My little Amnesia Trance Grow -- Michigan Legal, Michigan Basement

[BaccaRacca]

My traditional farmhouse Michigan basement is cold with very low headroom. To fight the cold I built a set of cabinets based around a 2'x2' footprint, then insulated with reflective bubble wrap. Lights and seed-starter heating maps provide heat. Ventilation at the moment is simple convection.

All cabinets are built with 4" vent holes at the bottom, and adjustable vents at the top. Eventually I will attach a powered 4" downdraft ventilation system. Because the cabinets are solid, and ventilation tubing is solid, I can use 4" venting. To save room, lights are fixed at the top, and I adjust height with shelves on cleats. I have three 2'x2' cabinets, and a two-bay 2'x4' cabinet. I'm also building a 32"x64" cabinet for flowering. I start seeds in 3" peat pots, then cut the pots and transplant into10", 3-gallon pots -- four fit in the 2x2 footprint, then 18", 10-gallon pots for main vegetation and flowering. The final setup will allow me to finish a plant every 4-6 weeks.

I chose fertigation over hydroponics because I'm familiar with it. Using a 75% perlite/25% peat moss soilless mixture makes the pots light and easy to move around, prune and train. I custom mix my fertilizer with a base of Miracle Gro Vegetable & Herb Fertilizer. As opposed to the base Miracle Gro, this mix has plenty of micronutrients. It seems to work great. I use tap water I allow to sit for 48 hours and de-gas. Ph is not a problem here, so no prob.

Here is my Amnesia Trance (from Seedsman) plant at 6 weeks. I have just topped the plant beneath the third node, then pulled the lower branches toward the middle of the plant, and pulled the upper branches out in order to give me a fairly level canopy.

At this time, I'm building the cabinets and the plants are simply sitting against a wall in the basement. Very crude.

 

[FunkyButtLovin]

Looks real nice, keep it up!

 

[BaccaRacca]

Week 7, and my girl gets a new home! First of the cabinets are finished. Just in time to start flowering, and give the girl a good first trim. Yellowing is from lack of water. Too busy finishing the cabinetry and forgot. Fortunately, she recovered.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Later in week 7 ... Just 4 days later and the first flower is popping out, and the girl is already beginning to fill out again.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Three weeks later ... I have a budding genius. But things are getting a bit crowded in the box ... On the final photo, I blew out some light so you could see where I've trimmed the sugar leaves and the buds are forming. Canopy is nice and flat, except for alpha bud near the thermometer -- the more I pull it down, the more it wants to grow.

 

[BaccaRacca]

As Nebulae Haze, sez ... A second trim in week three does a bud good!

Just look at them honey's lining up to see who's the biggest. Will alpha bud retain her crown?

Oh, and the second photo shows the box design. I get 1/2" sheet of Sande or Baltic Birch plywood cut into 4, 2'x4' sections for easy transport. The exposed back boards show where the bottom 2x2x4 box is attached to the light box. The two stringers to the side of the Vipar Spectra light are clamp light supports for UV lights, which will come into play in a few weeks. On the bottom left, you'll see the 4" vent, which leads to a plenum system beneath the Starter and Breeder boxes.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Just 4 days after the second defoliation, the girl is filling out faster than a bride after her honeymoon.

 

[DingusKhan]

Very nice job, BaccaRacca, those are some very deep green plants, very happy!

 

[BaccaRacca]

Thank you, DingusKhan. For keeping things green and happy I have learned that an EC meter is my best friend. It's like fertilize by numbers.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Week 11. Four Weeks into 12/12

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Lovely pics very nice stacking of buds. I like my vipars I've got 2 450 in a 4x4x8 they do well enough for me.

 

[D.A.A.S.69]

BaccaRacca looking great, nice even canopy, good job.
Keep up the great job.
HappyGrowing
HappyHolidays!

 

[BaccaRacca]

The girl has moved, and is now the queen of my double-wide cabinet. Had to make room for my White Widow youngsters, which had to move to make room for the beer cup challenge.

Week 12, 5th Week of 12/12. Stuff is filling out well. I've boosted the MG Vegetable & Herb with MG Bloom Booster, flipping the numbers on EC meter from ~1100 (ppm/TDS)/750(700 ppm) -- to 750(ppm/TDS)/1200 (700 ppm). Stuff is getting thick and sticky. Seed guide says 8-10 weeks of flower, so 3-5 more weeks on her.

And here is the White Widow, btw. Non-feminized, from Seedsman.

They got ignored for a while and seem to have bounced back.

Left/rear is 7 Weeks old, and has already shown herself to be a lady (small flower on green stem). Left/front almost died from dehydration and was severely stunted. Right front is a sickly thing. I think some dehydration and a nute problem set it back. She is bouncing back -- and yes, she's already showing, too (flowers on red stem)!

 

[SoOrbudgal]

She is a fine looking plant there sir lovely perpetual grow, I dig it.

 

[BaccaRacca]

The world is alive with the smell of vineyards. Grape aroma is very intense heading into week 13 of this Amnesia Trance grow, week 5 of 12/12 with another 4 or so to go.

 

[Detken]

The world is alive with the smell of vineyards. Grape aroma is very intense heading into week 13 of this Amnesia Trance grow, week 5 of 12/12 with another 4 or so to go.

Dude your shit looks great. I also grow in my basement. No where near to your level, those custom cabinets are cool as hell.

How long have you been growing? Also being in a basement are you having any issues with powdery mildew? Even with the temp change & low humility I'm still having trouble getting rid of it. Using hydrogen peroxide to kill it off, but it keeps coming back.


Any help would be great if you can.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Thank you, Detken,

I had a couple of grows under 4' florescent lights before I had a house and kids. Mostly sativa; first indica seed came from Thailand via 'Nam. Now it's legal, this is my second grow. First grow I started with foam core and just started to make things better for me and the plants. With prohibition at its end it's time our refugees made their way out of the homeless camps and tent cities and into more permanent homes.

I don't use soil indoors. It has its place: outdoors with all its friends in the whole big ecosystem. Indoors, soil mixes can bring in problems, and I'd put WPM at the top of the list. Soil is a living thing; it's the appeal of using it. But it also brings in living things that are not good for your plants. I think it creates more problems than solutions. This comes from my general gardening experience.

I have a very simple system, pouring tap water with massive amounts of solids and a ph of around 8 into a mix of 75% perlite and 25% peat moss (with ph as low as 3) I create an environment where the roots find a happy place between the extremes and the plants grow like crazy without a lot of fuss. At least that is what I think is going on, based on old hippy grower lore.

Plus no spores or eggs or other things that would make a petri dish and your plants unhappy.

Any activity below grade needs a vapor barrier between the activity and the foundation. Build that barrier and it will reduce problems. Note in the wide view of the cabinets I installed 4mil plastic sheeting between the cabinets and the walls & floor. Even after you add the barrier, run a dehumidifier. Between the moisture and coolness of the basement, and the dryness and heat from the dehumidifier you should find a good zone for your plants and bad one for the bugs and microbes. At least that is the theory.

In the permanent room I'm working on, I'm sealing all walls and ceiling. Nice thing about building a vapor barrier in a basement room is that you're containing odors and building a atmosphere lock for a CO2 system.

 

[Detken]

Holy crap, 2nd grow. You sure seem to know your shit. Yes prohibition has been a far to long process.

Now that you say that about soil, I did use Ocean soil on this current grow. Normally I use just coco with GH micro, grow, & bloom with Cal-Mag. The WPM seems to be more persistent this grow.

I like the idea of your perlite/peat moss mix, but a little unsure about the verbiage. Are you saying the PH of the mix is 8 & the PH of the water is 3? It kind of sounds like the idea of growing in rocks & water.

Yes a vapor barrier, right now I have two layers of 8 mill plastic hung in a corner of the basement to create my grow room. But the inside walls floor & ceiling are exposed. Humidity is going up with the water table rise. I do run a dehumidifier & keeping it under 50%. Also have a duck fan sucking air out of the room to the outside with two air intake tube vents on the floor coming from outside the room. I can control the problem with hydrogen peroxide sprays & wiping the leaf's.

Any ideas on a vapor barrier? Just remember I don't have the same carpentry skills you have. If I did I wouldn't have plastic walls. LOL

 

[DingusKhan]

Ay, caramba. Those are some fat mofos.

 

[BaccaRacca]

Detken, thank you.

Regarding the mix, way back in the 70s the hippy wisdom was mix peat moss into the perlite and the peat moss will buffer the effects of the local water. I have very hard water drawn out of Lake Michigan, which sits on a virtual giant slab of Cal Mag. The water is alkali, ph averages around 8.0. Peat Moss, on the other hand is acid with a ph between 3.5 and 4.5. My water is much more alkali than what cannabis likes, and the peat moss is much more acid, yet the plants I've grown seem healthy. So, yes, there is some buffering going on. Look at the photo below, and you'll see how the roots preferred the denser mix of peat moss-to-perlite up near the top, and didn't venture too far from it. By using this mix it appears the plant is doing the chemistry instead of me.

A vapor barrier against a wall is as easy as hanging the plastic that contains your grow room. Attach the top of your plastic sheet to the sill plate -- the wood board that sits atop the foundation and under the rafters. Let the sheet fall to the ground, pushing all the air out between the plastic and the wall. Then take a board -- 2"x2", 1"x4", 2"x4" and place the board over the plastic along the base of the wall to hold the plastic in place. Done, Using multiple sheets, make sure you overlap the sheets 3- to 6-inches and seal them with with flooring tape.

Also consider your floor. A lot of cold and moisture comes up from that. Overlap the plastic sheeting that comes down from the wall with a sheet that covers your floor. Add some flooring insulation (really cheap), and find the cheapest floor covering possible. The cheap laminate flooring that you'll see on sale for 39-cents a s.f. works fine in a below-grade setting. I'm looking at rubberized gym flooring for my permanent room.