Grow and Growth Log (the plants and myself)

So here’s me.
I’m rapidly approaching my 40th birthday. I’m 6’6" and when I started smoking, I was weighing in at 315 lbs, 28% body fat, not rolling with fat, but it was there. Now you’re probably thinking that this is a grow log, why the f#$% are you telling me your stats. I think it ties into my motivations and has helped me determine what I’m willing to devote to this experiment. I’m also sorry if I come off sounding like a robot when I type. I’m a fairly awkward dude with a heavy math and computer science background. That coupled with diagnosed attention deficit and borderline personality disorder…I tend to limit my social interactions to a minimum and talk in very logical terms.
When I would go out, I would typically have to drink to excess to be able to enjoy myself which ironically was when my company would typically start enjoying my company less. About 14 months ago, a coworker gave me a some small quantity of flower as a thank you gift…which was odd because I didn’t know he smoked and he just assumed that I did. Fuck it right, I smoked a pinch that night.
At first, smoking a single pinch hitter could take me from zero to zero. What I mean by that is that I would smoke then become almost catatonic. The dog thought it was amazing! She would know when it was hitting me then she would come and let me pet her for hours. I remember counting her heart beats as I would pet her during the entire session.
As my tolerance grew, so did my willingness to go outside when I was high. Then my wife and peers started to notice and enjoy the high me without knowing I was high and without being in a drinking situation. Even in the drinking situations, I started to not even want to drink. This is the point where my brain flipped and this is where this website and this experiment come into the picture.

I had resolved myself to a life of being a huge guy and probably dying of heart disease in a few years. My outlook was bad and the worst part about it is that I was totally ok with it. After realizing that I could “unlock” my brain and enjoy things besides solving programming puzzles, I made a change.

Today I am still 6’6", I weigh 230 lbs with a goal of 205 by summer. I don’t drink unless it is wine with a special dinner. I’m eating dramatically less. My wife loves me more some days :wink: and I have and can keep friends now. I did stop working out, but that is because I wanted to let go of some of the muscle that I had put on over the years. (Athletic huge geek) I smoke nightly and I’m happier during the days. Medical is now legal and so is home grow in my state. Now on with the grow…

Here is my grow experience:
The second amount of weed I received had seeds in it. I didn’t know what kind of weed it was or that I could conceivably grow these things. I didn’t even take the seeds out of the bud before I’d put it in the grinder. I did however pick them out of the grinder and set them aside before I smoked. I ended up with 50ish seeds that were cracked, cover-less and shit looking. When I finally decided to grow them, I just got some dirt (from my wife’s flower pot), threw it in a paper egg carton and stuffed those seeds (yep, all 54 of them) in that carton. Then I put the carton on a heating pad, dropped some 8.2ph tap water on it and let it go… About 10 days later, somehow I ended up with 12 little green plants. I stunted them like you wouldn’t imagine for the first two months. I had no clue what I was doing and didn’t really know the depth of resources openly out here.
During the first 4 weeks, I purchased a 4x4 tent, carbon filter and 8" fan, a Viparspectra 900 LED reflector light, some better dirt (fox farms ocean something) and some of those black fabric bags. After the 2 month old seedlings hit that dirt, they stopped looking like seedlings. Very shortly after that, I started seeing signs of flowering…sacks on 4 and white pistils on the rest. I pulled the 4 boys and tossed them in the trash (i googled that - this was the first point of research besides amazon reviews of the stuff I purchased). They were about 6 inches tall at that point. I didn’t know the difference between photo and auto plants. I also didn’t know about light cycles, but somehow I set my walmart lamp timer to 18/6 by default and left it there.
When all was said an done, I had 8 full quarts of popcorn. It smokes just fine, but it doesn’t smell like weed at all. I was happy. Now I’m smoking my own stuff and have zero plans on smoking other peoples stuff until it’s fully recreational legal here.

Then this site happened (fuckers!) :blush:

I turned my 11x10x8 tent room into a full sealed grow room with Panda Film over the cling and walls. I have a humidifier, dehumidifier, heater, CO2, 2x 600h quantam board kits, a mini split system about to go in and my full tent setup in the room. I switched to RDWC (added the R yesterday) with Cyco nutes. Reservoirs are located outside the grow room to keep the water a little cooler. I have a chiller ready if needed. I even have these little 12x12" wood floor tiles from IKEA as pot risers to keep them off the concrete floor.

Why!?! I’m not increasing my plant count (staying legal).
Shut up and show time.

Grow 1


Dirt in cardboard egg carton (8.2ph water, random handfull of potting soil from old flower pot)


First sprouts (felt proud)


I forgot I did this…
before I did this…


Boys


Oh yeah, my tent came with a net so I just kinda used it to…I’m not sure…stunt my plants more? ScroG wasn’t something I even knew about.


Just before harvest…


All to end up with this…OG Kush Auto (found out later from the grower)

Room and grow 2 pics next post…

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Build and Grow 2


Construction


I had started my seedlings too soon and needed to get them in pots before I was ready. Big mistake!!!
All construction from this point forward was in full on growing environment.


Blueprint Controller with RS232 sensor outputs which I then routed to a cloud server via this little Mac Mini server with Windows 7 running on it and made an app out of it.


I put the server in my server rack an put my QB drivers in its place.


I ended up with instant burn!


But you guys helped me recover!


That same burnt plant after a few days of 500ppm instead of 1700ppm. It might just make it?

READ THIS IF YOU ARE NEW!!

DO NOT PLANT MORE THAN ONE PLANT IN YOUR CLAY! When you try to take them out, there is great risk of damaging the roots. I lost one this way and stunted the rest.
!!START AUTOS IN THEIR FOREVER HOME!!

All White Widow autos

Here is my current fuckup… my awesome healthy never a problem Gold Leafs…

Now look like this…after adding my recirculating resivour with really cold water (I ran out of room temp water from filling up the white widows)

Has anyone ever witnessed this and had a successful recovery? @Grandaddy013 Any thoughts?

I still have some work to do on the room…and AC will help a ton. I’m at 84f but that is ok with the CO2 levels I’m able to keep, 1350 to 1450ppm. But I want to run my second Quantam Board 600h and that won’t be possible without the mini split.

And some Basil, Peppermint, Bell and Hot Peppers and Cilantro!

So this is where I am. My motivation is starting to leave me slightly because of the complications I’m having…which all stem back to…

FINISH THE FUCKING ROOM FIRST! GET YOUR PLUMBING SETUP FIRST! BE ABLE TO CONTROL YOUR ENVIRONMENT FIRST! Then germ your seeds. I germed first thinking it would force me to move faster on the build. Yeah, that didn’t happen.

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You’ve been bitten! Welcome to the forum! It looks like you are off to a good start.

I think you will find this forum to be fairly refreshing. The folks on here are (mostly) just interested in growing, getting high and helping others to do the same. You will find people here at all levels of skill and they are all willing to share what they know. If you wan to get someone’s attention you can use the @ sign in front of their handle like this: @Countryboyjvd1971 (Hi John!)

I’ve been doing this for some time now but I too just started my first RDWC grow. So I will be interested in how it goes.

Here’s mine:

Going Down the Hydro Rabbit Hole

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@Myfriendis410 Thanks for the tip! Your grow looks absolutely amazing!!! I will get there some day. The part of my brain that is accustom to solving problems wants faster fixes. It’s somewhat cathartic having to slow down and let problems with the plants exist. My brain says rip the fuckers out and germ new ones. I’m actually fighting a disease with the stuff I’m growing. All I can say about that is I love you guys!

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The stuff I purchased list:

SEEDS
White Widow and Gold Leaf

Lights from GrowersLights

  • 2x HLG Quantam Board 600h kits 4000k (will be adding 8x red suppliment lights from HLG for flowering soon)

Local Hydro Shop Purchases

  • Titan CO2 reg
  • CO2 tank ($130 full with $25 refils)
  • Blueprint BDAC-2 enviro controller with CO2 sensor
  • RS232 adapter for enviro controller
  • Blueprint Light Controller
  • Many Buckets, net lids, hoses (, Cyco clay and feed and almost everything else hydro related
  • Plugs
  • PH Up and Down
  • 2 1700 gph 12 outlet air pumps
  • 1 1100gph H2O Pump
  • 3 300gph H2O Pumps (going to soil hydro those herbs for my wife)
  • 1 mini split AC
  • Sunleaves bulkheads
  • Bluelab Trunion PPM EC wand thinggy (works well!)

Amazon buys

  • Viparspectra 900r
  • 4x4 tent
  • iPower 8" inline fan with matching 8"x16" carbon filter running as scrubber (need bigger filter)
  • Propagation trays
  • CloneX gel and liquid feed
  • Hydroguard (my shop was out)
  • PH Pen
  • Fox Farms soil trio feed
  • Fox Farms Ocean soil
  • Wicking filters for the dehumidifier
  • Little LCD Humidity temp thinggy
  • Zmodo camera that I can aim around the room remotely

Home Depot buys

  • Humidifier
  • Dehumidifier
  • Heater
  • Dewalt brushless drill and driver set (had to build a storage room to relocate all the stuff in this storage room)
  • Other tools that will have more use than just this build
  • Lumber (I reframed the room to get some offset between the drywall and pandafilm)
  • Fasteners (screws and bolts and eye bolts)
  • Plumbing stuff (returning almost all of it after I picked up the stuff from the hydro store)
  • Wiring stuff (boxes, wire for AC and high voltage DC)
  • 3 20 gal Brute trash cans for reservoirs
  • Weather strips to seal door (I’ll post what I did in another thread)

I’m sure there are a ton of thing I’m forgetting but this is a bulk of what I’ve purchased so far.
My budget is pretty much open outside of adding on to the house.

If anyone has comments or questions about the stuff I purchased, or if I’m missing something obvious, let me know. I’m hoping that at least some of these things are the right products for the job.

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I’m out of likes, unfortunately, or I would’ve definitely tossed some your way. I have a similar story. I never smoked at all until a couple of years ago. I went through a divorce, etc. and went from someone who occasionally had a couple of beers to someone who was drinking two or more bottles of bourbon a week… in the process I got up to 262 pounds… I shudder to even think about it now. To put it in perspective from the ages of 35-45 I averaged around 190#. In any case, I started smoking, quit drinking, and today weigh in at 197. :slight_smile:

Good luck with your growing!

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I think you’ve been bitten “buy” the bug pun intended. I do the same with my fishing gear, I never really tell how much I’ve spent (not that she’d care) I just hope if something were to happen to me she wouldn’t sell everything fishing gear included for what I told her I paid! I’ve been on some meds last couple years and I’m at my heaviest I’ve ever been. Kicking most of the meds and the bottle not totally but enough where I can actually have just a beer or two or drink or two. This forum is a great place to learn and bs with like minded people. Set to watching. I see @Bogleg responded and is good with hydro as is @peachfuzz @TDubWilly @BigDaddyCain are a few I’ve lurked hopefully they can get your ladies back to normal.

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Unfortunately I haven’t shocked plants quite like that before… I have shocked the hell out of them before though, and they’ve always recovered… so I think as long as you keep the root zone going well and the environment correct, they will probably bounce back. Might not be all pretty again, but considering you are going to light them on fire and smoke them, it’s not a big deal.

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A couple of oscillating fans would be good to put in the space. Other than that you have a pretty good start.

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I haven’t ever had that happen, but when I do a water change, I fill with the garden hose. Last time I changed, water temp dropped from 66 down to 52 with no I’ll effects.

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Holy $$$hhhhhiiiiiitttttttt… :grin:
Lots of good stuff…:grin::grin::smirk:
We get you there…
So what plant’s are the problem plant’s…?
New pics needed…

:v::sunglasses:

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They are starting to recover today. Ill get another shot of them in the morning.


And I’ll get some fans up tomorrow I did forget something important! Thanks

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Well at least you have a bit to work with, lol.

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Glad to have you @xaero_cool welcome to the forum. I commented on a few of your other posts, but this one has your life story. Really appreciate you sharing, and it’s definetly an inspiration.
I only know enough to be dangerous in hydro, but we all know who tag when needed. You’re off to a great start, and we will help you finish! Happy growing.

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@Covertgrower If the world would be as welcoming, helpful and warm as this community, we would all live in a better world. Thank you to everyone who has commented publicly and privately. I typically diversify my information sources…not the case here. I feel like I’ll be able to propagate enough camaraderie to feel like I have a real team supporting me.

Thank you Covertgrower and ILGM and the rest of you.

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More recovery photos. I pruned the dry leaves just after I took this photo. I’ll update again tomorrow.

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CO2 ran out. Lowering temps until i get my refill later today.

That picture shows extreme nitrogen toxicity. Just about as bad as I’ve ever seen. Gotta get you numbers down. Maybe even just water for a week or so.

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@Myfriendis410 PM is at 500 and never went over that. They looked fine until I changed out the water and went from 68f to 42f but still at 500ppm. Here they are right before I flushed them with the cold water. I was feeding them lite because I did burn my autos the week before. I’ll flush anyway tonight (with warmer water), can’t hurt, right?

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