First Cab Grow/ Bagseed experiment

It's been a while since I last blogged about my grow but I'm back now with a much smaller set up and a few new ideas.
Note that i'm using random old bagseed form various sacks I've acquired. These seeds have been stored inside a dube tube all mixed up in my desk drawer for at least a year before I sprouted them 2 weeks ago.

so here is what my system is comprised of:
1 400 watt digital/ switchable cooltube w/ super agro lamp

1 250 watt digital MH with a sealed hood and 6" ports

2- 2 lamp f32t8 fixtures w/ phillips daylight deluxe lamps

1 Patton stainless steel 14" shop fan ( for circulation )

1 Soler Palau 6" inline fan (293 cfm)

1 Hydro farms flush mounted snail fan ( 165 cfm)

1 Sunpentown portable AC 12500 btu

Homebrewed mulch soil mixture

4 to 6- 1 gallon square planters

I currently have 2 nice looking plants and one dinky retarded one that seems to be hanging still. I'm still trying to pop a few more seeds just in case there are any males but I only plan to grow 4 tops due to the size of my cab which measures:
48"x 40" x 36"
constructed with plywood I plan to insulate it with 1.5" rigid foam later on in the week.
my current temps are running about 75- 80 f @ the high point of the day with only the Soler Palau fan and the Patton Shop fan running. The ambient temps in my part of town have been around 80 lately.

I ended up with a bunch more gear recently including a bunch of F54t5 HO ballasts, a few brand new 400 watt MH ballasts (magnetic but they work good) another 400 watt vented hood with bulb but the cord is cut and the glass is broken ( I can cut glass and rewire np) a few more fans, earth bags and a load of small scale hydro gear which I may or may not play around with. I'm a soil guy and have only played with hydro once. but I got all the pots, pumps, bubblers etc. for free so Its worth a try.

I forgot to mention That the total cost of my setup will be under $200 when complete. I like to add a price list to all of my projects
I built the box using scrap wood from Home Depot (the Culls Section) with a total cost of less than $20
The Hinges I got salvaged from a project a few months ago.
and the lights and fans I got from craigslist in one big lot for about $200 but wont even use half of it for this project so I'm going to put a cost of about $100 on the equipment I currently have in my cab.
I see no point in buying from hydro shops at least here in San Diego because there are so many people out there trying to unload their gear from failed grows due to "stoner laziness". Ask friends; gear floats around the scene all the time and most of the time it's near new and @ a wicked low price.

here are a few pics of my setup and plants (the plant in the top left corner is a Cherokee Purple tomato Clone

so I nearly have the insulation complete, just need to seal up the seams with some foil tape and adhere the door panels, I ended up using 1.5" R-tech rigid foam insulation with and "R" value of about 9.8

The other plant in my Cherokee Purple tomato

hey spicy, nice setup and at a great price, looking forward to watching your grow, good luck and happy growing

emannn2010 said:

hey spicy, nice setup and at a great price, looking forward to watching your grow, good luck and happy growing

Click to expand...

thanks bro! and in the past few day the ladies have nicely adjusted to their new home...but still a work in progress; this box growing is really new to me, I wish I had room and simply yearn for sunlight --- haha j/k. Engineering is my love and fascination.BUT- how will I ever get my MSE if I keep playing hippie (aka growing the natural way ) this is a total experiment------------------be warned people I'm gettin mad scientist crazy with this shit!

Nice looking Cab, it will be interesting to see the yeild since all your gear is made for indoor growing. Good luck ! I'll be keeping an eye on your grow.

ok- so the foam insulation will be another addition to my bill of materials. 1.5" rtech rigid foam was a total of $31.92 for 2x 8' x4' panels. Bringing the total cost of my project to $131.92 usd. and left me with enough scraps to build a few bad ass hides for my reptiles.
In conjunction with my AC running 8 out of the 15 hours of lighting time helped drop the temp in my box -4f , currently averaging 72f (in grow box) with an ambient temp of 87f. and a humidity level midday of 41%.

new pics!, the girls are about 1 month old from the day I plugged the seeds. they have been on an 18/6 light cycle with no nutes yet I have just been giving them the water from my air conditioner. I have it draining into a 2.5 gallon bucket and it usually fill once a day. Also I have some basil clones in there that I got from a friend yesterday and they smell great.

btw I am still working on the ducting for the 400 watt and plan to have it up and running later in the week.

hey Spicy, great job so far, good luck and happy growing

alright people so after long delay, I'm back and will be updating the grow regularly while Im recovering from back surgery. In the past few weeks my plants have pretty much been on their own since I was in the hospital but I still ended up with 3 nice females and only one male. I'll have a few pics of the haggard lot shortly

New pics! the first is turning out really nicely she's about 14" bent over to about 6" and has 12+ tops, this morning I trimmed some of the fan leaves from the top of the plant.

The second pic is of my little retarded plant that still seems to be hanging on, she was pretty yellowed after i got home from the hospital so I have just been taking it easy on her and haven't tried to fim or lst yet( until her color comes back a bit more.

and the third pic is of my indica plant that seems to be getting very bushy and very stinky already.
I trimmed her back too and have been tying her down for 3 days now. I dont plan on getting too many tops on her but I have 3 good ones right now and hope to get 2-3 more before flower.
Due to my extended hospital stay and my plants getting a bit neglected I decided to give the veg period a few more weeks and will flip over to 12/12 + add the 400 watt hps on thanksgiving day.
I also added a few vanity fixtures The first 2 ( 1x 6 lamp, 1x 4 lamp ) I got for $10 a piece and loaded them with a combo of 4x 40watt 2700k cfls and 6x 23watt 5000k cfls) (another $20 for the bulbs) + 2x 23watt 6500k
either today or tomorrow I will add a second 6x lamp fixture to the mix ( picked it up for $5.49 @ the habitat for humanity ReStore) and will eventually be adding 6x 42watt 6500k bulbs to it but have to special order because nobody seems to carry them locally, Home depot site to store estimates they will arrive in 5-7 working days.
so in the mean time I will be using 4x 23watt 6500k bulbs and maybe a few other random ones I can find. bringing my total wattage to
:
4x 40 watt @2700k
6x 23 watt @5000k
2x 23 watt @6500k
=344 actual watts used
+ this soon

will bring my grow up to a roughly 600watt cfl box.
btw my current temps are around 72f- 75f with an ambient (room temp) of 70f

just a few more pics with the new light fixture for a total of 482 watts. I will be moving the plants around and adding a few shelves this weekend

Epic CFL grow is what you should have called it!
Looking good Spicy!

thanks reku!
good news and bad news people, So yesterday afternoon my 1 month old ac crapped out on me which is going to be a serious issue if I'm going to use that 400watt hps. It seems it's the run capacitor on the compressor thats tripping the breaker ( I tried 3 different dedicated circuits) but the strange thing is that it trips about 10-15minutes AFTER the compressor kicks on. If any HVAC types out there have any ideas please let me know.
Otherwise the grow is looking really nice, my temps are up to 81f without the ac running but the plants aren't showing any signs of heat stress and My wife actually took our first clone yesterday which is looking really perky this morning. It's from the big sativa plant


I have had a few really good plants in the past that I really regret not cloning -once the buds were gone they were gone forever.
I'm going to try to take one clone at least from each plant.

The first pic is a new one of "big girl" she is beginning to flower, I was hoping to give her until thanksgiving before I flipped to 12/12 but maybe she with go back to veg
The last 3 pics are of my indica plant which is getting stinkier by the day. She is also filling out nicely after some light lst. She now has 7 nice tops that are about 3" off the main.

Turn off that vertical CFL..just waste of elec.

CFL are ok for suplemental light, but only 1-2 inches from plant.. And they dry air out in box and raise temperature

friendly advice...just use 400w

smak420 said:

Turn off that vertical CFL..just waste of elec.

CFL are ok for suplemental light, but only 1-2 inches from plant.. And they dry air out in box and raise temperature

friendly advice...just use 400w

Click to expand...

it's not vertical must just be the perspective in the pic. and I have a few younger plants + my Cherokee purple tomato plant under it. I do plan to use my 400 watt to flower. But The point point of this for me was to do a cfl veg - an experiment it's my first cab, I've grown with hids a bunch of times and know what they are capable of.... Haven't had any issues with temp or humidity either.

She's got balls!!!! crap, so I set up my 400watt hps yesterday and noticed something strange about one of my plants... upon further inspection I found these!!!

she seems to be a hermie... this sucks, I'm going to try to find a good sized clone or a teen on craigslist to replace her/him. I think I may plant it down in the creek bed because It's still a healthy beautiful plant and I'd hate to just kill it.