The evolution of my grow room. 1st indoor grow

This journal is about my first (ongoing) experience of growing indoors, and includes all the mistakes, accidents, and negligence along the way.

Over the past 5 months, I've googled dozens of pot related questions, and could always rely on Rollitup to have several different answers, debates and discussions related to my question. Needless to say, I've been inspired to write this.

To start this, I need to go back to a year ago. A friend asked me to throw some seeds in the ground from some bag weed he liked. Nothing fancy, no weird fuggin 'purple hindu brain rape kush' or anything. Just regular ol' garden variety local bud. I didn't think much of it, I've got 5 acres of wooded locust tree filled land, with thorns big enough to use as nails- noone goes out there. What the hell, I figured I'd get enough out of it to keep my wife from spending my money on the shit every other week, so I germinated 15 seeds in the greenhouse ( forgot about them for a couple weeks, hidden on a high shelf) and ended up with 10 or so plants in the yard.

Now to me, these weeds were, well... weeds. And other than not killing them, I treated them like they were weeds. I might take water to them every now and then, but I promise it wasn't very often in the beginning. Now here's the thing that gets me... Actually, I need to stop and give some history. I've raised veggies since I was a kid. We have a 120' long 30' wide vegetable garden, an herb garden in the front yard, fruit trees, nut trees, and a greenhouse my wife tinkers around in. I have never once, not one time gone through my garden and taken a picture of every plant.. I might take a pic of the garden as a whole, but who gives a shit about tomatoes or squash, right?! My friend on the other hand, would come out 2-3 times a week to look at all the plants and take pictures. I live 15 miles outside the city and 20 miles from my buddy, and I mean no bullshit, in the beginning he did most of the work... for weeds.

So for the first couple months, it's business as usual. I'd spend 30 minutes a day in the garden, and maybe glance in the direction of the weed to make sure it hadn't died. If one of them looked really thirsty, I'd spray in its general direction with a hose. After awhile (around August) the paths leading to each plant became worn and easily manageable, so I'd actually walk out there and water/nute. I use botanicare in the garden and that shit is expensive as fuck, so they didn't get much in the way of nutes... yet.

September rolls around and everything is going smooth, there isn't a whole lot left to do in the garden, so I was trimming a peach tree. I'm minding my own business, sweating my balls off when a north wind picks up (anyone who works outside can appreciate a breeze on a windless day). I stood up straight to enjoy the breeze when it hit me... that sweet, stinky smell. It was really strange at first, I mean... I knew what it was, it just didn't register that it was coming from my land. I dropped my chainsaw like a zombie drops a rotten arm when it sees a live victim, and walked over to the first plant I saw. I very gently squeezed a bud on one of the side chutes and damn near stuck it up my nose trying to get all the smelly goodness out of it. Now its on...

I spent a couple hundred dollars on nutes, built dowel frames around each plant so we could tie off each cola to ensure max. light exposure, and I spent about an hour a day tending to them.

We harvested the first plant in late September, neither one of us knew when they were mature, so we guessed... and were wrong-Mistake no.1. I let the plant dry outside in the sunlight-Mistake no. 2. I'm not going to number each mistake, you get the idea already. Besides, it'd be irritating to read and depressing to type.

Most of the pictures of my outdoor work were lost when i dropped a phone in a customers toilet, but I do have a few after harvest. We got about 3 ounces per plant, not including the hermaphrodite that pollenated fucking everything. Here's a couple

I want to post a couple more pictures of last years outdoor harvest, simply because it was the best weed I've ever smoked. The two pictures are of 3 different strains. You can see the sativa buds in the background, and the two small piles of the good stuff. I have no idea what they are, but I can tell you neither plant grew to more than 3 ft. tall, or had more than 1/4oz. of bud. They both had indigo blue water leaves on them that were almost fluorescent in the sunlight, and if you handled them you'd have to wash your hands (I knew nothing of finger hash at the time).

These were the last two plants we harvested, and the least excited about, due to not having the huge colas the big sativas had. But damn was it good. 1 hit n' quit...

Anyways, we thought we were done so we divided everything up 50/50 and that was that... until the rest of the weeds died. One plant survived the harvest. It had never been watered, given nutrients, or even looked upon by a human eye for 6 months. Considering that its camo plants towered over it, it looked pretty good relatively speaking. It still needed a few more weeks to ripen, but by this time it was around mid Oct. (I think), and was starting to get pretty cold at night. Matter of fact, it was suppose to drop below freezing the night I found it.
I even made a thread on roll it ups newb boards asking for opinions.

There wasn't much of a choice here, either leave it be and watch it die or bring it inside and probably watch it die anyway. I chose the latter, and wasn't surprised to see it wilting after 2 days. Here's a pic with my pro 120w grow light... to think I actually thought it would help. wow

The box I built was the first stage of my grow rooms evolution. As a self employed plumber, I've got enough parts packed in the garage to build several homes, but those skills won't come into play until a little later

While I was deciding what to do with the last plant, I was also contemplating the next summers grow. The fun was over and I wasn't ready for it to end. Fuck man, 5 1/2 months was a long time to wait, I was ready to go NOW. So I grabbed a beer and slapped in a copenhagen, and stared at my plant for awhile (I don't think I mentioned that yet, but I do that from time to time now. Just fuckin sit there and stare at my babies).

The box was 6'+ tall, 4'5" wide and 3'deep. The perfect size for a 4'wide floro set up and tall enough to set a table in. I walked over to the seed box, grabbed it and headed for the kitchen. As for the sickly plant, my little brother drove 400 miles round trip so he could make hash. I asked him later how it turned out and he said it was "decent".

I germinated 22 seedlings total (and forgot about them again) and ended up with 16 a couple weeks later. This pic is a day after I remembered them.

Pretty sickly looking I know, but I pulled them out of it. I bought some mylar from the local garden center, bought a 6 row-54w per light T-5 system for 140$ from the parts house, with 2/ 85w cfl's that I mounted caddy corner under the floros. I made a front cover out of cardboard and a flap to close the thing from nosy kids, and away we went.
This is from early Jan.


And the box

That box was ghetto as shit, but it served its purpose. The last picture I posted was taken in early January. This picture I took on Jan. 29th and was the last picture I took with the box as my growing space. I had a space heater in the box to keep everything warm, and it didn't keep up with -17deg. temperatures. I lost 8 plants in one night... sickening.
Not bad though for a month of growth


From there I decided to stop fucking around and bought a 400w reflector with a digital ballast off ebay for 200$, built an actual grow room (with insulation) and set up a fill&drain system for some potential mothers I had already cloned.


I separated the veg and flowering sides of the room with black plastic and some cardboard from the first box.

I have an idea I'd like an opinion on, before I implement it... thanks in advance.

The drain hose from my mother/clone reservoir tank slipped out today, and spilled several gallons of water on the floor. I'm sure this happens to everyone at some point, but I want it to be a one time thing.
My idea is to jackhammer the floor and install 2 polyethylene sump pits, one under the veg table and one under the flower table. These pits will be my reservoirs. I'll hard pipe each pits drain line around the base of the room, whye them into each other and exit it out in to the yard (the grow room backs up to an exterior wall of the garage). I don't think I'll want to keep a pump in either pit at all times, so I'll install a union at each pit so a pump can be dropped in when its time to change water.
Any thoughts are welcome!!!

One of the 4 plants that survived the January freeze went hermy on me. I think it's an auto flower of some sort. If not, it definitely has some rud properties. It never had a chute grow longer than 12", and it showed signs of flowering even before I switched to 12/12.

This little bastard here:


I tried to make bubble hash out of it, and failed miserably.

Notice in that picture, the plant is tied down. The other 2 are even worse, I've got one that I tied down in 4 different spots to prevent from having to cut my table legs. So I researched different techniques, and decided to scrog them. yeah yeah, I know it's a little late but these sativas were cropped when they were very young, and are pretty flexible.

BEFORE


AFTER



I've been removing a little of the undergrowth at a time, and cutting fan leaves in half that block bud sites.

This one is a week after I started the scrog


and one more

Time to do some work this weekend. I'm going to go ahead and install underground reservoirs in the room. I also bought the shit I need to hard pipe exhaust / air intake and got a really nice inline fan from the supply house for 20$, that had a small dent in the side. Nothing a pair of flu crimpers couldn't fix

I might install a hand sink just outside the grow room, haven't decided yet. What I really need to do is install 50' of lateral chambers outside the garage and put a floor drain in the center of my space. The mess my trays drain hose caused the other night was a pain in the ass... we'll see though, that's a shitload of work.

One of the restaurants I run plumbing service for, is going to give me a co2 tank and regulator in exchange for me installing a pre-rinse sprayer... 5 min. of work and I have one in the garage. Im really excited about that.

Best of all though, my little brother is coming up next wed. with 4 purple kush and 5 diesel seeds. Not that I don't enjoy my current set up, it's just that these things are taking forever. 5 weeks since I changed to 12/12 and the buds have hardly developed out of pre-flowers. I'm thinking its genetics (mixed with a little ignorance).

These pics were taken a few days ago. It'll be 5 weeks tomorrow that I switched to 12/12

I think I'm going to trash my mother plants. I decided that with good seeds on the way, there's no reason to continue growing bag weed. I'll finish what I have in the scrog though, hopefully they're less than 2 months from being done. If it isn't finished when the kush and diesel are ready to flower, I'll teach myself how to make honey oil. I did throw out all but a few of the clones. I kept just a few for a small outdoor grow.

Got the inline fan and the duct pipe installed, but I forgot to buy a plug for the pigtail... whoops.
The fan runs at 240cfm.

I still need to clear out the room so I can get the reservoirs installed. The holes are cut just need to drop in the basins and plumb them in.

I nute burned a few of the bud sites this week. I didn't take into consideration that a shitload of foliage had been removed when I started the scrog, and all the nutes from the past few feedings went straight to the tops. fuck.

On a side note, I'm going to try Botanicares' Bloom Maximizer 0-10-6. I've never used it before because it's pricey. 29$ for a quart.

I stayed up til 3 in the morning drinking beer with a buddy, reflecting about my underground reservoir project. I may end up scrapping the whole idea and filling the holes back in. If I decide in the future to go with a water farm set up, the reservoirs need to be above ground... fuck i dunno...
I could seriously use some direction at this point. Google isn't helping, and neither of the hydroponic books I bought have anything to say about keeping the reservoirs underground. Any Constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

Other than that, I've gotta plant some potatoes today. My wife is irritated I didn't get them in the ground last week. And irritated I haven't cleaned out the greenhouse. And irritated I haven't prepped the garden yet... The scrog looks really good though, and the grow room is coming along nicely.

Disaster in the grow room. I forgot to water yesterday, left the space heater on and didn't have a fan going. So I guess this is the negligence part of the grow.

I can pull them out of it, but it'll probably set me back at least a week, probably longer.

The scrog still looks pretty sick, but not near as bad as this morning. I've been spraying the leaves and tops with water all day and removing necrosis when I see it. .

This isn't the first time I've forgotten to water, but it's the first time with a 400w hps 5" above the foliage. This will probably be my last soil grow, hydro is just so much easier to maintain.

I can save the plants, but it isn't worth it. I had to remove a shitload of fan leaves, bud sites and water leaves. I'd have to re-veg it for a month and by that time, the seeds I'm germinating will be ready for flower, if not sooner. So what I'll do is leave them be under 12/12 and hope for some hash oil.

^ Is all due to forgetting one watering. ONE TIME! shoulda coulda woulda i guess... oh well.

This journal is now scrapped and on to the next. My little brother showed up today with Blue Diesel, Purple Kush and a few he said I could probably just name myself. The room is ready, I need to get my shit in gear.