Vapor, (can i get a pic of syrup)
Sure bro, this is from
my current grow! This is day 27 from germination, under 1800W of HPS (mostly Metal Halide during veg) on a 24/0 light schedule, in a 2 gallon pail. I'm currently about 34 or 36 days on her; she's a few inches taller and bushier with flowers starting to form.
I have been wondering if i can do exactly what you said about just adding a softball size amount of seedling mix or generally neutral medium. In like probably 6 hours of searching i couldn't find an article relating to this, or i just couldn't come up with the exact wording for google to land it. (wtf how is google not a word yet) Im going to post pics shortly.
You'll be totally safe doing this; you're essentially creating a buffer area that's easier for your plant to start growing in. I wouldn't start mixing nutrient rich soil mixes
together, but the goal is to have a light to no nutrient area for the seedling to start off in. See, the two round leaves that first sprout on your seedlings are called cotyledons. These give the seedling it's initial nutrients until it develops it's root systems and leaves to support itself. You start blasting it with nutes, and you're trying to make it run before it learned to crawl.
Now, looking at your grow space, here's my personal opinion:
If you're worried about heat loss and cold temperatures,
if it were me, I would buy a roll of insulation and cut my pieces to fit all those open spaces in the interior walls. Then I'd take some 1/4" OSB/particle/chip board and cut them to fit the interior walls so you've got all smooth walls. Looking at this picture, you have a ton of angles and corners for light to reflect in which way it wants; I would try to create a more uniform surface for the light to reflect on. Flat and smooth! If you're going this far, I'd ditch that paint and get some reflective mylar and stick it on either with a low/no-VOC industrial spray or sticky-back adhesive.
You'll want to try to insulate your door to the grow space somehow; you could tack insulation to it, use rigid insulation, etc.
The goal is to make this baby as air tight and insulated as possible so that the air is flowing in and out primarily only where YOU want it to go. Air and odor travels fastest through the paths of least resistance, so let's make those paths the right ones!
Also, do you have drip drays for your plants? You may have excess water runoff during watering or spill accidentally; wouldn't hurt to stick down a reflective material on there and some spill proof material to boot. Wet wood promotes mold growth; and we do NOT want that.
Are you sold on your analog temp/humidity equipment? You can get a battery operated digital temp/humidity monitor that gives you current and LOW/HIGH averages over 24 hours. Very handy to see just how low the temps got overnight (instead of setting up camp with a sleeping bag in the grow room next to the thermometer haha
) If not for the ease of use; it gives you more insight into your temperature ranges.
It's also not a bad idea to do some "dry runs" with your temperatures. Leave the lights on for 24 hours and see what your high and low temperatures are through the day. Record the temps before you start any insulating and see how they fare afterwards. The less surprises when you start growing, the better. :stylez rasta smoke:
How is the ceiling of the grow space set up? Is it totally open? Space cut for the size of the fan? Are you opposed to using in-line fans and flex duct?
What are you planning on doing for smell? These plants WILL stink. There may be "low odor" strains, but there are no "no odor" strains, and you will want to address this before you start growing and not afterwards when you open up your shed and smell the most obvious smell you've ever smelled (or worse, smelling it OUTSIDE.) Trust me, it doesn't take much to chief up a big area, especially during flowering!
I would highly recommend looking into carbon scrubbers, which in this case is usually an inline device with a ported opening filled with activated carbon, which is carbon that's been super heated at high temperatures to create micro valleys and pores in the surface area of the carbon for molecules to get trapped (both odor causing molecules and other.)
Here's a picture of one of my 6" carbon scrubbers with a 6" 400 CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) centrifuge fan attached to it.
The 400 CFM fan pulls air through the filter (which is a porous metal grate that has a fibrous sleeve that fits over the entire enclosure; this is a pre-filter that catches larger molecules like dirt and dust, you want to prevent these from reaching the carbon as they more easily coat the surface area, diminishing the effectiveness.
They work incredibly slick; if you've spent any time at all looking at odor control methods on the internet, I'm sure you've seen carbon scrubbers mentioned.
I started a guide here on AFN for odor control and reduction methods; it's a work in progress (been on the back burner for a bit,) but I've had a few other members on here tell me it helped them understand the stink of their plants better haha!
Here's the link to that if you care for a read:
Vapor's Comprehensive Guide to Odor Control and Reduction Methods
At 3 ft by 3 ft by about 8 ft, you've got roughly 72 cubic feet of space.
I personally have a 4 foot by 4 foot by 7 foot tent (112 cubic feet,) and a 3 foot by 2 foot by 5 foot tent (30 cubic feet.)
To give you an idea, I exhaust each of those tents with a 6" 400 CFM centrifuge attached to a 6" carbon scrubber and use a 6" 240 CFM inline can fan for my fresh air intake. It has worked swimmingly for me, and it also achieves negative air pressure (exhausting more air in the space than you're bringing in.)
Why would you want negative air pressure in your space? Remember when I said that air and odor follows the path of least resistance? If you are exhausting more air than you're bringing in, you're creating a point of suction at your exhaust that is drawing air towards it. This means those odor causing molecules in the air will head towards the exit (your scrubber,) and not passive air intakes or leaks/cracks in your grow area. If you had positive air pressure, you'd be blowing more air into the grow space than exhausting, which would force the air to find it's own exits (and I promise you it will, unless you're the most epic builder known to man.)
If you're working on a strapped budget; let us know and we can work with what you have. If you're willing to spend a few bucks, consider this post at least some food for thought; definitely do your own research so you can decide for yourself what feels good for you and best for your wallet; and ultimately one way or another you'll be on your way to growing some buds!
It's incredibly addictive, if you don't want to invest into it now, just wait until you get your first harvest and say to yourself "... I can do this better next time!" And then you DO it! Hope this helps you out a bit bro! :karma Cloud:
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