My first grow, 400 watt scrog, white russian and blue cheese.

I hope they wont be to huge i don't have a whole lot of vertical space lol, i might have fucked up and let them veg for to long but if i did oh well it was my first scrog and ill just super crop the shit out of them.

Well it has been 2 days since the flush and the plants are looking a little bit better but i am not sure how much, here are some photos.

Both


White Russian






Blue Cheese

hey psilocybindude their looking nice so far especially the WR's! Hoping to get my white russians to look like yours someday! scrog been helping vertical growth alot cuz ive been told to do the same to my box?

Yeah it helps out a lot I've been super cropping quite a bit to, trust me though you don't want your plants looking like mine lol you cant tell because of the HID but both plants have got some problems going on, thanks for the kind words man.

they look waay better dude.

I'm only about half way threw my first grow and I've already got quite a few changes that i am planning on implementing while i am in between my first and second crop, i don't know why i didn't see these possibility's in the beginning i guess i was just rushing to much to get things together to think about it. For my first change i am going to build a mounting bracket to get my filter off of the hanger bar and mount my carbon filter closer to the ceiling, this will improve things in a few different ways #1 i will be able to center my light in the middle of my closet, #2 i will also be able to raise the maximum height of the light #3 the filter will be up higher so it will intake more hot air, #4 i will be able to hang my centrifugal fan inside the closet right behind the filter and so better odor control will be achieved. For my second improvement i am going to redesign my scrog screens and lose the crate idea, as much as it has helped me out in this grow and as much as i do like the design it was not built for the situation so there are certain disadvantages. I believe i can do a much better job designing something more efficient specifically for this closet and pulling the crates out will not be so necessary because of the next improvement. For my 3rd improvement i am going to be replacing my growing medium with some type of hydro most likely hempy buckets, i started out this grow with this super-soil because i thought it would make things a lot easier but instead it seems to have done nothing but complicate things. I have always wanted to grow dwc hydro but in a closet like mine i believe that maintenance would be a huge pain in the ass plus i would have to custom build my R-dwc system and worry about leaks and all of this kind of shit, so i believe i have decided to go with hempy 3-4 buckets to cover the entire screen and a res. It will be nice and simple with great performance and it will be awesome to have a medium that is inert and easily controlled.

looking good!! hope that blue cheese comes out the way you want!!

Video update.
[video=youtube_share;5q27Sr9mHes]http://youtu.be/5q27Sr9mHes[/video]

I am going to summarize what i said in that video real quick, the plants growth in the past week or so since i flipped the switch to 12/12 has been awesome, for about the past week i have been tucking the plants back under the screen but in the past few days i decided to let them grow out and they have grown huge amounts, its actually making me a bit worried i only have about 27 inch's maximum of vertical space and these bitch's seem to be shooting up at least a few inch's each day, I'm thinking i should continue to tuck them under to gain a bit of extra head room. The plants are looking a hell of a lot better since the flush, the burn on the leaf edges seems to have gone away, i also haven't seen any of the yellowing or spotting that had been bothering me for the past few months, the tips are also no longer burnt and curling upwards, and the stems don't look purple any more, almost every thing looks pretty healthy except for some leaves that's tips are drooping, and some leaf edges that are rolling downward.

Well that's it for the good news, for the bad news it smells like my odor issue is back and its really starting to piss me off i thought i had fixed the problem by ordering a new carbon filter but I'm not so sure now, i am noticing that same old smell coming from the utility closet again its really starting to worry me because these plants are starting to stink. I had done every thing i could think of i replaced the filter. i replace the ducting, i taped up the flanges and then used clamps on them, and then after thinking about it a bit today i remembered that when i tried to put the glass sealing piece back on my hood after putting in the bulb i had to bend some brackets to get it to go back into place i am wondering if my seal between the hood and the glass is not so good any more because of it so i am thinking about caulking the seems to seal it back up as a quick fix until i can get it fixed or looked at.

Picture updates...

The White Russian,
















and the blue cheese...

This smell issue is really starting to scare the fucking shit out of me i woke up today and this smell is full fucking blown, i guess I'm going to take the air cooled hood out of the loop because it is the absolute last thing that i can think of that could be causing the problem either that or im going to have to caulk all of the seems, this and the height issue are really making me want to shut the whole thing down until i know its under control.

Ouch dude.... that would be a waste of resources. theres methods of odor control that really work. do you have a carbon scrubber? how tall are the plants from the light?

Yeah man i have a carbon filter i just replaced my old one because i thought it being old was what was causing the odor problems but it wasn't, i just did a closer inspection of my hood today and i can confirm that it is what is causing the odor to leak there is a gap between the glass and the weather stripping that is causing odor to get into the system unfiltered. Tomorrow or when i get home i am going to work on sealing it, I'm thinking about just caulking the shit out of the seems to seal it or maybe using duct tape to seal it.

Well i got some work done on the room today i sealed the hood with duct tape because i didn't want to have to deal with caulking it and then cutting it open when i need to change the bulb i guess only time will tell how well it worked, i also tucked the plants under the screen again because i am concerned about the height, and i took some scissors to the under growth because i want good air flow down there, now i just need to take some clones and i am done for the day.

So you have two fans on your system. One for the sealed hood and one for your carbon scrubber? If you set it like so -- Scrubber --> Ducting --> Fan --> Cooltube --> Ducting to exit into attic. The reason the fan placement is before the cooltube is to minimize heat wear on your fan, hence give it more lifetime before needing a new one.. Duct tabe can become flamable so make sure it doesn't get to hot, just sayin!! Would have to be extremely hot but still, And caulking is a bad idea imo. Another thought is maybe your fan/s aren't strong enough and your not getting enough fresh air, stinky strains can create this problem. Also note that attics are made to breathe but if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction it could be causing a backdraft on your exhaust and slowing or even pushing the smell out of the closet and into the rest of your house. Hope u get her figured before the smell really starts to set in!! Peace

I am pretty sure I've got the smell issue figured out i just have to make sure that i got it fixed with the duct tape, when i put the bulb in my hood i could not get the lens to go back into place properly so i had to bend some hinges to get it to close, what i didn't realize at the time was that bending the hinges caused the glass to not meet up properly with the weather stripping on the hood so it was not making a good seal there is about a quarter inch gap on one side of the hood so i am pretty sure that is where the stinky air was getting threw. As far as my ventilation system goes no i don't 2 fans i only have one fan its a 450 CFM centrifugal fan at the end of my exhaust system, it goes scrubber duct hood duct fan i don't really like the set up but its all I've got until i do some remodeling of my grow room. The smell isn't coming out of the room that the grow closet is in it is going up into the attic and then some how seeping back down into my utility closet so I'm pretty sure back draft isnt the issue, also the duct tape should be fine it doesn't get very hot where i have it.

You could switch it around and put the scrubber at the other end. *Hood / Duct / Fan / Scrubber. That way any leaks in the system all have to go through the scrubber eventually. Just trying to help ya get it under control. Sorry read the last part wrong and thought of backdraft. Your right though, it would b leaking through the hood if it wasn't sealed cuz the scrubber is at the wrong end for that set-up. My last room had 2 parabolic 600's so the whole room filtered through the scrubber and then out. With a enclosed hood the scrubber is best placed at the exit incase of leaks. Peace!!

P.S. That being said your last scrubber was probably fine >.<

Yeah believe me if i could place the scrubber at the end of the system i would, when i originally set up the room i put it at the front because it was the most convenient place plus i didn't want to push to much air threw it to fast end up with odor leaks because of it, i had been told that its better to pull threw it to stop odor leaks from happening I'm sure it would be fine if my hood wasn't fucked up, from what i have read it would be best to go carbon filter - duct - fan - hood - then duct to exit because any possible leaks would have positive air pressure instead of negative so it would push the air out of the way and not suck it into the system unfiltered. But either way i cant really change the set up that much right now because of other factors involved, for the moment I'm just going to hope that the duct tape does a good enough job of sealing the hood, i plan on making some major improvements before the next grow though.

And yeah it sucks that i spent $100 on a new filter when it was the hood that was the problem i wish i would have thought of it before i purchased the new one.

Alright so i picked up a 5 pound bag of Earth worm castings today i am planning on making a tea for my plants, nothing fancy just the earth worm castings and a table spoon of molasses in a 5 gallon bucket with an air pump, i was wondering though why use the nylon stalkings as a tea bag? Wouldn't it be better to just pour the earth worm castings into my planters with the water so that my plants get the full benefit from it?

I also picked up a big bag of perlite today so i am going to cover the top layer of my planters with an inch or so to try and get rid of the insects that are in my grow space, i never have determined what they are, they don't look like any of the major pest that afflict cannabis plants though, but i cant keep from wondering what they are doing in there... If they are not predatory bugs which i don't believe they are they must be surviving off of my plants some how right? Oh well hopefully it will clear the issue up not that i will notice much because i barley ever see them.

/sigh so i woke up to the smell of weed coming from my utility closet again today, this really sucks i thought i had fixed the issue with the duct tape but i guess not, i walked around the out side of my house inspecting for smells, i still haven't detected the odor out side yet but if the smell is getting to my utility closet threw the attic its only a matter of time before it smells out side and I'm only 2 weeks into flowering. I really hate the way this whole thing is set up it fucking sucks that i cant just go sit on the exhaust side of my ventilation system and take a whiff for odor, i knew this would be a problem but i did not know how big of a problem it would be i didn't expect to have any odor leaks, i figured it would be a problem months down the road when my carbon filter was going bad or something like that. When i walked out side today i noticed that the wind was particularly strong, i have also noticed that the smell is not particularly consistent some days it seems stronger than others and some days i don't notice it at all, i am wondering if the wind flowing threw my attic could be negating my negative air pressure at times and causing the odor to escape into the attic around the hole i have cut from my ducting, it seems possible but unlikely the negative air pressure in my closet seems quite strong.

I really wish i had a weed odor detector, i know it probably sounds dumb but i am still not sure that this smell is even weed, it smells very dank and musty almost like old oil and a lot like weed but it doesn't have the fresh growing weed smell that my grow closet has, i am pretty sure the odor wasn't there before but i suppose it could have been and I'm just noticing it now because I'm extra paranoid. I dunno it just seems to coincidental to me for it to not be the weed, in the utility closet there are holes punched in the wall for utility stuff and it is the only room that i am smelling anything so my guess is that the smell is getting into the attic unfiltered some how and then seeping back down into the walls and into the closet where i can smell it.

Right now i have very few solutions left to fix this problem the main one being to change the position of the fan and the filter from filter-hood-fan to fan-hood-filter this is probably the best solution it however is the one that i like the least, doing this would require me to take a part my entire grow room and it would be a real pain in the ass to mount my carbon filter at the other end, it would however help me to identify the source of the problem if the problem is still my hood or some where in my ventilation i would know because the issue would be resolved. Not only would this be a pain in the ass it would also create other issues like the sound of the centrifugal fan spinning and the whooshing of the air that is currently being dampened by the carbon filter, on the other side of the grow closet is a room that gets used a lot and stealth factor is of the utmost importance to me. The only other real option i have that might be a solution is to weather strip the ducting hole in my ceiling so that if the issue is being caused by the wind it can no longer pull smelly air from the grow room, as i said before it doesn't seem to me like this would be the problem because i have a lot of negative air pressure, then again the odor coming from the closet isn't really that strong either i mean it smells but it doesn't really reek like my grow room so maybe it is the problem. I also might try removing the hood from the ventilation system to see if it is the cause of the problem i would rather raise my temps a few degrees than have to worry about this shit constantly plus it would also help me to determine what the problem is.