Rethinking Grow Room & Soil Strategies Sage Advise Welcomed

Indoor Growing Grow Room
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Hi All!

Been doing a lot of pondering on maximizing my indoor stuff with efficient lighting and going with re-usable living soil, so I can mostly eliminate the expensive full line of Botanicare nutes currently used. Plus they have a shelf life. My budget is modest but I’m learning that you don’t have to spend a lot of $$$ to grow great buds!!!

Rather than do a manifold or scrog, want to do a SOG using clones from mother plants. Thinking I can do 8 plants in 2 gallon cloth pots under my QB 260 XL with a 2’ x 4’ flower footprint. That total flowering space is a 3’ x 5’ with a piece of plywood over the bathtub. It’s lined with mylar and has a panda film curtain. If I can pull 1 1/2 zips per plant, that is something like 1 gram per watt.

I’m getting a $59 30" x 18"x 36" tent today for cloning/propagation. It will go in the far side of the 5’ x 8’ bathroom across from the tub. I have a 2 lamp T5 for lighting, and made a DIY hydro cloner that can do 24 clones. Perhaps it makes sense to change the lighting here too at some point…but I have to be mindful of my modest budget.

My other space is a DIY 2’ x 4’ and 6’ closet type room. This would be for 3-4 mothers. I have a 600 watt blurple that pulls 300 watts at the wall. I can use this or was thinking of going with 1 HLG 65 V2 4000K (or different spectrum?). I can get a new one for $99 on amazon. This will save me about $26 monthly compared to the blurple. My question is will it suffice if mounted 3’-4’ feet above the mothers. It’s painted flat white with a panda film door. Thinking I want some stretch for the clones, but need to keep the mothers happy too.

For the soil, was going to start them 1/2 gallon 4"x 4" pots for a 2-3 week veg or so using a veg blended soil higher in nitrogen. Then put them into the 2 gallon cloth pots using Sub Cools organic recipe for flower (have this cooking now). Veg would be in the flower area. This is the trade off of extra run time since my veg room is keeping mothers. Will make the lactobacillus serum for a foliar spray (have a batch going now) and feed them Garrigan’s AACT tea weekly.

Getting my outdoor grow started too but that’s will be a different thread, but will be using the organic stuff and living soil I’m learning.

@garrigan62 @dbrn32 @MattyBear @Skydiver @merlin44 @Big123 @AAA @peachfuzz (please forgive me for this and if I missed anyone)

So…I’m tagging my mentors and friends yet again looking for a sanity check and sage advise. Even if I don’t go with this plan, it has been fun learning all this new stuff and planning it. I’ve come a LONG WAY in the 2 plus years since I started, thanks to you all and ILGM for providing this great forum and genetics. And I’ve managed to still maintain my highly trained skills of screwing my girls up too somehow :sunglasses::sunglasses::sunglasses:

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Thanks for tagging me in.

Regarding lighting, even if the 65 had enough usable light for the mother’s, I think it would be hard to get the single fixture to cover the 2’x4’ spot. 2 of them would be more ideal.

Keep in mind, I’m no lighting expert, I do have a 65 for small vegging projects and I stayed at a holiday inn express last week!

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Hi @AAA

I was thinking I might need 2. At 130 watts it still makes sense compared to the 300 watt blurple, but $200 isn’t in the budget at the moment…someday!!!

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Damn budget concerns!

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Thanks for the tag! We all have a budget we have to account for. I would use what you have on hand until you can upgrade to something you really want. :wink:

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Plan looks pretty solid to me. I agree you have a little work to do on lighting, but you’re on right track.

If soil/nutrients becomes a concern, you can always bite bullet and go with dry nutes you mix yourself. There’s significant savings there over buying anything bottled.

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Hi @dbrn32

That’s the plan to use dry nutes and mix the soil myself. Will use up my Botanicare stuff as needed then make a complete transition to only dry nutes and stuff I mix.

For example, a month ago paid something like $65 for a gallon of Liquid Karma which is good stuff. But now that I’m learning the DIY method, I read the LK ingredients on my old gallon (they aren’t listed on the new one). It’s just kelp extract, bird guano, fish meal, humic acid and yucca extract. Just added the humic acid and yucca dry nutes to my quiver. Most all of these ingredients are in @garrigan62 AACT tea. I can make heaps of it myself for pennies on the dollar. Just learned yesterday that the rich brown color of Liquid Karma comes from the humic acid while making a drench using only 1/4 teaspoon per gallon. OK ok I’m geeking out on this. It’s kinda like cooking combined with brewing. Recipes and fermenting. The journey continues and I’m not even partaking of my stuff at the moment since still trying to get a job and need to stay clean. And…it’s still a blast!!! Plus my tomatoes and peppers are gonna rock too. Sorry for the rant lol…

@MattyBear thanks for the sound advice like always too bro!!!

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Sounds pretty solid to me…
Only problem with soil grows in a sog using clones , is that things and growth rates aren’t as predictable as in hydro…
You may run into problems of some plants growing faster then others even when using clones… :wink:
But still sounds like a solid plan… :+1::wink:

:v::sunglasses:

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I’m definitely following along.