WeedRider
Bud Brawler
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2023
- Messages
- 110
- Reaction score
- 425
Hey guys welcome to my grow. Saw some grow tents for sale, did the math, figured I have the room plus the privacy and so here we are. I've always smoked whatever I could get my hands on, never been picky at all so having high quality home grown is going to be an experience. I decided to start with some really old seeds that I'd been collecting for a decade or more. I got about 4 out of ~50 seeds to actually germinate though I killed one seedling when transplanting. Figured I'd feel less bad about screwing up some seeds I got for free. I've made a few mistakes already so that seems to have been a good idea. I do have some feminized seeds from a seed bank I will start after this grow.
I already ran hydro with an Aerogarden type setup for other herbs so DWC was an obvious choice. Water is much easier to deal with than soil for me. My local water is really hard so most is from an RO filter but I use 1/5 tap mixed for some buffering.
Early mistake wa trying to use test strips. I'm sure it's possible to do but I bought whole-range pH strips and they did not prove accurate enough to be useful. Thought they were indicating around 6 and turns out that was closer to 3.5! Whoops. That's why B1 is so stunted (among other reasons).
Another mistake was starting with Fox Farm liquid nutes. Besides making a mess of the reservoir I quickly realized they would be prohibitively expensive. Switched to Master Blend and have had great results since. I'm still on my first half-gallon of concentrate and probably won't need any more for this entire grow. Way, way cheaper! FF works great on my soil plants so it will get used there.
Here's what I'm using for ratios:
This with the 1/5 tap water and I haven't seen any cal/mag issues as long as I keep the pH around 6.2 or above. This is the three plants about a week after the flip. I probably should have been defoliating a bit more during veg.
For monitoring the environment I have a couple of WiFi sensors that keep track of air and water temp, humidity, pH, EC and light intensity. The temp and pH sensors are the only ones that are somewhat accurate, the rest are at best a relative measurement. The dashboard component is called Chronograf. The sensors log data to InfluxDB every 5 min. Kapacitor is used for sending commands and alerting. All of it running on an OrangePi acting as a WiFI hotspot so if my local internet goes out the automation and sensors are unaffected. Here's the last 7 days of data. Ignore the data from this morning, I moved the air sensor to on top of the LED light and forgot to move it down next to the canopy.
Here are the plants from a day ago. They are currently in nighttime mode so will not disturb them. I have lights on from 5:15am to 5pm. Read in an article that the most important dark period was at the end so set that to 5am so everything is dark and I'm not likely to be up and turning on lights. Same article said an extra 15 min on the dark cycle will promote more bud sites. Seems to be working, have way more buds going than will likely be viable.
I added another layer of net along the top today. I also bent a few of the highest buds down some under the net. Will see if I have some photos of that. If not can post some tomorrow. Sorry for the long post but I haven't had a chance to share this grow yet. I know it isn't perfect but making mistakes is a great way to learn.
I already ran hydro with an Aerogarden type setup for other herbs so DWC was an obvious choice. Water is much easier to deal with than soil for me. My local water is really hard so most is from an RO filter but I use 1/5 tap mixed for some buffering.
- Tent is a 2x4 Gorilla Lite I scored for only $100
- 18 Gal tote for reservoir
- Spider Farmer 6-Inch Fan w/carbon filter
- Spider Farmer SF2000 LED Grow Light
- One 6in oscillating fan
- AC Infinity Air Pump 45 GPH
- MasterBlend 4-18-38 Combo Kit
- Smart WiFi power strip
- Hot steam humidifier
- 35 pint dehumidifier
Early mistake wa trying to use test strips. I'm sure it's possible to do but I bought whole-range pH strips and they did not prove accurate enough to be useful. Thought they were indicating around 6 and turns out that was closer to 3.5! Whoops. That's why B1 is so stunted (among other reasons).
Another mistake was starting with Fox Farm liquid nutes. Besides making a mess of the reservoir I quickly realized they would be prohibitively expensive. Switched to Master Blend and have had great results since. I'm still on my first half-gallon of concentrate and probably won't need any more for this entire grow. Way, way cheaper! FF works great on my soil plants so it will get used there.
Here's what I'm using for ratios:
This with the 1/5 tap water and I haven't seen any cal/mag issues as long as I keep the pH around 6.2 or above. This is the three plants about a week after the flip. I probably should have been defoliating a bit more during veg.
For monitoring the environment I have a couple of WiFi sensors that keep track of air and water temp, humidity, pH, EC and light intensity. The temp and pH sensors are the only ones that are somewhat accurate, the rest are at best a relative measurement. The dashboard component is called Chronograf. The sensors log data to InfluxDB every 5 min. Kapacitor is used for sending commands and alerting. All of it running on an OrangePi acting as a WiFI hotspot so if my local internet goes out the automation and sensors are unaffected. Here's the last 7 days of data. Ignore the data from this morning, I moved the air sensor to on top of the LED light and forgot to move it down next to the canopy.
Here are the plants from a day ago. They are currently in nighttime mode so will not disturb them. I have lights on from 5:15am to 5pm. Read in an article that the most important dark period was at the end so set that to 5am so everything is dark and I'm not likely to be up and turning on lights. Same article said an extra 15 min on the dark cycle will promote more bud sites. Seems to be working, have way more buds going than will likely be viable.
I added another layer of net along the top today. I also bent a few of the highest buds down some under the net. Will see if I have some photos of that. If not can post some tomorrow. Sorry for the long post but I haven't had a chance to share this grow yet. I know it isn't perfect but making mistakes is a great way to learn.
