My Blue Dream (mostly) First Grow (Ebb&Flow SOG)

solcielo · Nov 22, 2010

Hi there and welcome.

After much reading and spending way too much time at home recovering from leukemia treatments I decided to make my own garden in a spare bedroom. Bought a 4x4 tent and a 3x3 tray with a 1000W switchable ballast and AC hood. Put a carbon filter and a few fans and blowers in. Heat was an issue with the 1000W so I put in a small used portable AC I picked up from another gardener.

I tracked down someone with 35 available blue dream clones (quite nice and thick cuts too, made a difference). Only about 20 of them had roots showing in the rapid-rooters but I was in a hurry and inexperienced so I slammed them all into the 4"x4"x2.5" cubes and put 'em under 400W MH on 10/13/10. Sure enough, the ones without ready roots got stunted and/or died but the majority of them flourished.

Eight days later I rearranged the clones and brought the weakest ones to the front leaving about 3 stunted ones that I thought would recover among the rest. I pulled the front 6 blocks out and replaced them with 6 healthy and happy looking sour diesel tweens so now I have 4 plants per square foot under 1000W in a 3x3 tray.

Put the additional sour diesels in on 10/22, let them get comfy, and started 12 hour light cycle with 1000W HPS on 10/25. By 11/3 I had pistols all around and the rest is history.

11/5-11/13

11/18

And today (day 29 bloom by the way) 11/22 with some pretty bud porn shots

Running all botanicare products with the addition of hygrozyme as a preventative. Also use RO water (lugging it around makes me stronger, great workout) with cal-mag. I just added liquid karma to the bloom solution and will soon be adding a PK booster. Noticed some nutrient burn on a lot of the tips of leaves so I dialed back the nutrients this week. Change the reservoir weekly. Keep the pH right under 6 (don't have a snazzy meter yet, just using the drip tester). I have given them a little light-friendly 3-part foliar spray when they were young and I think that helped them shoot up the way they did. Also buying clones that were thicker seems to have really shown results. It's in a spare bedroom so light and noise isn't so much of an issue most of the time therefor the tent stays open and very well vented most of the time. I water twice a day, 20 minutes in the morning when lights come on and for 10 minutes in the afternoon an hour before lights out just to keep the rockwool nice and moist. When I change the reservoir weekly I run just pH adjusted fresh RO water for about 30 minutes soak just to get any salts that have built up cleared away. Give the reservoir a good scrub every 3 weeks or so.

Welcome any questions, comments, or recommendations and hope we all enjoy this. Just keep in mind I'm no pro and this is my first grow. More coming with time :-P

pilgram · Nov 22, 2010

looks all good ! plus REP

solcielo · Nov 24, 2010

Couple days later and some more pics (day 31 bloom)

Nice Ol Bud · Nov 24, 2010

Looking Fantastic Mate!!!
Ill smoke a bowl for your beauties.
+Rep.

solcielo · Nov 28, 2010

Appreciate the rep and positive feedback. Here's a couple updates:

11/25

and 11/28 (day 35 bloom)

And I noticed the early signs of spider mites the other day so gave them a healthy dose of neem oil solution the other night after lights off and gave them some rosemary oil foliar spray tonight after lights off. Should clear them up no problem. Come on Christmas!

solcielo · Nov 28, 2010

oh also added some hydroplex (PK booster) to the reservoir tonight that should help bud formation too

dunit · Nov 28, 2010

Great looking grow amigo :-)

Sub'd + rep

Remember mites drown very easily so regular misting when the lights are off can be a great way to whack em and the plants don't mind water :-)

dunit · Nov 28, 2010

BTW super clean set up

dynamitejack · Nov 28, 2010

Wow I wish my first grow looked like this!

Do you have more pics of your light/fan/filter setup? It looks to me like you a 6" fan pulling air through a carbon filter then pushes it through the light then out of the tent. Is that correct?

You might want to consider cutting back on the number of plants you have. Usually 1-2 per sq ft is how most sog style grows are done (including mine).
Another thing you may want to consider for your next grow is trimming your ladies before putting them into flower. Trimming enables the plants to focus on top growth and the result is a 1 solid cola of bud rather than branches of less dense bud that have to be tied.

Using drip clean from house and garden would save you a lot of time, it keeps salts from building up and reduces flush time at harvest. :leaf:

solcielo · Nov 29, 2010

dynamitejack said:
Wow I wish my first grow looked like this!

Do you have more pics of your light/fan/filter setup? It looks to me like you a 6" fan pulling air through a carbon filter then pushes it through the light then out of the tent. Is that correct?

You might want to consider cutting back on the number of plants you have. Usually 1-2 per sq ft is how most sog style grows are done (including mine).
Another thing you may want to consider for your next grow is trimming your ladies before putting them into flower. Trimming enables the plants to focus on top growth and the result is a 1 solid cola of bud rather than branches of less dense bud that have to be tied.

Using drip clean from house and garden would save you a lot of time, it keeps salts from building up and reduces flush time at harvest.

Hey man thanks for the encouragement!

Regarding the light/fan/filter setup the initial picture with no plants and what you described is how I had set it up originally, only it's a 4" fan. I chose 4" because the 6" carbon filter needs less than 200 CFM air flow in order to achieve 0.1sec contact time with air passing through it which is how it does it's job. The vortex fans don't have adjustable speeds/flow so I just bought a 4" that moves at like 180CFM in order to suck air through the carbon filter at the proper rate and used 6"-4" flanges to make the fan fit in line. Originally I was thinking the clean moving air through the carbon filter could be doubled up in use and used to cool the light too. 4" fans are not enough to cool a 1000W light I soon found out. I had to modify the tent on the fly and leave the 4" fan with the carbon filter but added another 6" fan and ducted the light on it's own. Now the intake for the light is at the bottom of the tent on the outside, pulls up along the vertical duct on the front right side and up to the 1000W and out the tent topside exhausting near a cracked window on top of the tent; all with it's own 6" fan as I was originally instructed to do by the people at the shop

Point being: don't try to double up jobs on one little blower fan.

The rest of your recommendations I actually deliberated over quite a long time and did a lot of forum trolling trying to find input on those subjects.

As to the plants per square foot (PPSF) I struggled over this issue a whole lot and with the way I have it set up, I agree that 36 is too much. Blue dream/sour diesel have a lot of stretch when they go to bloom, they added another 2" during bloom so far. I would totally do 36 (4 PPSF) again in my 3'x3' if it were a trimmed short single cola indica I were growing next time. With the semi-stretchy and expansive blue dream I think 16 or 25 with a little longer veg would have been more appropriate. And in reality there's a couple buried and dying clones in that mess you see making it more like 33 or so in there but it's still a really crowded little tray. That's why I attach those side-shots sometimes just to show crazy it looks in the undergrowth. I have a lot of air still moving around their though and temp/humidity is always in favorable ranges so I'm not fearing mold, just wary of it.

As to trimming I stress a lot about this decision but when I look at all the bud sites down low I think I made the right decision. I read in some thread somewhere that a long time grower yielded 20% more bud by not trimming off the bottom/popcorn growth. Yah the nugs are smaller, fluffier, and not as pretty but I'm going for max yield not the most perfect 36-single colas. Dense pretty nugs and fluffy popcorn nugs all look the same once I put it through my kief-grinder and if I really don't like the undergrowth results I'll just make hash and butter out of it. I'm not sure if pulling all that bottom growth off would have allowed the same amount of production per plant in the left over top buds; though I'm sure they would be more dense and large as the plant has more resources to put in them. I guess point being it was a conscious decision not to trim the undergrowth. However, if I were using 2-400W or LED lighting I would have totally trimmed as you don't get the same light penetration as with the beastly 1000W.

As to drip clean from house and garden, is that like a product "Drip Clean"? To keep salt buildup from being a problem (hopefully) I run just pH-adjusted RO water about 30 minutes every week during the reservoir changes to dissolve any salts built up hopefully. The rockwool and roots also only had about 10 days of veg and straight to bloom so there hasn't been much time for it to build up either. I was planning on changing the reservoir around day 60 (65-75 day bloom indoor I read) and giving it a solid 5 days of nothing but pH-adjusted RO and an earlier harvest because I prefer the milky-but-not-amber trich bud. You think that's a good idea?

Always appreciate the feedback.

solcielo · Nov 29, 2010

dunit said:
Great looking grow amigo Sub'd + rep

Remember mites drown very easily so regular misting when the lights are off can be a great way to whack em and the plants don't mind water

That's a great easy solution. Thanks much!

dynamitejack · Nov 29, 2010

solcielo said:
Hey man thanks for the encouragement!

Regarding the light/fan/filter setup the initial picture with no plants and what you described is how I had set it up originally, only it's a 4" fan. I chose 4" because the 6" carbon filter needs less than 200 CFM air flow in order to achieve 0.1sec contact time with air passing through it which is how it does it's job. The vortex fans don't have adjustable speeds/flow so I just bought a 4" that moves at like 180CFM in order to suck air through the carbon filter at the proper rate and used 6"-4" flanges to make the fan fit in line. Originally I was thinking the clean moving air through the carbon filter could be doubled up in use and used to cool the light too. 4" fans are not enough to cool a 1000W light I soon found out. I had to modify the tent on the fly and leave the 4" fan with the carbon filter but added another 6" fan and ducted the light on it's own. Now the intake for the light is at the bottom of the tent on the outside, pulls up along the vertical duct on the front right side and up to the 1000W and out the tent topside exhausting near a cracked window on top of the tent; all with it's own 6" fan as I was originally instructed to do by the people at the shop Point being: don't try to double up jobs on one little blower fan.

The rest of your recommendations I actually deliberated over quite a long time and did a lot of forum trolling trying to find input on those subjects.

As to the plants per square foot (PPSF) I struggled over this issue a whole lot and with the way I have it set up, I agree that 36 is too much. Blue dream/sour diesel have a lot of stretch when they go to bloom, they added another 2" during bloom so far. I would totally do 36 (4 PPSF) again in my 3'x3' if it were a trimmed short single cola indica I were growing next time. With the semi-stretchy and expansive blue dream I think 16 or 25 with a little longer veg would have been more appropriate. And in reality there's a couple buried and dying clones in that mess you see making it more like 33 or so in there but it's still a really crowded little tray. That's why I attach those side-shots sometimes just to show crazy it looks in the undergrowth. I have a lot of air still moving around their though and temp/humidity is always in favorable ranges so I'm not fearing mold, just wary of it.

As to trimming I stress a lot about this decision but when I look at all the bud sites down low I think I made the right decision. I read in some thread somewhere that a long time grower yielded 20% more bud by not trimming off the bottom/popcorn growth. Yah the nugs are smaller, fluffier, and not as pretty but I'm going for max yield not the most perfect 36-single colas. Dense pretty nugs and fluffy popcorn nugs all look the same once I put it through my kief-grinder and if I really don't like the undergrowth results I'll just make hash and butter out of it. I'm not sure if pulling all that bottom growth off would have allowed the same amount of production per plant in the left over top buds; though I'm sure they would be more dense and large as the plant has more resources to put in them. I guess point being it was a conscious decision not to trim the undergrowth. However, if I were using 2-400W or LED lighting I would have totally trimmed as you don't get the same light penetration as with the beastly 1000W.

As to drip clean from house and garden, is that like a product "Drip Clean"? To keep salt buildup from being a problem (hopefully) I run just pH-adjusted RO water about 30 minutes every week during the reservoir changes to dissolve any salts built up hopefully. The rockwool and roots also only had about 10 days of veg and straight to bloom so there hasn't been much time for it to build up either. I was planning on changing the reservoir around day 60 (65-75 day bloom indoor I read) and giving it a solid 5 days of nothing but pH-adjusted RO and an earlier harvest because I prefer the milky-but-not-amber trich bud. You think that's a good idea?

Always appreciate the feedback.

Cool you already fixed the ventilation issue I was going to point out. I did the same exact thing but with a 4" carbon filter and after about two days I came to the same conclusion that I had to use 2 fans. +REP

Props for researching the ppsf most people don't and just cram whatever they can fit. Hope it works out for you!

Drip clean is the name of the product, you use 1 ml per gallon through out the harvest and it makes it impossible for salts to build up period. Plus you only have to flush for 3 days before harvest instead of the conventional 7-10 days. I don't know what your nutrients say as far as the feeding schedule goes, but I do not let my reservoir go any longer than 7 days before I change it and I've used fox farms and currently using house and garden.

3 things you should invest in:
1. CO2. It's easy to set up, cheap and is equivalent to taking your plants from florescent lighting to hids.
2. 420 scope (or any 20x+ microscope) That way you can see you trichs and won't have to guess if they are where you want them to be.
3. Drip clean it will save you time and your plants will be happier.

solcielo · Dec 1, 2010

As to CO2 can you give me approximate costs of what size tank I should get and how long they last? How much should I spend on a complete setup along with a meter to tell how concentrated it is? I imagine some kind of controller regulator connected to the sensor would be required to run a tank-regulator system properly and figured this would be a little cost prohibitive at the moment but was definitely in the plans within the year.

I have 2-60x LED lit battery powered scopes coming as soon as they get off the boat

Amazing how cheap that stuff is on fleabay. My last 60-100x burned out the light within 2 months recently so figured I'd double up for when the next one fails. But when they're like $5 apiece online I'm not going to worry about changing bulbs just buy a new one lol

I've been considering how to convert the single my single 4x4 tent into a perpetual harvest with concerns of short veg and how to flush using only one reservoir and one light. Well I think I can set up a small veg area with some CFL's or T5's just to let the girls get happy before I send them to 12/12 and continue the SOG grow. Flushing was holding me back as there's no way to flush only a part of the tray. However, your mention of drip clean got me turning this subject over in my head again and I'm wondering what you think about using the product and pull the corner of the tray that's ready for harvest and just put it in my bathroom or something for 3 days with ambient lighting and flush the 3-9 plants in there. Don't know if I explained that well enough but I'm curious what your thoughts are if Drip Clean is that effective of a product.

solcielo · Dec 1, 2010

Here's some growing bud shots. Four shots of blue dream and four shots of sour diesel. I have to say sour diesel has to be one of the prettiest buds I've ever seen. Pictures truly don't do it justice.

Also notice the burned tips of all the leaves in some of the pics, most notably in 'sour diesel sideshot'. I see that as nutrient burn from a couple weeks back and have dialed back the nutrient solution quite a bit and it hasn't seemed to get any worse. It's just disconcerting seeing the burned tips; do y'all think it's just old nutrient burn and nothing to be done just wait till harvest or signs of a larger problem I'm not seeing? Always open to suggestions and discussion.

Thanks again and enjoy the porn

dunit · Dec 2, 2010

You could use 4x2 or 4x1 tables so you have the option of just flushing part of your grow. When I'm done dialing in I will have a three stage system so I can harvest every month. My co2 set up cost $1000 and that was a pretty good deal. I think usually just the monitor and controller are about $900 up here and a burner is another $600. Not sure on tanks but noticed that LEDBUDGUY runs tanks so maybe ask him?

solcielo · Dec 3, 2010

Yah I only have limited fundage to throw around at this at the moment but after each grow I'll be reinvesting in a little more. Next is conversion to induction lighting from HPS possibly in conjunction with LED. Assuming that works out CO2 is next. Have you or anyone else ever tried and tested the Green Pad for CO2 enrichment? http://www.thegreenpadstore.com I got 3 and I'm going to hang them up pretty soon and see if i can get any better results but I have no basis for comparison or metering so I don't know if it's the snake oil of CO2 enrichment or the greatest thing since sliced bread...

guysk8r1717 · Dec 3, 2010

nice set up man

dunit · Dec 3, 2010

I don't think they are snake oil. They are slow, consistent release. Big issue is output. From what I can see they are good for a small area and take a while to reach a decent PPM so if you are exchanging your air regularly (like for cooling) then they are such a slow release you will never really see an increase. If you are running a sealed environment with no air in and air out then they would be perfect for a small tent. I run a sealed room with air conditioning for cooling so there is no air in or air out so they would actually work well for me :-)

Got to remember to keep them wet too because when they dry out they stop releasing co2

solcielo · Dec 3, 2010

Yah I think I'm just going to use them over these next couple weeks to get rid of some of the clutter around here and it can't hurt ... I hope. I keep one of the sides open and have a blower fan going in and the room isn't sealed either so it probably won't make any appreciable difference.

solcielo · Dec 5, 2010

Few shots from this evening right after lights off. Much nicer color without that HPS on them and again I'm astounded at hour pretty the sour diesel buds are. Regularly misting with dilute SNS 217 and RO water at night to rid of the spider mites and I can't seem to find many adults but still see little white eggs under some of the leaves...little fuckers.