First Time Hydro Grow-Mega Garden

What a great forum this is. I've learned so much in the short time I've been lurking. These grow journals are awesome. I thought maybe some could learn from my mistakes (they are plentiful).

Started growing with my buddy about 5 years ago with a single outdoor plant. It was so successful we kept increasing the crop every year. It's to the point now where I'm too paranoid to grow outside anymore. My friend suggested hydroponics indoors. At first I was very "anti". I'd have experience with a "Phototron" unit and was so disappointed I didn't see how growing indoors could be worth it. But after reading up on Hydroponics and seeing some of the results I agreed to give it a go.

Last fall, we bought a 'starter kit' from 4hydroponics.com... Which consisted of a
* HydroFarm MegaGarden 15 slot Ebb and Flow system
* Sunleaves Mini-Pulsar 400w 2way grow light
* Basic nutes for grow and bloom

We also picked up a "recipe for success" started kit from TechnicaFlora as we figured the basic nutes that came with the system would probably be crap and not designed for weed. Although we had done some very basic research, the wide array of available nutes was not part of it.

Also last fall we ordered 10 Bubblicious seeds from Nirvana.

And everything sat for 6 months while I was too damn lazy to clean out a closet and was unwilling to cut 6" holes in the walls of my house. Kind of a stalemate.

As we were getting ready for the final outdoor grow ever, we ran across grow tents. Never knew of such a thing. Oh, I know if I was really serious about it, I'd have seen them a long time ago. But anyway. This was the perfect solution. I had a room the tent could go in and we could just vent it with a fan into the room. No biggie. Couple hundred bucks and we're in business. We picked up the Secert Jarden Dark Room 100L (~3'x~3'x~6').

We also had to pick up more seeds for the hydro:
10 Trainwreckn (Greenhouse Seeds)
10 Himalayan Gold (Greenhouse Seeds)

Enough of the background bullshit, here's how things went... (I'm going to mostly ignore the outdoor grow, but I'll probalby throw in a pic or two along the way)

The exact date we germinated I do not remember. For the first time, we used germination plugs and a tray. Both for the indoor and outdoor plants. I think it was really meant for clones but it said it'd do seeds too. So, there was no soaking and no paper towel. The seeds went directly into the plugs:

Here's a pic of the Himalayan (From 5/7/10)


We germinated 9 Gold, 9 Train and 10 Bubble (we gave a friend 1 seed each of the 1st two)

We had 100% success with the Himalayan, 100% success with the Trainwreck and 5% success with the Bubble. Only 1 of the 10 bubble seeds germinated and it was a mutant. I'm guessing that waiting from November to May before germinating was a bad idea. In the picture below, the bubble is the only one still in the starter plug. (Top middle) See that it only has 1 little leaf, no starters and is barely above the plug.

(From 5/9/10)


Instead of just taking the loss of the 9 bubble's and being satisfied with 18 plants, we ordered another 10 bubble seeds. When they arrived we germinated 5 and they are all outside and looking very nice but 1/2 the size of the others.

At this point I was still leary about Hydroponics in general. So in deciding which plants would go outside and which we would try in the hydro, it was 'split the difference'. I took 1 very sturdy looking seedling from each strain, 1 average and 1 whimpy. We know we can grow outdoors fairly well, but we were nervous about the indoor grow... So many new variables. That's why only 6 inside.

Here they are 9 days later. At this point we were not adding nutes to the hydro. We were amazed at how well the soil plants were doing. The grow light makes a huge difference. The hydro babies were looking small and sad. They had odd discoloration (light green/dark green pattern) and overall did not seem very hearty. Also note the mutant bubble 2nd row from front, far left. 1/2 of the first leaf, barely starting to show the 2nd set. I'm amazed it is still living.

9 Days later (5/18/10)


Well, I have to throw a steak on the grill. I'll continue the long drawn out tale after dinner and hopefully get you up to today. Apologies for being so f'n verbose, when I get on a roll talking about this grow, I can't seem to shut up. It's so different and so much fun.

LH

(Oh, one side note... My buddy and I have never sold a gram of the weed we have grown over the years. It's always been personal stash or given away to friends and family. Last year was the first time we got carried away and had a shit ton more than we could use. Good timing too, as his neice was diagnosed with MS and his brother is wasting away from colon cancer. The lion's share of last year's crop went to those two and I imagine this years too.)

Your setup is Awesme !
very organized post, great work !

Welcome back... So in the interest of full disclosure... For the previous 4 years we have been growing, I'm basically been the "water the plants when you get home from work" half of the team. My buddy was the brains. This year, shortly after getting things ready for the season, my friend found himself with some major family obligations and not able to be a very big part of the grow. So I was thrust into being the primary caretaker of the grow. Trial by fire, but very satisfying so far.

So back to the grow... Unfortunately there is a big gap in pictures.

At this point we started adding nutes to the hydro, following the 'Recipe for Success' starter kit guidelines. Within a couple days, those little darlings started perking up, looking nice and healthy and greening up a bit. They started growing like ... ... weeds! It was amazing to me how well and quickly they came around. They started out being flooded 3 times a day for 15 minutes.

One of the things I am still not sure about is how deep to put the plugs (or rockwool) when I transplant into the MegaGarden. I had to block off about an inch of the overflow so the nute water would rise high enough to hit the plug before hitting the overflow. I think I should have put them deeper in the pots. As it is, I can barely run a single layer of hydroton over the plugs. Seems like there should be a couple layers of it... dunno.

The first batch of outdoor soil juvies were transplanted out of the grow tent, only to make room for those 5 new bubblicious seedlings we started late. Nirvana was good enough to send 1 seed each of Sour Cream, Rocklock, and Shark's Breath as samples. The Shark's Breath did not germinate. The other two joined the bubble in the tent.

This seemed like a good idea. The problem was, the new batch of seedlings were not ready to go outside but the hydro plants were ready to go into flowering. I made the decision to wait one more week before putting it into 12/12 to give the soil guys some extra time to mature. Well, oh my god, those little wenches just grew like crazy! It was about this stage when I realised hydroponic growing is frickin awesome:

You saw the nice little stand we had the hydro system on (last pic in 1st post). It was perfect. You could fit the bucked under the drain to change nutes every week. Problem was it brought the plants too close to the grow light. So we had to put the MegaGarden on the floor of the tent and figure out a new way to drain it. That turned out to be pretty straight forward. A 5' piece of reinfoced 1/2" hose. Pull the airator off the pump, slip on the hose in it's place, turn on the pump and the other end fills the bucket.

This was also around the time I realized the ventilation was going to be lacking considerably. So I picked up a Can filter and inline fan to pull the heat out. That now goes out the window of the spare room the grow tent is in. The air conditioning in the house is kept at 72, to keep the air in the tent cooler. Heat was a big problem for a while. But the exhaust fan and turning the air down brought it in line.

Also around the end of May is when we went to 4 15 minute floods per day.

Once the outdoor plants were moved out, we went to flowering mode in the tent. 12/12 on June 5th.

From 6/7/10, 2 days after going to flowering (I know, way too much photo gap during crucial part of the grow)


The hope was that once we went to flowering, the rapid growth would cease. That was not the case. We wanted short and wide, but they kept growing taller and taller. This was a week later:

From 6/12/10, 1 week of flowering


Meanwhile, the light keeps getting higher and higher as they grow and grow, but they seem to be slowing down some. Again, panic starts to set in as it's obvious they are going to get too close to the light again. I stop down to the hydro store and pick up a DR120 grow tent. This one is ~4'x~4'x~6.5'. It gives us another 6 inches height and some extra breathing room... Here's the new grow tent:

From 6/21/10 (2 weeks, 2 days of flowering)


And here are a couple little buds from 6/21/10 as well (after all, this is what you came here to see!)


The next week, they are taller once again and closer to the light

From 6/28/10:


It doesn't take too long before it's obvious the new tent is not going to be tall enough either. Grrr... I can't have them out of the tent in the open room, that just won't do. The only solution I can come up with is to try and move the taller shoots toward the outside of the tent, getting them horizontally away from the light... Here's my temporary solution on 6/30/10:


I'm going to wrap this post up with a shot taken on July 4, 2010. It's out of sequence, but wanted to show you why I was kind of panicing about the heat. Keep in mind I've never had to deal with lights and heat and such so I may be a little paranoid. It seemed like what I was seeing here was heat stress on those top leaves. They're curling under, almost shriveling... they just don't look right.


Next post I'll show you my resolution for the light/heat issue and talk about my trials and tribulations with ph.

LH

again sweet setup, + rep buddy

Thank you very much. I appreciate you checking it out.