315W CFL grow

I'm a little over 1 week into flowering and I decided that after I had taken all of these photos of the girls, I'd post how my grow goes and hopefully get some positive feedback.
I'm a college student so this was done as cheaply as possible with the small space I had to grow.
Grow Specs:
-Lighting - 3 105W CFLs Longstar 2700k Medium base, I made a reflector for each using wood, a ceramic bulb holder, an extension cord and mylar, I LOVE MYLAR.
-Soil - Here's where I'm gonna get a lot of complaints, but I used mostly miracle grow moisture control.
-Nutes - Even more shit is coming, I used miracle grow houseplant food.
-Grow room size - 2 ft deep x 3 ft wide by 5' 6" tall.
-Strain - Bagseed from some mids I'd had, this is meant as a test run to see if I can successfully grow weed.

I have tried growing weed before, but they never really grew all that well and it was due to lack of reading and space so once I had my own apartment in college I started trying to grow. I didn't have much luck until my friend, let's call him KZ, read absolute shit tons about growing and different techniques, and thanks to his help, my babies have been doing quite well.

What up man, glad to see you're starting a journal. It'll be interesting to see what the final yield is. Remember to keep an eye on the one that looks kind of questionable on sex.

+Reps

At this point, I had not made a grow room and I was at my wit's end. After being so unsuccessful for so long I didn't expect them to last long, especially when I left for a week for christmas. My roommate watered them and luckily they stayed alive. In this picture there are 2 unreflected 105W CFLs.

With renewed vigor I started trying harder to get them to live. I put up 4 blue lights, 2 19W and 2 24W.



My friend KZ designed a light fixture for the big CFLs and they worked really well. 5 wooden dowels connect two square pieces of wood. Attached to one side is a ceramic medium base, the fixture is wrapped with mylar and voila a light fixture.

I came up with a pretty simple PVC frame grow box that would be 3x2x5.5', but it would cost way more than necessary, KZ recommended the grow room you see in this picture. It is partially supported by the shelf that is in my closet and is made up of a couple of 90 degree and t joints. Mylar was then pinned and taped to the wall and pvc, a cardboard triple fold that has been mylared acts as a door and the shelf above holds a honeywell cheapo fan that fills the grow room with delicious fresh air. In the pic I have 1 68W 2700K CFL and 2 105W CFLs. In this picture they had been flowering for a few days.



In this pic you can see how big they have gotten over just a few days of flower. In order to retain the efficiency of the CFLs, KZ recommended LSTing the plants. We used his idea of pipe cleaners, and they work really well and the plant typically recovers and shoots back upwards within a few hours and will completely grow back up within the next day.



I switched out another 105W for the 68W.







The smallest of the three ended up turning male so I had to make a separate grow box for it. I know a lot of you will say that I'm an idiot because I should just get rid of the male, and clones are better than seeds. I understand that clones are faster, but I simply don't have the room or the energy to keep a mother plant around for a while, not to mention I can get some really good seeds out of this because I'm going to breed it with my friend's Mango Kush. The male is now under a 68W CFL in a 2x1x1' grow box.



This is the most recent picture, it was taken today, 10 days into flowering.

Also, today, I cut a small hole into the side of one of the pots near the bottom of the pot and I inserted a 6in air stone that is connected to a 20gal rated aquarium pump, I want to see how that can affect the oxygenation of the root system and see if it has any affect on growth.

Dude where did you find your CFLs that big, and how much did they cost? Also I think that an airstone is supposed to be submerged in water (I think) so I'm not sure if it will really do any good in there.

not to shabby on a budget. i do want to suggest more light. spiral cfls. it will affect your bud output dramaticly

DirtPoor, I got the cheapest deal off of businesslights.com, look under CFLs, longstar medium base. The air stone will still pump out air regardless.

monstaz, Thank you very much. I had some extra spirals in there, but took them out. How much more will the light affect it? I have limited space and if i try and put any more lights in there it might end up blocking other lights.

True thanks for the help...plants are looking good to man.

among my massive weed book collection i have a handy book that would suit u perfectly. "buds for less". in it he walks though a grow of 3 high quality plants from day 1 to harvest on spiral cfls. using the 42 watt(150 equivalent) they recommend at least 6 of them. the end result was just over a half pound of dried bud.

Idk, Monstaz, I find it hard to believe that someone got more than a g/watt using 6 little cfls. I'll try and look it up though.

no bs. he force flowerd at day 16 to keep size down and they were indicas. the bigger you let the plant get the lighter the buds will be with cfl. keep it small and they dense up decently. he had the lights close as possible. touching a leaf tip ok touching bud not ok. i gave the name of the book its by seemorebuds, official course book of oaksterdam university. keep in mind ph nutes etc were kept in check. i would use more cfls(light=bud). i have a load of these they're the biggest ones when u light up 6 its bright. i dont doubt the book but u can find out in a couple months

he got less than 1g/watt

You're talking about Garden Knowm's book correct? Perhaps if we're lucky he'll stop by and give some advice on how this could be improved upon and where additional lights would be most beneficial. Monstaz is right in that adding additional lights will increase yield, and the fact that your other bulbs are blue spectrum could help to keep the plants a bit shorter, but in your room space is tight and you don't want to put in too many lights and either push the temperatures too high or burn leaves/buds from them touching bulbs. If you have a chance when the lights come back on tomorrow you could see if the little stand lamps you have will fit in there now that the third pot (the male) has been removed and there is more floor space. Keep an eye on any temperature increases with the added lights though.

hey man things look to be going pretty well, and as for your soil awareness and nute choice well dont let any one shit on those, ive seen great grows numerous of times with the stuff so youll be fine, and from the looks of it the plants are liking the MG soil and nutes.

im subbed man

I was quite satisfied with the growth of the plant that had an airstone with a 20 Gal air pump, so I decided to get a much bigger air pump and hook both of them up. I now have a 100 Gallon rated aquarium pump (the blue whisper hump kind that you can buy at petco) that runs to 2 6in airstones that sit at the bottom of the roots. The pump is so strong there is a slight breeze if you put your hand over the soil. The plants are loving it and I hope to see a lot of growth today. Here are some pics.



You can see the air pump in the background.

In order to insert the airstones, I cut a small square into the pot and stuck it in and gorilla taped for a somewhat air sealed hole.

looks good man

Have you noticed any difference with the pumps yet? Oh and the ladies are looking purty lol.

The plant that had the pump grew faster in the short time it had the pump than at any other time. I can't wait to see how well they do after a whole day with the big pump.

Yesterday I decided to start a SOG style grow box that would incubate and veg 15 solo cups. I wanted really tiny plants, but a lot of them. This SOG experiment was also supposed to be a soil experiment, I grabbed from home depot some MG perilite and some organic unchopped peat moss. From petco I got reptile lizard bedding that is made from coconut husk. I had heard so much about how awesome coco is so I went out and got an $8 bag of 8 quarts. From DCHydro I bought CNS coco nutrients, grow and bloom and some superthrive which apparently is a must in coco grows. I already had some hygrozyme from a previous attempt at a DWC that did not turn out all that greatly.
Construction:
First, I cut a hole in one side of a rubbermaid 18 gal tub that was big enough for a cheapo honeywell fan (They are really great) and a small hole at the other end as well as 4 small holes for exhaust and lighting on the lid. I covered the inner walls with mylar (I ran out of tape to do the top too) and used two desk lamps to hold Y splitters that held one 19W and one 24W bulb both blue spectrum.
Second, I took the peat moss, perilite and coco and mixed it up in a container until it was fairly evenly mixed. I took 15 solo cups and cut holes in the bottom for drainage. At the bottom of the cups I put pebbles, then a layer of the mix, then straight coco.
After all this was done, I was quite pleased with the construction. I then received a drunken phone call from KZ and he came over and we brainstormed. In order to keep the plants watered and happy I'd need to either have to water them a fuckton, or I could come up with some sort of way to have them sit in the water. KZ was struck with a brilliant idea, Shallow Water Culture or SWC for short. Rows of pebbles would keep the cups elevated while airstones kept the water bubbling. A piece of cardboard cut with circles to fit the cups would keep the water from getting algaefied. I plan on starting that today. Tell me your thoughts and I'll post some pics of the new box.

My nutrients, hygrozyme and superthrive and for whatever reason my tin of 5gs of 80x salvia.


This shit is awesome, its so cheap and so fluffy.

you should think of flowering the bigger plants soon if doing so under cfls,

The bigger plants have now been flowering over a week. If I had waited any longer to veg them I would not have had enough room to grow them in. The plants have grown a little less than a foot over all since I started flowering and they have another 7 or so weeks.