Five assorted clones in a shed

Okay, here we go again.

Last year was a failure. I had lots of plants going and they were in great condition but then my water line froze. I should have run another hose from the house to the back shed but I didn't think of it. When the plants started showing signs of dehydration, I attempted to use water from my hot tub, which I got rid of the chlorine from but not whatever else was in there, and that water killed all my plants.

That shed was too far away. That shed had too many plants. Not for space but just for paying attention to. My foot hurt last year, more than usual, and I procrastinated dragging myself out there. That shed was too far away to have any automation relayed back to me without going into extreme tech measures which I was avoiding.

This year I'll throw a 150-ft ethernet cable back there. But I won't be using it this year for most of the effort. It's just too far for me to walk to when the weather is yucky. I'm old.

I have lots of reasons or excuses for last year's failure. Let's see if I can fix it this year.

First of all, get mail order clones, not seeds. I can't get clones locally but I can have them shipped for 40 bucks apiece. That saves me 4 weeks of fragile nursery time and early vegetative mode. Well worth it.

Risks of clones are disease or parasites. Keep a close eye.

I got the following. It took 4 days from the order and was shipped overnight as promised. Described in order of picture like clockwork, starting in the upper right.

Key lime pie: indica/sativa hybrid strain bred from Durban Poison, OG Kush and Cherry Pie. Perfectly happy looking.

DJ Blueberry: 80% indica. Cross of purple thai and Afghan. Showed up a bit tall but very happy looking. I expect indica to be short and bushy but lack of light can make it tall. Very happy with this one.

Orange Cookies: indica hybrid crossing Girl Scout Cookies with Orange Juice. This one looks sad. Showed up with lots of leaf burn. I'll give it a couple of weeks before I complain to see if the new growth is good or bad.

Pineapple Express: sativa-dominant crossing Trainwreck with Hawaiian strains. I failed on Maui Wowie last year. Let's see what happens here. I expect to have to do a serious tie down with this one.

Super silver Haze: 80% sativa Cross of Northern Lights, Haze and Skunk #1. I've been looking for this for 15 years. I saw it in High Times and really wanted it. I never came across it. Finally. This is very tight and bushy looking. Unexpected for sativa dominant. Looks very good. I suspect this one got a lot of light to start off with.

Grow environment is a small shed. About 6x6. Sloping roof. Washington state. Rarely freezes, rarely gets hot. Attached to the front of my house. 15 steps down and five steps to the door. Never gets any sun. Doors open to enclosed overhang space.

I use mylar backed bubble wrap insulation. I cover the walls and ceiling with multiple layers of it. I use a lot of double-sided carpet tape and T-Rex tape.

The hose is right there. It has a filter good for 8,000 gallons to handle chlorine, chloramine, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's the best water in the house.

Inside the shed I have several baker’s racks shelving units. They have varying heights due to the fact of the sloping roof. They're wrapped and covered with multiple layers of the mylar bubble wrap. They have perfect temperature and air flow control.

The floor of the shed is left bare. I want to be able to hose it down if I have to. There are some vents left open on the upper sides of the shed.

The shed has a single high amp (sideways blade) 120 v line coming into some very convenient power distribution strips with individual switches for every outlet monitored by something that shows me the what the draw is at all times. I can easily run multiple lines from additional dedicated circuits. I don't see needing them though. My max pull will be around 1,000 w when flowering. I love winter growing, no AC required.

The main power strip goes through a GFCI intermediate cord for safety. Nothing touches the floor and nothing electrical is in any path of water flow possibility.

... More in next post because this one got too big ...

... Continued ...

The shed is very close to high signal strength mesh Wi-Fi.

I have lots of LED lights. Everything is UL listed and rated for greenhouse usage and allows for water spray but there will never be water spray in here.

I have two lights hanging, one from the ceiling and one from the top rack of one of the baker's racks. I have them turned to 75% in vegetative mode at about 12 in. If I see any leaf burn I'll turn them down or move them further. I have a baker's rack reorganization in my future.

These lights draw 240 w a piece at full power. They have switches for red flowering and UV. I also have additional light bar lights and can put enough watts of whatever wave length I want at any moment. I have more than enough lights running and available in backup.

The lights are on a 20/4 schedule. I give 4 hours of darkness for rest.

These lights generate a bit of heat but not a lot. I have a temperature controller that handles a tall oil filled radiator (set to low with a fan blowing on it, the gentlest safest heat I could come up with) and a set of cooling input fans that brings cold air into the bottom quickly. The radiator itself is on a small shelf underneath some of the plants. That's why it's a bit tight on height there. Nothing touches the floor.

Temperature varies between 73 and 78.

The humidity is too low by default. I have a bucket filled with water bubbling next to the radiator on the shelf. I used to do that to get rid of the chlorine but now I have the filter. I still do it because it increases the humidity a bit and then it varies between 50 and 60% which is what I want. I have a humidity controller that I could use to turn it off and on (along with an ultrasonic humidifier) but it's been unnecessary so far and I try to limit complexity.

I have temperature and humidity remote monitoring inside the tent, inside the shed, and outside. It never swings beyond the extremes I have mentioned, and the shed itself is a great intermediate buffer zone.

I have a small reciprocating fan moving in the tight space, and I have lots more waiting to be put in along with tower fans as the space opens up. The fan is attached to the light controller so the plants get a rest during the 4-Hour dark time.

When the plants showed up I transplanted them into 3 gallon fabric bags using sungrow number 4 dirt and a couple of inches of plastic fish pond filter balls for drainage. I covered the top with diatomaceous earth to catch anything that might want to try to burrow through. I used a tiny bit of nutrients and a few other additives but at very low concentration. I'll build the nutrients depending on tolerance. I usually try to get to a bit of leaf burn and then back off. It takes a couple of weeks for each adjustment though.

I'll top them after they've settled in for a couple of weeks. Then I'll top them again in another couple of weeks. I might supercrop, but I've broken too many plants in the past to be comfortable with that. Maybe I'll get a FIM or maybe I won't.

The ones that need it will get bamboo poles for support and tie down. I'm comfortable with LST. I'll attempt to keep them at the same height, maxing out at about 4 ft while being as bushy as possible, but if not I will raise the base of individual plants to keep them at the same height so the light will hit them at the same level. I will not tie them together and I will not tie them in place. I will always be able to move them to water them and inspect them.

I might go crazy with the side lights depending on how good the side buds are versus how poor the top light penetration is. But that's for flowering so it won't happen during this vegetation stage.

I'll adjust the shelves and lights as necessary for the next couple of months. When it outgrows the shelves, I'll rip them down and just leave enough to keep the plants raised off the floor.

I'll transplant them into tall 7 gallon bags. Everybody will get 5-ft bamboo poles and tie down into the 7 gallon bags. If I really have to, I'll support the buds by hanging strings from the ceiling, but I prefer to keep it based on the bamboo poles on the bag so I can move things.

I'll double up the insulation (everything that wrapped the shelves will now go on the walls and ceiling), add a few more lights and fans, and give it another month of vegetative mode. The lights should be generating enough heat that I would not need the heater except during the 4 hours rest at night and then during flowering nights.

I will take some clones if possible. I'm allowed a total of 15 plants. These plants are already clones and every clone generation has a possibility for failure. I will have two additional grow areas for mothers and early flowers. Those will be in the large back shed, but I won't have the same level of attention required versus the ones growing nearby. As soon as I establish the clones I will flower five of them to see what's coming.

I will use UV but I'm not sure how much. It will be based on how the additional flowering clones handle it. If it doesn't kill them, I will use more and more until it does or until I hit max. I don't know if I'll learn enough on this pass to use it successfully on the large plants and I will err on the side of using less or none.

I have multiple cameras running. They are cheap but seemingly high quality. The images are great in both high and low light and they catch motion and analyze it for content. They give me just the right amount of notifications.

One inside the grow space, one watching the door of the shed, walkway, driveway and street, and one at the front door. I get notifications of movement and specific objects on the latter two.

I put the grow space on my phone which then goes to my projector which then goes to my big screen and then I sit back and watch my pot plants waving in the wind to the sound of the bubbling bucket.

I do not need to go downstairs except to water. I might automate that but I doubt it. I like Hands-On time as well and I need to inspect for bugs and disease occasionally. Once it starts flowering I want to be able to smell it.

Okay, we are a week in to vegetation. Let's see what happens.

Oh, and if anyone has any comments or suggestions, feel free. I welcome the interaction.

Did I just introduce a nutrient failure? Or am I burning with too much light really quickly?

I've had them about a week. The super silver Haze has exhibited a pretty dramatic lightning of the leaves coming from the central point.

I turned the lights down to 50% from 75%. I've watered them once with a very light touch of various nutrients and vitamins, just enough to tickle their receptors to get them to start growing and absorbing it. Certainly not enough to fry anything.

All the plants were getting burned. The lights were too close. There was not enough room for them. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Rip everything down.

Double the insulation on the shed and do the ceiling that I didn't do before and pieces of the wall and vents and plexiglass windows.

Use both new shelves that I've gotten and old shelves to build an enclosure space that is slightly smaller than the interior of the shed itself.

Keep the top open and be able to hang lights from the ceiling. Place various steel rods taped on various spots to give structure.

Wrap everything tight in multiple layers of insulation while leaving a 6-in wall space on one side to allow for electrical work and mid exterior cool air intake. If it gets too warm with the lights on and the fan isn't pulling cool enough air, I'll reroute it to the actual outside And if that's not enough, I'll add the air mover fan I have that will flush the entire space in about 2 minutes.

Build everything back with the various lighting and heating and cooling controls and camera.

Now I've got room for lots of clones and seedlings in additional trays and the lights are the correct distance to be covering everything I need and not burn anything.

I have a dream. I dream of laziness. I dream of sitting in my big chair and projecting my grow op running onto my screen.

I have a dream of never lugging water again. I have a dream of perfect temperature control. I have a dream of an irrigation system but that's not set up yet. I have a dream of everything monitored and controlled through my network and my phone.

I should open up the grow shed once a week to rewire/support plants if necessary but other than that I should stay out.

So that starts with a really big reservoir. Lots of water is dangerous. Lots of water grows mold. Lots of water Is cold when it shows up from the hose/ filtration system.

That water will have nutrients in it. That water will be warmed up. Perfect for things to grow in it. That water will have to be pH balanced on an ongoing basis if I leave anything in it. This will have to be treated like a hydroponics grow from that perspective while I will still use it to keep the dirt wet since I like to grow in dirt.

I have lots of power control/ monitoring plugs plus temperature and humidity monitoring plus smoke detector plus various power distribution switches.

Everything runs off a single high wattage 110 line now. Max is around 2200 w (if multiple heaters go on simultaneously) but rarely ever goes over 400 w.

Insulation is very good and I don't expect total power to ever run more $2 a day.

I put in a 900 w pond heater that is temperature controlled. It is set for 78° like the room. It rarely goes on unless it's new cold water and then after it's warmed just for short bits.

PH Monitoring/injection system is just crazy complex for this. I'll adjust by hand weekly before feedings for a while and then when it's automated I'll have a better idea of what I have to do in the future.

None of this is really required for anything that I'm trying to produce. I just used to build computer rooms and I find this fun.

I got a huge pond air pump with eight air stones on it to keep the water oxygenated and moving around. That also adds to the humidity level of the room and I like that.

I bought a UV sterilization light bulb to use in a fish tank filtration system and weighted it down and dropped it into the reservoir. That should kill everything. I'll find out soon enough.

Just another piece of the puzzle as I play.

Nice project. Good luck with the grow.

Dream detour.

Too much stuff running on my phone.

Everything gets choppy, everything's yucky, I go into tech downward despair spiral, blah blah blah.

There was no way to actually monitor everything at the same time. All my time would be spent flipping around on my phone and trying to remember stuff as I correlate various values. Or write it down with a notepad. I smoke way too much pot to be doing this.

I need everything on a single screen simultaneously within vision and reach.

And then maybe I can actually do some code and pull all that data together and turn it into actual information.

I haven't it set up a real computer system in about 15 years now. I've lived off my phone for the last 10.

Every tablet I've ever had has been crap, not worth it, but I never bought the high high end.

Roll the dice, get a Samsung $150 tablet. It's a toy compared to the high end but it's name brand and the support (updates, software, not phone ) and usability should be acceptable.

What I wanted... Something I could attach my preferred clicky USB keyboard too and my preferred big trackball to, a Kensington expert mouse. They are USB. I'll pick up connectors if required and whatever translation device but it's all a crap shoot. Default hub does not work. Web searching says that it's actually a device specific feature and only the high-end Samsungs have. It. Looks like Bluetooth is in my future.

What I got was a big ass phone that can run multiple windows simultaneously. Nice handling and controlling the interface. Not my KDE but perfectly usable.

The feel is solid, controls are good, general interface is fun to work with and the window movement is quick. The window enlarge and shrink button has a moment of hesitation that I feel. I doubt I will ever optimize past what it has by default but I might try.

Generic apps such as email and browser and whatever else. The default just feels like a full screen PC with decent controls and visuals.

Phone specific little apps can go big or be adjusted into windows or get sliced into the exact areas I want to see. I'll figure out the macro language that does this all automatically on startup.

It is attached via a wire bar to an anchored table next to me. Hard lock clamp on the table. The table itself can swing and be repositioned.

It's perfectly positionable but it bounces way too much and way too long.

If I was to use a solid arm I wouldn't be able to maneuver it quickly. Unacceptable.

It's totally worthless for any real usage because the finger movement will keep it bouncing and then I can't see it. Certainly can't type on it even though size wise you can.

I have clamp solid wire phone holders. When one of these is attached to the back of the tablet holder, it gives it two points of quick solid anchoring. Two phone holders clamped onto the back of this thing turned it into better than a hard arm desktop drawer.

It becomes perfectly usable interactively without holding it in the back at all. This is an unexpected benefit. It now works better than anticipated.

I have to retrain myself on how to position my body when dealing with the tablet because I always expect my arm to be holding it or my head to be hunched over. No more.

I wonder how you can wirelessly cluster Android tablets into a desktop. Now this is a tech adventure I can get into.

Okay, all good. I can run multiple windows of multiple security and other monitoring apps while simultaneously using it to surf the web.

Next I got to figure out secure shell into Linux back end as well as local gvim or whatever the closest thing is that I can find plus whatever the local default shell program is. It's like landing in a foreign island that someone else laid out for me to play in. It's very familiar yet very different in at the same time. But it is to my benefit to simply play.

I have a new dream. I dream of a Star Trek Captain's chair with thick wire arm tablet holders so I can maneuver them everywhere. And then I dream of slowly adding tablets until there's nothing left.

Detour over.

Almost time to cut a few clones.

I've ordered a whole bunch of seeds. I will just fill out at random depending on what grows and then kill the weaklings when I hit my legal limit.

There will be several autoflowers in there. I'd never grow one on purpose since I want to control the vegetation time frame, but when I ordered the random high lemon content seeds they threw in a few autoflowers.

So I will grow the autoflowers in the middle of the vegetating standard photoperiod and see what happens.

They should simply flower while everybody else is in vegetation and there will come a time that they either finish flowering before I flip and then I simply have something to smoke at that point and have more space for vegetation or they will take longer and continue to flower and be bigger than I expect.

Either way it will be fun.

I love testing. Note my handle. What time is it?

Okay, I needed a space for seedlings and very young vegetation. I told my wife I'd like to use a closet in our very small living room. That's about 10 ft from the chair I'm sitting in watching tv. She said sure. I don't think she has an idea of the commitment. So here we go.

The lights shown are square, purple, quantum random vendor LED boards with a bit of red that cost $22 a piece including shipping. They pull 122 w. The edges are razor sharp. There is no heat sinks.

I will cover the sharp edges with tape and I will put a fan running over the lights constantly.

I currently have a fan running over the seedling tray on an offset timer that blows across the top for about 15 seconds every 2 or 3 minutes.

The seeding tray is filled with herbs and spices.

Rosemary, oregano, thyme etc. I have lots of extra light in the grow tent until the plants fill out and I'll have the automated watering system so I might as well fill it with other stuff that I want and will be helpful.

When the cannabis gets too big, I'll move them somewhere else. There's always more room and more lights somewhere, I just won't be paying that close attention to it at that point since they will be established cheap plants that may end up being planted in the yard. I'm sticking with all kinds of odorous herb, spices and alluviums that bugs don't like. Natural bug repellent.

I'll do the same type of seedling tray for the cannabis seeds when they show up after an overnight soak.

Progress so far.

so cool

I want to post concerning electrical setup.

When you set up a home pot grow, you have to deal with electricity allocation. Most people's homes do not have a spare circuit that they can pull 1500 watts from.

You can call in an electrician and pay to deal with this and the permits involved but it's unnecessary.

If you have a electrical circuit that can spare 600 w for the lights but cannot handle the occasional peaks that you pull for heat or a portable AC unit this is a reasonable solution.

Portable whole house batteries are around a thousand bucks now. They're not really whole house, you throw electrical cords to run your refrigerator and portable heater and any other critical elements to ride out a short blackout of a few hours if you want to run a whole bunch of stuff or a couple of days if you want to squeeze out every drop of energy.

That battery can act as a power source for the grow environment. It can supply far more energy in short bursts then the household plug. It's actually good for the battery because you want to exercise It.

That thousand bucks will allow you to grow and simultaneously keep you safe so you don't overload the circuit and at that point you'll have a spare household battery to use during a blackout. I suggest anybody in that situation look into a household battery.

And now moving on to setting up lights with cheap shelves. I hate setting up lights. Drilling stuff into the ceiling and putting down anchors that will not move hopefully and everything involves in the destruction of an interior space in setting up lights is no fun.

So how about you take the cheapest set of shelves you can find on Amazon, shelves that are no good for actually putting stuff on because they will collapse quickly, and instead using them as a light tower.

Build it up as high as it goes as long as it fits but do not put the interior shelves in. Use the bottom shelf for stability and the top shelf to hang stuff on. Hanging stuff includes attaching the shelves that you did not put in the center with heavy duty zip ties. This gives a shelf for electrical management above plus strong wires to clip lights on and you can do it for about 30 bucks. You can attach them to the back for additional cable management and hanging stuff too. You can attach them further out to the top to give a longer hang space.

I love cheap wire shelves and their associated bars even though they are crap for the intended usage.

Another few thoughts on the whole house battery.

I don't know how much electricians cost you but it cost me about a thousand bucks to run an additional circuit to my kitchen. I use the cheapest method possible, I told him to run conduits around my house rather than put it through any floors and walls. It was one day (really about an hour and a half but he had to deal with the permitting so he left and came back for a quick zoom call with the inspector) and quick and easy as far as he was concerned and it cost about a thousand bucks.

I would have been much better off buying the household battery at that point. I had him run two more lines to the kitchen and one to the AV area. That battery would have handled those additional lines as well. It probably cost me about $5,000 in electrical work over the course of a few months, the cheapest electrician, he was a new guy in town and he was cheap, over the course of a few months.

I could have solved all of that with one battery while simultaneously using it as a UPS and exercising it the way it wants to be exercised. The whole point is to be able to handle the peaks of electrical appliances in the kitchen and the video area and other stuff. There's lots of peak pulls that can happen simultaneously that you need to allow for on the circuit. But not if you have a big ass battery that is as expected to handle lots of pulls at the same time.

And another on the battery. Apartment dwellers can't call the landlord and say I want another line for my cannabis grow. That's not going to work. Go get a battery.

Nursery progress.

Many years ago, approximately 16 years ago I had an apartment in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. I had a great walk-in closet. So of course I had to grow some pot. It was the first time in my life I could.

Seeds? Bag seeds.

In those days it was three times 600 w HID. I ran extension cords from three different circuits to be able to power everything including the multiple rolling AC units.

I paid intense attention.

When in juvenile vegetation mode I went insane on the care and feeding and environment. I pushed humidity up but kept the wind going and I had the entire thing wrapped in clear plastic so I could control the jungle environment.

I got some incredible weed out of that. And it was a great variety since it was random bag seed.

After a few grows, I was good enough to be able to write an article and get published in a magazine. I got paid for it. Somebody got paid for it. I told them to send the check to NORML. Maybe they just kept it. I was totally anonymous in those days and communicating to the the magazine via a drop account.

I moved on and stopped growing weed and went to mushrooms and then got caught. Mushrooms were a lot easier.

I thought I was good, at least good enough. I was wrong. I got lucky. Maybe. Who knows?

So then I went to Colorado and grew some plants from clones. They were great clones and I did almost nothing other than drop them in a tent in my living room and water them. That was documented here.

I think I got lucky there. I had great clones that were never stressed and I gave them a good environment but it was legal and easy and stress-free. At least for the plants. And I wasn't worried about being arrested or making too much smell or showing too much light at night. That was magical.

I ended up with a huge amount of weed that I ended up giving away since I was moving across states and I was not going to carry anything illegal when I went to a Prohibition state and I crossed a few of them in my travels.

Now I'm in Washington state. I thought I'd go big, but legally. I got my card and I got my plant count of 15 and I got my decent space within a huge shed. I put in a huge tent. Within that tent I isolated various sections by putting up a walls of reflective insulation material. I got all the lights and the nutrients and everything that I needed.

I got a bunch of seeds. I followed the formula. I made a stupid mistake by giving poisoned water. I killed all my plants. I said. Oh well. Let's think about next year if ever at all.

This year I see I can order clones off the web. I order five clones and one of them shows horrible leaf burn and another shows serious stress and the rest of them are so so to okay to hopefully this will be great.

When they first show up I quickly throw them in a dedicated space which will require multiple reworkings but that's okay. I put lights on them that I've had one past experience with but I had gotten them after the plants were past junior vegetation stage. I had never put these lights on early plants.

At the same time I had a guest in my Airbnb who is able to see me working in and out on the plants and the shed if I did it. So I didn't. I watched the plants for a couple of days via a security camera and during the those days those plants got burned. Everybody got burned. It was sadness.

So I shrugged and adjusted the lights and watered everybody and hoped they'd recover and ordered some seeds.

Why take chances? I was hoping to take clones off those five plants and fill out the space, but I don't think they're healthy enough to take clones. I would just be propagating stress. Not going to do it. Maybe I'll take a couple just to try but not for most of my target plants of 15. Every slot in that 15 should be productive some way and should not start bad.

One of the problems with the last grow here was simply walking distance to where my shed is where they were growing. My property is not very large but it's enough to make me think twice about going out there. I really hated it when I was in seed mode last year. I ran back and forth to that shed a few times a day for a month. I should have thrown a network cable but I didn't. My feet and ankles and hips are not happy. It's bad enough to walk one flight of steps up and down to get to the shed attached to my house.

So this time around the nursery is between my bedroom and my chair. I will pass it many times a day. I will satisfy my various undiagnosed mental illnesses and not worry too much since it's right here.

Okay, now let's really talk about the progress.

Raise the lights to the absolute max i can get them. Allow my fingers between the wire grid and the light to spin the knob. I never want to have to reach up there and raise them again. I can adjust the plants height if necessary in there. Right now it is 120 w left and right and 240 in the center if I ever turn them up but that would be insane.

On the other hand, I might grow hot peppers in there. Hot peppers would love to be close to that 240 w light. Someday.

Put wires up on top of the wire cage above the lights. Rewire everything as required to simplify. Grow rooms are like Zen gardens. You start with a whole bunch of stuff and when you remove almost everything you're done.

Place a high corner fan to blow across both top and bottom of the lights. I don't want any heat accumulating up there.

Take a bunch of spare bars from grow tents that I'm not using and create a structure along with some bamboo to wrap with a clear vinyl shower curtain. Go find the shower curtain. What the hell, I saw it 2 days ago in a package! Delay. Continue on the structure. Order a new shower curtain from Amazon if not found within a few days. Will not need it until plants are large enough to get out of domes but small enough to still live in this environment. That's when I want the high humidity.

Reflect on the insanity of creating Marthas to grow mushrooms instead of using bins and then be happy that I had so much experience creating them. So now I know right off the bat the humidifier I have will not work since it is a regular humidifier and will not restart based on external humidity controls. Think about wandering Amazon for the next humidifier order.

Reflect on lessons of the past.

Fill the walls with velcro. Be able to just lean over and move wires and control gear. Large strips of industrial Velcro double anchored with T-Rex tape. Don't trust the edges to stay. When you use it on the back of a heavy device such as the light controller, use the T-Rex tape to tape the edges of the velcro to the device there as well.

Never lock anything into place that you don't have to. Everything changes. Or if things don't change, it means you're ignoring the environment and it's going to go bad.

Buy zip ties by the thousands. Heavy duty zip ties. You won't need them heavy duty 99% of the time, but occasionally you will want them to hang something heavy. It's good to have them by default.

Be ready to use them to cinch things together and move things around and be ready to cut them and get rid of them just as quickly when done. They're too cheap to think about not using them. Connect multiple zip ties together as you're thinking about how long they have to be to reach something and then double that.

When placing lights make them as high as possible. Those various hangers with or without the adjustable gear eat up too much space when you really need it. Start high and if you have to, raise the plants.

Practice using zip ties with your eyes closed in tight spaces when you don't care about it. Do it by feel. It's a skill you'll need.

Have a step stool nearby at all times. Don't reach up by default. Shoulders end up being dislocated, at least if you're old and decrepit like me.

Put remote controls on every device inside. Even if you won't need them. Put them on the lights and the fans and the heater. You're going to want to reach in and do stuff and you don't want stuff blasting at you or blinding you. By opening the environment you'll be changing the tightly held temperature balance and therefore you will trigger devices to go on all the time when you don't want them on.

Put velcro on the remote and slap it on the wall by the grow. Don't walk away with it.

Have a stack of lunch trays handy at all times put plants on top of them. Never trust a plant tray not to bend and crack and make you cry.

Use power bricks when plugging in light distribution and other types of stuff. You want the outlets on multiple sides, not a power strip, because everything will not fit together by default on a power strip. You will be wasting space and plugs.

When using a power strip, always use one with lit switches.

Plug everything in through the original source through a GFCI breaker. You can get a GFCI power strip off of Amazon. Water and electricity does not mix. Don't take chances.

Okay , I'll have seeds in a day or so along with some other associated initial seed stuff I ordered and we shall see where we go from here.

Reviewing the picture I thought describe a few things.

I like to use infrared emitters in reptile heater bases. It is very controllable heat. You can direct it right on top of the seedling tray. And it is gentle at the distance.

You must use one of those bases because they have the high heat ceramic base for it to screw into. You must also make sure you have good clearance and do not trust the clip. Use large metal clips on the other side of the reptile lamp clip to double secure it. Make very sure there are no swaying cables anywhere near it.

Always have a bunch of big clips around. As you move stuff around, you will be attempting to pull and attach things and you want four hands. Use clips to secure things in place temporarily.

The right hand cart has lights on each level so I can grow on both levels. I can add to the left hand side, lights just aren't slapped in yet. The air mover can be moved outside for more gross babes but it's fine there now. Additional lights at the lower level cause heat. I will probably be generating enough to have the air mover kick on a bit more later.

Note the air mover on the bottom. It has two intakes, one on each side. I make sure the curtain does not block the one on the outside. When it goes on it will suck cold air from the floor and forcefully circulate the air inside the grow space both by sucking half in from the outside and half in from the inside and blowing it out while simultaneously exhausting half on the upper right hand side.

It does a total replacement in a couple of seconds.

Those little exhaust fans cannot compare with a real air mover. Those high-speed spinning discs are fun though. But they scream like a jet engine. So I don't use those anymore.

Yes, this air mover is loud as well but rarely goes on. For now.

Yay, the seeds are here, the seeds are here!

I spent the last couple of weeks in prep. I've been growing seedlings of random plants and slicing up onions and carrots and lettuce and just splitting things in trays and playing with the environment. I want to make sure it's right for what's to come.

I've been watching my current plants suffer. They're just terrible compared to what I have experienced in the past. Mailed clones are a bit too stressful for me and I did terrible things to them the first several days. I'm okay with accepting it's my fault and moving on.

I've taken a shotgun approach. Same way I used to grow mushrooms. Try as many things as possible simultaneously and find out what's good for me in my environment and discard that which does not keep up. I've grown bag seed in the past and came up with phenomenal plants. I never had any idea of what I was getting and it was a variety of phenotypes.

I did the same thing here. I wandered the website and chose the cheapest singles I could find while focusing on lemon/ orange smell/flavor just because I like it. Occasionally I'd end up with more than one due to their freebies.

I ended up with way more possible seeds than I'm allowed to grow along with some choices concerning some autos. I've never grown them before and they were included in the freebies.

I will try some autos and the regular photoperiods together and I will let the autos stay inside the long day environment and see what happens. I'll put them under their own extra light just to give them their own during their flowering. Lights I got and I've got them all on electrical monitoring plugs so I know how much they're costing me.

Legally I'm allowed 15 plants but realistically I could flower eight at the same time. On the other hand, I could slide in some skinny smaller ones in between.

I have a mix of assorted phenotypes so I'm going to tie the big ones down and train the little ones up. I'd like them to be at the same light level eventually. So there will be some juggling but I can always put them on raised bases if necessary.

Anybody see any particular strain they want to see grown? I can't grow them all so I will be putting seeds aside for later.

Pictures attached along with recent nursery setup.
As you can see I've totally enveloped the environment with thick diamond pattern mylar. I will cover the top with something see-through yet waterproof as well as waterproof the bottom connecting areas and pump up the humidity inside.

The lights will stay raised outside the actual environment and shine through whatever I cover the top with. I don't care about lost light, I have way overkill for young vegetation. I just have to keep my air flow constant to control any heat those lights generate to above. Right now I'm circulating it down because I want the warmth.

12 primaries chosen. They get planted within the next couple of days and as they pop I kill two immediately currently growing.

3 backups chosen. If the primaries veg along nicely, I'll kill the current final three and plant the next three in a few weeks.

Apple strudel Auto claims really fast. Let's see if I can have some smoke out of this in 8 weeks from seed.

Put a variety of cannabis into damp paper towel Ziploc bags. A couple of them seemed dry and sketchy but most were okay.

Also did six assorted cherry tomatoes. About a dozen seeds for each and I'll transplant three for each when they pop. I've convinced my wife to let me turn our downstairs kitchen into a cherry tomato Vine wonderland. I don't think she understands what I'm thinking about, but you can be sure whenever you walk by that kitchen you will be able to grab a cherry tomato to eat. Probably from over your head.

I threw the hose with the filter upstairs where I'm working. No lugging water anywhere anymore.

I transplanted the onions that we had simply planted from the store onions that we rooted. That's as easy as it gets.

I love these high skinny bags. I want to pack as much as I can in a skinny area as deep as I can until it's ready to move somewhere else if needed.

I used to use little clay balls for drainage on the bottom. At this moment I have none but I do have a whole bunch of pond filter plastic spinning objects. These things are intended to be used in barrel filters but they are perfect for both drainage and letting the roots hook into them. I like them better than the clay balls.

Root vegetables typically hate being planted next to each other. The root portions fight and contort and look like crap and are not what you typically want. On the other hand, their topside green portion typically grows better than if there were a loan. That's because they're competing for the Sun. In my case, I don't want the bottom of the root vegetable. I want to chop the top off and saute it with garlic. So I'll be doing this style of packed bags for a variety of root vegetables that I never intend on harvesting such as carrots and onions.

So I will experiment with packing these bags with a variety of density of these plants.

I have fucked this up in the far extremes of temperature, simultaneously. While thinking it was perfect.

Review today's wake up temperature and humidity.

Oh shit, it got cold in there last night. My 600 w heater should have kept it just perfect. It's managed to handle every previous night no problem.

And wow, the humidity has been incredibly high since I exited the environment yesterday. What did I change?

I didn't like the previous 30% nightly humidity drop when the lights went out because I stopped running the bubblers so I just put them in different plugs so they would run 24/7. That should have no effect from me just walking out of the tent.

I put in a bin filled with onion plants. That shouldn't have pumped it up that much. Maybe a little.

Oh look, the temperature monitoring cluster dropped and is now sitting partially in some very damp dirt. That would do it. Partially.

Review the temperature some more and look at an additional older device that has been sending and see that it's 39 goddamn degrees in the dirt. Holy God damn shit. Of course these plants have not been growing. They've been freezing their ass off.

How goddamn cold is that floor? I have 6 in of airspace in between that and the racks where the plants are. It's 78° in the air yet that dirt can drop to 39° when it's 34° outside.

Okay, padding insulation on the floor. No choice there. As well some type of heating solution that will swirl heat underneath. Double check the underlaying of the insulation as it comes down to the walls to the floor. Currently I actually leave channels for water to flow if anything overflows. I might have to seal that up.

Keep reviewing. I've got a tray filled with seeds that I only got a half dozen pops out of. It was terrible. I figured it was old seeds. They're 3 years old and they have not been kept in a good temperature environment. Fine I can accept that.

But maybe I froze them because they were sitting in that corner and I thought they were fine. So review the seedling mat and controls.

I currently have three controls set up with three seedling mats which are currently keeping seeds in plastic bags and wet paper towels. I'm trying to pop some seeds. I'm also trying to maintain everything those seedlings are going to go into with good moisture and temperature.

I think it's good.

Let's pull out the temperature camera. I bought this thing 3 years ago while I was working through my house insulation and trying to figure out where the hell the cold air was coming from. Then it got put aside and a lost and then a week ago my wife handed it to me. She said she found it while cleaning something up. Great. I was looking for this.

Use the temperature camera to compare the settings of the seedling mat controls versus what is reality.

The two digitals match up fine. That analog is 17° off. When I think it's 78, it's really 95.

When that tray was in the environment with all the seeds it was being roasted. The majority that did pop died. I got a few basil, carrot, and dill out of it. Those mustard were mostly early popped and then they immediately died.

I was about to throw a couple hundred dollars of cannabis seeds into it. That would have been some suffering.

Okay, good thing I got the camera. I can adjust the analog control accordingly and not throw this thing out since it seems stable on setting just not correct.

Ignore any settings you see on the red LED. The camera does not pick it up correctly.