First grow, CFL, Hempy, Training Table LST, Micro cabinet SCROG

Good morning. This is my first post about my first grow. For this post I will describe my grow by dissecting the title.

This is my first grow...if you don't count the six foot male plant that I grew in my closet when I was in college 35 years ago. Smoked every leaf of it.
My Dinafem F1 Blue Widow Feminized seed popped her little head out of her Rockwool cube on 10/10/12. I switched to 12/12 yesterday.

For lighting, I built a ten socket light valance....bulbs installed horizontally. Have not needed to use all light potential yet. However, I did crank it up
with ten 26 watt CFL's installed just to check it out. Very, very bright. My grow cabinet is only 1.56 square feet. The valance has a window glass
leaf guard installed on the bottom to prevent any overambitious leaves from touching the hot bulbs. Right now J am using just six of my available ten
sockets with a 26 watt Soft White spiral CFL in each. This gives me 156 watts. From my research on RIU and other sites, the consensus seems to
be that 50 watts per squarefoot is adequate. With my cabinet having a footprint of only 1.56 sqft, I am putting double the required amount of light on my plant. There is an 80mm, 21 CFM computer fan installed top center on light valance to exhaust hot air from around bulbs. That hot air is picked up by my main exhaust fan, (same fan as valance) mounted top center in cabinet ceiling where it is ducted above the ceiling of my garage where I hope (bring
hot air, and hot air rises) it will evacuate my attic space through the ridge vent.

My first post is only a small portion of the post that I composed over a two hour period. Don't know what happened to the rest. I will post the rest in shorter individual posts...Chockfullonuts

I decided to use the Hempy Bucket method because of its simplicity...no moving parts, nothing to go wrong unless you screw up the nute mix. I will not go into an explanation of Hempy Buckets as that information is all over these forums. If you are not familiar, just Google "Hempy Bucket". I am using Fox Farm hydro nutes. I started with a weak mix and I have been gradually increasing the dosage. I use pharmaceutical syringes to accurately add the nutes to the water. FWIW, I started with 1 ml of Grow Big and .5 ml of Big Bloom. Now at seven weeks and I just went to 12/12 yesterday, my mix is 4 ml of Grow Big and 2 ml Big Bloom. I will add Tiger Bloom next feeding. Not sure how much, possibly someone who uses FF might give me an idea. If not, I will start off weak. My growing medium is 50/50 Coco fiber/Perlite. I am watering/feeding every three days...Chockfullonuts

As I was researching marijuana growing, I came across LST. After reading about it I decided that I would use this method as my vertical space is very limited. My grow cabinet is only 26" high. Here is my setup. My bucket is a black plastic Walmart dishpan, 10" X 14" . Out of 3/4" plywood I cut out a lid the exact size as the dishpan/bucket. I cut a 5" hole in the center. Plywood is attached to bucket/dishpan with zipties. Then I drilled a bunch of randomly spaced pilot holes all over the plywood. The pilot holes are for screwing in cup hooks to hold down the stems in the locations where I want them. Using this method I can precisely position the growth. I am using 1/2" and 3/4" cup hooks. To give you an idea of how well this works...my plant is seven weeks old and it rises
3 to 4 inches above the table and it covers about 1/2 of the table at this point. Interestingly, even with all the pilot holes that I drilled, it seems that there is never a hole in the area where I want to anchor a stem. Consequently, I keep a cordless drill handy. I intend to continue to LST while in flower until I run out of space on the table. Last night I counted growing tips and came up with 20 give or take.
By using this method I was able to pin the trunks tight to the table when they were small and pliable. So there you have it, the Chockfullonuts Training Table LST system. Possibly someone else is doing this but I haven't run across it and I have been haunting these forums for the last three months.....Chockfullonuts

Add pictures

I will add some pics when I figure out how.

Here is info on my cabinet. My grow is in a standard upper kitchen cabinet installed over the workbench in my garage. This is a four door cabinet; I am using two doors worth for my grow. The spaces are 15" X 15" X 26". The walls are covered with bright white dry erase marker board material, self adhesive. It sticks well and the heat from the lights does not
loosen the hold. I have an 80 mm computer fan in the ceiling sucking out the hot air. I am using passive intakes in the floor. The intakes are 1 1/2" PVC 90 degree electrical boxes installed with the pull box nipples penetrating the floor. There are several 1/4" holes drilled through the floor to provide more passive intake. The bucket is elevated off floor by sitting on small Legos, this allows the small holes under the bucket to also function as passive intakes. There is a tube from my nutrient/water reservoir that penetrates the ceiling and drops down the side of the box to the floor. This is a siphon feed. the tube is kinked and a small clamp closes off the supply. When water/fert time comes, simply take off the clamp and you are in business. It is nice having the supply available inside the box. I have installed 3/8" foam weatherstrip onthe door to contain light and insure suction at passive intakes. Thar about does it for the cabinet. Now back to the football game. I will post info on SCROG screen setup later. I will also try to post some pics....Chockfullonuts

This is the final post describing my grow setup. After this, I will concentrate on posting some pics. My SCROG screen is a rectangular halo cut out of a piece of 1/2" plywood. There are holes drilled 2" on center around the perimeter of the frame. The screen is woven of stranded insulated electrical wire.
The screen wil attach to the Training table on four 1/4" threaded rods that are fastened to the table. The frame of the screen has four holes drilled for the threaded rods. There are nuts and washers on the threaded rods that allow the screen to be adjusted. I realize that that after my plants are in the screen, there will be no upward adjustment...but I may crank it down at some point to gain a little space. I will not be installing the screen over the plant until I run out of space on my training table. The entire setup can be removed from the cabinet for training and pruning. Now you know everuthing about
my grow except what it looks like. I'll work on that....Chockfullonuts

sounds good, I am looking forward to pics as I am approaching my first grow ... THANKS! and good luck!

sounds really interesting except for this guh spamming about jersys, im lookin forward to hearin more about your grow, subbing

I think that I finally have a handle on posting pics. I am going to try to post a few from the last couple of days....Chockfullonuts

Now that I have figured out image posting, I will post a few more...older pics....Chockfuts

Awesome! I'm 2 weeks in with 2 babies with 155 watts of cfls now and will add more as we grow. Look forward to flowering to see what you yield!

When do you plan on LSTing?

i just finished up a cfl grow got few grams shy of 3ozs off one of the girls i was running 9 23 watters and 4 55 watters 2 plants lots of lst plant on the right is the one i got about 3 ozs from moving up to a 600 hid system this grow

Sounds and looks good I will be watching

Calmlikeozil said:

When do you plan on LSTing?

Click to expand...

Thought that was what I was doing with my training table. My plant is almost two months old and only 3 inches high. There are about 20 cup hooks
holding this puppy down to the table. Guess you didn't read the posts? Tonight I will post a picture of the cup hook hold down LST.