Come Grow With Me: A Beginners Guide

[VetSmoke85]

OK everyone, let's not discuss Politics or Religion. Those 2 subjects always start arguments. Some things are better left unsaid.
So fire one of those bad boys up & party like you mean it ! Now there's something we can all agree on.

Hear, hear. I've had a lovely evening. Managed to have a nice little smoke of northern lights and no anxiety/panic symptoms. It's been a while. Also played a game with myself walking back from the shop. See how long I dared keep my eyes closed walking home

 

[nivek]

in the nineties we lived on a lake that would freeze over in winter,, it still does but we don't live there,, ha

we used to smoke and drink , not too much, just enuf,, and go out on the lake in the dark and walk for many, 15 or so, minutes with eyes closed and we were always surprised by how much off direction we ended up

good times,, indeed

 

[parrajara]

Nice Journal Buds. I'm new to growing and read every single page. I'm attaching pictures of my ladies, which were put in soil around November 21st. They are almost a month old, and I severely stunned their growth. I've gone ahead and ordered new seeds, but going to continue growing these ones as a learning experience. Once I get the new seeds I will grow them all together, but prioritize the schedule/timing of the new seeds. Current seeds are photo, new are autos.

Only thing I was surprised was that you start feeding around 7 days in. I'm using happy frog and transplanting to Ocean Forest, which you use. All the research I did indicated that I wouldn't need to feed until 2 months in (1st month happy frog, second ocean forest). Now I'm discovering a new method (yours). How do you not get nutrient burn ?

I am kind of in a unique scenario, because my plants are so stunned that I don't even know if my soil still has nutrients or not, and they are too small to transplant. Next time I'm using your double solo cup method.

I have this Gaia all purpose fertilizer (4-4-4). Would you suggest that I start top feeding them now?

I also have this RAW microbes that I want to give it to help with root development, but I never gave my plants anything out of fear that the HF and FFOF soil are already "hot".

btw, any luck recovering your files? May be able to help troubleshoot (no expert tho)

 

[Buds Buddy]

I've never done an organic type grow where you just Top Dress & water. Mega Crop is different as you feed every time & never just water. With MC you just start out at 1 gr. per gal. & increase by .5 gr. every feeding till your leaves are a nice green color. Not sure of the science behind it but with MC the plant only takes up the Nutrients it needs as long as you don't make it too strong. I was told I could start feeding MC the day the seed sprouted. @Emilya is the Organic Pro around here. If you want the best advice possible on organics do what she says. Even when others say different; do what she says. I don't think there's another member on here with the experience she has. I've had many say she was wrong & I tried what they said & it didn't work. So I did what she said & it did work. This hasn't happened just once; but several times. She is usually right.

 

[Buds Buddy]

LOL .... Canna Bitch was a Screen Name I suggested for someone who didn't have one.

 

[Buds Buddy]

Trying to save this Topping info of Emila's. Hope it pastes ... lol.

I keep learning from all of you folks as is the nature of this open forum thing... so let me pull all of this together for you.

First, I have recently learned to restrict my chopping of the plant to one time. You get much stronger and more potent buds if you stop with that first cut and however many primary kolas result, is what you grow. It is OK to supercrop or LST after that... but the multiple topping method of pruning a plant into a bush shape results in one primary kola, and a bunch of 2nd rate bud underneath. If you want more buds, grow more plants. (this was the big lesson I learned so far in 2020)

So where do you chop? Chopping at different nodes has a different effect on how many primary nodes are created. Uncle Ben's method is popular because it results in 4 primary nodes! It also allows you to quad or mainline your plant very easily, producing very large producing plants. To use Uncle Ben's method you wait until the 5th node is rising up and could be nipped off if you wanted to. Instead, go all the down to between nodes 2 and 3... chop there, as high up as you can. Take the big stalk that you cut, and root and grow it out.

If you don't play this waiting game but instead chop between nodes 3 and 4, a very interesting thing happens. It is almost like a FIM. It stunts the plant for several days trying to figure it out, but typically you get 3 main kolas, sometimes 4, and occasionally 5! It's like playing a slot machine... you just don't know what is going to happen.

If you chop between nodes 4 and 5, or anywhere up the stalk higher than this, the plant develops 2 main kolas and doubles your yield. Bend those down and do some LST on them, and you can get some great production this way too.

This, I think, is everything that I know about where to cut, as of this date.

***Cool ! Going to Top the Gorilla Girl between the 2nd & 3rd nodes to try that out. ***

 

[Buds Buddy]

Hey all, I've been working on getting my 3 x 3 tent set up in the shed. It's pretty much ready now so I've been testing things out. So today I was messing with the "Inkbird ITC 306 T" temperature controller. The instructions are fairly accurate once you decipher what they're telling you. But the instructions make no mention of plugging the Inkbird in a few hours before setting it so it can determine the current room temp. When I plugged it in it read 25 C so I had to go through all the settings the 1st time just to change over to F & then re-set everything to F temps. So at 1st the Inkbird read 75 F so I set the ON cycle to 70 F & the OFF cycle to 80 F to test it. It did turn the heater off at 80 F. The shed was actually 65 F at the time but because I didn't plug the Inkbird in ahead of time to let it adjust to the actual room temp things were off. So if you use one of these be sure to plug it in a couple hours before you plan to set it.
I'll know more about how well it works tomorrow. I'll update with some pics then.

 

[Buds Buddy]

OK guys, going through the Inkbird set up.
Inkbird ITC 306 T
(Factory setting is in Celsius so if you want it in Fahrenheit I'd set that 1st)
To do so HOLD the SET button 3 Seconds & the screen will flash. Then PUSH SET 3 more times till you see Screen : CF. Choose C -or- F. Then keep hitting set till you get back to the 1st screen ( TS 1 ) & set your parameters.

Step 1 : Plug it in & let it sit a couple hours so it can adjust to your current room temp.

STEP 2 : Hold the Set Button down for 3 seconds to enter set up mode. The Red lights will flash & a TS 1 Screen will show up top. The bottom numbers are what you want to set your HIGH TEMP to. (I set mine for 75 F.) Use the Arrow up & down keys to set things. Once you set your desired Temp hit the SET BUTTON to go to the next step.
TS 1 = Temperature Set Value

STEP 3 : DS 1 (Heating Differential Value) This one I thought was weird because you don't enter a Temp. This one you enter the number of degrees you want your high temp to drop to before the heater comes back on.
For instance I set my HIGH TEMP at 75 F. I want my LOW TEMP to be 70 F. So I set the DS 1 setting to (- 5) which drops it 5 degrees. Once you set your Differential hit the SET BUTTON to go to the next step.

Step 4: CA = TEMPERATURE CALIBRATION : If the Inkbird is not reading the correct Room Temp you can Calibrate the Inkbird to read correctly. I made my Inkbird Temp read the same as my Temp / Humidity Monitor so they'd be in synch. My Inkbird was reading 13 degrees higher then my Temp / Humidity monitor so I had to Calibrate it.
Setting the TEMP CALIBRATION is pretty much the same as setting the Heating differential in the previous step.
So with the Screen saying CA you use the up & down arrows to add or subtract the number of degrees from the temp the INKBIRD reads.
For instance, mine was reading 88 F when it was 75 F in the room. So I used the down arrow to subtract 13 F . Once I pushed the set button to go to the next step the Inkbird read the new, correct temp.

STEP 5 : CF = Celsius or Fahrenheit : (I put this in Step 1 so you didn't have to redo things twice)
Once you get here you can HOLD the SET BUTTON down 3 seconds & it will work automatically keeping your temps between the setting you chose 24 / 7.
However, you can go on to do steps 6 & 7 to use different night temps settings if you don't want the same temps all the time. There's also settings to make it turn on & off at certain times. I don't plan to use these features so haven't looked into them. I'm sure the info provided will give you a good understanding of how to set it up.

This is the little Heater I use. This thing rocks ! I bought it 2 years ago to heat a bathroom that never got warm in the winter. It was like a Sauna in there. It could heat a 15' x 15' room. Thing was only $8 & I got it on sale for $5. I hope to find more of these.

Kind of obvious .... but you plug the heater into the outlet on the Inkbird.
***NOTE*** The Heater has to turn on & off Manually & not Digitally or Electronically for the Inkbird to work.

Last but not least you need to hang your Temperature Probe somewhere to read your temps. I chose to hang mine from the center of the room.

And that's all for Inkbird Set Up 101 .... LOL.

 

[SmokeyB]

Always so well explained bro love it

 

[Buds Buddy]

Plant Update : Today is Day 20 for the 3 little gals. I'm fairly disappointed in the growth so far. The "Bruce Banger" is the biggest of the 3 & I'd say it looks more like a 2 week old plant. I cut a couple of the Large Fan Leaves off her today as they were blocking everything. The 2 branches are starting to protrude from where I topped her. This girl is now being fed at 4 gr. per gallon of MC. Her color is a nice green now so I'll keep her at 4 gr. for a couple of feedings. I plan to up-pot her before long to a 5 gal. bag.

Next up is the "Gorilla Girl". I am highly disappointed in this one. Last time I grew this it was double the size of the Bruce Banner at 3 weeks. She looks like a 1 week old. So far she has only been fed at 2 gr. MC per gal. She goes up to 3 gr. next feeding. Since she's not doing much anyway she is my test plant on topping between the 2nd & 3rd nodes. I did that today after I took the pics so I'll post pics of that next time.
So here's the pics before she got topped.

And here we have the "White Widow". She seems to be picking up speed after a slow start. Her 2 new branches are just starting to develop. I cut her 1st node branches off today also. She's also been fed at 2 gr. per gal. but will go to 3 gr. next feeding.

All 3 plants take about 4 - 12 oz. cups of MC to get 20% run off. I think the pots are taking longer to dry than usual and the roots are staying wet too long causing slow growth. My pots usually dry in 2 - 3 days & they are taking 4 - 5 days this grow for some reason. Thing is, it seems like my run off comes even easier then usual making this kind of confusing. I can only contribute it to cooler Temps in my grow area as that's all that is different besides the light.
Speaking of the light. I don't think this light is doing to well for 4 plants in a 5 x 5 tent. I'm going to purchase a 2nd TSW 3000 & then use both of them together in my 4 x 8 grow shed in the spring. Haven't decided on the light I'll buy for the 5 x 5 yet. The light could have something to do with the slow growth also.

 

[Buds Buddy]

Here's a few pics of the Peyote Wi-Fi. I'm continuing to LST (Quad-Line) her 4 main branches & tie down select side branches to fill in certain areas. As you can see I'm letting her get some upward growth now. I'm now feeding this girl at 4 gr. of MC plus 2 ml. of Terpinator per gal. She drinks almost a gallon every 4 days. I know from experience 4 gr. + 2 ml. of Terp. is OK so I didn't take a ppm reading. But I will next time so we can keep track of things.
Once I get everything tested in the 3 x 3 tent that's in the shed I'll be moving this gal out there so she has her own light.
Should be out there in the next few days. Hopefully I can get more light to the 3 little gals this way.

 

[Buds Buddy]

For those wondering about all the Green Color in the Inkbird pics .... It's because I use Green Light Bulbs in my grow room so I can go in during lights out. Green light will not cause Hermie's for some reason.

 

[CaliSmoke]

This fake pandemic will soon slowly change and everyone will be able to get there life back again put us all on hold and made everyone struggle for a year for control stay strong bro

Sorry for getting off topic:
But it doesn't seem fake when you have friends die that were perfectly healthy before this chit happened.
And just think of all the people that would have died if we (most of us) didn't follow the COVID guidelines.
Anyway, if you don't believe in science I can't help you.

 

[Buds Buddy]

Hey all, Just bored so thought I'd post a few pics of the Shed / 3 x 3 tent set up. The Shed is usually my Flower Room but since I needed to empty a bedroom for my Mother in Law to stay with us a few months I had to change things up.
So the 3 x 3 is now set up in my Flower Room .... for now. I ran everything last night to test things out & it all went well.
Low temp was 70 F & High Temp was 77 F. RH was at 65% running the 6 gallon Humidifier on low. So I'm really liking the environmental conditions at the moment.
As you can see it's pretty crowded in the Flower room right now so kind of had to make the best of things.

As you can see I have a Brand New Portable AC with Heat & Dehumidifier. The window AC will come out this summer & get replaced with the Portable. A little bit of light comes through the vents of the window AC. I haven't had an issue with it yet; but better safe then sorry.

 

[VexGrows]

Glad y'all decided to stay on topic. Everyone has the own opinion when it comes to politics and religion, but none should be discussed here.

BB, I'm loving the mainline training. I'm aiming for 4 little bushes like this with my clones.

Kudos!

 

[Buds Buddy]

Everyone has the own opinion when it comes to politics and religion, but none should be discussed here.

Got to agree with that. I'd rather talk about weed anyway. As they say, " A Friend with Weed is a Friend Indeed" & I don't care what political affiliation you choose when it comes to weed .... lol. I'll just smoke all YOUR WEED if you're on the opposite team & save mine for later.

 

[Farmer Reading]

I wanna live in that one town that has a dog mayor.

 

[Buds Buddy]

I wanna live in that one town that has a dog mayor.

It's probably the best run town around. I think our politicians give their selves fancy titles to sound important. Kind of like Sanitation Engineer = Garbage Man. Hey, I think we have a bunch of sanitation engineers in office right now come to think of it.

 

[Buds Buddy]

Hey guys, if you need Fox Farms soil & your store has it, you better get it now. Took me 3 days to find a hydro store with a few bags. When I called the store they told me they got 2 pallets in yesterday & they have 5 bags left so I better hurry.
They said the Fox Farms plant had a fire so it could be a month before they get more in. Now I know why it was so hard to find. Just a heads up. I got the bags I needed to do my up-pots for this grow.

 

[Buds Buddy]

So far this grow isn't going as well as usual. All my plants seem much smaller at this age than they usually do. There's only 2 things I've done different so it has to be one of them. First different thing is I mixed about 1/3rd used FFOF with 2/3rds new soil. I highly doubt this is the problem as I've fed nutes since about 7 days old.
The 2nd thing that's different is the light. The TSW 3000 doesn't seem powerful enough for a 5 x 5 veg. I usually run my veg cycle at 75% light & flower at 100%. Last night I decided to bump it up to 85%. I think I'll have to go to 100% in veg & flower with this light.
Saturday will be 6 weeks veg on the Peyote WiFi so it will get up-potted to the 10 gallon bag this weekend & moved to the 3 x 3 for an additional 2 weeks veg & then flower.
Monday will be 4 weeks veg on the other 3 plants. The Bruce Banger & White Widow will get up-potted to their final 5 gallon bags then. The Gorilla Girl appears to be a waste of time so far so leaving her in the 2 gallon pot. They will also get 2 more weeks of Veg before starting flower after the up-pot.
I'll get some pics up later today. Damned batteries in the camera died again. Have to go to get groceries so I'll get more then.
Once the little ones are in the 5 gal. bags it's time to start maxing out the nutes & adding Terpinator each feeding. This is the point I like to push things to get bigger frostier buds at the end.