CFL Stealth Cabinet 1st Grow

3/26
Light proofed a bit
70ish degrees with 6 bulbs 2 13 watt 3000k’s 2 32watt 5000k’s 2 25watt 3000k’s
72ish degrees after I added 2 more bulbs 25 watt 6500’s
77 degrees after I lowered shelf
59 degrees after 1 hour of lights out
55 degrees after 2 hours of lights out
29 degrees outside
Humidity < 20%

3/27
Mounted movable light to middle
Added lights, they are all 25ish and all 8 are in 5 6500&#8217;s 1 5000 2 3000&#8217;s
Peaked at 77 when vents were taped
Dropped to 73 with tape out
Added humidifier
Humidifier raised humidity to >30% so far
Raised shelf
3/27 pm
Put heater in and relay
Lights off holding at 69 for 3 hours
3/29
Plants moved in
Temps looking good
Humidity low, at 30%
Put co2 in
Put water with felt
Put container of water at bottom
Plants 1-2 inches from light
Foliar fed phosphorus, I don&#8217;t think they liked that
3/30
Only have given them straight water from now till a little shot of phosphorus only on soil on 4/13
Not looking good, wilting
Sprayed a bunch of times with plain water, soil on top seems to be drying fast
Need moisture meter
3/31 &#8211;4-2
Got moisture meter
Soil dry
Maybe to much perlite
PH maybe high, going to test PH
1 almost dead, wilting badly

4/1 switched lights from 20-4 to 18-6

4/2
Watered the shit out of em&#8230;been watering them a lot but the top always has been looking like a desert after a couple of hours&#8230;
Moved them back to their &#8216;original habitat&#8217; to try to bring em back to life

4/2-4/8 The one that looked good initial first died sometime in this time frame. The one that was looking sickly at first and had a light dropped on it while switching back to &#8216;original habitat&#8217; lived and is looking better
PH was also tested with a shitty ass tester sometime in here and looked ok

4/8 switched lights from 18-6 from 16-8 also checked soil ph with a better tester, looks ok. Redid the light board to the current pic.

4/13 Plant looking good. Still under the Rubbermaid. Its got a couple leaf sets and another forming. Squatty as hell.
Straightened it:
Pushed it up a bit straighter today because the stem was diagonal like crazy. Had been but didn&#8217;t want to mess with it. The bottom leaves were touching the dirt from when I tried to put it in a bigger pot. This is because the stem was kinda stretchy looking so I added a little more dirt. Since then I have realized it wasn&#8217;t stretchy. I dug a little soil out from around the stem carefully a couple days ago and today I pushed it more upright and supported it gently with a little soil. Now the leaves are not touching the soil.
Phosphorus:
I gave it a little straight phosphorus that was ment to be mixed in soil, mixed with water. Then I watered it pretty good to dilute the phosphorus even more. I only sprayed it with a very light mist 3 times only on the soil with a very small spray bottle.

Looking good man, I'm sub'd. My friend is looking into something simple like this and I might be picking up some infos to pass off to him in here

Looks like you're off to a pretty good start. What strain are you running with?

4/14 Just went and looked at it. Looks good.

looking good im also using cfls in a smaller place, definatly gunna keep watchin, love all the info you give about wuts goin on

monkeybones said:

Looking good man, I'm sub'd. My friend is looking into something simple like this and I might be picking up some infos to pass off to him in here

Looks like you're off to a pretty good start. What strain are you running with?

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This is just a bag seed for learning purposes. Started with 2 that germed from the 10 I collected from dank bags over the past few years. One started off looking great and one sickly. The sickly one is still alive and looking good and the one that was looking good died. Go figure. I did a couple things to piss them off I think. 1 I started in miracle grow. Miracle grow is prefertilized and is to harsh for seedlings. In the future I will start in rockwool cubes prob. When you water miracle grow it like releases the nutes that are mixed in. I watered alot at first and the combo was no good. Now that this one made it this far I think its in the clear. Also I foliar fed it a little nitrogen and a little phorphorus way to early. Plants dont need nutes at all really for the first few weeks. Also dropped the cfl on the one that is living a while back, lol. Good thing I started with bag seed. I got 10 northern light seeds coming.
Thanks again for posting. I will try to keep this updated pretty well. When the northern lights comes in a few weeks Im going to want to get them going right away so I will have to figure something out setup wise. Probably will start 5 and hope I get at least a couple fems. I ordered regular seeds not feminized. Its a lil cheaper. I will prob move 1 male to a different room and harvest its pollen when it produces in case I want to 'impregnate' a fem. I will keep a lower bud branch instead of chopping them all and I will fertilize that one maybe to get some seeds to work with. I will also try to clone the lower branches that I plan to prune in rockwool cubes.

monkeybones said:

Looking good man, I'm sub'd. My friend is looking into something simple like this and I might be picking up some infos to pass off to him in here

Looks like you're off to a pretty good start. What strain are you running with?

Click to expand...

marksk85 said:

looking good im also using cfls in a smaller place, definatly gunna keep watchin, love all the info you give about wuts goin on

Click to expand...

+ rep for you guys for posting so fast. I just put this post up

Also If anyone has questions about why I did something a certain way I am more then happy to tell ya. I have learned a ton from the hours of reading I have done on this site. I can suggest some great guides I have found and a great video I watched earlier. I am in the middle of another video now that I will finish tomorrow. First vid was like 40 minutes canadian documentary style. Soil based medium. AWESOME VID...Ill go ahead and link it http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-259262713655286519&q=cannabis+grow# The one I am watching now is with a wierd do it yourself type guy. Good info though, so far. Especially on do it yourself hydro which I may switch to on a smaller scale.

Coolbeans, your plants are growing nice and compact. No stretching which is great! Your lighting is doing its job.

I also used prefertilized soil for my first grow; started with shultz and moved to miracle gro soil. I believe the shultz was much less potent though, because I had no issues with burning. I think it depends on the plant; my AK-48's are ultra-fast growing nutrients hogs. I've just kept watering restricted to when the soil is dry and it's been smooth sailing. Putting my ladies into flower today.

Northern lights will treat you well. It's pure indica and will grow nice and shrubby for your limited space. +rep for the indepth grow log.

4/15
Changed setup:
Took it out of temporary habitat and put it in the cabinet. To clarify, it was already in the grow cab but I took it out of the rubbermaid with only 1 light above the plant.

Pot:
I had it growing in a jiffy cup so far. Not sure on the exact side right now. I checked today and there were a few roots growing out the bottom. I am not going to use jiffy pots in the future I dont think. Not sure but I think the roots might have a hard time growing threw the cup how they are supposed to.
At any rate. The jiffy cup has been placed inside probably like a 1 gal pot, it doesnt say and its old so idk.

Dirt:
I prefilled the new pot half way or so. I also moistened the new dirt. I set the jiffy pot in and filled around and moistened it in.
Still MG for now not sure Im happy about it but its what I got.

Watering:
I did not water yesterday and only once the day before because I wanted to see my plant tell me it needed water (leaves drooped). Just doing that for learning process to figure out how often it likes water. So ya the leaves are droopy right how.

Lights:
Went from having 1 compact florescent bulb 25 watt daytime (6500)' bulb sideways right above it....to 4 x 25 watt cfl daytime 6500's + 2 32 watt cfl bright white(5000)'s.

Plant Positioning:
The Plant is positioned dead center.

Light Setup:
2 Y adapters one on each of the middle 2 sockets, these are the 4 25 watt 6500''s.
The outside sockets have 1 32 watt 5000 each.
Ill get a better pic of the lights tomorrow but for now use this one and your imagination.

Humidity:
Under the temporary setup it had 60-70 percent humidity. In the new setup it probably has around 40 percent.

Past Humidity Problem?:
When the one plant died and the current plant was also having problems I had just moved them from the fake humidity dome setup to the cabinet. So after a few days I put the one that survived back under the dome thinking it must have been the change in humidity that messed the plants up.

Broke the damn hygrometer(humidity) part of my regular $5 Indoor/Outdoor thermometer / hygrometer
So I cant tell the humidity now. (I f-ed with the coil on the back because the humidity was reading 0, dumb idea in hindsight)

Things I did to try to increase humidity in the cabinet:
Put a sheet of felt up that I will moisten by spraying it with water periodically. I could just put the bottom of it in a container of water but then I would have to put it near the bottom of the cabinet. I wanted it right under the fan the blows down over the 'custom heater' because that fan is always on so there is always air being blown downward (towards the plant) over the moist felt. Felt is a very airy or 'loose' fabric so it is good at both absorbing and releasing water.
Also there is a bath towel at the bottom that is damp as well. The intake fan that kicks on when the cabinet gets to warm is right on the bottom. So that fan will hopefully blow on the towel and release some moisture as well.

Nutrients:
I am mainly only giving it water right now, tap water. I did spray a little bit of diluted phosphorus on top of the new soil so when i put the jiffy pot on it the roots that did grow through the bottom will get a little phosphorus. I moistened the soil with straight water, sprayed a lil of the phosphorus and then more water.

P.S. I'm pretty ripped right now. Picked up some really nice shit while Im waiting on mine to grow. Grow damn you!

3 weeks and looking tiny. I hope it enjoys all the light and the new home.

Damn, was that a long enough post? Lol..Im trying to keep as much info as possible if I am going to learn from experience.

Cool! Are you going to grow one northern lights in with the bag seed. I have a cab about the same size almost ready for my master kush seedling to move in. I think I will go scrog with this one.

Do you foliar spray your plants alot because they look soaked in alot of the pics, I would lighten up, I only mist mine once a day i needed.

chainseeker said:

Cool! Are you going to grow one northern lights in with the bag seed. I have a cab about the same size almost ready for my master kush seedling to move in. I think I will go scrog with this one.

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Ya. That bagseed is going to veg for a long time I think because I would like to put a northern lights or 2 in there. My cab is like 4 sqft inside so I could do 4 plants if I had enough light. I went out today and got enough supplies to double my light. Will post more about that in a minute.

Oh, and I think I am going to scrog as well

DankBudzzz said:

Do you foliar spray your plants alot because they look soaked in alot of the pics, I would lighten up, I only mist mine once a day i needed.

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Yeah I was prob foliar spraying to much. Couple times a day sometimes. I was doing it cuz the humidity is terrible but oh well. I pretty much stopped that already and I have been watering way less now. Today I got seltzer water that I put in my 2 oz spray bottle that sprays really fine mist. So I will hit them with that once a day or so. Maybe every other day. That way they get the CO2. Also when I do that on plants that have grown up a bit I will include weak nutrients with the seltzer water.

4/19
Ticking every closer to 4 20 day.

Temp is peaking at 84 with 12 bulbs.
The main plant really likes it though. It is looking really happy and growing fast.

Organic Miracle Grow Gardening soil plant broke soil first and is looking ok, not great but ok.

The One in potting mix that grew its taproot just hours behind the MG one has not broke soil yet but it looks like it wants to. It may be getting stuck, i see it lost or is loosing its shell just under the soil level and im hoping it pops up.

The third one that germed last has no sign of soil break yet but its a day behind.

They are all in the box under the lights but i am trying to keep the 2 that didnt break soil shielded from the light
Here's the pics:
Big plant, looking happy..One broke soil...One you can see it wants to.

check out my grow my babies are much smaller than yours at the same age i dont know what i'm doing wrong.