First Cabinet – Winter grow

Been spending a lot of time reading over different designs and spent a fair amount of time finding the right place to construct my box. While I found a decent location to grow, it has to be stealthy and has the major challenge of cold temps to overcome (below freezing at night). I started with a cabinet under a work bench in the garage, flipped over one of the drawers and secured both drawers and one of the cabinet doors shut. I wired in 2 x 120v lines and used mylar insulation to line the whole inside. I added a heater with thermostat on the non-grow side of the box and dropped 16 - 26W CFLs in to the other side (8 x 5000k and 8 2700k). I had a few light leaks to seal up with brown silicone to match the wood and used foam rubber door seal to keep the other door tight. The locking mechanism is just two bolts to a pair of pin nuts on the other side and open and close it with a cordless driver that I keep on the work bench. It keeps the door shut very tight and isn’t as obvious as a lock or beefed up latch.
The lights keep the box around 70-80 degrees and the heater will keep it at 65-80 degrees when the lights are off or if the temps outside drop to the negatives. I was pretty impressed with the efficiency of the insulation, the heater cycles on maybe once every 15min for about 60sec when the lights aren't on and that was when it was -11 F outside the box.
I plan on one northern lights and one blue widow and will be doing LST on both given the limited vertical space.

I realize this is a fairly challenging grow but hopefully I’ve set myself up for success. Any thoughts or comments on the setup would be very helpful.

the amount of cfls in there should keep it warm. it might even get to warm, but with those cold temps im sure itll balance everything out. looking good though. you should get a thermostat the records the High and Low, makes getting an idea of your range a lot easier.

Love the cab mate, have you got ANY ventilation on that thing? Heat may not be an issue for you but won't the plant need fresh oxygen ect. to grow? (I have no personal experience yet) If you do add ventilation I think it would be cool if you could seal it in the above drawers BUT I do see that you have light fixtures on the top. It's a nice looking cab though and stealthy, is it completely light tight?

RRain said:

Love the cab mate, have you got ANY ventilation on that thing? Heat may not be an issue for you but won't the plant need fresh oxygen ect. to grow? (I have no personal experience yet) If you do add ventilation I think it would be cool if you could seal it in the above drawers BUT I do see that you have light fixtures on the top. It's a nice looking cab though and stealthy, is it completely light tight?

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Completely light tight.
For the winter I wasn't too worried about venting it but If I did need to I would to it in line with the heater and let it draw fresh air in as it heats. Ive got a one way vent on hand that I can install that will only open when the heater turns on and would be plumbed into the adjacent cabinet. Once summer rolls around I'm going to add in two 120mm fans wired to a greenhouse thermostat that will kick on when the temp is too hot.

Sounds great man, seems like you have this well thought out! +rep

Thanks for the replies, hopefully it all works out. Good to know that Ive got my bases covered. The only thing Ive yet to figure out is were to have a clone chamber. I think the first run through I might try and clone from the flowering stage right before harvest and see how that works out. If not Ill have to build something different.

one of the things I found with my micro stealth grow boxes that's beneficial in the winter and summer, is if you have your light cycle on during the evening/night and off during the day. This helps in the winter 'cause night is waaay colder than daytime temps so the lights being on late keeps them warm at the coldest outside temps AND helps in the summer 'cause night time temps are cooler than daytime temps so your cab is less likely to overheat. Job done

btw nice grow cab, reminds me of mine!

Stay Frosty!

nice setup bro

Props on a good idea...

Since half the thead is gone, I just wanted to reupload the pictures of the progress so far.

A few more recent ones.

Niceeeeeee!!!!! Lookin awesome man

Nice dude!

Thanks, I’m hoping the clones I took from the blue widow take root, I’m really liking the look of the buds so far on that one. The NL is pretty impressive as well but is definitely budding slower than the blue widow.

How long did you veg for? looks good

greengrowthexpert said:

How long did you veg for? looks good

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Around 5 weeks but next time Ill go to 12/12 sooner as Im having to LST now in flowering to keep the height in check.
Heres a few more recent ones. The pictures arent as good since Im not taking them out of the cab anymore since I dont want to break any branches as it gets more top heavy.

A few more progress pictures along the way. I’m very pleased with how the blue widow is turning out, much faster of a flowerer than the northern lights. Not as many bud sites for sure, but the buds are definitely bigger way more trichomes at the moment. I’ll have to wait till the NL is fully done since it’s likely that it will take a few weeks longer to flower than the BW to give a final opinion and smoke report but Im pretty excited about both of them.
The one thing I’m puzzled with is the yellowing leaves. I haven’t trimmed anything off of the plants until today when I went through and clipped about a dozen yellow/dead leaves off of each. No change to the water or nute schedule so I’m thinking it’s just part of flowering as the plants are devoting more energy to the buds and less to the fan leaves but I could be way off. I’m open to suggestions or opinions if anyone has any on the topic.

Lookin amazing!!!

^ how many weeks into flower are you? i know late into flower it's not unusual for the leaves to yellow..basically what you said, it's kind of a last ditch effort to put everything it can into bud production before 'winter.' i'm only 2 weeks into 12/12 (5 or 6 days since first pistils emerged) and some of the lower fan leaves are yellowing. i'm not sure what's causing that. everything else looks healthy and is showing good growth.

shap3less said:

^ how many weeks into flower are you? i know late into flower it's not unusual for the leaves to yellow..basically what you said, it's kind of a last ditch effort to put everything it can into bud production before 'winter.' i'm only 2 weeks into 12/12 (5 or 6 days since first pistils emerged) and some of the lower fan leaves are yellowing. i'm not sure what's causing that. everything else looks healthy and is showing good growth.

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I was using the thread as a log more or less to get the exact date but I know it’s right around 5 weeks of flowering now. I know I had some of the older fan leaves on the bottom die off in the first few weeks of flowering and more on the bottom are slowly turning yellow as well as some tips here and there but there is also some new growth and the buds are still developing so I’m going to assume it’s all normal. I hadn’t moved the blue widow out in a while but when I did today there were a bunch of completely dead leaves on the bottom but the top is very healthy so I think that just lends more the idea that its normal.
I think the blue widow should finish out in another 3 weeks and the northern lights might take 4-5. At that rate the yellowing shouldn’t really be a concern as long as it doesn’t get any more worse.