Northern Lights Auto - Budget T5 & T8 Grow Box

[EndItAll]

saw a few spots during my pre lights-out inspection that I suspect may be potassium toxicity from my foliar feeding. will refrain from using it next few days and see if I get any new spots. If I don't I'll water my batch down before re-applying.

 

[EndItAll]

As promised here's a few pics of my mutant leaves.

In this one you can see one of the tiny leaves above my finger in top left corner.

Here's another, bottom right of the centered fan.

And another, at the top of the centered fan. Also visible are the spots I mentionned. Those don't seem to be getting any bigger nor am I seeing new spots yet.

 

[420Girl]

Hey EndItAll, just thought I'd say hello as I'm also growing NL autos and looks like we're roughly at the same stage. I've just got a 4-fingered leaf come through although the I think all the rest of mine have odd numbers of fingers. I did read that it's normal to have even numbers but I'm certainly no expert in the field!

Subbed, by the way

 

[EndItAll]

@420Girl hello and ty for joining my journey.

 

[EndItAll]

No time for photos right now, will post some later when i get back.
#1 new growth is 7 fingered, yay for signs of healthy happy plants, no new spots like I saw yesterday but one of my bigger fan leaves has some sore of damage that wasn't there at last inspection, might have been me being to rough when I ponytailed her at lights on. Training seems to be paying off, she grows thick and strong and it looks like she threw out some more bud sites overnight
Brought her top down again after ponytail came off, not as low as I would have liked since I'm still trying to bring her head over the absurdly high bucket rim I left myself with....

#2 is coming along, coty's are starting to wither, based on what I saw with #1 I excpect her to find her legs in the next day or 2 and really start going.

Both are showing a little heat stress, very mild upward curling of leaves so going to raise the lights an inch or 2 when I get back and do photos.

The 2 mystery bag seedlings really aren't impressing me, they're both alive and well but moving along SLOW compared to the CKS seeds, 1 is growing far faster than the other, and I'm surprised because it's the one from the seed that had the smaller taproot at planting. I expected the longer one to move faster. Science is fun and often surprising

 

[EndItAll]

Side note, I'm sure this clip has been vastly overused, but I feel a need to point out that if I get any sort of real harvest, this will be me.

Half Baked Weed Room - YouTube

 

[PacificPeach]

Hi all, first time grower, at least with this crop, experienced organic high-yield square-foot-gardener.

This is a hobby project I've decided to undertake as a proof of concept and to fill my days during the winter.

Some rules I've set for myself in this project :

-as organic as physically possible
-keep total startup cost under $300
-free-cycle as much material as possible
-total stealth from neighbors etc (focusing on general odor and specifically exhaust control)

Total out of pocket cost so far on this project :

$65 5-pack of seeds
$117 various Home Depot purchases (lumber, blower fan, activated carbon filter materials, some lights)
(does not include materials I already had such as growth medium, containers, some lights, some build materials. Alot of these were originally donated from construction site waste, some were otherwise scavenged or free-cycled)

So, let's start with my growth medium :

I am using a customized variation of Mel's Mix, (%33 peat moss, %33 vermiculite, %33 organic compost blend composed of 8 different composts incl chicken, sheep, cow and deer manure, mushroom compost, worm castings, shrimp fish and seaweed compost and a homemade general veg matter compost) so nutrient wise I'm set from seedling to at least 2-3 weeks in, probably longer but will be reading the plants. My starting nutrient levels are nitrogen heavy but not unreasonable. I have had alot of ridiculous tomato yields with this blend and look forward to seeing what it can do with this crop.

My box is 4ft wide, 3ft deep, and 5ft high total, with about 4.25 total usable vertical feet allowing space for containers, some gear, and lights. I intend to use this space for no more than 2 LST and scrog'ed plants, but i did make it a bit bigger than needed in case that changes in future, i suspect with strict training and clever use of space i could support 4-5. The box is currently a work in progress to be completed over next couple weeks as time, and materials allow. Will eventually be painted flat white on all interior surfaces for reflection purposes, currently unpainted wood interior.

Currently using 1 x 4ft 2tube T8 fitted with 2 x 32w 6500k tube (I plan to add 2 more of these fixtures with 4 more tubes totaling 6 x t8 tubes, just out of stock for a week) as well as 1 x t5 2ft single-tube fitted with 1 x 24w 6400k mounted vertically between the 2 grow spaces. To bridge the light deficit until i get more units I've added a few 7w 2700k CFL's I have kicking around. All lights save the vertical t5 are fully height adjustable in a 4.5 foot range in order to keep the T8's within 1-2 inches of canopy (this has worked well for me with my indoor vegetable crops, the heat these things put out is negligible and as my ambient temperature is 22-23C any extra heat they give will be welcome I think.

Box will be exhausted via dual DIY activated carbon filter powered by 4inch 700+ CFM blower, and will double as drying and curing area between crops after initial startup and supply building, I don't plan on continuous grows, just as needed based on supply and yields. Have fresh air inlet to room via Hvac Combustion Air supply, so at least on paper entire box air volume will be exhausted and replaced 10x /minute, which may be a little much but i don't believe in half-measures when it comes to stealth. I'm debating whether or not I want to go with powered intake or stick with passive, if I go powered it will be with max 2 x 2inch PC fans to maintain negative box pressure and filter system integrity.



Currently have 2 NL fem auto seeds germinating, started them about 30 hours ago, took a bit longer than I expected to sink but they eventually both did. I'm guessing the lower than ideal temperature in the house contributed while they were soaking. Transferred to plate and paper towel after 14 hrs, had to leave and wasn't going to be back before 18 hour CKS recommended limit.

Checked them a few minutes before starting to type out this wall of text, 1 is visibly popped with tap root out, root <1mm atm so letting it go a bit more, other looks like it's about to pop but it seems to be fighting the wakeup call, will give it a few more days before i start worrying.

Will add pics of my work in progress box shortly.


Any and all comments, advice, etc welcome of course, but I pretty much intend to stick to my current grow-plan and box design with little to no modification until these plants die or are harvested, I know there are likely to be a good many methods/techniques/designs that would be more ideal or "better", and if this fails I will be trying again with whatever changes seem appropriate, but my primary goal is to see if THIS methodology and THESE materials will work, and if so how well.

Wish me luck!

Regards,
EndItAll

I like that you're going to stick with your plan. For better or worse I feel like I'm changing things all the time and it's like there's too many different variables. It's a good idea to just stick with one thing sometimes and then you can really see how that one thing works.

 

[PacificPeach]

It is damned cold in the house, and it is damned cold in my cabinet. I think I may have to pull one of my cfl's and put in an old standard incandescent 100w for extra heat for the next few days during this cold snap. Damned high efficiency T8's and cfl's, Y U NO MAKE MORE HEATS.

Glad I planned ahead and went with a strain that does reasonably well in colder environments, but I gotta up the temperature in there somehow, it can't be more than 23C in there, and during the 6 hours lights are off it's probably closer to 19 or 20. Curse my wife and her draconian control of the thermostat, my girl needs heat.

Have the seedling pot on a standard germination/seedling mat as well, but I don't think it's quite enough to deal with my winter.

Other than that, I'm happy to say she seems to be doing well, the first leaf set doubled in size since my last pics, the 2nd set continues to slowly squeeze out the extra leaves, not much action from the 3rd set, some growth but minimal.

Pot was nice and light, mix was bone dry for at least 1.5 inches so gave #1 her first good drink, local source, beautiful trace salts and minerals, including HCO3 which naturally adjusts PH to around 6.0 to 6.2 and gets metabolized into CO2 as well as providing a biological buffer against sudden PH changes in either direction, Calcium which I hear most green things like, Magnesium which again I heard somewhere is a good thing to feed to pretty much anything green, NO3 , and K or potassium if you prefer.

Only thing missing from this water is phosphorous, which I am having trouble sourcing organically and locally atm, at least in a form that is easily converted to spray bottle friendly form, but am not overly worried about as my original compost sources for my mix contained several composted manures, all of which contained at least some.

After more reading and research into what and when to feed my girls with the mix I'm using, the answers I've come up with is not much at all and not until flowering time unless the girls tell me otherwise. My mix and method appears to most closely resemble a so called "super-soil" grow, which by all reports are given nothing but water from seed to harvest unless needed, which is only if you start with used or improperly refreshed mix. I will monitor closely and post pictures for advice if anything odd begins to happen.

Replacement seed sprouted while I wasn't paying attention, checked this morning nothing, check an hour ago, taproot 1.25 cm long, so into the #2 pot it went, have it on the mat under mild light. Better luck this time little thing, your predecessor died an ugly death, try to avoid that if you can.

I put a piece of styrofoam insulation on the bottom of my tent and then put my heating mat on top of the insulation. It seemed to help keep the warmth inside the tent and not get lost through my cold basement floor.

 

[PacificPeach]

Im folowing every step of you and your doing great.You can try with egg shell,banana,bone/fish bone,crab shell.All easy and 100% organic just for you ....


GOTTA TRY THEM ALL!!!

What do you do with the egg shells?

 

[PacificPeach]

Several angles, zooms, and light conditions to show shape and color. She looks better now than when i got home, less lime/yellow than 4 hrs ago and less droopy, but still not the vibrant deep green I have been seeing before.

I'm fairly certain it's not nutrient related, as I understand it, if the medium grows tomatoes well it should grow cannabis well too, and this same medium (I am using fresh unused remnants of the garden batch) with drought, then flood level rains, then drought again, and poor attention all season, gave me 20-40 pounds of tomatoes per plant in my garden with nothing but chlorinated fluoridated tap water straight from the hose from seed to harvest.

I should also point out that my first observation where I noticed yellowing and drooping coincided with end of 6hr night.

My 2 guesses at this point based on small but visible improvement over 4 hours are :
-if improvement continues, assume mild over-watering that is already self correcting, if so then continue as planned, IE: no more water for a few days until pot is light again, give less at next watering, see if symptoms re-occur, if so is plant less impacted with less watering? I need to bear in mind that both the vermiculite and the peat moss in my mix retain more water than standard soils, and not allow so much runoff.
-my low temps may be adversely affecting plant's metabolism, thus slowing down chlorophyll production during growth. It may be coincidental but lights on appears to have led to improvement, and this leads me to suspect temperature as a contributing factor if not an outright cause. Must urgently find way too raise temps a couple more degrees in box, and get around to making the trip to town for a thermometer and humidity gauge, really shouldn't have put it off this long. I would kill the oscillating fan for a while to stop that source of cooling, but I don't want to lose the circulation in the box and further reduce evaporation from soil, and I intend to train the naughty girl, so I want that wind shaking her good and giving her a strong stem.

edit : I think for now as a stopgap to help with heat and humidity in box, I shall boil a large pot of water and place it under the table

I have been putting a clear glass jar filled with plain water in mine and it really helps bring up the humidity. I have to refill it every 2-3 days.

 

[420Girl]

I have been putting a clear glass jar filled with plain water in mine and it really helps bring up the humidity. I have to refill it every 2-3 days.

That's really interesting because I've been having problems with low humidity since introducing T5s into my tent (it got as low as 36% last night). I'm currently using a tub of water but it's not made any difference so far so I might give the glass jar a try!

 

[PacificPeach]

It's kind of a simple fix but it's working for me!

 

[EndItAll]

Looks like the treatment dealt with the gnats, can't see anymore in the box as of tonight's inspection, but there's a chance I might have dormant stragglers so I'm not quite ready to declare complete victory.

Better late than never, as promised, today's photo update. Moved things around a bit to get the lights packed in a bit closer. Had to move lights up, definitely seeing signs of mild heat stress.

#1 starting to really bush up, bucket is getting pretty light so I think I will giver her a drink tomorrow. New growth is throwing out 7 fingers. Added another tie down to bring her head down and out some more, next tie down will be a near 90 degree turn to start her along the bucket rim.

#2 cotys are about to fall off, secondary growth is starting and she feels like a cat doing the butt-shuffle right before a big pounce.

The mystery seedlings continue in the back, still a big gap between them, pots are getting light, first big drink this week-end I think.

All around nothing much to report, plants all seem happy and healthy to me. Seeing more and more flower type activity from #1, according to CKS I'm looking at 8 weeks flowering time so I reckon I'm about 7 weeks from harvest...... #needatimemachine

 

[EndItAll]

#1 doing well, starting to see a few more early flowering signs, gotta push the training a bit harder while i still can.
Canopy is getting close to even, alot of pretty looking bud sites now. Doubt I'll set any records with her but reasonably confident I'll be able to call her a success.

#2 has definitely found her legs and gone into vegetation mode, coty's fell off and growth is noticeable every morning. Starting first bend, aiming for a bit less than 90 degrees to bring her up to the rim fast, already showing nice secondary growth I expect a much better yield from her after applying lessons learned on #1.

 

[EndItAll]

So, life gets complicated sometimes, got too busy to post mmuuch, but here we go.

#1, day 40 above surface :

I'm no expert, but to my eyes that's looking like a healthy and productive plant.
Going to be swapping in 2x 3000k tubes tomorrow and adding 4x 2700 cfl next time I make a trip into town, probably weds. night.

 

[EndItAll]

#2, day 30 above surface :

Showing alot more flowering activity alot earlier than #1, still seems to be vegging hard, I have to adjust and tighten every day, adding new ties every 2-3 for the last week.

 

[EndItAll]

And the mystery seedlings, both still not showing much in way of gender tells, checking daily.

Attempted to FIM the larger healthier looking one a few days ago, definitely see damaged leaves but no sign of new cola growth, gonna let it ride another week and if it doesn't show me anything I'll top that one at that node.

The smaller one has a slowly expanding pale spot on 1 leaf only, been there a few days, can't quite determine what I'm seeing, rest of it including new growth looks fine, not gonna stress since these are free mystery seeds and possibly males, but if anyone has thoughts on that spot and what deficiency or excess it might be I'm open to ideas.

I'm reasonably sure the brown outline in centre of leaves is residue from my foliar plant food.

 

[EndItAll]

Smell is becoming significant, trip into town for filter parts tomorrow, will post photos of the build.

 

[420Girl]

Smell is becoming significant, trip into town for filter parts tomorrow, will post photos of the build.

Is the smell coming mainly from the NL or your other one? My NL started smelling really early on but now it seems to be less so despite being in week 3 of flower, so I don't have my filter set up yet. Also I've noticed my NL photo smells a lot stronger than both the autos which is interesting.

 

[EndItAll]

I'm quite sure it's the NL's. Less pronounced today but still stronger than I can allow.

Here's why I'm sure it's the NL's

#1 is, as you can see, THROWING out budlets and just going to town with the flowering. I counted 50ish budlets formed and more eery day. I'e stopped with the aggressie training, just bending as needed to keep the canopy stable. If those each only turn into 2 grams i'm looking at about a 100g plant, and I suspect my aerage bud might end up bigger than 2g's.