And so it begins..

Hello friends of riu, all comments are welcome.

This will be my second indoor grow and first grow journal. I just finished up my first indoor grow a couple weeks ago, it was typical of most first timer grows, over watered, over fertilized, ect. Most of the plants didn't live a very happy life through most of flower. So as a result of those mistakes and recently joining riu, I've learned a lot since just starting out. So of coarse I'm pretty excited to see what I can do with a fresh start.

My set-up

Grow area: 9'x9'x7'3" room. Planning on probably a 9x5 canopy inside the room, possably a 5x5, that's the one thing I haven't decided on yet but will in the upcoming days.

Lighting: I currently have a 600w air cooled dimmable hps/mh hid. I'm thinking i will probably keep this over half of the canopy(If i decide to run a 9x5). I also have 2 130watt galaxy hydro leds(blurples). I will most likely use these to veg the other half until I get a cob setup built, (if I decide to run a two light setup). I've recently become pretty interested in leds, specifically cobs.

Ventalation: I have a 6" 430 cfm vivosun inline along with a carbon filter, planning on running the least amount of ducting as possible with a 90 degree elbow fitting to mount into the door of the exhaust room (big "crawl space")for exhaust ventilation. I might have to throw a booster on it or get a bigger fan, that one is still a mystery to me yet. Input is welcome. One or two oscillating fans if I do a 5x5 or probably 3 for a 5x9. One thing that I'm thinking is probably a must is I need to cut a hole in the wall making an air way between the grow room and the rest of my basement and attach a couple furnace/AC vent covers for concealment to allow fresh air to be brought into the room. The room doesn't have any air registers or windows but is a finished room. I also have a dehumidifier(50ish pints I believe) that I will use and an A/C but I highly doubt I will need the A/C.

Medium & potting: A mixture of FFOF, FFHF, and perlite for their beginning one gallon pots. Only fox farm ocean forest will be added when they're transplanted into 3 gallon pots. I will also be using r/o water along with a mixture of nutes from AN, growth science, and botanicare. I will be letting the plants feed off of the soil as long as I can until they are showing some defiencies. Not going to make the same mistake as the last grow with over fert'ing.
Will incorporate cal-mag+ into my r/o water along with a silica from growth science that I will use till probably somewhere around early flower(the silica, cut the CaMg probably mid to late flower).

Genetics: The genes are a little funky. So I got the seeds from a buddy that he had accidently produced the year before outdoors. There was a male blueberry missed in the middle of the patch and by the time they realised it, pollen sacks had already opened. There were 4 other strains in the patch, aside from the blueberrys. All of which seeds that I got were mixed together so I don't know which is which. I can't remember the other 4 strains for sure but I will be talking to the guy tomorrow. I want to say lemon skunk, northern lights, AK-47 and headband. All were seed bank seeds, don't know which companies though, he will. I grew with these same seeds on my last grow and despite them basically giving up on life by the end they still produced some real nice bud. 20 or 21 small plants. Probably 25% less then desirable (every one of the undesirable shit out before they finished budding fully, needed another couple weeks), and 25% ass stomping stuff that finished and beats out most of my Colorado stuff i smoke(I live in an illegal state, a lot of what we get comes from there). Also, one plant popped nanners around week 4 and was pulled but I've found about a dozen seeds so I wanted to run a little test and see if those seeds turn out feminized and if I take nice care of them if I can keep nanners from popping, since most people say they will be prone to nanners and some people say only if under stress. I plan on cloning each plant and looking for a couple nice phenos to keep. Probably will do somewhere around 30 plants if I decide to go 5x9.

I think that covers it, hopefully i didn't forget anything. Here are a few pics

Looking forward to a good grow

8/25: Day 1 for BX numbers 1-16 and BS number 1 & 2.
8/26: Day 1 for BX number 17-22.

Correction on genetics:

Nirvana-Bubbilicious male crossed with the following females (All seeds mixed together So which is which is unknown)
Dutch passion-Blueberry
Serious seeds-AK-47
(The following are unknown seed banks)
Lemon skunk
Northern lights
Head band

Following was just given to me today:
Barneys farm-Grape ape
"Fast pine"
Those two strains i do have labeled so I know which is which.
I'm numbering every plant for a pheno hunt. Probably will start off somewhere around 70

Quick update: Room is really coming together nicely.
BX numbers 23-28 day 2, FFHF.
FP numbers 1-9 day 1, 1:1 FFOF/FFHF.
Seedlings have started breaking soil the past couple days. Today I got my storage rack moved to a different wall, my fresh air vent covers put into the wall connecting this room to the rest of the basement (air wise) so I can keep fresh air moving in. It appears to be a furnace/ac register but is basically just a hidden hole between the walls. I also put up a smoke alarm and dry erase calender board for keeping track of nutes or any special notes along with a folding chair/table for convenience of any work I have to do down there.

I will be looking into getting some panda film or something similar for the grow half of the room.
I'm also probably going to look into a booster fan to hook up to my fresh air intake for the room.
I've got a couple sticky traps out because I had a few leftover gnats from the last grow. As soon as my seedlings have established themselves I'll begin a full pest prevention schedule of organic sprays, probably neem, and soil drenches, through veg to try to prevent any bad happenings..
So far everythings getting plain RO water. As soon as my seedlings get a few sets of leafs I'll begin throwing in cal mag+ and a silica. Once they hit around 4 nodes or so I'll probably give them a dose of super thrive.


I believe that's about everything though for now.. here's a couple pics.

Also in the works is a new door for the grow room. The room originally didn't have a door so I took one off a room that stays open but it's not a perfect fit so it won't close all the way. Maybe get that ordered next weekend and installed the weekend after

Update:

I hung up some panda film today for reflectivity. Seedlings are looking decent, a few stretchy ones but that's okay. About 1 week old today from when they broke soil, for the oldest ones.
I'm going to be buying a 4" inline fan for cool air intake into the room tonight along with a couple oscillating wall hangable fans.
I'm also looking into getting a light tonight, have done some thinking on the cob system and I may wait on that because of the price. I've been looking into CMH's a bit and thinking about getting one of those tonight

- any recommendations are welcome!!!

Ipower has good pricing, I was just looking at their 630watt model with a double ended bulb.

IF FOR GOOD REASONING ANYONE BELIEVES THIS IS NOT NEAR THE BANG AS AN EXPENSIVE BRAND PLEASE TELL ME AND WHY SO I DON'T ACCIDENTLY MAKE THE WRONG PURCHASE.

I am still new to all this lol
So anyway I think that's about it for now.

Update:

Plants are doing fine, blurple side is starting to take off. Mh side the plants are a bit younger, anywhere from 2 days to a week younger. Mh seedlings do seem to be growing slower than the leds though.

Yesterday mh side was given a light r.o. water. Today the led side received a light r.o. water containing .5ml/gal of calmag+ and .75ml/gal of my silica supplement.

Room is still under slight setup. Still deciding on my flowering lights and also going to build a simple fresh air system bringing air from the rest of the basement into this room. Will have an inline fan connected to ducting with two separate exhaust vents blowing down on my canopy, one for each 4.5x4 foot area. This will also be great for any heat issues, which I don't think I'll have, but if I do, the rest of my basement during winter will be pretty chilly so this will simply act as an air conditioner.

So anyway that's the scoop. Oh also, all grape apes are dead. Only 3 of 10 germed, one of the three broke soil and as soon as it did simply stopped growing. Don't know what the deal was with them. Here's a few pics

So I ran a bit of a test lastnight.
My seedlings look okay but it looked to me like they could be happier.

Ive been trying to get my lights adjusted to the right level and thought maybe that was it. I ruled that out because the leaves looked a bit droopy, theres some slight waving to the first set of leaves that i think mightve been from the lights too close when they were a bit smaller but only a couple very slightly cupped upward like you see with light stress so i threw out light stress.
I also ruled out overwatering because it had been about 5 or 6 days since there first real watering and they didn't seem too droopy days before.

So lastly I looked at my 12" oscillating fan.. I've had it on low and about 5 feet from the seedlings but they were still russling around pretty good. So I turned the fan off lastnight. 24 hrs later they seem much more perky. I think the little bit of wind was too much for them while they're this small.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm still new to indoor growing so some pointers or recommendations are very welcome. All I know is I turned my fan off for now and they seem much more happy

Your a funny guy.
How many plants are you growing, like 20 under an LED, and another 15 under a 600 watt HPS?
Way too many plants, with not enough light.
You definitely have the beginning of a nice grow, but be more reasonable in the sense that all these plants are going to get big, hopefully, so then what?
How to water, adjust, trim and generally just touch, which you should be able to do at any time,
You should seriously start thinking about the future, like how am I going to deal with all the product produced, and byproducts of the grow. Many plants,much more leftover shit you have to deal with,
Very nice setup though, and good luck.

Jimdamick said:

Your a funny guy.
How many plants are you growing, like 20 under an LED, and another 15 under a 600 watt HPS?
Way too many plants, with not enough light.
You definitely have the beginning of a nice grow, but be more reasonable in the sense that all these plants are going to get big, hopefully, so then what?
How to water, adjust, trim and generally just touch, which you should be able to do at any time,
You should seriously start thinking about the future, like how am I going to deal with all the product produced, and byproducts of the grow. Many plants,much more leftover shit you have to deal with,
Very nice setup though, and good luck.

Click to expand...

Hey man, thanks for taking a look. None of these are feminized except for(possibly) 6 that I'm doing a little test on that were seeds from the last grow as a result of a few nanners on a separate plant. So I should and up with around half this many plants. Plus I may kill a couple because they are growing real screwy looking leaves, will wait to see if they have good structure and vigor. So point there is I should end up with I'm thinking 25 ish plants for the 9x4.5. Which also will have a short veg time because that's all I will have room for by the end, worst case scenario, it's a 9x9 room, they will fit and I have extra lights.

So as far as the lighting aspect, I'm going to be puting no less than 1200 watts over the 9x4.5. Most likely I will be getting two 630 watt double ended CMH 3000k red spectrum lights from Growers Choice. They have a real nice spectrum and are pretty efficient, much more efficient than traditional hid. So that should do for the lighting, but I still have extra lights.

I just finished my first grow about a month ago so I have a pretty good idea at what different tasks to plan for that will take lots of time, like up-potting for example. My biggest concern really out of all of it is my watering. Just have a standard 18 cup water purifier and collecting water would take a while and I would always be filling jugs weather they were getting watered that night or not on my last grow. So I'm currently looking into a larger r.o. system or building my own "multi purifier into one barrel" type of diy.

As far as getting rid of stalk leaves dirt ect., I already have that figured out because I had to deal with it with my first grow.

I think that covers the main things you asked about. I'm sure I'll run into surprises, it's only my 2nd indoor grow but I'm feeling fairly confident

Just dimmed my hid light down to 250 watts. I had it on 400w about 3 feet above the seedlings, open hood and I think that was a bit much for them. They seem a little droopy with slower growth, which they are anywhere from about 3 to 6 days younger but still don't seem as rapid as the leds. And I know I haven't been over watering because the hid dries out the soil quickly and I've only given them a couple light waterings with no run off, monitoring the weight of the pots too. We'll see if dimming that down seems to make a difference

Day 12 to 13 for majority of the led side, from the day they were put in soil. Most popped after one or two days. Most of the mh side are around 4 to 8 days old from breaking soil.

Current environment
MH:
Temp- 79 degrees 73-84
RH- 52% 40-67

Led:
Temp- 75 degrees 73-79
RH- 58% 54-58

Note- the mh gauge got some water on it from misting so it's reading higher. Usually gets to about 63% during lights off. Also the temp/th gauges usually reset each evening autamatically

So that's the scoop

Got my fresh air intake setup
Vivosun 4" inline advertised at 200 cfm, pulling only 23 watts from the wall.

Seems to be moving air about like an average window a.c. would. Should be perfect when the rest of my basement cools down this winter. 23 watt a.c. unit. And if need be I'll switch it out with a 6 inch inline

Got my r.o. setup all finished. I know I would save more money simply installing an under the sink r.o. system but honestly my entire counter top is ceramic tile and I don't want to have to try drilling through that to install the tap. Plus filling jugs constantly would still be a pain, I'd have to figure a way to stock pile water and I really don't want to do that in my kitchen.

So here's my unit. 3 home water purifiers with 5 stage filters, each drilled with a hose sticking through to let water flow through freely. A 44 gallon barrel to stock pile the water and 2 air stones in the water tank. My tap runs around 430ppm, I haven't yet decided where I'm going to draw the line for filter replacement. I'm thinking probably somewhere around 100 to 150 ppm max just because the filters are 15 bucks a piece. I probably get around 15, maybe 20 gallons per filter before they are hitting around 150ppm.

So now I won't have to be screwing around waiting for one purifier to give me enough water to mix up a gallon/be working to fill jugs out of that little spicket on a daily basis. Dump a couple rounds of water through the purifiers each evening, and just dish up the water for my plants as need be