My first Indoor grow

Hey guys,

My first outdoor chili grow of jalapeno's and Scotch bonnets in pots is coming to an end. The days are cooling down here in Melbourne Australia so I've decided to try and grow indoors.

Growing weed in soil approximately 15 years ago and when I was just closing the grow down, I was seeing pictures of 'bubble buckets' now known as DWC. I always wanted to try it, so fast forward 15 years and now's the time; but young pot head has gotten old and not a pot head any more so he wants to grow chilies :-D


Here are the seeds I ordered and the reasoning behind them :


• Yellow Trinidad Scorpion -  Flavour, juicy, yield with big heat
• Buena Mulata - Again for flavour but not bonkers heat, they look interesting and the story behind them intrigued me
• Elephants Trunk (not shown in the picture) - Sounds like they have an interesting flavour with reasonable heat 
• Carolina Reaper - Because its a Reaper. Never had one, its become a bit of a bucket list'er for me.
• Aji Charpita - Sounds amazing flavour but due to its bushyness its not suitable for indoors so I'm sitting on those seeds until they can be sown outdoors

So there it is, 4 different strains to grow indoors and only growing one plant per strain in a limited space to find my favourite.

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Here's the grow light.

 It can independently dim both veg and flower LED's allowing you to make your own colour cocktail, has a built in on/off timer and a wider spread than the last model at this wattage rating. With it being so new It's only available in the states ..don't you love Ebay :-)
 
Judging by the condition of the box and also hearing from the bedroom, the courier throw it to the concrete outside the front door.. That it turns on at all is a testament to how well it must be built

 

 

[Chilidude]

Is the dim one a UV led or did the courier break it?

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Is the dim one a UV led or did the courier break it?

Its an Infra Red LED there are two of them.

Lol, I'm sure your not the first to ask as "IR LED, NOT a faulty LED " is written in 3 different places on the box/instructions :-D

 

[WindowsillGrower]

Best of luck with your grow!

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Best of luck with your grow!

Thanks :-)

 

[chelicerae]

Yeah, good luck, from a fellow indoorer!
 
Would love to see the setup.
 
(That is one disco light, my Sunmaster 250W HPS with ballast looks a bit 70s in comparison. I suspect you may not be needing the added heat so much)

 

[Devv]

Good luck this season

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Yeah, good luck, from a fellow indoorer!
 
Would love to see the setup.
 
(That is one disco light, my Sunmaster 250W HPS with ballast looks a bit 70s in comparison. I suspect you may not be needing the added heat so much)

Thanks for the good luck :-)

Back in the day I grew with 250w hps and had A LOT of heat issues so this time around I decided to drop the cash and go LED. Preliminary tests are telling me that the LED on full is only lifting the temperature 4°C above ambient. ..which could be a problem in the winter.  From the frying pan to the freezer huh? :-D

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Good luck this season

Thanks :-)

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Time to germinate.
 
Three seeds from each strain floated in tap water, left for two days and then put in my Ghetto Germinator®. Seventy two hours later and one of each strain had germinated ..very happy   ..credit to the seed company for fast germinators.


Ghetto Germinator®: Tap watered coffee filters inside zip lock bags duct taped to the back of the refrigerator for the warmth



 

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Things are starting to look something like the beginning of something..

• White tape on the back wall and base of the tent is marking out the lights rated spread; narrow for fruiting and wider for veg. A visual reference for any limbs that maybe out of the lights sweet spots and influence my pruning approach.

• Tape measure up the wall for quick reference of plant growth progress and canopy to light distance.






 

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Painted containers with window markings at every 2 liters for a quick nutrient usage reference and grinder gouged notches in the containers lip; to loop string for plant training. 


Food!!

 

 

[Chilidude]

Seems like you are going to do hydroponic setup, best of luck to you then.

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Seems like you are going to do hydroponic setup, best of luck to you then.

Thanks :-)

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Update:

I jumped on Ebay and bought a powerful air compressor for the air stones. It was cheap, it was powerful; it was louder than my grow area can take (spare bedroom/office). It had an unnerving rattle coming from it and you could see it was a crappy Chinese copy of the original.
Check out the rough edged metal, the crappy paint work and stripped screws; the cable holding it up from its feet so it couldn't sit flat on the surface. ..It pumped air awesomely though.

..I sent it back.

 

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Update:

Finally got the DWC Air stones and pumps sorted.

After testing it all out, the air stones and pumps work great but I think bigger pumps would have been better. Oh well, they have been bought, were a good price and are a lot quieter than I thought they would be, so I'm sticking with them.

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Update:

Finally got the DWC Air stones and pumps sorted.

After testing it all out, the air stones and pumps work great but I think bigger pumps would have been better. Oh well, they have been bought, were a good price and are a lot quieter than I thought they would be, so I'm sticking with them.

 

[Clueless Wanderer]

Update:

Here's me getting all scientist and trying to eliminate the guesswork out of when to, or when not to water the seedlings.

I've weighed the medium when its dry and when its fully saturated and as the saturated weight is 73 grams more than dry weight, I can just put them on the scales and know at what point it's best to water them.
I do realize that I won't know the growing plants weight, but this technique should be accurate enough until they go into the DWC.

 

[Chilidude]

Nah, you can just place those rockwool cubes inside a mini greenhouse and keep mild hydroponic fertilizer in the bottom all day long without any issue after they have germinated.