Green Knight - Hydro CFL - Auto Bomb - First Grow Journal

Day 25 photo update:
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its looking good mate, its getting big now as well, it looks like yours had shown sex early but stayed in veg slightly longer than mine, i think i have some soil issues myself, i have got a huge 5ft dwc 2ltr hempie, now i took clones from this and rooted them and planted them in soil in pots, now the clones are growing a whole lot slower than the mother plant they came off, so either dwc boosts the plants or i need to mix up a batch of soil with stuff added to it, i just used it out the bag, so clearly their is room for improvement,

your auto bomb looks great though,
 
Looking good sir, way to spot the Mg deficiency early, that is precisely what scares me away from the hydro b cuz one little thing like that would royally piss me off and frustrate the shit out of me. Maybe someday I'll invest some time to learn it, but for now I'll just sit back and watch you do it :) thanks for the pics, she's gonna be a beaut!
 
Thanks everyone; she's really beginning to grow fast. I went away over the weekend and just got back to a nice surprise - she's grown a good few inches in four days and has greened up nicely so it seems the previous problem is fully sorted and she's taking up all the nutes she needs. The bud sites are also starting to become more prominent and fill out a bit.

She's now at Day 29 so almost half way (Bomb seeds say 65+ days) so another month or so and she should be ready. I'm looking forward to the buds properly filling out over the next few weeks, and at the rate she's growing I think a lot could happen over the next few weeks.


Latest pics:
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With the light off:
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donpaul.p said:
its looking good mate, its getting big now as well, it looks like yours had shown sex early but stayed in veg slightly longer than mine, i think i have some soil issues myself, i have got a huge 5ft dwc 2ltr hempie, now i took clones from this and rooted them and planted them in soil in pots, now the clones are growing a whole lot slower than the mother plant they came off, so either dwc boosts the plants or i need to mix up a batch of soil with stuff added to it, i just used it out the bag, so clearly their is room for improvement,

your auto bomb looks great though,
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Thanks donpaul. I think that your soil plants will grow a bit slower than the mother that's in the DWC so it's probably nothing to worry too much about; the plant in the DWC should be getting more oxygen to her roots, as well as a constant supply of nutrients, so the growth rate will probably be a little quicker.
 
grogreen said:
Looking good sir, way to spot the Mg deficiency early, that is precisely what scares me away from the hydro b cuz one little thing like that would royally piss me off and frustrate the shit out of me. Maybe someday I'll invest some time to learn it, but for now I'll just sit back and watch you do it :) thanks for the pics, she's gonna be a beaut!
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Cheers grogreen; it was a little frustrating, but mainly because everything seemed to be as it should be as far as pH etc goes, so it was proving a bit of a puzzle. It is a bit of a learning curve but gets easier as you go on and start getting used to everything. Hydro is a little bit more high maintenance than soil, but not by a lot. I'd definitely recommend it. And if you don't make the mistakes I've made (like trusting your pH meter and not calibrating it!) then you shouldn't hit any major problems and within a couple of weeks you'll be used to everything and then it gets quite easy - 5-10 minutes a day to check everything and top up the reservoir if necessary, and about half an hour a week to change the nutes.
 
big budda said:
Lookin pretty sweet man,nice job..she should be a nice budder to..keep up the good work man.
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I hope so; it would be nice to get a reasonable yield to keep me going until the next one's up and running. I'm interested to see how the CFL performs - I'm happy with it at the moment but it does have less penetration. I think when I scrog the Berry Bomb next grow this will be less of a problem but there's not a lot you can do to autos without stressing them and reducing their yield so the lower bud sites may struggle a bit for light. Might harvest in a couple of goes when the time comes to allow the bottom buds to fill out a bit, but we'll see how things go.
 
damn mate, that plant has grown, im just getting my soil plants out the way then im giving a dwc scrog a try,
 
just flowering off my soil plants then ill be setting it up, not long to go though, im thinking a 3ft by 3ft scrog with possibly 2 plants
 
donpaul.p said:
damn mate, that plant has grown, im just getting my soil plants out the way then im giving a dwc scrog a try,
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When you make your DWC setup will you take lots of pics and do a step by step DIY guide, I'm very interested in trying this but need to see how to make one, since green knight didn't show us how he made his ;)
 
grogreen said:
When you make your DWC setup will you take lots of pics and do a step by step DIY guide, I'm very interested in trying this but need to see how to make one, since green knight didn't show us how he made his ;)
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Ha ha - I copied mine from another system so it's a DWC that also pumps the oxygenated solution into the middle of the root ball.

I used totes because of the way the lid opens - you can open half the lid without disturbing the plant so it makes checking and changing the nutes very easy, but you could also use a cheap bucket with a lid.

If using totes, draw round the top of the net pot to get the size, and then mark a line inside this about 1/4cm. Use a dril and drill round this line, then a Stanley knife to remove fully.
This is the propagating one with space for six
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And here's my flowering one with one half of the lid open:
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All you need to do then is put an air stone in it attached to an air pump, and a small aquarium pump with a piece of hose attached and a smaller hose coming off this (I just used some spare air line from the air pump). Place the seed or cutting in a small rockwool cube in the net pot and surround with clay pebbles. Then push the water hose through one of the gaps in the net pot and up to the rockwool, about halfway up the pot. Both pumps run 24/7, and I covered the top of the tote in Mylar to reflect light and heat. You can see the air line and the cable for the water pump coming out of the side of the tote on the left (there's a small gap so no need to drill a hole or anything)

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Water pump and air stone
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And here's the hose going to the net pot
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Dead easy and quite cheap to make - shouldn't take more than half an hour to put together
 
thanks GK, that does seem easy, maybe I'll try it out with a clone, I already bought all the materials just a matter of throwing it together, I bought the materials so I could make a bubble cloner, but think I might just make it a DWC with one net. Can anyone tell me, what's the best size net to use? The bigger the net the bigger the plant? Is that the way it works?
 
I'm using 3.5cm net pots. I'm not sure if the size makes a huge difference because once the roots have grown out through the pot and into the nutrient solution the reservoir theoretically becomes the pot. I used the same size pot for both of my systems because then once a clone has rooted and vegged I can just transfer the pot straight into the flowering room without needing to transplant to a larger pot.

The only issue I can think of using a small pot is if you're wanting to grow large plants, as the roots growing through a small pot will provide less support to the plant than roots growing through a larger pot, so you may find that you need to support the weight of the plant somehow. Obviously if you're planning something like a scrog this shouldn't be an issue as the net will support the weight of the buds etc.
 
Green Knight said:
I'm using 3.5cm net pots. I'm not sure if the size makes a huge difference because once the roots have grown out through the pot and into the nutrient solution the reservoir theoretically becomes the pot. I used the same size pot for both of my systems because then once a clone has rooted and vegged I can just transfer the pot straight into the flowering room without needing to transplant to a larger pot.

The only issue I can think of using a small pot is if you're wanting to grow large plants, as the roots growing through a small pot will provide less support to the plant than roots growing through a larger pot, so you may find that you need to support the weight of the plant somehow. Obviously if you're planning something like a scrog this shouldn't be an issue as the net will support the weight of the buds etc.
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Makes sense, good info! Think maybe I'll go with a bigger pot just to see what difference it will make, and of course I'll keep you posted :thumb:
 
hightimes4evr said:
Wow :cheesygrinsmiley:
Nice closet setup man :blunt:

I will follow this thread + reps Green Knight!

:peace:
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Thanks hightimes - I really appreciate that. And thank you for finding my journal and following!

I'm really pleased with the set up and now I'm a few weeks in I'm getting used to it all and have ironed out most of the teething problems I had early on so it's getting easier all the time.

I'm just about to do the weekly res change and will then upload some more photos; she's starting to rocket now!
 
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