Arteekay's Second Grow - Autos & Feminized - Mixed Strains

[arteekay]

Happy New Year everyone!​

We planned to have these girls all sprouted and ready for tonight, with the idea of announcing our New Years Babies. But then I remembered it would only be in our timezone, so whatever. I'm shooting for the first journal of 2016 for the central time zone.

We popped the following weed babies from the wonderful folks at Crop King Seeds:

• 1 Jack Herer autoflower. (JH)
• 1 Early Miss autoflower. Britney's little sister deserves her own shot at the top. (NEM, for New Early Miss)
• 1 White Widow Feminized. (WW)
• 1 Crown Royale Feminized. (CR)

They went for their soak at around 4:00 on Saturday, Dec 26:



After spending a day at the spa, they napped in a damp paper towel in the dark for two days before any had tails, and by the third day one had pushed through the first layer. Erg! We picked her out as best we could without hurting her little tap, but we were worried.

Also worrying was that our white Widow cracked open, but hasn't progressed since then. We stuck her in soil anyway and will give her a couple three days at least to see if she wants to come out and meet you all.

We planted the two autos in 5 gallon fabric pots and the 2 feminized females in solo cups on Dec 30 after work. Medium was our remaining Sunshine Mix #4. We made sure to drill a couple of holes in the bottom of our cups first.

We are now growing "real" weed!

We still needed to finish setting up the veg tent, our original Secret Jardin DS120 with the Twilight Spider x4, a muffin fan for exhaust and a small clip fan on a pole to direct the spider's warmth downward. Shouldn't need much more for what this tent is going to do. We've decided to veg at 24/0 indefinitely.

We watered the solo cups to runoff with a large syringe so we could figure out exactly how much it took, which turned out to be 180ml. We put the same amount in a new solo just to get a visualization of how much that actually is.

We then decided we will feed the two autos a similar amount each for the first bit of water, adding another 60ml to account for that it'll dry out far quicker. In our first grow, before we'd found this wonderful forum, we soaked our 3 gallon pots on the first night. This time we plan on following Atrain's advanced feeding guide, once I find it again.



First date with the spider, back in action after a few weeks on vacation:




Like the stoners we are, we plugged the spider into the other side of the timer and the exhaust fan into the wall, then zipped up the tent for the night. We even watched the light go out at 10pm and didn't clue in.

We have a three sensor weather station thinger with one sensor in each tent, and one in the same room as the tents on a shelf. At about 1am I checked the temperature and humidity:

66.5 F and 40% RH. Too low for my liking on both. Well no wonder, the light was off and we're sucking dry basement air through the tent with nothing at all in need that air. When I plugged the spider in directly and turned off the exhaust fan I took a peak in with the intention of giving each a little mist of ph'd water directly over the seed...

Shockingly, we shouldn't have worried about Jackie poking through the papertowel and us having to extract her. She was buried a good quarter to half inch in soil, but stuck her head up within 6 hours. I was amazed and honestly, a little afraid.




JH still with her hat on:



By the 10 o'clock on New Year's Eve, she had thrown her hat somewhere and was starting to unfurl





CR was next out after 24 hours, also with her toque on:






NEM took a few hours later, maybe 26:





And unsurprisingly, WW hasn't been seen since she got her solo cup on.



So that makes up our second grow. Once my Dark Devils come in we'll be popping one of those for sure, along with a replacement WW if need be. No plant will remain untrained this time. We'll be topping all early and seeing what happens from there.

 

[Brewer]

id like to watch this!
it looks good so far.

 

[glimmergrass]

Hey, arteekay! As always, I love your style and humour Great strains -- can't wait to follow your new adventures with photo periods, too!

 

[TheNarrator]

After seeing what you guys can do with Auto's how could I resist!

 

[arteekay]

Jan 01 Update. JH, CR, and NEM are 2 days old. Temp is 79.5 and RH is 70%.

Welcome Brewer and Glim, and anyone that follows. I debated just adding this grow to my original journal, but those 20+ threads are incredibly daunting to new community members, I can say from my own recent experience.

Perfectly timed, I said I needed to find Atrain's Advanced Autoflower Feeding Schedule and Glimmergrass shows up with it in her signature. You're an angel.

Although I want to say I'll cut down on my update frequency and not bother with every little change, I know myself too well. We talk about them and go back to see where everything was on a particular day, so I need pictures from every day. I may have a slight touch of OCD...

We noticed that for every step of germination we had a little less luck than our first grow. We had less cracked when coming out of the day in water glasses. We had fewer tails sticking out any distance on day one in paper towel, and still less than we expected (in comparison to the last) on day two. We let them go a third day when we didn't last time, and only one showed the kind of vigor we noticed the first time.

We felt compelled to help each one out of their seed case, and two of them got stuck in the membrane and had to be assisted. The third one I'll get into below...

To top it off, we may have finally had our first dud seed. If we don't see our White Widow by tomorrow afternoon, we will have to pull the plug and let her go into the great beyond. Regarding the consecration, we will settle on the garbage box in the corner. I considered a proper burial, but that just seemed mocking and insensitive.

We still want two photo period girls, so we'll try to pop another WW. That leaves us at 90% success with germinating CKS babies. I don't think we can complain about that.



Family. Yeah I know there's nothing at all interesting to see, sorry folks:



JH:






CR:





They look decent to me, happy with their starts.



And then we come to our New Early Miss (NEM). I think we may have a curse of some kind. She looked good coming out of her shell, but was obviously struggling to get out of the membrane. Once we pulled her up on the pedestal and had a good look it was apparent why.

She only had one cotyledon, the other was fused to the membrane, yellow and hard more like a peanut:



NEM:





So in the first grow, our Early Miss was set back a week or two by a stoned ass with no sense of spatial relationships, and now our second has half the tank she should be starting with. We'll give her a chance to prove herself like her big sister Britney is doing over in flower land.

I absolutely LOVE looking in on these tiny little girls, then walking 5 feet to their left and seeing them at around 50 days. To think of the millions of generations before them, even before we took over their evolution, it's just a complete mind scrambler.

 

[arteekay]

After seeing what you guys can do with Auto's how could I resist!

Oh, I don't think either of us feel we deserve such a compliment. Honestly, any success we achieve can be attributed to a reasonable spend and being literate enough to join this fine community. Our budget wasn't small, but it certainly wasn't unlimited and I do hope my journal can assist other new growers in a similar situation to make fewer mistakes than we did. Or at least different ones.

I spent 6 months learning how to spin a pen around my thumb. I'd say our grow skills are at the 'occasionally flinging the damned pen across the room' stage. It looks cool when it works, but it's a bit embarrassing to have to crawl under the conference room table to retrieve it when it doesn't.

Our training was cruel and unusual before being rudimentary. We planted too many and kept having to redo our entire setup.

This grow is off to a bit of a rough start as well, but with at least a couple O's fattening up on the other side of the room, we will handle it far better I think.

Welcome aboard.

 

[golfer420]

 

[MaxHeadroom]

I'm in and glued to the screen *wipes it off*

 

[Rifleman]

Stumbling in late.

 

[arteekay]

I'm in and glued to the screen *wipes it off*

It'll be a while before anything really interesting happens. I'm not planning on doing anything stupid that'll be entertaining for you all, but every day is a brand new chance of being that day.

Stumbling in late.

Na you're early, we're still setting up the chairs for the front row. Feel free to grab some snacks, but keep an eye out as I'll likely soon do something ridiculous like fall off the stage while adjusting the speakers.

 

[BpoBrad]

Subbed I got to catch up... but how cool I just started my second as well, photoo's are fun you can really beat them up

 

[ShiggityFlip]

(Stumbles in high after smoking a cellulose clear joint) Hey! Izzair a grows goingz onnnn here?
(Plops down in chair displaying extreme lack of tolerance due to smoking scraps for two years...)
Ok ok immmm heear....(bonks head on arm of chair and drools down onto leg)
"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

 

[Rifleman]

(Stumbles in high after smoking a cellulose clear joint) Hey! Izzair a grows goingz onnnn here?
(Plops down in chair displaying extreme lack of tolerance due to smoking scraps for two years...)
Ok ok immmm heear....(bonks head on arm of chair and drools down onto leg)
"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Damn hippies !

 

[arteekay]

(Stumbles in high after smoking a cellulose clear joint) Hey! Izzair a grows goingz onnnn here?
(Plops down in chair displaying extreme lack of tolerance due to smoking scraps for two years...)
Ok ok immmm heear....(bonks head on arm of chair and drools down onto leg)
"Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Two years!?!? How'd that happen? I have some history to catch up on.

All right everybody, listen up, from here on out, Shigs is a made man. Anyone who has anything different to say, Nick and T-Dog will f*ckin' cut you!

Damn hippies !

These are what we call the uh giggling stoners. Pretty common form of hippie, usually found in the attics. Problem is, if you see one hippie, there's probably a whole lot more you're not seein'.

I'd better check my backyard for drum circles.

Subbed I got to catch up... but how cool I just started my second as well, photoo's are fun you can really beat them up

I hear if growers hang out in the same forum long enough, their cycles sync.

Creepy right?

 

[arteekay]

Jan 02 Update. JH, CR, and NEM are 3 days old. Temp is 78 and RH is 69%.

Well, it's official. Before I woke this morning, Jaybiz made the painful decision to respect White Widow's DNR order and let her quietly slip away. She was removed from her death-cup at about 8am on Jan 02. Her autopsy confirmed that she simply lacked the will to subject herself to our cruel world. I ask for a solemn moment of silence in her memory.

I can accept donations in her memory in the form of seeds or nugs. All donations will be grown or smoked near the place she first tried to live, my kitchen and basement. Monetary donations are also encouraged, in fact it's what she would have wanted.

Her new sister got roughed up just a touch on the seam with an emery board and started her morning bath this afternoon. As the baby of the family she'll likely get all the coolest toys.

Onto new business.

Jaybiz reminded me that we likely have enough DNF base Bloom and Gro nutes to get through the next four or five, so we are going to forgo a change in nutes until the next set. These girls will get a similar schedule to our last set, this time without the cold feet and hopefully, without any overwatering while being trained early.

We ran the Spider x4 at 36 inches for the first 24, then 30 for the next 24, and lowered it to 24 late this evening. We got more stretching out of the Crown Royale photo fem than the autos. Not really sure exactly why yet, but we've discussed running the next set a little lower to start with, something like 28 the first night and 24 the next.

We lowered the clip fan to get the girls vibrating a touch, we had pretty good luck with it on the last girls, all have very strong root collars and are thick as hell for the first two or three inches.

The two Autos, JH and NEM, got 120ml of bubbled tap water at 5.8 ph through a 60ml syringe down each side of where the tap should be heading straight down. We're having a little trouble decided exactly how much to give them so early in their huge pots, but figure this early we want their roots damp and finding damp when they grow down and out.

Otherwise as to be expected, there's not really a lot of interest for anyone that's seen a three day old sprout before.


Family pic:




JH:






CR:






NEM, her one remaining cotyledon seems to be noticeably bigger than her sisters, so maybe she's got 3/4 of a tank to start on:

 

[Atrain]

A-Train checking in... if ya need any help with the feed just hit me up....

 

[MzSiroz]

Hey Arteekay!

Enjoyed your first journal so you know I had to come subscribe to your second grow. @ShiggityFlip you are hilarious!
R.I.P WW

 

[arteekay]

Jan 03 Update. JH, CR, and NEM are 4 days old. Temp is 79 and RH is 85%.

No surprises, not much happening and no need for a family shot. Cup and fabric pots get rotated a couple times a day when we feel like it, and I've been lightly spraying down the surface of the auto's big pots once a day, just enough to change their color and keep the dust down.

We're not exchanging air in the tent except when we look in on them, still no need. To keep the humidity up I've been misting the walls of the tent and letting it evaporate from there. Seems to be working well enough, as it's a 44% increase from the RH outside the tent, for at least 5 or 6 hours before someone checks on them again. Once they get big enough to require our exhaust fan we'll reassess.

Spider x4 at 24 inches seems to be doing fine, we're not seeing any of them stretching anymore.

New White Widow is in paper towel for the today and tomorrow.



CR:


Trying to grow feet and go on a walkabout:


Top filled about a half inch, hilled up a bit around her stalk:


Re-moistened:




NEM:





JH:




We've been talking, and I think I'd like to try to finish the Dark Devil under the spider, assuming I actually get the seeds in. If I understand my angles and coverage from the 90 degree lenses I should be able to flower a 2x2, so I just have to keep her canopy within that, correct?

Means we'll need another carbon filter for this tent, or more likely a 6 inch for the flower tent and bring the 4 inch over to this one. More redesign in our future.

 

[TheNarrator]

Oh, I don't think either of us feel we deserve such a compliment. Honestly, any success we achieve can be attributed to a reasonable spend and being literate enough to join this fine community. Our budget wasn't small, but it certainly wasn't unlimited and I do hope my journal can assist other new growers in a similar situation to make fewer mistakes than we did. Or at least different ones.

I spent 6 months learning how to spin a pen around my thumb. I'd say our grow skills are at the 'occasionally flinging the damned pen across the room' stage. It looks cool when it works, but it's a bit embarrassing to have to crawl under the conference room table to retrieve it when it doesn't.

Our training was cruel and unusual before being rudimentary. We planted too many and kept having to redo our entire setup.

This grow is off to a bit of a rough start as well, but with at least a couple O's fattening up on the other side of the room, we will handle it far better I think.

Welcome aboard.

Don't play your guys work down that much! Its one thing having good equipment and advice but without you looking after them like you have they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive. You're clearly prepared to invest the time and effort and surely that's more important than anything else .

Awesome analogy but hey at least you can make it to the conference table! I don't think I can even fling my metaphorical pen that far yet.

Thanks, loving the strain selection, especially if Dark Devil makes it in.

Real curious to see what the size difference ends up like between your photos and autos, I sort of tried to do that but screwed up by abusing my auto too much

 

[arteekay]

Don't play your guys work down that much! Its one thing having good equipment and advice but without you looking after them like you have they wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive. You're clearly prepared to invest the time and effort and surely that's more important than anything else .

I can't disagree, they have been getting a ton of love and attention. Far more work than we'd though, but not work either of us mind yet. Truly a labor of love.

But I have a whole new perspective when someone says they want to grow their own free weed.

Awesome analogy but hey at least you can make it to the conference table! I don't think I can even fling my metaphorical pen that far yet.

Oh, they only let me in the conference room to help the consultant selling a multi-million dollar software solution on how to use a projector.

Thanks, loving the strain selection, especially if Dark Devil makes it in.

Real curious to see what the size difference ends up like between your photos and autos, I sort of tried to do that but screwed up by abusing my auto too much

I got confirmation this afternoon that my Dark Devil has been shipped, complete with a tracking number even. The way our White Widow germination is going, they might turn out to be the same age.

You abused your auto too much? I'm guessing you didn't see Brit back in early December, and now she's our second tallest plant.

Thanks so much for the dialog, good to know someone is still reading my ramblings.