Sawney Bean Grow Shows 2023 Bob's first go at a SOG - Sawney's SOS grown in BioTabs

BigB6 said:

Very nice healthy plants man. I'd highly recommend one of the smart grow c02 bags. I've used a few different c02 options and have to say these increase growth a lot. View attachment 1567432

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Thanks bro. Luck has it I was indeed looking into CO³ supplementation, as when all the values get into spec one can surely do his/her advantage with CO³.
I've been checking out the above mentioned sugar and yeast bags, one can buy or DIY if you're a bit handy The other side of the spectrum is that one can buy canisters with CO³ for cheap, as they are used in all sorts of building shit. Anyhow, a canister, a couple of meter tubing and a electronic regulator would set me back a couple of hundred Euro's (yeah the regulators are f#(k @ss expensive, so I'll probably be looking at more chemical approaches to generating CO³. We'll see what comes out of this tinkering exercise
Tomorrow I'll be doing an attempt for the new and improved sensor array. Compromised from a real CO³ sensor, I2C humidity and temperature probe an a Lux meter with white cap, which is if I read up on it correctly is a must as you need to measure an avarage of the light coming through and that cap provides that. Anyway...buddy, I'll check the above mentioned site out and see if they have a distributor in Europe

Oh, got another picture I forgot to upload previous this evening... I'm really starting to dig into the whole automation and maybe even more important monitoring of all sorts of inputs. That a the time lapses have learned me so much already, I cannot stress enought to our new reader to try and implement these tools where ever posible

Sawney_bean said:

don't remove anything dude. They are not very branchy 2/4 branches then the main kola.

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Thanks mate!! Your advise means the world to, you know that right?!

Tom Bombadil said:

this is gonna get wild
u heard it here first

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St. Tom said:

Going to get really packed in there pretty quick Bob that's for sure and I can't wait to see tons of tops

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Me to ♥

BigB6 said:

Very nice healthy plants man. I'd highly recommend one of the smart grow c02 bags. I've used a few different c02 options and have to say these increase growth a lot.

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I've been reading up on them mushroom bags and this got me thinking. I grew a lot of oyster mushrooms in the day. So I might get this hobby back up this summer and hang a couple of bags in the greenhouse, just for the fun of it...
I did however went out and bought the supplies needed for a yeast based CO² generator. I still had a 10L bucket with lid which only needed cleaning out and some airtubing.
The other ingredients are the following:

• 5L tapwater
• 1kg sugar
• 5gr dry yeast
• Two leaves of gelatin
• 10gr or one baggie of baking powder.
• 50ml syringe

Dump the water in a pan and turn on the heat. Toss in the sugar, gelatin and baking powder and let it go for a while. It'll turn cloudy for a while. That's because the carbonate in the baking powder is difficult to dissolve into the water. When the water is almost boiling (approx. 80-90°C / 176 - 194°F) turn off the heat and set aside. Don't let it boil as it will degrade the gelatin.
Clean out the bucket, lid and tubing with hot water and soap. I finished off with a healthy dose of an ISO drenched rag. Followed with a thorough rinsing to get the ISO out. Don't dry the inside of the bucket with a towel. That bit of water that's left won't do a thing, just let it drip upside down for a couple of minutes. I did all this in the bathroom and also left the bucket in the bathtub for the next step...
Next dump the hot mixture into the bucket and put the lid on tight. If you followed my advise the temperature inside the bucket will sit around or above 76°C / 169°F for at least 7 minutes and that's what's called pasteurizing. Longer is ok, but you need the 7 minutes at least...Let the mixture cool down for 24 hours....
Next day, take the 5gr of dry or fresh yeast and mix it with a little room temperature water until dissolved. Get yourself a (clean) Phillips screwdriver with a diameter smaller then the diameter of the air tubing and puncture a hole through the lid. Suck up the liquid yeast mix with the syringe and inject that into the bucket through the hole. Finally squeeze the air tube through the hole. It should only be about a centimeter / inch through the hole and fit nice and snug.

Voila, your very own CO² generator is finished. Will it work? I dunno, but for about 5€ worth, I'm going to find out. I'm measuring CO² inside the tent already so any rise should be measurable. Remember that these generators are being used for decades in the aquarium hobby, so they do generate CO², but if this will be enough for my tent will be the real test I guess...

I'm planning on threading the tubing into the top part of my tent where the fan is. That way the CO² will get nicely mixing in. Of course I'll keep you guys update on this whole endeavor

Crow River said:

The other thing you can do is to brew beer or wine in the same room. That's what I do. Perfectly complimentary activities. The yeast from the brewing gives CO2 for the plants, the plants produce O2 for the humans (and maybe yeast). Also, cannabis goes nicely with wine or beer!

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I've indeed heared that beer, wine or even champagne yeast is far better to create CO². It seems these 'strains', yup strains, here we call it strains, with plants it's cultivars...Sh!t I'm rambling....are better copaing with the creation of alcohol. The only thing stoping me from buying those is that they cost about 25x the price of standard bakers yeast.
I've calculated that two 2L bottles with each 1L of mixture would be enough for my size tent, so I upped it and used a 10L bucket with 5L inside. After cooling down to at least 36°C / 96.8°F I dropped in the yeast mixture. I then connected the tubing and put a clamp on the end to see how fast CO² production would occur... Well after half an hour the lid of the bucket stood warped, it did took me two ventilations to get rid of the air inside the bucket, but after a third try I could snuff out a candle in a gless. So yup, we've got CO²


I punctured a small hole in the top left side of the tent and presurefit the piece of tubing inside The fan is direct to this spot, so I'm completely sure everything will get mixed properly


I've also changed out the old environmental sensor for a serious upgrade...


This new one got a real Lux sensor on top, price 5€. To it's left is a Humidity/Temperature sensor which calibrates itself by means of heating itself. Cool function, but this as well costed me about 8€ for the sensor. I've kept the best for last. A real CO² sensor which uses twelve heat elements to creat an environment to make a calibrated measurement. It does that six times, so waiting for the result of this sensor takes a while. Also this is the most expensive sensor I bought to date ending up on 17€. Compared to those sensors, the 1.8€ pricetag of a NodeMCU is laughable. Maybe that's why I always have ten spares in my toolbox...


After about an hour I had to take the sensor down as there were some software issues te be resolved...
I fugured out that one library was causing a memory overflow causing everything to halt... Luckily most of the time there are several libraries to be found and the next one I tried didn't have that issue, at least until now...I've spent about 8 hours into something I thought was going to take one hour or so, as I only planned to solder everything together...
Then I had to try out every sensor so I could finalise my review on Aliexpress. Once I got all the sensors working, I forgot about time and it's now 4:30 am. Figure I'm not going to bed anymore as I need to get up at around six o'clock. A nice cold shower will do me good, lol, brrrr...


Anyway, I leave you today with an overview of all the ladies inside the tent. I didn't water the pot's except for the two middle ones from the previous time lapse. But just a little bit, like 50ml per pot. All others were wet enough and get left alone.
The cool thing is, that since I started to keep an eye on the VPD, my ladies' leaves don't look and feel like parchment anymore. coincidence? Let's find out with the coming time lapse friends



Goodnight, morning or afternoon, wherever you are