Arborist's pre-grow journal

will be posting my learnings as i prep for my first grow.

prep day 1

today i got around to mixing my happy frog mixed. added dolomite lime, perlite, and sprinkled some de on top. currently sitting in a container (cleaned it out with bleach/left it to dry thoroughly) with the lid partially off.

learning of the day:

i hadn’t put together that i shouldn’t use the ‘adult’ soil for the seedlings (read some more on the forums just to double-check i was ready, and saw comments that the hf might cause nutrient burn for a seedling). went to the store and picked up some jiffy pellets for the seedlings.

my plan is to drop them in the pellets after sprouting in water (as the grow bible suggests). then once i see any roots poking through, i’ll carefully cut away the biodegradable outer ‘netting’ and transplant carefully into the hf mix.

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Sounds like a good plan. I started in Rockwool (clones), then went to Happy Frog, then to Ocean Forest soil. I also used 20% perlite. I’m running my first grow as well. There are a bunch of very helpful people here on this forum.

Aside from temperature, humidity, soil pH, and soil ppm, taking structured notes has kept my grow in proper order. Looks like you are documenting that stuff. Good luck with everything. Happy growing!

nice! i’m curious, when you did your transplant, did you drop the rockwool straight into the happy frog?

yeah i’m trying to be as organized as possible. have my shopping list of tools and ingredients i’ve gathered. planning on spending time this weekend putting together my tents, learning to use my ph pen, and prepping a log book to track all that good stuff.

thanks and happy growing to you too :slight_smile:

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Unfortunately, I did drop it straight into the Happy Frog without removing the rockwool. I was scared to damage the delicate roots. I did add some Great White mycorrhizae when transplanting. The problem is that rockwool absorbs moisture, and can lead to root issues. Fortunately I left the top of the rockwool slightly above the medium in my first transplant, that way when watering, moisture didn’t pool around the center of the stem. It’s been a journey for my first grow. I’ll take you to my first grow journal if you want, that way you can pick up some names of the forum members you should be asking the major questions to.

Here is my main journal:

Here is the setup to my main journal:

There is some useful info in here. You can tell by the end how much better off I am from everyone’s help. Hope this proves useful.

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Let me know once you get the links. I can delete this post afterward so it doesn’t clutter your setup post if you’d like.

thanks got them! no problem leaving in the links, i’m sure other newbs like me will find it useful.

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Cool. If you have any questions about lighting, @dbrn32 is the person to talk to. He and @Myfriendis410 and @PurpNGold74 have helped me pretty much every step of the way, along with a bunch of others. This site is a wealth of useful information.

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If you want to catch someone’s attention, use “@” then the name of the person you are trying to tag. Like this @arborist It will give them a notification that you have tagged them or dropped them a message.

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thank you! i’ll be sure to share my lighting details and questions once i get that set up, hopefully this weekend.

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Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on it. Good luck with everything!

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prep day 2

got the ‘nursery’ tent set up (24x24x48 tent like this one). was very easy to put together. i plan on putting together my larger ‘veg’ tent later today.

i have inline duct ventilation fans and carbon filters for both – i think to start i’ll just put the filter on the ‘veg’ tent since that will have more smell, and keep the second carbon filter as a backup. then if i ever have a cycle going where i have more fragrant plants in the ‘nursery’ tent, i can stick that second carbon filter there. it was nice, my tent came with straps for hanging the carbon filter, and ratchets for the light (will have a 300w led in the ‘nursery’ tent and 600w led in the main grow tent; sticking with the leds for lower
power consumption).

got nervous reading mixed reviews about people’s success with jiffy pellets, so i got some black gold seedling soil. will add some perlite and dolomite lime to it, and stick with root riot plugs + seedling soil for germination/seedling stage. while i think i could make the jiffy pellet ultimately work for initial germination/seedling growth, i’d be concerned about root rot/over-retention of water once transplanted.

learning of the day:

i thought i had an idea of what i was going to do ventilation-wise but now i’m convinced i don’t exactly know what i’m doing :slight_smile:

question: the tent has three holes (the link above is an example of where they are; one big one on top, i’m guessing for exhaust, and then two on the sides near the bottom, i’m guessing for intake? where you could use one or both? what’s the best way to set up an inline duct fan + carbon filter + hose?

right now i’m thinking: one vent at the bottom closed, the other left slightly open, inline vent fan sitting at the bottom of the tent, pushing air out through the hose, which will be hooked up to the top hole (or carbon filter down the road). going to test it out and tweak it, try to get that negative air pressure going.

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success! walls of the tent are sucked in nicely with that setup i tried out.

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Nice! Keep documenting everything. I have kept written journals from day one, and upload a ton of info onto this site, daily. If you clone your plants, you’ll essentially have a personalized strain specific grow log. Even if you don’t, you’ll have a wealth of information through trial and error.

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Your gonna want to have twice as big passive intake as exhaust 6 inch exhaust u want a 12 in passive air hole to feed the grrr ent… you dont want to create a negative pressure in your tent it will give u issues worh how the plants are supposed to respire … also what kinda of leds when they say 600 watts look at the specs on it and see what the actual draw from the wall is u less it’s a high dollar light its probably much less then advertised causing you to need more light in flower its probably about 200 actual watts if it’s a blurple light

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Another thing u won’t need carbon filters yet they give a little smell off in veg but flower is what u wanna worry about until then if you smoke weed any where in the area y worry about the carbon filter that’s my theory but burning weed smell diff from plants that’s for sure

As @fano_man mentioned, the passive intake area probably needs to be at least twice the size of the 6 inch fan (both flaps should be open). A bit of negative pressure is fine, just not too much. If the walls are caving in, that’s too much. In addition, it will put a lot of strain on your inline fan’s motor.

I started posting something else. Sorry for the delete of the above post. I was replying to two separate posts. Lol.

As mentioned with the lighting, try to stay away from Amazon purple lights if you can. If you go Amazon purple, at least run with something that has a good actual wattage draw, not one of those “1200 watt equivalent” lights with an actual draw of 175 watts. Those things are junk. I’m using Quantum board rspecs for my flowering stage, in tandem with my Viparspectra TC 1200. The Vip is a purple from Amazon, yes, but it also pulls over 500 lighting watts from the wall, so l I’ll have over 730 watts to flower between the two lights. My fowering area is about 4x4, so I’ll be around 45 watts/per square ft. I’ll be getting another Quantum Board kit from HLG at the end of the month to boost wattage for the final weeks of flowering. They are absolutely worth the cost.

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I’m in a 10 x 10 using 10 x 7.5 I got 4 hlg 600 which are 4 v2 qb 288 rpspecs all in 1 with basically 640 wall watts maxed out each for a total of 2480 in 75 sq ft

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@fano_man That’s where I wanna eventually be. You’ve got it down my friend.

And I got a 9x9 for veg

But I just up grades from closet covert growing so I’m still figuring out best ways to do this the veg room is empty my flower room is my veg room right now but I gotta build the floor plat form in my veg room like I have in the flower room so it has no standing water …that was my enemy 2 grow spaces ago it was a low shed and rain would flood it …needless to say i got bud rot lol but hey it’s good to make mistakes when the stakes are alot lower so you have a good rule of thumb on what to and not to do

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