Mini-Tote CFL Soil supercrop

I inherited a slightly mistreated plant and this is a test of the mini-tote grow chamber idea. I dont have a closet that is not in use and I cant afford tents or larger more sophisticated setups, so instead of doing a cabinet grow (which would require I build a cabinet) I assembled a container/light/fan system that could support multiple indoor growing methods (hydro, soil, aero) that was also self contained and easy to clean and has some stealth/portability. This is a test of the environment and its suitability to grow and flower.

Apologies for the photo quality, I'm using a cell phone camera.

Strain:
Unknown, looks like 70-30 indica I guess. If I can find out I will post. The plant has been sitting in the corner of a guys closet for an unknown length of time, hasn't been performing well and has some stress/pest issues. Plant is approx 3" in height as of October 15th 2011. No idea what sex it is but I presume its a cutting from some female somewhere. Its a mystery at the moment.



Colour is mottled, probably a nutrient deficiency and pest damage, but if you can identify a specific issue please let me know. Its not the solid green I would like to see, but its not too far gone either (I hope).


Starting to train it right away. Top is bent past 90 degrees and I plan on training it along the circumference of the pot as it grows. Looks like someone tried to top the plant; incorrectly. Not sure what to do about that, just a stump on the stem, it didn't split.


Tote:
Rubbermaid 79L Clever Store Blue Tote 17.5" wide, 18" high, 23" length (painted white interior, used a direct to plastic spray paint, but one should use a sanding sponge on the inside surfaces first to promote better bonding).

Pot:
10" wide, 9" deep. I will need to change to a shallower container at some future point, assuming the plant survives.

Lights:
4x Philips 23W (100W equivalent) EL/mDT 2BC 1600 Lumen 2700K. Peak output should be in the 550-650nm range and should be okay for flowering. I cant find a spectral output graph, but similar bulbs have peaks in the yellow/red and blue. I plan to mix in a couple Daylight (5000K) versions of the same bulb in the future to get some more intensity during veg. Going to see how the plant performs under the 4 soft whites first. 4 of these might be enough for veg and flower. Have it on a 18 hour veg cycle right now.

Soil:
Unknown, presumed standard potting soil from hardware store, no perlite that I can see. Water did drain out the bottom after I gave it about a litre of water. I am a bit concerned about oxygen availability for the roots. I have aerated the soil with a pencil for now. Will change soil composition a bit when I change pots later on.

Temperature/Humidity:
Unknown, need to install meters.

Cooling:
2x 9mm 37 CFM fans, one intake, one output running off a salvaged AC Adapter (12v .850 amp) fan wires soldered together with molex connectors for easy power disconnection. Air flow is enough to shake plant at the present.

pH:
Unknown, need to buy a test kit for the house water, I think its high though so I am letting the water sit out and adding a bit of vinegar for now. I image this plant was living on straight city tap water up until now. I need a test kit.

Nutrients:
None at present, will likely buy some basic all in one nutrient for now.
(SCHULTZ Plant Food, 10-15-10 - 300g)

Watering:
Gave it a good soak today, with added air movement compared to its old environment I will have to gauge how often it needs to be watered over the next couple weeks. leaves do not appear wilted, but the plant is a bit weak.

Pests:
Spider mites of course, cleaned the web off as best I could with a sponge and wiped the underside of the larger fans. Will buy some sulphur powder soon, but will clean by hand for now. Only one plant so I should be able to manage this during training sessions.


The whole contraption:

Four lights, painted interior, 2 fans

The fixtures, wire boxes and wire all cost about $20, the lights where $10 for a 4 pack and the tote was $10. I would have bought a white tote if I could have found one, but they only had a semi-transparent one and thus is why I needed to paint the interior of this blue one.


$5 digital timer and power config above and you can see the electrical setup on the lid below. Didn't really need the 4th interconnection as was in parallel, but did it absent mindedly.




I am looking for feedback/suggestions on anything you see here so feel free to post. Particularly the plants health.

It's my first grow

Cheers

So its been about a week, lots of new growth already so it seems that 4x27watt is plenty for a single plant, can probably do two plants in this container. As for enough light during flowing, well I guess we'll eventually see. I may need to bump it up to 6x27watt CFL's during 12/12. I could try to flower this as it is, but I am not sure if it will make a noticeable difference in resulting harvest yield. (I'm not sure I can even flower it as it is "at all"). Been pruning bad leaves and looks like the mite problem is under control at least.

Well, figured I would put the screen on her this morning, if anything its going to be my impatience that kills this plant. lol.

So basically I found a screen that was the front of a large floor type fan, cut it down to fit the box and mounted it to the pot with some zip ties. I think this will work and provides a nice fit in the tote. I can still get it in and out easy.

As you might be able to see there is some curl down and leaf tip browning. So next couple waterings are going to be sans nutes. pH test u/d kit should arrive soon, so no data on run off or source water numbers. but soon. New small growth is even showing the browning tips, although impossible to see in photos from crappy phone camera. (its a BB, you'de think it would be better). next phone is going to be a Samsung Galaxy Android, but I digress....

All in all its been under a lot of stress and I think its looking better overall, bushier and certainly more healthy with the mite infestation bashed down. I would be surprised if they are completely gone, so I will just keep spraying them occasionally.

Projects for the next week or so are , 1. the pH issue (and PPM if I can find a cheap way to do that), 2. Install digital therm/hygrometer and 3. Install a Rheostat on the fan assembly, there is a lot of air going across this area, which is good, but I would like a set and forget way to manage fan speed to give me some sort of environmental control.

Looks nice man. Great setup. I would like to have a few of those

nice setup. Glad to see a tote grow box made well. Those lights should definitely be fine for one plant throughout veg, just add like 2 more 2700k bulbs for flowering and swap out two of the daylights for 2700k's (so you have 4x2700k 2xdaylight)

Thanks all,
Well, I just found out that this might actually be an auto-flower strain, so will have to wait and see, (it's been around for a long time and hasn't shown any indication of flowering, but it was so neglected before, who knows). Also figured out that the soil is primarily (if not totally) Sphagnum moss peat, leaves me still wondering about this stupid Nitrogen toxicity issue, still gotta figure out the pH and flush it anyway.

As for the lights, I was planning on buying a 4 pack of the Philips daylight and adding another central fixture with 4 outputs internally. (next grow for veg) These 2700K light have a big spike in the blue spectrum anyway, so not too worried about it, but when flower time rolls around I was going to add a couple blacklights in conjunction with something heavier in red only (even if I loose overall lumens with coloured/filtered lights I think I can fine tune the spectrum this way, so a bit of an experiment).

this is what the spectrum looks like now, picture is a bit shoddy (camera phone again) but you get the idea.

As you can see there is a significant blue range in there already. Tthese CFL's do really waste allot of energy in the green, lesson here is check the manufacturers data sheets for spectrography charts.

My concept is to add UV-A and something that is big in the 650nm range without adding tonnes of green/yellow which the plant just ignores. I am already getting harassed in another thread for this, so please lets just wait and see if the end result is worth it or not. LED's or T5 HO's would be great for this, but thats not in the cards for this go round. Maybe a 90watt UFO sometime in the near future. I'mm thinking a combo of two 6500K for now and swap out for whatever craziness I desire at flower.

Cheers

ive heard blacklights are useless but I wanna see how your lil experiment goes. I was reading that other thread you were referring to, made some decent points but I think it's still very much in the air. Good luck though!

Some evidence to back your claim. .http://www.sciencefairadventure.com/ProjectDetail.aspx?ProjectID=89



That's only using colors. Still think its best to stick with kelvin only.

On the blacklight/UV issue, from what I can tell most CFL blacklights are peaking above 315nm which is essentially all UV-A. T-5 HO's (atinics etc) seem to be 400nm+. SO maybe a bit of UV-A in there.

Where UV-B is from 280-315nm....

The reptile/aquarium 5.0/10.0 UV-B bulbs have moderate sweeps in the 280-340nm ranges along with other peaks throughout the spectrum. Tanning beds are prety much all UV-A with abotu 4-10% UV-B production. Medical grade lamps for phototherapies are more focused and only inteded for short period exposures to so are irrelevant here.
Kessil LED's dont seem to go lower than 400nm, I haven't really done any significant LED research though, I do know there are Diodes that do UV light, just cant find any at the moment.

SO factually we know that all UV radiation damages tissue UV-B and UV-C being the worst, though you wouldn't find the latter in anything other than a kill zone for bacteria.
Anyway, there is a study floating around that they did with radishes and exposing them to UV-A radiation...

ABSTRACT:
Effects of near-UV, especially UV-A, irradiation from UV lamps on the growth and physiological activity of radish plants were investigated by growing plants in plastic frames covered with a poly(vinyl chloride) film that was opaque to solar UV radiation on the Earth's surface. The growth of radish plants was promoted by the UV-A radiation, and the promotion by UV-A radiation was associated with an increase in chlorophyll content and photosynthetic activities. Furthermore, nitrate reductase activities, levels of soluble protein, levels of vitamin C (ascorbic acid + dehydroascorbic acid) and levels of nicotinamide coenzymes (NAD(H) and NADP(H)) in leaves and in the so-called globe “root”, which includes stem tissue in radish plants, were also elevated by UV-A radiation. Taken together, these data suggest that promotion of plant growth by UV-A radiation involves the promotion of carbon and nitrogen metabolism in radish plants

SO that would seem to suggest that you actually may be doing more harm then good by using a UV-B lamp (although another study suggests that UV-B damage can be counter acted by far red spectral input, balancing metabolic and physiologic process out within the plant or something)...as opposed to the more common UV-A lamps.

The flip side of that argument is that you WANT UV-B not for promoting growth BUT to actually do (some) damage to the plant, the plant then creates more natural oils as a defence mechanism. The catch here is out of the many cannabinoids that the plant produces does it actually create an increase in Delta 9 or right across the board (delta9, delta8, cbd,cbn, thcv, cbc) or what? I cant seem to find data on this. Since we are only going to be concerned about delta 9 for the most part, I'm inclinded to go with UV-A and more growth.

Of course cannabis isn't a radish, but hey its enough info for me to go right ahead and put in some standard (less expensive) blacklight CFL's as a supplement.

Of course when I do we will all get to see the results, but it will take several grows I think to really get an idea of it's relevance.

FYI, plant died due to a PH fluctuation.