So excited to start my first indoor grow!!π It's been a few years since my last outdoor grow, and when I say "grow", I essentially mean "put seeds in ground, harvest in October". There wasn't much effort to the process, as I didn't have the time, and in turn, the results were less than satisfactory.
I've been working from home for a while now, so I figured why not give indoor growing a shot and actually put some effort into it? I ended up grabbing a 3x3 AC Infinity kit, as buying similar value equipment individually would've been around the same price at the time. It was super simple to set the tent and equipment up. The controller app was unintuitive at first, but after a bit of time I had some basic automations up and running.
While researching, I stumbled upon this site, and it seems like a great community and resource for growers. I'm hoping that by documenting my process here, I can gain some knowledge from those who are more experienced and maybe even help out other beginners... Anyway, that's enough rambling. On to the notes...
03/30/23 - Day 1
- Started germination late at night
- Ended up using a damp paper towel placed in a sealed Ziploc bag
- My place is pretty cold right now, so I put the bag in between a thick folded towel, placed that on an old heat mat I found, and kept it inside the tent
03/31/23 - Day 2
- Makeshift heat mat seemed to do the trick, as I could see tap roots poking out when I checked them in the afternoon
- Figure I'll give 'em one more night
04/01/23 - Day 3
- Tap roots are looking good, and I think they're ready to go
- So, around ~48hrs total to germinate
- Planted them right into 1 gallon fabric pots
- I used Happy Frog soil with ~20% perlite, and presoaked it with filtered room temperature tap water before planting
- I wasn't able to test the pH or PPM, as I'm still waiting for my meters to arrive. Hopefully, it's alright
- Happy to get these gals in their new home π
04/02/23 - Day 4
π€| π‘οΈ16.6Β°C/61.88Β°F π¦ 67% π 0.62kPa
π‘ | π‘οΈ25.1Β°C/77.18Β°F π¦ 43.4% π 01.78kPa
- Currently have the light 36" from the top of the pots, on the max intensity setting. Going to start here and move down if it looks like the plants are stretching for light
- Temperature dropped a fair amount in my place last night, as it's not very resistant to the change in weather. The tent temperature hit a low of 14C. Probably should've turned the heat up a bit...
- Pretty large temp and humidity ranges right now, still need to dial in all the AC Infinity automation stuff
04/03/23 - Day 5
π€| π‘οΈ18.6Β°C/65.48Β°F π¦ 66.6% π 0.7kPa
π‘ | π‘οΈ25.5Β°C/77.9Β°F π¦ 41.1% π 1.88kPa
- No signs of life so far, was really hoping to see some green in the morning π
- Humidity has been pretty low throughout the day. I added some domes and a tray of water, hopefully that helps a bit. I'll probably need to invest in a humidifier
- Tried using the Photone app to measure PPFD. I'm getting a reading of ~300ΞΌmol/mΒ²/s at the top of the pots, which I believe is ideal for seedlings. Hopefully the app is somewhat accurate π€
- Checked in again a couple of hours before lights off and two little saplings have appeared π±β¨
04/04/23 - Day 6
π€| π‘οΈ20Β°C/68Β°F π¦ 58.1% π 0.95kPa
π‘ | π‘οΈ24.9Β°C/76.82Β°F π¦ 43.4% π 1.74kPa
- Looks like they're doing well today
- Humidity is still a bit low, but I assume the domes are helping
04/05/23 - Day 7
π€| π‘οΈ18.5Β°C/65.3Β°F π¦ 66.4% π 0.75kPa
π‘ | π‘οΈ24.8Β°C/76.64Β°F π¦ 42.4% π 1.76kPa
- Took the domes off at night as there were some water droplets forming on the planets, worried that it's getting a little too humid
- P1 seems to be a bit slower than P2 at the moment
-Overall, I think the first week went pretty well. I'm still getting a handle on managing the tent/lung room climate, but the plants seem to be doing well so far π
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π€ = Lights Off, π‘ = Lights On |π‘οΈ= Temp, π¦ = RH, π = VPD
I highly recommend an Elitech RC-4HC if you want to start making use of the logger data. It costs about 25 USD and is well worth it.
I just upgraded to a couple of RCW-800WIFI loggers. No more manually pulling data - all cloud upload. Elitech mostly does commercial cold chain monitoring so their cloud product is actually a good buy. I paid around 22 USD to upgrade access to cloud based graphs (free CSV download without the graphs). Adding my second RCW-800WIFI cost NOTHING.
You can check Week5 of my current diary for a screenshot of the cloud platform. One thing to note is that I actually make my own graphs using google sheets since I now have custom graphs for the following: Optimal VPD, Temps, RH%, "lights off" times have been added to these graphs, and most recently I have been comparing my lung room logs, my tent logs, and imported weather temps as well. I have screenshots of the homemade graphs in Week10 of my current "Let's Do Some LST"diary.
@NegotiatedBubble, thanks so much for all the info! I'll definitely look into these loggers, not having to manually pull data would be nice lol. Eventually the plan is to build an Arduino based system that I can add and remove sensors to as I need, host all the data on my local network, and build out a simple desktop app for monitoring. That's pretty far off though, so these may be a good solution in the meantime, or at least a source of inspiration β¨