Dear Diary

[DesignatedDave]

 

Dear Diary,

Today I decided to finally start this diary and share my growing with other community members.
This diary will cover my indoor and outdoor growing, but lets start with the Indoor Grow Room.

After much effort and time I finally finished off my indoor grow room:

You can see the full YouTube video tour of my Grow Room HERE 

To explain what you are seeing here:

• The space itself inside is about 3.2m x 3.2m x 2.3m high.
• All walls have been covered in Diamond Mylar and sealed with Aluminum ducting tape.
• I'm using the tent pole frames of two 1.2m x 1.2m grow tents.
• In the far back corner, I have a 12000BTU aircon connected to a Inkbird ITC-308 Wifi unit and vented through the ceiling. This unit controls the aircon based on the temperature under the lights, It's set for 25 degrees as optimal. When it reaches 29 degrees, it turns on the aircon and brings the temperature back down to 25 degrees. This leaves me with average temperature of about 27 degrees on the leaf surface.
• On the back left, I have a GMC Air Purifier with a medical grade HEPA filter, this is used to filter the air on the Grow room and remove things like Powdery Mildew spores. It can cycles the rooms air one every 30 minutes or so. How much of a difference this is actually going to make in the room is still questionable, but I'm trying it out.
• In between the grow lights hangs three senses. One for the Temp / Humidity sensor on top of the first light ballast. The 2nd sensor is for the Inkbird controlling the aircon. The 3rd is a Inkbird IBS-TH3 Wifi provides me with the temperature and humidity readings on my cellphone with reporting.
• For this grow, I bought myself some Sunplus Sundro 700W lights (https://plantliving.co.za/products/700w-led-grow-light-lm301h-8-bar-quantum-with-uv-ir-sunplus-sundro), these are connected together and linked to the Touch Screen LED master controller (https://plantliving.co.za/products/sunplus-master-led-controller-touch-screen). These lights run their Blue, Red/Far Red and UV on 3 different channels so they can be controlled individually.. from the touch screen... Like Sunset and Sunrise... this shit is like cool. Currently the plants are vegging under 70% blue, 20% red, 20% UV for 18 hours a day.
• Using 3 Wild Spirit CO2 bags, the keeps the CO2 around 2000ppm for the most part of the day. However when the Air conditioner kicks in, it extracts a lot of air from the room, lowering the CO2. I'm not to sure how to get around this since a wall mount split aircon can't be connected the Inkbird Wifi controller. Any suggestions welcome?
• The 8 plants are using the Autopot system and are Feeding off an 85L reservoir sitting in the front of the room.
• The grow room is connected up to a 3kVa Inverter connected to a 4x massive battery UPS . The exception to this being the Aircon and Air Purifier which are on normal power. When there is load shedding, I drop my lights to use 15% power (Well I press the "Cloudy" button on the touch screen controller, fucking worth every cent yoh). The UPS can hold the grow room like this, my Internet, PC and girlfriends PC for about 2h30m. If its a 4 hour load shed during the day, I can remove the towl from the window and get sunshine into the room which provides more than enough light.

As for the indoor plants themselves, these are all clones from cannaclones.co.za and we:

2x Terple - InHouse Genetics
2x Zweety Inzanity - Ethos Genetics
2x Critical Cheese - Unknown
2x Dozi Killer - Jungle Boys Genetics

I'm currently feeding these plants NutriGold (Nutriplex) hydroponic nutrients, with Silicon, Calmag and Fulvic Acid and the plants are planted in the Atami High Porosity Coco.

 

 

Then for my Outdoor Grow for this year, so far we have:

2x Planet of the Grapes - Ethos Genetics
2x Mandarin Cookies v2 - Ethos Genetics
2x Blueberry Sunset - Unknown
1x Chempie x Purple Punch - Ripper Seed Genetics
1x Zombie Kush - Ripper Seed Genetics

These little guys are planted in freedom farms green bag and chomping on Biobizz fish-mix for the moment.
They spending the day in the Sun currently and the evening/night in the Tent to make up the 18hours of light.
In November, I will plant them out into their 25L/30L pots using the Freedom Farms Green Bag amended with the Elemental Blend from Dirty hands. From here they will spend 100% of their time outside.
I will be using a combination of Biobizz and Dirty Hand liquid nutrients, alone with some top soil amendments, Bio Boosters and all the Organic goodness you could ask for from an Outdoor grow.

Well that's it for now, I will update again once I have some more content, let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Prom]

Very sexy!  Nice setup! No.. VERY nice setup ^^

If you run CO2, you use different lights, they are enclosed and have their own air in and out. You ventilate straight outside and only use a aircon to combat the little radiation heat. You can skip the CO2 bags.. rest looks perfectly working. 

[ORGANinc.]

Fuck yeahhhh! That’s the first thing I said when I saw this! Very nicely done bro! 

[DesignatedDave]

10 minutes ago, Prom said:

Very sexy!  Nice setup! No.. VERY nice setup ^^

If you run CO2, you use different lights, they are enclosed and have their own air in and out. You ventilate straight outside and only use a aircon to combat the little radiation heat. You can skip the CO2 bags.. rest looks perfectly working. 

Hi, thanks 

why would I run different lights for co2 and what different lights would I run?
These are 700w Samsung LM301H LED lights, that's 1400w over the 2.4m space... Or am I missing something here?

 

7 minutes ago, ORGANinc. said:

Fuck yeahhhh! That’s the first thing I said when I saw this! Very nicely done bro! 

Thats awesome to hear, thanks man 

[ORGANinc.]

2 minutes ago, DesignatedDave said:

Hi, thanks 

why would I run different lights for co2 and what different lights would I run?
These are 700w Samsung LM301H LED lights, that's 1400w over the 2.4m space... Or am I missing something here?

 

Thats awesome to hear, thanks man 

I think he means lights which generate heat and then the co2 would be effective, temps need to be controlled from 30 - 34 degree when ppm is that high I think, who know anyway

[Prom]

1 minute ago, DesignatedDave said:

Hi, thanks 

why would I run different lights for co2 and what different lights would I run?
These are 700w Samsung LM301H LED lights, that's 1400w over the 2.4m space... Or am I missing something here?

The lights are build different with their own cooling air in and out. You blow cold air into the light cooling duct and split to each light. They all exit outside the room so the main heat is taken care and you do not lose CO2 from cooling the lights. Over all you have 2 cooling systems, one for the room and one for the lights.

[ORGANinc.]

Sure the aircon can raise ryhe temp, when the sun isn’t doing it’s job, in summer  

[DesignatedDave]

23 minutes ago, ORGANinc. said:

Sure the aircon can raise ryhe temp, when the sun isn’t doing it’s job, in summer  

The co2 allows the plants to go up to 32 - 34 degrees and be fine, however, you shouldn't run your plants at those temps though... the co2 bags are like a heat safety net.

However in saying that, if I don't use the aircon, the temps will sit around 30 degrees in the room now already, let alone come Jan/Feb.
Generating heat in there isn't an issue. So yes, during load shedding the co2 ppm is high and the temps are high as well for those 2 or 4 hour periods. 

However this has been this weeks temps under the lights:

 

25 minutes ago, Prom said:

The lights are build different with their own cooling air in and out. You blow cold air into the light cooling duct and split to each light. They all exit outside the room so the main heat is taken care and you do not lose CO2 from cooling the lights. Over all you have 2 cooling systems, one for the room and one for the lights.

Are you not thinking of the old vented HPS lights?, if you google "co2 LED grow lights", there is no vented LED lights, only 1000W+ LED bar lights similar to mine.

The room is sealed mostly, I can maintain a very high co2 ppm. A split wall air conditioner would solve the problem since it would only reticulate the air inside the room and maintain the co2 levels.
However I wouldn't be able to connect it to my inkbird, which has a probe that I can use to monitor the "leaf temp" per-say under the lights, and control the cooling around that being about 27 degrees.

I'm not completely writing off a split unit aircon as a solution, I just need to do some more research into it.
Right now though, having my plants get high co2 for 12 out of the 18 light hours per day is acceptable to me for now.
How much it impacts the growth I have no idea, but since I already have these co2 bags they can hang out there for now

 

[Prom]

Only applies to Veg and that is a safety you shouldn't use. The plant needs more CO2 when it runs over about 1200 micromole PAR. So you have more on during flower. How much is your quantum flux meter telling when you have your LEDs up max at 50cm and how close you go to reach 2000 micromoles? Yes, there might be some heat protection from dying by over heating during Veg... but if you let your weed go during flower, and now the lights are really cooking ^^, daily over 26 degrees, you kill a lot of the terpenes off.. they start to decay over 26C. Your potency will suffer, if you can't keep temps down... CO2 on or not ^^ 18-26 degrees is the grow range you must be able to handle. If people can't keep temps down during veg, they will fail during flower when you run your lights on max (not even talking summer). Winter with no AC on i manage around 19 for veg and 24 during flower. Summer AC is draining my wallet more or less none stop while lights on to keep it below 26.. 24 kicks in and turns off at 20 (depending on weather and load shedding simply impossible to not let it pass 26). Some insulation behind the Mylar? Also, you have a refractometer to measure your leaf sugar content? If you want em to run max capacity, you want to be sure that they have enough sugar to boost photo synthesis (BRIX levels). Sugar to low.. rest can be perfect and you get zero advantage out of everything. At the end all things have to fit together to create perfect weed  

On your graph you already pass 28C on Veg setup, you will bake your weed on flower for sure.. you might want to think into a lot more cooling. Have you made a flower test run with a empty room to see how much heat you end up with when you have all running max? Let is run for 3 days and heat up the walls.. if you stay below 26 at all time, you have a system to start with. Still, high summer will need a second AC unit.. so a split unit with the right capacity for sure the right step. Other option is to simply forget CO2 during summer high time and run the usual 1000 micromole PAR setup.. so dim your monsters down ^^ saves cost. 

My honest opinion.. the first and last of those CO2 bags you bought... just run a normal setup and stay out of the energy power game. The more you put in, the more you have to cool down. I run 480 watts on a 1.2x1.2 area and more then happy with the results (reached 1kg dry on a square meter, no, no CO2 boost ^^ just normal QBs and Autoflowers). 700 watts for a 1.2x1.2 is a bit much but with CO2, might be worth the try ^^. Would be curious to see how much the harvest would be, same strain, Autos or Photos and compare 2 x 1.2x1.2 on 1400 watts with what ever CO2 gimmicks against 3 x 1.2x1.2 on 1200 watts (would use 4 x 100 watt QBs per 1.2x1.2). 

Sorry.. became a bit long ^^ but i was into CO2 maaaaaaaaaany years ago and simply couldn't measure any difference at the end. But again.. was a home system.. not a commercial build environment. I enjoy growing without AC way to much to go back to high watt numbers.. see no reason to do so to be honest  never had better harvests as with LED now, HID is as dead as it can be.

Will enjoy and follow your diary.. really really love what you did with the room. 

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

@DesignatedDave 

You got one sexy setup there man, well done  

I notice you keep a lot of appliences and plugs directly in your grow space, I am sure you probably know about this and already covered all the little stray LED lights on everything. 

more important than anything when it comes to growing is not having a 100% successfull grow run and then trip over your own feet at the finish line. 

when you're in flower, especially later in flower when buds are closer to being fully formed, if you got any stray little LEDs or anything making any kinda light in the tent you will see a nanner or two.... or three..... or a lot. all it really takes is a few of them to release hundereds of millions of pollen particulates on your tent, and the fans will just help kick everything around till you have seeds or micro-seeds on all your plants.

Anyway, goodluck with the grow!!! I am very excited to see what happens here, looks like we're all in for a show  

I can't wait to see what the Zombie Kush looks like have been hearing way too much about it! 

[DesignatedDave]

1 hour ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

I notice you keep a lot of appliences and plugs directly in your grow space, I am sure you probably know about this and already covered all the little stray LED lights on everything.

You are correct sir, I went through all of them one night with the lights off and covered all the little leds and shit with the aluminum ducting tape.
The only two things that are still displaying is the Inkbird and the co2 monitor. I'll cover those up closer to flower. (or turn the co2 monitor off if I follow Prom's advice).

I also need to completely close up the Window which currently just has a towl in front of it, I just need to go pick up sticky velcro and some blackout fabric (I want to be able to remove it in the day if I need to). This will then give me complete darkness with no light leaks.

I also can't wait for the Zombie Kush, a strain with 20 awards should be great right? She is growing very strong and I am going to need to repot her soon.

 

[DesignatedDave]

Dear Diary,

It's been 2 and a half weeks since the last photo's, so here's an update.

On the indoor plants, I created had an issue for myself on the 13th, I got up early, filled and mixed up the nutrient reservoir, PH'd it and off my girlfriend and I we to Cape Town for the Weekend.

(Btw the way, we stayed in  Bloubergstrand and was very quickly introduced to a place there called "Baked". Seriously, go there, sign up as a member (R200) of their club, and go order an indoor joint and a sativa infused Chocolate Milkshake... It was amazing. I ended up fucking unbelievably Space-X high, there is just no other way to describe it. That chocolate milkshake though is the be all and end of all of all chocolate milkshakes, it's epic. 

Then like 100m down the road is this place called "Tree of Life"... where I proceeded to buy a "Moon stick", which was a gorilla glue joint, rolled in chocolope concentrate and then rolled in a haze kief. You got to try one of these  )

 

Ok back to the story (I'm so baked while writing this) - While we were flying high in Cape Town I had some issues at home... we had a 24h power outage, and a heat wave, so to his credit my step-son did manage the situation fairly well.
When I got back the following Monday, the plants looked like something genetically suddenly went wrong with all of them. they have grown, but the nodes are less an a cm apart and they have all just like bushed in one place or another. After checking through everything I found that in my haste on the Thursday morning before leaving, I forgot to open the tap of the reservoir to feed the plants and they had now gone from the wednesday to the following monday without anything. I figured with the co2, the high temps, the lack of water it just culminated  in the plants weird growth.

To rectify it, I cut off a whole bunch of nodes to space it out a bit and then just let them grow it out. They have since recovered nicely and I have started pulling them down and out to start the growth of the flat canopy which will grow into the scrog net once it's up.

 

The little outdoor plants I had in my tent in the first post have come along way. I've repot them into their 25L pots and they are now out on the grass for the outdoor season.
I have two 50w flood lights on them at night and will be adding a 3rd this month so I that I can light them up 360 degrees. 

Blueberry Sunset

 

Chempie x Purple Punch - This is by far the fastest growing plant I have ever come across.

 

The Zombie Kush

 

The outdoor plants will be feed a worm tea this week and hopefully they should settle into their homes nicely.
These 8 plants are spread out nicely and I'm busy looking at building a 4m x 4m shade cloth canopy to try help with heat and hail.

 

That's it for this update.

Edited October 29, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[DesignatedDave]

Dear Diary,

It's been almost a month since I last posted and a lot has happened and changed.

About a week after I my last post, my indoor plants took a dive, they yellowed out on the new growth like an iron lockout from a PH issue.
Considering these plants were 100% until I went and spent 4 days in cape town and forgot to open the reservoir tap before leaving. That coupled with a 36 hour power outage, a heatwave, 7000+ PPM of co2 and these were screwed. I initially I thought I could save them, but their growth was becoming deformed and I wasn't in the mood for a warped difficult grow, so I decided to trash the entire indoor grow and buy new clones and start over.

So now we have a full ripper seeds grow:

2x Criminal+ (Critical cheese)
2x Gelato x Kmints x Runtz
2x Zombie Bride (Wedding Cake x Zombie Kush)
2x UK Cheese x Zombie Kush

I also decided to switch out my nutrients from Nutriplex (NutriGold) to trying the Gold Label CoCo Nutrients with their Stimulators & Boosters - https://goldlabel.nl/nutrients/ - (I get that it's all just NPK `n shit, but lets give it a run and see, since I don't think there is anyone on this Forum running these nutrients).

I acquired the clones on the 7th November and these are how they are looking today on the Gold Label Nutrients:

 

Then on the Organic Outdoor side - these plants have been going great and getting big, I am considering changing their pots to 48L pots. I did a defoliation last Saturday and they seem to have recovered nicely.
Still feeding them Biobizz Fish-mix, Calmag, Molasses, Enzymes.

 

Blueberry Sunset

 

Chempie x Purple Punch

 

 

Zombie Kush

 

that's it for now.

[Golden-Goose]

Fantastic setup Dave. A pity about the earlier cock up, but life happens.

I'm also using NutriGold and calmag.

[DesignatedDave]

5 minutes ago, Golden-Goose said:

Fantastic setup Dave. A pity about the earlier cock up, but life happens.

I'm also using NutriGold and calmag.

I like the NutriGold nutrients, they work well,

This Gold Label nutrients caught my interest, I'm using their coco 70/30 grow medium which is Kiwa certified and from what I understand, their main market is medical cannabis facilities and are branching more consumer stuff.

If you go through their bottles, its interesting that they include additional things like Silicon, Amino acids, Aloe Vera, Enzymes to break down dead root mass into nutrients, etc.
It seems like a lot of R&D has gone into this nutrient bundle and I'm really keen to see the results of them.

I buy a lot of stuff from GreenThumb on a monthly basis, It would be amazing if they could start stocking these Gold Label nutrients.
Currently its being sold by 1 grow shop (Canna Kingdom @ Hillfox Shopping Center, JHB) and because of that, I believe it's marked up rather high.

[Golden-Goose]

Interesting. Thanks for that feedback Dave. I'm going to see what can be done about Goldlabel nutrients. My biggest concern would be DAFF registration. It's a bit of a bitch to get done, and can take as long as 18 months.

I'm keen to see the progress of your grow my man.

[DesignatedDave]

9 minutes ago, Golden-Goose said:

Interesting. Thanks for that feedback Dave. I'm going to see what can be done about Goldlabel nutrients. My biggest concern would be DAFF registration. It's a bit of a bitch to get done, and can take as long as 18 months.

I'm keen to see the progress of your grow my man.

That would be awesome because the full set of bottles for "maximise growth" comes to about R6000 for the set (From Canna Kingdom), While I understand this was R&D'd for medical grade cannabis, I don't believe it should be that expensive (or maybe I'm wrong, but everything in their shop is marked up crazy... their pre-rolled joints are good though).

Edited November 24, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[Golden-Goose]

Just now, DesignatedDave said:

That would be awesome because the full set of bottles for "maximise growth" comes to about R6000 for the set (From Canna Kingdom), While I understand this was R&D'd for medical grade cannabis, I don't believe it should be that expensive.

Yeah, that seems a little crazy.

[DesignatedDave]

Dear Diary,

A quick update on the plants.

The indoor plants are now ready to flip to flower and I started the 12/12 lighting from last night.

They have grown like crazy and are so ridiculously happy on this Gold Label Nutrients it's insane.

2x Criminal+ in the front with 2x Gelato x Kmints x Runtz at the back.

 

My UK Cheese x Zombie Kush however is the only two plants that aren't "growing" - they mostly have just bushed out and stayed short. I'm hoping they stretch themselves out nicely with flipping them.

 

The Zombie Brides (Wedding Cake x Zombie Kush).

 

My outdoor plants are looking rather worse for wear, they took a solid beating from a bad hailstorm this past week. Once they have recovered some I'll take some pics.
That's it for now.

 

 

[DesignatedDave]

Quick update, the plants have now done their stretch and are flowering nicely.

 

The Gelato x Kmints x Runtz have stretched all the way up to about 1.7m tall.

I've slowly stared defoliating, however I won't be taking off to much, as long as there is airflow and the bud sites have direct light, I'm happy.

My next update should include some nice bud shots.

 

[DesignatedDave]

 

Between all the Stage 6 load shedding and the continual vandalization, theft and damaged to mini-substations in our area, my UPS hasn't been able to keep up and keep the fans on.

Thus the "Gelato x Kmints x Runtz", "Criminal+" and "UK Cheese x Zombie Kush" has been hit with Powdery Mildew and I've had to throw them away 3 weeks before harvest.
Pretty disappointed and despondent about this, I tried all I could to prevent PM, including a preventative IPM program, but I guess there is only so much you can do in a closed space without electricity before heat, humidity and stale stagnant air stresses the plaints out to the point they PM can set in.

At this point, I'm even questioning the viability of growing indoor with the current stage 4 - 6 load shedding, the petrol cost to run 1800w of power for 4 hours just adds to the pain.

The "Zombie Bride" has been pretty resilient so far (touch wood) and is going strong, I made a quick video of it: (sorry you have to view it on youtube because of their policies).

 

[GreenGalaxyFarm]

9 minutes ago, DesignatedDave said:

At this point, I'm even questioning the viability of growing indoor with the current stage 4 - 6 load shedding, the petrol cost to run 1800w of power for 4 hours just adds to the pain.

cant you run equipment(lights) dailed down to save on petrol

but what a legend, link a video to private youtube 

atleast we know now you really are dave

Edited January 23, 2023 by GreenGalaxyFarm

[DesignatedDave]

Just now, GreenGalaxyFarm said:

cant you run equipment(lights) dailed down to save on petrol

I'm about to replace my lead acid batteries in my UPS with Lithium Ion batteries. At this point I would just like to keep the extraction and fans going and hopefully that will help. The issue is when we get hit with 2x 4 hour load shedding schedules during a 12 hour period with only 4 hours of power in between. The UPS isn't able to charge the batteries up enough before the next load shedding hits.

In addition to this, we being affected by this - https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/city-power-runs-out-of-stock-to-replace-vandalised-mini-substations-20230120
A mini-substation got vandalized, they replaced it and 3 days later, they vandalized it again, so city power has now replaced it for a Third time. When this happens, we don't have power for 18 hours at a time.

 

 

[GreenGalaxyFarm]

3 minutes ago, DesignatedDave said:

I'm about to replace my lead acid batteries in my UPS with Lithium Ion batteries. At this point I would just like to keep the extraction and fans going and hopefully that will help. The issue is when we get hit with 2x 4 hour load shedding schedules during a 12 hour period with only 4 hours of power in between. The UPS isn't able to charge the batteries up enough before the next load shedding hits.

 

i hear that, we work with backup batteries alot in telecommunications lithium definitely wins at faster charging

[Ill_Evan]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of grow equipment getting sold secondhand soon the way things are going.