Let me tell you a story. Sit back grab some coffee and or popcorn and enjoy a good read.
About a year ago, I decided it was time to make a change in my life. Marijuana is not legal in my state however hemp is. So I started a small grow in a 4x4 tent and ordered a handful of seeds.
I’ve got lots of reasons for making this change. In 2011, I was diagnosed with crohn’s disease. I’ve been on multiple pharmaceuticals and nothing really helped. I was a cannabis user when I was young so I’m well knowledgeable about it. I also grew it but stepped away for jobs that require testing.
I decided to test out some cbd flower, vapes and the like and found great relief. I immediately noticed that quality of the products I was purchasing were never the same. I even found mold and bud rot in some of the products I purchased. Then there was the whole boom about e-acitate(sp?) in vapes so I stopped buying them.
Of course living in Virginia, marijuana is still not legalized state wide or of course federally. I needed medicine that I could trust would have the same quality and medical help. I was like, what am I doing? I can do this!
So over the course of the past year my little tent has grown into 2 tents and 2 open tables in a 10ft by 12ft room. During that process I came to learn about so many things I didn’t remember from my grows 15 plus years previously.
My first problem did not initially show itself until my first seedlings started to flip and stunt on growth. Found the ph from my well water was averaging a 2.5ph, omg talk about crappy well water. So called a buddy of mine and had a whole house ph neutralizer and water softener installed. Things got a little better but still not seeing the growth unexpected after a 2 week flush.
I thought I could be cool and go with nutrients that said they were organic. I’m sure they were some kind of organic but I have a feeling these were on someone’s shelf for years. After using them I noticed not much was coming out of the jars. Apparently they solidified in the bottom and my plants weren’t getting the nutrients they needed. Back to basics, flushed everything and went with General hydroponics nutrients and life came back.
I then had my HVAC system die in the middle of the summer. Talk about fun times. Had to replace both the indoor and outdoor units. The temperatures during the replacement and lighting were all messed up since power had to be turned off while they removed old and installed new over the course of about 8 days. Plants didn’t know what to do for a while.
I had a dehumidifier system installed and found that the humidity was way too high through the house and the room I was growing in did not have the ventilation it needed nor the proper airflow.
Numerous other little issues cropped up like power surges that killed my smart switches for my feeder pumps or keeping lights on indefinitely.
Towards the end of the year on the last couple of plants I was waiting to finish flowering I had pests get in the room. My daughter brought them in by accident after playing outside.
So I cleared out cleaned up broke the room down. Sterilized everything, dealt with the pests. And now I’m starting over again.
I completely rebut my room,. Pulled the tents out and setup 4 open tables. Installed ventilation ducting and carbon filters. You know doing it the right way.
I’ll post pics now so you can see the room rebuild.
Here’s what I had setup before…
Here’s the build process of my new setup
New cloner seedling setup in closet.
And here’s my new seed starts
Trying out some Suver Haze and Mountain Mango and 4 seeds of an accidental hybrid from my previous strains.
We shall see how this. Hopefully over the next couple months I will see some better, happier plants.
I have also been posting my farm stuff on reddit. Hopefully this is allowed but you can keep up to date on
I will try to maintain this post as well.
Wish me luck!
