Step Onto the Road - Grow Journal (Kit's First Grow)

[paladinkit]

Hi everyone! I'm Kit, and other than reading GWE posts repeatedly I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm determined to grow my own meds, so here we go...

Put seeds in moist peat pellets to germinate today (3/25/21)
Dutch Passion Auto White Widow (white tie)
Dutch Passion Auto Lemon Kix (green tie)
Seedsman Northern Lights Auto (red tie)

Planning to grow in a similar setup to the linked GWE tutorial - I just have a 2x2x4 tent instead, so I had the head room to hang my fan from the ceiling, then run ducting out the top port and down the side to my carbon filter set on the floor. I also could only afford one light right now, so I've got the HLG 100Rspec in there. Am I the only one who hates how the section of cord between the extremely lightweight light board and the very heavy power brick is so damn short? I finally jury rigged it so the brick is also hanging from the top of the tent bars, but I have to have the angle just right or it moves my light out of alignment :/

Anyway, despite my equipment frustrations, I'm really excited to finally be starting!
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[Mr.furley]

Hi paladinkit and welcome to the forum. I wish that cord was long enough to place the driver outside the tent so your not alone on that one.

Good luck and happy growing.

 

[MrPNW]

To give you more room above you could place just the end of your ducting at the opening in the tent, having both your fan and filter outside.
https://www.acinfinity.com/pages/tec...ion-guide.html



With that out of the way you can replace the stock wires all together, then use 4 rope hangers at each corner of your light. This would allow you to pull your light all the way up closer the ceiling. Use rope hangers with the metal gears, not plastic.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018WIOEDA

 

[paladinkit]

Thanks!!!

 

[paladinkit]

See, I thought about putting the fan outside too, but I had understood that would make it quite a bit louder? And rn the only room that has space for my tent is the home office/spare bedroom, where my wife makes phone calls all day, so I was trying to minimize the noise inconvenience. I can try running the fan outside and see how much it bothers her, though!

The light did say in its box instructions that it wants 12" of clearance above... But as I review the tutorial post, she definitely gets the light up to the top of the tent at one point. Hm. I'm gonna have to read up more on that bc I'd like the stretch space for my plants but not at the risk of setting our house on fire.

 

[paladinkit]

No pops yet, just excessive thinking about lights. In said excessive thinking, I reviewed that microgrow tutorial post again paying more attention to the photos to try to guess how close to the top of the tent those lights were placed, and look what I spotted!

(nebula's photo)

The driver rested on top of the light board!!!

This is visible in multiple pics from different grows in that article, this is just the clearest one. My instinct is if it was set up this way for multiple grows it's probably less dangerous for the board than I assumed it was.. And honestly, while I don't want to be out that money immediately, I'm so frustrated with *many* aspects of this board's design that I won't grieve if it's lifespan is just a little shorter. So later I'm going to beg my wife into helping me reconfigure the light setup and make it a little less crazy.

 

[YYCannabis]

Those drivers can generate a lot of heat. It’s something to keep in mind if tent temp starts becoming an issue. As for the cord...looks like they used some bazaar plug connections which could make it challenging to buy longer cords.

 

[paladinkit]

I figured the driver generating heat could be a problem, since it looks a lot like the power bricks on say laptop chargers... but yeah, unless I can find an alternative cord I'm just going to have to work around that. I've seen people discussing diy power cord mods for issues like this but I know just enough about electrical work to know that is NOT within my skill or comfort level, lol

 

[YYCannabis]

Totally within your skills. It’s not a hard modification to lengthen a cord. It’s DC power for LED lights, all you need is a length of 16 gauge wire and some wire connectors. Cut the cord in half...expose wire ends...connect new wire in the middle with Wago connectors.

That cord looks thick like it’s moving thousands of volts, but it’s not.

 

[paladinkit]

I appreciate you trying to encourage me! I did sincerely mean it about the skills though, and I'd also appreciate it if you'd take me at my word on it. I have disabled unsteady hands and not enough physical or mental energy to put into learning electrical safety work right now. I will save this idea for if I can get assistance with modding my light in the future

 

[paladinkit]

Bad news:

The driver was definitely way too hot too keep in the tent. Over a period of about 18 hours it went up to 95F in there, with my little germination pods all roasted :/ So I spent a part of today fighting yet again to reconfigure the light. I had to move a table, find a support box, run the wire out a side port i hadn't intended to use, and now I *absolutely* can't move the light like this, but I've finally got the driver out of the tent but the light still plugged in. I'm running the tent empty to test, and after 5 hours it's been pretty steady in the 85F zone.

Good news:

Despite the parching heat wave they went through, it looks like the Lemon Kix is trying to pop! So I'm going to cross my fingers and keep nursing the pods along a little longer to see if anything survived. It would be nice if I didn't achieve a TPK during germination of all things.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

WOW did not think those lights would put out that heat i mean the driver anyway. How interesting to hear that so sorry about the dilema:doubtful: I seen pictures of those drivers just dangling outside a port hole?

 

[paladinkit]

I didn't think it would put out that much heat either! If I let it dangle it pulled the light sideways, so I moved a table next up to the tent and stacked some boxes so I can rest the driver securely just outside the port & not cause any tension issues on the power line.

It's steady right around 80F after about 18 hours with the driver out and the fan on high... and it's also only 20% RH. So next step is setting up a humidifier because wow no.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Well if it keeps it at those temps 80f is perfect. Yes my humidity is very low also cause it's our heating system woodstove. I do not use a humidifier frankly probley why my buds are slower to fatten as much. I like the cool temps on lights out during winter grows this helps. Don't let that fan blow directly on those plants it's like desert wind OK.

 

[paladinkit]

Humidifier is magic It's helping the tent stay cooler during the hottest part of the day too

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And all three girls are showing little signs of movement! Hard to see in the picture, but I can see changes even from this morning.

 

[SoOrbudgal]

I see something poking out good news

 

[paladinkit]

All three girls are alive and doing their best! I'm not sure how old they are technically - I planted the seeds on the 25th, and they started poking out of the jiffy plugs on the 29th & 30th respectively. I transplanted them to solo cups and gave them their first feeding/watering on the 1st.



I do think, after a week in the solo cups, that I maybe didn't put enough drainage holes in the bottom of the cups, so that's going to be a project for this evening. Once they've outgrown the cups they're going into fabric pots, but I don't want to stunt them before that point!

 

[SoOrbudgal]

Goodmorning way to grow Here's some advice from another auto learner. Autos waste no time so before long maybe a week they will need to be in there final pot. It's why most not all but most who do autos go from sprout to final pot. But i have transplanted autos and they did fine as long as the roots are not damaged when holding and transplanting. This will make them slow down do to shock. You will learn this as you grow them more. Have you seen the post on auto training/growing going on right now?

 

[paladinkit]

Thanks for the advice! I was planning on giving them no more than another week in the solo cups I just don't want to cause them any more problems than I already have with figuring out what correct watering looks like in practice rather than just reading about it.

I did see that thread! I'm going to take a closer look later, not sure yet what training I want to try for this grow but I do want to do something for a more flat canopy.

 

[paladinkit]

Hey folks! The girls are three weeks old today and doing their best I gave them nutrient water today and got some pictures and a close look at them, and I had some questions:

1) this girl (my white widow auto) has been smaller and a little less perfectly symmetrical all her life, I thought due to the fact that her seed casing was stuck over both cotyledons for I think two or three days after the stem pushed the whole thing above ground. However, over the last 24 hours or so these marks started appearing on the leaves, and I don't know what they are?


2) I've started giving them nutrients every watering rather than every other because of the paler lower leaves these other girls have. Other than that, do these girls look ok? (Northern lights auto & lemon kix auto)