2nd Grow - CFL's - Exodus Cheese - LST/SCROG - Advice Always Welcome!

[PlanetJ]

Sorry for the kinda longish break .. newborns and damaged computers have a habit of shifting priorities

2nd grow!

Vacation is over, time for new seeds, and another shot at growing.

Strain: Exodus Cheese, feminized.
Lamps: 5x 45W 6500K 2900lm & 3x 23W 2700K 1125lm CFL's for now
Stage: 3rd day in, 2nd day in medium
Grow medium: Cocopeat
Water: regular tap, at growroom temp
Temperature: ~31C
Humidity: ~30%

Seeds as they where delivered:

Seeds where started in a cup of water and left in there for ~24h

I then filled some seedling cups with the grow medium, poked a hole in there an dropped the sprouted seeds in and covered it and watered it.

By the end of day 3 in the soil, I have 2 seeds breaking the di... eh ... cocopeat ..

closeup:

I plan on topping them ASAP, lst them into a SCRoG, and do it all in little to no space under suboptimal lighting conditions, and hope I will be able to improve on that in the near future. So this should be fun, daily pictures, loads of rooky mistakes and me not having the slightest idea what the fuck I'm supposed to do .. feel free to chime in

Thanks for watching, and please gimme some time to catch up to what I was following .. I need to catch up a ton and then some

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Day 4.

The girls need water every few hours due to the overkill in ventilation and airflow. Temperature is a little high because of the outside temp and me not having a cooling unit or system in place.

I try to combat it with water spraying the walls and keeping a wet towel in there. It seems to be enough .. the girls are going for it :d

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

I could not resist but upload another picture for today ... it keeps amazing me how fast these plants grow. This is a picture taken roughly 6 hours after the previous one, I am going to switch the light to my planned schedule at this point. So far, the lights where on 24/7.

I'll switch that to 12 hours on, 5,5 off, 1 on, 5,5 off, repeat. It worked well during the previous grow, and I see no reason not to save a little more on energy costs then I am already, using CFL's. I'm almost @ 400W with my CFL's and fans, and saving about 6 hours of that every day sounds like a plan to me

I will be using diminishing light schedule near the end of the grow as well .. if I do not change my mind that is

Without further ado, the ladies at the end of day 4:

 

[Antics]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Good start so far!

And you know on the green house breeder packs, there's a small hole to punch out of the back, then you turn that plastic front to dispense the seeds from the rear

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Good start so far!

And you know on the green house breeder packs, there's a small hole to punch out of the back, then you turn that plastic front to dispense the seeds from the rear

LMAO ... I just KNEW there was a reason for that darned hole .. but had a bit of trouble getting to the seeds .. so in the end, I just ripped it open, managing to keep all the seeds in .. next time, I'll try to use the intended method

 

[HunterHunt]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Im in for this one! Looking good and keep up the good work!

 

[Antics]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

LMAO ... I just KNEW there was a reason for that darned hole .. but had a bit of trouble getting to the seeds .. so in the end, I just ripped it open, managing to keep all the seeds in .. next time, I'll try to use the intended method

I would have done the same. My girlfriend figured it out, and now she can't wait until I grow them so she can use the "nifty" dispenser, as she called it. (The strain I have is Big Bang)

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Almost 2 hours into day 5 for the girls here. They seem to be doing great, other then that, not much te report on .. I'll compare it to my first grow for fun and gigles.

First grow, day 5, 1x 23w 2700K 1100 lm lamp hanging about 1,4m above the plants ... I learned since then

Current grow, day 5, specs above .. lamps hanging ~5cm (0,05m) above the plants

4 hours later:

 

[devilish]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

looking good!

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Added two pics to my previous post .. it keeps amazing me how fast these plants grow ... you can almost see them grow if you open your box every hour. Thanks for the comments

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

And another day went by without much to talk about regarding the girls. Temperatures are still too high during their daytime, and still too low during their night. Lights go off at 6am and come on for an hour from 11.30 till 12.30 and I switch to 'day' at 6pm. This helps a little in keeping the temperature around where I want it, but I fear I'll need some sort of heater in a month or so, to prevent temperatures from dropping too low during their night. They would hate below 19C I guess.

Without further rambling, here are the girls on day 6.

Taken at midnight, plant time. This is during my one hour of light, to prevent them going into bloom:

This one is 7 hours later .. one hour into daytime for the plants:

The last one for today, is taken a few minutes ago .. roughly mid-day for the plants

So far, so good. Tomorrow I will probably relocate them to their new home, which will be 3 liter pots. I'm a little unsure if I'm going to SCRoG them .. as the fluxing tutorial really makes me wanna try it, as it seems a bit simpler then a SCRoG, but I guess I should be moving them to their final home in that case, and a 3 liter pot is no where near big enough for that ..

Any advice there on how to proceed ? Should I just put them in 7,5 liter pots and skip the 3 liter version ? Last time, in 3 liter pots, they where all rootbound at month 2 .. could've added to the issues I had .. anybody wanna share some insights on what size of pot I should be using to finish them in and when to put them into those ? Thank you in advance!

 

[MrRandyWatson]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Why don't you add more lighting instead of a heater? A few extra bulbs should raise the temp and a few extra lumens is never a bad thing.

 

[HunterHunt]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Lights go off at 6am and come on for an hour from 11.30 till 12.30 and I switch to 'day' at 6pm.

Can you confirm your light scheduled? Do you have them on 13 hours on and 11 hours off? 13/11 is a flowering light scheduled and you should be on a 18/6 or you can even do 20/4 if the temps are to low and you need heat in the cab.

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Why don't you add more lighting instead of a heater? A few extra bulbs should raise the temp and a few extra lumens is never a bad thing.

Hey, thanks for the input. The main issue is that I'm already pushing 35C with lights on, and with lights off, there will be no benefit from more lights. I am growing in an unheated attic .. temperatures will drop to just a tad above outside temperature with lights off. The only thing I can think of is heating the attic to 20C or so, during lights off.

Can you confirm your light scheduled? Do you have them on 13 hours on and 11 hours off? 13/11 is a flowering light scheduled and you should be on a 18/6 or you can even do 20/4 if the temps are to low and you need heat in the cab.

My light schedule is:

12 hours of uninterupted light
5,5 hours of darknes
1 hour of light
5,5 hours of darknes

The one hour of darknes tricks the plant into thinking it's still in veg. It worked perfectly the first grow .. now hermies, all ladies, started with bagseed of what was prolly a hermie Power Plant.

It is called the Gas Lantern Routine, or GLR for short .. and helps keep the heat and electric bill down, and afaik, has no downside for the plants. I have read up on quite a few journals using the technique, and it seems to work allright.

Since I used it during my first grow, and the vegging stage of that grow went without issues, I'm trying it again now.

I can not find the topic that explained it in detail, but here is a link to another topic discussing it: Gas Lantern Routine / Diminishing Light Schedule

 

[Antics]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

I haven't tried either GLR or DLS, but they sound interesting. I might have to give them a try at some point.

 

[HunterHunt]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Oh ok gotcha! Just wanted to check!

 

[MrRandyWatson]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

My bad. I mis-read what you were saying. Makes sense now.

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Here we are at day 7. Aside from me fucking up even before I planted the seeds, nothing new to report

I'm currently growing in cocopeat ... and I thought you could just treat it as regular soil .. I'm glad I just checked that, a little less glad about the nutes I have not being ideal for cocopeat .. I was thinking about buying canna a+b now.. ( Home | CANNA Gardening CANADA )

Is there a sponsor version of this stuff available that anybody knows without me having to search down the whole site ? If not, I'll buy it locally.
Any other reccomendations about nutrients when growing in coco ??

I love how this stuff drains tho .. no way in hell will I overwater with it ... but it needs a lot of water at set intervals to prevent complete dry-out, and with a fan blowing over it, when dry, it goes everywhere where I do NOT want it .. I think I'll put some stones or something on it to keep it put.

Here are todays photo's, as you can see, no repotting yet .. I had to figure out if I want to continue in coco, or switch back to soil .. unless someone convinces me otherwise, it will stay coco.

Midnight for the girls:

Daybreak for the girls:

Noon for the girls:

 

[PlanetJ]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Day 8 !! Or week 2 .. whichever you prefer 5 days above ground in any case

Not much to talk about, didnt do anything with the girls except water them (hmm .. that sounds wrong ).
First of all, here is my light setup:

As you can see, it will be a challenge to get enough light to the plants, but I have another one of these for flowering. It wont be the yield of the month, but it should do I hope


Now for the ladies .. here is midnight for them

This would be morning

And here we have them chilling in the afternoon

As you can see from the last picture, it's well above recommended temperature in there at max temperature .. but so far, with extra watering when the coco dries up, it seems managable.

If I get the time, I will repot tomorrow, to 3 liter pots.

 

[Antics]

Re: 2nd grow. CFL's, Exodus Cheese, lst/scrog, advice always welcome!

Why repot to 3 liters?

I personally like the small, and easily manageable size of the seedling pot, and I go straight into their final pots when they're ready. By doing this it minimizes risk of root damage if the medium breaks apart during the transplant. I've always found it more difficult to transplant larger containers unless the roots were too long for the container, which is also a situation that isn't optimum for Cannabis.