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Photoperiod: Day 16 Veg
Autoflower: Day 5 Veg
Photoperiod:
A few tweaks, and some realizations/actions. In the picture below you see the girls today on the morning of Day 16. All is well in phototown. You can see their environmental conditions as well which are working very well. I compared yesterday morning's picture to this morning's picture, and you can clearly see the uptick in the girl's growth - not so much size-wise as adjustment to the transplant-wise. I didn't need the picture because I could see it with my eyes, but it helps to compare using photos. They are significantly more perked up this morning than they were yesterday. This is of course what I was hoping to see this morning. The tweaks were just fan position adjustment so that the girls get a steady but not windy diet of moving air and are constantly "jiggling," and the addition of pavers to raise the pots off the overflow trays.
Here is the realization/action (this post is particularly for newbie growers like me who think they've thought of everything and have all their bases covered); You can't have a pot sitting in the water you will have from runoff, even if you vacuum/remove the excess water immediately. The pot and dirt will absorb this water and screw your watering cycle up completely as water pools in the bottom of the pot. Well DUH, right? Not so duh. Especially if, like me, this is your first time using fabric pots. I never thought far enough ahead on this particular topic to anticipate the need to raise the pots from the trays. Thought I was all good. Then as I looked at yesterday's picture it hit me that I needed to raise the pots.
The fix for the one gallons, as you see in the picture, was to simply raise them with pavers, which works well because it allows me to put an extra paver under each Pineapple Upside Down Cake and/or adjust height as desired of individual plants. These two girls are behind the other three in terms of size. I raised them an extra paver because by doing so all five plants are the same distance from the light, with the PUCs being maybe even an inch or two closer. This is my attempt to help them play catch up, lol. The rate of growth the PUCs are exhibiting is what I expected from all the plants, not this incredible Hulk thing the Blueberry Muffin and Jelly Ranchers are exhibiting.
But then I also realized that those same pavers are not going to work for the five gallon pots that will be the girl's next and final home. They aren't large enough to support the base of the pots evenly. So that sent me into research/find out if there's a product for this mode. There almost always is, and it's almost always better than whatever MacGuyver thing one can come up with. If it's within reach financially I often begin there, cuz I figure any question I have, EVER, about a grow has been asked by someone before me. And indeed that was the case. There's a million "raise your container" products out there. I got some plastic 13" round trays with plastic, very sturdy feet underneath that sit inside the round runoff trays and the plants on top of that, allowing a two inch space between the bottom of the pot and the floor of the tent. All the runoff will still go into the bottom round tray. Yay. Problem solved.
The next watering is a regular water dealio, then we begin the addition of the second part of the FF nutrient trio, the Grow Big. Can't wait to see how the girls respond to that. Other than that, for a good while now the girls stay at these environmental conditions as seen in the picture, they grow, and they get themselves ready for a topping sometime very soon.
Autoflowers:
Sometimes you have to make decisions that cause you pain. Lol. I have made one. These autos look the same this morning as they did on day one. No picture cuz there's nothing to show. They aren't moving, as I've already said in earlier posts. It's been five days. At the same time, today I get six more auto seeds in the mail - 3 Pineapple Express and 3 Lemon autos. I was already planning to add one PE to the mix when these seeds arrived. But now I have decided that I'm adding TWO more autos which will hit the paper towels today - one PE and one Lemon. I am going to attempt to sprout them and put them in with the others. That will give me two different strains to compare to the others. Assuming the two new ones come up "normally," (I'll have the others to compare to), they will stay. At that point (this should be around Monday or Tuesday) I will compare them to the four original girls. If at that point I feel the four originals are too stunted or compromised to produce for a plant that is compromised to begin with by it's very nature, I will very hesitantly pull them. I have a strong feeling that is what will happen. Then I will pop the other PEs and Lemons and continue with those 6 total of those two auto strains.
It'll hurt if that is what happens. Not only because of the wasted time/effort, and the waste of $50 worth of seeds, but because of the failure. My first major fail. Not a fan at all. But the one thing I know for sure is that it is absolutely impossible that I got four dud seeds out of four seeds. No way. That means, like in my opinion is always the case, that the autos not getting off the ground is my fault. I screwed up somehow. So I don't dwell. Instead I try to learn from it and figure out what I did wrong so as to not make the same mistake. In this case I believe it is because I was impatient and planted the seeds before the tap root was long enough, and perhaps too deep. But it may well be something else - maybe they don't like the soil, maybe I overwatered them, maybe it's a strain specific problem, etc. So for newbies - when you screw up, don't despair, learn from it. But understand it is NEVER the plant's fault.
Final thought:
I reiterate for experienced growers who wonder why I'm posting such basic information that part of the point of this whole journal is to hopefully provide newbie's like me a look at the process this newbie is going through. I believe I made and make all the common errors new growers inevitably make and I think I do a decent job overcoming them, so the hope is that my experience has some value for new growers. I don't mean to bore any readers who already know this stuff like the back of their hands, like raising up your pot. Duh again. OF COURSE you have to raise your pots. But in growing I have found that not everything that's obvious is always so obvious. Lol.
Happy Growing guys!
Autoflower: Day 5 Veg
Photoperiod:
A few tweaks, and some realizations/actions. In the picture below you see the girls today on the morning of Day 16. All is well in phototown. You can see their environmental conditions as well which are working very well. I compared yesterday morning's picture to this morning's picture, and you can clearly see the uptick in the girl's growth - not so much size-wise as adjustment to the transplant-wise. I didn't need the picture because I could see it with my eyes, but it helps to compare using photos. They are significantly more perked up this morning than they were yesterday. This is of course what I was hoping to see this morning. The tweaks were just fan position adjustment so that the girls get a steady but not windy diet of moving air and are constantly "jiggling," and the addition of pavers to raise the pots off the overflow trays.
Here is the realization/action (this post is particularly for newbie growers like me who think they've thought of everything and have all their bases covered); You can't have a pot sitting in the water you will have from runoff, even if you vacuum/remove the excess water immediately. The pot and dirt will absorb this water and screw your watering cycle up completely as water pools in the bottom of the pot. Well DUH, right? Not so duh. Especially if, like me, this is your first time using fabric pots. I never thought far enough ahead on this particular topic to anticipate the need to raise the pots from the trays. Thought I was all good. Then as I looked at yesterday's picture it hit me that I needed to raise the pots.
The fix for the one gallons, as you see in the picture, was to simply raise them with pavers, which works well because it allows me to put an extra paver under each Pineapple Upside Down Cake and/or adjust height as desired of individual plants. These two girls are behind the other three in terms of size. I raised them an extra paver because by doing so all five plants are the same distance from the light, with the PUCs being maybe even an inch or two closer. This is my attempt to help them play catch up, lol. The rate of growth the PUCs are exhibiting is what I expected from all the plants, not this incredible Hulk thing the Blueberry Muffin and Jelly Ranchers are exhibiting.
But then I also realized that those same pavers are not going to work for the five gallon pots that will be the girl's next and final home. They aren't large enough to support the base of the pots evenly. So that sent me into research/find out if there's a product for this mode. There almost always is, and it's almost always better than whatever MacGuyver thing one can come up with. If it's within reach financially I often begin there, cuz I figure any question I have, EVER, about a grow has been asked by someone before me. And indeed that was the case. There's a million "raise your container" products out there. I got some plastic 13" round trays with plastic, very sturdy feet underneath that sit inside the round runoff trays and the plants on top of that, allowing a two inch space between the bottom of the pot and the floor of the tent. All the runoff will still go into the bottom round tray. Yay. Problem solved.
The next watering is a regular water dealio, then we begin the addition of the second part of the FF nutrient trio, the Grow Big. Can't wait to see how the girls respond to that. Other than that, for a good while now the girls stay at these environmental conditions as seen in the picture, they grow, and they get themselves ready for a topping sometime very soon.
Autoflowers:
Sometimes you have to make decisions that cause you pain. Lol. I have made one. These autos look the same this morning as they did on day one. No picture cuz there's nothing to show. They aren't moving, as I've already said in earlier posts. It's been five days. At the same time, today I get six more auto seeds in the mail - 3 Pineapple Express and 3 Lemon autos. I was already planning to add one PE to the mix when these seeds arrived. But now I have decided that I'm adding TWO more autos which will hit the paper towels today - one PE and one Lemon. I am going to attempt to sprout them and put them in with the others. That will give me two different strains to compare to the others. Assuming the two new ones come up "normally," (I'll have the others to compare to), they will stay. At that point (this should be around Monday or Tuesday) I will compare them to the four original girls. If at that point I feel the four originals are too stunted or compromised to produce for a plant that is compromised to begin with by it's very nature, I will very hesitantly pull them. I have a strong feeling that is what will happen. Then I will pop the other PEs and Lemons and continue with those 6 total of those two auto strains.
It'll hurt if that is what happens. Not only because of the wasted time/effort, and the waste of $50 worth of seeds, but because of the failure. My first major fail. Not a fan at all. But the one thing I know for sure is that it is absolutely impossible that I got four dud seeds out of four seeds. No way. That means, like in my opinion is always the case, that the autos not getting off the ground is my fault. I screwed up somehow. So I don't dwell. Instead I try to learn from it and figure out what I did wrong so as to not make the same mistake. In this case I believe it is because I was impatient and planted the seeds before the tap root was long enough, and perhaps too deep. But it may well be something else - maybe they don't like the soil, maybe I overwatered them, maybe it's a strain specific problem, etc. So for newbies - when you screw up, don't despair, learn from it. But understand it is NEVER the plant's fault.
Final thought:
I reiterate for experienced growers who wonder why I'm posting such basic information that part of the point of this whole journal is to hopefully provide newbie's like me a look at the process this newbie is going through. I believe I made and make all the common errors new growers inevitably make and I think I do a decent job overcoming them, so the hope is that my experience has some value for new growers. I don't mean to bore any readers who already know this stuff like the back of their hands, like raising up your pot. Duh again. OF COURSE you have to raise your pots. But in growing I have found that not everything that's obvious is always so obvious. Lol.
Happy Growing guys!
This conversation is inspiring me. I did my first grow journal on paper, all printed out with a cover sheet and all that OCD stuff. Lol. Two pages of it is me looking back after the buds were in jars curing and the list of mistakes I had already identified. I further updated that list another couple months later after doing more research. Maybe I'll post a separate post specifically of my list from Grow One since it's fresh and it might save some first time grower a few headaches. I got lucky in that one of my best friends is a professional, licensed grower in Oregon who has been growing 30+ years and has both a massive greenhouse/various lighting combo (four of them, all with living soil and the screens that come down over the entire outside, as big as barns) and a sweet, huge indoor LED setup. I have had the luck to have his ear at will. He's like you - I would ask a question and his basic thing would be, "Jeez, lemme see if I can remember that far back, it's been years since I had to think about that..." LMAO!! But he has helped me out a ton and is one of the main reasons my first grow turned out acceptable instead of horrible. Cuz I tried hard to screw it up as best I could. 
So I totally understand how tough it is and how lucky I got because without that I would have had nothing to show from my first grow I suspect.
