Jon's First New Digs Grow
- Thread starter Jon
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Scottay
Well-Known Member
Heya Jon!!! Good to see you back at it buddy!! Can't wait to see them grow up!! You're in Pennsylvania now right!?!? Happy Sunday!! 
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- #23
No the DGs didn’t pop and the WWCs both came out perfectly so I went with the two best sprouts. Two WWCs it is!
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- #24
Let’s see. That’s about 95 grams per gallon. So the challenge is to get basically 500 grams from a five and 700 from the seven? That’s pretty good man. I am not set up as you see here to take on that challenge. But certainly it can be done and I’ve done it. I ain’t competing with you cuz I’ll get dusted, but come spring I will have an entire 5x5 of coco autos with Cyco. In that grow I’ll gladly take that challenge on. Appreciate the push.Aww shit, I didn't get tagged Jon
New test for you - I'll bet you can't get 25g/L of bud in coco
I do
I see the weather is a bit freaky over there, stay safe dude
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- #25
Oh this was a direct challenge. I see. My man, I’ll be dead honest. I know your skills and when it comes to growing autos in coco with nutes, you are better than I am. That said, I also don’t scare very easy (lose your legs - you won’t either, lmao). So - fine. Done. If you can set it up timing wise, I’ll take you on. We are getting ahead of ourselves, but assuming we do the same size space, both use coco, both use nutes (obviously), and both use the same seeds from the same breeder, it makes no difference to me what the strain is. However, as the Skywalker (at least in my experience) is done faster than Kush, I’ll be glad to go Skywalker. You choose. Fair enough?
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- #26
So here we are.
Day One
Two Watermelon Wedding Cakes have found the light. Even better - neither one has to have a seed coat removed. Yay.
Day One
Two Watermelon Wedding Cakes have found the light. Even better - neither one has to have a seed coat removed. Yay.
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- #27
So @Azimuth - question for you. I’ve been top dressing the EWC historically throughout my organic grows, as you have seen. Now I’ve incorporated Bat Guano into my soil mix (the still temporary soil mix). But the bat shit is 4-3-0. It has more N and more P by far than EWC. So the question is, would it be advisable to alternate my top dressing between the EWC and the Bat Guano? If I have had deficiencies in my mix they seem primarily centered around N and P, and this would seem to be a logical solution, at least in this poor man’s soil mix. ??
I'm not competing with you Jon - I've seen what you can do too
What I'm trying to work out is whether bigger grows are worthwhile in terms of efficiency
Only way to test that is yield divided by pot size and total wattage used
Sounds complicated, but bear with me...
12 week grow = 84 days
200w x 18h per day = 3.6Kw x 84 = 203.4Kwh
If I used 5L pots and harvested 5oz that would equate to appx ratio of yield [oz]/Litre [of coco]/Watts of 1:1:40
Does that make any sense? Anyone? @ProfessorFlora
I will be running Frosted Guava & Super Kush
SnoopingAsUsualI
Well-Known Member
Looks more patriotic than practical, but I like that setupHi guys. After my seemingly endless moving experience and all related bullshit (which I’ve learned never actually ends, lol) I am ready to get back to it, at least in limited fashion. I had gargantuan plans for this grow, but alas, they were not meant to be. Instead that happens in the spring. For now, I can at least present a little transition grow, which brings us to here.
First, some personal thoughts. This period of time of not growing, for the first time since I started, was killing me. I hate not growing. It was on my mind every day. It may truly be an addiction for me, and I know I am not alone. What I can say is that literally the moment I dropped the seeds into a glass of water, I began to feel better. Less stressed. More relaxed. Life has begun again.
So here’s the skinny on the grow.
Strain: Watermelon Wedding Cake XXL Autoflower
Genetics: Watermelon Zkittlez X Wedding Cake
Breeder: Growers Choice
Pot Size: One 7-gallon and one 5-gallon
Medium: Amended organic soil (FFOF base) in upper part of pots, California Super Soil in lower part of pots
Amendments: EWC, Kelp Me Kelp You, Wholly Mackerel, Bokashi, Frass, Coco, perlite, Bat Guano, Great White
Space Size: approximately 3’6” x 3’6”
Light: 420h
Since I am unable to use my huge garage space until the spring, I was forced to get a little creative. So I set up my space in my secondary room upstairs, right off my bedroom. I utilized the existing window well, blacked out the window and space as shown below, set up the light and such, and started mixing soil. That was right after I got here-ish, and the soil has been “percolating” since then.
Here you can see the grow space, the nutes table setup, and the strain. These photos are taken from the couch opposite the grow space.
I dropped the seeds in water two days ago. 24 hours later I transferred them to the tried and true paper towels, and this morning I planted the sprouts in both pots. Unlike many, that is when I turn on my light. I believe the sprout can “see” or “feel” it, and it helps them come up effectively. Silly? Perhaps. So I’m calling today Day Zero. Day One will be when they sprout.
The WWC is my favorite plant to grow and the one I’ve grown the most. In my experience it is the most dependable and consistent auto genetic I’ve found. However, this is the first run with organics. I know what I may be looking at in a 5 and a 7, and I will end up turning the light up and lowering the pots from what you see above. At the moment the light is around 50% power and the sprouts will see their first light at 550 ppfd, my preferred starting point in terms of light level. I am going to train both the same way, which is into a ten cola plant. I will use only the first four nodes and the two I’ll get from topping above node four. Easy peasy. No fireworks or experiments or competitions or bullshit. Just hopefully solid growing and I’ll display each step I take for what it’s worth.
Good to be back guys. I didn’t tag anyone as instead I just attached this to the last journal, still open. That way I forget nobody. Lol. Thanks for your interest and for stopping by.
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- #30
Ah! Well that’s 1000x better! Yeah, sure that makes sense. But perhaps it would be helpful to define exactly to what you refer in terms of “efficiency.” Cuz to my eyes there are any number of ways to test efficiency. By yield. By coin spent. By wattage. By whatever. Per whatever. What I am hearing is the same thing we all wonder - where’s the damn sweet spot? How many colas of what strain per size of container, taking into account training style, medium, etc, is the maximum efficiency, where quality and yield are perfectly balanced and all is right in the world. Is that what you’re wondering?
Me too. Lemme know when you have the algorithm worked out please.- Thread starter
- #31
In my experience it’s a good sign, autos or photos, to have nice, solid, appropriately green seedlings pop out of the ground. This is exactly what a healthy one day seedling of this particular strain is supposed to look like. Which is a bit Captain Obvious I know, but dig this: with the extra curing time for the upper pot soil above the California Super Soil this time, I am postulating that the upper pot is in possession of part of a more well developed crobe colony than in my previous attempts with this temp soil set up. What I had seen before at times was the upper soil doing “okay” and then the plant finding another gear when it got established and hit the good stuff at the bottom. Well, that’s not acceptable. And I thought (right or wrong) that at least a large part of the answer was the age of my prepped upper soil. I was basically staring it within a week of mixing it. This time I let it go three weeks, dark and warm and damp. That’s a significant difference and if these are my indicators du jour, it appears it had a positive effect. Or not. Or I’m just trying to build myself back up after a time away from growing and still finding the groove.
Edit: note that this WWC begins life on day one with already fuzzy stems.
Edit: note that this WWC begins life on day one with already fuzzy stems.
Chuckeye
Well-Known Member
May I ask @Jon, how did you establish your starting light level of 550 par ?
Most of my searching recommended 200 - 400 for seedlings....
I'm growing with a new LED light, loving it so far but working on "how much" is enough !
Started at 9000 lux/200par and slowly over two weeks moved up to 26865 lux /400 par.
Bars are currently ~16" above plant height and 25% power.
My early starter (vigorous one day ahead) is exhibiting the same stretch I'm used to seeing under my HID light but the rest are definitely staying shorter, ie., short node spacing. Everything else seems to be as it should....
Much like my nutrients, I'm sneaking up on what it should be
Thoughts ?
Cheers
Most of my searching recommended 200 - 400 for seedlings....
I'm growing with a new LED light, loving it so far but working on "how much" is enough !
Started at 9000 lux/200par and slowly over two weeks moved up to 26865 lux /400 par.
Bars are currently ~16" above plant height and 25% power.
My early starter (vigorous one day ahead) is exhibiting the same stretch I'm used to seeing under my HID light but the rest are definitely staying shorter, ie., short node spacing. Everything else seems to be as it should....
Much like my nutrients, I'm sneaking up on what it should be
Thoughts ?
Cheers
That's a good question. I don't rely on the worm castings for any of the NPK inputs, although they do bring some of that along, but very gently as you indicate. For me, the castings are more for their microbes.
What I do on a weekly basis is a topdress mix with a number of other inputs, including many of my crumbles as well as some of the calciums and bonemeals, etc. I do 1 teaspoon per gallon and then add 1 Tablespoon per gallon of microbes in the form of castings to break down that topdressing and then mist it all in well. For you, it might be some blend of the amendments you added to your soil before cooking to help "top them up" over the coarse of the grow.
If you're getting deficiencies then you'll obviously need to up your topdressing game if that's how you want to address it. Not all castings are the same which is why making your own will be so advantageous since you'll be able to add specific things to boost the nutrient content of them. For example, I've recently starting adding spent flowers (daylily, peony, etc) for their P value both to my worm bins as well as my topdressing mix. I figure if I supply them in various forms, the plant and the microbes will figure out how to best utilize the resource.
At some point I may experiment and see if I can get away with just using worm castings, but by adding the amendments in a separate topdressing it allows the opportunity to have different mixes for different stages, veg vs flower, etc. without having multiple worm bins. I haven't gotten that sophisticated yet and it's producing deficiency free plants so it seems that I'm not over/under doing it at my current usage rates.
If you haven't read The Rev's TLO book(s), they're worth a gander. I have both the 2nd and 3rd editions and they differ a bit in what he recommends. The second edition has more topdressing recipies for different stages, and in the third version he simplifies things even more, but gives more soil recipies.
But, to answer your question directly, I think you would have some success alternating your weekly castings with the bat guano. Your's is from insect eating bats most likely and maybe in flower you switch to guano from flower nector sipping bats or seabirds for more of a P/K input vs N that you used in veg.
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- #34
Hey @Chuckeye - thanks for the question. I arrived at that number based on observation and a bit of Jon logic. I also find those same numbers for starting seedlings and so I started that way. And all I got was stretch city almost every time. I figured it had to be related to the light level. Only everyone I asked said roughly the same as you say above. (Guess there’s only one internet, or idiot net as I call it, lmao). So here’s the Jon Logic part. Half the weed education you get off the net is bro science and the other half (to me) is way way too conservative. I think about pot growing in the wild, as it did for millenniums before we started growing it on purpose. Fairly certain those seeds popped out into full sunlight. So by midday they’re getting blasted with what, roughly 2000 or so ppfd? Ever measure your outdoor environment in the morning? You’re at 200-400 ppfd by 8 am in most places or higher. Well, if it worked forever that way, why am I starting seedlings at 200-400? So I started experimenting and going as high as necessary until I stopped getting stretched out seedlings. After a while I settled between 500-600 (ie, 550, lol), and ever since ive had no issues. So that’s how it came to be. For what it’s worth.May I ask @Jon, how did you establish your starting light level of 550 par ?
Most of my searching recommended 200 - 400 for seedlings....
I'm growing with a new LED light, loving it so far but working on "how much" is enough !
Started at 9000 lux/200par and slowly over two weeks moved up to 26865 lux /400 par.
Bars are currently ~16" above plant height and 25% power.
My early starter (vigorous one day ahead) is exhibiting the same stretch I'm used to seeing under my HID light but the rest are definitely staying shorter, ie., short node spacing. Everything else seems to be as it should....
Much like my nutrients, I'm sneaking up on what it should be
Thoughts ?
Cheers
- Thread starter
- #35
Ha. As usual your answer is exceedingly detailed and helpful. Yeah I have no intention of using this forever. I’m in process of acquiring long term soil ingredients now for the four month “real” soil. I’m okay with the lesser top dressing method for this grow. While I’m also equally certain I’ll never do my own worm farm and such, in the future I’ll be trying for a mix to eliminate the need for constant top dress. But yes, to this exact question, what you suggested at the end was exactly what I intended to do. I realize my base has plenty to get her to flower. Then we’ll see if the bat shit helps. Thanks man.
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- #36
Btw - the advantage I find in starting them there is that then you can just let the plant grow up into higher par numbers. I have found beginning there saves me a ton of time messing with light levels and such. I generally won’t adjust it until flower.
Chuckeye
Well-Known Member
Thanks @Jon !
That's kinda what I did with my HID light, start at 50% and 30".
Right now @400 par and two weeks my girls look plump and green but with drooping leaves ?
I'm used to them looking more perky ?
An hour into lights on the temp is 77.2 and rh 51%.
Lights out without humidifier running was 71.4 and 61%....
Cheers
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- #38
I went to your place re: the leaves.
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- #39
Day 5
Plants aren’t particularly worth showcasing just yet, lol, but I did take an action today worth showing and sharing my reasoning. Part of my “process.”
Today I finished topping the pots. Meaning I filled in the edges up to the finish level. The pots now look like this:
Here’s how the two babies are, and as always, I continue to be amazed at the difference in growth rate of autos in organic soil vs coco with nutes. They simply would be significantly, noticeably larger at day five in coco with chem nutes. No comment on quality just sheer rate of growth. But they’re happy and healthy so far and the first set of leaves is beginning to emerge.
So why do it after five days? Why not top the pots as soon as you can? My thinking is this:
It takes a few days before the plant has finished whatever stretching it’ll do and establish the cotys and first set of non leaves, as you see here. Until then, I really don’t know for sure if I may have to bury a stem a half an inch or anything like that. So I fill the pot 90-95% to begin, and the let the seed sprout from a “hill” in the middle where I want the top of the soil to end up. Then, once established to the point I show today, which is usually right around day five or maybe four, depending on the strain and medium and light and such, I “finish top.” For organics and since we are talking in the few handfuls of dirt, not near a half gallon even, I simply use the FFOH, as it comes. It’s prettier to look at than my soil mix using the same FFOH as a base. And it’ll take the EWC and such, at least the very first time, better than my perlite heavier and amended mix.
As usual, part Jon logic, sort of slightly an esthetic thing, but to me, also part of reading a plant out of the gate and responding to it as an individual thing. If that makes sense.
Have a great weekend guys. Go Phillies and send the stinking Mets home for game three down 0-2.
Plants aren’t particularly worth showcasing just yet, lol, but I did take an action today worth showing and sharing my reasoning. Part of my “process.”
Today I finished topping the pots. Meaning I filled in the edges up to the finish level. The pots now look like this:
Here’s how the two babies are, and as always, I continue to be amazed at the difference in growth rate of autos in organic soil vs coco with nutes. They simply would be significantly, noticeably larger at day five in coco with chem nutes. No comment on quality just sheer rate of growth. But they’re happy and healthy so far and the first set of leaves is beginning to emerge.
So why do it after five days? Why not top the pots as soon as you can? My thinking is this:
It takes a few days before the plant has finished whatever stretching it’ll do and establish the cotys and first set of non leaves, as you see here. Until then, I really don’t know for sure if I may have to bury a stem a half an inch or anything like that. So I fill the pot 90-95% to begin, and the let the seed sprout from a “hill” in the middle where I want the top of the soil to end up. Then, once established to the point I show today, which is usually right around day five or maybe four, depending on the strain and medium and light and such, I “finish top.” For organics and since we are talking in the few handfuls of dirt, not near a half gallon even, I simply use the FFOH, as it comes. It’s prettier to look at than my soil mix using the same FFOH as a base.
And it’ll take the EWC and such, at least the very first time, better than my perlite heavier and amended mix.As usual, part Jon logic, sort of slightly an esthetic thing, but to me, also part of reading a plant out of the gate and responding to it as an individual thing. If that makes sense.
Have a great weekend guys. Go Phillies and send the stinking Mets home for game three down 0-2.
Hi, it looks as if you've planted your seedlings close to the side of the pot. Have you or is it an optical illusion? If you have, why have you done that?