Space Bucket - Day 0

I’m posting the following journey undertaken by my friend Theodore Complete on their behalf.

Spacebuckets: the mini-mini grow op

I enjoy planting and gardening as a hobby, and I was curious about growing cannabis after legalization. Many friends of mine tried growing in their backyard just for the novelty of the whole thing after it was no longer a crime, but I had no desire to have one in my backyard. I'm sure a bit of the old stigma played into my decision, but I was always struck by how much they smelled when they were in their flowering stage. In addition to that, growing any plant outdoors has a slew of environmental issues that you can only mitigate to a certain point, and if i were to grow I wanted to try and produce the best quality I could. I decided at a certain point that were I to grow, it would be in a more discreet and controlled indoor manner. I had never really gone beyond these theoretical consideration until I came across a forum on spacebuckets. In no time at all I became fascinated with this microgrow method and found myself planning my own bucket in no time.

You're bringing a plant from seed to harvest inside a relatively self-contained and discreet growing area. Indoor growing is not new and neither is this, but in this case the growing area is a small bucket or pail that contains the plant and grow lights inside. The pot plant size has to be kept relatively small and average yields seem to be in the 30 gram range, and if you were to buy you would be looking at anywhere from $150 to $190 from the government.

There is a wealth of information available online on how best to set up a spacebucket and how to grow weed, but you can really 'go down the rabbit hole' with optimal nutritional supplementation and growth training to maximize yields.

Planning

There are loads and loads of potential designs for self contained growing operations to suit your preference. I wanted to try out the standard bucket design.

My goal was to have several sections that I could jockey around to suit the growth height.

• Lid - houses the main grow light

• Top Vent section - houses 120 mm exhaust and eventually the carbon filter when the growth stage warrants attachment

• Middle Light Ring - houses white LEDs for supplemental lighting where there is shading from leaves

• Base / intake - will hold the plant, has drainage holes drilled into bottom

• Drip tray

I scoured various sites found in posts on popular growing forums to try to get this happening. Here's how the build priced out.

As you can see, the most costly item is the filtration system. I thought about this for quite some time before pulling the trigger, but I knew from having been around flowering cannabis plants before that the smell could potentially become overwhelming. This would kill the discretion I'm looking for so I decided on it.

Building

I used a rotary dremel tool / drill / utility knife to cut the appropriate holes in the buckets for the fans and light. The black tape blocks light from escaping since the lights inside turn the whole thing into a lantern. I pre-wrapped all buckets with black duct tape first so that I could avoid dealing with that part later.

The build is pretty straightforward.  I decided for a modular design in order to use portions like the LED ring at my discretion after the plant growth warrants it. All in all the construction went well, and I think my setup looks pretty slick.

Seeds

I wasn't satisfied with the availability of strains from official vendors, so I decided to go off the grid a bit. This had mixed results.

Again relying on the suggestions of the online community, I made my way to a well recommended vendor and placed an order for 4 seeds for $41. Within a day my money was accepted and then the wait begain!

Unfortunately at the time of writing the wait is still ongoing. Several followup emails yielded no responses after several weeks passed without a shipping confirmation. Granted they have a disclaimer citing Covid-19 related issues, but I can't imagine wanting to deal with an outfit that doesn't respond to inquiries. By all accounts I was ripped off. The company is Jordan of the Islands. Don't deal with them, fuck those guys.

I placed a second order from a different outfit. This one had a minimum order size, so the price there ended up being $120. 

This is turning into an expensive experiment..

So now I've built my bucket and now I play the waiting game. Stay tuned for more, but in the meantime our little pepper plant is loving this.