Project 21 - Dream Grow - The Ultimate Journal - A Complete Guide To Growing PART 1
HERE IT IS...ENJOY!
PROJECT 21: Dream Grow
By Hyena Merica
HELLO!
This is a complete grow journal presented as a story. (Presented in two parts due to post size restrictions) Rather than upload chapters as I went, I wanted to give readers something juicy to enjoy from start to finish like a novel. Novel idea, eh?
My motive is simple. I am an experienced and talented grower. The body of knowledge required to do what we do perfectly is usually the result of years of dedication and experience. I wrote this journal in a semi-instructional style that will allow the newer grower to learn literally everything he or she needs to be fantastically successful growing the most perfect marijuana…every time. I reveal and detail every secret, every technique, every nuance I know…while hopefully also providing enough entertainment, and enough bud porn, to thoroughly amuse even the most jaded journal junkie.
I invite you, dear reader, to come along for the ride as an average man takes hold of his fondest dream and with intense passion, unwavering dedication, and lots of really good pot...makes that dream come true. Light one up and enjoy!
-Hyena Merica
Chapter 1
WHAT UP?
“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.†-Anonymous
My foot hurts. More specifically, my left ankle. Most days it ranges from tender to sore, up to I-can-hardly-walk sometimes, and I'm only middle aged. The result of many hard landings over the course of a thousand skydives in a long-past chapter of life, now aggravated by my admittedly too-aggressive golf swing. But it freaking hurts and some days I limp around like a cripple. Sucks.
Doctors have rendered their medical opinions over the decades and it always comes down to “There's really no effective surgery for your foot issue, you'll probably have to give up golf and strenuous walking and use medications to manage the pain.†Not happening. So I smoke marijuana, because it makes my foot, and my head, feel better.
“Never give up on something you can't go a day without thinking about.†–Winston Churchill
There comes a time when a man's just got to take control of a situation. Weed is expensive. Really good weed is super expensive. Plus I have never liked buying pot. Even with marijuana put into its rightful societal context which is right below light beer IMHO, it's messed up that in a free society, founded upon individual liberty and built upon individual responsibility, we allow a hundred forms of alcohol which kills tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters every year while prosecuting, persecuting and even demonizing those who simply choose to use a calming, healing, consciousness-raising fragrant herb. That's my rant.
So begins a personal journey.
Chapter 2
THOUGHTS ON BEGINNING
“Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.†–Pirate Saying
If my wife found out I was about to grow a large quantity of some of the world's finest marijuana right over her head I would be one dead pirate. Considering the prospect of marital shipwreck I have waited years for the courage to take on this challenging project and finally decided the risk is justified if for no other reason than because like many other weed aficionados I secretly spend at least a couple grand a year on herb and my family would be much better off with that money. Plus I like excitement.
This is a grow journal but it's also a story. A story of turning dreams into reality. My intention is to share all the actual details of how to do it as well as an amusing stream of consciousness. Believe me, this story is going to end in pounds of perfect bud, and if you want to see every single aspect of space-age hobby growing laid out in layman's terms I hope you will enjoy the story and perhaps even benefit from my efforts and observations. I have had multiple successful grows in my time. However…my most recent grow was 20 years ago. A lot of time has passed. Is Grandpa too old to pull this off?
Fortunately you don't ever forget how to do certain things no matter how much weed you smoke. I believe growing plants is as much a Zen thing as science. It requires at least a working knowledge of general botany and basic chemistry combined with dedicated care, systematic observation, some intuition and even a kind of motherly love.
Technically, things have really exploded since I was last in the game and while the evolution in lighting and equipment is fantastic, the most incredible advancements have taken place inside the genetic code of the tiny reefer seed itself. The diversity and quality of strains today is nothing short of astounding. I've spent years drooling and will not wait another day to bring a selection of today's fabulous hybrids to life for myself.
“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.†–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Choosing which strains to grow is perhaps the hardest part of a project. It is certainly the most important IMHO. The days of investing time and money in growing plants with unknown genetics from bag seeds are long over. Sadly, no amount of growing expertise or fancy nutrients will increase the potency (THC level) of a pot plant even one bit…the quality of the ultimate harvest is predetermined and that is called genetics. So, it is imperative to select the best genes, not only for quality but also for particular physical characteristics such as height and flowering time, to ensure from the beginning that you will optimize the plants to their growing environment and vice versa. The flourishing of hundreds of new varieties over the past decade is nothing short of a feast…each one looks more nugilicious than the last. Who can choose?
My smoking tastes run through the full spectrum of flavors and highs. I appreciate the physical high of a fine Indica before a movie, a meal, or a cigar and a magazine. On the other hand, I enjoy a nice Sativa during a round of golf, a deep conversation about the universe, and of course sex. But my ultimate preference is a Sativa-Indica mix with about 70-80% Sativa dominance. Since the whole point of growing is to reward yourself with your dream buds I will spare no expense and begin with awesome beans.
After an eternity of reading about strains I was somehow able to choose four and placed my order. All my seeds were procured from one of the zillions of online seedbanks. Of course anyone who takes out an ad in a magazine is a “seedbank†and who really knows who's honest until you send them a couple hundred bucks? Luckily I made a solid choice. I ordered and within a few weeks my little seeds arrived as good as gold in clever stealth packaging. You know the packing achieved its purpose when it takes you 15 minutes to even find the seeds!
As I said I will be growing four strains for my first project. Real winners. Our selections are:
-Blue Dream from Humboldt Seeds (Blueberry x Silver Haze, fabulous taste and buzz),
-Holy Grail 69 from Samsara Seeds (a cross between Chronic and Haze, supposed to be wicked),
-White Widow from White Label seedbank (WW…even the leaves are frosty)
-Amnesia Haze from Ripper Seeds (only tried what was stated to be it once, and it was among the stoniest pot I ever smoked…I briefly thought my brain broke)
If my girls look half as good as these photos I will be one bad ass grow monster. And they absolutely will.
There was even a couple bonus seeds thrown in there of White Widow mixed with something else from who knows who, plus a few seeds from a couple years ago that I have had laying around, a Barney's Farm Haze called Liberty. We will try those as well. If this lineup was a baseball team I think we would be talking playoffs for sure, maybe World Series.
“Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world.†-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have decided to approach this not as a “grow†in the singular sense…my dream is to create controlled long-term steady production for personal use. In addition, wherever I do this has to be so well hidden that it can survive any random close encounter with my wife undetected. It is legal to grow where I live but I'm worried about staying married. So grow tents and such are out of the question. No, I have to literally wall off an area and build a botanical laboratory, a completely controlled environment which can sustain all operations involved in a grow from seeds to smoke.
There is only one place where I even have a chance to keep everything under control…the attic.
This won't be easy. First, I have to invent a pretext for spending many hours in the attic. The single entrance to the large attic above our garage is only accessible by manually raising up a 16-foot ladder. Not exactly stealthy. My best idea is to completely insulate the attic, a big job which could reasonably take one person 4-6 weeks of spare time. This is the perfect cover in addition to the obvious benefits in energy savings. The amount of work involved will be enormous but in the end, a month of hard work should produce a beautifully organized and insulated storage area the size of a three car garage, which will also contain a completely hidden two-chamber botanical grow facility complete with its own electric, plumbing, and all equipment required to produce stash…literally for life.
Okay let's do it.
Chapter 3
TAKING SHAPE
A full month has passed and the Project 21 lab is nearly finished. My obvious dedication to the immense task of putting insulation on every square foot of wall and ceiling in our vast attic has impressed my wife, it feels a little weird receiving this praise from her while having a dark, secret agenda. Here's a before and after shot of the grow room corner:
My philosophy has always been, don't do things you don't want your wife to find out about and you'll never have to worry about talking in your sleep. That's worked out very well for me, so after 25 years of marriage to actually be hiding something from her is a bit of a burden. Nevertheless it is completely for her own good. She doesn't smoke and only tolerates that I do. A damn fine woman. She absolutely could not live with the knowledge of me growing weed and I would be in shit so deep they would never find my body so I am determined to make sure that she will never, ever know. Guess I'm breaking bad. Wow. No turning back.
The main room will have two HID lights which you can just see, tied to effective ventilation. A 400 and a 600. 1000 watts of pure HID should be more than enough for my space though I may augment with a few 300w LED banks as needed since I have plenty of juice to work with. I ran a 20 amp dedicated circuit to the room, along with tying in to an existing 15 amp circuit for various small stuff like heaters, pumps and fans. The floor is set up to contain a spill. The chamber is completely insulated and close to hermetically sealed. The air intake vent is filtered to prevent even a mite from entry. I hope.
One of the biggest decisions has been what overall growing method to use. After a reasonable amount of experience (20+ years ago) growing in various soil setups, this time I know I have to take it to the next level: hydro. Yes, the forgiving nature of good soil cannot be argued. Your first ten grows should be dirt because even the world's greatest acrobats learn with a net. However, soil grows aren't reload-friendly without a lot of work. The hydro advantage comes down to easy re-use of most everything and total control of all variables…which is a big advantage if you get them all right. It's also the only way to go if you can't check on it every day. The inaccessibility of the attic means I can't plan on just popping in the grow room anytime I feel like it. I have to automate everything with the goal of being able to manage the whole project in only one visit per week. That's a high bar, but after nearly a year of studying the work of others I feel I am ready.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.†–Michael Jordan
Choosing a hydro method and constructing a functioning system is daunting because I've never done it. So many of the commercial systems I looked at have key parts that can fail putting the grow and/or security in big danger. I can see leak/overflow events potentially occurring with a number of them if just the wrong thing happens at the wrong time. That simply cannot happen and must be designed out since the entire operation will be blown if there is even the smallest water leak, the whole thing sits above a finished drywall ceiling. Water leak=possible divorce. Crikey.
“It's got to be foolproof. Because I am a fool.†–H. Merica
So I've been dissecting every different form of hydro over about a month and every one of them has some piece or aspect I don't like. I'm starting to worry this is beyond my ability to do safely. Finally, I stumble across the solution and I see the clouds part…Dutch buckets.
A Dutch bucket is a hydro pot that holds somewhere between 2 and 3 gallons, designed with a little siphon drain near the bottom that allows nutrient solution to drain out after it reaches a certain level. So, a design based on Dutch buckets can have a top-feed watering system and a closed drain line returning to the nutrient reservoir. Nothing can overflow or leak. The ultimate system…I can't screw it up!
Dutch buckets are the perfect size for growing a root ball the size of a basketball in just inert grow media. My choice is Hydroton (expanded clay pellets) for the bottom 4 inches and 80% Perlite (I call it ‘rock popcorn', it's a lightweight grow medium made from volcanic glass of all things) plus a dash (20%) of vermiculite (expanded mica, holds moisture nicely). If you use those ingredients as directed you cannot fail. Plants can grow roots like there is no tomorrow in this stuff. The nutrient solution is pumped to the buckets (I do 3 times a day for 12 minutes each time), gently trickling down through the growing medium and bathing the roots with oxygenated water, then returning to the reservoir through the drain elbow on simple gravity. This system is impossible to overflow even if the pump would run continuously. Even better, in the event of total pump or timer failure, the plants would still be okay for several days because the Dutch bucket design leaves a continuous 2-3 inch reservoir of nutrient solution in the bottom of each bucket. It doesn't get stale because it is freshened with newly oxygenated water each watering. Ingenious those Dutch.
Time to hit the plumbing aisle at Home Depot.
Chapter 4
ALL ABOARD
The ship is finally built. She is a thing of beauty.
Even my fertile, reefer-fueled imagination couldn't have pictured a finished lab as cool as this. Let me give you a tour…
You remember this is in an attic behind a false wall. The lab is neatly integrated into the available space between rafter joists with a floor area of 9x12 feet. The ceiling slopes from 7 feet up to 10 feet giving ample space for lights and eventual plant height. The space is divided into a main room, and a smaller but still quite adequate nursery chamber. Let's start in there.
011
Here is a view to the left and right looking through the “hatch†into the nursery. It's a little hard to see through the opening. The nursery is where I will sprout seeds, root seedlings and eventually, rear the next crop. It will also serve as a “lung room†at times, which for those who haven't heard the term means a separate but connected space that can be helpful in controlling the temp by circulating air through and back into the main room. It runs ten feet long by 3 feet (sloping up to 5 feet wide) with an adequate ceiling height. It is completely insulated and also light-tight so it doesn't disturb flowering ladies in the main chamber. That is huge because absolute darkness during the “dark†period is essential for proper flowering to take place.
There is a hatching area. My method is to use a heat mat and rapid rooter plugs. And of course fresh, top-quality feminized seeds.
“Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature.†–Gerard DeNerval
As previously mentioned, NOTHING a grower can do will ever increase the potency of a marijuana plant once it sprouts…if it isn't in the seed's genetic code it won't be in the buds. Virtually every aspect of the plant's growth and development is pre-ordained. The amazing pop that the best reefer seeds exhibit has always surprised me. Give a seed the optimum environment and nature makes truly wonderful things happen. They explode. I always think spring…I like a cooler environment during the initial several weeks of growth because keeping the air a little cooler seems to make the plants stouter. No science whatsoever behind that opinion…I still apply gentle heat to the root area, but the above-ground part of the plant seems perfectly happy in cooler air. Like spring.
The rooting device is a decent-size plastic tub with nine 4 inch net pot holes. I covered mine with black gorilla tape to minimize light penetration, a good idea across the board in hydro setups to minimize algae growth. You don't have to worry too much about the water temperature within reason, again, think spring. Beneath all the flavors and colors of the floral end product, these are all essentially resilient weeds that have amazing powers of growth and recovery built into their sturdy little DNA strands. I read so often about people over-fucking with their plants. These little girls are neither delicate nor ladylike…just give them a basic supply of what they need and they will behave more like Ronda Rousey.
The minimum of nutrients is all that is needed…a good rule for me has always been to use half what is recommended, and almost nothing in early development. Naturally I defer to the knowledge base of more experienced people who demonstrate very sophisticated use of supplements, but when I see folks using 20 different nutes over the lifespan of one plant I almost wonder how little Mary Jane ever evolved with only dirt, wind, and rain. Not being deliberately naïve, I just prefer simplicity where possible because personal experience has taught me you are far more likely to hurt your plants by over-fertilizing. Less is more. Less to fuck up. That's more pure opinion but I am certain my results will prove it out.
The nursery is equipped with two 300-watt Mars Hydro LED lights. These are the original ones which you can buy for 65 bucks apiece and they are every bit as good as the much fancier and a lot more expensive ones. Today's compact, efficient LED lighting is sooo great because you get great spectrum but don't have the heat issues. The main limitation of LED is a much shorter depth of the “prime†intensity zone which makes them somewhat less effective than HID per square meter in fully lighting long colas. But these lights are the best thing yet invented for hatching and establishing little plants.
I have enjoyed reading many grow journals over the past few years, and one thing I see in a lot of the early pictures is stretchy seedlings. I believe stretchy seedlings = stretchy plants. Indoor growing is a vertical game. Every inch your canopy grows higher than necessary reduces total yield. My experience has been you can slightly alter the structure of the plant during its first 2 weeks by giving the new seedlings ultra-intense light 24/7. This seems to make the seedling shorter and surprisingly stocky, resulting in thicker-than-normal-main stems with very closely spaced nodes. This “stretch-prevention†technique worked beautifully for me years ago (especially with Sativas) using 1000-watt MH lamps but the intense heat made it a very tricky game of death which killed many seedlings. Several cycles of this showed me two identical seeds can be encouraged to develop noticeably different node spacing during their first two weeks of life using this method. The small percentage that survived the treatment grew up lower, wider and with much stronger branching compared to more conventionally lit seedlings. But I had to start 100 to get 10.
The price of good seeds makes that approach out of the question today. My hunch is the 300 watt LEDs will be perfect for the technique. If we end up with seedlings that are a foot wide and only 6 inches tall with stems half an inch thick we're there. That may be a slight exaggeration but you might be surprised. BTW, I also tried this shortening technique several times with clones but it didn't work…clones already seem to have their node spacing dialed in, and it didn't make their stems thicker, just burned up a lot of clones. We will try the 300s and see what happens.
Now let me describe the main grow room.
It contains a complete 9-container hydroponic system under 1000 total watts of HID lighting. The hydro system is expandable to 12 buckets in the future, and I may supplement this lighting with 300-600 additional watts of LED if the expected canopy expansion materializes. Always plan for success, baby.
Nearly every square inch is covered in reflective insulation for maximum light use. For optimum marijuana plant development nothing beats HID lighting. Still. I personally believe this and while my opinion is primarily derived from many hours of internet research, I concede the results of many well-constructed LED-only grows are fantastic also…I just believe the intensity of HID lights produces a more natural result. Some maintain one main advantage of an all-LED setup is broader dispersal of the light source, providing more even coverage and that's true. However, if you just have a good-sized oscillating fan going and you get the speed right the plants will move continuously, just a bit but this will allow light to hit more branches.
Aggressive intermittent air movement also makes the plants doubly strong. Think Hawaii or Jamaica where outdoor plants are buffeted by strong winds day and night. It's like lifting weights for plants, and it's one of the very best things you can do that will make the girls stronger, healthier, and prepare them to support bigger buds. There are other benefits to great air movement in an indoor grow room but avoid a direct stream from one or several mounted fans…it doesn't provide the same benefit at all, it actually just makes them lay over. The key seems to be intermittent bursts. An oscillating model with at least a 14†diameter set of blades is ideal.
As previously mentioned, I have two HID fixtures, one 400 and one 600-watt. Metal Halide bulbs for veg, High Pressure Sodium for flowering.
A nice-size carbon filter connected to the two sealed light fixtures (all 6-inch ducting) plus a variable-speed professional-grade inline fan allows ambient air to be drawn through the filter, cooling the lights then being vented up and out through a roof vent. No smell, no tell.
The hydro system uses nine Dutch buckets all permanently plumbed into a PVC return system, simply pump nutrients gently to each bucket three times a day and gravity returns the excess to the reservoir.
The buckets are lined with 5-gal paint strainers which will contain all the growing medium and keep it from washing out the drain pipe into the reservoir.
The buckets are top-fed using a 60 gph fountain pump and ½â€ blue tubing. Blue colored tubing keeps algae growth down inside the tubes. Nozzles are inserted into the tubes and can be positioned. Just avoid having water delivered directly against the main stem as it can cause problems for the main stem to be wet all the time.
A 20+ gallon reservoir is set up with two long air stones bubbling away to keep the nutes fresh and oxygenated, with the right pump matched to the system so that the solution is delivered at a flow rate that will deliver adequate pressure at the furthest drip nozzles but won't create too much pressure and overwhelm the system. A digital timer with built-in battery backup (important feature) completes this reliable machine. No matter what happens this system will never flood the room, and will allow the plants a several-days-long grace period of nutrient availability.
An additional reservoir is next to the main reservoir. The only potential security vulnerability in my setup is there is no way to run a water line directly to the lab. So, for water I have to lower a hose from the attic opening and connect it into the adjacent laundry room. Should only have to do it every 10 days or so but during this operation I am as vulnerable as a giraffe getting a drink at a water hole full of crocodiles.
What the longest ten minutes in the world looks like.
I have to wait until the coast is clear to run the hose. So by having a second reservoir, I can fill it whenever that chance comes along and have the water already up there ready to go when it is time to change the nute solution. Tap water needs a day or two to sit and allow the chlorine to dissipate anyway. It can sit there for a week and be fine.
To dump the old solution, I routed a drain line out the corner of the attic into a rain gutter so draining water is just a matter of turning a valve and it's completely stealth. Everything uses excellent quality pumps in mesh bags to minimize larger particulates getting into the pump. Water is the lifeblood of any grow and this system should take care of that.
About water quality…I have a household water softener system with no option to bypass it. My initial water analysis is a PH of about 8, with significantly reduced levels of calcium and magnesium, the result of the “softening†process. You may have heard that softened water, because it utilizes salt during the ion-exchange softening process, makes the sodium content of the water go way up but this is exaggerated, there is only a negligible amount of sodium added by a properly-functioning water softener and it doesn't have much effect on nute uptake if you just add back some calcium and magnesium. I had several analyses done to confirm this.
About nutes: don't reinvent the wheel. It's too easy to destroy your plants early in their lives by trying to be Nutrient Einstein. Thousands of growers have produced zillions of tons of frosty bud goodness just keeping it simple and utilizing General Hydroponics' Flora nutrient system. When someone has made a complex thing so totally simple why would anybody not just go with it? If you just use these nutes at 50% the recommended strength IMHO you CANNOT go wrong. Since probably half of fatal growing mistakes involve fertilizer (and I love to fiddle) I just feel like I should take that variable completely out of the equation.
Every grower needs to know the basic process of testing and adjusting the PH of the nute solution to between 5.5 and 6.5 PH. That range works best on a hydroponically grown marijuana plant in my opinion, allowing maximum uptake of the widest range of soluble nutrients. Of course weed will grow without water adjustments but it really does make a lot of difference if one is trying to achieve the maximum possible rate of natural growth. Perfectly tuned water (PH between 5.5 and 6.5) is very important.
There is a heater with a thermostat, multiple temperature and humidity monitors, plus air conditioning capability should Summer heat prove too much to control with just air movement and exhaust fans. You must be able to reasonably control and also actively monitor the temperature and humidity to keep both in a good range. 60 degrees Fahrenheit up to 90 degrees is great. Some would say that's a very broad range but plants don't need their environment to be perfectly controlled to flourish, it's just fine for it to drop down near 60 at night and get up to 80-ish or even 90-ish during the day because extremes like those are what the ancestors of these plants were used to where they evolved.
From my experience lower than 60-ish for longer periods slows growth, and over 95 causes the plants to transpire water at a rate that is beyond any real benefit making the grow room more humid and burning through nute solution faster. Some say a longer-term heat problem which sustains accelerated transpiration can cause excess nutes to build up in the plant tissues and I have heard you can end up with funky-burning bud with a chemical aftertaste. They say even a one-week final flushing won't totally remove that issue if your grow spent weeks burning through too much solution per plant per day because it was kept too hot. On the other hand, my previous experience has been grow room temperatures of 90+ sustained for months and I have no idea if it ever negatively affected the taste or yield because the taste and yield were always beyond my expectations. If it gets crazy I will use air conditioning but I bet I won't have to.
The floor is padded underneath a double tarp set up to contain a reasonable overflow or spill. The entrance is completely camouflaged. I keep tabs on everything through a pair of baby monitor cameras, the bomb for checking up on the kids every day without having to go up there. Mine has a decent picture, plus it tells me the temperature so I can remotely monitor that too. I can switch between the two cams and see the whole room, and (VERY important!) the system uses the latest security technology with an encrypted signal to prevent some nefarious figure from intercepting it and having a nice little TV picture of my grow room.
The kids are alright.
“And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.â€― Meister Eckhart
When I had finally finished the whole attic I said a little prayer and had Wifey up to inspect my “insulation†job and to my relief she did not detect the grow room…man was I sweating that but it had to be done. I think after six weeks of me being up there almost every day she was starting to wonder if I was up to something more. Hopefully that final walk-through eliminated any suspicion. I would hate to have to kill her.
We are ready to launch. Bon Voyage!
Chapter 5
MAGIC BEANS
“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.†–Lao Tzu
There is something so very special about certain moments in life. For me, one of those has always been the moment I take a small number of carefully selected seeds and drop them into a dixie cup of water. As the first tiny seed falls from my fingers and hits the water with an inaudible splash, I feel a sudden rush of emotion, a trembling anticipation so powerful I almost can't describe the excitement of it. Here we go, I always think…liftoff. Houston, the clock has started.
I germinate seeds by letting them soak in regular water for 24 hours. With this treatment, if they are good, fresh viable seeds many will sprout a taproot within 48 hours. The seeds will probably sink to the bottom of the water after awhile but it won't hurt them…that indicates a good fresh seed. I take them out of the water after 24 hours (whether I see an actual protruding root yet or not) because they just need to soak for a full day to partially dissolve the “glue†that binds the two halves of the seed casing together. I find inserting the seeds into a growing medium without any pre-soak is a little hit and miss, because if the seed casing doesn't receive enough water contact directly on the seam it may take many days to pop and I want my seedlings all coming up at about the same time so we can keep all plants on the same operational schedule. If I have to wait several extra days for half of the seeds to appear, by that time some of the early ones have stretched too far and become unusable.
My little seeds were nearly all beginning to stir after 48 hours and I very, very carefully placed each one, point down, into the moistened rooter plug. I arranged all the little plugs into little rows in the germination tray (the kind you can buy at any store, they have a plastic cover that keeps the humidity in and they work great). Onto the heat mat, which doesn't even feel warm to the touch but provides a nice, soft, gentle heat to the root zone which is one of the most helpful things you can do.
So, here I come back after only 24 hours in the rooter plugs and THIS is what I see! Holy shit Batman! Some of the seedlings have already stretched so much they are probably unusable! This shocked me, not just that I'd made a minor mistake already but the amazing speed at which seeds given perfect conditions can grow.
I immediately moved the propagation tray under the LED light. Now we will get these babies growing. You can see they don't look like much at first.
I keep the plugs moist but not soaked…some air at the roots is important. Some Vermiculite is sprinkled on top to keep evaporation to a minimum. FYI the photos under LED lights all have a strange color cast. If you have never seen LED lighting in person they have nice intensity and the diodes emit light only in the spectral ranges that stimulate plant growth so they look like this. I had my doubts about how good they would be at first but they are perfect for this application.
These plants are now in day 5 since being dropped into the water and out of 16 seeds, I have 12 healthy looking seedlings. Next step, I transplanted all viable seedlings to 4 inch net pots and put them on the bubbler. As previously mentioned I use a grow medium made of Hydroton pebbles in the bottom 1/3, then 80% perlite and 20% vermiculite (the vermiculite holds water so you only need a little mixed in there, the key to this is the medium must drain almost completely every time it is watered). Be very gentle when transplanting and never physically touch roots if you can help it. Under magnification, one can observe even tiny roots have thousands of micro-hairs, all of which will grow into major roots but their structure is quite fragile to the touch. So be very careful. If those two 300-watt light banks look too close, they are! This is the high-intensity saturation I described. The lumens are serious but the heat is reasonable. I want them to literally stop stretching upward and begin just growing outward immediately.
Now here they are on day 8. After only 3 days of super light saturation they have almost completely stopped growing up and now they are just chomping light like maniacs and growing outward. That is exactly what I want. Once we get them super stout we'll encourage them to start stretching upward again but at that point they will be extra strong and the whole plant will be much better suited for wide, bushy growth.
Excellent root development after only 8 days of life. The bubbling reservoir stays perfectly oxygenated so these roots are just as happy as they can be soaking in it all day. We are encouraging the plants in just their infancy to develop an internal structure which will enable maximum liquid uptake and perfect metabolism. This will prepare them for sustainable aggressive growth once they go into their final pots in the main room.
At 10 days these babies are really starting to flex their muscles.
3 inches wide and only an inch-and-a-half tall at 12 days. It's working!
Day 15…the girls are 2-3 times wider than they are tall. Now let me show you why they look so good…
THIS is the real key to successful plants…massive and efficient root structures developed as early as possible. Some of these roots already reach a staggering 2 feet in length which represents more than an inch per day of growth. The thing is, with roots like this we can transplant them into their final home and we will have no transplant shock whatsoever. Most plants after transplantation take around 5 days to regain fully vigorous growth but these will never even pause. Ah, science!
Now it's day 16 and we call that “moving dayâ€. Time for the final transplant to the main grow room. Nerves? Yes, some. Here is the last real chance for me to fuck something up. As the long roots are carefully lowered into the new container, I gently guide them to a circular pattern before ever-so-carefully pouring handfuls of perlite/vermiculite mix around and over them. Gently. You must minimize movement of everything once you begin to cover and set the roots. Don't rush. You have maybe 5 minutes before the light and air exposure will begin to have adverse effects so carefully build up the material until it supports the net pot which you are holding firmly at the correct height. More material is now added and GENTLY packed down just a little bit, just enough to make sure there are no big voids. Now carefully and thoroughly water in all the material. Since this setup drains right back to the main reservoir, no worries about using too much. The growing medium will perfectly set up around everything down there if you are just steady handed and patient.
In they go, one by one. You will have a sore back when you are done but this is the single most important operation of their lives. Do it right and they will never miss a beat. Damage them and you lose 7-10 days while they freak out, pout, and recover.
Leaving the nest.
One interesting note…in the last photo you can see one plant, in the foreground left, that is half the size and vigor of the other 11. One of the other plants still visible in this photo is the same kind but look how different they look. This is the mystery and genius of genetics and natural selection, that Rosetta Stone of theories which explains why life becomes so amazingly diverse over time. The two factors which comprise “natural selection†are (1) the steady production of slight variations, and (2) the environment acting upon all these slight differences and some ending up being more helpful to the organism than others, leading to the better-suited organisms reproducing more and passing that trait on where it may eventually help the species compete a little better, leading to more offspring. In this case, two identical seeds in identical environments but one plant is quite vigorous and the other sort of scrawny to this developmental point.
So we see how gradually, over tens of thousands of generations each producing similar but ever-so-slightly different organisms, the helpful variations which enable better survival lead to everybody incorporating that trait eventually because the ones without that advantage die off a wee bit sooner.
Whut?
The real problem many people have with understanding this whole thing is we just can't wrap our minds around the staggering amount of time required for evolutionary changes to occur. We live maybe 80 years and the Earth is 4.3 billion years old. None of us can really comprehend how long a million years is for example, but over such vast spans of time trillions of little lives play out, steadily acted upon by environmental forces, and eventually change and diversify to become the myriad of species we see today. Hard to believe 95% of all species that ever evolved are already extinct. And for all our observational ability, we estimate we have yet to even identify more than half of the species living today. It's a big world.
Back to weed. With everybody in their new home I could take a few moments to just look at my babies. Now we will see how well the early saturation worked. You can't really see it yet but these plants will grow very low and bushy now, ideal for scrogging. I lit a joint and just watched the smoke curl lazily upward into the carbon filter. The hardest part is done. If you get them to this point in this condition you have almost guaranteed success because from here on they just sit under the light 24/7 and drink nutes three times a day. Now the fun begins.
Chapter 6
GROWING UP
“The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you've come.†–Anonymous
It's day 21 and it's time to meet the ladies. The plants are all looking great, absolutely zero transplant shock as I predicted. Extra root volume=extra ability to absorb the move. So, the time has come…allow me introduce you to my beautiful girls.
In bucket number one is Blue Dream #1. She has two sisters in the project as well. Blue Dream as you may know is a cross between DJ Short's Blueberry and a Silver Haze plant from Northern California. This variety has many of the good attributes of a fine Sativa with the wicked Haze buzz mixed in there. It's supposed to be a high-yielding plant with a reasonably short flowering period of 55-60 days. I have seen Blue Dream buds that are long, furry, and frosty. I want dat.
In bucket #2 we have some White Widow and a Holy Grail 69. White Widow, (left), produces some of the frostiest nugs I have ever seen, for some reason the plant even develops trichomes all over the leaves. I wish they all did that! I am looking forward to having some WW, it seems like the coffee shops and dispensaries suck that variety completely up because I can never get any. Holy Grail 69 also gets very good reviews and seems pretty similar to the WW in structure.
Bucket #3 is another Blue Dream. Dreamy.
Bucket #4 contains some Haze by Ripper Seeds. I'm so excited about the Haze from all I have heard. Those are just water spots on the leaves.
In #5 we have a cross between White Widow and something unknown. A Scooby Doo mystery indeed. Also in there is another Holy Grail 69. I hope they will get along since they're sharing a room.
In bucket #6 is White Widow (left) and Liberty Haze by Barney's Farm. The Liberty is from a seed that was 2 years old at least. I started 3 and this is the only one that sprouted but she looks good. Smaller though. That's why I paired them up, they were both a bit smaller and may work well together.
In bucket #7 is another beautiful Ripper Haze. Mmmmmm.
Bucket #8 has the third Blue Dream. Such a pretty girl! Maybe the best of all the plants even though this photo doesn't really show it. Just impressive from the start.
Finally in bucket #9 we have little Cinderella, another Ripper Haze but inexplicably tiny and scrawny. She shows serious leaf discoloration despite receiving the exact same nutes and light as everybody else. She's going to be my little special needs child. I will nurse her along. She'll go to the ball someday.
One note: I am assuming these are all female! I will be keeping a vigilant eye out for any sign of a male. The seeds were sold as “feminized†and I really don't know the incidence of males coming from feminized seeds but one should take nothing for granted in nature.
One of the amazing things about the always-interesting marijuana plant is it has a male plant and a female plant. At least 90% of all flowering plants have bisexual flowers containing male and female organs. Many of these species avoid inbreeding and incest by having their sex organs mature at different times. In many plants the female organ is receptive before the male is mature, or the male part is ready before the female is receptive. This clever strategy favors cross pollination between different plants. Some plants have only unisexual flowers and are dioecious with separate male and female plants --like date palms, edible figs, willows, cottonwoods, marijuana and, how cool, people.
So, that's the family, three weeks old. So far so good.
Chapter 7
THE TEEN WEEKS
“Do you remember the time when we couldn't wait to grow up? What the hell were we thinking?â€
-Anonymous
Adolescence. A time to train youth, to encourage them to grow in the right direction, to help them become productive adults. Our girls are no different…they are ready to grow up. Weeks 4 and 5 are dedicated to aggressive growth. Now we find out whether the start we gave them is a good one. If everything is tidy they should begin to explode.
Here is a picture on day 28. Over the last 7 days they have more than doubled in size and girth. Absolutely no evidence of any problems. The hydro setup works flawlessly. I was a little apprehensive about the relatively large amount of standing water that sits in the bottom of each Dutch bucket (root rot would be disaster) but apparently the infusion of freshly oxygenated nute solution three times a day is enough to keep it okay. Everything up top looks peachy.
Getting great leaf and stem development. No evidence of major nute imbalances. I noticed a very slight pattern of discoloration beginning in a couple of them a week ago then looked at my notes and noticed I prepared the nute solution but missed one step-forgot to add the Cal/Mag. Second small mistake of the grow but no big deal. Remember my water is very Cal/Mag deficient because of the water softener. I added the missing supplement mid-week and within a few days that did the trick.
All leaves look vibrant and healthy and branching is underway.
The time has come to top my girls! Even touching them is something I do with reverence. Pulling off parts of their beautiful little bodies pains me even though I know it is completely beneficial and necessary. Fact is, only bad things can come from too much physical contact with your plants, even being in the grow room too often is a risk because if you've done your work right and your grow is properly sealed, the only way any monsters will ever get in is by hitching a ride on you. With diligence I might never introduce a spider mite into the grow room (pray) but I certainly can't tell if a fungus or alien plant-chomping bacteria is on my hands just waiting for me to touch and infect my babies. Probably a bit of paranoia…I just hit some nice Sativa. Seriously though, avoid touching your plants any more than you have to because it is a good rule. Not doing something bad is doing something good, in a Karmic way.
A pinch to grow an inch
It turned out topping the plants was extremely fun. They have grown so fast most of them will be left with eight branches which is up from my goal of six. I want to scrog the plants no more than 1 foot above the level of the soil to keep the prime light intensity zone as low as possible. Here is where making them stocky in their early life pays off…if the plants were even a little bit more stretchy topping at the proper level would leave only 6 branches, maybe even four. That theoretically represents an additional 25%, even 50% in total yield in the end. It's all about maximizing use of prime space.
You want to be mindful that the plants will stretch aggressively for another 2, even 3 weeks after turning the light schedule to flowering. That's the beauty of scrogging…you can keep weaving these still-growing branches all through the net without worrying that they will get too tall. The goal is an absolute wall of buds and it can be done.
First harvest! LOL
One sign your plants are all they can be is aggressive early branching
Pulled just a few leaves where they were totally blocking out productive areas…hard to believe such pop after less than a month.
Here's how we look at exactly one month old! Everybody is getting along. Even the little scrawny one in the lower left has recovered and is beginning to grow a little better.
Blue Dream is a hungry and very strong variety. All three exhibit perfect symmetry.
White Widow and Liberty Haze with their fat daddy leaves, they look very similar and they are both bustin' loose.
Like many I suppose, I like to just stand there and stare at the beauty of nature. The marijuana plant is a truly beautiful life form. It is one of the most advanced and sophisticated of all plants, an amazing platform of genetics, fiber and water which evolved on our planet over millions of years for our grateful use. Now we live in full partnership, selectively improving the species and creating magnificent new diversity while benefiting from its increasing variety of specialized effects. Today there is pot for everything from pain suppression to stimulating new thoughts on particle physics.
â€Without continuous growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.†–Benjamin Franklin
Often I find myself just standing there, gazing, and of course smoking some really good ganj. Ironically people who don't fully appreciate the wonders of marijuana wouldn't understand. But we do, don't we?
Chapter 8
SCROGGY DOGGY
“The road to success is always under construction.†–Lily Tomlin
It is Day 33. Time to scrog.
Screen of Green is nothing but a simple tool to arrange growing branches so they all get as much light as possible. It's simply setting up a screen horizontally that keeps everything at one level, then weaving the branches all through the screen to spread everything out for maximum exposure. It takes a little technique but it's a great way to double or triple your yield compared to allowing the plants to grow in their natural Christmas-tree shape.
The science is simple too…many plants like Marijuana “prioritize†growth, with the single central stem growing more vigorously because it is physically higher than the side branches. The “apex†shoot gets allotted more of the plant's energy at the expense of the rest. Topping a plant after the fourth node removes the apex shoot but the eight remaining shoots all develop like apex shoots, as long as all the shoots can be kept at about the same height. So the screen sets a baseline and you just work all the branches in and out gently so they grow horizontally. Every branch then puts out 2 shoots at each node which will all start from the same height. The branches can be allowed to grow in veg a couple weeks longer as the whole screen is gradually filled out, until you have a complete hedge of 12â€-18†shoots which all flower like main colas. The end result is maximum production from a given space.
I have the benefit of a few truss pieces going diagonally through the space, so I can build a frame for the screen.
Put small nails all along the top every 4 inches
Nice. Now for the string. You can use anything from chicken wire to fishing net but I like a 4-inch square fairly tight net made of good cotton string which hurts plants the least. Thread the string on, making it as tight as possible. Don't hurt anybody!
Perfect! Reusable too, in the end just cut the strings and easily remove. Re-string again next time.
Now exactly 5 weeks old. For the next 2 weeks they will grow, grow, grow and I will weave, weave, weave. Every 3 days we bend and tuck everything so all branches are under the net. They will keep immediately turning up toward the light and growing back up through the screen. That's what we want. As they grow, we keep tucking them back under and allowing them to grow horizontally. At each growth node there will appear two branches. These will grow straight up and become colas, not quite as big as the original main stem but good. We might end up with a hundred decent-size colas from just 12 plants, instead of the 12 main (and a bunch of smaller ones) we would been limited to without this technique.
The plants will continue to grow so fast we will only have a window of a couple weeks to develop our SCROG horizontally. Every three days the entire garden will have to be addressed and all branches bent/woven/adjusted to keep everything as low and level as possible. I like to take my time doing it.
Two weeks to showtime.
Chapter 9
KEEP IT UP
“No road is long, when dreams are big, and the sky is the limit.†–Rishika Jain
Four days have passed since the SCROG installation and they need to be “tuckedâ€. God it's so fun when you have an actual excuse to touch (okay, fondle) your babies. That motherly thing I guess. I truly enjoy winding the stems all through the net, it's actually serious business with a lot on the line because the care taken directly affects final yield and final yield is everything in growing. There is a “box†defined by the frame, containing 30 square feet of prime, perfectly illuminated space. The goal is to make these 12 plants grow to fill every possible inch of the space, horizontally, before the canopy begins to stretch vertically. It's kind of an art form.
If you're reasonably gentle, you learn to bend the stems without breaking and keep them under the screen. That's stage 1 of SCROGing. You are trying to avoid any abrasion or damage to any branches, just keep them under the screen for a ways. You can probably veg for months if you want to let the branches continue to grow and grow, though my space is limited so my goal is just to evenly fill it.
Next step along the way as branches get too tall, will be Supercropping. That's where you actually do break the inside, rigid part of the branch, but without completely snapping it off or creating a horizontal break in the vascular tissue or “bark†on the branch. Like bone and skin. The plant lays over at more than 90 degrees and he first time you do it you really wonder if you killed your plant. No worries though. The elbow joint just grows more tissue over the next week until it has a swollen “knot†appearance. It carries even more weight now, it's actually beneficial. Some swear it also increases potency to stress the plant like this and I'm not sure of the science there but hey, cool.
SCROGed the left side, didn't do the right side yet, see the difference in height. The plants are already growing almost an inch every day. Many people grow marijuana and think their plants are great and I have seen some of those grows and thought, nice, but if the setup was able to deliver everything these plants could possibly use they might be twice as big. PERFECT plant growth is really just the result of keeping all essential factors inside a reasonable range. There is a range of nutrient density, a range of PH, temperature, heat…it seems complex but staying within all those ranges is like staying between the lines on the highway, not too difficult. There's plenty of margin. You just have to know where the lines are. My hydro setup, maintenance, and the nutrient choices I have made have all combined like a symphony orchestra to produce beautiful biological music. These plants are basically growing at the genetic speed of light. Things will get real crowded very soon.
Nute note: Many growers fall in love with nutrients, especially with adding them. With respect to the few growers who are true nute geniuses, you don't really have to be. One thing to keep in mind is go very easy on the nutes when you top off the reservoir, it's a place you can easily make a big mistake! Because water both evaporates and is transpired by the plants, the nutrients in the reservoir become more and more concentrated. Therefore it isn't necessary to use the same concentration in the replenishment water, in fact it's dangerous. The nutes you added previously are almost all still there, the plants only absorb a tiny fraction of the ambient chemicals. Cut the dose at least in half compared to fresh water.
Back in the day, many lectured me on the value of all the little boutique nutrients they like to add and exactly when to add them but I never personally noticed a difference between my yields and theirs. Plus it's more to flush at the end and un-flushed weed can have a chemical taste. But the real risk of over-messing with plants is you can “burn†them and that can cause a lag in growth while the plant tries to recover its equilibrium. The lesson of a bad nutrient burn is not forgotten quickly, especially since blowing a grow which is already way past the hard part would be especially painful. I'm not in this to lay in bed for months thinking about what might have been. The plants are drinking over a half-inch of nutrient solution (roughly 2+ gallons) per day already so I top off the solution every 4-5 days, and change it completely every other week.
The goal is to gradually fill in all open areas.
See how the branches grow under and along the SCROG net, while each node produces two branches growing straight up to heaven. Ideally, I want to have at least one branch growing up through every square.
Day 42 and it's quite apparent how the plants are spreading out and responding to the even lighting and increased penetration, rapidly producing new branches at the nodes. Here's where my choice of cotton twine has value, it's the easiest to work the branches through and the least destructive to the “skin†on the branches. I will let them veg until they are maybe two feet tall as measured from soil level then we're gonna turn the lights back. Can't wait.
“Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.†–Abdul Kalam
Now I find myself sitting in the grow room, enjoying the delicious fragrance of some witchy Lemon Haze and dreaming big dreams. As it perfumes the air, I'm thinking about all the fabulous bud I'm going to have. All the delicious flavors. All proceeding perfectly. One more week and we start to bud.
Chapter 10
‘BOUT TIME TO FLIP
“There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.†–Orisen Swett Marsden
We are beginning the countdown to the Big Flip. I want to truly maximize this grow so I'm really being patient. If I err, it will be on the side of vegging too long which only means a whole lot of branches everywhere and it's a great problem to have though the other side of that is the canopy can rise artificially high, putting the best zone into hotter air and in the extreme hurting production. We'll see.
Only 3 days have passed. Such recovery and aggressive growth! The SCROG is becoming a Sea of Green!
A nice view of the horizontal branching process. As I mentioned I want one or two branches coming up through every square if possible. It's fun to choose each branch's direction without regard whatsoever to which plant is which. I have already lost track of a whole bunch of them, they're like vines all growing wildly.
I have altered the nutrient mix to favor aggressive growth but still careful to underdo it. Not so much as a single discolored tip on even one leaf anywhere. I feel like Mother Nature. I knew I was once pretty good at this but honestly these results are blowing my best expectations away. I knock on wood after writing that and take a deep hit of some Dynamite…ahhhhh.
Day 47 and this garden is EXPLODING! Now we see why it is crucial to SCROG aggressively and especially early…virtually all the branches are already too big to easily tuck under the SCROG anymore. Further influence will be more and more about supercropping. Note it's nicely filling in, and the remaining open spaces will be filled by smaller adjacent branches as they lengthen and are guided through the openings.
Spreading out
Day 49, exactly 7 weeks from wetting the seeds. Now we're getting somewhere! Despite the ever-more-apparent difference in verticality between the varieties corresponding to the differences in sativa-indica ratio, the whole garden is looking fluffy.
Weed is a very over-bred organism and that plus the steady production in nature of all kinds of variations sometimes results in interesting anomalies like this four-leaved node.
White Widow and Liberty Haze looking like the ultimate mind salad.
Now Day 53. I'm being attacked by plants. I feel like if I turn my back they'll eat me! Almost time to flip, definitely time for uber-aggressive Supercropping. Again, you can't be shy when you do this, and you may lose a branch or two (it's more than 90% successful with any touch at all) but the benefit is huge. These are stretching an inch a day but there won't be room for long at that rate. I will top most of the central branches to slow their vertical growth and encourage lots of branching in the middle since there's nowhere to go. Then, Supercrop most everything in an outward direction, basically creating a canopy that is wide and curved.
Day 56 or exactly 8 weeks from seed was my prediction to turn them to flowering cycle. Looks like we can do it a few days early. They have never known anything but 24/7 light at every stage of their lives. For all the back-and-forth about plants needing/not needing a “rest†period for redevelopment of certain proteins or hormones or whatever, my suspicion has always been that we are perhaps personifying the needs of pot plants rather than objectively analyzing the relative merit of a short dark photo period during vegetative growth. From my results I say maybe they do not need it. They couldn't have completed the first half of their wonderful lives any better.
“Let today be the day you give up who you've been for who you can become.†–Hal Elrod
I stood in the grow room and lit up a fatty, some Lemon Haze. Such a smell, mmmmmmm…and what a sense of satisfaction to have reached this point so perfectly. Blowing the final hit up toward the carbon filter, I turn the timer on, and click…darkness falls on my babies for the very first time. I hope the little darlings aren't scared. Time to flower. Sleep well.
Chapter 11
THE STRETCH
“If your dreams don't scare you a little, your dreams aren't big enough.†–Anonymous
For the next two weeks the plants will grow and grow. They are growing so fast I think I can hear the cells dividing but since I'm really stoned I'm not completely certain of that.
Day 55 and in the first few days of flowering. The change in hue is from the substitution of High Pressure Sodium for the Metal Halide bulbs. The intense red spectrum emitted by HPS encourages flowering and produces better bud density than MH.
Of course, it will be a couple weeks before flowering takes place, until then they are keeping a killer pace. Note the aggressive branching. Love it.
Now Day 60 and they have stretched eight inches in many places just over the past 5 days. I'm Supercropping lots of branches, just cracking them over (carefully) to keep lowering and thickening the hedge.
Blue Dream stretching to Heaven
Topping off the nutrient reservoir…the plants drink an inch or more from the reservoir every day now so more than once a week it needs to be refilled and re-balanced. First adjust PH, then nutes (always adding one at a time), then PH once more. If you mix nutrients before adding them to water, you risk potentially combining substances which could result in “lockup†which can prevent optimum absorption. I use a small pump to move water from place to place.
Under the tanning bed lights. Now the temperature of the lights will begin to be an issue. I will raise them another foot which should be exactly perfect when they stop stretching and begin to fill out with all those delicious, fragrant, amazing flowers. It's sooo hard not to be impatient knowing that I could have piles and piles of fat buds in only a couple more months. I believe flowering may take longer than the typical 7-8 weeks because the Sativa influence is strong in these varieties. Hydro, I read, also seems to extend the flowering period by a week or two compared to soil. There seems to be a consensus about that, but I wonder if longer flowering results in more effective bud development and even greater canopy density. Greater density=more buds. I want dat.
Now back under wraps they go, to be alone for another few days of muscular growth. I will be very anxious to check them next time, and hope to see those first beautiful little flowers.
“You get what you work for, not what you wish for.†–Anonymous
Now day 65 and the forest is getting thick. A beautiful thing…
These babies are about to start showing.
The canopy has developed nicely, I have worked he foliage all through the space, carefully, spreading it out to obtain the even, thick coverage you see. Just setting the stage for the final phase…real success will only be measured by the ultimate yield and that is why it's so important to have every ray of light falling on something green. Still no major heat issues, since it is early Spring outside. Still not a single leaf looking anything but healthy and strong. It's so fun to see plants being all they can be. The stem thickness in places is amazing, these branches will be capable of supporting the great weight of all the buds that will soon cover every inch of their length.
I get a touch nervous to have them flowering for well over a week and still not be seeing any flowers but I remember feeling the same way at this point in previous grows. It seems like it isn't ever going to happen because you're counting the seconds but then one night it just goes pop. I know it's imminent. I must be vigilant because we still don't know for certain if all the girls are really girls of if we have a transvestite in our midst. This is a potentially crucial issue so let me address a couple possibilities.
The use of regular seeds brings a lot of excitement into your grow, most of it unneeded. First let's discuss the worst possible scenario. Hear me: if even one male plant is allowed to flower the entire energy of your plants will be devoted to growing big fat seeds instead of big fat buds and you will have achieved a shitty grow. Regular seeds (male and female) make the whole thing way too much of a crapshoot. That's the reason to invest in feminized seeds. Feminized seeds will all be female, case closed. You simply have to use feminized seeds today. Nothing would be worse than raising ten or more plants more than half their lives and finding out most of them have to be killed.
Now let's talk about the very, very best case scenario, though it is also very unlikely. That would be where there are no males in the garden, but somehow a very small number of male flowers, ideally only one, appears on a female plant. Why is this so great if it happens? Because the pollen from these rogue male preflowers would contain only female DNA, so every seed produced by any accidental fertilization would be a feminized seed! That would be wonderful because it would mean I had produced my very own hybrid and I would have seeds for growing it. Even better, if I could identify one male preflower and it fertilized all the varieties, I would have up to four new hybrids. Considering these would be ass-kicking crosses, and if there was only a scattered incidence of seed production but not a ton, I could end up with years and years worth of seeds for fresh, home-grown hybrids like White Widow x Holy Grail 69, Blue Dream x Ripper Haze, who knows?
One of my very advanced goals is to one day induce such preflowers through careful light exposure of only one part of one branch during the flowering dark period which I understand can trigger one or more hermaphroditic flowers to appear. Talk about tricky to execute, I could easily ruin the grow by messing around with something so delicate and if I throw the flowering cycle off it will extend the grow by many weeks while they recover and also probably diminish the quality of everything. I will save all such stuff for future grows. For now I just want to avoid that worst case scenario I mentioned.
Therefore, any male preflower must be spotted and removed immediately or the entire grow could be ruined by just one premature ejaculation, so to speak. The excitement is delirious, the tension is high…it's making my head spin, or maybe it's just that bowl of Skunk I just burned…
Day 67 and here come the flowers! I'm so excited and frankly a little relieved. I checked every plant…all showing, all female! Yes!! Even when you buy seeds from a reputable seed bank, there is always a little doubt as to what you really got until this day. A lot of work, time, and patience finally resulting in the certain knowledge that you have not wasted your time and the bountiful harvest of your dreams is at least on the horizon. Now the most wonderful weeks of the grow begin.
There is nothing on Earth as fragrant and intoxicating as the delicious aroma of budding marijuana plants! I love that smell so much I could marry it but that doesn't mean I can start camping out in the grow room. As a rule I minimize the time I physically spend in the chamber, knowing full well less contact means less risk of introducing anything into the grow room that could hurt the plants and that care has always paid off handsomely as I have never had a buggy- or moldy disaster. These babies have developed into strong, healthy adults and every one has come through the stretch and the changeover with flying colors. I must maintain my level of personal discipline and not start going in there more than needed even though I want to just totally immerse myself in the impossibly delicious though still-delicate scent of musky skunky wonderfulness.
The next day I added three additional supplemental lights, 300 watt Mars Hydros, just to give a little boost to the front corners. Could probably add ten more but no need. I'm totally confident 1,000 watts of HPS are more than enough to supply this grow. It's just you always want more, you know? Plus they add a neat hue in this picture as they illuminate the fan leaves.
I blow a huge hit up toward the exhaust port and survey my handiwork. Two days short of ten weeks since those tiny little seeds first touched water. It truly exceeds even my best expectations and that's a rare place to be in life. A mighty fine quilt we're knitting, that's for sure. Mighty fine.
PART 2 FOLLOWS...
to 420 Magazine, Hyena Merica. Here are some links that may help you 
I copied your project to our Hydroponic Gardening forum as a coherent thread, without the extra posts from us 