Absolute Beginner on a Budget

Basic Growing Info
#51

If you are able to keep it dark enough in the rest of the basement you might be able to get away with a few layers of black weed stop of landscaping fabric, if you’re trying for an unexhausted breathable kind of thing, but its not going to be totally light tight unless you layer it up enough to slow down the breatheability I’d imagine.

Honestly, the cheapest and easiest way to build a grow “room” quick and easy, without buying a tent, is to just frame up a form with some 2×4s, even 1x2s or scrap wood and skin it with plastic sheeting or tarps. Simple, cheap, no heavy lifting required. You dont even need to “build” a door, you can get a tarp zipper for $10 and slap it on the poly itself, or even cut a slit and make a flap that hangs over on the outside to block it when its closed.

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#52

Oh right, fan sizing and CFM! So this can vary quite a bit depending on what type of lighting you ultimately end up running. If you’re going with HID in the end you will have more heat to deal with and a larger unit will make that easier to manage.

The math isn’t that hard really though. Let’s say you built a 6x6x6 foot enclosed space for your grow. Well 6x6= 36 square feet of floor space, times 6 again gives you 216 cubic feet of space inside your grow. You probably want to be able to turn that entire volume of air over at least once a minute, maybe more if you have hot lights. With LEDs you can run higher temperatures overall because they dont throw off the infrared heat that HIDs do, so your leaf surfaces don’t get as toasty. That means with LEDs you can run less air changeover potentially, bit it’s the humidity that can catch up with you then. You’d be amazed how much water big plants in tull bloom can breathe out into the air.

Generally I’d say over spec things a bit and put it on a dimmer or speed controller. That gives you much more control to adapt to changes in seasonal temperatures and changes in plant size and humidity.

So to use the example of a 6x6x6, 216 cubic foot space if it were me, id probably be looking for about a 400CFM fan.

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#53

The spot I’m setting up has two existing stud walls, one with the stairs in the other side, and one with a doorway. I might just do that, and have the two outer walls be more like 2x2 frames tied to the joists. Hopefully none would fall it, lol.

Oh, and The light barrier in question would be part of a light trap on the air inlet and outlet on the tent. My first solution will probably be DIYed because I have a tight budget, but some stuff around the house I can fabricobble as good as any other man. I have basic power tools and some oddities for sure. I’d work in theaters that are underfund with directors who have ridiculous requests. I definitely have done some sketchy shit, and now is the time for slightly sketchy. Its just got to last me a year at most. Should have savings a plenty to funnel into better equipment as soon as that first crop comes up.

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#54

Oh yeah, if you’re used to shelling out regularly for your meds then once the harvests start rolling in you’ll slide easily into a crippling gear addiction with all the funds it clears up for ya! :sweat_smile::rofl:

Seriously though, its true, you can get started with something pretty simple and fugly and grow enough quality product to free yourself from the dispensaries. Once you’ve done that it becomes pretty easy to build up a top notch setup pretty quick. I just kept investing what I would have normally spent on meds in a month back into the grow. A few months of that and you can have top notch versions of everything you’d need to crop out successfully for years without buying much more than nutrients regularly.

I once told a buddy a ballpark figure for what I’d spent on grow equipment over the years. This is a guy who loves to splash out on “big boy toys”, fancy unnecessary shit, fancy new gaming pc every year or two. It was a figure in the thousands and he laughed like “you spent HOW MANY thousand on gardening!?!” He wasn’t laughing so hard when I told him how many elbows that gear had turned out! He once watched me buy a $350 high end extraction fan about 15 years ago.

“$350 for a fucking FAN!?!? That’s STUPID! I bought an xbox for that much! You should buy an xbox instead!”

Well, 15 years later that stupid fan is humming pleasantly away in the other room, keeping my precious babies happy and keeping every trace of stank safely contained. So far its cost me $23 a year, a crippling 6.3 cents per day to keep my crop churning out countless delicious flowers. :money_mouth_face:

15 years later I’ve got a ass kicking fan and some pretty solid grow skills. He’s got that old xbox in storage, buried under 3 or 4 newer consoles that are now obsolete.

So waaaaaait a second… who’s hobby was laughably expensive again here? :thinking::laughing:

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#55

It’s medical cost. Medical quality. I don’t mind accommodating the plants, they pay it back. I have a mind to automate it entirely, to the least it’s caretaker friendly. I go out on music or comedy tours and I just can’t tend to them directly. I’m sure that will become an obsession soon. I’d love to do aeroponics but little expensive to start.

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#56

Oh yeah, that was the other bit, automation. Unless you already have a bunch of arduino sitting around and feel like banging your head against for fun, just get a Raspberry Pi and run Mycodo. Ivr got it in my cab, @pufferfishfiend os running it. Fully open source free software, get yourself a level of control and customizability you can’t get in the high end industrial systems on the cheap at home. I’ve watered and checked on my plants from a beach 6 hours of driving and 4 boats from home. And you can have that remote access without having to let creepy Orwellian google or amazon into your grow room!

I keep saying I’m gonna finish writing up my guide to a Mycodo build, and hopefully I really mean it this time. I’ve gotta get my next one put together sometime this month so I’ll document it and get it up at some point. There’s a bunch of info on it in my grow thread already though…

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#57

I am looking forward to that information when you get around to putting it all together for us :monkey_face:

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#58

Looking forward to that myself. I have an Arduino development board, and have programmed it once. That’s my only attachment to it, I have thought about moving to Pis for projects but I’ve never wanted to bother learning it. Also arduino nano boards and like amazing for for say a lamp or something. Cheap, small, and easy if/then programming. Pis do have more support for communication so that’s probably a good call! I’ll have to see if a friend has a dev board I can borrow. My mom is a programmer by trade, but I’m more of a hardware guy myself. Never cared for it. Arduino a were easy if/then but Pis seem to have a lot of the automation programs already written with interfaces to configure them even, so eh fuck it. Easy for me to follow your grow if I learn it anyways, lol. Thanks man.

#59

Alright, today I’ve been looking at mediums and containers. I think ultimately I want to work with aeroponics for medical, which will be a ways out in the future. Currently I’ll be growing in soil, still haven’t settled on what, depends on what nutrient system I can find locally, as I’d prefer using all one brand for the first couple grows, so I can follow the chart pretty easy. I do have interest in growing landrances in live soil (my property is crap soil, all clay so it’ll have to be indoors. What mediums, techniques, whatever will translate best from potting soil into live soil? I imagine they are similar to work, just one is more work to maintain.

Grow bags- yes? I was going to grow out of some cheap vessels at first, 5 gallon buckets or cheapo plastic pots. Then I was seeing a lot of people using bags, and they aren’t that expensive.

Also, I should be able to sprout the seeds in some paper towel and then put them directly into the soil and cover it to keep moisture in?

On a grosser note, my soil may be crap but I have access to a good amount of, well crap. Actual feces. I have three guinea pigs that just constantly put out the stuff. Plus two cats, and a big ole dog but the guinea pigs make nice little dry pellets that are easier to collect. This would of course also have some urine in along with it, guinea pig urine is high in calcium as well as the stuff you’d expect. Anyone have some experience making say a manure slurry to apply some extra nutrients? Not crazy about the idea, but logically I know it’s nature. If you have had experience; how’s the smell long term? Grow room smell like a barn?

#60

I would propose you start a worm bin, put the guinea pig bedding (along with the droppings) in there and let the worms transform it into black gold.

If you are interested in a simple, water only, soil recipe you can try this one. You should be able to find most of these items locally and cheaply.

Base Mix
7.5 gallons of peat moss
4.5 gallons of perlite
3 gallons of fresh EWC or compost
2.5 cups of dolomite lime

Ammend with
2 cups bone meal
1 cup blood meal
1 cup kelp meal
1 cup greensand (optional)

This mix will make two cubic feet (15 gallons). Mix up the base mix, then set some aside for seedlings and clones. Lightly moisten and let the mixture compost for about three weeks.

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#61

Yeah, I should be able to get all that readily… actually. How long does peat moss keep?

My grandmother who had to come to terms with losing her mobility, bought a whole bunch to use last year, completely ignoring the fact she physically can’t tend to her flowers herself. So there is a good deal of it over there, if it’s any good still, otherwise it’s probably on it’s way to being compost anyways, right? Just have to be a little creative with the reason I ask, lol.

My sister was wondering if we could grow some veggies too, I told her the space is free if she can chip in for some more light. Thought about some tomatoes and some strawberries. This is a good excuse to give my grandparents to pass down some useful stuff they have. We’ve decided it’s ultimately probably better to just not tell them about my medical use unless we have to; they aren’t long for this world and would receive it with conflicting feelings. They are anti recreational for sure, and I just don’t want them to have to deal with that stress.

So anyways, I do have a minor anaphylactic reaction to strawberries when I touch them(more so the juice rather than the skin); is there concern of crop cross-contaminating? Botany was never a subject of interest before but I know physics, chemistry etc. So sorry if I randomly ask a dumb question. I keep my lawn alive, that’s about it. My part in this is most muscle and brains. Caretaker will be tending and monitorIng for the most part so I will have minimal exposure to it aside from cleaning the room or transplanting, things like that.

FWIW- “Caretaker” is my mother, who is too busy to learn much, but was willing to tend to them every day or two.

#62

No sphangum peat moss does not go bad. It’s already aged plant matter from a peat bog. That recipe should make tending plants much easier for your caretaker. The hardest part is learning to water properly.

There should be no issues with having strawberries near your plants. The compounds in the strawberry will be broken down by the soil microbes into the ionic nutrients plants can use.

2 Likes
#63

Alright, we’re getting some things cemented. The grow room will be about 4ftx4ftx8ft. Most of that will be not be used yet, considering partitions. Will depend what material I get for the walls.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/203478327
Found this stuff, should work well, and not terribly expensive. Right? My other options are 2-4mil plastic sheeting with moving blankets. Worried about two things; if that plastic gets too hot it is a huge fire hazard. The flame retardant kind is expensive, but possible. The second thing would be the opacity of it. The moving blankets are not fully opaque on their own and the plastic surely isn’t.

So, I think the Viragrow stuff is the winner… right? (Almost seems too easy) Its more reflective, more protective to someone accidentally switching the basement lights on during the dark cycle, and more durable. For the same price. Anyone else build their own tents? I plan on using timber frame attaching to the plastic.

Edit*- Revised plans

#64

For real time monitoring, +1 for the Pi, Mycodo and a cheap real time pH probe and EC probe. I’m using mine to establish known baselines for my DWC systems so I don’t have to monitor them constantly. It’s been a god-send for helping me dial it in, and it just helped me figure out I just dumped pH up into my res instead of my bloom nutes while I was stoned :joy:

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#65

If your hand with building things, you can always build a box for your garage. My has extremes in both heat and cold. It’s unfinished. So I have reflective insulation on the inside of the box so it helps control my temps from the outside.

1 Like
#66

It works. And it’s easy to work with.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/R-Tech-1-1-2-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-R-5-78-Rigid-Foam-Insulation-320817/202532855

Pics or it didn’t happen. Lol

1 Like
#67

I went shiney out.

IMG_20200401_222641546
IMG_20200401_2226415461500×2000 512 KB

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#68

Highly advise against using cat/dog feces, or hot compost and age it for a long time before use. The guinea pig poop/bedding can get composted, fed to worms, or even used directly in the soil apparently, as with rabbit rabbit poop.

#69

That’s what I was thinking, herbivores only. Also apparently the rest of the household was down with the idea of a worm box, because it’s cruel to the worms… so uh, is it? They don’t die, right? You basically just feed them and take their poop.

#70

Even if you don’t sift the worms out, they live in your plant container and get fed too lol. If you do your part, they breed and thrive. If you go fishing, unlimited bait supply!