KeepORgreen's Indoor Soil Grow Journal 2016

Got some more pictures today with my point and shoot. Better than the iPhone, but LEDs make for poor studio lighting!

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Lemon Kush
 
Funny I bought leds to save electricity but it's been so cold I'm running a small heater 24/7. Ha.


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Not much happening. My pictures haven't been turning out (iPhone or Lumix) even with flash, but I have a couple more I'll post. Even autofocus doesn't work. I think I might have to turn on some fluorescents in my grow area and probably turn off the LEDs. Anyone else have this problem? I can take decent macro pictures in the sunlight, but this is hard!

So, the ladies are smelling really nice! I love walking into the room. However, the mites are spreading out since I turned up the heat. I figured it was better for flowering even though mites also like it warm and dry. Now I'm trying to raise the humidity, because it's regularly in the low 30's(%). I don't have a humidifier, the obvious remedy. I'm afraid of ruining the bud with sprays, so I'm pretty much letting them go, perhaps a mistake. I haven't done much defoliating, but this might be the best course of action. I haven't figured out how to get the experts on this site to give me helpful comments which I probably need because I'm flying by the seat of my pants!
 
I think in Flower you want it cooler actually, as you are making it think it is Fall coming on hard and they want to make seeds before they die. That and you can get colors out of the plant more if cooler (if the Strain has that trait to it). But I'm still learning all this and still flying blind ;) :rofl:
This is the Deep Purple on right and Dairy Queen on left of pic that I harvested in early October, was getting cool at nights out in my shed (lights off my box was getting down to low 60s, and up to 70 with lights on), and the Deep Purple really started getting a lot of color when the temps started dropping at night:
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Wow, those are beautiful colas! They look a lot bigger than mine, but then that looks at least a couple weeks farther along. Good point about the lowering temps. I've been struggling to make it warmer for so long, that now I'm so far along it should be cooling. When the first cold days came, I was dropping into the 50's, so I started warming the box with a small heater on low. I just left it on during the day, but it does get close to 75. If I turn that little heater on only at night (lights off) and off during the day I should be able to keep it from getting that high. Right now the outside temps have gone from 25 degrees at night/35 daytime to much warmer and I have zero automation to my system, requiring me to tweak things frequently. Since my grow box is in a converted garage and draws air from the house, I have more variables if I turn down the heat at night. Silly me sucking all my warm air out of the house during the cold winter. It goes through my grow box and very quickly exits through the attic vents. My vortex fans are too big for my space (even on low) which gives great circulation and air flow, but it really sucks when the electric bill comes in ($350 and climbing). So I buy LED to save electricity and then end up heating the space because they don't produce much heat (and the weather's cold). It's funny reading posts from folks with HPS/MH lights struggling to get rid of the heat. I guess where I live it would pay to use HPS/MH in winter and LED in summer, or grow outdoors in fair weather.

By the way, I LOVE the fall colors in your ladies!
 
By the way, I LOVE the fall colors in your ladies!
Click to expand...

That was early October, taken a few days prior to Harvest, so they was about done in that pic. Ended up with 14 grams on the Deep Purple and 20 grams on the Dairy Queen dry weight on the flowers (I didn't heavily trim them either, left a lot of the trich heavy sugar leaves on the buds), bought those two as a Clone at Dispensary (think they was $20 each plus the Sin Tax), but I was very happy with the result as it was my first time growing (well ok 2nd technically as I tried once back in 1980 with crap mexican bag seed, but that doesn't really count in my mind ;) :rofl: )....keep Oregon Green (well and Purple, me likes Purple too ;) :rofl: ).....ended up moving my boxes into SunRoom/Spare Room as couldn't keep it over 60 with lights on during that cold stretch out in my shed (one space heater, two heat lamps and a crapload of electricity), my Wife doesn't like the smell but she let me bring my grow boxes in so my kids wouldn't die. Bit hard to follow along on (my writing skill is all over the place) but it all in my Anti Journal Journal thread, trying to be a bit better with my other Journal thread for one from seed ;)
 
I was wondering how to determine days in flower: is it days since I flipped my lights to 12/12 or days since the first bud appeared? I may not be as far along as I thought, since I was going by the day I flipped the lights (Nov 11) which is 8 weeks on Jan 6. I'll have to check my grow room journal, but I believe it was a couple of weeks before I saw the first signs of bud formation. So is it 6 weeks or 8 weeks? I want the girls to hurry before the mites can get to the flowers!:theband:
 
Ladybugs are certainly more fun than spider mites. They are, however, not very effective in flower at gobbling up the mites. After I ordered 1500 ladybugs off Amazon, I continued my research and found that they work best as a preventive measure in veg. I was never under any illusions this would get rid of my mite problem, but was hoping to slow them down a bit. Not happening. Turns out adult ladybugs just aren't that interested. Apparently, young ladybugs have a ravenous appetite, but this is not the case with the adults. They seem more interested in exploring. Sure it takes time for them to get settled in, but c'mon, these guys are lazy! They hang out all day basking in the LED sun, or just aimlessly wandering about the grow room. They will hang out in the canopy if I put them there, but there always seems to be a small percentage in the foliage with most of them on the walls, ceiling, floor, and just about any place you look except where they should be! They are fun to hang out with when I'm talking to the girls. They remind me of lemmings, and I've rescued many who have fallen in the water, or gotten stuck on the edge of some duct tape. Fortunately, I didn't put all 1500 of them in the grow space at one time. I have probably put a couple hundred in there already. After the first day, I realized the 747 cfm vortex fan pulling exhaust from the room was like a black hole which cannot be escaped if they fly too close so I put a wicker basket over it so they had a better chance of escape (most of the holes are smaller than they are). It is recommended to start a ladybug community early in veg because their life cycle is much longer than it is for mites. It takes many weeks before any baby ladybugs hatch and for that to happen you must make them a comfortable home first. I've followed the recommendations, giving them food and water. Seriously? Thousands of mites and they need food? OKay, I gave them a few raisins as suggested (and they do eat them). They have a 'varied diet' now, so how about eating some protein before going after that dessert? Maybe it's just cheap entertainment, but I feel better knowing the ladybugs are there. hopefully eating mites too. Hopefully, I will have some baby ladybugs soon, because I did spot some of them mating!

I'm not sure what week of flower I'm in right now, but around 9 weeks since the 12/12 flip. I'm guessing now (based on their progress) that "weeks in flower" are measured from the time they stop stretching and grow buds, so maybe subtract two weeks from that. It would put me about 7 weeks into bloom. That seems more realistic, since I haven't spotted any cloudy or amber trichomes yet. Colas seem big to me, but even the pistils are still mostly white, so I'm guessing the girls are not as far along as I've been thinking. It is my first time, so uncertainty has been rampant throughout this grow! It does present a conundrum knowing when to flush, since I don't know when we finish. I'll just keep an eye on the trichomes and try to predict the future as best I can.

Despite the Borg, the ladies are looking good up top! The colas are looking and smelling nice, so I'm just waiting until they ripen to my unenlightened satisfaction. Will shoot some more pictures and post them soon...
 
I think most folks go by when you first see pistils to start counting as "in Flower", so average of 10-14 days off your 9 weeks number. Though plant goes at it's own pace and numbers they give you are "rough guess" albeit more meaningful than the "yield" numbers as too many freaking variables. I go more by the pistils turning, but I'm old and half blind :rofl::rofl: so trichs are hard for me to see except on my computer and my camera not the best for real up close shots ;). That and when the plant reaches end of it's cycle it slows way up on the water it will take in (soil starts staying wet longer), least in my limited experience so far with all this growing stuff.

My Dad tried Lady Bugs and Praying Mantis for his Roses back in the early 70's, he would let them out of the box into the backyard and you would never see one again ever (think they liked the neighbors plants better or something, just like beer works real good on Snails, but if you have a Dog you need to put it in a small necked bottle, as the Dog followed him around and drank it up before the Snails could crawl into it :rofl::rofl:)
 
I think I got a handle on the issues in my garden. Well, besides the mites. Some time ago, I stopped checking pH. At first I checked the water I was giving the girls and it was always 7.0. The instructions with the pH meter said to mix a slurry of the soil and water to check it. To me this made little sense. Am I checking the pH of the water or the soil? Long story short, I stopped checking, because I never got any reading except 7.0. I tried sticking the probe directly in the soil in each pot, but never got any reading except 7.0. I mistakenly concluded all was good and stopped measuring. Mistake number two was failing to follow a reasonable feeding schedule. Despite the fact that many growers use water-feed-feed or some other method of periodically flushing, I gave nutrients every time. I should have known better at this point, because I also ran into problems during veg and had to flush when PPM readings went off the charts. This time I am seeing actual leaf damage and it looks like some colas are at risk, with this extending all the way up to the sugar leaves (and some of them as well). The guy from the hydro store set me straight when I described the problem and he asked "what is the pH of your effluent?" I had to admit I stopped measuring it. I got a liquid pH test kit to back up the probe measurements. The probe is probably working, because the water really is 7.0 and the slurry would also be (since I used fresh FF soil in a cup). However, as I proceeded to flush the ladies, I found the worst ones again had PPM off the charts (9900+) and pH was in the 4.0-5.0 range. Highly acidic, meaning I've been overfeeding. I proceeded to flush them all, once again, and to hopefully learn my lesson this time.

This also explains the slow growth (both in veg and flower). It has appeared that things slowed to a standstill and I would be surprised if my time in flower doesn't extend longer than it should have. Besides the overfeeding, I've also been keeping my temperatures low to slow down the spider mites, which I can't get rid of entirely. I have since raised them a bit since the Hydro guy cringed when I told him I was down to 58 degrees during lights-off. So now I'm going for 62-75 instead of 58-72. Even though that's not much of a bump, it's doable ($$) in the cold winter months and I suspect this might help bud growth a bit. This lame humidifier I bought at Wal-mart doesn't seem up to the task, even though I sometimes get up to 50% rH, it is usually in the 40's, sometimes the 30's especially when the temperature is higher (I know, it's relative). See the pictures above....
 
There is a sharp learning curve for sure :rofl: my first go round I was feeding every time I watered and took awhile to get them out of shock once I figured out that was wrong (hadn't found this place yet, wasn't until they were almost done actually). I'm still learning but thought I read somewhere that you want the humidity lower in Flower than in Veg, as less likely to get Bud Rot, but I haven't tried controlling it really other than if it is low I leave some water in the catch trays and it evaporates quickly and raises RH. Different strains act differently and have different preferences to Nutes, which just throws a big wrench into it until one learns to read the plants (I'm still speaking a different language than them it appears ;) :rofl::rofl:
 

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