Hello,
In an effort to reduce our monthly costs incurred with regular purchases to assist with my wife's chronic pain, we decided to give growing a try.
After reading several tutorials and making a trip to our local hydroponics store (very informative), we settled on a method the guy at the store suggested.
In a nutshell, we have 4 3.5 gallon buckets. I started the seeds in peat pellets, then transferred them into the buckets. As you will see in the photos, I used a stone medium instead of clay. We are now using tap water, properly pH'd, with an air pump set to highest output that runs a medium sized air stone in the bottom of each bucket. We started the babies under CFL's while we waited for a MH/HPS light to ship in. The light we have set up now is 600W, not air cooled, digital ballast with controls to knock down output to 50% and 75%. To control temp, we have an AC in the room and a small fan blowing directly on the babies. I am using Advanced Nutrients, Sensi Grow parts A and B. We have no idea of the strain we have, only that they have come from a very cheap ounce purchased a few weeks back that turned out to have a high number of seeds in it (half an ounce yielded almost 60 seeds).
Of the 9 seeds i started, 7 sprouted. I decided to work with that number and hope that I can get enough of them to the flowering stage that the ratios will work in my favor and we will have at least 3 girls to take to budding. A couple of hiccups and mistakes have left us with 5 currently.
I apologize about the pics, I'm not sure why they are loads sideways. The appear correctly in my viewer and were uploaded from files that had them save with the correct orientation. I'm working on it and hope to correct it in future posts.
Here is a quick pic I snapped of some of the babies after they sprouted. I stuck them under a CFL for a couple days while we worked on our set up.
A couple weeks prior, I dropped a seed in some soil for shits and giggles. When it actually sprouted and started to take off on me, I put it in a set up i was trying for some indoor tomatoes we were trying. We have affectionately been referring to it as the "Dirt Baby."
I realize now that it did not have adequate light in the first couple weeks, so it got very tall and didn't develop much. I kept it to grow along side the other babies to get a rough idea of reference.
On 6/19/15, we had our buckets and did our initial set up. Here are the specifics:
A/c set at 75.
Light set for 18 hrs.
Each plant was set under a 100W CFL.
Nutrients were added at 1/2 the recommended dose for their age and development.
No adjustment was made to the pH, all tested at about 5.5-6.
Baby 1: Plant had some roots showing through the peat pellet, it had its 2nd set of leaves and measured approx: 2 1/4" tall by 1 1/2" wide. It was a light to medium green.
Baby 2: Plant had no roots showing, only its first set of leaves, and was smallest at 1/2" tall by 3/4" wide. It was a medium to dark green.
Baby 3: Plant had not roots showing, only its first set of leaves and measured: 2 1/4" by 1" wide. It was a light to medium green.
At this point, we had a tomato in the last bucket to test out our tap water to see how hard it would be on the plants. Here is a pic of Dirt Baby and the tomato.
Here are a couple other babies that started and were not used right away:
Week 2 (6/24/15)
we had encountered our first issue/hiccup. The water was set at a level just below the net pot as the guy at the hydro store had described to us. The problem was that, while it did dampen the stone in the bottom of the pot, it did not soak it enough to get to the peat pots. Some of the babies did well despite this, but one baby appeared as though it would be offered as a sacrifice to the growing gods. It was swapped out with one of the extras and set in a bowl with water to see if it would come back.
We corrected the water problem by raising the water level to about an inch above the bottom of the net pots. After some further reading, I decided to up the light to 24 hrs some time during the previous week.
We did not snap pics the day we did the water change, but rather I snapped them the next day after we set up the new grow light. The rest of the pics are under a 600W MH light. I have continued to run the light 24 hrs.
The tomato appeared to be doing well, but we decided to keep it an extra week. All water was straight tap beginning this week.
Nutrients were again left at 1/2 the recommended dose for the babies age and size, except for the tomato which was dosed at the recommended level.
Baby 1: pH adjusted up to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves fully showing, measures 2"wide by 2" tall. Dark green in color.
Baby 2: pH adjusted down to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves started, was too dry, plant very brittle, measures 1" wide by 1" tall. Light to medium green. Was pulled out and replaced with a healthy extra with approximately the same measurements.
Baby 3: pH adjusted down to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves fully showing, 3" wide by 3" tall. Healthy dark green. We started calling this one "Monster Baby."
Dirt Baby: Lightly watered but otherwise left alone. Approximately doubled in width and added another set of leaves, still a couple weeks ahead.
I didn't take individual pix of the babies that week. The best I have is a group pic with Baby 1, Dirt Baby and Baby 2 (aka Monster Baby).
Week 3 (7/1/15)
We had an outside temp spike and the temp in the room climbed significantly. A couple of the plants began to show signs of heat stress. We have since lowered the A/C more and changed how the fan was blowing on the plants. The buckets themselves still felt cool to the touch though.
Nutrients were up'd to about 75% the recommended dose for the size and age.
Baby 1: adjust pH down to about 6-6.5, Several roots showing through the rocks and beginning to dangle, measures 4" tall by 4" wide, 3 full sets of leaves with a fourth starting, several growth nodes evident. Healthy dark green.
Baby 2: adjusted pH down to about 6, No roots showing, 3 sets of leaves showing fully with a fourth started, measures 2 1/2" tall by 3 1/4" wide. Remains a light to medium color
Baby 3: Monster baby pH adjust down to about 6-6.5, A lot of root showing in the bucket, 3 full sets of leaves and 4th well started, measures 4" tall by 5" wide, Healthy deep green, several growth nodes, 2 sprouting new leaves
Baby 4: Tomato was pulled out and transplanted to the garden, the remaining healthy baby was transplanted in along with the struggling baby that dried out too much during the first week. pH was adjusted down to about 6, some roots showing through the peat and the stones it had been sitting in while waiting transplant, 3 full sets of leaves and a fourth started, measures 2 3/4" tall by 3" wide, healthy deep green color.
Dirt Baby: Water in the bottom of bottle was changed, several long roots pushed down from the dirt into the water resevoir, water was pH'd down to about 6.5 and a very small dose of nutrients added. Stake was removed and plant measures 6" tall by 5" wide, has 4 sets of leaves and a 5th started, only very small growth nodes.
Again, pix are lacking for this week, but i have a group shot:
Notice some of the leaves curled and showed signs of heat stress. I lifted the light somewhat in addition to the changes to the A/C and fan location.
We are nearly into week 4. A few days ago, Baby 1 was doing very poorly and showing some strange signs of deficiency on it's leaves. After doing some research, I concluded it may be root rot. Sure enough, after pulling up the lid and taking a good look, there was a large section of root that was a distinct brown color, very slimey to the touch and smelled swampy. I wasn't in a position to treat it immediately, but read that adding additional oxygen would help somewhat. I removed water from the bucket until it was about inch below the net pot and just below the problem section. About a day and half after that, the plant was taking off in growth again and when I checked the roots, it appeared as if nothing had happened..... major problem averted by minor adjustment? I'll take my miracles.
Not a great pix, sorry, but the leaves had brown spots through the center of the leaf, between the veins and near the ends in addition to showing the heat stress.
This is a few days later. I removed the most damaged leaves because they were very brittle. New growth is coming on strong and healthy. It is putting some serious growth and may catch up to the Monster in the next few days.
Sadly, my mistake baby from the first week was sacrificed to the growing gods. I think one death in the family while trying out a whole new growing style is pretty damn good so far.
Also during this last week, I topped both Monster Baby and Dirt Baby. Both were gaining much faster in height than the rest and had some aggressive growth nodes pushing right out. So to slow them down and open up more colas for later on (assuming they are females), I topped them just above the third growth node. This has definitely slowed down Dirt Baby, but I think Monster Baby saw it as an opportunity.
https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/20150706_110742.jpg[/img
[img]https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/20150703_203022.jpg
We are planning to top the remaining babies as they get a bit bigger. I really like the way Monster Baby is growing in after being topped. I will begin some low stress training with it this week to really open it up and let the nodes bush right out. I haven't decided if I'm going to top the nodes as well and get 8 main colas going yet. Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Baby 2 is showing some odd growth that is not symmetrical and appears to terminate at the top rather than continuing to grow, so I plan to top it to see how the new growth nodes perform.
This week we plan to drop the level of the water in all buckets and let the bubbles do the work. A quick check of pots yesterday showed that they all have roots dangling now. We also plan to up the nutrients again to the full recommended dose for young plants which is about 1/4 the dose for mature girls.
Thoughts, constructive comments, kudos and advice are gratefully accepted and appreciated! Despite the handle (an ongoing joke in my house), I am not rude(rood), tho definitely a newb. lol
In an effort to reduce our monthly costs incurred with regular purchases to assist with my wife's chronic pain, we decided to give growing a try.
After reading several tutorials and making a trip to our local hydroponics store (very informative), we settled on a method the guy at the store suggested.
In a nutshell, we have 4 3.5 gallon buckets. I started the seeds in peat pellets, then transferred them into the buckets. As you will see in the photos, I used a stone medium instead of clay. We are now using tap water, properly pH'd, with an air pump set to highest output that runs a medium sized air stone in the bottom of each bucket. We started the babies under CFL's while we waited for a MH/HPS light to ship in. The light we have set up now is 600W, not air cooled, digital ballast with controls to knock down output to 50% and 75%. To control temp, we have an AC in the room and a small fan blowing directly on the babies. I am using Advanced Nutrients, Sensi Grow parts A and B. We have no idea of the strain we have, only that they have come from a very cheap ounce purchased a few weeks back that turned out to have a high number of seeds in it (half an ounce yielded almost 60 seeds).
Of the 9 seeds i started, 7 sprouted. I decided to work with that number and hope that I can get enough of them to the flowering stage that the ratios will work in my favor and we will have at least 3 girls to take to budding. A couple of hiccups and mistakes have left us with 5 currently.
I apologize about the pics, I'm not sure why they are loads sideways. The appear correctly in my viewer and were uploaded from files that had them save with the correct orientation. I'm working on it and hope to correct it in future posts.
Here is a quick pic I snapped of some of the babies after they sprouted. I stuck them under a CFL for a couple days while we worked on our set up.
A couple weeks prior, I dropped a seed in some soil for shits and giggles. When it actually sprouted and started to take off on me, I put it in a set up i was trying for some indoor tomatoes we were trying. We have affectionately been referring to it as the "Dirt Baby."
I realize now that it did not have adequate light in the first couple weeks, so it got very tall and didn't develop much. I kept it to grow along side the other babies to get a rough idea of reference.
On 6/19/15, we had our buckets and did our initial set up. Here are the specifics:
A/c set at 75.
Light set for 18 hrs.
Each plant was set under a 100W CFL.
Nutrients were added at 1/2 the recommended dose for their age and development.
No adjustment was made to the pH, all tested at about 5.5-6.
Baby 1: Plant had some roots showing through the peat pellet, it had its 2nd set of leaves and measured approx: 2 1/4" tall by 1 1/2" wide. It was a light to medium green.
Baby 2: Plant had no roots showing, only its first set of leaves, and was smallest at 1/2" tall by 3/4" wide. It was a medium to dark green.
Baby 3: Plant had not roots showing, only its first set of leaves and measured: 2 1/4" by 1" wide. It was a light to medium green.
At this point, we had a tomato in the last bucket to test out our tap water to see how hard it would be on the plants. Here is a pic of Dirt Baby and the tomato.
Here are a couple other babies that started and were not used right away:
Week 2 (6/24/15)
we had encountered our first issue/hiccup. The water was set at a level just below the net pot as the guy at the hydro store had described to us. The problem was that, while it did dampen the stone in the bottom of the pot, it did not soak it enough to get to the peat pots. Some of the babies did well despite this, but one baby appeared as though it would be offered as a sacrifice to the growing gods. It was swapped out with one of the extras and set in a bowl with water to see if it would come back.
We corrected the water problem by raising the water level to about an inch above the bottom of the net pots. After some further reading, I decided to up the light to 24 hrs some time during the previous week.
We did not snap pics the day we did the water change, but rather I snapped them the next day after we set up the new grow light. The rest of the pics are under a 600W MH light. I have continued to run the light 24 hrs.
The tomato appeared to be doing well, but we decided to keep it an extra week. All water was straight tap beginning this week.
Nutrients were again left at 1/2 the recommended dose for the babies age and size, except for the tomato which was dosed at the recommended level.
Baby 1: pH adjusted up to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves fully showing, measures 2"wide by 2" tall. Dark green in color.
Baby 2: pH adjusted down to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves started, was too dry, plant very brittle, measures 1" wide by 1" tall. Light to medium green. Was pulled out and replaced with a healthy extra with approximately the same measurements.
Baby 3: pH adjusted down to about 6.5, No roots showing through the net pot, 2nd set of leaves fully showing, 3" wide by 3" tall. Healthy dark green. We started calling this one "Monster Baby."
Dirt Baby: Lightly watered but otherwise left alone. Approximately doubled in width and added another set of leaves, still a couple weeks ahead.
I didn't take individual pix of the babies that week. The best I have is a group pic with Baby 1, Dirt Baby and Baby 2 (aka Monster Baby).
Week 3 (7/1/15)
We had an outside temp spike and the temp in the room climbed significantly. A couple of the plants began to show signs of heat stress. We have since lowered the A/C more and changed how the fan was blowing on the plants. The buckets themselves still felt cool to the touch though.
Nutrients were up'd to about 75% the recommended dose for the size and age.
Baby 1: adjust pH down to about 6-6.5, Several roots showing through the rocks and beginning to dangle, measures 4" tall by 4" wide, 3 full sets of leaves with a fourth starting, several growth nodes evident. Healthy dark green.
Baby 2: adjusted pH down to about 6, No roots showing, 3 sets of leaves showing fully with a fourth started, measures 2 1/2" tall by 3 1/4" wide. Remains a light to medium color
Baby 3: Monster baby pH adjust down to about 6-6.5, A lot of root showing in the bucket, 3 full sets of leaves and 4th well started, measures 4" tall by 5" wide, Healthy deep green, several growth nodes, 2 sprouting new leaves
Baby 4: Tomato was pulled out and transplanted to the garden, the remaining healthy baby was transplanted in along with the struggling baby that dried out too much during the first week. pH was adjusted down to about 6, some roots showing through the peat and the stones it had been sitting in while waiting transplant, 3 full sets of leaves and a fourth started, measures 2 3/4" tall by 3" wide, healthy deep green color.
Dirt Baby: Water in the bottom of bottle was changed, several long roots pushed down from the dirt into the water resevoir, water was pH'd down to about 6.5 and a very small dose of nutrients added. Stake was removed and plant measures 6" tall by 5" wide, has 4 sets of leaves and a 5th started, only very small growth nodes.
Again, pix are lacking for this week, but i have a group shot:
Notice some of the leaves curled and showed signs of heat stress. I lifted the light somewhat in addition to the changes to the A/C and fan location.
We are nearly into week 4. A few days ago, Baby 1 was doing very poorly and showing some strange signs of deficiency on it's leaves. After doing some research, I concluded it may be root rot. Sure enough, after pulling up the lid and taking a good look, there was a large section of root that was a distinct brown color, very slimey to the touch and smelled swampy. I wasn't in a position to treat it immediately, but read that adding additional oxygen would help somewhat. I removed water from the bucket until it was about inch below the net pot and just below the problem section. About a day and half after that, the plant was taking off in growth again and when I checked the roots, it appeared as if nothing had happened..... major problem averted by minor adjustment? I'll take my miracles.
Not a great pix, sorry, but the leaves had brown spots through the center of the leaf, between the veins and near the ends in addition to showing the heat stress.
This is a few days later. I removed the most damaged leaves because they were very brittle. New growth is coming on strong and healthy. It is putting some serious growth and may catch up to the Monster in the next few days.
Sadly, my mistake baby from the first week was sacrificed to the growing gods. I think one death in the family while trying out a whole new growing style is pretty damn good so far.Also during this last week, I topped both Monster Baby and Dirt Baby. Both were gaining much faster in height than the rest and had some aggressive growth nodes pushing right out. So to slow them down and open up more colas for later on (assuming they are females), I topped them just above the third growth node. This has definitely slowed down Dirt Baby, but I think Monster Baby saw it as an opportunity.
[img]https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/500/20150703_203022.jpg
We are planning to top the remaining babies as they get a bit bigger. I really like the way Monster Baby is growing in after being topped. I will begin some low stress training with it this week to really open it up and let the nodes bush right out. I haven't decided if I'm going to top the nodes as well and get 8 main colas going yet. Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Baby 2 is showing some odd growth that is not symmetrical and appears to terminate at the top rather than continuing to grow, so I plan to top it to see how the new growth nodes perform.
This week we plan to drop the level of the water in all buckets and let the bubbles do the work. A quick check of pots yesterday showed that they all have roots dangling now. We also plan to up the nutrients again to the full recommended dose for young plants which is about 1/4 the dose for mature girls.
Thoughts, constructive comments, kudos and advice are gratefully accepted and appreciated! Despite the handle (an ongoing joke in my house), I am not rude(rood), tho definitely a newb. lol
