Gorilla Glue Auto Monkey Business

Good day folks!
I’m so excited to start my first grow! My wife and I have been cannabis users for around 20 years and are taking advantage of Vermont’s newish cannabis legislation which allows us to grow our own.

The Setup:

We are growing indoors inside a 2’x4’x80” gorilla grow tent.

2 California light works solar extreme 250 lights

AC Infinity T4 in-line exhaust fan with charcoal filter

4” passive intake vent with bug screen

2 5 gallon water reservoirs with aeration

3 3 gallon smart pots filled with SoHum living soil

And we’re growing gorilla glue autoflowers

So where are we at?

Our 3 seeds have soaked in 68F water for 25 hours and we’re planted directly into the medium. The soil was SUPER dry so I added about 20 oz of water to the medium after planting the seeds. This sounds like a lot of water to me, but I assure you that the medium is moist and not sopping wet. None of the water used so far has been PH’d as we literally just received our PH tester this morning. Going forward all water used will be PH’d.

It’s been roughly 24 hours since last watering and the medium still feels moist.

We’re having some problems with humidity. I have domes over the plant sites, but the RH hovers around 39%-43%

Temps are steady around 77F

Can’t wait to hear any advice and feedback from all of you wonderful folks! I hope everyone is healthy and staying safe!

7 Likes

@Kilgoretrout. Welcome to the forum! You will like it here. Though his grows aren’t autos, I think you will find this thread very helpful. I have followed it and very happy with results. Also, that looks to me as a very successful set up.

Hellraiser grows Gorilla Glue and other stuff - #122 by Tenga

3 Likes

Welcome to thw community. :+1:

2 Likes

Looks good. Wouldnt worry about the water… sounds like they are in a good set up. Let the soil dry and then water with a small amount(shot glass). Mist your domes and that’ll help with humidity and moisture.

2 Likes

Today is a great day folks! Our dogwood is almost in full bloom, there’s a blueberry sky, the sun is shining, and oh yeah; this happened today!

My little ladies have popped. The soil seems to still have some moister remaining and the domes are still holding condensation. I’m going to take these signs to mean no water for another day or so.

Speaking of water:

I received my PH testing pen in the mail yesterday and just got around to calibrating it. I just followed the directions to the nearest tenth. I figure that’s close enough for now.

Here’s a few pictures of the supplies/equipment I used to calibrate my pen:

Now that my PH meter is calibrated, I tested the PH of our well water. Turns out we have a PH of 7.54. It took 4ml of the Blu Lab PH down to reach a PH of 6.23 in my 5 gallon aerated reservoir. I’m not being too picky with my PH at the moment, because I’m trying to get my head around the 10,000 other aspects of growing the ol’ electric lettuce. To measure out the PH down solution I used a disposable pipette (a pack of 100 was only $4.50!).

Here’s a Couple pics of the reservoir:

I AM having a couple issues so far with my tent and would love some feedback. It seems the negative pressure inside the tent is drawing in the walls of the tent quite a bit. It’s not a problem at the moment, but I know it will significantly reduce the allotted space for the canopy.


Any suggestions?

1 Like

Dogwood huh…State tree? Great information on H20! Thanks for sharing.

1 Like

No clue what our state tree is haha. It was a nice site first thing in the morning after five days of shitty weather!

3 Likes

I would also highly recommend @Hellraiser grow journal

This guy knows his stuff and has quite clearly been growing for a long time.

4 Likes

Hey @Kilgoretrout, thanks for the mention.

On the tent sides sucking in due to negative pressure, usually opening up a passive intake will take care of that, need to have an easy way for air to get in to replenish what your exhaust is sucking out, most tents have a screened square hole or 2 or 3 near the bottoms of the tent walls, some have covers with velcro, need to open one or more up, lacking those there might be round intake holes near the bottom.

If you already have a passive vent open, try seeing how low you can have the exhaust fan setting on and still stay within good temps, may not have to move as much air.

2 Likes

Ok. So I have a 4” exhaust pipe installed at the top of the tent to remove hot stale air, and a 4” passive intake pipe with bug filter installed at the bottom of the tent.

The vent on the tent is very tight to the wall. So I doubt much air would move through there. I do ha e two small utility openings (for wires and such) that I could install some extra ducting and bug screening. I guess I know what my garden chores are for tomorrow! To the hardware store!

1 Like

Thank you for the input @Hellraiser. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I’ll need some advice. We still have a long way to go and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

2 Likes

Anytime, feel free to reach out, happy growing!

3 Likes

Hey folks! I’m finishing my coffee and getting ready to visit the hardware store to gather some more piping for a couple extra passive intakes. This will hopefully solve my imploding tent problem.

I’ve also been doing quite a bit of forward thinking about my grow medium and the downside of using living soil in 3 gallon pots. According to the SoHum living soil website, 3 gallons of their medium will last one week of veg and 7 weeks of flower. That’s not enough food to keep these ladies going! Does anyone have any suggestions for dry amendments that I should use? When should I apply them?

1 Like

Here’s what SoHum has to say about available food based on pot size:

1 Like

During my own childhood, while driving around with my mother she would point out homeless people and say “see him over there? Do you know why he’s on the street? He’s a dope smoker!” Obviously that type of parenting had the exact opposite effect on me. I want to keep my boys educated about drugs and alcohol, but I also want them to be responsible when it comes to both.

5 Likes

My dad would get us weed and beer when I was in high school, he would only allow us to drink and smoke at the house, under his supervision…my dad wasn’t the greatest, but he did some things that others didn’t. Miss him!

5 Likes

So here we are 6 days after planting our gorilla glue auto seeds.

Yesterday I applied some sticky traps as my first line of defense against fungus gnats. They received their first 3-4oz watering yesterday and the domes were misted every other day since the seeds were planted.

One of the three seems to be growing well:

The other two are about half the size and already have what appears to be trichs???

It might be hard to see, but one of the nodes on the small plants seems to be partially brown! Am I already killing these plants?! I hope not!

Temps are around 77-80F during the day and 68-70 at night.

Humidity is around 43% with a small ionizing humidifier running.

Maybe @Hellraiser has some suggestions???

1 Like

I’m not a fan of the dome and misting method, don’t feel it is necessary or beneficial and that the plant would be better off not being kept in such a humid stale air environment. You’ve seen my sprouts/plants/buds, never been domed and misted, always fast growth, always super healthy. When I look at your smaller sprouts and the discoloration and irregular leaf edge growth, I see over watering from being kept wet too much - from the doming and misting.

4 Likes

Son of a bitching overwatering!!! Deep down I felt that was the problem. I’m so nervous to over/under water!

3 Likes

Thankfully the domes are off, I have my 6” fan set to lowest setting, and I’m now a proud owner of a soil moisture meter. All three pots read on the low end of moist around the sprouts. I’m sure watering would be a little bit easier with solo cups, but I didn’t want to transplant seeing as that these plants are autoflowers

2 Likes