New Grow 2nd try All CFL Rubbermaid

Hello Everyone,

I am back and I'm ready for a new grow. I'm going to try and start down the rubbermaid path. I've been away for a couple days building my new grow box and today I have finally finished it I will go ahead and let you all take a peek at it. I haven't started growing anything yet as I will be asking some questions before I get started. But here is what I have:

(2)30 Gal Rubbermaid Totes
(1)120mm Computer fan on top sucking in the nice fresh cold air
(2) 80 mm computer fans one is sucking the hot air from the lights and blowing it out of the box and the other is pulling in fresh air to the bottom totes where my plants will be living at.
(4) 42 watt 150 watt equiv CFL Lights
(4) 26 Watt 6500k daylight CFl Bulbs
Inside is wrapped with mylar and if I can make any advice if you start a rubbermaid grow just paint the inside white the mylar is a pain in the ass to get in excuse my horrible tape jobs.
(2) 1 1/2 inch pvc elbows and 2 1 1/2 inch connectors for fresh air into and out of the box.

That pretty much does it for what I all have for supplies of course I've got the weather striping to seal it all up and I have to trailer pins holding the whole grow box together.

Plan: I plan on putting 3 new seeds in this and running them in here starting off in 16 oz cups and then of course transplanting later into 3 gallon containers where they will finish their grow. This box will be sitting in a nice cool room with an A/C vent right on top of it so the top fan pulls in nice cold air.

Questions:
(1) My number one question is I'm wondering what type of soil I should use. I've seen the different mixtures but I live somewhere where all I have is home depot and walmart to go to so I'm kind of sort on supplies and need a good pre mixed bag of soil any ideas? I've tried scotts premium soil but my last grow failed me and I'm not sure if it was the soil or what Io was doing wrong.

(2) I've seen in another rubbermaid grow a guy took a 2 liter bottle and put some water, yeast and sugar together to ferminate and create co2 would this be something I should do or will it not make much of a difference?

(3) What light cycle should I use 24/0 or 18/6?

This should conclude all I have right now I'm not starting this grow until I have everything in line but this is my new journal for all my supporters from my first grow and this is where you con track my new grow.

I would like to thank thank you in advanced for all the advice I receive during this grow this is for you

Peace Not Greed,
Haxxor

Stay away from the premium soils that contain any kind of built in nutrients. I would go with top soil if options are limited.

Making your own CO2 might be fun but as far as practical forget about it. Much more important to take that time spent messing with the CO2 and make sure you have a good ventilation system.

Dont use a 24 hour light schedule. It will slow the development of the preflowers (sexual maturity). Plants grown under 24 hour light take an extra week or two to sexually mature vs plants that are given a dark period of 6 hours. You know plants grow at night too, they store energy all day and then use it to go to work at night. The whole chemical process changes and the flow of energy reverses.

Anyway thats what I believe, good luck with your grow!

Alright thank you for the advice I was wondering Walmart sells the soil called hyponex and I looked all over the bag and there is no nutrients that I can see added to it would this be something I can use? Also would I have to buy anything extra for this soil I know nutrients later on of course but just to make the soil should I buy anything else if using this soil will work?

To be honest I dont know that much about growing in dirt. So a second opinion wouldnt hurt. That dirt sounds fine, you got the idea. I know that if you mix the soil with perlite it gives better mositure control and oxygen to the roots. I also remember reading that mary jane likes a sand and soil mix. I dont think its a good idea to go mixing sand without getting more info. But thats all I have to offer.

POOR MAN FOX FARM....1 part perlite to 3 parts soil..just open the bag and fill it to the top with Perlite, the bags are usually 3/4 full of soil.
Add about 4 measured cups of earthworm castings
2 TBSP of Dolomite powdered gardening Lime. done and done.

Alright I believe I can make that soil mixture the only thing I may not be able to get is the earthworm castings will that make a big difference? Also I was wondering the mixture you are saying would that be to mix a big bag of soil I believe that how you were meaning it and if so how do I go about mixing it all together if it's in the bag?

Hey man, I'll definitely be following this again.
I love how organized you keep your posts, thanks.
1. I'm cheap and used like Hydronex potting soil, it's super cheap
2. CO2 can never hurt my friend, I would recommend it.
3. You could start out 24/0 for maybe the first few days, then go 18/6. I generally just start from 18/6. Personal preference really.

Goodluck with this one bro, hope it goes well

Later.

ok man heres what i have to say, for soil use organic mixed with perilte, peat moss and verm... thats what i use in my grow

next that out take system wont move enough air for that box and 8 cfl lights... you'll be hitting very high temperatures... also with so many outputs how will you carbon fliter all of them

also you need a fan inside the box to move around the leaves

I'm thinking of CO'2 myself but I dont know yet im playing that one by year, id ont seem to need it and i wouldn't worry about it for a while

also it depends on how tall your box is, if you got a lot of room then veg for a while at 18/6, if not go to straight 12/12 thats what i do in my rubbermaid

your box looks nice, have you run it with the lights on to check your temperatures?? dont assume that since you have several fans that the temps will be ok... run the box with lights and fans on for 24 hours and keep check the temps, also IMHO having an intake fan on the top of the box is a huge mistake ( I made the same one) heat rises, so you will be blowing the hot air from the lights back down into your grow box..... the fan on the top shouldnt be used as an intake...

Hello everyone,

Thank you for coming and stopping by my post. Uber very nice to see you again and glad to see you are following this grow. Everyone new coming to this journal I hope you all stick around I will take any feed back into consideration to try and make this a very successful grow. So here are my questions once I have this down I will be setting up my grow and I will be updating frequently!

(1)So for the soil if I used hyponex should I add some of the perrilte, peat moss, and verm to the mix if so how much should I add? OR could I just pot them in the soil and see how they do without any of that stuff added to the soil as I've seen many plants grown in this soil before but of course hey weren't marijuana plants. Uber since you've grown with this soil before what have you done?

(2)Ok so thats great to know that I have some flaws in my box now I want to fix them so lets see what I can do.

(2A)First I believe someone said that the top fan is not good for an intake so I was wondering should I swap it around and make it and outtake and than take the fan on the side and make it an intake?

(2B)Also with my pvc elbows should I take one of them out and just have one in the box if so should I take the top half or the bottom half out? OR is there a better way I should just do the whole thing?

(2C)So someone says I need a fan in here to hit the leaves and such anyone have any ideas of what I could do for that?

(2D)Is the fan on the bottom have that pulls in fresh air ok to have?

(3) Was wondering if I should really run all 8 of these lights are should I take out the y adapter and only run two daylight bulbs all together?

I will do a heat test soon after I hear how I should move my fans around and what I should do about my pvc pipes.

Also sorry if this message was long but I'm wanting to have everything planned out before I jump into it that is what I did on my last grow and I kind of got too far a head of myself.

I believe that's it for right now again thank you all for supporting me and I hope you all stick around to help me through this.

Thanks for my longtime supporters stopping by too and following this next grow!

Haxxor

yes exhaust should be at the top in my opinion the heat will naturally rise to the top, and yes if you have an intake fan pulling air into the box from the bottom or side that is sufficient to keep the air moving inside the box for the plants......

Also I was wondering about the soil if I could just go ahead and get the hyponex soil and just make a 1:1 ratio with perilte I've done some reading around and have seen this 1:1 ratio when using commercial soil and was wondering what you all thought?

ok so I did temp check and after about 3 hours the temps were pushing 98 so I went ahead and dug through all my scraps and was able to find an adequate piece of plexi glass that I put in right under the lights so I'm hoping this will at least help some of the heat issue.

Also I went ahead and I got some of scotts premium top soil with no nutes or anything and picked up some MG perlite does anyone have a suggestion on how I should go about mixing the two to create my soil?

i dont do soil, i do hempy buckets, and be careful the mg perlite has nutes in it

Ok so these hempy buckets you speak of how effective are they? What exactly is a hempy bucket I've looked around and seen a couple things on it but was wondering how you have yours set up? What is everyone else's opinion on these hempy buckets?

I've been also reading around and I seen that alot of rubbermaid start 12/12 right on seedling would this be something I should look into cause obviously I don't have alot of room to work with?

hempy buckets are a passive hydro system, I have tried soil, dwc, and also bought an Aerogarden, the hempy bucket has them all beat imho, vey simple and user friendly, I will give you a link to the hempy collective its all explained there, but simply its abucket with a hole about 2" up on the side, everyone has an opinion about the medium but for simplicity go with 100% perlite ( thats what I am using with great sucess) put your plant in water everyday fo the first week and then water as needed you cant overwater as the hole on the side is a runoff, and perlite doesnt retain mch moisture...

link for hempy

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/59705-hempy-collective.html

Alright thank you for this I will look into this after I do this grow I'm going to try soil one more time since I already bought everything but this is something I will look into.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I should mix my top soil with the perlite I got.

Also does anyone have a suggestion on the time setting I'm trying to pick between 18/6 or start from seed 12/12 but I'm not sure what would be the right way to go?

I actually may use 2 pots for soil and 1 pot I will make into a hempy and see if I can pull it off. So bigd what size buckets do you use for your grow? And I read this and I'm just not sure on the whole way to start this off It says start in a 16 oz cup so should I fill the cup with perlite then let it fill with roots then switch to the hempy bucket and have it all full of perlite and just transplant into it? Also what should I use to catch the run off water since this will be in the rubbermaid and of course you can't just let the water run into the box lol