1st Medical Grow, 3 Strains in 2x4 Hydrohut

Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

May 9th

Today upon the lights turning on I immediatly inspected the ladies for any signs of more fungus gnats. I found only 1 flying around which I killed via the Mr. Miogi Method...(not really chopsticks). I also checked the sides of the pots as well as the soil and found in my front right Chemband plant
1 fungus gnat larve and 1 newly hatched crawler, not quite flying yet. I destroyed them as well and then gave the ladies soil another good top spraying of Neem/dishsoap solution. A few hours later I checked back to see if I spotted any more flying ones and I only found one nestled in the soil, looked like the
bastard was trying to lay eggs again. Squashed him and then turned around the top 1" of soil in each pot and followed it up with a good soaking of (Safer brand, End All Killer). This product is rated organic and says it will kill flying, eggs and larva so I figured why not since its organic and kills all 3 stages.
I also bought some sticky yellow sheets and put 3 in my tent. 2 of them are near the top of the tent by the vents and one is at canopy level. I also put one by my kitchen sink because this is where they I first started seeing them by my garbage disposal. I will check each day on for signs of any stuck to the yellow cards
and I will follow up in 2-3 days with another spraying of soil and pots. I also bought some misquito dunks which are to be used with watering. However I am going to wait a few days before any watering to let the first few inches of soil dry up. I read that the fungus gnats will reproduce as long as there is moisture available for them
to lay eggs in. If you let the top soil dry out, then the eggs will die. So i figure with a combination of organic pesticide and soil conditioning, I should be in the green but it will take a few days for the test to really show. I also bought today a ph 4.01 and ph 7.01 calabration solution and storage solution for my hanna. Wow I was off
by at least .8PH...may be why my babies were locked up a few weeks ago. RE-Calibrated the hanna ph meter and now its readings are right on the money. I bought a timer today also because my ventilation fan I had to make sure to plug in and out in morning and at night because I was lacking a timer...so now that issue is coorected and everything is electronicly controlled.

My ladies look healthy today, but the leaves seem to be a little saggy from the neem heavy dosage yesterday. My front right chemband plant does show a little yellowing/browing on just a few of the newer upper fan leaves by where the fan leave stems meet the branch. I believe this may have been caused by light burn because this plant was closest to my HPS when the neem treatments were done
and the browning only is showing in spots where the neem solution would have pooled up/collected. Throughout the day I have been checking up on it to see if there are any further signs of stresses or further coloration but there is none. so far I believe my diagnosis is right.


Today the outside temps are lower to mid 70's and RH is only sitting at 35%. Inside my tent the canopy is reading 79F and upper tent is reading 81F.

Watering wont be needed for at least 2-4 more day's due to pots feeling about 60% wet still by feeling the weight of the pots and also I want to dry out first 3 inches of soil due to the above mentioned fungus gnat issue.

Wish me luck!!
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Hey man, nice looking op you have here. Good looking on the Miagi Gnat Smackdown. I have been checking my girls and luckily, where I live is rather dry. Also, the country in south america I live in is VERY strict on foreign agricultural imports that the number of little buggers roaming in search of food is relatively low. There is an issue with moth-worms and occasionally some spider mites. Nothing major though.

Luckily my ladies are clean at the moment. I'll be watching your grow.

Peace
:tokin:
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Nice work. Good write ups.
Seems like you're solution is working on the bugs. Do you filter the intake air?
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Hey Nice Grow. Bravo and keep up the good work! the only thing I would think is you could have both the lights on at the same time. With both lights on:thumb: same cycle this gives your plants more lumen and to me the more lumen the better. As long as there are no heat issues I would say run them on the same cycle but that is just IMO. Will follow your grow.
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Thanks everyone for checking on my grow and your comments!! much appreciated..

Chicago joe....well so far I think I have killed the first wave of the little gnats and haven't seen any flying around my apartment or especially inside the tent. So I believe my quick attack on them has worked so far. I also bleached the shiz out of my kitchen sink and had some old recycled cans that I took to outside storage to eliminate any other breeding grounds. I hope that I got them all but will see if and when the new wave of larva hatches...or if the neem got em!! to answer your question though, my intake air at this time is not filtered. I am thinking about going to the local part store and checking out some F250 Ford intakes and seeing if the cone's will fit on my 6" intake tubing..if not I may just go the cheep route of some layers of cheese cloth or gauze...

Plato...definitely feel you on the extra lumens, however I still am in my veg for another 2-3 weeks ...so right now I have them low enough to not break my wallet on my electric bill but still should be plenty to veg...when I switch over to flower though, different story all together.. I will be running both on for 12 hours...should be giving them around 130,000 lumens at that time... Right now morning they are receiving 39,000 lumens from my Ushio MH Opti-blue and 59,000 lumens from my 600W ushio HPS opti Red (running at 400W)(93,000 lumens at 600W). Mid day for 3 hours they are recieving a combination of both of nearly 100,000 lumens which my goal was to simulate the overhead noon sun...appreciate the recommendation though and def agree more lumens = larger plants I just want keep myself clear of the the other part of the equation where my more lumens = thin wallet...lol

I appreciate everyone's comments and look forward to learning more about this fun process!!!
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

for intake filters and for my prefilter on my diy carbon filter I use this stuff from a big chain hardware store. Its carbon infused fabric, pretty cheap, I think I got a sq yd for $5 and I cut it to fit. I vacuum it clean every 2-3 months.
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Damn...May 10th....The fungus gnats are under control, however, I made a huge freakin mistake...something I knew not to do but in the heat of the fungus gnat battle I fried my ladies by spraying with neem with the lights on. They looked fine all day yesterday but when I checked on them this morning, OMFG, all of the new growths were curled up, most were brown and some of the smaller fan leaves by the new growths had also started turning brown!!!! I knew better and I messed up big!!! I know there hardy plants and I still have high hopes because all of the larger fan leaves are fine and by later in the day I saw no more progressive damage...so immediatly i killed the lights upon discovering the burn and sprayed the ish out of my ladies with ph 6.8 water, I mean soaked the leaves heavily. Followed up by a good soil flush of 6.5ph water with a 1/4 musquito dunk in it (to fix any soil contaminants and kill any remainging fungus gnat larva) I let my girls dry and repeated the washing again to make sure I could wash off as much of the layer of neem oil as I could. They air dryed again and then I turned my lights back on. They seemed to thank me by looking a little more lively after the drenching, but still all of the new growths are fried....damn....a week before I was going to flower!!!!
After much reading on the internet there was a few causes of this disaster...
1. I neemed the leaves with the lights on.
2. The neem mixture was too strong...
3. The palmolive dish soap had somthing in it the plant reacted to.

Anyways...I know these babies should bounce back because they are very healthy in the soil and have very large stems and large fan leaves aren't affected. I also know this will probably push my flowering back at least 4 days to a week longer than I was planning...I just hope they do bounce back...

Anyone had issues with this before?
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Well today I found out that I indeed have hope and with quick action and a lot of TLC I think the ladies will be fine. Many of the spots that had browned on the new growths has started to re-green itself and come back to life. None of the leaves are sagging and all are firm and standing like normal. Some of the New growths that were "neem fried" will have to be trimmed but overall most of the plants are making a quick and healthy recovery...whew... I believe it still will put me behind about a week where I should be but at least there alive with very strong stems and rootbase.

Today the day started out with a very low RH around 34% which was good to aid in the quick transpiring and recovery. I checked all the pots for any signs of fungus gnats and saw none, now larva, no flying ones...none...so my attack measures worked on them... the soil now was completely dry and the pots felt very light. Time to water. Since the last watering was a flush, and previous to that was a organic tea, it was time for the full nutrient line again. Used the EarthJUICe line (grow, bloom, catalyst, metak, micro) in the recyculation amounts for veg, added 4ml of cal/mag, 12ml of europonic humic acid, 2ml of carboload by AN, 2ml of BioBud, and 4ml of Bio Root. This was all mixed into 1.5 gallons of distilled water. the distilled waters ppm was 4 and the ph was 7. The mix was quite acidic and i bubbled it for a few hours, and checked the ph and it sat way low at 4.2ph. At this time the ppm of my feeding was sitting right around 950ppm but after ph adjustments to the mix to bring it to 6.4ph, the ppm's sat around 1500ppm which I knew was too much for this part of the cycle. ( or so ive read) I figured if I added the other 1/2 gallon of distilled water, it should bring me back down to around 1000 and I was right...sat right around 970ppm so time to feed the babies...

I watered the soil evenly and slowly...each plant got 2 cups of feed at a time and when I cycled thru all 6, I would start at the beginning until the 2gallons was gone. Since the plants were very dry, most of the drip pans were only half full after letting them sit for a 1/2 hour or so. I tested the soil runoff and it sat nicely between 6.2ph at a low and 6.4 for the highest ones...not bad :)

I emptied the drain pots, turned all my plants and rotated the most burned and stunted plants under the 400wMH and the larger under the 600w running at 400HPS. It seems that the ones under the MH grow much more during the day and show a lot more new bud sites and leaves then the ones under the HPS...??? I guess the really love the heavy blue this USHIO puts out..

Twards the end of the day, the humidity really went up, not sure if its the weather or just the marine layer coming in off the ocean but maybe it will give my ladies a break. Now its sitting at about 45%RH.

Wish me luck!!
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Here are the "horror photos" of my damaged ladies...things could be much worse and I know I am probably overreacting but hey...I'm a protective parent...lol....

Here's shots from May 9th and May 11th...
May 9th Morning...look at all the new growth areas just fried!! damn...
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close up of the damage to one of my University Og's.
A
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close up of the damage to one of my Chemband's
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May 11th Morning, things look a lil better, but not by much...I guess on a good note, no more damn gnats...
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May 11th evening shot...
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May 11th evening close up..
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May 11th evening close up..
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May 11th evening side angle shot..
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Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Today the ladies are looking much healthier and really showing a lot of recovery and new growths. My 2 worst plants are one of my chembands and one of my University Hill's OG. This morning I picked up there pots to see how much water was soaked up and they all felt pretty full, however, about mid day I felt the pots and they felt like about 60% wet. Wow, they really are sucking up a lot of nutrients, must have really liked the nutrients I gave them yesterday with a few secret ingredients. Today the temps again were pretty nice, relative humidity is a little higher with the wind comming off of the ocean today. Temp in my tent is 79F at canopy and 81 about head level in tent and RH at 45% today.

I decided today and after asking a few very knowledgable growers to support my decision I decided that since many of the newer fan leaves were fried but the roots and large fan leaves were healthy, I would top and trim some of the damaged areas. Since the plant would focus too much on repair and not enough on newer growths, I decided to very carefully prune the leaves that were 70% or more damaged. I only took off the most heavily damaged tips but left as much healthy green growth as I could and did this very sparingly on the plants....removing less that 5% of the total leaf matter on the whole plant... I also chose a few stronger stemmed tops on my healthier plants and topped them, also aiding in my decision was the stems with most bud nodes below the topping point and also which stems had the most damage. I left alone any stems that had damaged fan leaves since these were already stressed and recently trimmed/pruned so I only went for the tightest, healthiest ones on 4 of my six plants...left the 2 runts alone...

Well next feeding will be my organic tea so tomm I will be starting that brewing and might be as soon as tonight depending how much more water they take up by then. Right now it seems that about every 2-3 days they are needing water. I also since my fungus gnat attack, have been lightly cultivating the top 1/2 of the soil about 2-3 hours after waterings and it helps it dry out quicker, so it is not as attractive to the pests that like it as there cheap hotel....lol....
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

May 13th

Not much was needing to be done today besides just watch the ladies do there thing. I shopped around at 3 different hardware stores for materials for a SCROG screen that I plan on building. My plan is to have a V shaped Scrog so I am making use of more surface area as well as bringing the plants closer to the light on the sides of the tent, to help increase the intensity of the light they receive. I couldn't find the right type of screen anywhere unless it was in a 50' roll
in which was also around 50$ which I didn't want to spend knowing I only needed about 6 feet. No luck today so back to think of more ideas. I did a little trimming of the ladies today, just removing more of the badly damaged and unrepairable tips of some of the healthy fan leaves. I also removed any dead undergrowth and because I didn't want any diseases forming or having a place to take over. The plants all today are showing signs of good new growth, slower than normal due
to many of the existing fan leaves having mild to medium light burn....I still so regret my neem attack...still no more fungus gnats, the muskito dunks and sprays worked...at the expense of my ladies and a week of slow stunted growth. The pots today of the larger plants, the blue dragons and the larger chemband and UVOG were pretty light, should need a watering within a day or 2,
The other 2 plants which are slower growing and were burned more are sucking up less water, so I am going to waith with watering them for at least a day or 2 as well. Everything said, the plants are coming back and looking happy.

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Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Here are the photos for May 13th
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Another of May 13th
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Morning of May 14th, before the SCROG Screen was built..
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SCROG screen construction
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Another Photo of construction
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This is the screen I chose, was 9$, I believe its called concrete drywall screen
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A shot of the screen attached
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Another shot of the screen attached
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Installed in my tent.....let the SCROG begin!!!
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An angle shot of the SCROG screen
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Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Here is a few more angles of the new SCROG setup. I hope you like and feel free to comment!!
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A better example of how bright this tent is...
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A screen level shot, look at how I prepped them with LST week 1-3!!
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Right before the lights are to go out, only HPS running for red simulation
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Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Hey I am liking the SCROG setup up . They are looking really good. Before you will know it they will be resting on the screen enjoying life and producing bud.:thumb:
:goodjob:
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

If this is your first grow attempt you are doing a fantastic job! Thank you for posting the SCROG setup that you are doing as well, I have been looking for more information on this method of growing and you made it look pretty easy :) Can't wait to see the rest of the pics as your plants get older!! Your grow journal is also very detailed, you did a great job with your descriptions. I'll be taking notes from you for my next journal :) Thank you for posting!!
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

Icemud said:
Here are the "horror photos" of my damaged ladies...things could be much worse and I know I am probably overreacting but hey...I'm a protective parent...lol....
Click to expand...

Hi Icemud! I enjoyed reading through your journal; very informative!!
Sorry to hear about the fungus gnats!! My girls had thrips a couple weeks ago, and tried many different products including the neam oil solution. We didn't have any adverse reactions after placing them back under the lights, but the neam oil just wasn't strong enough. If you have any more gnat problems, I highly recommend investing in a bottle of Azamax. It is somewhat expensive (4 oz for $20), but it completely eradicated all our thrips within one application. Hopefully, you won't be having anymore gnat problems tho! :goodluck:

I look forward to seeing how your grow turns out! :popcorn:
 
Re: 1st Medical Grow, 3 strains in 2x4 hydrohut..

May 15th....

The plants today really seem to be making a full recovery from there light burn and showing a lot of new growth today. A few of the tops already have reached thru the SCROG screen and have had to be stretched out further!! Since its been a few days for watering and I knew the ladies had to be thirsty, I decided to skip my organic tea this watering and go right with the nutrients.

Mixed up a full batch in 1 1/2 gallons of distilled water of Earthjuice (grow, bloom, catalyst, micro and meta-k) following the recirculation amounts, undercut a little by using measurements for just 1 gallon. I added to the mix my europonic humic acid 15ml, General organics bio-root and bio bud, about 5ml each, advance nutrients carboload 3ml, botanicare cal mag 10ml, 1 1/2 tablespoons of organic molassas. I also added in a "secret ingredient" that I have been reading up on and trying as an educated experiment.

My secret ingredient: I was really curious about alternative organic products that could be used to supply nutrients, minerals and hormones to the plants and after some medicated pondering I started to really think about coconut water and its possible benefits to plants. Coconut water is from green (young) coconuts and is very high in potassium, sugars and low in salt. Now upon some investigating and research I have found that coconut water contains many minerals like what you would find in ocean water, since primarily coconuts are grown in areas near salt water and many of the micronutrients are absorbed into the coconut plant and stored in its fluids. I looked further into coconuts and found out that they contain a high level of the plant hormone Zeatin which is of the cytokinin's (plant hormones). Doing some further research into these areas I found that Zeatin is responsible and proven to actively induce plant growth. Also cytokinin's seem to have many benefits to plant growth includeing cell expansion, increased root formation and enhance growth of shoot buds. Cytokinin's also have shown to enlongate a plants life, increase lateral growth, speeds up protein synthisis, and prolong plant organs from wearing out....

With all of this information I decided to add some Coconut water to my nutrient mix. I tested the ph and ppm of the coconut water and found the coconut water to be very low at 5.2ph and the ppm was higher than my Hanna Primo PPM meter could handle...(higher than 2000 ppm) I know that this is way to high to be fed to my plants in this concentration so I added about 1oz (a shotglass) of coconut water to my 1 1/2 gallons of nutrient mix.

With some ph adjusting my nutrient mix was sitting at around 1100ppm and ph adjusted when feeding the plants was sitting nicely at 6.4ph. I added about 4-5 cups of water per plant, they were very thirsty and only about 1/4 cup or less ran off into the drain pans.

Today I also adjusted my lighting schedule to supply more daytime light to the plants. I now have my MH to start the day at 7am and set to turn off at 7pm, running it an additional 2 hours. My HPS now I have set to turn on at 12pm (noon) and ride out thru 1am. Instead of overlapping for only 2 hours of the day, now the plants are receiving 7hours of dual spectrum lighting and I hope to see some explosive growth now that the plants have recovered from there light burn and are nearing the 12/12. I still will be waiting about a week to possibly 2 weeks to watch how much of the screen fills up, and at about 1/2 to 3/4 screen I will flip the lights.

Today I also added in my "poor mans CO2 system". I took (2) distilled water jugs, (the 1 gallon kind) and filled each one half full with regular sink water. I added a good 2-3 cups of sugar to each of the jugs and added 2 packets of active yeast to each jug. One a active dry yeast and the other a highly active, quick rising yeast....The kind that comes in the little foil packets. I put the tops back on the jugs, shook them a bit and then cut about 8 holes in the top of each of the jugs to let the CO2 rise to the plants. From what I have read this will not nearly produce enough CO2 to be highly effective but I figure adding some is better than none. I also didn't want to go as extreme as adding a CO2 system for my small tent because I feel it would be a waste, being that a nice CO2 system, CO2 meter, tanks and regulators will run me a good 500$+. Also with my small 3x5 tent, the air is circulated too quickly for a pro CO2 system and this also would be bulky for the room that I am working with. I definitely know there is massive benefit from using CO2 however I will have to leave the pro setup for when I expand my grow area.
 
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