First Grow - 2 x Small Closet - 300W LED For Flower - CFL For Veg

[St0ner]

Hello everybody and welcome to both my first grow and my first journal!

First off I would like to thank everybody for taking the time to read my journal and help me on my way to growing some awesome bud!

As most beginning growers would have before me, I've done a lot of online research but there is so much to learn and in many cases very different opinions. To get better feedback on my own personal grow (read - what I'm doing wrong), I thought it would be a good idea to start a journal. Maybe it will also help some other people with similar setups.

What strain is it?
Bagseed

If in Veg... For how long?
My veg cabinet started veg 2 days ago.

If in Flower stage... For how long?
The flowering cabinet started flowering 24/06

Soil or Hydro?
For the first 2 plants now flowering I used garden soil from garden centre mixed with about 30% perlite and 30% peat moss.
The clones were rooted in jiffy pellets.
Then put in soil, potting mix from garden centre. doesnt say what exactly is in it but has a fair bit of bark, mixed in some perlite and peat moss.
I still really want to improve on my soil but it;s proving much harder then i expected to find a descent potting mix that doens't contain either a load of bark or slow releasing ferts. Haven't gone to a hydro store yet but its a fair drive.

If soil... What size pot?
Flowering plants are in 1 gallon pots.

Size of light?
300W LED for Flowering.
5 x 18W + 4 x 24W CFL for Veg. (closet is 38cm x 88cm)

Temp of Room/cab?
Flower: 25-30c lights on, 18-24 lights off varying with colder and hotter weeks.

PH of media or res?
+/-6

How often are you watering?
When the top 2-3cm of soil feel bone dry. Usually every 2-3 days.

Type and strength of ferts used?
Thrive All purpose for veg. started with quarter strength, but a bit too soon, burned the tips a bit but recovered just fine after a couple plain waterings. Worked up to half strength, every 2 out of 3 waterings. Started giving Thrive tomato food (because i had it laying around) about 1.5 weeks into flower, npk is about 2.5-1-3, every second flowering, the other watering I'm giving this Debco ProVita Effervescent Fertilizer, Instant boost plant food fertilizer, Vegetable & Herb - High Yield formulation. It says 5-5-9-3. Not sure about this but it looked good and I just couldnt find any ferts with the npk ratios i was looking for at any garden centres.

Any topping?
I FIMMED both flowering plants, or at least i attempted... once, not sure when exactly.

Ok, I think that covers most of the basic info, next I will post some pics.

Here are my first two bagseed plants. Had five seeds, two germinated and guess what, just found out they are both female!
Here they are just after I switched to flower. didn't want to wait for them to grow taller as I didn't know what sex they were. I took 4 clones off each 4 days before the switch.

This one is looking just perfect i think... ?

This one however has been a weird looking plant from start. Not sure if its because of dna, stress or something else. But it did get an ant nest in its pot as a seedling ( had no lamps yet so was just sitting outside). When i found out i transplanted but had to actually wash all the soil off roots because the ants were nested inside the rootball, hundreds came out. They must have done some serious damage down there.
So far even the clones from this plant are showing new mutated growth.

These are the clones I took a bit over 2 weeks ago.

And the temporary tub I rigged up for em. Worked just perfect!

Here is the new veg closet i built from an old cupboard. Intake and outtake fan, both VERY silent. Outtake fan adjustable with little switch on top of cupboard (L-M-H), hooked up to a random 9v adapter. Also wanted a sort of inconspicuous lock on it. Lights are stationary but shelf goes up and down. I put boxes over the fans to stop light leaks and it muffles the noise a bit more to. Still need to get a couple small desk fans but its winter and there is no stock anywhere... I'll have to order some online...

Here is a better shot of the seedlings 2 days after being put in the new closet. I had them down low for a day first and then moved them up.

And a couple shots of my flowering plants today, just over 2 weeks since switch. The mutated one actually showed its first pistil on day 7, the other one took another 5-6 days, but is showing some nice early flowers now (i think anyway...) I'm really loving the look of this one. I am thinking the nice one has a fair bit of sativa because the leaves aren't very wide, but then it really is growing very short and bushy...?

So that's what I have for now!

Again thank you for taking the time to read my journal and please let me know your thoughts and feedback!

Happy growing everybody!

 

[St0ner]

Hmm, no much happening here yet... I guess a couple of questions I would have is...

Any idea what is going on with that mutated plant? Anybody here seen this before?

Should I really worry about getting some proper nutes online or is it not that big a deal since my soil already holds some nutes and ferts?

Is that CFL setup gonna be enough for veg? I guess if they just grow a bit slower I wouldn't mind to much since the flowering plants will take longer anyway and I want to have a bit of a rotational system going. I just don't want them to stretch to much or be unhealthy.

What does my soil look like to you? Would this make a big difference if improved on?

Also since I use a soil mix, should I use these chemical nutes or better to use other fertilizer, and what? I don't want to have to go and buy 10-15 bags of stuff, but if there is a system with 2-4 ferts or something... I just keep getting very confused when looking up about ferts and nutes for soil grow. What, how much, when...? Not everything being available everywhere and different brands everywhere don't make thing any easier...

Anyway, I really hope I'm gonna get some feedback here soon!

Thanks guys.

 

[Pigeons420]

Hey st0ner! I found you!


Looks like heat stress going on. That's what's making be leads curl into a taco. Aka "tacoing"

As for nutes. If you can't find anything in your area. Then look online. It doesn't need to be anything sophisticated. Just need a nute for veg and a nute for bloom (flower)

As for your CFLs. They are perfect for veg! A lot of growers including myself, use CFLs for the entire veg process for efficiently and economy. They're cheap and effective. Having the LED ready for flower is a great idea. You could get away with running both CFLs and LED.

Your soul looks good. I see a little perlite in there with a bit of mulch and peat. So it looks good. You do want to start looking for those nutes though. You'll need hem right away.
Again doesn't need to be anything crazy. Just a couple bottles. (Dont use my line of nutes (Green Planet Nutrients)as a beginner)) I learned this the hard way. Paid about 400$ for all my nutes. Great investment but I could have gone a cheaper route.

You've got it going on here St0ner! Keep it up! Your gonna have bushes in no time!

 

[Pigeons420]

His is my line in its entirety. It was entirely to much for me to start with but I learned a lot about nutrients and dosing by starting out big. I think I really made things a bit complicated for myself by starting with this. But I have no regrets. Love em

 

[St0ner]

Thanks Pigeons420!

Been trying to get back to you with some photos, finally got some time so they are uploading now

I'm adding some fans for air circulation, trying to make pc fans do it but they don't seem very effective making much 'wind'. I'll sort this out when i get some cash to order some desk fans online, cant find any in stores since its winter here.

Also took a little drive to a hydro store and had a look at the Canna products, when I get the funds I think I might get either the Coco or Terra line, I'd propably then just get all their nutes (there aren't that many and their system looks fairly straight forward) and follow their schedule and instructions, couldn't go wrong that way I'm assuming? I'm thinking the coco might be the best way to go, I've read it gives excellent results comparable to hydro in speed and yield, just wondering what the advantage of the terra would be then? Better flavour/potency maybe?

I also grabbed some pk 13/14 to add to the nutes I'm using for now. Looking at the npk ratios of what I have I think I could mix things up to work good enough untill I can get all the Canna stuff...? Any suggestions here would be nice I'll upload pics with all my nutes.

I've also had some problems with my clones that just started veg, I could really use some advise here. I'll put some photos of this up seperate in another post.

Ok, pics are done uploading so I'll post them in my next post.

 

[St0ner]

So these are the nutes I have, I'm using the tomato one for flowering and I was thinking I could use the Canna ph 13/14 in combination to get a descent npk ratio for flower. I know its not ideal but i'm hoping it will be enough until I can get that Canna stuff.

And here are some pics of my 2 flowering plants today, 19 days since switch.

 

[St0ner]

So as I mentioned my clones have been having a rough time, here is what happened,

when I transplanted the clones I watered with tap water, I tested the ph of the water last about a week ago and it was about 6.5 (it always tested about the same so I stopped testing every time) and after transplanting I tested the soil ph and it read 5.2 ! I tested the water i was using and it was 5.2 . I'll go on about this more later because now that I think about it somehow ph has been really weird thing to deal with for me. So anyway, I had some RO which was 7.0 so I used that to flush until it was about 6.0. I put them in the cabinet and done.

A couple days later the bottom leaves started yellowing rapidly and everything was turning a lighter green color, then the bolder leaves just completely shriveled and died. I assumed this must have been a nitrogen deficiency because of all the flushing with RO so I fed with the thrive all purpose nutes, I started seeing slow improvement and the yellowing of the older leaves now seems to have completely stopped, and most of the leaves are showing a darker green color again.

BUT, as you can see on the photos below, the top growth has this really bright light green color which doesn't seem to be going away. Yesterday I picked up some trace elements with high calcium amounts thinking this might fix it. I gave it a feed of this last night (15mg/litre solution and fed about 600ml over the 8 pots, also a bit worried about overwatering since the soil is still very wet every time I feed like this to fix defficiencies), no change yet but we will see what happens in the next couple days.

 

[St0ner]

Here's a bit more info on the pH problems I've been having, I'm not sure if it's my cheap meter pictured below or if this is normal...

when I test my tap water it reads about 6.2-6.5, if I use lukewarm tap water however (since its winter here and the water out the tap is too cold)) its like 5.2-5.5 , which is what happened when I transplanted those clones because I didn't realize there would be a difference. If I let the warm tapwater sit for a while the ph does go up a bit...

The other very weird thing that happened, is when I mixed up that Trace Elements solution (15g/litre) as the instructions on the box, and this was the lowest ratio recommended) the solution went from 6.2 pH to <3 pH, as low as the meter would go

I added some pH up till it read 5, let it sit for 15 min. and then it read about 6 when i fed it to the plants...

I keep using some light sanding paper on the tip of the probe as it said but I just feel like these readings are all over the place...

 

[St0ner]

So I was trying to set up some more fans in my cupboards and thought I'd share some of the things I found out about pc fans.

All these fans are rated at 12V but that doesn't mean they all run the same at 12V input. I've gone through a few fans I had here, some are in the pics but I've already got 4 built in to the cupboards and discarded others. Also a few adapters I had around, at different Voltages, 5V, 9V, 12V and 15V. The 9V and 12V were what I mostly wanted but harder to find around the house. Modems and routers I noticed often use this range, lucky I kept some old ones...

The small fan laying down in the pic is just from a cheap desktop, and if I hook it up to the 12V it makes A LOT of noise, it does create the strongest wind of all the fans here because it runs at such high rpm, hence the noise. This one only goes reasonably quit on the 5V, but then there is a lot less wind...

The bigger fans are much quieter because the rpm's are lower, but they don't make much wind at all, the one in the photo is hooked up to a 15V adapter and that seems to give me a descent amount of wind and the noise is still considerably less then the small fan on 9V.
So I've set one up now on the 15V but I will hook the other large fan in the pic up to the same adapter (adapter rated 1.0A so it could run 3 fans, most fans use about 0.30A) and set it at the other side of the cabinet.

I also used some tape to direct the airflow a bit better improving the efficiency slightly.

Ideally you could get some universal adapters allowing to adjust voltage, allowing you to control fan speed. I had one of those laying around which is in use in my flowering cabinet.

 

[St0ner]

hmmm, just checked back on the little ones, no improvement so far, doesn't seem to have gotten worse either, but they just don't look very happy. I've got no more seeds so I really hope I don't lose these...

Any tips would be greatly appreciated..

 

[MysterySeeds]

Honestly, I wouldn't feed anything but water to the clones until they're farther along. They all have roots, correct? PH is important in hydro and coco grows, but much less important in soil grows because the soil acts as a pH buffer. I usually fill a large jug with cold tap water and let it sit overnight to evaporate chlorine and reach room temperature. This has worked well for me and my tap pH is at 7. That said, you'll definitely want to pH adjust your nurtient solutions so you're not adding straight acid to the soil.

As for fans, the veg closet only needs a tiny bit of air movement to keep the little ones happy. I keep mine dancing, but that's to keep them short and stocky so I don't have to fiddle with lanky plants in my short flowering tent. If you're looking for shorter plants, keep the CFLs from 2-6" away from the leaves to prevent stretching toward the light.

That's all the time I have now, but I'll be back by to see how things are going and to answer anymore questions.

For a first grow, things look to be doing pretty well. If you're serious about growing good herb in a no hassle soil, check out Doc Bud's High Brix Blend Kit. It costs about $180 for all the soil, EWC, and Doc's kit, but it makes a killer soil that will last many rounds. Check out the instructional link in my signature or head over to Doc Bud's Q & A thread to see what the kit can produce.

Happy growing!

 

[MysterySeeds]

P.S. Remember that the plants you're growing are called "weed" for a reason. Left to there own devices, they will do just fine. Under careful supervision, they will do great!

 

[St0ner]

Thanks MysterySeeds!

I did give them plain tap water for about 2 weeks in the propagator, but when I transplanted them I didn't pH my water and when I tested the soil right after transplanting it was only like 5.5 (My tap water normally tests around 6-6.2, but I've noticed somehow it's lower when I use warm/hot water. I flushed with a lot of rainwater because it had higher pH and I didn't have any pH up around yet. That flushing must have flushed all the nutes out because a coupe days later I had a major nitrogen deff. That was easy enough to fix but I think I stuffed it when I used some of this Trace Element solution from Manutec. it says to add 15-25 gram to 1 litre, so i did 15 gram, and the solution instantly dropped to <3 pH !! Added some ph up but maybe not enough, not sure how exactly it happened but when I checked my soil again yesterday it first read 5.5-6, but the lower I went the pH kept dropping to <5 on the bottom.
So last night I made a 1/4 strength solution with the Thrive all purpose and pH'd it to just over 7, Flushed about 5-6 litres through each pot and this morning they are looking slightly happier, and the new growth looks like it starting to get some color again

You have to look pretty close, but you can see the newest growth starting to get some color again. This photo was taken about 12 hours after flushing.

Really sucks because they looked awesome coming out of the propagator. Fingers crossed we are out of the woods now!

 

[rhetorrikz]

Hi stoner ill tag along

 

[St0ner]

Hi stoner ill tag along

Hi rhetorrikz, welcome to my Journal!

Just checked on the 2 girls in flower and they are starting to get some trichs going I'll have a better camera later today and I'll try and get some nice pics!

 

[Legal Hydro]

Waiting on them pics! Nice grow! Subbed!

 

[rhetorrikz]

Can i ask which led your using in flower?
I have some clones under a 100w t5ho . Ive got some yellowing of the tips thaught it might be light burn after misting them .. ill make sure to double check my ph now that u mentioned the ph difference between your warm and cold tap

 

[St0ner]

Waiting on them pics! Nice grow! Subbed!

Hi Legalhydro, Really happy to have you here!

Can i ask which led your using in flower?
I have some clones under a 100w t5ho . Ive got some yellowing of the tips thaught it might be light burn after misting them .. ill make sure to double check my ph now that u mentioned the ph difference between your warm and cold tap

I'm using a Mars Hydro 300W (around 175W actual draw), I think it's the old model or something. I got it on ebay for just over a $100.
If it's only the tips that are yellowing I would say its most likely nutrient burn. The best thing to do would be to check the runoff water with a ppm or EC meter if you have one of those. You would have to flush the soil if it is too high. Also if you check your soil pH make sure you check it at different depths.

I'm definitely not an expert but from all the research I have recently been doing and my experience so far, that would be my advise.

Good luck with your grow!

 

[St0ner]

Ok, here it is My first trichomes

So I didn't check on them yesterday (I knew they were doing fine and had plenty water), hoping I would see a more significant change instead of checking on them all the time and it looks like nothing happens... It's hard to resist sometimes

And to my great delight I found some frost forming on the buds which wasn't there at all 2 days ago.

21 days since switch

I'm thinking they look really nice but maybe small? I guess they still need to fatten up heaps. Any ideas on how many weeks it would have left? I'm thinking another 4 weeks give or take? Or am I way off?

 

[rhetorrikz]

Most likely way off bro lol. 21days = 3 weeks heaps of time left to fatten up