Spork's Grow Cab 1.0 - Making Jack Herer Mothers

Seeds got here on Tuesday, so it is time to get this show on the road. The cabinet still has the main exhaust fan to install. HTG forgot to ship it but it finally came, going to install and finish the cabinet with that today. The clone room isn’t affected much so I started the seeds already.
My cabinet is 48W x 20D x 72H. I will be building an additional area on top of the cabinet to encase the fans and handle ducting so all I will have is a duct coming out of the cabinet and out the window. Also going to build a homemade carbon filter as well, if it sucks I will probably just buy a commercial one. I am not so much concerned about stealth than I am just keeping it locked and airtight. If anyone asks it is a server cabinet since I am a comp geek. I am a med patient, but would rather no one know.

The cabinet is separated into 3 sections. On the lower area left is the reservoir with the water pump and an airstone. On the right side is the clone room and the main section is the real grow area.

I am running a 400W Cooltube, and I have a MH conversion and a HPS bulb that I will interchange if needed. In the clone room I currently have 4 Daylight 27w CFL’s.

Ventilation is a bit extreme. I didn't really think about how powerful the fan I got was...so I might need to rig up a controller to reduce the speed if it is possible, especially since it is starting to get cooler outside. Also the Cooltube is taken care of a 250CFM duct fan. The air intake is on the back bottom of the cabinet, shielded to protect from light leaks. It comes up through the clone room, up through the black pvc piping (elbow joints to help protect against light leaks) and then through the carbon filter and out the window.

I am using Ebb and Flow, with Rockwool and Hydroton. Since this is my first grow I am still learning what my personal preference will be, but as of now I am planning on cutting my 6inch RW cubes in half to make 6x6x3 cubes. That way roots will get out of there sooner and I plan to just flood the hydroton.

Since I am growing from non feminized seeds, I will have to sex these plants. And since I plan to run a somewhat perpetual system, I want mothers.

The game plan is to germinate and grow these guys and throw them up in the main section until they show preflowers, or until I feel that they are safe to clone to be sexed. Once I know what is what, I will be pulling the males and making mothers of the remainder. The mothers will have a mother chamber ready by then so I can stick the first set of real clones in the main section to be scrogged. After the first harvest I will pick the best genetics and start an entirely different journal by then.

Depending on San Diego legal limits, I may start working on a SoG setup instead of scrog, but will probably do at least one scrog to see how I like it since I built this cabinet with scrog measurements in mind.

Seeds germinated mostly on Tuesday/Wednesday and were planted in the middle of the day Wednesday. They are currently starting to poke above the surface and I will get some pics once there is a bit more green.

I would really appreciate comments or assistance when needed. I have researched my ass off and my questions at this point tend to be extremely specific.

1) Cabinet Closed
2) Cabinet Open
3) Weatherstripping and Caulking
4) Intake/Electrical/Ebbflow Holes
5) Light trap vents
6) Top area kind of set up
7) Clone room kind of set up
Whole room










Does anyone know the medical limit is in San Diego? I see both the 6mature/12immature on one website, and 24 plants on another website. One of them has to be outdated but I cannot find a current version of the city guidelines. If anyone knows I would appreciate the help.

I am going to call today Day 1. In the morning you could see that a couple were getting read to break through, and now in the evening a few have come up and all the rest just need to break the surface and they will be out to play.

So here are the pics of the best three so far.

9/10 germinated and were planted and if the activity is any sign all 9 should be sprouting.

lil baby jacks

yo! i like it. i wish there were more pictures of the rig thought. but ill be stickin around.
i dedicate this bong rip to you.

Thanks!

Mid next week I can drown you in pics if you like. Company coming over for the weekend so I am moving the grow cab out of my area.

As expected this morning all 9 of the girls were out to play. Since I have minimal time to care for them I went ahead and made some 200ppm nutes ahead of time for when they need watering.

Since the cubes were drying up a bit i just quickly dipped the very bottom of the cube in the nutes for a short split second since RW sucks up so much water so quickly. I don't think they are too wet.

I am not certain of the humidity since the probe I have down there only does the temp. I am just going to detach the whole thing and put it down there for the time being until i can get a dedicated temp/hygrometer. But as of now they are keeping at a fairly constant 75-78 degrees F.

Anyways, here are some pics of the ladies.

Just so happens my velcro fastening of the CFL powerstrip didn't work out too well. Thankfully it only fell on one side so it didn't harm the babies. They just grew a little to the right for a couple hours.

Taproots starting to come out of the cubes. Soaking the larger cubes right now so I can transplant in a little while. At what point should I transplant them? When the taproot comes out the bottom? When there are more than a couple roots coming out of the bottom?

I will get some pics tonight.

yeah woo hoo san diego! i live in the beach area

i think you can have up to 8 ounces of dried medicine and i think the plant number might be something around there as well.

California NORML | Dedicated to reforming California's marijuana laws!

Thanks Brendon, as far as I could tell the county limit appears to be the 6mature or 12 immature plants with the 8oz. But it looks like San Diego the city allows for 24 plants. So there is of course conflicting guidelines. 6 is the safest way to go and will probably be the way I will go. Although the 24 plants is very tempting. I really like the idea of SoG'in and makin hash. mmmm

Anyways here are some more pictures. Not a noticeable difference really but I like taking pictures everyday. Also have some of the tap roots starting to stick out.

Again if anyone could let me know when the best time to transplant to a bigger RW cube would be I would appreciate it. Taps are starting to come out and on one of them it is getting long considering it wasn't poking out yesterday.

As I said before I have the bigger cubes soaking so I might just do it tomorrow if they all have taps searching aimlessly for water that isn't down there.

a. 200ppm Advanced Nutrients. Trying the 1:1:1 ratio until someone tells me to use the 3:2:1 instead.
b. 5.8ph
c. 1inch RW cubes
d. Temp is somewhat stable around 76-78, although when the light dropped it spiked to 84 for an hour.
e. 7am-1am 18/6
f. Currently quickdipping the cubes when they are dry enough.

i think its about choice, im sure it cant hurt when they are one their second or third node and there is a healthy root system ready to go

Some bad news....

Yet again the velcro adhesive screwed me and came undone and the CFL powerstrip dropped again. This time it landed on one and was there for probably an hour and is it pretty fried. It appears dead although the root sticking out looks okay. The sprout itself was laying over seemingly fried. However after a few hours it is lifting up a bit. Maybe it is okay but it surely did get a bit too much stress. I am going to see if it recovers but with it being so young and exposed to so much heat I am fairly sure it is a goner. So we are down to probably 8 now.

However that really doesn't concern me that much because my main grow area will be better with an even number of plants than an odd.

I redid how I affixed the lighting in the clone room and it isn't going anywhere. However I lost the ability to adjust it. Small price to pay for the safety of the youngins though.

I went ahead and transplanted the 8 other babies into the larger RW cubes. They are 6inch blockes that I halved. I transplanted and put them up top in the main area because the taproots were sticking out quite far and on a couple of them they just broke off or airpruned. I expected to not transplant them for at least a week, but whatever. If they don't die then it's all good.

Will throw some pictures up later when i get a chance. Thinking of germing the bonus seeds I got from my order. We will see.

ouch .. bad lucks homes. why not screw it in? the powers strip.

I ended up removing the velcro. I was using velcro strips to let the powerstrip hang down and different levels. It allowed me to adjust it depending on height and whatnot. I did end up just putting screws in the top of the clone chamber and affixing it that way. Lost my ability to adjust it but I removed the possibility of it falling on the kids again.

Anyways I transplanted the other 8 into the larger cubes and have them under the MH in the main area. Only watering the bottom of the cubes slighting to try to get them to root down to the hydroton so I can start ebbing.

The "dead" one still looks to have lively roots and is lifting itself a bit so I think it might still be alive. I have it in the clone area under a humidity dome to see if it happens to recover. I really don't think I will include it in the bunch unless it totally comes back with gusto, so it doesn't really hurt much right now. I figure with the drastic heat stress if it does recover it would probably be a loser anyways.

I will update properly with pics soon.

I am going to start taking measurements soon.

The "fried" one is in the clone area just waiting to see if it recovers.

The other 8 are up in the main area transplanted to their bigger cubes. I don't know how long it will take for the roots to reach the hydroton but none of the babies appear to have any bad effects from the transplant.

One of them was slightly damaged by the dropped light as well, it doesn't appear to really be affected though.


a. 200ppm Advanced Nutrients Micro Grow Bloom
b. 5.8ph
c. 6x6x3 inch RW cubes, sitting in hydroton.
d. Temp averages 76-80 thusfar. Once I get the cab back in my room I will be able to monitor temperatures better.
e. 7am-1am 18/6
f. Ebb and flow is ready to go, just waiting for the roots to reach the buttom of the new cubes. The cubes were soaked for 24 hours in PH water and after adequate removal of a majority of the water, I poured some of the 200ppm solution into the center just before I transplanted. I am only watering from below when needed to promote the downward root growth.

you start them that small under the hid? am i loosing time by allowing them to get 3 sets of 3 under fluorescent before moving them to the big room?

To be honest I didn't want to move them up there that quickly but due to having company come over at just the wrong weekend I had little time to mess around. With the CFL powerstrip doing what it was doing and having the top area better suited for temp control I just did it.

No ill effects thusfar, I started the light fairly far to start and just have been lowering it bit by bit. Starting to get a nice second set of leaves.

I imagine the cooltube has an effect as the temps are stable, and they don't seem to have a problem with the intensity thusfar.

As long as your temps are stable I would imagine you would be good as long as you don't put it too close too fast.

Oh yeah, my clone room isn't very large, I intend to only use it to root clones and not for any real vegging so maybe our "cfl rooms" have slightly different purposes as well. This cabinet will eventually be a SCROG cabinet, just need some good mothers first.

ok so your using cfl? cool, your attention to detail is very impressive, excellent ventilation system, so are you also using hid? i like your setup makes me wanna move my mothers out of the closet, how much was that cabinet? and where would one aquire such a piece of craftmanship?

oh yeah, cool tubes rock but have a hot spot, its just at the bottom of the glass, so easily to avoid. borrow someones laser thermometor or get one at harbor freight if you feel the need to find it, but it's a genius design.

The clone room has CFL's, and the top area has a 400W MH conversion bulb. I have an HPS ready when the time comes, but since these are mothers I won't be harvesting them...just all of their daughters.

I have a temp probe on the cube that is the most centered and not too much of a problem. I will most definitely go check right now though, I have one of those temp things handy somewhere.

I was originally going to build my own cabinet, but they had this one at Home Depot on sale for a lil under a hundred. Instead of affixing the shelves like they said I just put them in where I wanted and made sure everything was reinforced. It is awesomely stable and I put wheels on the bottom so it is easier to move around when needed.

As for the total cost I don't have it completely counted but I know with the $250 meter and the seeds/cab/shipping/etc it was over 1000. With compromise it could have been a lot cheaper, but being an engineering student...I love this kind of shit. Especially considering an o here is about 300ish, so it will pay for itself in the first harvest I bet. Will be nice to not have to pay for it anymore.

just a question off the top of my head. how much did this run you? approx.

If I don't pass out again from exhaustion from the weekend I will get the exact number for you. I can sure as hell tell you it is about 2x what I originally planned on. But as before, one harvest and it will pay for itself since I would have been spending the money on weed otherwise. (at least it isn't led's )I have no interest in selling, unless maybe co-op with the dispensary, but I would imagine my shit would need to be dank for that.

Alrighty, now that company is gone I get to move the cab back to its rightful spot and I plan to build the top fan enclosure tomorrow.

I have noticed a small internal light leak that I will also fix. Clone room to main room. So when they are the same timer no biggie, but that wont always be the case.

The 8 are doing well in the main area. I haven't noticed any issues with the intensity of the light as they are still growing. I don't plan to lower it anymore until they pack on more leaves.

Doing lots of "dry" (wet) runs of the Ebb and Flow system. I am pretty happy with how it is going thusfar, it seems pretty damn reliable. Just waiting for the roots to make their way down there.

They technically have 200ppm nutes, but in all honesty they aren't getting much of it. When I transplanted them, I poured a small amount of 200ppm nutes in the hole. Since the cube already had some moisture retained I bet it is even more diluted than that. I just knew that I wouldn't have much of a chance of getting anything to them until their roots got to the bottom without running the risk of saturating the entire cube.

Anyways, here are the stats. 1.1 refers to grow 1, plant 1. 1.2 is grow one plant two, etc. Pictures are also in order of 1, 2, 3, etc.

1.1) 1.9cm - Just starting her second set of leaves.
1.2) 2.3cm - Small second set. Bit bigger leaves than others
1.3) 2.0cm - Small second set. Bit bigger leaves than others.
1.4) 1.7cm - Small second set.
1.5) 1.8cm - Small second set.
1.6) 1.7cm - Dinky. While generally same vertical height, first set of leaves are small and growing slowly. Not sure if it is a pheno showing through, a fuckup on my part, or maybe just a dead plant walking...or growing..whatever.
1.7) 2.3cm - Small second set. Bit bigger leaves than others.
1. 2.1cm - Furthest along, has decen't sized second set of leaves compared to the rest, but you can see where the first set were damaged from the dropped CFL. I ended up tossing the other one that was completely fried.

















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a. 200ppm Advanced Nutrients Micro Grow Bloom - As above this isn't the effective amount, just what was added to the cubes as they grow their roots down.
b. 5.8ph
c. 6x6x3 inch RW cubes, sitting in hydroton.
d. Min Max 71/81 degrees F.
e. 7am-1am 18/6
f. Still no effective watering schedule until roots get down to the hydroton, but I am planning to go every 2.5 hours, flooding for 3 minutes. It takes one minute to fill the tray, and I figure 2 minutes to try to rinse extra salts off. I will supplement with h2o2 as well. I have a 7 event digital timer so thats 7pm, 9:30pm, 12pm, 2:30pm, 5pm, 7:30pm, 10pm. That last water is 3 hours before lights off. Is this seem reasonable?


It's a trip to look at these guys with 100x microscope. So small yet the surface of their leaves are so complex.