Farmer Joe's First Grow - Outdoor/Indoor LED cabinet grow

Hey everyone,

New guy checking in here and I thought I would share my grow so far and how it has been progressing as well as hopefully get some feedback!

To provide some background, I decided I would plant four seedlings of a mystery strain a friend gave to me. We have no idea what they are but they've been growing! Initially these were planted in a green house in a 2x8 bed of soil composed of compost, chicken manure, mushroom compost, and whatever other soil. We grow vegetables so these beds were ready for planting although the soil has never been used before.

Welcome to RIU! Let's see what ya got going...

April 29 2015

The seeds were germinated and placed into the ground! For fun (and to hope that each comes out a female) I've named each plant.

Ashley


Betsy


Cara


Jess


The plan was to have them grow in the ground and if any of them turned out to be male then I would remove them.

May 7 2015

Weather in the last seven days has been really sunny and hot with temperatures in the greenhouse reaching 30-40C. Watering took place every other day to keep the soil moist.

I had a hard time keeping temperature down because all I had was a tiny table fan. I also had no way to monitor humidity or measure the PH of the soil. Tools for both were purchased.

Here's how the girls look:

Ashley
Betsy
Cara


Jess

May 19 2015

12 days later... Temperature has still been high but with the addition of a bigger fan there is more circulating air from outside. I continue to water every other day and now with a reduced dose of MiracleGro general fertilizer once a week.

The PH meter arrived and everything seems ok. Some areas of the soil were on the acidic side so I added dolomitic lime to the bed.

Ashley


Betsy


Cara


Jess


As you can see there has been a huge amount of growth which surprised me. But some of the plants are looking extremely worse for wear especially Jess. Turns out there was an ant hill right next to this plant and it quickly became a meal There is also a big tomato plant about a foot away from Jess which may need to be moved...

Ashley is also growing slowly compared to the others and I've decided that this is because it's shaded most of the day. Betsy and Cara continue to grow well.

May 25 2015

Some changes in the last few days.... the tomato plant was moved to a pot and Ashley was moved to the end of the bed (sunnier spot). So now it looks like this:

B C J A

I decided I would purchase an LED light to provide supplementary light during the day. The more I like at this part of the greenhouse the more I notice that it really isn't optimal as it's being shaded by my garage and home during the early and later parts of the day. It arrived on the 21 and I hung it up immediately over Jess and Ashley which were the most stunted at this point.

The war on the bugs also began. Whiteflies had begun to appear EVERYWHERE. I laid out sticky strips and ant traps in a number of locations plus used Pyrethrin spray in the evenings to kill any whiteflies that tend to hang out by the ceiling vents.

I am still watering every other day with a small amount of MG. I purchased organic blood meal to be used instead next week.

Ashley


Betsy


Cara


Jess

June 4 2015

A lot has happened in the last week and a bit. Since the last time I updated till yesterday (June 3 2015) all plants were still growing outside in the greenhouse. I moved the light to grow over Betsy and Cara instead because I figured I should concentrate my effort on the most successful plants. Another LED light was purchased sometime last week as well.

I started feeding with blood meal. I began with a very conservative dose and then fed again a few days later with a slightly higher dose. There seems to be no ill side effects so I will continue feeding with blood meal until flowering.

Now the big change is due to security, I have had to build a cabinet and choose only 2 of my plants to harvest. I share my living space with other people and we concluded that this would be the best way.

This is what I came up with:



An old 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 6ish cabinet. Drilled some holes on the sides for the fans and cable runs as well as mounting hooks for lights. 2x 70cfm fans are used as exhaust and a small circulating fan was placed on the ground pointing upwards.

2x 300w LED panels from China:

I don't like to cheap out on things but a friend convinced me to buy these because they were relatively inexpensive and I'd be able to test them out without too much loss. So far so good....

Betsy and Cara were by far the biggest and strongest plants with the most foliage so they were of course selected. They were transplanted into 5 gallon pots and moved in last night when the sun was down. Some new compost was added to the bottom of each plant however the old soil was used to fill in whatever space was left.

Here they are as of today:



They are 2' tall! I can't explain how excited I am to see how they will turn out. I am somewhat disappointed by the fact that they now have to live in a cramped closet but oh well, what can you do sometimes right? Because they were able to grow in the greenhouse uninhibited they are somewhat leggy and the leaves brush against the walls. Do you think this will be OK?

My plan is to let these recover for a week or two and then induce flowering. Any thoughts guys? Thanks!

Cool grow. Good choice in names How much more room you got in the cab? You may want to bend the girls a bit so they don't run into your light after the flower stretch. I look forward to seeing this grow through, good job Joe.

kimoolos said:

Cool grow. Good choice in names How much more room you got in the cab? You may want to bend the girls a bit so they don't run into your light after the flower stretch. I look forward to seeing this grow through, good job Joe.

Click to expand...

thanks man! I appreciate it. How would you suggest I bend them? At first I was just going to let them grow naturally because I had tons of room but now that I'm in this cabinet it's a whole different story. LST?

Here's a photo from earlier, hopefully you'll be able to see how much space is left.



The corners are pretty full up obviously but the opposite corners are empty for the most part. Maybe I can LST the top toward the opposite corners? How long would you suggest I continue doing that until I flower? I can also raise the lights up higher should I need the extra room.

Evening update... I took your advice as it simply made sense to me. Cara was easy to bend as her stem isn't as thick and she isn't as bushy as Betsy. Betsy the bend was less extreme because her stem was way more rigid and I was worried I would stress it too much.

Betsy: (added one more line that bends the tip horizontal)


Cara:


Canopy:


Compare this to the previous canopy shot and you can see it's way more full. The bottom leaves are actually exposed to the light now! However, there is still tons of leaf overlap. I don't know if this is something I should concern myself over.