Welcome one and all, and we’re damn glad to meet you! 
Intro
I’m @Coffin_Dodger , and I grow with my partner of nearly 16 years. We’re a couple of late-Thirty-Somethings, We tend to enjoy the simple life we’ve carved out in this old city, as I work nights in produce and she keeps the house and cat (Jessicat the Many-Named) running and happy. Both of us medicate for a number of reasons, including chronic pain, arthritis, anxiety, depression, CPTSD, insomnia, and more. We prefer smoking flower, hash, and taking full-extract edibles or FECO oils, but have found good results with topicals. We have "dab"bled in vaping quite a bit in the last three years, and would like to start dry herb vaping as well. We have a fondness for “active, heady” leaning effects, and like heavy, complex terpenes, but also enjoy a hard sedative couch lock when we need it. We stay up. Hahaha Variety is the spice of life… and the spice must flow!
I am a retired tattooer, painter, drawerer, and former bass-er in a defunct regional metal band no one remembers. She is a retired body piercer and holds a degree in sociology. We grow for our own personal medicine and stash, and to gift to friends and family.
What can you expect from this thread? Beyond a reckoning and recording of our third grow, you can expect the same “advanced-beginner” drive and passion that comes with new growers. We are serious about the work we do regardless of the form it takes, and aim to keep things honest and open with folks who mean the same. As we grow and expand, we plan to add a variety of veggies to our gardening, with great interest so far in methods and medium like Kratky DWC and simple DWC/Coco, NFT, et cetera. We intend to make this home to multiple grow journals through out, continuing to hone our cultivation, and share what we can. We believe in the foundation that has been built here by great folks before us, and at much greater risk, and believe we serve a debt of a sort to such a powerful medicine, in the grand scheme. We believe in learning, especially from our mistakes, and in listening to voices of experience while forging our own paths. We plan on trying our hand at autoflowers next run. We plan on practicing cloning as soon as possible. While it won’t be for some time, we do plan on breeding our own personal crosses and the like, as well as participating in Co-ops and seed increases. The more we learn and grow, the more we want to.
This will be the first Growroom Diary proper for us, so here’s hoping there’s plenty to learn, share, and build on to come. Our only other major grow thread was last run, and started as a Sick Plants post, which quickly assured us that supercropping our monstrous girls would turn out just fine. That was our second grow, and thanks to the confidence we got here, we were able to bring home a yield of 1.6 pounds (plus extras for edibles and trying to make bubble hash again).
BackgroundWe got into growing as a serious possibility a few years ago. While my partner had no experience with growing anything, I have always loved doing so, but was never stable enough to give anything the attention I knew it would deserve. My grandfather had a fairly serious garden with a great greenhouse and koi pond, which I have always held as an inspiration in my memory of an otherwise rough childhood. I began researching psychedelics, drug/counter culture, and the like at a pretty early age and with an earnest intrigue and respect for them.
After picking up smoking before I turned 16 and dropped out of high school, I tried my hand at several small bagseed grows, including trash can space buckets and a 2x2x6 locker. Hard hot-wiring “found” HPS security/street lights, CFLs, even old fluorescents. I found lights and grow guides, pearlite and timers from my father’s old attempts at grows before me, and used them. I scoured and lurked through forums like Erowid and Overgrow, never having the drive to finish a grow or even join the conversation.
A lot of years passed, underscored by ideas about cabinet builds, dreams about not having to deal with buying shitty weed, and the therapy of a well-kept garden. Before '22, my only attempts (albeit not unsuccessful) at gardening were growing some windowsill Trichocereus.
Anyway, after a few rough years, we have settled back into the city I was born in, and we have a great little home to ourselves again. We decided to jump on our states medical program in its first year, and I started looking into converting the spare bedroom into a garden, regardless of what wound up happening legally. As the laws got more and more relaxed, and I eased my partner into the idea, I built out the garden to be on paper and in my head. My partner is disabled, and her accessibility to the garden was and is a priority.
After discussing it all generally and making initial decisions, we settled on starting with hydroponics, and then narrowed it down to RDWC. While we knew the initial investment would be much, much larger for that choice, we determined it would work best for us and our lifestyle. We further decided that, considering the potential savings on our medicine, we could afford to kit-out the actual system. I searched a few different builders and brands, and eventually settled on a Fallponics system from Gary at PAHydro.
We had everything all gathered last year, cleaned out the spare bedroom, and got it all up and running. Having always dreamt of growing, I kept a rotating stash of bagseed, and we chose some, got them wet, and with a few months of learning, growing, and harvesting WAY too early, we were set with plenty of stash for ourselves and some friends and family, which my partner took to calling by the names of some of our favorite directors. That first run we set out to just let them grow and see what happened, familiarize ourselves with the growth first hand, and get used to the schedules and cycles.
And then…
That run sealed the deal, though: we’re growers, we’re going to keep growing, and hell- we still suck at this, as we like to remind ourselves.
We doubled down this past year, and picked up a lot of great equipment to help us through our second run and help her have complete access to it all. We added a digital controller, humidifier, and techniques like low-stress training and topping. We got a firm understanding of pH, EC, VPD and DLI. We went through a seedbank (NASC, they’re great) and invested in genetics. We had little info on the cultivars though, and quickly found out that reaching out to the breeder wasn’t very helpful based on their posts elsewhere. The girls got away from us, stretching 4 or 5x when we flipped. Eventually, I posted here, we got some good advice, and supercropping through flower with a staggered harvest and a Cannatrol brought it all home.
Now, we’re almost done with the reset and clean-up from last run. The fans have all been broken down, cleaned, and reassembled, the room has been rearranged, the hydroton has been washed and baked. We’re READY to get it started already!
Without further ado, welcome to our garden!
We grow in a spare bed/lung room, roughly 11’x7.5’. We are set up in a 4x4 Gorilla Grow tent (we lovingly call it Ishmael) with the height extension, and based on a PAHydroponics Fallponics RDWC. The plant sites and reservoir are all 13 gallons, giving us a typical total operating capacity of about 35 gallons. 8" net pots.
For light, we have a 17w t5 for seedlings and an HLG 600 RSpec (which we’ve never taken past 70%.)
Our water lines (3" and 1" respectively) are driven by a 470GPH ActiveAqua pump, and each plant site has a 2" cylinder airstone, driven by a 240GPH ActiveAqua pump.
For air circulation, we have two 6 inch Hurricane fans for heat dissipation above the light, and two oscillating S6 clip fans from AC Infinity. For air exchange, we have an ACI S4 inline forced intake at the bottom of the tent, and an ACI S6 inline exhausting up above, filtered by a 16x6 Vortex carbon filter and boosted by a 110 CFM Panasonic Whisper Select exhaust fan through the ceiling and out of the attic.
Starting this run, all the air will have its own Controller 69 Pro WiFi, while everything else cycling or scheduled will be on another.
We will also be using an ACI Cloudforge T3 humidifier, a Lasko tower space heater, HM Digital COM and pH pens, hydroton, General Hydroponics (Flora Trio, CaliMagic, Armor Si, Floraliscious, Kool Bloom) Hydroguard, and tap water (~240ppm / 0.48EC.)
We have built a scrog frame for this run, to finally get a handle on vertical growth and increase the yield quality. We have built it according to plans and recommendation of NorthernScrogger, with no more than 8" or so of space between the hydroton and screen, which has been set to hold 3" squares.
All measurements are given in Freedom Units 
unless otherwise noted, and PPM is taken in 500 scale. All pen meters are regularly calibrated. We have so far stuck to the “Aggressive” GH Flora Trio feed schedule. We massively overfed the first grow, but they kept up. We cut down to aggressive last run with success, and may cut further to save on nutes and protect cultivars we aren’t familiar with at first.
We use our central A/C, and have so far found that while our solution temps average at the high end of acceptable, we don’t need to run a chiller, R/O, lung room-specific A/C or dehumidifier.
The most obvious problem with our current set up is the fact that the room still has carpet, albeit very fresh carpet from previous disuse.
After this run, we should have plenty enough a stash to break for long enough for me to tear that out, clean up the hardwood a little, and mount a tarp or vinyl sheet, essentially turning the whole room into a spill tray. (Eventually a drain may be installed, who knows. )
For cleaning between grows, we over-do it a bit, probably. Last round there was a near total disassembly and rebuild, cleaning along the way with bleach solutions, isopropyl alcohol, and vinegar solutions, as the job saw fit. Obviously, vacuuming is a constant. In addition, all fans get opened up and cleaned out, any fan screens are replaced, and small parts are soaked in cleaning solution. Hydroton is being reused the first time this round, so it was all soaked in H202 solution and baked for extended periods. Instead of near-total disassembly this time, we are going to try a run after simply running the system with clean water for several days, then running a strongish H202 Solution (145ml/40 gallons @ 3% starting). After, everything was wiped down in bleach solution again for good measure. Double layered blackout curtains are washed, along with carbon filter pre-filter. Beginners tip: Don’t get dried leaf crumbles or resin on microfiber shop cloths! It does great to pick it up, but will not come off. Ever.
And now, the main event: Our Third Run!
…and I got these BEANS, man! 
For this run, we’ll be focusing on our medical flower supply, growing 2 or 3 “Doctor Seedsman 30:1 CBD” alongside something more fun, “Negan’s Bat” courtesy of @Rhai88.
For the Doctor Seedsman, we have the incredible write-up and journals of @Gpaw to assist us. The cultivar, per SeedFinder, is:
Hoping for some serious pain-relief focused edibles and first-time practice at tincture and balm/lotion making, these are being grown especially for my partner, who suffers chronic pain.
As I understand, and I’m sure many of you either already know or can correct me if I am misreading, the Negan’s Bat is a Tombstone F2 ( @DefNSmokn ) x BamBam ( @NugLifeFarms420 ). Not to mention, though we fell off of watching the show long before his role, we are both big enough Walking Dead comics fans to have tattoos based on them, so I gotta say the shoe fit.
Again, as far as my research shows, the Tombstone itself is a cross of Triangle Kush x Stardawg and BamBam is Flintstones x Toyz. Flintstones being Fruity Pebbles x Sour Bubble and, finally, Toyz being Face Off x Runtz. Sounds like a great breeding effort, includes BOG and Triangle Kush in the lineage, and from the pictures we’ve seen, especially courtesy @AzSeaindooin420 it is a beauty through growth. We hope to find some similar fire. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
We have typically started by germinating 6-8 seeds and culling down from there within the first two weeks, before they take their places in the RDWC.
We will be soaking them in distilled water for at least 24 hours, then placing them in Root Riot peat cubes, and into a domed incubator with a heat mat to be covered and kept in the dark. Temperatures here over night have dipped into the mid 50’s, but we anticipate plenty more days above the mid-80’s. We’ll be keeping the space heater on deck in the lung room to prevent any cold spikes.
Should be germinating in the next few days.
WHEW Hot damn that turned out to be a lot longer than I intended… Hahahah I promise it wont always be so wordy.
In closing for now, THANK YOU to anyone who watches, follows, likes, or even just read half of this; and for ANY constructive criticism, feedback, questions, thoughts, encouragement, details about the cultivars, or otherwise. An especially big thank you and respect to @LemonadeJoe and all the Moderators, sponsors, donors, and supporters of such a fine corner of the cyberwebs. There’s something special here, and we mean to make good by it in our own little ways.
See y’all next week!!
Stay up!
Coffin_Dodger
interesting and I will be watching too!
This DSCBD is also fighting against its seed hull, but we’ve sprayed it with purified water in hopes it slides off, per a tip I picked up in 
seeing all the pictures of outdoor grows getting ready to come down. We got word of an uncle inspired by our endeavors to pick up Kratky-style vegetable gardening, and gave some pointers to my old man about caring for a troubled aloe.
