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I have NO idea what I'm doing and have never grown something before. I've watched my wife use the Tower Garden to great success, It's now legal to grow and I got my hands on some random bag-seed (comment from the future: we'd guess Candyland. It's definitely a Sativa, 26% THC according to Purple Pro and SO smooth.) What I learned at this point was that I needed a tent because it was too hot/dry during the day and too cool/dry at night.
In reality, the moment I tried to clone her, I effectively killed the mother and the cutting wasted. The friend who gave me the seed, had started his own couple plants from the same source, so he set me up with a couple little cuttings, I got myself a dome and I spend at least a month learning how NOT to kill cuttings and eventually, how go give myself all the plants I wanted. What follows is an accidental experiment. Because I only had a couple decent cuttings to start with, I had to mature them far enough along that I could give myself the other 4 plants I wanted (I was going for a round of 6; the per-person limit in AZ). Because of this, the plant at bottom left (Grow-1a) was trained out to have 6 "spokes", while the next had 4, then 2, then 1, then a couple runts I wasn't sure would even survive (the 2 on the right). The rest of the diary highlights those 6 plants.
I tried a 3x3 on my back porch and found that the temp variations outside made it impossible to manage the tent (condensation on the walls kept humidity down when it was cold outside and the 3x3 is just too small). So, I decided to repurpose a server closet with a dedicated 1-ton Fujitsu Mini-split that made climate control a breeze. I sealed the room up further, created a 4" pass-through with flapper so air from the (climate controlled) room that's on the other side of that wall, then I put an AC Infinity 4" (later went to 6") Cloud-Line system on to pull exhaust out if heat or humidity became an issue. The lights on either side are Home Depot, "Commercial Electric High-bay" 5000k, 180w lights. In the middle is the Sun Raise QB2000 to get more blue in. All were dimmed down to maybe 20%. I was using an Android PPFD app to set them. The buckets are a custom system using the "air-lift-water-pump" concept to bring nutrient water up from the bucket, then some of that water is sent out to drippers, into the 3" net-pots and the excess was pumped to the next bucket, causing a slow recirculation (including with an added reservoir bucket.)
Playing with a 2-liter, chemical CO2 generator into the environment now, but I don't see the chemicals, disposal and mess being worthwhile. I've learned about VPD now so I'm using lookup tables from PulseGrow to inform my environment. I'm also adjusting the A/C down cooler at night.
1 more week until harvest! Botanicaire Karma doesn't seem to hurt, but it makes a mess. I'm going to look for other solutions to get a surfactant and the benefits of kelp-meal.
Final week! Counting down the days until I put them into 48 hours of darkness, then harvest. The smell is amazing and the plants look wonderful from top to bottom.
This grow required me to start taking notes and went from a blank Google Doc, to a 14 page guide in the time this grow took. That guide is now 41 pages and I'm constantly updating it as I learn more. https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSn0Hkn3HRuBtO5nECCbEJCPvY6GTtrTdnkxC31cBemi-WPjUx60M8RQQngXEafqmHU1-z6V8Q6GGLy/pub
ExperimentalGrower
