Sour Candy clone + DWC Grow in homemade Cabinet: test-run

Hey Guys, just thought I'd throw this up here to see if anyone wanted to follow along during my first attempt at growing. I had it in the DWC section but I think this is a better location for the thread.

I built a 4'x2'x4' two room box to fit snugly into a closet of my house. A vertical wall in the middle divides the inside into 2 chambers taking up 1/3 and 2/3 of the space each. The smaller one is for vegetation using a 10 gallon dwc with 5 or 6 net pot locations. Right now however I'm using the space to flower a Sour Candy clone in soil that I have.
The bigger chamber will be for flowering the plants prepped in the veg side, and right now I have 2 plants going, they are in an 18 gallon dwc. One white widow big bud that I ordered a pack of, and one free seed that was labelled OG.

The sour candy clone I've had for about 2 months, and since then I have grown out its canopy and transplanted it into a 3 gal pot. The soil I have it in is pretty basic, so I include Bonticare plant food when watering, using the ppm suggestions from the label, seems to be doing pretty well. It is about 2 weeks into flower now and I recently cut back the shaded undergrowth to increase ventilation and get the lower bud sites more direct light.


On to the DWC, which I plan on solely doing once the Sour Candy is done.
Both seeds were germinated in rockwool, then at 1.5 weeks put into the 3 inch net pots with hydroton,
They are 4 weeks old now and have been growing well as far as I can tell, both were up to their 5th or 6 nodes, and today I made the decision to top the white widow at it's 5th node to get it's growth shoots a chance to beef up, higher up it had a set of canopy leaves that were blocking a lot of light.


The other plant is an "OG", not sure about any details beyond that. It is also 4 weeks old, had a lot of healthy looking growth, huge fan leaves, and I decided to try out main-lining on it. So today I topped it at the 3rd node, exposing those growth shoots which had been in the shade, those will hopefully become the start of the manifold. I know with my limited space I will want a flat even canopy to maximize yield, that is why I'm interested in techniques that promote that.


-It took some trial and error to get the cabinet ventilation the way I wanted it, so there were a few temperature swings up 100 degrees for short periods, but they seem to have survived fine. Now I have the temps stabilized in both chambers, 75-85 during the day, down to mid 60s at night.
-Humidity ranges from 20-50%. I'm in Colorado with very dry air, so I found two Vicks Cool Mist machines for a couple dollars at the local GoodWill, and they increase the humidity nicely in the closet, thus increasing the humidity in the cabinet as well.
-My tap water tests at 7-8 on the pH level, so I make sure to get it down to 5.5-6.5 when prepping the nutrient solution for the tank and watering the clone. PPMs in the DWC right now are 720.

-For lighting I'm using fluorescents, one 125 watt flowering bulb that i have on the Sour Candy, and one 125 watt vegetation bulb that is on the two in dwc. Using timers I have the sour candy on 12/12 and the other two on 20/4 light cycles.

-The nutrients I'm using are the KIND line from Botanicare liquid plant food. I got a free set of the whole line, a bottle of the tea, base, grow and bloom each from the local store.

Comments welcome, happy toking.

Update 4/16

The Sour Candy looks to be coming along nicely, bud sites are plumping up and I'm seeing some crystals now. Just watered it with a full dose of bloom formula for the first time, since it is now into the 3rd week of 12/12.




Over in the DWC, I now have the White widow bonded at 4 locations and am giving it time to respond.



The main-lined OG has grown out the 2 shoots she had left and I tied them down to start spreading them away from each other.


I added two 60 watt 5500K bulbs to the lighting in bigger chamber. So now it is pushing 240 watts total with the one 120wt 6400K bulb I already have been using.

Looks good man, I'm very interested in how the sour candy turns out. I have 5 seeds that I have been waiting to pop but haven't been able to find any grow journals on it. Keep it up I will be watching!

Just found this picture of when I got the clone.

I forgot how much it has grown since I see it everyday.

Update 4/23

Sour Candy:
Middle of the 4th week of flowering now, it is looking pretty good to me. Have been watering it every other day, 0.5-1 gallon of pH'd straight water gets it to about 10% runoff, then about a 1/3 gallon of the botanicare kind bloom+base+tea mix formula.
The pics are at the same locations so you can compare them directly to the ones in earlier posts.



DWC:

The Main-lined OG is bouncing back and it's two main shoots are growing well, gonna give more time before I top it again to get 8 cola sites. Pretty sure I don't want more than that due to my space restrictions.



The White Widow is also going off, I've been defoliating it in certain spots once a week to give the growth shoots more space. I don't plan on topping it again, just want it to grow up from here, and I think it will fit nicely with the OG once that is grown out.


The roots look good on both. Sometimes they will have some dark sludge looking build-up, but then the next day they are back to nice and white....?

pH in the tank has been pretty constant around 5-8 to 6.2. PPMs around 800. I have been topping off the water with straight ph'd water, and will do a full water swap pretty soon since it has been a few weeks.

-This past week I improved my air circulation a lot by rigging up some duct fans pushing fresh air into the bottom of both chambers, and large exhaust points in both rooms with a duct fan pull air out. Temps have been great with this set up, I have much more piece of mind now leaving the cabinet alone all day with the doors shut, before it would heat up past 90 inside pretty fast with the doors shut. Now as long as my inlet air is a decent temp the box stays well within the prime temp range.
-Still tinkering around to up my humidity, been trying out humidifiers from Good Will and directing all of the output air straight towards the inlet of the cabinet and that has increased humidity a little. 20-40% range now
-I've been reading up on LEDs and thinking of switching to them after the Sour Candy is done. I'm concerned that as we get into summer and temps increase I will have trouble with too much heat from the CFLs. Also like the idea of less power consumption and being able to have my lights further away from the canopy.
A local light store has a good sale on LED flood lights right now, I'm looking at making my own panel out of 4 or 5 of these bulbs, 19 watt, 2700K, 38 degree beam spread. They say they are comparable to a 90 watt cfl.

Anybody have thoughts on this, at $25 each I can build a 450 watt equivalent flowering panel using 5 bulbs for under $140 including all materials. Assuming these lights work well for growing that is a good deal no?

this i a good detailed story and good pictures!!

bakenast said:

this i a good detailed story and good pictures!!

Click to expand...

Thanks dude, tune in midweek for the next update.

Time for another update, anyone with comments or constructive criticism is welcome to chime in.

Sour Candy is in the 5th week of flower now, still looking good to me, I've kept the same watering/nute schedule.
Ran out of smoke a few days ago and I don't think I'll be able to wait till this girl is done, luckily I live in Colorado so it shouldn't be an issue lol!



DWC

Ran into a deficiency with the white widow this week, after researching around I'm pretty sure it's Calmag, which is strange because botanicare says like 10 times on their website if you're using the Kind system you DO NOT need to supplement extra Calmag... If anyone thinks otherwise please let me know.

Also read somewhere that low humidity can cause Calmag lockout, which if true is most likely what I've got going on, been struggling to up humidity since the grow started, now I have one of my Vicks cool mist machines shooting air STRAIGHT into the intlet and humidity shot up nicely to 40-50%, so hopefully that fixes the issue, also added in some calmag to the res.


The OG is almost ready for it's final topping to get 8 cola sites. No deficiencies with this one yet, so I guess it's a more tolerant/hardy strain than than the WW. It also doesn't have any older leaves so that may be why I don't see any affected areas.



Currently I have way to much time on my hands so have been piecing together a top drip feed recirculating grow table using drain pots with Coco Coir in a draining table I made with a concrete mixing tub. I'm curious to compare it to DWC. To me it seems like the best combination of hydroponics and soil, without as much of mess. I considered ebb&flow as well, but personally I like the idea of a constant slow drip top feed than having 10+gallons of water begin pumped around several times a day. (cheaper as well)
Also been reading all about LEDs this week. Thanks to all the knowledgeable people in that forum section, I have some Cree COBs on the way and plan to build 3 flowering lights with them.

Day 41 for the Sour Candy, still trucking along. It's had the "burnt" leaf tips for a while, but I think that is from the CFLs and not nute-burn, anyone think otherwise?
I test the runoff water each watering and the tail end of runoff has been testing around 6.7-6.9 consistently, The water and nute mix I use always tests right around 6.
Medicine Man, where I got the clone from, says 8-9 weeks of flowering time. 8 weeks for me is on May 24th. I could use input from readers here though for an approximate time left, as I think I see a fair bit of the reddish pistils that signal it's almost time? Close up pictures below.




DWC
The white widow bounces back with a vengeance every time I clear out some of it's foliage.
The OG has 8 nice looking shoots now. Since I'm done with shaping, hopefully it gains some vertical height now and evens up with the WW. I will be putting in a SOG once they both are a bit higher and start 12/12 at that point also.



One week post adding in extra CalMag I see no more problems.

SC at the end of week 7 is plumping up noticeably now. Still has the nute burn look even though I've giving it lower strength feedings, 500-800ppm (my tap water starts out at 80ppm). or is that still too much?

More of it's pistils are turning burnt orange-ish now.



DWC
I topped the WW at a it's highest points 3 days ago, it is getting close to evening up with the OG

Alrighty I'm flipping these lassies today, got my 2 fancy-schmancey cree cob leds wired up and running smooth at 20 watts each, drivers output at 0.65A. Poor mans SCROG is up as well.


Trying out a $20 microscope on the Sour Candy, how are my crystals looking?

Final days of the Sour Candy, It's milky pretty much everywhere I look with the microscope. Last sunday was the end of week 9 at 12/12.



The main-lined OG suffered a significant trunk center split at the first pair of branches. Never recovered and it's growth stopped. I took it out and now just have the White Widow, which has stretched a lot since flipping 2 weeks ago and is doing it's best to fill the newly opened area. It looks about done stretching now and I built a better screen to space out the bud sites as much as possible.



I finally have the lights configured how I want them for the remainder of flowering the WW. 3 total Cree 2700k COB LEDs, 2 40w/1.5a, with 1 20w/0.7a in between them.