Indoor fwiw - 1st indoor grow log - hopefully I will keep it updated

[oldguyintn]

This will let you see a totally inexperience grower "in action" if you are really bored. I am seriously growing for personal medicinal use, even tho at the moment it will be severely limited medical use - but I hope that changes and I will have some really nice aged smoke if all goes well
Starting my 1st indoor grow and am going with a dwc system I put together plus a soil grow (or 2 now maybe).
So, a super fast quick summary.
Grow room is about 4x6 or so. Lights are 1 250 watt MH/HPS and 1 400 watt MH/HPS (Gotham Hydro). Is in outside garage, now heated with 65k furnace. Grow room insulated well, rest of garage not even close. Heat will NOT be an issue (except lack of, going to be interesting to see my next gas bill)
For soil grow I sort of use subcool's recipe
My home made dwc - Lowes bucket and lid. No hydro store so bought a plastic planter that had holes in bottom, used soldering iron and made a bunch more. Cut hole in lid, insert pot, silicone in.
"soldered" hole near bottom of bucket, installed pvc and hose bib to drain bucket when needed. Also made holes in bucket for pump wires, air hoses and 3/4" hose from pump.
Air pump is Tetra Whisper 60 with 2" limewood air stone. Also using a bubble wand, was like 15" so broke it in half, sealed end and now about 6" long. Installed Tsunami bilge pump in bucket. Used JB Weld to cement it to bottom of bucket. ran 3/4" hose out hole in bucket and back thru hole in lid. Figuring would help add oxygen. Added pvc pipe to top of hose to "spray" water back in bucket, creating more action than just flowing directly back. Used a computer power supply for 12v needed for pump.
Needed a temp box for seedlings so got a 27 gallon container, added water and an aquarium heater. Put a container in water to keep rockwool out of water. Heat water to 86-88 degrees (is on cold cement floor), covered with saran wrap to make it humid in there (seems to be working GREAT)
Overwhelmed with choices of nutes so just got Floraduo. Annnnndddd, who knows, some say yea, many say nay, but also trying Superthrive occasionally.

No more of that. On to the log. I will try to keep it fairly updated and you can read me fail or read me get lucky. I am sort of a trial and error type guy. I read what others are doing and sort of wing it from there, so I would not take anything, and I mean anything, that you read here as the way to do something. Might be best to do the exact opposite.
let's get growing.



1/24 – soaked auto white widow and ultraviolet auto in container of water

Submerged rockwool cubes inlight mix of Floraduo and 1 drop of Thrive (gallon)



1/25 – auto white seed sank,ultraviolet seed did not sink. Put both in rockwool, rw in baggie and placed by window



1/26 – busy, did not check seeds



1/27 – checked seeds, ultra notsprouted, widow should have been checked yesterday. Did not grow into rw but upa good inch, falling over. Made inch size hole in rw and dropped seedling in,put a cfl on it for overnight, still in baggie



1/28 – still no ultra sprout.Widow looking droopy. Prepared “box” in grow area. Put water in 27 gallon tote,dropped in heater, set temp at 88, covered in saran wrap. Turned on 150 watt MHlamp about 3’ away. Reason for high heat is grow area is in garage, heated to 65 degrees



1/29 – No Ultra. Started soaking1 Rhino Ryder and 1 blue mystic auto. Checked seedling around 11 am – lookinggreat. Grew another good inch and standing up straight, looks much better. Asheat from lamp not an issue, dropped light to about 24”. Opened up saran wraptop some to start cooling it down a bit.

 

[oldguyintn]

1-29 - scary moment. Furnace in garage quit working. Cranked up all of the HID lights, temp dropped down to low 50's. Working okay next day. I think I know what the problem was.
Okay, this is an experiment after all - widow sprout was about 2" long. Was getting tall and tap root was just to the bottom of the rockwool. Was going to set it in DWC but started wondering........so, just as an experiment. I added a heater to the dwc bucket, temp set to 67. I added some hydroton to pot, removed sprout from rockwool. placed taproot in bubbly water, supported it with more hydroton. NO rockwool - just a taproot.
Will probably kill it, but who knows.
Seeds I was soaking sank, so I put them in rw, prepared as I did the widow. Placed them in "grow chamber". Auto Blue Mystic seed had opened a bit already. I think I like soaking them in water, will have to see results tho.

1-30 - didn't get out to garage until around 1. Messed with furnace, is working now. Think it "overheated" because I had a deflector in front of it sending heat towards grow room. Temp was around 50. Furnace working now, temp back up to 65. taproot is still alive, don't see much change. Don't want to lift lid to see if taproot grew any, will wait a day or 2 and see what is going on.

Was expecting to see auto blue mystic popping up, but nothing yet.

 

[oldguyintn]

2-1 - Guess I need to get some pics.
dmc widow is making it. When I took it out of the rw and went straight water, the seed shell was still on the leaves keeping them from "opening". I gently took it off when I put it into the water and they were of course "wrinkly" of whatever you want to call it. Today they are looking good. Only thing I see is it seems to be maybe getting too tall, so I lowered the light again. I didn;t want to get it down this far so soon, but it isn't adding heat - just hoping it's not too much uv etc. The light is down to about 20".

Seeds in RW - Blue Mystic has popped thru and looking good. Rhino Ryder tap root came out and was pointed sideways, so I switched it so it was going down.

So biggie now is to see how the skipping the rw in the dmc experiment turns out. At least it is still alive and growing so that is a plus.

 

[oldguyintn]

Ok, so here's the pic. Doesn't look like much yet, but it is still alive.. Leaves aren't much yet but it is actually pretty long. When I "transplanted" it from the rw I had the root just to the bottom of the pot and it is a 4" pot. At least it has survived me so far and it now appears it is done with the shock stage from me removing it from the rw and covering it with the hydroton "boulders.
If you really think about it, life is pretty amazing. At times we think of these plants as fragile things that are lucky if they make it when in fact they are actually pretty darn durable and can suffer thru quite a bit of harsh treatment in it's desire to live it's life.

 

[oldguyintn]

dmc seedling is growing and looking health so if I kill it now, I doubt it will be because I removed the rw and went directly to water.
Reason I did take it out of the rw to begin with - the seedling had gotten taller but the taproot wasn't yet out of the bottom of the rw. I had prepared the net pot like everyone says to do but started thinking I could either have the rw sitting on damp hydroton for a bit or I would have to top water it until the root grew into the water. Never having used rw, I doubt it would have, but I was a tad concerned about having the rw getting too wet and rot setting in, and I am sure it is flawed thinking, but thought since the end goal is to get the root into the water, why not just start out that way. Flawed thinking no doubt, but it seems I got lucky.
The 2 new seedlings are looking good, well out of the rw. I prepared the pots which are plastic 14" x 16" x 16" which is I believe around a 4 gallon capacity. Is what I grew the last auto's in and they seemed to be just about the right size.
I am going to leave those seedlings alone tonight and put them in the soil tomorrow.
I think I did "shock" the widow when I put it into the dmc, but as it is going well now, I am very interested in comparing how the soil grow goes compared to the dmc.
One advantage of the dmc I know is coming is I will be out of town for about a week at the end of the month, so will have to rig up a drip watering system or something for the soil where the dmc plant will obviously be fine in that respect.
Pics - I had a comparison pic of the dmc seed showing the difference between 2-1 and today, but tho it uploaded, the picture itself is not showing up in my album. So I am putting it here, who knows if you can see it. Other pic is the new seedlings

 

[oldguyintn]

 

[oldguyintn]

dwc - plant seems to be thriving, is about double the size of last picture, but root had not yet made it out of the pot, so, trying to kill it yet- I removed all of the hydroton. Root was doing well, better than anticipated. Bunch of tiny roots now. Guess it wasn't growing out of pot because it didn't need to. As long as I had it out, I went ahead and put the roots through the net pot and put the hydroton back in. Who knows what will happen. Water level was fine, since temp in garage is kept at 65 degrees, not too concerned about algae growth yet. I went ahead and added a capful of each of the Floraduo to the water.
Soil grows -still small, doing well. I just had a bad feeling about leaving the rockwool on when I planted it in the soil . Probably wrong , but I was thinking when I water the plant the rw would stay soaked, maybe giving the plants better odds of getting root rot - so, now trying to kill these - I removed them from the soil and removed the rockwool, putting them back in the soil without it. Last plants I just started them out in soil so just feel more comfortable this way, wish I would have just started them out like that. Should be fine, only time will tell if I "shocked" them too much. I obviously wet the soil where the root went back in very well.

 

[oldguyintn]

2-17 update. All of the plants are doing well. The soil grows are taking off, looking good. The hydro, well I am not sure. It looks good and has more leafs than the soil grows, but (and this is probably a good thing), it is not growing up. Maybe my light is too close ? I do have it under the 400 watt lamp while the soil grows are under the 250 watt lamp.
Seems I have a critter eating my leaves. I actually did not even notice it until I had the pictures on my pc (shows u how much I pay attention).
Am guessing as this is in my outdoor garage and this space is now a comfy 65, the critters are getting an early start.
2 days ago I did see a few ants so I sprayed the area down. Will have to keep an eye on the plants. Seriously thinking about starting them on NEEM oil as I have a large container I got for personal use.
The pictures. Bad angle as they don;t show the height. The 2 soil grows are actually shooting up nicely. I am going to have to raise the lamp tomorrow - I am keeping it approx. 12" from the plants. The hydro grow has me a tad confused since leaf wise it is doing well. I think I am going to raise the lamp up and see what happens.
Light cycle is the same - 18 on, 6 off. I may change it to 4 off, have to think about it a bit.
i am heading out of town for at least a week so i am making a auto waterer. Bought everything I need and tho the pump does have adjustable flow, I made the hole too large and there would be too much water if I ran it one minute each day. Will work on fixing that tonight.
For the hydro, I will just change the water/nutes before I leave.
I duid screw up and I forget which soil grow is which plant - I should be able to tell the auto blue mystic as it matures.
Biggest surprise was seeing something had been snacking on the leaves.

 

[oldguyintn]

3-8 update
Went out of town for 8 days. For the soil grows, I made an "auto waterer" that ended up apparently working very well. Nothing fancy - I bought the 19.00 pump from Lowes as it had an adjustable flow rate, plastic tubing, t's and a pvc pipe. I also bought some copper pipe hangers that were just about perfect for holding the pvc in place. Total cost was under $40, with the bulk obviously being the pump and timer. I had a timer but it was a manual timer. I just dropped the pump in a Lowes bucket ($2.49 for nice buckets), ran 1/2" tubing out to a t which then split off to each bucket and then had the tubing go to 3/8" pvc pipe. I capped off the pvc pipe and then drilled a tiny hole in it. I did have to experiment with the size of the hole until I got it to where in one minute it filled up a cup similar to a Big Gulp about 1/2 way. Then I just clamped it in the copper bracket and pushed it in the soil. Tho I tested it out, of course I was still kind of worried but when i got home everything was great. One of the plants got pretty big and had grown into the light, which was about 12-14" above the plant when i left. I have been home for 2 days now and still have not watered the plants myself - I figure it's working fine so why mess with things.
The hydro is doing okay, but it does have some brown spots on some leaves. I have NO doubt hydro is more productive, but I am just more comfortable with the soil grows and so far have had good luck with them, so will probably just stick to soil from now on as it is less hassle - prep the soil and forget it unless it needs watered.
Again - is just me as I know hydro should be better .
Anyway - here are the plants as of today. The one soil grow is getting pretty darn big with the other soil and hydro about the same size. I make up a sort of subcoll super soil so all I ever add is water when needed, no nutes etc. I have been spraying the plants with Neem oil. I mixed up neem oil, water and a splash of soap. I did have some ants roaming around the plants before but they apparently don;t like the neem oil either so they are gone.
So far so good - now it is just holding on until harvest time. I am going to change the hydro water tomorrow - I changed it right before I left so needs done again. Is easy to do, but something I obviously don;t mess with when using soil........as I am apparently lazy, soil is just less work for me so as long as I get good results..........soil from now on for me

 

[oldguyintn]

well it has been approximately 70 days now. I must admit my 1st hydro grow has been a bust but it has been from my negligence. It has never looked good the entire grow, been hoping it just makes it until harvest time. I need pics but let's just say the leaves have never looked good, always a lot of yellow and just not healthy looking. My bad tho as I never really got into checking the water with a meter much etc. Is just me but I prefer the soil grows as they are pretty much plant and forget, especially when I had the auto watering system going.
The 2 soil grows are doing great. I am actually trying to determine if /when they need to be harvested. This has been the hardest part for me, trying to decide the best time to harvest.
The auto blue mystic is the closest to being ready. Pretty much all of the trichs are very cloudy, which would lead me to believe it is ready to harvest, but what is throwing me is the leaves are still looking healthy and many talk about waiting for the leaves to start to yellow and fall off.
In the past I harvested too soon and while it was great for the head, I am looking for a better combo of head/body in this batch.
The rhino ryder is right behind the mystic. I would say over 85% of the trichs on it are very cloudy but it still has a few "fresh" looking pistils. It's leaves are also very healthy tho.

Think I am going to ask about this in the general forum but right now I am thinking I will give it one more week, checking them everyday with the scope.
Will get pics soon