@monkman ahhh sorry i overlooked the convo! Unfortunately i have no help with humidity levels, where i am in ontario canada my basement usually sits around 55 all year…someone here on ILGM has to have an idea to raise humidity on the plants without spending money lol
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I’m having the “MI Dries” as to humidity in my tent. I’m tossing wet hand towels on the tent floor…a cheap way to bring humidity up quit a bit, but they do dry out quite quickly.
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i just did some figuring on the financial justification of growing your own. i used to smoke an ounce or two a week(it was 10 to 15 dollars an oz LOL). now i am at two ounces a month because the quality of the pot is so much better.
last ten years @ 200 an ounce x 2 per month x 12 months x ten years equals 48k
ten year before that @ 150 x 2 / month x 12 months x ten years equals 36k
ten years before @100 oz x 4 per month x 12 month x ten years equals 48k
ten years before that @ 50 oz x 4 per month x 12 month x ten years equals 24k
five years before @30 /oz x 4 / month x 12 month x 5 years equals 7.2k
five years before that @ 15/oz x 6/month x 12 month x 5 years equals 5.4 k
for an approximate total of 170k
keep in mind that these are all estimates except for the last ten years and even then all are approximations. i have never actually tried to do this before and it is scary. it was a good thing i averaged 58 hours a week as a start up engineer lol
Personally, i don’t see your potential for quality being any different in a phototron than any other method of indoor growing. It’s just a self contained vertical hydro unit with fluorescent lights right? But people’s opinion vary on what quality weed is too.
So you’ve arrived at a point where running 2 spaces you need each to produce 5 ounces of quality per harvest? At what frequency do you plan to harvest each space?
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thanks for the heads up and idea @SteveC. that is the problem, i won’t get my tent in for another month as it is on back order. the towels in tent helps a bunch but can invite other problems according to some of what i have been reading on here. they suggest to raise the whole room as safer in long run and when i get my tents and lights acquired i will be working towards getting environment better controlled.
I’m running 2 whole house size humidifiers in my home now, and 35 % is the best I can do, yet I’ll bitch all summer while the A/C and dehumidifier run. Whatcha gonna do?
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from what i’ve seen on here @dbrn32 it looks like 7 days germ, 14 to 20 days in solo cups (seedling stage), 30 to 45 days veg, 60 to 75 days flower, 30 to 60 days cure. makes it approximately five or six months for full cycle cut in half by having two tents. so 4 harvests a year. one tent will be veg tent the other will be flower. right now am leaning towards third tent for cure. been told a box would work, but i want the control of environment and the smell that a tent provides.
As far as the first part of your response goes, i know that neither you nor most people on here believe what i have posted on here about the phototron and/or can’t accept my or another persons page of anecdotal documentation of his grow experience. i wouldn’t believe me either if the roles were reversed. part of my personality is i try to see thru others eyes so i keep a better perspective on “real” life. i was a first time grower, when i see pea sized balls of trichomes on a plant then i will say that that plant is as good as grown by phototron, i keep in mind that it was thirty years ago and the Hawaiian did not have the same amount of trichomes displayed in the same grow. so part of it was the skunk#1 i got from amsterdam. but a majority of it was the fact that the phototron was designed specifically to be used in an exact way. all you had to do was follow exact and i underline exact directions. that made it possible for a first time grower like me, to get incredible pot, yes it was one or two toke for a great buzz.
There is much to be said about multiple variables and multiple strategies but for the masses and for the uneducated that exactness separated phototron then and now. As i said, it will take me probably 3 to five years to get enough experience to grow real good bud the way it’s done now. maybe with all the push towards legalizing recreational pot some bright and enterprising young man will develop a way for the common man to grow great pot in his own home in closet from the first try.
btw, i know that i would be able to build and program a logic controller to do most all of the work needed to be done on hydro gro system with proper sensors and actuators. all that would be needed would be to monitor and prune. at this time the price would be exorbitant.
@SteveC life in Michigan LOL my buddy has a mid 300k house that he built and put in a built in humidifier which he overspec’d to make sure he didn’t get nose bleeds in winter. his works! LOL
I’m not doubting your experience. You may never grow good weed again, people fail and give up all the time. Or, you may hit the first grow right out of the park. That’s happens pretty regularly too. I’m just suggesting that you have 30 years of advancements in your favor, and there’s nothing particularly special about vertical grow with fluorescent bulbs. The only thing that may be particularly hard to replicate is nutrient package. Who knows what kind of pgr’s or whatever may have been in the included nutrients. Some of which may be now banned in at least particular parts of the country.
I can tell you’re very passionate about the results. May i ask why you didn’t go after another vertical setup with fluorescent?
As far as your timing goes, you may have overlapped some. 7 days to pop from drop is reasonable. But once it’s up that plant can flower in 4-5 weeks regardless of what you do with it. Based on following your grow plan you’ll want them a little longer, but 72 days from sprout is a little excessive. Running 4 plants in 4x4, 40-60 is probably a good ballpark number assuming you’re not running out veg to correct an issue or anything. You’re also not going to cure in your tent, and you’re already setup to germ outside of your tent. So you can remove 37-67 days from your plan. You’re left with basically 1.5-2 months veg and 2ish months flower. Should you choose to run each space independently I think you would be closer to 3 harvests per year. At the very least, you’ll have some wiggle room.
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checked the girls 4 and half hours after watering and am happy to see pellets are still dark and damp on top. i can see growth on all plants and the leaves have grown and are not quite so tiny lol. i see a good possibility that i won’t have to spray again until tomorrow, but will check them every 4 or 5 hours.
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i won’t try to copy the footprint of the tron because of the uniqueness of that component. but if you remember, i said that most of what made the phototron work was the exact directions so even having a tron i wouldn’t be able to copy my results as i don’t have the manual anymore. i just read your response again and didn’t think about the nutes was adding at the time. and yes, it is 30 years down the road, but one of the facts that most have forgotten is things like all plants are female and keeping plants at 90 degrees helps keep them that way.
one of the things to keep in mind is that the florescents were 3 vita twist (twisted florescent 20% more powerful than reg flor grow lights in a three foot by 18 inch diameter area). after i have paid my dues in learning to grow i might try to copy that, but i doubt it. what i’m hoping is that i can get similar results growing the regular way. i also think that i can grow better pot than what i have been smoking from the med pot growers in my area but i could be deluding myself on that. i sincerely hope that is not the case because what i have been smoking is very good, but not what i would consider great. what i see in pictures on this site is what i would call some great pot. i wish that i could get a look at some of my suppliers plants at harvest so i could compare. i have seen some real great pictures of flowered plants and hope to get to that point. if i can get to that point, the next will be to come up with a way to make them even better. i am real interested in hydro but have completely shut that down as an option because of what i’ve read on here about soil allowing for the taste of the plant to show up better.
as far as what i’m going to get from my two tents, with them both going i will not have a problem with having enough pot for me to stay high, i am almost positive that i will have an excess except when trouble or Murphy shows his ugly face.
I’m actually pretty familiar with the durolite vita bulbs. We used them in inspection lighting while working in the aluminum industry. Those lights were substituted for cmh when they became hard to get, and then ultimately replaced with high cri led due to explosion hazards of the cmh.
The durolite bulbs were great for t12, but they still only had efficacy of about 40-50 lumens per watt. Modern t5’s are double that comparatively. While they were more light per watt at the time, definitely not to what’s available now.
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did my late afternoon check of the girls and found a nice surprise. The watering i did this morning has still kept its strength as all the pellets are drk brn and dampish still, that is good, but what the surprise was is now i have 5 instead of 4 seedlings. the one that i thought had died in the pellet showed up and is a quarter inch above ground now. i hadn’t done anything to the pellet and had pretty much written it off (didn’t need it, it was an extra so i would have a choice on the 4 i took to veg growth) and now i get to still do it if the little guy can catch up to the rest of the gang. i also went and tapped on the ceiling of upstairs and think i’ve found a spot to put in a couple of hooks to temporarily mount my 630 so i don’t get bad stretch when doing the 2 weeks of veg i’m going to have to do without my tent. i’ll see about that for Monday. temp 73, humidity 22.
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Good to see your seedlings are all growing. A cheap dome or clear solo cups over each seedling will keep your humidity up and keep them from drying out so quick. Keep it up!
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Awesome news! Sometimes the runts/ late bloomers turn out to be the best plants! My theory is they get all their chit together before going to work.
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checked the girls this morning. trixie the slut is no longer the biggest. all four are over two inches tall and have color on stem. trixie was dry as was the new guy so i gave a good dose of water to those two and left the other three alone. the first leaves after the cotoldons are now a little over quarter inch and are bigger than the cots. every time i go up there i blow gently on the area so that the plants move some and also gently bat at them with my hands 4 or 5 times to get movement in them to help strengthen stems. am happy for growth but it looks like stretch. i will see what i can do about getting my good light to the house and mounted. i will be able to adjust for any stretch when moving to solo cups. i tried to look past the gauze of pellets to see if i could see any sign of root but think it is way too early for that.
temp 73. humidity 20%
Why do keep at 20% humidity during vegetation.
not trying to @seascallop. plants in big upstairs room and is winter here in mich. my tent is on back order for a month so i am just trying to get by. i am 65 and told mom when i decided to grow that i was going to grow some pot because it was legal. her only stipulation was that i didn’t get a bunch of people coming to the door. she has been making suggestions. she said just put a pot of water up there and it would help. i thought about putting in a hot plate with water heating, but i’m sure both would just be minor and wouldn’t help much. thought about humidifier but would take two or three of them to get the humidity of room up because of size. i am getting good stuff for this grow and am on tight budget for next two months to make it work. after i get my tents and lights and fans and filter all going my next project will be to work on getting the upstairs room environment around. it already has air conditioning so will be set in a couple months when it gets hot. but i will be buying a good humidifier for the winter months and will have to get a de-humidifier for the summer months. as per what i’ve learned on here, i will be trying to bring my whole room to proper environment rather than my two tents. which means anyone in the house will be wanting to hang in the pot room as it will be the most comfortable in the house LOL.
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I can see your in a difficult situation, I’m in central Florida and humidity is a big issue here I’m lucky I have a 10 by 7 room with Ac dehumidifier all self contained sealed. I go to 20% humidity last 2-3 weeks of flowering.
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Holy crap! I have not seen or heard mention of a phototron in years. Back in 1989 a friend gave my ex one and that’s where he started out growing. It was cool as heck but ours was way to small. We soon made a grow room in the basement of our old house. It was a cool old water sistren room you had to climb up into a crawl space and jump down into the room. it was well hidden. He had quite a set up. I was just a helper. I wished I would have paid more attention back then but I was busy smoking it and taking care of 6 fruit trees a grape vine 20’X40’ veggie garden, 2 pigs, several chickens a goat and working overtime 
… sorry for my trip down memory lane on your thread 
but that phototron took me way back. 
I’m excited for you to get your camera so we can see some pics
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