First indoor grow: SCROG Gold Leaf and Chocolope

As I mentioned before, you’ll probably get more experienced answers if you create a new thread about this. But if it were me, I’d get it on a mostly light schedule, probably 18/6, and I’d start ASAP.

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My home energy monitor has been offline. I got it working two days ago and I found that today (so far, as of 9:42pm) my grow setup has used 17.42kWh. That’s a pretty high number. It only equates to about $3.50 here in expensive electricity land, but from an efficiency standpoint, it nearly matches (and probably will by midnight) my solar production for the day (18.48kWh). That’s off of a relatively large solar array that otherwise covers the house.

Why am I using so much electricity? The space heater, mainly. I posted in another thread, but I’m going to copy @Bogleg and cycle down my ventilation system using an interval timer. That should leave more heat in the tent and keep the thermostat on the space heater from triggering as often.

As much fun as growing indoors is, I will have a hard time justifying ~500kWh per month just to grow a recreational crop. Not when I can plant outdoors in the summer and haul in many times more than I could use or give away in the year. So hopefully I can get the energy use under control. Moving my tent to a garage would probably be a good start, but I like the relative privacy of my shed.

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This is one of the reasons I am slowly building out a new COB light system for my tent - to reduce electrical usage or at least increase efficacy at the same electrical usage. Right now when I get the new light built I should be able to drop from 710w consumption to 670w consumption on the lights, but with 45% efficiency and much higher ppf. Next step after that, like you, is figuring out how I can heat more efficiently. I have a 1500w oil radiator inside the tent and it’s been working overtime these past couple of weeks.

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I’m strongly considering a cob kit but really need to take a deep breath and not jump into anything. It’s possible I stop indoor growing after this harvest and it makes little sense to invest in a new lighting setup in that case. I plan to do four plants outdoors this season. My two outdoor SSH plants last year yielded enough for a decade of my consumption so I have to keep reminding myself that this is more about the hobby than it is about the product or yield.

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Some natural light photos for a change. Not sure what to think overall. I see some problem areas but then again, it also looks fine for a first try. Definitely looks like it wants more light especially on the perimeter as those are reaching. I will be sad if I don’t have reasonably heavy buds at least somewhere in the scrog.

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Looks great to me!

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What I thought was potentially chlorosis of the leaves (I referenced this upthread) may actually be bleaching. It’s presenting itself mainly in GL near the center of the scrog, just under the light. You can see it in the natural light photo above, and in the highlighted area in this post. The areas of the plants directly under the light seem to be less “healthy” than those just outside of the intense area. Chocolope has thinner fan leaves in the center as well which may or may not be a bad thing. It could represent an adjustment due to the light intensity. I’d been running at 18" from canopy but today decided to raise to 21". I’ll see if I notice any difference for better or worse.

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All continues to be well as far as I can tell. I feel more confident about the bleaching, as I found leaves where the exposed parts were yellow but the shaded parts were green. Leaving the light at 21" for a while to see if there’s any change. Chocolope is sticky already.

I’m continuing my watering and feeding schedule, which is approximately every other day. I cycle through one day of FF Big Bloom (earthworm castings, bat guano, etc.), day off, one day of plain water, day off, one day of Tiger Bloom, day off, one day of plain water… repeat. Seems like they’re happy with this schedule for now. My interval timer is due to arrive today and I’m eager to get my exhaust fan (and energy consumption) under control.

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Well… some issues with the new timer. Energy use is down, humidity is up. WAY up. I’ve dried the walls of the tent, removed my 5 gallon bucket of water + aquarium heater, and set ventilation to high for now until I can get the humidity down. Then I’ll try to stabilize it with the right interval. I’ll leave the heated bucket out from here forward, I imagine.

Yeah I am curious about how this will effect me come summer when I have high humidity and higher heat. I think my dehumidifer will keep up (last summer I just had the thing drain to my 5ga buckets and used the water in my grow).

My RH is now at 40% with the lights on with no humidifiers running - a marked improvement for me.

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Since my grow setup is in an uninsulated, completely unsealed garden shed, the fact that we got 3 inches of rain a couple of days ago will also raise the humidity. I’ll keep my eye on things but a dehumidifier might be in my future. So long as the heater runs when it’s wet outside, and I ventilate enough, I’m guessing I can keep the RH reasonable. But if it’s warm and rainy, no way.

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You’ll certainly want to keep the humidity down, and keep the air moving in there. You’re Scrog is looking really good but it (as mine was as well) looks prime for an outbreak of leaf spot fungus or even bud rot if there’s not plenty of airflow and a moderate/low humidity. you’re buds are filling in nicely and it’d be a shame to lose them to a fungus.

Not saying this to be a downer, just to say I’d get the dehumidifier even if it’s just to run it for a day or 2. gotta keep on top of everything, and you’ll have a killer harvest from that tent.

Looking Good!!

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Much appreciated. I have turned the fan interval timer to 1 minute on, 1 minute off and the RH has stabilized at 55%. Potentially still a little high, and I don’t have an oscillating fan yet (getting that today). If I can find a small enough dehumidifier at the big box store, I’ll get that as well.

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If you have 2500k cfl’s laying around, I would absolutely throw them in there. Especially if you don’t have to spend a whole lot to do so. Try to get them in there so the bulbs are horizontal, remove any glass or covers on the fixture too. Them try to get them close without blocking any of your led fixture.

These are floodlight fixtures with reflectors built into the glass. Should I still try to remove/break the glass? Seems like the reflectors would be helpful.

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Can you post a pic? I probably wouldn’t break them.

Not my pic, but this is it.

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Oh ya, don’t break those lol. I was picturing something else.

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Ha. Yeah, that seemed a little extreme. I have many of these lights though, so I’ll consider a cheap fixture. That is, if I don’t jump into a hlg board or cob setup…

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So that’s a single advanced 300 in there?