Candy Cane Auto Journal - First Grow

[Juny360]

I am starting off slow with one plant since I lost two plants prior never making it past seedling stage.

I am making a first attempt at candy cane using fox farms happy frog in a 3 gallon pot. I plan on keeping it at 24/0 inside of a small grow tent.

Day 1- 15 hours in distilled water
Day 2- put the seed in a paper towel soaked with the same water it sat in. It began to sprout so I went ahead and out it in the soil.

For lights I am going to be using 4x 23w CFL 6500K. I would like to upgrade down the road. I also have a intake fan and a exhuast fan plugged in.

Here is my setup. All feedback is welcome good or bad. Here's my setup. Let's go!

 

[Juny360]

I am starting off slow with one plant since I lost two plants prior never making it past seedling stage.

I am making a first attempt at candy cane using fox farms happy frog in a 3 gallon pot. I plan on keeping it at 24/0 inside of a small grow tent.

Day 1- 15 hours in distilled water
Day 2- put the seed in a paper towel soaked with the same water it sat in. It began to sprout so I went ahead and out it in the soil.

For lights I am going to be using 4x 23w CFL 6500K. I would like to upgrade down the road. I also have a intake fan and a exhuast fan plugged in.

Here is my setup. All feedback is welcome good or bad. Here's my setup. Let's go!

Here's a better pic

 

[EastCoastGhost]

I will grab a seat for the show, i have some autos going right now also.✌

 

[Juny360]

2 days in to planting her. She finally popped out of the soil. I'm really going to take my time with her this time around. My first 2 were blueberry but I fried both from adding nutes too early and never got past the seedling stage. From following this forum and watching everyone else's grow, I've learned a lot from the group. I'm definitely going to hold off for a while on the nutes. Here she is! Day 3.

 

[Juny360]

Been about 3 days since I updated. She has been progressing and I'm super excited about this one.

Just to watch her on a daily is therapy .

 

[Juny360]

And we progress on to day 6. She is coming along beautiful. I have got to admit. My other 2 that I started never got this far in the life as you will.
Although I day run in to a issue yesterday. I changed some things up on the timer. I decided to connect the intake and exhuast fans to the timer. I left the humidifier plugged in. When the lights cut out as well as the fans, the humidity sky rocketed over 9%. ☹
That didn't seem to do any damage. Phew! I put it back to having the exhuast and intake running 24/7 and only the lights on 20/4. Does anyone else shut the fans off during lights out?

 

[Nightmask]

Pretty sure you should be having your intake, outtake, and circulation fans running 24/7. The lights however are fine to run 24/0 to get them to sprout and for maybe a day or two but most people say 18/6 for seedlings/veg and 12/12 for flower, though different people do use slightly different schedules (some do 20/4 and 13/11 for example). Hopefully others will chime in and give their advice.

As for nutes you shouldn't need any for atleast 2-3 weeks cause the seed itself should have enough to last atleast 2 weeks and good soil would last you even longer.

 

[Juny360]

Pretty sure you should be having your intake, outtake, and circulation fans running 24/7. The lights however are fine to run 24/0 to get them to sprout and for maybe a day or two but most people say 18/6 for seedlings/veg and 12/12 for flower, though different people do use slightly different schedules (some do 20/4 and 13/11 for example). Hopefully others will chime in and give their advice.

As for nutes you shouldn't need any for atleast 2-3 weeks cause the seed itself should have enough to last atleast 2 weeks and good soil would last you even longer.

Thanks for the advice on the fans. These are autos. I've read some people keeping the lights on 24/7 throughout its whole life. I'm going to keep it for 20/4. Supposedly they will flower on their own when ready.

As far the nutes, I'm going to stay away for 3 weeks minimum. I jumped the gun on my first 2 and fed them nutes within the first week and fried them. ☹

 

[Juny360]

Day 10 in to the journey and everything is going well. I took a Whif of her and she is beginning to smell very Good! Still got a while to go tho.

 

[knighthawktfc]

Pulling up a chair.

Also doing my first grow, also doing Candy Cane from CKS (along with a White Widow), both auto (link in my sig).
I'm about a couple days behind you in starting, I'm on day 6 from sprout tonight, yours look better than mine on same day.

Mr.Cane day 6:

Maybe I should flip the lights from 24/0 to 20/4 a couple day earlier than I planned (day 10), hmm.

 

[Juny360]

Pulling up a chair.

Also doing my first grow, also doing Candy Cane from CKS (along with a White Widow), both auto (link in my sig).
I'm about a couple days behind you in starting, I'm on day 6 from sprout tonight, yours look better than mine on same day.

Mr.Cane day 6:

Maybe I should flip the lights from 24/0 to 20/4 a couple day earlier than I planned (day 10), hmm.

Welcome! I started off on 24/0 for the first 2 days then I got to thinking...it needs rest. So I put it on 20/4 and it's seems to be happy. Good luck with your grow! They say it's a 7 week cycle. I'm definitely excited for this one. My next order from CKS will be some of that white widow.

 

[knighthawktfc]

Well.. 7 week flower that is. I'm not actually planning to sample anything before late Sept, that said if they come in earlier all the better! Most of what I've seen tells me add at least 1 week, maybe 2 to every banks 'autos' estimate.

Yeah I'm going to start giving my babies rest starting tomorrow afternoon (good to have my lights off during hottest times of day here) from ~2pm - ~6pm, might even add a hour eventually in august lol just to help with temps.

 

[Juny360]

Here I am on day 13. Patiently waiting and excited to continue watching her grow. More sets of leaves coming up. I've been doing a lot of reading on toppin autos. There seems too be a lot of mixed thought coming from people about it. Some say you should and some say you shouldn't. I stand in the middle. Being that this is my first grow and no doubt a noobie. I havnt decided if I'm going to risk it. I have a second CC that is growing next to it and it's a couple days behind this one. I may top that one just so I can

 

[Juny360]

*press the wrong button and sent without finishing*

Here I am on day 13. Patiently waiting and excited to continue watching her grow. More sets of leaves coming up. I've been doing a lot of reading on toppin autos. There seems too be a lot of mixed thought coming from people about it. Some say you should and some say you shouldn't. I stand in the middle. Being that this is my first grow and no doubt a noobie. I havnt decided if I'm going to risk it. I have a second CC that is growing next to it and it's a couple days behind this one. I may top that one just so I can make my own opinion.

Here she is day 13:

 

[MrJojo]

Looking good so far! .

 

[knighthawktfc]

*press the wrong button and sent without finishing*

Here I am on day 13. Patiently waiting and excited to continue watching her grow. More sets of leaves coming up. I've been doing a lot of reading on toppin autos. There seems too be a lot of mixed thought coming from people about it. Some say you should and some say you shouldn't. I stand in the middle. Being that this is my first grow and no doubt a noobie. I havnt decided if I'm going to risk it. I have a second CC that is growing next to it and it's a couple days behind this one. I may top that one just so I can make my own opinion.

Here she is day 13:

Nice., looking real good. As for Topping the Candy Cane autos.. yeah I don't know either I'm in the same boat as you.
I started out thinking "why complicate my first grow", but the more I read the more I see it may be advantageous.
I have a White Widow auto as my second plant, I more leaning toward topping her atm than I am the CC, only cause my WW is doing better it seems and from what I can gather the WW stains, even the autos are very resilient to beatings. The CC I'm not so sure about, seems mixed bag according to strains for topping autos. That said it's been done with CC with decent results from what I'm reading, still don't know if I want to take the plunge, got time to still contemplate it though.

So you watering mainly just around the base of her only still or did the outer just evaporate more in that pic.

Day 10 - CC:

 

[Juny360]

Nice., looking real good. As for Topping the Candy Cane autos.. yeah I don't know either I'm in the same boat as you.
I started out thinking "why complicate my first grow", but the more I read the more I see it may be advantageous.
I have a White Widow auto as my second plant, I more leaning toward topping her atm than I am the CC, only cause my WW is doing better it seems and from what I can gather the WW stains, even the autos are very resilient to beatings. The CC I'm not so sure about, seems mixed bag according to strains for topping autos. That said it's been done with CC with decent results from what I'm reading, still don't know if I want to take the plunge, got time to still contemplate it though.

So you watering mainly just around the base of her only still or did the outer just evaporate more in that pic.

Day 10 - CC:

Yours is looking good and on track.

Right now I'm only spraying around the base. I'm too scared to over water and underwater. I figure I can't go wrong if I just spray a little daily. She seems to like it. In about another week or two once she gets at about 5 nodes, I think I will start watering just once a week enough to get runoff. I also think in about a week or two I will lower the humidity down to 50%. I'm using a humidifier with a digital thermostat on it. It seems to be pretty accurate. I've only had to fill it every 3-4 days. She seems to like it tho so I'm just rolling with it.

This being my first grow, I'm just learning as I go and watching lots of YouTube videos and learning from this forum.

 

[Juny360]

On to day 16 and everything is looking good. I lowered the humidity to 60%. By next week I'll maintain at a 50% level. Also I'm 4 or 5 nodes in. Next week I plan to start LST. I'm still hesitant on topping. With this being my first grow and so many different opinions on topping autos..i don't want to chance anything to destroy my medication.

 

[Juny360]

Day 19. I have been keeping the humidity at 60% and she is enjoying live . I wish I had enough space to give her 3 or 4 more sisters. She has one other with her but why not a party . She is staying healthy and strong. From reading the forum a lot of members are using the feed, feed, water method. That is the approach I have been taking. I fed her a tspn and a half for the past 2 days of fox farms big bloom. She seems to react nice to it. I ordered a cheap ph pen off eBay that arrived without calibration packets and their solution was to send me 80 test strips. oh well. I take it as a 10 dollar loss. I plan on getting the calibration solution later this week. I fed her water today. I feel at this point I may be underwatering her. Any tips?

 

[knighthawktfc]

That's how I've felt with mine, that I've been under watering them if anything, i mean in terms of real good waterings mine have only had 2 in 15 days since sprout now (counting full soak today), and realistically not given them any nutes yet, that said I think I have other problems, and my pots I think are retaining more water than they should be.

Yours seem to have really started to take off around day 15\16. I'd say keep doing what your doing.
On ph pens. I have one and the drops... I use both because I don't trust either alone, I may even get a 2nd digital pen.
It is important to calibrate it though, and to do so every couple weeks. It's hilarious that calibration stuff runs just as much as the pen.
I also have solution incoming this week. (I do have 4 more sets of calibration packs that I ordered with the pen originally, but I'd rather use liquid solution than 'dissolve these crystals in a cup of water' packs).