping is a great way to get a lot of plant in a little package.My Citral is 70-some days old, has 4 tops (would have had 8, but I topped WAY too hard at one point and took my new branches, so I lst'd it down VERY hard at the trunk and focused on the 4 tops I still had. They are all about to get snipped for cloning practice. If those clones are viable, I'll put them outside somewhere. The aim, then, is to bonsai all of the tops to keep it small and contained.

That is correct.. the veg will effect your smoke date in Sept., so I'd suggest get 3 plants pumped out via 12/12 and LST. You should get between 45 and 60 grams per box, dry. That's 4 oz., if you pull off the high end of the weight estimate. My estimates before were for a qp PER BOX.. sorry.. was stoned. I really hope to see you make it.

Also, regarding the Top44.. skip it. I did it because it was "easy" and an early harvester. Glad I did it, but the smoke is a little lighter. I'll have a better report once cured and all..

Hey everyone, I am glad you guys are sticking around to see how my first pc (and fully complete hopefully) grow will turn out.

DCN, Thanks for the link. I have read it but like I told ER I do kinda have a set 'smoke' date and I think with the snipping and 'regrowing' it would effect my smoke date. This does seem like a very helpful and advance procedure that I will look into! I do remember reading about this, but in the old ass book I read I am pretty sure that it said that you could only top once to get two colas rather than one. With the link you showed me though, I can understand how ER will probably getting a Qp/harvest (good luck again ).

I will most definantely be LSTing but I need to do some research on that too. Most of the diagrams I see don't make much sense. Also, when sould I start LSTing? Remember that I will have one unit starting from a 12.12 with the other going through 3 weeks on veg 1st.

ER, Congrats on your Citral I wish I could toke some with you especially after your review of the super one from Amsterdam. I will be looking into the 'toping' a bit more. Like I was telling DCN the only thing I have read about it said that sometime in the middle off flowering that you could 'top' the main cola to get two. If I were to try and get two main colas when would be the best time to top it? Also, thanks for the tip. This will help me greatly reach that personal goal of mine

I have decided to use one unit to start from a 12.12, meanwhile, the other unit will receive 3-4 weeks of veg before going into flowering. I don't really know if this will make that much of a difference (and I am using different genetics), but I feel like the more time and more light has to account for something.

Towards quanity, honestly, if I get more than a total of 2 oz for both units I will be happy. 3 oz and up total for both units and I will be SUPER excited. However, I will say that if I get anything under 2 oz that I will be somewhat disappointed, until I get hy lol I am extremely excited that you can see me getting what I have hoped for. This makes me feel like the vision is not far from being reached.

I hope the top44 smokes well for you. I will say that the smoke report and you having some 'trouble' with the early growth made me go with Aurora Indica, but I am still curious to see if you agree/disagree with the smoke report.

-X

There really is no limit to topping. I've seen pictures of mother plants that have been "topped" from cloning so many times they have probably over 100 growth tips. Topping, LST they're both meant to maximize your yeild by presenting more budsites to the light. With out doing this you will get one main cola and the rest of the lower buds don't amount to much. To more effectively fill the area exposed to the light we use topping and LST to create an even canopy of buds.

You'll understand it once you start growing. Oh, and check this out: How to LST. You have to do it by eye - look at the plant, spread it out with your hands, try to plan out how you want the plant to grow out. You really will understand it better once you have a plant to look at and practice on.

DCN, I think I am finally understanding the value of ScroGing now. I still don't think I will ScroG, because I dont know how to make one of those net thingys. However, topping is looking more and more appealing as the days go by.

The first hand experience will be the key, though. How long would I have to wait to just top the vegging girls once? Would 3-4 weeks be enough time?

I will, also, check out the LST link you gave me tonight when I get home. I am set on doing this, but like you said learning to do it correctly will be most of the battle.

-X

How many you gonna do in each box?

LimitedTimer said:

How many you gonna do in each box?

Click to expand...

Three most likely, but I do know that four will fit. Just all depends on what kind of cycle I decide on (perp, large harv, or clones).

Just went home for my lunch break and guess what!? I received my seeds in today! All look healthy and in good shape, even got a free old ass cd This is the second time I have ordered from marijuana-seeds.nl Using my CC this time eveything was hastle free, stealthy package and receipt, and came from over seas in just over a week. I recommend them.

-X