cardgenius’ 2 in 1 LED Grow Tent

[cardgenius]

Thanks!

 

[cardgenius]

Day 43 of Flower:
Things are looking good. Buds are stacking and starting to put on weight. Had the first branch fall over from the added weight so that’s good, luckily it didn’t break off. Trichomes are starting to get cloudy, maybe 10-20%.

Since I’m going with an organic grow with these next plants I figured what the hell and fed them a mixture of the Bloom amendments and earthworm casting for what should be the last feeding. The timing was right and I’m tired of playing Russian Roulette with the bottled nutes.

Had to cull out one of the bagseed seedlings. It had weird growth and was lagging behind the others quite a bit. The other seedlings going strong and just got transplanted to 1g pots.

 

[QBCrocket]

nice work

 

[cardgenius]

Day 53 of Flower:

Everything is still going strong. Plant on the right has about 80-90% cloudy trichs, no amber yet and hasn’t started to fade while the other is only at 40-50% and is starting to fade. It needs more time so I’m thinking about putting in a few Tbs. of earthworm castings to keep it good for another couple weeks while it gets closer to being ready. I purchased the new light, tent and have had the plants flowering in it for a few days now.

The tent is another Vivosun that’s 3x3x6. It seems they’ve lowered there quality cause thing is flimsy, has quite a few micro holes in it and the vent covers were cut to the wrong size. I’d return the damn thing but I don’t have an alternative to use so I’m just gonna deal with it. I patched up all the holes and taped up the vents so no light is leaking into it. The clip on fans oscillating feature just **** the bed and also happens to be made by Vivosun so that’ll be the last thing I buy from them. Had that thing for only 3 months!

Light is the Spider Farmer SF-2000. Everything about this light has been great. More light(par), less electricity and no noise! Its a little rough around the edges but I liking it so much I’m getting rid of this Vivosun 600w soon so I can get the SF-1000 for the vegging tent.

 

[cardgenius]

Plants got the chop and have been drying in the tent for 5 days now. It’s dry around here so I’ve had problems in the past with them drying out too fast and never getting rid of that hay smell. So this time I left all the leafs on to help lengthen the drying time and it seems to be working as that terrible smell is fading.

The “Blue Dream” and random bagseed plants are doing good but could be better. Been having some cal/mag issues due to this new medium, Tupur. No matter how much cal/mag I throw at it I can’t get it to fix itself. So I’m just gonna do a side plant here and there with the Tupur till I can get it figured out.

 

[cardgenius]

I got to pick up a pack of seeds from one of the large dispensary’s close by. It’s a cross of Jah Kush, Cindy White and Graper Ape. Haven’t smoked any of these strains before so it’ll be interesting to see how they turn out. Guy at the dispensary didn’t have a clue so no help there.

Dropped 5 seeds into some Happy Frog and EWC to get them going and they just popped up a couple days ago.

 

[cardgenius]

Trimmed up the buds after drying for 6.5 days. I’d like to get that number closer to 8 days so I’ll probably put the fan on a timer next time so it’s not running 24/7.

Got a total of 4.3oz from the 2 plants. The shorter plant produced some nice dense colas with very few popcorn nugs. The other one was the exact opposite. It produced just as much popcorn nugs as it did “large” ones so I don’t think I did as good of a job lollipoping this plant as I did the other.

 

[cardgenius]

Upgraded the light in the veg tent to the HLG100 v2 by Horticulture Lighting Group. It’s another QB LED like the Spider Farmer but made here in the USA which is always a plus.

I was originally going to go with the Spider Farmer SF-1000 but they have raised the price up to $180 this last week so I started looking into other lights. It’s probably the better of the two lights with it’s 3500k spectrum instead of either 3K or 4K with the HLG and it has infrared diodes while the HLG does not but the Spider Farmers are made in China and I was not impressed with the build quality(aluminum back plate is bowed out jus a bit) of my SF-2000 to justify the price hike. Paid $150 for the HLG100 and it’s great. It’s dead silent and only pulls 100w from the wall while putting out 450 PAR at 18”. Either way it’s a better option for my 2x2 veg chamber than this out dated VIVOSUN 600w LED I’ve been using which pulls 260w while barely putting out 500 PAR and is extremely loud.

I was going to eventually add another SF-2000 to my 3x3 but they raised the price on that also by $40 so I’m now looking into the 260w QB v2 Rspec kit from Horticulture Lighting Group.

 

[Lesso]

Moving right along. Congrats on the harvest!
Keeping it nice and clean up there.

 

[cardgenius]

Blue Dream and the Bagseed finally showed their sex and lucky for me they are females. Made a couple mistakes in the last few weeks. First, I grabbed the wrong measuring spoon so I only top dressed half of what I was supposed to which led to the plants getting a little starved. Then, I put the new HLG too close to the plants and they really didn’t like it. Lost a lot of color and shut down growth for a week before I realized the problem. I am happy with the size and even canopy though. They’ve been moved into the flower tent with the Spider Farmer and will give them a week before I put up a SCROG and flip to 12/12.

The Jah Kush x Cindy White x Graper Ape cross are all doing good. Just transferred them to the Veg chamber under the HLG and into 1 gallon pots. I’m hoping that at least 3 of the 5 are females as I’d like to flower 2 and keep the other for a mother. I like growing from seed but Id like to try my hand at cloning. I also think it will keep the veg to flower cycle on point a bit more.

 

[WeedHopper]

Nice job on your previous grow my friend.

 

[Kyfarmerb]

Looking good bro.stay at it and you'll have green hands instead of green thumbs.check my grow out bro.hit me up if u have any questions.and happy 420 bro

 

[cardgenius]

Did some pruning and lollipoping a few days ago and then flipped the ladies to 12/12. Plants are not as big as I had hoped for but they've been in veg for over 2 months now so their time has come.

Top soil is looking good after a recent top dress.

The Veg chamber is coming along nicely. All were topped earlier in the week. Will do some low stress training on them once they are bigger.

This one has some weird growth going on.

Popped some veggie seeds in the germination station a few days ago. Big Boy tomatoes, Lettuce, Sweet Peas, Jalapeño, Serrano and Bell Peppers. I usually buy starter plants from the nursery but wanted to do it from seed since I’ve got the equipment to do so. I’ll let them grow in here for a couple weeks before putting them outside for the summer. I dream of having a garden or even a high tunnel greenhouse one day but for now my back porch will have to do.

 

[cardgenius]

Watered the plants in the veg tent last night and was bummed to see that 2 of the 5 are males. Pretty sure there’s a 3rd in there but I’ll give it a few days to let those ball drop some more before I give him the boot.

 

[Sin inc]

Wow nice grow you have their fam. Just got that same tent.

 

[cardgenius]

Wow nice grow you have their fam. Just got that same tent.

I saw that. You’ve got very cool grow going on!

 

[cardgenius]

Day 12 of Flower:
Plant on the right has just exploded since the flip with bud sites and pistols popping out all over the place while the other hasn’t done much and is just now starting to show pistols. Wonder if it’s the difference in strain or if it’s just a healthier plant than the other? It did start showing a ton of pre flowers 3 or 4 days before the flip whereas the other only had a few showing...

Overall both are doing good and have filled in a lot after the lollipoping I did.

Not a lot of stretch going on but this one should have a nice fat cola towering above the rest.

And finally, got confirmation that the 3rd one is a boy so he’s been put in isolation. Not sure if I’m going to let it go and collect some pollen from it or just strip it’s leaves for the dirt bin and trash the rest.

 

[cardgenius]

While I’m liking the Spider Farmer so far, I wish I had known then what I know now and purchased a light with more red in its spectrum. This is a good all in one grow light but there’s definitely better out there to use for flowering. The 300w or 260w R-Spec’s from Horticulture Lighting Group is what I would have gone with. Unfortunately the return window for the Spider Farmer is closed so I’ll have to live with my mistake and move on.

Luckily there are good options out there for adding supplemental light. I purchased a 60w red supplement bar from Horticulture Lighting Group last month but have yet to receive it due to it being back ordered, damn covid.

So last week I did some browsing on RapidLED website and found these little LED pucks they which come in “Royal Blue” for Veg, “Photo Red” for Flowering and a Violet UVA for a boost in trichome production. They are about 3.5” in diameter so they can be placed pretty much anywhere and only use 4w.

I ended up ordering a Photo Red and UVA puck, got a 10% discount for being my first order. Shipping was cheap and only took 2 days to get here. The red has been plugged in since Saturday. They say to use the UVA in the last couple weeks to boost the trichome production. I don’t know much about the use of UVA so I’ll be doing some reading on it. Plants seem to be liking the extra red so far, especially the Blue Dream.

 

[cardgenius]

Day 40 of Flower
Buds are fattening up and starting to look good. Not much smell coming off them yet. Drinking around a quarter gallon every day.

Ive been interested in picking up some kind of monitor for the tents and had my eye on the Pulse One Monitor and wanted one for each tent but with the price $200 each, I just couldn’t do it. So I looked into the monitors from Push Sensor and ended up buying 2 of them. They dont have all the features that the Pulse One has but at only $50 each, I’m ok with that.

It uses Bluetooth to connect and transfer the data to your phone or tablet app so it’s only accessible when your at home and in range. They do sell a wireless gateway that can connect to the internet so you can monitor from anywhere with internet access. I’ll probably pick that up at a later time.

The functions are pretty simple. Set your Max/Min temperature and rH. Then an alarm if you want to be notified if the temp/rH go above or below the range you set. It puts the data into a time graph for you too see day, week, month and year. Any spikes above the set limits are shown in red.

Just made my first online seed purchase! Went through Neptune Seed Bank and picked up a pack of feminized ‘PuTang’ by Mass Medical Strains. I’ve been a big fan of his for a while now so I’m really excited about getting them and growing them out. Should be here tuesday!

 

[cardgenius]

Day 50 of Flower:

The random Bagseed(below) has really been putting on the trichomes recently. I’ll get a better pic onve the lights come on tonight. The Blue Dream(above) doesn’t have much trichome production yet. I really have to get in there with my loop to find some when I check for trichome colors. The plant looks beautiful though with it’s pink and purple leaves right now so hopefully it starts producing here soon. I have been running the UVA light for 90 minutes a day but am going to turn it up to 3 hours a day until I chop them. Both plants have really slowed down their drinking this past week and I over watered because of it. Leaves got really droopy on the Bagseed plant. They're now drinking a quarter gallon each every 2 days instead of every other day.

Got my order from Neptune Seed Bank, shipping was quick and they threw in an extra freebie. Can’t wait to get these beans into some dirt!