Mich's Train Wreck Grow

I’ve grown a couple times now, once for beginner’s luck and once to see there are some nuances to growing. My last grow ran into problems with WPM, and I don’t want to do that again. I upgraded my ventilation system and added filtration to the intake as well. Before starting, I ran an ozone generator in the tent to hopefully kill off any spores left over.

I have two ILGM Train Wreck seedlings started. I started two and one didn’t take off so one of them is about 2 weeks behind the other. Just getting established now and taking early vegetation slow I’m hoping that the smaller one will close the gap some.

I have a 4x4 tent using 2 HLG 260XLs for lighting. Right now I have only one running 24 inches away from the seedlings. I’ve been using a humidifier to keep the humidity at least 60% and the ventilation fans run to lower any spikes over 65%.

For ventilation, I have two 6 inch AC infinity fans, one pulling intake through a HEPA box and the other exhausting to a carbon filter. To open up some space at the top of the tent, I am using ducting to exhaust to an external filter. There are 3 fans moving air inside the tent in addition to the ducting coming in from the intake. My hope is that the air is moving enough and that external spores and pests aren’t getting in.

Once the seedlings are well established, I’ll transplant them into 5 gallon fabric pots and will be using FFOF to the bottom of the pot and FFHF in the upper part of the pot, cut with 20% perlite as I’ve seen recommended here. I’ve not paid a lot of attention to nutrients in the past, and my plants have turned pretty yellow early in flowering. This time I plan on using the fox farms feeding schedule, although I will start light with 25% strength and see how it goes.

My goals are to learn to train plants better so have better airflow, and I would like if I can get these plants to fill the 4x4 space. I figure that learning to train the plants will prolong the vegetative phase and I’m okay with that.

I do have some questions. How do I know how close to keep the lights to the plants? I have the light 24 inches away now, and took a few days to bring it up to full power, but it is now.





@KeystoneCops @Deez Thank you for being helpful in the past. I’m hoping to stay out of trouble with this grow.

2 Likes

Thanks for the tag @Mich. you’ve got a great looking set up. I’m set to watch - I’m interested to see how the HLG’s work for you, LED is something I’m looking into presently - maybe when I reboot the grow room in the fall.

Good thing is you can train those plants to be the same height as the grow regardless of one being a bit bigger than the other. Are you planning to Scrog these, or just do a bit of string training?

You in soil or Coco? … those clay pots are temporary, right?

Looks like you got a Govee thermo/hygrometer, I just picked one up a few weeks ago and have been geeking out on the graphs. It’s cool.

1 Like

Thanks, Deez.

I have been really happy with the HLGs, the plants seem to love it. They are blinding, but I don’t have any real measurements to back that assessment up. I decided to keep the lights at 24 inches and just try and gauge how the plants are doing to figure out if the lights need to come up or down.

I have looked into SCROG and decided to try and do more of a manifold. I haven’t done any training in the past, and would like to learn. If a manifold system can achieve close to the same canopy as a SCROG assuming I can make it happen, I’ll go that way.

The clay pots are temporary. I’ll be growing in soil in 5 gallon fabric pots.

I like the GOVEE sensors a lot. I use one at the bottom of the tent, and one at the top of the tent. I recently learned about VPD which seems like trying to balance almost opposing goals. Using the hygrometers and watching the effects on VPD per the charts makes understanding what is going on better to me.

It sounds like you are well set up. I’ve got no experience with LED but am trying to learn more as I might switch off HIDs - one thing I see is a lot of folks using light meters to check the actual strength the plants are receiving - seems like that’s the most accurate way to give plants all the light they can take and not more.

1 Like

Tonight I mixed 4 parts FFOF with 1 part perlite to fill the lower part of the 5g pots I have, then the remainder with 4 parts FFHF to fill the rest. I had been considering a tablespoon or two of Dolomite, but I’m going to stick to the script.

The small pots were already starting to be filled with roots.

I rearranged the tent some to make it easier to work in later, gave the girls two cups each of pH’d water and left them to get settled in. One thing that I’ve been lax on is checking the pH of my water, and will keep on top of it this time.

I have been trying to watch the VPD and keep it around 1. I can’t control heat other than running the fan as I will be as close to 15 amps on the circuit as I plan to get once I have 2 lights going for flowering. What I’ve found is that by setting the set point for the ventilation just above the set point of the humidifier I can bounce the two off each other and maintain a fairly close range. I don’t know how people control VPD later during flowering (unless they run AC) just when you don’t want to keep high humidity. I’m getting ahead of myself thinking about it, but I can’t help wondering. But for now, VPD is not that difficult to control

Lights are at 30". When I see some growth again, I’ll start dropping them.

Funny story, as an aside. My wife had a friend visit some weeks ago from Canada and we gave her some flowers. Before going back to Canada, she gave her niece the leftovers, a college student. This morning my wife told me she heard from the niece, who asked if we could spare 4 ounces of Blue Dream for her to take back to college, and how much would that cost. I about fell out of my chair. I don’t grow to sell, and what does a college kid want with 4 oz!!! (My whole harvest last time was under 8…)
Oh, she read it wrong, she asked for 4 grams. I said to tell her it wasn’t for sale, and she could swing by anytime and pick it up. It’s funny the friends you can make in this hobby. :laughing:

:joy: lost in translation :crazy_face: it’s funny how things are changing post-prohibition. I ran dry just prior to my last harvest and called my younger brother who lives in town and said hey bro can I buy some buds off you - he goes nah man I can’t sell you any weed BUT I can GIVE it to you!!

So I go over and we’re having the realization that we are doing a completely legal activity - him giving me a handful of herb. Me sticking it in a jar and driving home with it where I sat down and smoked it!

It makes me crazy that seeds are somehow still not legal … like WTF … meantime I’m growing extra clones to give to friends and we’re all trading clones with each other and each of us knows two other guys the other doesn’t know so we’re like the friggen Silk Road of clone trading from here clear out to the coast :rofl:

I gave the plants a good watering, slowly and keeping close to the plant. I believe I saw that described as perimeter watering. Since transplanting into the bigger pots, I haven’t had the humidity swing so wildly, and I’m able to keep close to a vapor pressure deficit of around 1. Humidity wants to go way up at night but the ventilation is able to keep it around 60%.
I will probably be watering tomorrow, or the next day after that and I’ll count the nodes on the larger girl. Once I get to 6, I’ll top and start training a couple days after that. The smaller plant is growing well, but not quite caught up.

I answered someone else’s question and explained my ventilation set up way better there than I do here. So… here it is.

I’m getting the humidity and VPD dialed in. I have lights on at 0600 when I get up. I open the tent, fill the humidifier with the water I get from the dehumidifier outside the tent and check the plants to see if they need watering. With the humidifier set to 60 on the lowest mist setting, I can throttle the humidity in the tent with the AC infinity controller set to kick in at 65 or 70 depending which way I want the humidity to go.

Today I had to make very few adjustments and my VPD has stayed in the range I was looking for.


I went back in and cleaned up some of the growth tips below that 4th node, and cut off the growth tips I was trying to grow for my manifold. Oof. I may be here for a while, I’ll see how long it take to sort things out, if it recovers.


My over cropped plant is showing signs of new growth. It’s not exactly where I hoped it would be, but it’s an improvement.

Yesterday I watered the plants with quarter strength big bloom and grow big.

I watered the healthier plant with a gallon of water with a pH of 6.8. Runoff was 5.9 and 1461 ppm tds.

The botched plant still had some dampness in the topsoil, so I’ll let that one dry a while longer. The new grow tips are progressing slowly, but still making progress.


I have been keeping the VPD around 1.2 during the day, just checking here and there and making small tweaks. Temp during the day is 78 and rh is 65, during the night the temp drops to 67 and 63 percent humidity.

Where things stand right now is I have really beat up these plants trying to ‘train’ them. Trainwrecked is more like it. After I trimmed plant one of all it’s growth tips, it has rallied and regenerated where it looked like a revegetating plant. It has one good branch coming out sideways and I’ve been pushing it down with soft wire I picked up to make it grow more horizontal. I FIM topped it, and I’ll see what comes out. I’ve abandoned the idea of a pristine manifold and will see what training I can accomplish and I’ll call it flux. There is a lower branch that popped out, I am going to let it grow and I’ll cut and root it. I don’t know what I’ll do with the clone, offer it to a buddy and if I don’t get any takers I’ll give it to my Mom. (I give my Mom a plant and she tries to keep it alive in a window. She has a year old Blue Dream clone I gave her that is sad looking but alive. This year she has an outdoor Power Plant that is doing really well.)

Plant 2 I topped and also tried to train too much too soon and split it pretty bad. I splinted it and wasn’t sure if it was going to make it, but it bounced back. I am surprised, and have to say that ILGM offers some very good genetics if these plants can survive my suboptimal skills.

I read about the gas lantern technique with 12h light, 5.5h dark, 1h light, and 5.5h dark. I don’t know if dark equates to sleep for plants, but if it does and dark is a period of recovery I’m going to try it. That and the possibility of lower energy costs is attractive. If I get slower vegetative growth, even better to give me time to sort out what I am doing.

Using the hepa filtered intake, I am less anxious about mold in the air so the humidity is staying fairly high in the 64 to 69 percent range and the vapor deficit pressure has been pretty steady at 1.1 give or take 0.1. I have sticky yellow pads and have caught one tiny fly, so really no pests so far. I adjust the humidity to track the temp since the temp is just going where it will., Temp is at a high of 78 to 80 during the day, down to 67 at night. I’m watering every 4th day when the soil looks dry and using quarter strength big bloom and adding quarter strength grow big every other watering.

Today I trimmed the plants and tried to bend the branches a little more horizontal. I broke a branch but not all the way so I taped and braced it. When I did that previously, I was surprised how fast it came back. Gas Lantern Routine seems to be working out, the plants are recovering well between training attempts. It has made humidity a little trickier to maintain, so I turn up the humidity in the morning, and turn it down before lights out.


@Arrow I’m not going to get a nice manifold. I was thinking to just let it get a few inches of height from here and try LST training to grow the plant broader. Any thoughts?

1 Like

You can use stem flexing as a technique … bend the branches to where you need them to go, but you go past that point and release …do it twice a day and the branches will knuckle up and start staying in place…be careful obviously …hope this helps …:sunglasses::v:

1 Like