Project AeroGarden

Ginger_gnome So I have been dying to do this for well over a year. I was on Google one day looking at AeroGardens in images and i came across a picture of a AeroGarden that some peraon put in a cardoard box. The walls had tin foil on them and it was on a small shelf. Very quick and easy and not that expensive to set up. I thought that was brilliant, but that with a little money this could work a lot better sooooo here's the Idea!!! To take a top of the line counter top hydroponics system and build a box to put it in that is almost like a grow tent set up and try to grow a Auto in it. I'm still waiting on a few parts to finish up the box (should be here this weekend) so next week I'll explain the ins and outs of that. This week I'll talk about the grow system. I'm using the 2019 AeroGarden Bounty Elite as my base. It uses a 50w LED board that can go up to a max of 2 feet grom the base. You can customize the timing for the light, adjust the water pump to circulate when you want. Keeps track of how full your reservoir is, and let's you know when you should refill it through wifi. Ive done a bit of customizing to it by adding a 760 GPH air pimp to add air to the water and to help keep the nutrients mixed. The AeroGarden also come with a really cheap "trellis" system. I modified it to fit my liking a bit more. Well now that ive gotten that out of the way its plant talk time. Because of the limited space I have with the light I went with crop king seeds Dwarf Low Flyer because its max hight is 2ft. I plan to do LST to help with that. If this ends up being a successful project I'll be moving to a different plant next or trying two low flyers. Well Happy Growing everyone!!

Ginger_gnome So the grow box is done. It's got 2 s3 muffin fans that have speed controls. There both intake fans that are boxed in with holes at the bottom. It has 1 s7 muffun fan at the top center thats being used as a outtake fan. . Its got highly reflective mylar on the inside. The temperature and humidity have been staying fairly low and thats always nice. Havent started adding any nutrients yet, still waiting for 2 bottles to come in but should be starting soon. Started noticing some rust on one of the leafs and should hopefully have that sorted out soon. Happy growing everyone

Ginger_gnome So this has been a fairly hectic week. I was having issues with the Ph. I was noticing some small deficiencies on 1 of the leafs and so I hooked up a nutrients monitor to the tank to see what everything was at. I thought the base nutrients I had gotten was for hydro but it turns out it was actually for soil. So it was adjusting my Ph to 6.5, way to high. So I switched to General Hydroponics flora series and adjusted everything and now she's running perfectly. I've noticed Rust popping up on a few of the leafs and then after looking around that my grow box had gotten pushed up against the wall so the outtake fan wasn't working properly. I left some space between the top shelf and when the light is fully extended so that I can left it up and direct the fan right on top of the plant. Going to do that and see if it helps. If it doesn't ive already ordered up a bottle of lost coast plant therapy and it well apperntly kill rust on contact. I know before hand that this was going to be a tough project. But im determined to make this work correctly. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome MYSTERY SOLVED!!!!! So shortly after I started this project (think day 12-15) I started noticing rust on a leaf. A fellow peraon on this group told me they had tryed AeroGardens before but would always get rust and eventually the plant would die. So me being me, I spent the next 12 days reading up and trying different things to fix this. First everyone was telling me its cal-mag (go figure) but I was already adding cal-mag, so I increased the amount, nothing. Next I was told it was from a dirt grow space, so I cleaned it up a bit and still nothing. Then last week while working on it I noticed my tank temp had gotten higher then I would like it (25c). So I added cold water to it and got it below 20c (17c I believe). Then after I did that I started thinking about the temp of the tank, looked it up, and sure enough water temp in DWC needs to be kept low around then18c mark to stop harmful bacteria from growing in the tank. Started keep the temp below 20c and bomb rust stops spreading!!!! Now to figure out a way to keep it cold constantly without me having to drain it and refill it. This is proving to be difficult due to a heat wave we just got hit with. Temperature outside has been hitting close to 38c and inside the house has been hitting close to 30c and warming my grow box rite up. When its colder out (24c or less) everything in my grow box runs smoothly, as soon as it gets higher then that, Temperatures start to sky rocket. Oh well wouldnt be fun if it was easy. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome so this last week was going great, had kept my res temp low, and my rust was basically all gone. Then I had to go away for 2 days to help my dad set up his 2 grown tents. I had my significant other watch over everything while I was gone. Unfortunately she wasn't able to keep the res cold enough while I was gone and the started to come back. Its so far only on 3 leafs that I can see. I also taped up the openings where the probes go into so to help cut down on light and heat getting into the res. Never grown a Dwarf plant before and it is growing super slow, like a inch a week almost lol. I know that the max hight they can get to is roughly 24 inchs but at the rate its going i don't see it getting that big. My nutrients levels slowly drop between 30-50ppm a day, I usually drain it out every 4-5 days and drain and refill it. I try to do it before the ppm drops more then 200ppm below what it was when I mixed it up. The trellis that comes with the aerogarden is just a basic plastic ring. So I used twine and turned it into a net so that the plant could have more support. Hopefully it works lol Happy growing everyone

Ginger_gnome This last week the growth increased a bit. Did a little defoliation so that I could see the branchs and bend them into the neting. Also FIMed it to hopefully get the plant a bit wider so that it takes up as much space as possible. Now that ive been home more ive got the leaf rust almost 100% under control. Only have that i can see 1 leaf that has just the tiniest amount on it. So according to Crop King Seeds, my plant only needs 6 weeks to flower but im planning on going a bit longer then that. I'm hoping the flower stage starts soon. Getting excited to see the quality of the smoke. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome so this week they started to flower finally. Today is exactly day 48 since I planted the seed inside my aerogarden and crop king has the seed down as a 6 week strain. I have a feeling I might end up going 7 but we well see. She is at 12" now so I'm going to net the second trellis so I can try and control its hight a bit. Want to try and keep it from going more then 18-19". I try to trim the leafs a bit every few days so that I can make sure the plant is growing the way I want it to. Hard to see anything when there is so many leafs in your way lol. I'm aiming low for this crop, maybe 25-30g. Low flyer isn't a big harvester. But if I'm able to get those numbers at least this grow. I might try using a feminized seed instead of a auto so that I can come control the veg period and see how well that works. So I had to move the grow box from where it was located to a different spot. Since then the humidity and temperature have dropped a bit. Before I was battling high humidity levels, now it's low levels lol growing from scratch 101 lol ive already got a small humidifier if I need it but humidity is low inside and outside rite now. Dropped slowly over the last 4 days. The room its in is 30% and outside is just a at 33%. After moving it I decided it was time to finish the decorations for it. Plus my wife was telling me constantly how much of a eye sore it was lol so motivational lol. Still got to paint the last few parts but itll be complete soon. "Update": did a massive leaf strip at the end of the day. Wanted to see as much of ths plant as I could and make sure all the branchs were up in the net, from what I can see the plant is growing perfectly up into the net. I have a feeling the plant is only going to get about 4-6" taller. At the rate it toke for it to get to this stage, its not going to get much bigger. Happy growing everyone

Ginger_gnome Man did this plant have some massive growth in the last few days. Most of the increase in hight came in te last 3ish days. As it grows I've been trying to make sure as many of the branchs go into the correct spots to spread them out perfectly. So far there's a few that are past the second trellis. Still have a few that haven't grown past the first trellis tho lol. I did a small leaf strip yesterday to clean up the area between the two trellis nets. There was a lot in there and I noticed it dropped the humidity a bit after I did it (was 67% before ad 59% a while after doing it). Humidity so far is my only issue if been having with this grow box. I could put a small dehumidifier into it but I'd like to try and keep it clean. Ive had a few spikes (67%) and drops (mid 30%) but for the most part it drifts from 58% to 61%. Personally myself i like to keep my humidity around 50% during flower but that's just me. The bud clusters are starting to multiple nicely and hopefully they well plump up a bit because right now there looking a little like the popcorn buds I remove from my grow tents lol. If by the end of this week there still looking a bit on the tiny side, then i'll definitely look at adding more light the next grow. The reflective mylar i got is garbage... theres a lot of spots where its completely warn out and you can see the board on the oter side. The piece I have on the door is falling off also so I'm thinking off removing it, painting the door on the inside white. Then cutting a small piece of the mylar and taping it to the inside of the door like a beauty mirror for my girl lol. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome So going by what crop kings says for there seeds im about 3 weeks from crop. I dont think ill br cropping then and well be pushing it a bit longer. Ive got a scope to check to make sure there done but I feel like I'm atleast 4 maybe 5 weeks to crop. This last week had some good growth but the buds are still looking a bit small. Idk if that's characteristic of the strain or if the 50w light isnt cutting it. Im already looking at removing the reflective mylar, painting the walls and adding 4 - 10w LED bar lights for supplement lighting for the next grow. By adding the miicrobial mass and over thing else my ppm jumped up massive. Ill be watching the plant closely the next few days for signs of stress and nutrients lock. Well happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome Sooooo I decided to add more light lol. I was going to do this after this grow but I ordered them up and after they got here I decided why not add them now lol. I feel like I've already accomplished what I set out to do with this grow, and thats grow a cannabis plant in a aerogarden with a custom made grow box. Now I just want to try and maximize im end yeild as much as I can. So the lights are 4 cheap Amazon special LED 10w lights (40w total) they give off a super low par at 3" and there just over 18" long. Ive only had them in the box since 09/26 (3 days) and they only run for 12 hours. So my lights structure works like this 12pm aerogarden light turns on at 10% and over the next hour slowly increase to 100%, the at 3pm my supplement lighting turns on for 12 hours (3pm to 3am). Then at 5am my aerogarden light slowly decrease from 100% to 0% at 6am. Trying to make it like a sunrise, mid day, sun set like structure. The buds are starting to look very nice on the plant and hopefully we'll fill out a bit more but only time can tell. Getting very sticky and the smell is very mouth watering. I'm excited to see how this smoke taste compete what ive grown in soil. Happy growing everyone

Ginger_gnome Day 79 since I started this project and I dont think I could be happier with how it's going. The buds are not very big but its not the size that gets it done. Growing for myself so if I end up with a jar full of popcorn nugs whatever lol. Im a admin on a midsized facebook grow page and had a member try to call me out over the size of the buds. Its funny how many people think its all about size, explaned to them that when it comes to my personal grows I don't care about the size of the buds. Started adding Overdrive to my nutrients to give her that last extra push but I don't see them getting to much bigger. The top section and tier 3 buds look great but tier 2 looks like it still has a ways to go. Also I realized I hadn't been adding house and gardens drip clean to my nutrients chart above. I'll be going back to past weeks to correct, its just a heads up going forward for people following. My next grow ill also be switching from General Hydroponics Flora series to Advanced Nutrients Jungle Juice. Ive used General Hydroponics Flora series for years and so has my family going back to basically when it first came out. The stuff works, but Advanced Nutrients says that Jungle Juice is the exact same product, but better. So I'd like to test that out. Judging from the way the plant looks today, I'm going to be giving her 2-3 more weeks before she comes down. She's getting milky trenchomes, but I like mine to be around 70-30% milky/amber when I chop them down. So hopefully she well be cropped, cured, and tested for before November. Like to enter into the October contest if I could. Don't think she well win, but always have fun trying. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome So the plant is almost ready to get chopped down. See about 10% amber trenchomes, so I'll start flushing sometime in the next day or so and do so for about 3-4 days. As soon as she goes down ill be cleaning up the box and making some improvements before the next grow. The next grow i want to have started before the end of the month and im thinking of running bubba kush feminized seeds and not Autos. Ive got a bucket full of seeds to run and with my 4x4x7 tent down for the foreseeable future, this little grow box is going to be my main source of personal grow. So I hope to have all the bugs worked out before the end of the next grow. Happy growing everyone!!!

Ginger_gnome So she got cut down today. I would have click on harvest but I do my entries based on the last week so next week I'll be clicking on harvest. Started flushing on Wednesday last week with grotek final flush blueberry. Buds are not very big but whatever, its personal smoke, and its super sticky. Fingers crossed for a few oz of smoke when its all said and done. Happy growing everyone.

Ginger_gnome This was a really fun grow. Building the box and planning out how everything was going to go in it was a lot of fun. The fast germinating and amazing growth during veg fun to watch. The lack in size of the end results was a bit unfortunate but what she lacks in size, she makes up for in quality. The AeroGarden works great as long as you keep a close eye on your reservoir temperatures. Simple to use, yes to maintain and clean. The 50w light works great for veg, but im unsure yet on how well it works on its own in flower. One really nice thing about this set up is super fast turnaround. I made some adjustments for the next grow but clean up takes 2 hours and you can have your next plant up and running the same day as harvest. If your looking at doing a AeroGarden grow feel free to msg me for advice. Now whenever I see people ask "can you grow cannabis with a AeroGarden?" I'll be able to say yes, you can. Happy growing everyone