Cascadia Grow

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Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Hello! My friend and I are starting our first indoor grow and I wanted to share pics and story with everyone since we're brand new to this. We'll be growing Blueberry Kush and I'm super excited! We should be planting the germinated seeds today if all looks well when my friend gets home. We have our grow bin built but we might need to change a few things after I did some more research today. We went with a basic DIY guide that was recommended to me from a friend who has grown successfully. I'm excited because I joined this forum awhile ago and may have started a journal, but my roommate at the time took control of logistics and ended up not growing anything from the 3 seeds I was given by the friend that gave me the guide (good guy he is! we listen to ELO and get baked together a lot :D)

So we're going to give it another go. I live in a new place that's much much bigger and we have an empty bedroom to keep the plants in for now. We're planning on doing two plants, and I'm not sure if the seeds are feminized or not, so will have to check gender at some point to make sure we don't lose yield.

Please, over the course of this journal, if you see that we're doing anything that will cause CERTAIN DOOM (tm) please feel free to speak up. I'm totally new to this and I think I want to grow long term to help other people (and myself). Any guidance on getting the science right would be fantastic. I also want to give gratitude to the members of this forum that have most of the sticky topics. I read a few and have a few others open for perusing later and I've learned a whole bunch in only an hour :)

Here are some images of the different components we've put together. Once we get the seeds potted and the rig hooked up, I'll snap another little album of photos to share with you all.

Fig. 1 - This is our grow bin! The top is the upper bin and our bottom bin is the one touching the ground
Cascadia grow


Fig. 2 - Inside. You can see the foil (shoddy job but I had to let roommate do it because I was cutting my fingers on the tape :(), spliced cords, light array (might be changing this after first grow), large computer fan (see fig. 3 for where that goes) Note: both bins are taped on the inside
Cascadia grow 2


Fig. 3 - Fan cutout. Sorry it's a tad blurry, was trying to show context with the foil. Not sure how we're going to fasten the fan yet, roommate cut out to the outside of the fan, so it fits perfectly inside but would fall by too much rotation or getting hit. Tape? Maybe screws somehow? Innovation awaiting
Cascadia grow 3


Fig. 4 - germination bag. Germinating in a bag with damp towel. Roommate has been in charge so I haven't gotten much visibility on this. Hopefully this works!! My roommate might know, but I'm unsure how to tell when the seed has sprouted enough to be ready. In my first grow we waited until there was probably about half an inch of growth out of the seed before planting. How do you know which end to plant downward?
Cascadia grow 4


Fig. 5 - Potting mix and containers. These are 12 inch. Originally we were just going to plant in these from the start, but a video I saw on youtube recommended sizing up for each stage, so we're going to consider that tonight and maybe get a few more pots to start out smaller
Cascadia grow 5



That's all for the inaugural entry to my journal. Be back soon with more images once we answer some of these pressing questions and get the seeds to push past the potting mix!
 
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MT.4Lready

MT.4Lready

53
18
Next hole, indent your cuts to allow for screwing through the plastic. a sloppy cut is fine, just leave enough material to get a good fasten.

Finding long strips of fastening material, you cover over the hole pattern of the fan, fastening the strap to the container, and fasten to that. you could possibly sandwhich the material over the fan and then fasten the screws over that. It'll probably be a flush mount from the outside, all of the fan should be inside the box.

The fan can also be fastened with tape temporarily, and a tidy silicon/expanding foam, should have enough strength to hold the fan in place. in this scenario you want it on the center line of the box wall (last resort)

I caution, you may want to use a bigger fan size eventually. this one will work

This container will work np. mindful of bugs
it's a lot of innovation like you said -with the supplies you can muster and sometimes making due after cocksure cuts.

- It was a lot of fun building my first computer case, It introduced me to the impressive growth qualities of cannabis and the requirement every grow has to be intuitive and innovative.

Good luck!
 
C

Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Thanks for the tips guys! The fan is secure like it is thankfully. If it gets loose I'll fasten it with tape. It's been running for a day or so without any issues. Will keep mindful of the bugs for sure, we have it stored in a closet with tight shudders on it, should be good to keep most bugs out.

Quick update, we got the seeds planted and both have come up past the soil! Will include the images below. We started out with the lights on for 18 hours straight over the pots and then got 4 out of the 6 dark hours before our time controller plug arrived from amazon and we put it on a normal schedule that was more in line with local sunrise and sunset. I also moved my temp/humidity device into the bin and have been checking temps. The temp device is in the bottom of the bin beneath the pots and it's reading about 100F. When I put my hand in the pots it feels cooler than if I put it in the bottom. A towel was placed down inside the bin below the plants, I'm curious if this might be adding to it? I read the 100F temp for the first time when the fan was off, so I turned it on and the temp hasn't really changed. I'm worried air circulation isn't working properly. I might try to innovate a new bin setup with a it better placement for the fan.

Also I did a little more research with a beginners video on youtube and took a lot of notes. That's what we've been following for watering and fertilizing. Speaking of which we haven't been able to find a good source for the specific fertilizers that are needed. Any tips on where to obtain? Right now we're watering once every two days and checking the soil for moistness, and plan to move to the veg state in a couple of weeks when we see the first leaves.

Here are the pics!

IMG 20160901 194743
IMG 20160902 093128
IMG 20160904 081948
IMG 20160904 082003
IMG 20160904 082008
 
MT.4Lready

MT.4Lready

53
18
@ 100f
keep the moisture to the seedlings the temps may be drying out the mediun quicker than expected, with your checks, soil moisture is important for those little girls

the container will need venting near the top; minimum. otherwise turning a light off will help temps initially.

the ballast of the cfl are inside the container which I think will be producing most of the heat. If you're still modding the container, bringing the fixture to the top and drilling holes for the bulbs to fasten from the inside, you'll beable to relocate some heat.

you don't have to do that,
Gotta drop the temp somehow sooner than later. 80-85f is workable.

If the towel isn't serving a purpose remove it. cleaner room easier troubleshooting


Wont need nutrients very soon, water pH is important now
if you are growing to flower in that container, look in to getting square pots, or grow bags preferably. aware that you'll need to water the plants enough for excess run off, grow bags will allow the plants to breathe afterwards and efficiently take up space. food for thought.
 
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C

Caiy Nyhm

16
3
I think we'll just cut a hole in the top bin on the side near where the lights are and move the fan up. The temp was down to 90 something in one of the pics I posted, that was after the fan starting running so I think if we control the temp in the outer room it might help get us down to where we want to be.

When should we start fertilizing then? The material I was studying recommended fertilizing during the seeding phase. Also we are planning on flowering in those containers. I wanted to get smaller ones to start but ended up needing to plant the seeds sooner than we could obtain. Will it really be a problem to grow all the way in that size container? I was going to transplant them into more soil in the same pot when they get bigger. I did figure running 2 might cause issues, if we had just done 1, perhaps these containers could be used.

Also, how much watering is to be done? The towel is there supposedly to soak up any water or moisture that comes through the bottom since we have holes in the bottom of our pots (do we need to plug them?), but I'm not sure if we should be watering it completely and thoroughly, like make sure the soil is all wet and then let it dry up, or if we should do smaller amounts. My roommate has been in charge of watering so far and I've noticed he's only watering around the base of the sprouts.

No pictures today, but the leaves have gotten bigger! It's cool to see how fast this plant grows.
 
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Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Reporting in! Temp has dropped to around 85 in the bin per the thermometer after opening a window a crack and turning the fan on. As long as we can maintain as we go into winter and keep the room relatively temperature stable, I don't think we'll have any more heating problems. I still want to mod a new bin setup for our next plants. My roommate and I are medical patients here in Washington and we're just getting started. I need to read up on local laws for how many plants we can have, but from what I understand it's at least 6, so we're starting to plan bin 2 and bin 3 :) I'll upload some pictures from my phone down below; they're not current, I took them a couple of days ago, but it shows some really good growth.

We're going to have to figure out something creative to keep the plants watered over the next two weekends as we'll both be on vacation this weekend and out of town the next. 2-3 days is the max gap there, I'm thinking we just water it as normal and pick up when we get back. The plant is probably resilient enough to survive a day, or is that a wrong assumption? Anyway on to pictures!

Fig. 1a - "Right Plant" or the slower grower of the two
IMG 20160906 100224


Fig 1b - "Left Plant" or the "First" plant
IMG 20160906 100215


Fig 2 - Temp control pic. It IS closer to the fan, but I think it's getting a more accurate reading still
IMG 20160906 100229


Fig 3a - Watering pattern on the left plant to help determine if we're underwatering or not
IMG 20160906 100241


Fig 3b - Watering pattern on the left plant to help determine if we're underwatering or not
IMG 20160906 100244
 
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Caiy Nyhm

16
3
I'm alive!

Sorry for the break on my grow journal, life has been interesting over the last month or two and caused a lot of drama to deal with. Back to a fairly stable medium now though :)

First up, we're still on the seed lighting where we're doing 18 hours lights on, 6 hours lights off. We water once every two days or so but generally let the soil show when it needs to be watered. My housemate did independent research and obtained a set of fertilizers (colored liquids) that do no match the nutrient breakdown percentages that I studied 1 to 1. We did some rough conversion and each of the three fertilizers seems fairly close to the percentages of each nutrient needed, so i think we'll do okay with it. I'm keeping a fairly rigorous scientific journal on our experiment complete with barometric pressure (that was fun over the weekend with Typhoon Songda scaring Cascadia into fit), lux levels, temp and a few other bits including soil pH.

Since the last pictures I posted (I thought I had posted more, maybe one or two of those posts were never finished or failed to submit...) the plants have grown, and recently (last week or 2) they REALLY took off. I'm not sure if fertilizers were used yet but the bottles look full still! You'll see the change in growth over 1-2 weeks in the photos below.

We're looking to switch to veg lighting here pretty soon but we're unsure of the exact marker that we should take to mean it's time to switch. Any tips on that would be welcome. We'll be transplanting when we switch lighting schedules. Housemate obtained some grow bags that are bigger and we're going to try them out and see what happens! I noticed a little bit of leaf death or tan/grayness on the edge of a leaf on Plant 2, it takes up the right most area of the bin. Not sure if it's visible in the pics, but we're going to try to track that one down ASAP so as to reverse it if possible.

Fig. 1a Sept 14 (not sure which plant this is :()
IMG 20160914 084809


Fig. 1b Sept 14 (the other plant)
IMG 20160914 084824


Fig. 2 Sept. 21 thinking that small leaf bottom left is slightly discolored..
IMG 20160921 080039


Fig. 3 Here's the beauty, consider this with the following photos. Both plants Oct. 11
IMG 20161011 172252


Fig. 4 Both plants today. If you look back to one of my first posts, in the pic comments I called the Left plant the "first plant". You can really see it's headstart now, it's MUCH wider than the right plant (does this have any gender indication? We don't know if these are feminized or if we might get a male plant)
IMG 20161017 163651


Fig. 5a Left Plant up close
IMG 20161017 163700


Fig. 5b Right Plant up close
IMG 20161017 163708
 
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Foxlink

Foxlink

477
143
Hiya :) loving the ideas for the bin and lighting. OHHH Yeah- :) Welcome to the farm, and have a wonderful time here. I've only been here a short while, but the folks here are knowledgeable, helpful, and very friendly. :)

-Fox
 
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Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Heya Foxlink! Thanks for stopping by and for the welcome :) The bin and lighting scheme was based on a blueprint we found online, it's pretty cheap.. perfect!
 
C

Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Edit: I was wrong below, the right plant is the one that got singed, and it is now the "left plant" because of the way we placed them back in. Not confusing at all! :p

Hello again! Checking in here on the Cascadia Grow for you guys since we JUST got back from both being away for thanksgiving. Pictures will be uploaded in a little bit.

Firstly we moved the plants out of the ceramic pots you've seen in the above photos and switched them to 5 gallon grow sacks. It was really fun to figure out how to safely get the plants out of their pots and then figure out the appropriate way to repot. I'm glad to say that since switching them to the bags they've been growing beautifully! We officially switched to veg lighting a few weeks ago and also ran into some space issues.

The space issues we kind of knew would happen, the plants grew up far enough to touch the lighting rig. Only the left plant (Plant #1, though we kind of lost track replanting but plant 1 has always been the slowest) got burned a little bit, a few of the leaves near the top got singed. Removed the singed portions and the plant is doing quite well now! The right plant is quite a bit taller though as you'll see in the photos. To remedy the space problem, we hung the top part of the bin from the closet dowel with a few hangers and rope on each side. We left it like this with a gap for awhile, but right before leaving for thanksgiving we wrapped a windshield sun reflector around the open space so now we have a reflective surface aiding in light diffusion!

We still need to determine the gender of the plants. I'm still hoping their feminized. I have 1 picture that shows what male vs female looks like, but I can't tell where on the plant to look for that sign. PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN! I'll do some more research of course around the internet, but any input here would be greatly appreciated! The seeds were obtained in Portland, OR from a dispensary so i'm really hoping they are feminized so we get 2 plants worth of yield when the time comes.

Depending on how long we veg the plants, this particular grow will likely be the only one in this residence as the lease is up in May of 2017. At that point we'll probably trim the plants down a little so that they can move easier and then start up again at the new place with some new equipment!

Thanks for reading and look for the pictures in about 15 min!!
 
Foxlink

Foxlink

477
143
Edit: I was wrong below, the right plant is the one that got singed, and it is now the "left plant" because of the way we placed them back in. Not confusing at all! :p

Hello again! Checking in here on the Cascadia Grow for you guys since we JUST got back from both being away for thanksgiving. Pictures will be uploaded in a little bit.

Firstly we moved the plants out of the ceramic pots you've seen in the above photos and switched them to 5 gallon grow sacks. It was really fun to figure out how to safely get the plants out of their pots and then figure out the appropriate way to repot. I'm glad to say that since switching them to the bags they've been growing beautifully! We officially switched to veg lighting a few weeks ago and also ran into some space issues.

The space issues we kind of knew would happen, the plants grew up far enough to touch the lighting rig. Only the left plant (Plant #1, though we kind of lost track replanting but plant 1 has always been the slowest) got burned a little bit, a few of the leaves near the top got singed. Removed the singed portions and the plant is doing quite well now! The right plant is quite a bit taller though as you'll see in the photos. To remedy the space problem, we hung the top part of the bin from the closet dowel with a few hangers and rope on each side. We left it like this with a gap for awhile, but right before leaving for thanksgiving we wrapped a windshield sun reflector around the open space so now we have a reflective surface aiding in light diffusion!

We still need to determine the gender of the plants. I'm still hoping their feminized. I have 1 picture that shows what male vs female looks like, but I can't tell where on the plant to look for that sign. PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN! I'll do some more research of course around the internet, but any input here would be greatly appreciated! The seeds were obtained in Portland, OR from a dispensary so i'm really hoping they are feminized so we get 2 plants worth of yield when the time comes.

Depending on how long we veg the plants, this particular grow will likely be the only one in this residence as the lease is up in May of 2017. At that point we'll probably trim the plants down a little so that they can move easier and then start up again at the new place with some new equipment!

Thanks for reading and look for the pictures in about 15 min!!


Good to know you are home and safe, your plants are doing very well! However, due to their age (still quite young) and even your pics are great, it can be a couple more weeks to know for absolutely 100% on sex. The males will start growing little balls, the females will grow little hairs ( both will grow in the stem crevices ).

I hope your plants will do well, and keep growing :)

-Fox
 
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Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Thanks! Good to know that it's a couple weeks out, I'll confer with housemate and determine when to try to check. Will report back with results :) Excited to get to the fruiting phase!!
 
C

Caiy Nyhm

16
3
Short update today with a picture from this morning. The plants are doing pretty well but the bottom leaves are drooping and dying due to the lower light level at the bottom. This is caused by our space issues. I think it's not bad though. This branches won't bear fruit so I'd rather have the resources be sent for more bud production.

We're currently on fruiting lighting and fertilizer.

IMG 20161221 082802


We found out the plants are both girls!
 
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