Me: "Hey son, you wanna grow some weed together?" Him: "Are you serious?"

Hi thanks for reading about our grow. I hope its entertaining or educational or both.

Cheese autoflower from Sunwest Genetics, soil (Promix HP with Myco), indoor, diy cabinet grow, LED+CFL, Green Planet 2-Part Dual Fuel

We are growing indoors because we live on the east coast of Canada, we love cannabis, and we don't know when our local outdoor grow season is because all I've ever grown is, older and all he's ever grown is, into a big pain in the ass. So let's bond. We're pretty much stuck together right now anyway.

I'm laid off so cheap and free are our tenets. We requisitioned an mdf cabinet from the storage room and the boss approved it. It was an ugly 30"x 20"x 72" tall, brown shelf unit with cabinet doors in the bottom and 3 shelves in the top half. The internet told us we could grow in anything and we believed it. Then we found some 1-2-3 primer sealer and some ceiling paint under the stairs to turn the inside white but this thing still needs doors. Hmm. I have a circular saw.

Then we scavenged a bag and a half of garden soil and potting soil, a few old pots and some other assorted goodies from the junk that the previous owners of our new home (yes, we moved in the middle of this pandemic and no, I wouldnt recommend it.) had left behind and we were then convinced that this was gonna happen. We just needed light and seeds.

That was probably April 20th.

Already dig it bro. Keep it up.

Make sure to provide ventilation. It'll get too warm in there without it.
I use a single QB led panel on a 120 watt driver in my small tent that's similar in size to your cabinet.
I'd ditch the cfl's and stick to led light bulbs(much more efficient) if funds/availability is an issue.

Then we went online looking for seeds but didn't know who to trust so that brought me to my local grow shop and guess what, they sell seeds. I talk to the guy and he says these Cheese auto seeds from Sunwest tick all my boxes for what we're looking for. Ok now I'm really getting excited, and I'm in a store that sells everything for growing, and I have a credit card, and no one to supervise me
So when he asked me if I had "nutes" I thought "the fuck are noots?" but what i said was "no, I don't even have lights." But there they were, lights, right there in this budding salesman's eyes.
When I got home with my purchases, (supposed to be seeds only - remember cheap and free?) my son said "oh dad, what did you do?!"
"I don't know you weren't there to talk me down."

That was April 28th.

At this point I started to feel a sense of urgency about getting seeds started.

I also discovered that 3 free buckets, bummed from the grocery store bakery, fit snugly side by side inside our grow box. I thought they were 5 gal but it turns out they're only 4.

We still hadn't figured out where we would get material for the grow box doors so I went to the building supply store and bought a 1/2" sheet of MDF. $

And the initial plan was to grow in the garage so smell wouldn't have been a problem but controlling temperatures in the uninsulated garage were likely costlier and more problematic than indoors in the storage closet. So I bought a 4" fan with speed control and carbon filter from Vivosun. $$
Of course when the fan and filter arrived they looked gorgeous!
Another trip to the building supply where I got a 4" vent & clamp and a furnace filter and louver for passive intake air. And cove and weather strip to make it light tight. $$
This is getting expensive because I forgot to mention I had also picked up hinges, magnetic door closures and 4 casters so we could roll it around. $$$$
Cabinet complete (enough), next phase: germination!

Oh and by the way, although I complain, the money I spent was a pittance compared to the reward from spending time building this project with my son.

Rock solid rolling cabinet 20x30x72"
4" carbon filtered exhaust
4x4" filtered passive intake
Least expensive grow led from my local.
4x 23W daylight cfls (I regret the led i got.)
Vented shelf

May 10th

PS

looks great, get a thermometer/humidity thing to keep an eye on temps. and save up for a decent qb led light (i found decent ones on amazon for ~$100usd). other than that you look good to go!

what better way to bond with your son than to grow some mary jane together! Awesome man love it!

We started three of our Cheese Auto seeds in hydrated peat pellets on May 11th. We kept them in a warm dark cabinet and used a plastic baggie to maintain the humidity above 80%. They germinated and sprouted up four days later on the 15th. I got an excited call from jr. that day.
We scrapped our plastic baggie humidor for the lid of a container from the birthday cake we bought to celebrate triplets. Just kidding. But we did switch to a plastic cake lid.

On May 15th all 3 sprouted! One was really tiny at first but it has caught up now.

On May 19th we planted them, still in their peat pellets, into 4 gal buckets with 17 x 3/8" holes drilled into each bottom for drainage. We used straight up Pro Mix HP Myco supplied by the local grow shop.

The night before we actually planted, we filled and watered our pots and put them into the grow box to bring the medium to the same temp as the peat pellets to reduce stress after planting. I honestly don't think anyone told us to do that, so that might've been wrong or needless. But we tested the runoff and pH was 5.5 so we used ph up and made some 7.2 water and watered until we had 20% runoff and then the pH was 6.5 so I don't know what that was all about.

On May 22 We swapped out the drip pan made out of a sheet of plastic for a pan made from a tin bbq drip tray. Wiped out the cabinet and watered the plants. Runoff pH was 6.5

The next day we added a humidifier because until then we couldn't get it over 50% RH and we wanted to get rid of the clear plastic cups.

14 days after 2nd set of true leaves appeared. Cheese auto in ProMix HP Myco.

Despite tons of reading. We're still unclear about exactly when the seedling stage ends and veg begins. And we know that autos are small but.. I'm afraid that they're too small / too early for us to begin adding nutrients.

Also, we got a little fan at Wallyworld last night because the one that arrived from Amazon yesterday is way to big for our little cabinet. "You can feel it from 25' away!"
So that will add a little turbulence today. Until now we've just been running our exhaust fan.

Problems. Last night. 14 days since we potted. You knew it would happen. We knew it would happen.
2 plants had browning on the first set.

We watered our, HP filled, 4 gal plastic buckets to run off with their
First feeding at 1/2 strength.
Green Planet Dual Fuel 1 and 2 and Vitathrive. Also gave 1 ml/gal Pro Cal then 2 drops of pH down got me to 6 (probably a little under)
Tested with liquid drops because the 1 week old, $40 pH pen we got from Amazon won't give me a consistent result when I try to calibrate it. We did use storage solution.

The 2 plants with browning had runoff of 6.5 pH
The healthy one was 6.

Also we lowered the rh in the cabinet to 60%

This morning 8 hours since feed/water and things do not look better.

OTOH I'm allowed to post mojis.

I'll be doing lots of reading today.

Good morning! Cheese Autos, Day 19. 19. N n n n n n 19.
Project: Baby Bel.

Lots of growth the last couple days, very nice!

Did you end up figuring out the browning issue?

Just watch your nutes at that size, she can get burned easily. Take care, and i like your ingenuity! Take something old and make it new again!

P10p said:

Lots of growth the last couple days, very nice!

Did you end up figuring out the browning issue?

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I guess? The browning stopped at 1/2 the leaf almost immediately after we watered with the low-end of acceptable pH and fed under 50% nutes (1st feeding and it felt a bit early tbh) and supplimented the tiniest bit of a calcium additive. So one or more of those 3 things stopped the brown.

Thanks for being interested enough to ask!

Power outage yesterday for 6.5 hours gave our 24/0 autos an unintended rest.

B_the_s said:

Power outage yesterday for 6.5 hours gave our 24/0 autos an unintended rest.

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Nods, I'm still on the fence with the 18/6 - I run 24/0 as well.

The girls just had a spa day

Been scared of losing power with these storms