bgmike8 first grow ever. all comments welcome

okay. its been awhile because i have had alot going on. my thc bomb seeds didnt work out too well. i have only four out of 30 seeds. i ordered more. i find that the seeds work best when you germinate them until they have a real long tap root and then just set them into the rock wool. the ones that i put into the rockwool and just barely pressed the rockwool in, all died. this did not happen with the bag seed.


so anyway, here are some pics. i have vented my lights but the temp is still in the low 90's on hotter days. i went ahead and opened the co2 boost bucket since the temp is high. considering the environmental problems, the bagseed is doing okay. i took out all the males and have been flowering for close to a month now.

i have built an aeroponics set up and put my four thc bomb seedlings in it. i know it works becaue i put 7 clones in it and they all rooted

i am going to buy a portable ac to bring down the heat and hope that it will dehumidify because i am at 70 humidity.

more pics of buds

stopped in to check things out BGM... real decent setup... you had any more luck fine tuning the enviroment? i actually moved my grow room because i couldnt control anything where it was at very well... and because it flooded and shit... lol but i know how it is.. feels like a losing battle sometimes.. anyways... subscribed to your thread... gonna keep up with things... looking forward to seeing progress... check out my journal in my sig.. just started the 5th week of flowering today... should start seeing a lot of swelling here soon...

oh.. here is a tip for easy germination of seeds... get a small box, such as a match box or something like it, and put a piece of sand paper in the bottom of it... put your seeds in the box and shake for a minute or so... this is called scuffing.. it helps allow water to penetrate the seeds... take the seeds and soak them in a glass of water for 12-24 hours... take them out and put them right into your rockwool cube... you should have 100% germination this way.. typically seeds dont germinate because the shell is to hard and water does not penetrate it.. if you dont feel comfortable scuffing seeds you bought from a bank then just soak them for 24 hours in water... i almost never have seeds not germinate following the above advice...

good luck with the next batch.. hope that helps!

here is the 7000btu portable a/c unit that i have just installed.

is it workin well for you?? ive heard mixed things about portable a/c's... just curious what you think...

sampson

was working well but then i closed off the room that it vents to and it got up to 100 degrees. if im using a co2 boost bucket and the humidity is in check, then do ireally need to exhaust?

here are fresh pics of my aero set up. these are the 4 thc bomb seedlings that made it out of 30 lol.

is the small bushy one better than the taller one?

as long as heat and humidty arent a problem, there is good air movement from an oscilating fan or some sort of fan, and you have fresh air going in then you dont really need to worry about exhausting it... but it really depends on how stable the enviroment is... and ya.. where are you exhausting the a/c to right now??


so in my experiences taller sprouts like that tend to be males... typically males grow thinner and taller... in nature male plants grow thin and tall so that when they pop their sacs open the wind can blow the pollen further... so it could be that the taller plant is a male... that would be my guess... but you wont know until flowering... you can tie it down or top it of whatever if you want keep the height of it down till you do flower them and see if its a male or not... or if you have the time you can cut a couple clones from it, root them, and put them under 12/12... the clones will show the sex of the plant you cut it from while the plant is still in veg if you do it that way... just a suggestion tho...

i like the set up tho.. nice and clean... and your plants are looking very healthy... how are you liking the areo garden?? are they pretty easy to grow with??

oh and can you space the plants you have out anymore?? like move them further apart?? they wont grow into each other and have to fight for light if you can...

the aero setup is just a prototype. it works well for cloning too. the plants grew up fast with pretty impressive root mass.

the real plan is to put four or five of these together to replace one of my flood trays. i am going with the more smaller plants= better yield principle. so i might even get them closer together next time. have you seen the seemorebuds video where he has 300 2inch pots in a 4x6 area?

i havent seen that video... mostly because i am more a fewer plants but larger kinda guy... like once i get those 4 - 1000w lights ive decided prolly 9 - 12 plants plus im going to keep a buncha autoflowers going i think.. but i find watching scrog and sog styles grow interesting...

so are you thinking about trying to replicate that kind of grow? that would be awesome to watch... i think ill look for that video and watch it tho..

why not go with autoflowers in a grow like that anyways?? those seem like they are tailor made for your style grow... are you taking clones and starting clones in 12/12 as soon as they root? just thinking that it would be a really good setup for autoflowers... just my 2 cents..

a little background, this is my first setup first grow. i read mel franks book ed rosenthals book. i have been studying thewhole subject for about 4 years now. i have been dependant upon foreign sources of weed for too long and so now i am actually trying to put to work all the concepts in my head. of all the research i have done, i have seen numerous claims that you get better yield from small plants completely filling your light area. hid's only penetrate 18 inches.. blah blah blah. i really have never seen any "official" source say the opposite.

now in my mind i had imagined the flood and drain with rockwool cubes. that was until i saw the seemorebuds videos. that is when i started looking into aero.

it seems to me that either way you go, the more plants the better to a certain degree.

i think you should watch seemorebuds vol 1. he uses aquaponics systems. they are 2x4 tubs and have choices for lids. the choices are 6,4,or 2 inch holes. so the biggest cups can do something like 12 plants and the smallest can do 90-100. (i forget the exact numbers) anyway, he gets the best yields with the 2inchers. he has 3 aquamist systems under 4 600 watt lights. thats 4x6 feet of growing area. actually when he puts nearly 300 plants in the 6x4 area, about one third of them were choked out by the other plants. he still got something like a half pound or more than the set-up with big cups. i think nearly 6 pounds..

this seems to go along with everything i have read. i got the video from piratebay. i dont know if there is a way to put the file on here?? not familiar with file sharing. i know it is probably too big for most email.

lots of problems today. it seems that my portable ac may not be able to cool my room well enough. i think it is because i am venting it right into the containing room. i think im going to have to cut the air lines running from another room and run the window ac unit in the containing room. i never wanted to draw in air from the containing room because i exhaust the carbon filtered air into it. this was my first go and i didnt know if the carbon filter would handle all the smell.so now if i have smell i will have to run ozone generator in containing room and i will be using it for intake. plus if i have to run the window and the portable, i will be dawing too much electric and will probably not run my second 1000 watter.


also my aero tub leaked out too much water and my plants are dying. i took them out and put them in a cardboard box cut out and kept misting the roots with ph balanced water. i made a collar around the lid. it is the white poly in the pics. i used goop plumbing glue to glue it around the lid. basically it will direct the water downward into the tub rather than the water splashing against the lid sidewall and leaking out. a shower curtain of sorts.

pics include aero setup in more detail dying thc bomb seedlings and their brown roots. i was really impressed with the size of their roots though. they looked good and white 3 days ago.. i also have some pics of buds that i think just dont look dense enough.

fucking stoned.

by containing room you mean the room that the grow room in set up in/connected too... ie the rest of a large room a smaller room was built in right?? if yes then wouldnt it be easier and cheaper just to exhaust the containing room?? put a 400 or so cfm intake fan near the exhaust from the portable a/c and carbon filter and just exhaust it into another room or outside even?? it just seems silly to cool a room with a window a/c that isnt being used really... i know how bad a/c's are if they dont get exhausted right... i had one in my basement and it made my garden creep up to 100 degrees because i didnt have it exhausting out of the basement at all.. it was bad.. but like i said.. i think if you can afford a fan and can run some duct out of the containing room you would be just as well off and save a lot of money in the end on electricity...

and the buds will liven up a lot with the humidity down... you want low humidity for flowering... high humidty, aside from growing mold and fungus, can inhibit flowering... that coupled with heat stress can really affect your buds... if you have humidity in check thanks to the a/c dehumidifier and can get heat in check as well your buds will be just fine..

thank you. i guess what i need is a redesign. my original idea being a newbie, was to have the containing room as a fail safe. an area that i could control in case the carbon filter wasnt enough. thats one thing you cant get from book or video. i am in very urban setting. it seems that this carbon filter might take care of all the smell though? i mean i might as well rip down the tent and grow in the room like it is? i had this whole idea of an enclosed enviroment that i could control. really a money issue because i cant afford more fans. unless i can some how return the portable i suppose. im all confused at the moment. first mistake was using black and white poly as a wall. my exhaust makes it suck in like a reverse bubble.

let me think about this... first off the carbon filter will more than take care of things.. i use a can55 myself with a 400cfm fan and it works fine...

secondly can you draw me an above view pic of your layout... the grow room and the bigger room its in... and where your equipment is... ill try to help you out with this problem... see if we can fix things so you dont have to undo any work youve already done..

i dont have paint on this stupid pc. basically it is10x 8 room. there is barely any clearance on the right side. just a few inches. on the back side there is a closet and shelving and the window ac. there isnt much room to move but there is air flow. all around the grow tent.

okay nnnnnnn

i have a few ideas... but i still dont have all the answers so im going to give you a few scenarios to play with...

the key here is the heat in the containing room is being sucked back into the grow room.. and the grow room has negative pressure from the fan inside...

the negative pressure is easy... just cut a hole into the side wall of your room big enough to let air in at the rate its exiting the grow room... put a piece of window screen over it to keep out bugs and use the piece you cut and tape it back up to create a flap over the hole.. that way it covers the hole when the fan isnt on but opens when the fan is... sorta like a cheap ass damper... the extra movement of air through the tent will help cool it off... assuming one of the next few answers work for the other problem..

based on your setup and what you said i assume that everything from the grow room is being exhausted into the containing room... which means all the heat is just being recycled all day.. hence the problem... i also assume that you have a window a/c but no window to put it in...

now the key to solving this is removing hot air instead of trying to add more cool air... that window a/c will add more heat to the room than cool if its not vented out of the room anyways... but if you can vent it out of the room then one of the following solutions will be much much easier...

#1 - the easiest solution to your problem is to exhaust your fan out of the containing room all together.... cut a hole in the cieling and vent it out of there.... or cut a hole in the door to the containing room itself and vent it into the hall... or even run in into the closet and cut the hole in there to vent it... but basically if the hot air is being vented out of the room it will make a HUGE difference... even if the a/c is venting into the containment room and being circulated through the tent passively, with the all the air the fan is moving being blown out of the room, it wont be able to stay hot enough..... this banks on the idea that you can cut a small duct hole though and it be ok...

#2 - well honestly there is no number 2.... you have to somehow move more hot air completely out of the containing room all together.... your idea for a micro environment is right on... the poly is good shit... you should have put ply wood up and attached it to the plywood so it wouldnt reverse bubble like it is... but its durable and easy to work with and reflective... nothing about your setup is flawed on the inside... its just where the exhaust is going on the outside thats a problem.... so you need to equalize out the pressure in the room and run the exhaust fan ducting somewhere outside the room all together... just to get rid of the heat....

tearing things down and using the entire space wouldnt make sense because your still gonng have the same problem.... you did a great job with the setup.. just have to tweek it a little...

hope that works for ya...
sampson