Jon's Second Grow, First Grow Journal, Soil Grow Autos & Photoperiod

Backlipslide said:
The trick is, is when you feed them, you feed acting like a plunger. When fed like a plunger, it pulls oxygen down with the water. Give my BLT link a read. It should explain that theory a bit better.
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Read your BLT link. Very different methodology compared to Emilya's. I can honestly see either/both working well. It seems to my logic that the BLT method is more applicable once the plants are out of the Dixie cups and into actual pots, yes? Cuz I'm just now starting to water the seedlings to a little bit of runoff. I still want to build out the root ball. For now I'm gonna keep doing the water down the sides of the cup then wet the middle thing as it seems to be working well so far. I may employ this technique on the autos in particular. Interesting read, thanks.
 
Photoperiod: Day 13 Veg
Autoflower: Day 2 Veg

Updates:

Photos - it's been 24 hours since the first feeding of nutes at 50% concentration. No sign of any negative effects on the plants whatsoever. Would it show up that quickly? It did when I overdid it on my first grow, I had yellowing tips the very next day after an overfeeding mistake. Granted this Big Bloom is mild as hell, but it's still a good sign. These girls continue to grow at a lovely rate, the PUC continues to play catch up a little bit, and they are getting closer to transplant. I could transplant now and they'd all be okay, but after conferring with Emilya and others I have decided to not be in a hurry. I learned a bit more about what "root bound" actually means, and I can see I'm not close to that. I'm going to let them work on their root ball a while longer. So basically all good in phototown.

Environment
Temperature: 74-76 degrees
Humidity: 55 - 60 percent

Autos - When I went to wake the girls this morning the tent had ceased to function. The entire tent is on it's own dedicated outlet, and for some reason it had stopped working overnight. Normally this would cause me serious stress. But I sort of planned a bit for this contingency, in case an outlet went. I only had a few minutes to fix it in order to keep the girl's schedule, so I simply plugged the light main and fans main (have the two separated) into a strip and then into the wall outlet inside the house, as there are no more outlets in the garage. I had the strip and extension cord and spot to plug into already on hand and figured out, so it wasn't that big a deal. Problem temporarily solved, woke the girls up, they were fine. I leave the garage door to the outside open enough overnight while they sleep to lower the temperature to a nice cool 66-68 degrees. So the girls were in the dark as intended and the temperature was fine. Only issue was no moving air in the tent for a few hours overnight. BUT - that COULD have been disastrous under other circumstances. So I check the breakers. Nothing popped. But that circuit is out for sure as even the overhead light in the garage is out. Will investigate and fix today.

Also, I made a small mistake I think with these girls in that I think I either planted them a tiny bit too deep or a tiny bit too soon before the emerging tap root was quite big enough. I think that cuz these girls were having a rough first 48 hours getting off the ground. Today they are finally looking like the actual seedlings I kind of expected to see on Day One. I think the root had to play a little bit of catch up. But it appears all is okay now. We'll see how they grow.

A happier update on the autos is that I have gotten notice that the Pineapple Express and Lemon auto seeds will be here by Friday. I'm going to immediately begin the paper towel routine on one of the PE as planned to round out this auto tent. They will only be about a week behind by the time they pop. I can live with it. I may put it up on something in the tent so it's higher than the other plants to try and help her catch up as best I can.

Environment
Temperature: 76-80 degrees
Humidity: 65-70 percent

Below are the girls from each tent as they were when I woke them this morning. I pulled the autos out into non-blurple light for the picture and told them to say cheese.

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Everything is looking happy and healthy over there man! :yahoo:
cant say anything for whether or not nute burn should be showing already. Not much good experience with soil. Those photo girls look nice and lush green though so they’re definitely getting what they like.

Glad you caught that outlet failure. Thats my biggest fear. Something failing and not catching it. Do you know how many outlets are on that circuit? And did all of them go out? I know code here says all exterior outlets including garages, must be GFCI protected. Either at the panel, or in an outlet on the circuit. Yours could be wired a few different ways if your code is similar to ours and it was followed by whoever wired the house you’re in. You could have a gfci breaker, but you said you checked that. you could have the first outlet in the circuit gfci, and the rest daisy chained off that one. Or each outlet be a gfci, which is what we did when building our garage. Good luck with the fix man :high-five:
 
Jon said:
Read your BLT link. Very different methodology compared to Emilya's. I can honestly see either/both working well. It seems to my logic that the BLT method is more applicable once the plants are out of the Dixie cups and into actual pots, yes? Cuz I'm just now starting to water the seedlings to a little bit of runoff. I still want to build out the root ball. For now I'm gonna keep doing the water down the sides of the cup then wet the middle thing as it seems to be working well so far. I may employ this technique on the autos in particular. Interesting read, thanks.
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This method works for plants in small pots like Dixie cups as well, the only thing that changes is the overall quantity of water being pushed through the “pot”. The larger amount of medium, the more amount of water needed to feed to properly feed the full bacon, lettuce, and tomato to all the roots. :thumb:
 
Photoperiod: Day 14 Veg
Autoflower: Day 3 Veg

Hi Folks - and hello @Backlipslide, @Dabeast09, @Michael Hunt, @soGnotSOG,@irocu88, @Virgin Ground, @Tokin Roll, @Farmer Reading, @scrumpdilly - Hey guys I could use your input on this one. A little unsure about transplant timing.

The deal: The Photoperiod plants when I transplant are going from their Dixie cups to One Gallon pots which are already prepared. The five plants are all to work together in a scrog. It is not necessary to transplant them all to the ones at the same time. They can and I guess should be transplanted as they are ready. All that is good.

Let's assume I feel confident about how to do the physical act of transplanting, and let's assume I feel confident in how to water the newly transplanted girl. What I don't know/don't feel confident in is WHEN to transplant. Also potentially relevant is that I have decided to top using "Uncle Ben's method," which basically is waiting for the 5th node to sprout and then topping it there all the way back down to the 2 1/2 point, ie, between nodes 2 and 3. This apparently guarantees four main colas and works very well for scrog grows. I do NOT want to wait til I top before transplanting as some suggest - that just won't be possible with these girls. They will have WAY outgrown the cup by then by any sane and non-extreme-experimental point of view or standard. Lmao. I have read all the stuff and even conferred with a few people who's opinions I respect, and even experienced growers seem to all do it at different times based on what they are trying to achieve. This seems to be a "non-consensus" issue.

There are those in Emilya's camp, which as I understand it is not to transplant my plants yet. The point there is to get the root ball as established as possible and as huge as possible before transplanting. I personally feel like I have watered these girls correctly and have a BANGING root ball going so far - certainly (in my inexperienced opinion) established enough to comfortably transplant based on the pictures. Then there are those who will think my girls should have already gone, or at least three of the five. But what everyone agrees on is not to transplant TOO LATE. Too early - ok, if you must. But definitely not too late.

So that said, below are pictures of the largest plant of my five and the one with the most roots showing, which is the one Blueberry Muffin. I show both sides of the cups and the bottom as well as the overall plant from the side and a closeup of the nodes as best I could get so you can see the insane degree of growth this absolute beast is displaying.
Lol. The two Jelly Ranchers are basically in the exact same place. I am kind of feeling like all three should be transplanted now. The Pineapple Upside Down Cakes can stay in the Dixie cups for now. At least to my inexperienced eye that is how it appears and what I am feeling.

So looking at these pictures, if anyone would please provide their two cents on:

- whether or not I should transplant the three big girls that are like this NOW or if I should wait?
- if I should wait, WHY should I wait and HOW MUCH LONGER should I wait?
- anything else you wish to share that you think might help me in transplant?

I would be MOST appreciative! Thanks VERY VERY much guys. Your help is invaluable.

Other significant note: I decided to screw the blue light treatment on the autos starting this morning. The blue light was really bothering me for some reason. The reds don't affect me the same way and they seemed to help at the end of budding in my first grow. But I never used the blues (VEG) setting. I vegged the plants my first grow start to finish (once they hit the tent from the Dixie cups looking WAY worse than these girls) using both, as suggested by Maxsisun. The blue light also seemed to be doing nothing for the little girls. So I made an executive decision, flipped them on to "full spectrum," (VEG and BLOOM) settings both on on both lights, and of course moved the plants to the floor to accommodate the increase in par level. I still have them being BLASTED with around 650 par, but by now you guys know I'm stupid like that. I also don't care about killing a few baby autos if necessary for the sake of the experiment and gained knowledge. So they'll either take it or they'll curl up and die. We will see. Heh. I'll know by Friday when the Pineapple Express autos arrive, so if these get fried I will simply restart on Friday with the Pineapple Express and maybe the Lemon autos that come with them.

Also, I forget who warned me but they were right. My sleep schedule will not be able to survive this grow without help. Maybe if both tents were on identical lighting and timing schedules. But not with one Photo and one Auto. It's already killing me. I broke down and ordered a timer for each tent which will arrive tomorrow. I got digital ones that are grounded (3 prong into the wall, with three prong into the timer) and easily programmable. I'm scared to use them, but I'm going to. Of course I won't risk these gorgeous Photoperiod girls without testing it first on the common gutter autoflowers tent. :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo: :laughtwo:

Thanks again for your help and participation in my grow!

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I transplant when the leaves go beyond the width of the Solo.
I would transplant now.

Most folks I know just use the veg and bloom right off the bat to give them closer to full spectrum.
Blue gives short ,stocky growth with small leaves and red makes the plant stretch and produce larger leaves. You really want a mix of both.
 
Virgin Ground said:
I transplant when the leaves go beyond the width of the Solo.
I would transplant now.

Most folks I know just use the veg and bloom right off the bat to give them closer to full spectrum.
Blue gives short ,stocky growth with small leaves and red makes the plant stretch and produce larger leaves. You really want a mix of both.
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Thanks for both these. That explains the autos. They were only one or one and a half day big for day three plants I thought and I was wondering why. Already in just almost six hours under full spectrum they are perking up and stretching their leaves out and such. I had the right instinct just didn't know why. They won't stretch tall cuz I simply have too much par hitting them for that kind of stretch. But the plants themselves needed to stretch out and that's what's starting to go on now already. Thanks. And yes, unless someone talks me out of it I am going to transplant today.
 
Being a hydro household over here i have nothing to offer regarding transplanting. But i wish you all the best of luck and I'm sure the others mentioned will have you covered.

Glad to hear you came to your senses about the timers :laugh: . I'd imagine that was probably close to the sleep schedule of newborn parents. Thankfully plants just eat and sleep. They leave that third element to us dirty animals :p
 
Michael Hunt said:
Being a hydro household over here i have nothing to offer regarding transplanting. But i wish you all the best of luck and I'm sure the others mentioned will have you covered.

Glad to hear you came to your senses about the timers :laugh: . I'd imagine that was probably close to the sleep schedule of newborn parents. Thankfully plants just eat and sleep. They leave that third element to us dirty animals :p
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Ha! I thought that was you, just wasn't sure and was too much work to go back and find that one sentence somewhere. Ok. You were right. Lmao!!!
 
UPDATE:

I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER!!!

Today I looked closely at the roots I had going on and I decided (with a little help, lol) to transplant today. The timing was right in terms of the moistness of the pot and the time between waterings. The roots were ready. They had drained 50% by weight of the water I added yesterday in about 14 hours, so I made the (I hope) logical assumption that in 24 -28 hours they'd have drained it. Time to transplant.

If you look back on my setup there were likely a lot of folks laughing at me for the three cup overkill method. It was a pain in the ass to do all the cutting, poking, etc. But it was WELL worth it and it worked like a charm. All I had to do was pull the cup the dirt was in off one side, then the other, then drop it in the hole. I'm pretty proud of this transplant job. I believe I caused these guys the minimal amount of stress they could possibly experience on a transplant. And the plants are LITERALLY already acting like it was nothing and are perked up as if I didn't even transplant. Now, maybe over the next 24 hours I'll see some drooping or whatever, but honestly I don't think that's going to happen. They're laughing at me and asking me what their next house will look like.

So for any new growers (like ME! This was my first transplant ever!) who may benefit from it, here is a step by step list of EXACTLY what I did in the order I did it. I was solo so I had nobody to take pictures and honestly that was my last concern. Transplant takes at least two hands. Lol.

1. Washed my hands
2. Cleared and cleaned my workspace
3. Assembled the materials I needed for the table top to do the transplant
4. Put on gloves
5. Picked my largest plant out of the tent. (It was the Blueberry Muffin by a hair)
6. Took the one gallon pot and dumped out half the soil to another container so that I could fit into the middle the exact same size cup the plants are in.
7. Filled in around the cup and moistened the soil just enough so that when I took the cup out the hole stayed together and did not cave in on itself. This left me with the exactly correctly sized hole for the plant about to go into it. (I got that idea from Emilya and it's a winner by a mile - thanks Emlya!)
8. Gently removed cup to make sure hole stayed together, sprayed a bit of water if it didn't till it did. It did first try every time.
9. Lightly dusted the hole and the sides of the hole with Great White.
10. Picked up plant and removed outer two cups leaving just the cup the plant is in, which was cut completely in half before I ever started just for this purpose.
11. Removed the two sides of the cup very gently so as to not damage any roots and dropped the plant very gently into the prefab hole. The root ball was indeed well established all around. Stayed together like a dream. I had roots all up and down the entirety of the walls of the cup and starting to cover the bottom of the cup just a little, but nothing was wrapped around. I believe I nailed the timing. This was the case with all five plants, which was surprising considering the PUCs are a bit smaller.
12. Watered the top of the soil so the circle of the top of the pot was all wet down to about maybe two inches below the dirt line.
13. WAITED 15 minutes.
14. Watered only along the sides of the pots with the second application of nute water until I got gentle runoff.
15. WAITED 15 minutes.
16. Watered a few shot glasses or so of nute water directly down the stem in the middle to wash/rinse the original root ball a bit, and then hit the entire top once more to gentle runoff.
17. WAITED 15 minutes.
18. Topped the top of the pot with dry soil to even out the stems and such - cleanup/detail work.
19. Moistened that top off dirt just enough to integrate it to the rest.
20. Placed plant, now transplanted, directly back into tent in same conditions it was experiencing one hour earlier.
21. Repeated process for all five plants.

So I took a few pictures of the aftermath. I also lowered the light to 18" above the tallest girl.

If these guys look anything like this in the morning you are gonna hear me jumping up and down out of my wheelchair. Lmao!

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Photoperiod: Day 15 Veg
Autoflower: Day 4 Veg

Photoperiod: This morning was a big morning. I wake the girls at 7 am. That's about 18 hours post transplant. I believe 18 hours, including an overnight, is plenty of time to see any "stress" from transplant that the plants are going through as a result of transplant, yes? That "transplanting will always take the plants a day or two to 'recover' from" theory had me thinking I would wake up to drooping plants at least. At 6:55 am I felt like I was about to ring the doorbell at the girl's house when I picked her up for the prom!

I'm not going to say anything further. Below are four pictures, one of all the girls and one closeup from over top of each one. Please, someone tell me if there is even the slightest sign of stress of any kind. Good luck. Ha! I feel like Superman! (Reality: I probably just got lucky) But this looks like a successful transplant to my eyes.

Autos: I think the autos are over whatever I did in planting them. They are finally beginning to show actual growth. Very slow to get off the ground which again I'm certain is my fault. Not worth a photo of one inch tall seedlings under blurple light. I will post in a few days when they are worth a picture.

I hope y'all enjoy these pics. I consider you all to be a part of this grow and appreciate the interest and help. Thanks. In order, they are:
1. The Girls
2. Blueberry Muffin
3. Jelly Rancher
4. Pineapple Upside Down Cake

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Bill284 said:
Beautiful looking girls. I'd love to follow along and see the action. :thumb:
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Thanks man! You've been doing this a lot longer than me. Am I correct that 18 hours is enough time to see wilting, or drowning, or root damage, or whatever negative signs of stress/damage there would/could potentially be from transplant?

(Notice how you jump in and I immediately start picking your brain? Lol. Thanks.)
 
Jon said:
Thanks man! You've been doing this a lot longer than me. Am I correct that 18 hours is enough time to see wilting, or drowning, or root damage, or whatever negative signs of stress/damage there would/could potentially be from transplant?

(Notice how you jump in and I immediately start picking your brain? Lol. Thanks.)
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Imo your transplant was a complete success. If you are gentle and don't damage anything transplants won't hurt your ladies. I on the other hand am not very gentle with my girls. I like them hardy and vigorous ive lost track of how many girls I have uppotted, but I've never had one stress out and become a problem. Your doing a fantastic job so far. The only thing I could suggest is your watering technique. Have you read watering the blt method in @Backlipslide signature. Water can kill your babies if your not careful.
 
Bill284 said:
Imo your transplant was a complete success. If you are gentle and don't damage anything transplants won't hurt your ladies. I on the other hand am not very gentle with my girls. I like them hardy and vigorous ive lost track of how many girls I have uppotted, but I've never had one stress out and become a problem. Your doing a fantastic job so far. The only thing I could suggest is your watering technique. Have you read watering the blt method in @Backlipslide signature. Water can kill your babies if your not careful.
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Thanks, I appreciate that, and yes, I have read his BLT method thing. Between his methodology and Emilya's (I really like them both, and when you break them down they accomplish the exact same thing) I have developed my own that borrows from both. But that's mostly cuz I work from home, have lots of time, no kids, etc, and I like to obsess over my plants. So watering very slowly and patiently when I do is cool with me. I believe I am creating a banging rootball, or at least I hope so. I get the watering the edges thing. I get the suction vortex thing. I get the circulating the soil/nutes thing. (Caveat: I *think* I understand them, lol). And I *think* I'm doing it right. Til my plants tell me otherwise. Lol.
 
Jon said:
Thanks, I appreciate that, and yes, I have read his BLT method thing. Between his methodology and Emilya's (I really like them both, and when you break them down they accomplish the exact same thing) I have developed my own that borrows from both. But that's mostly cuz I work from home, have lots of time, no kids, etc, and I like to obsess over my plants. So watering very slowly and patiently when I do is cool with me. I believe I am creating a banging rootball, or at least I hope so. I get the watering the edges thing. I get the suction vortex thing. I get the circulating the soil/nutes thing. (Caveat: I *think* I understand them, lol). And I *think* I'm doing it right. Til my plants tell me otherwise. Lol.
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Fantastic my friend. Its important to develop those roots. Your unseen helper.
I use roots excelurator gold once a week on all my girls once a week. It pays in the end.
 
Bill284 said:
Fantastic my friend. Its important to develop those roots. Your unseen helper.
I use roots excelurator gold once a week on all my girls once a week. It pays in the end.
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I hear you. Roots are the infrastructure of your plants. Without them you're wasting your time. I am using Great White periodically for the same purpose. The stuff is rocket fuel.
 
You would see stress by now.
Great job on the transplant!
 
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