Nosey Mae

I experimented with growing when I was in my 20's but never got anything to flower. When LED lights came on the market I got interested again and bought a small tent and light in early 2018 and started growing in the garage. I started with Autos but now I grow mainly Photo Periods mostly because I learned about the power of cloning ... it's like free weed! The plant that keeps on giving! 😍

After two grows in the garage I had a good idea what I was doing and then moved into the house. I now grow in a closed off furnace/storage room which was perfect once I removed the storage and bleached everything ... I probably have the cleanest furnace and water heater in town lol.

I now have a Veg tent, Bloom tent and a Dry box all vented together and using the same inline fan and carbon filter. I think I'm pushing the limits here but so far so good. I also have a small 2x2 clone/seedling station tucked in one corner. A dehumidifier keeps things in the lung room just right and I have it draining into a floor drain so I never have to worry about emptying it.

I really hate trimming, it kills my back, so instead of flowering a bunch of plants all at the same time I have things set up so one plant is ready to harvest every 2-4 weeks. The down side of this is it's hard to find a time to give the tents a really good cleaning.

In the Bloom tent (39x39x78) I have a SF-1000 and a 600w Aglex COB light. The Veg tent (32x32x63) has a knock off of a SF-1000 and the Cloning station has a cheap Bloom Plus BP-1000. I would like better lights but I'm doing ok with what I have for now.

I grow in potting soil with nothing extra in it and then I add a lot of perlite. For the nutrients I try to keep it as simple as possible. For Veg I feed CalMag and GH FloraNova Grow and in Flower I feed GH FloraNova Bloom and a PK booster called GigaBoost. I also use a PH Down product when feeding just water. I let the girls tell me what they want, but generally I feed nutrients twice and then PH'd water once. For cloning, I don't use any cloning products or hormones unless I am trying to take clones from a sickly plant or from a plant already in bloom.

I'm retired, this is my hobby and I'm loving life! 😁

What a nice set up!!! Thanks for sharing. It’s always good to know the background of a good resource. I did the same thing with the measurements when I did my 1st grow last year too. My background… I too wanted to grow to save money and know what I am putting in my lungs. I Started last year with two seeds, both successful and yummy. This year, well you saw, the Durban Poison seeds were a bust! I use seeds that I find in my smoke and have saved over a two year period. So have many seeds so I think I will stick with photoperiod growing for now. I am working on nutrients, finding what I like best. so far everything has been a blast. Learning and reading, watching lots of videos. Experimenting and what not.

I have been growing plants on and off my whole life. I grew a few bag seeds out when I was 12 and that was my first foray into growing weed. Had no clue what I was doing. I made a terrarium out of a 5 gallon water jug and let it grow in there until it was decent sized. This was on a military base and someone ended up finding it but didn't know it was me luckily. I grew a few more plants out when I was around 15-16. I got a few to grow out but never had any make the finish line. I joined the navy at 21 and got out at 25 so I didn't do anything then. I started smoking again a bit after I got out and quickly decided fuck this and started my own grow so I knew what was in my bud and where it came from, not to mention the money I was spending.

My first real grow was in a shed I built. I grew 2 photoperiod mango seeds in 3 gallons under a mars hydro tsl 2000 using fox farm as most of us do lol. I actually misread the label and never looked at it again. I was feeding tbsp instead of tsp. My plants actually did ok but had bad calcium/phosphorus deficiency for the last 4 weeks. Don't remember what my yeild was but it was decent, buds were airy though.

After that I got really deep into living soil for a few years. I have been making custom soil mixes using ammendments and making my own earthworm castings. The last soil grow I did was in a 4x4 with 2 27 gallon containers. I ended up with 480 grams of top notch bud. Strain was strawberry candy by bloom seed co.

While that was finishing out I got to work on building an rdwc system because I feel like the uptake of nutrients is my limiting factor at this point. Living soil can only do so much. I grow mushrooms for food so I have more than enough c02 to run extra ppfd. I build my own lights and the one I currently have in my tent is capable of like 720watts but in soil I couldn't go anywhere near that.

My current setup is 4 plants in a 4x4 in my custom 25 gallon rdwc waterfall system. I added an inline water filter and 1/10hp water chiller recently. I feed gh maxigrow, calmag, and silica in veg. In flower I'm feeding maxibloom, calmag, silica, liquid koolbloom, and floralicious plus. I feed at the reccomended doses for dwc using the gh maxi series chart. 1400 ppm and 6.2 ph in flower. 800-1000 in veg ph to 5.5. I don't use a couple of the things they suggest because they are redundant in my mind and I don't feel they are necessary. These are easily the biggest and fastest growing plants iv ever seen. I'm currently in the beginning of week 3 of flower and I'm almost maxed out on light height. Going to be tight. I also add great white to my res. My light is only at 480 watts currently but I'm going to try and get it to 600 when stretch finishes. Also, I run ro water because my tap water is trash.

I also have a 3x3 veg tent with a 480 watt light. It could easily be another flower tent tbh. Both tents run mars hydro inline smart fans(should have gotten ac infinity because the no minimum fan speed kills me). 6 inch for the 4x4 and 4 for the 3x3.

I mainly grow photoperiods but I have grown a few autos and I really enjoyed the smoke. I'm currently making a fem cross in my veg tent to get some seed stock so I can start running them out.

I also help build out much larger ops for other people. 30+ plants per room with multiple rooms. I setup the rooms and build the lights for them. Those are in rockwool using botanicare and I'm going to end up building a drip feed system here pretty soon.

I appreciate the follow. What's your background?