Max's First Grow - Soil - LED - Painkiller XL

MaxHeadroom said:
I'm glad you said that. I've not poked but the urge is strong. I've just looked at your grow again and the last pictures were splendid. I'll leave #2 alone and see what gives. I'm currently trying to find the optimal light height for new seedlings under LED but I keep getting distracted by journals. I'd like to read this site after a spliff, but it's been a long time since my last one and my next will be home grown (although one of my friends has suggested we nip over to Amsterdam to try high CBD there). Oh I waffle, have a great evening.
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This is from MarsHydro:
As to the distance,you can keep it at 24-30inches above the plants when germination,and 18-24 inches for veg,12-18 for flower,hope it helps.
I have Marshydro reflectors and asked their customer service the same question.
 
Day 8

Following on from some sound advice, I've raised the Mars II 400 from 8" above the pots to 22" above.

Edit: Bloom setting has been enabled so LED's are now running at full power.

XL#3 is almost ready to go into soil, having shown a small root in the germination box (old ice cream container on a heated bathroom floor). All seeds sprouted this way have shown life, but XL#2 died in the soil. Too wet, too deep, too much mycorrhiza, too much poking. Lesson learned.

Edit: XL#3 has just been planted in soil

Due to cold weather and the fact that LED's don't give off much heat, there's a 1Kw fan heater in there with a large bowl of water on the floor to raise the humidity. The plan is to get the heat more stable by using an oil filled radiator, rather than a fan heater that clicks on and off blowing hot air all the time.

The seedlings are looking happy despite my ham fisted care. Not watering them every 2 hours is killing me, they look so dry on top. Must. Not. Over. Water.

Edit: XL#1's soil was dry to my first knuckle and has just had a bit of water with a small amount of seaweed extract. I should mention I'm using tap water and will start ph monitoring once I've got a calibrated meter.

A SCRoG net will be constructed in the next week and all plants will have at least 5 weeks in veg so they are all similar in size before switching to flower. I've been toying with the idea of a small HPS to provide heat. My thinking is that I may as well have a bit more light at the same time as heat. The tent would be way too cold without some form of heating. This is just an idle musing though and I'm not sure if I'll pursue it to conclusion.

Here endeth the ramblings for day 8
 
Hey there Max I saw you posting on the DD thread so I thought I'd stop over to say hi!

I'll sub thank you very much now ahem .... slide over let me thru ... I'll sit over here in the corner with my pipe and my weed and :passitleft:
hang here wit ya's. Cheers everybody.

Ok I use some Mars lamps in my grow. For seedlings I don't put them under LED until they are hardened off. So be careful you can burn the little ones. Move the lamp up high (30" +) or just get a CFL and a small fan to get them going for another week or so. I use CFLs at the pediatric stage.

Once you get flowers you can put the lamp right down on top of the main cola. A few inches is fine.. go see my journal and just go to the last page and see how I have my lamps hanging. I've had plants grow direct into the lamps with minimal burn. I was away on vacation and the plant stretched into the light. So you will be fine later on but now the little ones are extremely sensitive. You're not out of the woods yet at this stage, when I lose seedlings its in the beginning right where you are now. The seedlings have everything they need to get to the next level all they need now is a little water and some light in soil without anything added. You will get them ready for the fun part.

I actually stress a wee bit at this stage. It's the only time I loose them due to whatever.

I read your story about opiates and pain et all, that's how I got into this. I don't take them anymore at all and all I take now is the occasional aspirin and my daily medication with canna. I'm pain free. Cannabis isn't the only reason for pain free but it certainly helps me big time. I had arthritis in hip, back, toe... where else.. started swimming at out local gym and got off that crazy crack shit the doctor was giving me and I'm good. My wife found some bag seeds for me I had laying about and handed them to me and I knew right a way it was going to help me and it has very much. I of course moved past the bag seed but that was some mighty fine bag seed weed.

If you want to run 4 plants under a 400w Mars - probably not enough wattage. I have 10-12 plants running at any given time and I'm running 1200w of true usage. So that would be equal to 6 of your 400w lamps. You can grow with that lamp but it wont have a large enough footprint for 4 plants. They will grow spindly. Topping will only make matters worse. Suggest looking into LST (low stress training) to get feet wet on the training part without cutting the brains of the plant off. That and get another 400w lamp - you have room and the electricity usage wont be an issue and it will warm up so get a light and unplug the heater after the little ones are hardened off of course.

No need for chemical ferts - use your kelp and make some tea with it for the win! Specially if you want meds. Whats the point of growing with chemical fertilizers to grow for medication and health.

Analogy - The quality of hydroponic tomatoes compared to organic tomato - taste the difference? Exactly the same thing with cannabis. Organics is a lot easier... water for the win! Hard to beat that.

Cheers and keep it green!
 
Good morning one and all and welcome BB,

It's a pleasure to welcome you aboard the good ship Headroom.

I appreciate the words of wisdom with seedlings and lights. I'm going to learn this one the hard way and go with Mars' recommendations on height to get my baseline grow (or not grow). Then I'll take your hard earned wisdom to do this dialling in thing of which people speak on a subsequent grow. Definitely not shunning your advice, it's being filed away under "The optimal way to grow, established in real world tests". It really is appreciated you taking the time to impart said wisdom, so please don't let the fact my first grow is setting some baselines prevent you from commenting further.

For edification, elucidation and erudition; my baseline settings are

1. Normal soil (Canna Terra) with minimal nutes during the first 4 weeks of veg. Only addition is seaweed extract in very small doses
2. Manufacturer's recommendation on LED placement
3. Small 1l pot for seedling, 15l pot as potting on. Not decided if this should go to 20l in the first grow


Everything else is up in the air at the moment. Advice for improving on my baseline parameters for a second and subsequent grow are very welcome and will be put in "The optimal way to grow, established in real world tests" file.

One area I'd really appreciate comments on right now is SCRoG spacing. Should I aim for 3" squares? I definitely can't fill a 3' square screen because the light isn't powerful enough for the size of the tent, so I think 2" squares gives me too many holes to fill. Alternatively I should aim for 2" to get more in the middle and ignore the outer squares *brain melt over-analytical moment ahoy* The short back story behind this is that I'd set my heart on a 2' tent with a matching Mars II 400 from Mars Hydro. The small tent was out of stock. The light arrived. I got impatient and upgraded the tent to 3' and was stuck with mismatching tent & lights.

The upshot is I've only got 3 plants and they will be focused in the middle. Light Addict (previously Icemund) made a V-SCRoG to help colas at the sides get closer to the lights. I like this idea. A lot. His video (under the moniker Icemund) is available at all good video streaming outlets. Failing that you can find it on YouTube.

Once again things have got tangenital. Time for my breakfast drugs (of the prescription kind). Damn, I can't wait to have some (mainly) medical ganja to get me facing the day without opiates. Street stuff would send me back to bed and I have a tax return to do today.

So SCRoG spacing. Are there any experts that have managed to read my meandering musings and care to wade in at this point? It's not cut and dried; the tent is too big for the light available. I'm looking at it this way round because I want a small grow and as far as I'm concerned I bought the right size light and wrong size tent.

Time to check my babies. I'm sure they are too dry *watering hand twitches*

Wafflingly
 
Whilst waiting for the morning meds to work their black magic..

Well done BB for getting off opiates. I'm weaning off at the moment and have dropped from 14 x 30mg codeine a day to 4 x 30mg a day in the space of 2 weeks. I came off morphine a couple of years ago. Overnight. My very own Trainspotting moment.

I'd love to medicate herbally, hence this grow. I see so many stories like yours on here and it both inspires and annoys me. Why annoy? you ask. Because you and I are force fed opiates (class A drugs) like fois gras geese, yet a plant that can be relatively easily grown at home and that provides such well documented relief is illegal here in the UK. This makes it impossible for us to visit a friendly neighbourhood pot dealer to obtain the pain meds that would help our symptoms. Yes, I could get insane THC level buds that would destroy my career, but quality control, strain information etc are woefully lacking.

Apologies all, I get a bit loquacious when in the twitchy "my meds haven't kicked in" phase.

Actually I'm saddened more than annoyed. So many people would have a better quality of life if pot was legalised everywhere. I have a few friends that would benefit greatly from the Painkiller XL I'm attempting to grow, but it's bad enough in the eyes of the law that I'm growing it for myself. Prison is almost guaranteed if I gave some to those friends. I'd become a dealer and the penalty is higher the more high tech the grow equipment is. As a result my grow is super secret and I dare not tell my friends. It's frustrating. Ahhh, you all know this. You've all been there with these thoughts. What does make me happy is that many of you over the pond can now legally grow.

My train of thought has been derailed. Y'all know what I'm going on about. I'll go talk to the plants. Even growing distracts from life's woes.

Final wibble; has anyone else noticed they pay more attention to their own nutrition because they've learned plant nutrition? I feel that attention to quality food for the babies has spilled over into my daily life.

Adios amigos
 
Well said Max. It's frustrating that we are pushed towards "legal" methods of pain management that lead to suffering and dependence. It seems so logical that we should be able to use natural things to overcome illness without fear of reprisal. But government is still stuck in the Victorian era, judging based on an outdated set of beliefs. The times they are a changin and it can't come fast enough.
 
Spot on Shiggity,

The UK government is all about lining their own pockets and the pockets of their paymasters - big corporations. At the end of the day legalising pot doesn't give profit to either camp so they aren't interested. In their eyes, getting people off big pharma's products is very bad.
 
Big pharma has caused so much pain and death here too in the US. I had a friend die from an opiate addiction. She was crushing vicodins and snorting too many to count(over 15 Vicodin per day) Her and her boyfriend became like zombies. She was a beautiful girl in her twenties and now she will never see thirty. This was ten years ago and it was such a shock too me. Though it was obvious if I had bothered to really look close that they were both dying while living. Big pharma knows these pills are getting out and they keep making stronger opiates. It's such a sick thing. So many get addicted from being on a treatment regimen and can't stop. Others get addicted because these pills are everywhere on the streets.

Cannabis has never done this to me. And has never stopped working for me. Man and cannabis have evolved together over time. There is no better medicine available. Our medicine system needs to realize how potent it is.
 
Opiates do have a place for severe pain. There have been times in my life that would have been incredibly depressing without strong pain relief. Saying that I self medicated with cannabis to reduce the amount of morphine I took.. it worked and it worked well. I discussed it at work and told them I could smoke a joint at the office and take less morphine, or not smoke pot and take too much morphine to work. The deal was they would turn a blind eye as long as I was discrete. We go back to strains and quality control though - the pot available on the streets became too high in THC and too low in CBD.

Very sad that there are people like your friend denied something that could have helped.
 
Being shaken awake by the police is definitely not my favourite wake up call ever.

Someone broke into the house to get my car keys. I no longer have a car. In other news the police politely pretended the grow tent didn't exist. I'm thinking to carry on the grow - 3 plants for personal use, all listed as medical rather than recreational seeds. Alas it's not legal here but I think I'll brazen it out. A crime scene crew are coming to fingerprint the downstairs later today.

I have a posh house and used to have a nice car. I have a high flying job and am seen as a respectable pillock of society, so I really think they are going to pretend the grow tent doesn't exist.

Does anyone in the UK have experience of this kind of thing and the reaction of the police?
 
Yikes buddy! I've got my fingers crossed for you, but I've nothing but moral support to offer.

Be safe man, always better to be free than not.
 
Then I won't worry for ya, it's definitely a new world. I was arrested in the mid 80s for a fleck of green something on my passenger side back carpet. Thrown out of course, but still a massive waste of time and worry.
 
Yea a lot of places are saying they arent going to punish people with a small personal grow. They have better things to do with their time. Worst case scenario they make you get rid of them as long as your not causing a stink or problems they should leave you be.
 
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