Closet Grow: 250W HPS, 12/12 from seed, Soil, Bagseed

[ugmjfarmer]

I'm starting a 12/12 from seed grow. I chose this for simplicity and to get to know growing at an active pace.

I have aquired the following:

1 GAL Grow Bags x 6
Fox Farms Ocean Forest Soil
Rockwool Starter Cubes
FloraNova Grow + Bloom
250W Switchable HPS
250W HPS Bulb
4" Inline Fan w/ Speed Control
Carbon Filter
Black/White Mylar

The chosen closet has 90" vertical room, 35" Wide, 19" Deep. I will be building a base using 2x4's, which will be sealed using the black side up of the mylar. So far the build process has not happened but should be good to go this weekend.

The walls will be coated with white mylar. All gaps will be sealed. The light will be hung from the ceiling. It will have to sit 12" from the top to hold in the vent/filter, which will be vented into the attic.

Cool air can be drawn in from two ways, and until I figure out how I want to vent, I cant comment on intake yet.

So far, I am working with good local grown seeds. I'm not sure how well they will do, but I hve germed 6, which are sitting in rockwool starter cubes. They have been soaked for 24 hours prior in 5.8 PH water. Nothing has popped up yet, but I have high hopes.


The cool thing about 12/12 from seed is that the plants will not flower until they are ready. If i find a male, i kill it and start another seed. Hopefully at some point I will have a mother room and I will be building this into a future design. Cant wait to put it together.

 

[THE BROTHER'S GRUNT]

Whats up mang. Sounds like you did your reading and are off to a great start. Here's some GREEN MOJO to give them babies a boost. Good luck on the grow and we'll be following along.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

A couple ideas floated too me today. I'm going to do a SCrOG. I have the perfect area for it, for 1 - 2 plants. The bagseed will be grown as quickly as possible to get some buds, then the screen will go up and I'll plant "The Church"

Ordered them today. Hopefully they will come soon.

When I do the Church I'm going to switch over to DWC.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Ok, lots of developments and pictures!

Ordered a 250W Sunleaves Pulsar switchable ballast/reflector, 170CFM Centrifugal Fan and Can filter, 25ft Mylar. These took about a week to trickle in and arrive.

It took me two weeks of waiting for supplies, cleaning the closet out and building. The steps that I took to ensure a good harvest and grow room are:

1. Clear out the closet of all debris and vacume.
2. Disinfect all surfaces using bleach and water.
3. Further cleaned all the surfaces with a wet rag and a disinfecting spray.
4. Chose my shelf location for separating mother and flower rooms, which ended up being 40", leaving 60" for the mother room and ventilation setup.
5. Went to home depot with measurements and bought 2x4's to make the shelf.
6. Screwed in the shelf and cut a 4" hole for ventilation
7. hung up mylar on all the walls, white side out.
8. devised a curtain situation using mylar for keeping light from leaking from room to room.
9. Hung the fan using bungee cords.
10. Hung the light
11. built my own CFL ballast which allows me to run up to 10 CFL bulbs
12. further cleaning of room.
13. Test runs for temperature monitoring showed that the room did not have enough ventilation to keep the temperatures near optimal, so passive intakes were drilled into each room. I will be using 4" x 1.5" VAC fans to make the intake active.

Mother room temperatures leveled out at 85/45% Day, 72/55% night.
Flowering room temperatures have been running 81/50% Day, 72/35% night.

So far, I have germinated 5 seeds. These are all bagseed of unknown orgin donated to me by a good friend and fellow colleague. I originally tried 6, but after a week, one did not develop enough of a root structure to push the pod buster up through the rockwool which is bad news considering how porous rockwool is.

I germinated in a trial DWC setup using a 3 gallon rubbermade container. I cut square holes in the lid just big enough to put the rockwool starter cubes into and wetted them down with 6 pH water. A seedling nutrient mix using 2 gallons of RO water was placed in the container and I used two 5" air stones to pump air through the nutrients. Within 3 days of being placed in this container and setup, roots had sprung through the rockwool and into the water. One particular seedling had an 8" long root with many spines on it. Awesome!

I decided that since the rubbermaid container was not light proof that it would be a good idea to dark out my mother room before algae started to form, so the seedlings are now in the mother room with a 250W MH burning 24/0 18" above them. Temps are 80F, humidity is 50% with the 24 light structure. Growth has been wonderful, they took around 12 hours to recover from the transplant shock. Now they are all taking off and growing at the same pace with their second set of leaves already starting to show.

And what would a grow log be without some green porn. So here is the few pictures I have taken so far. My camera filled up so I had to clear the card out so I'll have more in the future.

 

[lyfr]

looks good ugmj, sounds like your off to a very well educated start.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Couple more pictures for the feasting of eyes

 

[Timmyjg6]

Everything looks pro, bro.. Nice, and remember no nutrients for 2 weeks...

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Everything looks pro, bro.. Nice, and remember no nutrients for 2 weeks...

Oops. I have already been feeding them (once though) 300ppm mix of Floranova Grow. I know the fox farms is nutrient rich enough, but they seemed to have loved it and have taken off like wildfire.

Why is it that we dont feed them anything until 2 weeks in?

2 weeks from seed falls on sunday, so i'm hoping its not too early in to do damage. Also, I only wetted the rockwool, the rest of the soil has been RO water of 6 pH.

Gotta love walmart for a nice supply of good distilled water. I also found that save-a-lot has it for 6 cents cheaper and is 5 miles closer. Bonus.

 

[Timmyjg6]

Well its usually about the time the leaves start to turn a lighter shade of green, takes a little experience to see this. But you let the plant tell you when its time to eat. You don't want to burn the little guy. Its just a percussion and it wont do any damage to the little guy. Just take easy first 2 weeks thin its on to the nutrients. And when you do star the nuts start with 1/4 strength thin half thin full. Take your time.

 

[DomsChron]

As timmy said, take your time. Everything takes so long when growing marijuana so you might as well sit back and let them do their thing. Wait untill they actually NEED help before actually helping. Now I'm not telling you not to give them some dang love which you are plenty fine with. I'm just saying if it aint hungry don't make it eat LOL!

 

[DankCloset]

hey man, i've already done a 12/12 from seed, you'll get pot on your plants within a month(depending on plants)....they'll also grow way crazy too. look me up on here, i think i made a grow journal of it.
Dustin

lookin good.
p.s. i grew soil too

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Right now I've had them under 24/0, so I'm not sure its going to be a pure 12/12. I'm trying to get them developed a bit before scaling back. I'll probably go to 18/6 after this weekend. after they are a foot tall i'm going to force flower because I only have 22" vertical room. After its 12/12 in that room, its going to stay 12/12. At that point I should have a better HPS bulb for the ballast. The Enko that came with this ballast is not good enough for me. The MH i'm using seems perfect for this period of fast growth with my current bagseed. When I can grow clones and switch to SCRoG that will be the thing to watch.

For now, i'm just learning the basics of this growing stuff.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Two Days of Growth under 250W MH. My HPS sodium bulb blew up internally after shutting off last night. So for now I'll be running MH, but the HPS is on the way ASAP. Eye Hortiliux most likely.

For the last two days, we have watered 200ml 5.8pH water. Light was taken off 24/0 two days ago, now running for 12/12. Tonight, I ran 100ml of 900ppm Floranova Grow and 100ml of 5.8pH water. The seedlings have doubled in size each day, and so I believe its time to start some weekly feeding with around 450ppm each plant. I'll go a few more days with plain water just to keep them up, but nothing more than 200ml daily.

Pictures!

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Wow I just took a look at this journal and thought that a nice update should be in place.

Since this is bagseed, I have no idea what each plants genetic makeup is. That being said, I have three very indica looking plants with big fat leaves and nice tight nodes, and two very sativa looking plants with thin leaves and more stretched nodes.

They are now 4" tall and at the rate they are growing the third node should be rapidly developing tonight. I'm seeing a double of growth every day. Timer is set for 12/12 and I'm now running 11,000 lumens per sq ft (32,000 lumens in a 2.7ft area). I flushed them last night with 1/5th a gallon of distilled water and ran a wood skewer through the soil to add some air. Taking off like wildflowers!

Pictures.

 

[FLA Funk]

Nice grow thus far farmer. Don't you just love the bagseed surprise? Never know how they will turn out. Best of luck to you my friend.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Got some Thrive Alive B1 Green to add to the mix in small quantities throughout the grow. I mixed up a 1/2 strength mixture of that in a spray bottle and sprayed them while it was dark. I also fed them some since they were feeling light.

Its amazing to watch this grow happen and participate in it. Its almost like being back in highschool and working on a science project. I wish they would have let me do this in highschool, i would have aced the class. Overnight they seem to grow quite a bit which is amazing. I get a kick out of taking these pictures and comparing the difference each day. They really do grow quickly.

Which leads me to my problem of vertical space. 22" is enough for some lowriders, but already I can tell these plants are going to be much taller than 22", more like 46-56". I'm going to have to dive into the world of LST very very soon as the third nodes get off their buttox.

So does anybody know given my layout what the best way to tie them down. I dont have hard plastic pots to work with, so ingenuity has to be on my side.

 

[Abso]

Supercrop or LST them for space, !

They are both very simple and fascinating techniques to learn actually.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Ok guys, Bad news first. I ordered on 6/7 Greenhouse Feminized "The Church" from Attitude Seed Bank. Today, I got the shipment however it had been opened at customs with seeds removed and a nice "FU we stole your stuff" letter from them.

Not to sound un-patriot and rant, but I cant help it. The drug war policy in this country is **. I'm tired of the lies, deception, stealing and gustapo police who treat marijuana smokers as criminals. The punishment never fits the crime ever! This stuff is great medicine and has helped many people stay alive for some of the best years of their lives while they fought their diseases. Its insane to classify a plant as something that you "manufacture". Its gross, its abusive and its unconstitutional. /rant

Good News, tonight being it the exact 2nd day of 12/12 and that its probably the last grow nutes I'll be feeding it before transition to bloom, I'm going to take the following mixture to a gallon and feed these babies for the week:

7.5 ml Floranova Grow
3 ml Thrive Alive B-1 Green

I've started spraying them with a light mixture of Thrive Alive and water and they are just going nuts with it! They have all gone to the 4th set of leaves already with the 3rd set (7 leaves) opening up. My best guess, 2 days and they will be another 2" tall. Pre-flowers might start soon, but who knows on that. I'm hoping to have them all sexed in under a month and I'm also hoping to start LST'ing them when I can get a good grasp on the 3rd set of leaves.

I'll take some pictures when i'm done mixing the nutes.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Some green pr0n for everybody.

 

[ugmjfarmer]

Some updates later after I go swimming. I decided to take out the mother room and utilize my full 6' 7" of vertical room. This should allow me to veg them longer if needed.

Should I pop the MH back in and Veg them for another month?

A picture from last night before the remodel: