First CFL Grow Using 30 Watt CFLs

[donpaul.p]

thanks spring, this is my 1st go ever at making my own seeds, so i had a very strong fast growing male from kiwi seeds strain and i put the pollen on my most aggressive 2ltr dwc hempie which is the 5 ft sour kush, it only had 7 days of veg under cfls then went 12-12 and it still grew to over 5ft, so that was my first choice to use as a mother for my seed project, now i just got to make sure the seeds are ready before i harvest, the plant is ready to be harvested but wasnt sure if i could harvest the buds that are not seed set or would this risk causing it to go hermie if i harvested everything above and below the seed set buds,

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks spring, this is my 1st go ever at making my own seeds, so i had a very strong fast growing male from kiwi seeds strain and i put the pollen on my most aggressive 2ltr dwc hempie which is the 5 ft sour kush, it only had 7 days of veg under cfls then went 12-12 and it still grew to over 5ft, so that was my first choice to use as a mother for my seed project, now i just got to make sure the seeds are ready before i harvest, the plant is ready to be harvested but wasnt sure if i could harvest the buds that are not seed set or would this risk causing it to go hermie if i harvested everything above and below the seed set buds,

 

[spring2012]

I just came across a thread on GLR. You are all over it! Can I use GLR on Autos? I want to try it next grow. Its probably too late for me now. Im at day 12. Just posted some new pics today. Thanks for your info as always!

 

[fish cake]

don or should I say master Don, Why dont you water them from the bottom?
if you have some kind of run off tray then just fill that till its gone. and if you think they need more , give them some from the top.
worse case senario is they are root bound and there is no room for water.

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks fish cake, i used to have the pots in bowls and watered from the top and left them in the bowls, so ill give that a try, its just the plants i had in veg are big enough now so ill start doing that again.

with the autos mate i dont think glr will do much really, we use glr with regular plants as it tricks them into thinking that they are starting to flower, so they start rapid growth and continue rapid growth till we flip the lights from glr to 12-12, the question you ask is a good one, i am also wondering whats best for autos, ive tried 24-0 and found they still flower, so im wondering if something like 18-6 is best so they can then have some night hours, im only saying this after the massive growth my plants had when i had a power cut for 22 hours and my plants where in the dark, they grew more in them 22 hours than they did in a whole week. but autos are different, the ruderalis is from cool climates that have plenty of light hours, so they dont get the 12-12 needed for flower, so they evolved to flower due to age and not light schedule, all the autos ive grown started flowering around week 2, so some testing needs doing to find out what schedule is best, i thought 24-0 would be the best option as i was told they wouldnt flower till they had some dark time, but they still flowered with constant light, and they did not get any bigger than the autos grown under 20-4, so ive tried both 24-0 and 20-4 and found the growth is not that good,

now using glr for autos might make them go hermie, i just dont know if autos would respond well to glr, the reason glr works so well for regular plants is that its growing the plants under 12-12 during veg but during the 12 hour dark period we give the plant 1 hour of light to stop it from flowering, this keeps the plants in rapid growth and keeps them in veg, they may look like their starting to flower as they grow pistils all over the place but they dont go into full flower and they are just showing sex, then when you put the plants to 12-12 to flower they dont have the stretch as they have all ready done it and they start to flower a whole lot quicker as well, but im not sure if autos would benefit from glr, i think it would be ok to use for the first couple of weeks, but as soon as they start to flower i would not use glr as it might make them go hermie, it would be like flowering a none auto plant and then putting that under glr, it would make it go hermie.

but as an auto is ruderalis crossed with indica then this means they do contain the traits of none auto plants, so each strain would be different and i think even each auto strain would respond to different light schedules, so what works for one might not work with the other, it all depends what traits the strain has taken on,

but i have grown a dwc hempie and taken clones from it and grown these in soil and they look like totally different plants, the hempie is huge and grew really fast and is over 5ft tall, the clones taken from this hempie and grown in soil are slow growing and is not going to be as big as its mother plant, even though the mother only had 7 days of veg under glr under cfls then it was flipped 12-12 under the dual spec hps, but the clones have been vegging for a couple of weeks and ive just flipped them to flower, and its perfectly obvious that its not growing as quick and as vigourous as the plant they was taken from, so when i order my next autos ill be growing them in the 2ltr dwc hempie, because i can clearly see the difference between the dwc and the soil grown plants, and the difference is shocking

 

[donpaul.p]

ive dug down in the pots to check for root bound and they is plenty of room for the roots, i just think my compost is not that good and need to mix it with something, when i water or even spray from the top and then if i use my fingers and touch the compost the compost then sticks to my hand and the layer under is bone dry, so i think the soil is not holding the moisture that well, im not sure what i need to add but im thinking perlite or something similar.

but ive also been thinking about trying something else, what if each pot had 4 thin tubes running through them, from the top of the pot to the bottom, then if the bottom was sealed up and holes drilled at different levels then if these are placed in the pots and the pots filled with compost and plants put in, then when i watered i could fill these tubes with the nutrient mix and it should water all the pot, plus once the water has left the tubes and gone into the soil this would then let air into the roots, if i covered the tubes with fine netting then when i filled them with water it would allow the water to get into the compost/soil but it wont let any soil back into the tubes, so once the water in the tubes has been soaked up then the tubes would be empty and air would be able to move in the tubes and should put air into the compost and the roots,

would this be some thing that might work, im just trying to think of ways of improving a soil grow, i will be going back to soil after ive given the dwc scrog a try, unless the dwc scrog is worth the risk then ill keep down the hydro root, i just dont want a pro looking set up, the more basic it looks the better ill feel and the less risk im taking, if i had a full hydro set up then its not just some dirt in a pot with a seed planted in it, hydro would mean ive thought about what im doing and got the equipment needed, but i am giving hydro a try as soon as these last plants have flowered, cant wait to get it set up and i hope i get some great results like teSmp and fish cake,

 

[donpaul.p]

ive dug down in the pots to check for root bound and they is plenty of room for the roots, i just think my compost is not that good and need to mix it with something, when i water or even spray from the top and then if i use my fingers and touch the compost the compost then sticks to my hand and the layer under is bone dry, so i think the soil is not holding the moisture that well, im not sure what i need to add but im thinking perlite or something similar.

but ive also been thinking about trying something else, what if each pot had 4 thin tubes running through them, from the top of the pot to the bottom, then if the bottom was sealed up and holes drilled at different levels then if these are placed in the pots and the pots filled with compost and plants put in, then when i watered i could fill these tubes with the nutrient mix and it should water all the pot, plus once the water has left the tubes and gone into the soil this would then let air into the roots, if i covered the tubes with fine netting then when i filled them with water it would allow the water to get into the compost/soil but it wont let any soil back into the tubes, so once the water in the tubes has been soaked up then the tubes would be empty and air would be able to move in the tubes and should put air into the compost and the roots,

would this be some thing that might work, im just trying to think of ways of improving a soil grow, i will be going back to soil after ive given the dwc scrog a try, unless the dwc scrog is worth the risk then ill keep down the hydro root, i just dont want a pro looking set up, the more basic it looks the better ill feel and the less risk im taking, if i had a full hydro set up then its not just some dirt in a pot with a seed planted in it, hydro would mean ive thought about what im doing and got the equipment needed, but i am giving hydro a try as soon as these last plants have flowered, cant wait to get it set up and i hope i get some great results like teSmp and fish cake,

 

[fish cake]

do you use peat moss in your mix?

 

[gittergreen]

I grew a plant out from bag seed that was given to me, and it ended up being a auto flower. I thought cool, Im going to have some smoke
before fall harvest. Well it started out as female and then turned mostly male. I should of took a photo of it for you guys. It was weird the cola was all female bud with no male flowers on it. It did have a few other branches with female buds, but the rest of it was solid male flowers. I saved the seeds from it and the pollen. I might do an experiment with it.
I let the seeds grow as long as the plant could stand it. I chopped it when it started getting bud rot. If it were me I would harvest the buds that are not seeded when ready and let the pollenated ones finish the job.

 

[donpaul.p]

my compost does contain peat moss, i think thats what most of it is in the compost i buy, i know the john innes is peat moss or if i remember right it was stagnent peat moss, but i could be wrong ive not got the packets anymore so cant check, but it is peat moss based.

i am very tempted to harvest the hempie and leave the 3 branches that are making the seeds, if i left them 3 on it would mean i could remove the main bud as the branches are lower down on the hempie, their the 2 lower branches, so i could leave them 3 and remove the rest, i just didnt want to risk getting bud rot or risk making it go hermie by harvesting half the plant,

i just thought would a pollenated plant go hermie, surely it goes hermie when its stressed so that it produces seeds to continue the plants life cycle, so if these buds are seed set then would this mean it dont go hermie, could this apply to the whole plant, so 1 branch was seed set then would this stop the rest of the plant going hermie, not that i got many plants going hermie, i just started thinking as they go hermie to reproduce but would a plant that has all ready started seed production go hermie or would it no longer go hermie as it dont need to.

im also trying to make a super male, not sure if you have all heard of them, but ive been reading for a while that if you can get a male plant to go hermie and then this gives us a super male, or the pollen from the hermie used on a fem then any male plants it produces from seeds is a super male, problem is im not even sure what use a super male is, its just something i read and asked about a while a go, not many people have seen or heard of males going hermie as most growers dont grow males, but im growing my 2nd male so i can get pollen from it, i want the pollen from the ak47 cross uk cherry cheese so i can get seeds from the same strain when i put the pollen on the fem of that strain, i never kept the kiwi seeds male after using pollen but i was going to see if i can make this male go hermie.

 

[donpaul.p]

i know it takes around 3 weeks to make sure the seeds are viable and ready to be collected, problem is im not sure how long ago i pollenated it, ill have to flick back through my journal and see when that was.

on the buds that are making seeds some of the calyx are really swollen and a few look like their bursting as they have a slit up the side of some of them and i can see something white in the slit, this is either the seed or the skin of the calyx stretching and going thin, i did cut one open and found a soft white seed that squashed with little pressure, but this was from a small calyx lower down than where i put the pollen, so i think the seeds further up the bud should be further along than that one

 

[spring2012]

DP,
Great info! Looks like I will stick to my 18/6 schedule for my Autos. When I start some non autos in a few weeks I will give GLR a try. You have some cool ideas with the tubes in soil. I would love to see it work. Sounds like a slight mix of Hydro and soil. Maybe a bit of both worlds that give the best to the plant?

With my FF oceans I mixed 30% perlite. It may even be closer to 40%. Stays very airy and lite. I have no problems with total soil being moist. Seems to dry going down. The issue I have is it stays to moist. Now that the babies are getting bigger they are drinking more. So maybe the problem is fixed. Not sure if that helps or not for ya!

 

[Xlr8]

thanks everyone,

i dont think their is any slow release nutes in my compost, most of it i buy cheap at around £1 per bag so its nothing special, but some of its john innes and the other is peat or something like that, no perlite in it but it does drain fast, how ever i emptied my grow room today and mixed up some bpn magic and im trying something i spoke to corey about and im not having problems yet, but i took all the plants out and i used to pour water onto the top of the soil and let it soak in, but i found it was not soaking in it was just running through channels in the compost and out the bottom, so i got a spray bottle and i spray the top of the soil now so its all soaked in, but today when i sprayed it i scraped back the top inch and under the top inch it was dry, its as if the water is not soaking into the soil but sort of stopping in the top layers, so i poked some holes down into the soil and poured more water in making sure it was all moist.

so clearly i have some problems, this is possibly why my soil grown plants dont do so well, now im not even sure what to do to fix this, im thinking a mix of compost and perlite might be what i need, so once these plants are out the way and im setting up the scrog ill get some perlite and compost and mix my own batch for my next soil grow.

ive flipped the hps to flower now, all my plants are now under 12-12 so i can get them out the way and give the dwc scrog a try, the plants ive been vegging are about 1ft high, so these are now going to flower and wont be to long before i give a scrog a try, plus these plants have been vegged under glr so they should start to flower quickly, so at least now im not taking plants out the grow room and putting them somewhere dark to flower as the hps was set to glr schedule,

im waiting to harvest this reseva privada sour kush, its ready and all the trichs are cloudy with a few amber, but its making some seeds, i did check one of the seed pods to make sure their is seeds inside and their are, but the pod i checked was small and the seed was white, so clearly that seed was not ready, now im not sure how i can check without damaging the seeds, if their ready then they wont be damaged but if their not and i open the pod and its not ready then that seed is no good to me, some of the pods are starting to split open so i think the seeds in these pods are nearly ready, but my problem is that the plant is not all seed set, just 3 big bud sites are pollenated so the rest of the plant is not pollenated, so do i harvest the part of the plant thats ready with no seeds or is it best to wait till the seeds are ready and harvest it at the same time.

my ak47 cross uk cherry cheese is in flower now as well and ive got a male of the same strain as i want more seeds of this strain, so i clipped all the branches off the male and left just the top 2 sets of branches so they can give me some pollen, then ill be getting some more seeds of this strain as its a good strain to have, i may even put a bit of pollen on 1 of the autos as well, but im not sure if the seeds it makes will still be auto.

my thinking is this, the auto is clearly an auto, and if i cross it with a none auto then this should weaken the auto side of the strain, so the seeds should still be auto but a weaker auto strain, so would this make it grow longer like a none auto plant and still have the auto trait, i know it takes a lot of back crossing to get a new strain, but would the resulting seeds be auto or not

Hey buddy!

Seeds take about 35 days to mature once pollinated. Do you know when it was pollinated (sorry if I missed that). If the rest of the plant is ready, I'd harvest it and not harvest the seeds until that 35-40 day from pollination point.

Sorry, I don't know much about breeding autos (by much I mean squat, zilch, nada, bupkis). I think BID does perhaps?

Hope things are well across the pond!

 

[Xlr8]

i know it takes around 3 weeks to make sure the seeds are viable and ready to be collected, problem is im not sure how long ago i pollenated it, ill have to flick back through my journal and see when that was.

on the buds that are making seeds some of the calyx are really swollen and a few look like their bursting as they have a slit up the side of some of them and i can see something white in the slit, this is either the seed or the skin of the calyx stretching and going thin, i did cut one open and found a soft white seed that squashed with little pressure, but this was from a small calyx lower down than where i put the pollen, so i think the seeds further up the bud should be further along than that one

Oops, I didn't read ahead to see you don't know the pollination date. Sounds like they may need a couple more weeks to me - maybe slightly less.

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks for the help spring2012, ill give it some thought, im liking the tubing idea so might give that a try after ive tried the dwc scrog, ive got no compost left so need to get some supplies in for my next soil grow, but it will be after ive given the dwc scrog a try, ill be harvesting the reserva privada sour kush tonight at some point so ill leave the branches that are in seed production on the plant.

i have also taken the ak47 cross uk cherry cheese out of the hps room as the sacs are ready to open and spread pollen so the male has gone into his own room with natural light just to ripen and get me some pollen, then i can keep that strain going as its such a nice strain to have, not even seen them seeds for sale they was totally free, i came across this site that gives packs of 10 seeds away for free every couple of months, they even pay the postage and you dont need to buy anything, you just have to wait till their running the offer and apply, and its first come first serve, but i got talking to the owner of the site and he sent me the seeds anyway, they wasnt in a breeders pack it was a regular jiffy bag with ak47 x uk cherry cheese written on it, a lot of the seeds turned out male but the ones that did turn out fem was amazing.
so i planted my last 2 seeds, and i got a bit of luck as one is a female and the other is a male, so these will be used to make seeds only, the female is in the start of bud production and the male is the same age and has got sacs all over it waiting to open, so the male is now in his own place and ill catch the pollen and cover the fem in it, im thinking about shaking the male over the fem plant and that should cover it enough to get me plenty of seeds of this strain, i might even put some pollen on one of the autos and see what happens

 

[donpaul.p]

thanks x, i was told it takes 3 weeks from polenation till the seeds are ready, i think its been around that time now, ill check back through my journal, the seed pod i checked was a small one lower down the bud, the pods at the top of the bud and just under the top are a lot bigger and the sides of these pods look like their about to split open, so im thinking the seeds are more ready their than the pods lower down, if i can get a handful of seeds then ill be very happy indeed

 

[CanuckGal]

I never thought about making sure the seeds developed properly. Bt it totally makes sense.

This is why I come here, I learn something new everyday!

 

[donpaul.p]

im always learning, plus the more i learn the more i can use in my grow, plus it lets me be a bit creative and add my own spin on things, if it works it works if it dont then it dont, live and learn, if you dont try then you never know, why always wonder when you can jump in and give it a try, your not sitting their thinking what if then, plus if it works then its a huge bonus if it dont then you know not to do it again, but thats life

 

[miwa]

I use sunshine mix #1, what's the difference between 4 and 1? I had good results with #1. Oh and I was in the states today and noticed there's a hydro shop right off the bridge!! I saw a big billboard advertising fox farm products, meant to stop in before I came back to Canada but I forgot, I'm super pumped to check this place out. Will probly buy my next soil there, maybe my light tracks, I could easily spend thousands of dollars in a good hydro shop, hardest part is, not feeling guilty afterwards

Mix 4 has the same things in it..you will have to ask the store what the difference is my store only had the mix 4 ...you should have went in that store...i use fox farm nutes for my pots and technaflora for my hydro...both good products...

 

[GigaGrew]

YAY another journo caught up on, lol i also tend to help newbs with no posts and i read every single bloody word of every journal ive ever commented or liked in, so with all the waffle it really does take me an age to catch up if real life gets in the way, lol...

ok few things.

newspaper IS a growing medium...its high carbon undigested compost when you think about it
add perlite for drainage issues
add vermiculite for water permiation and retention.
use a tiny bit of dish soap (washing up liquid) to help your water be wetter if you have dry spots.

err there was more but it seems to have fell into a memory hole....running parity check on all addresses, will get back to you