fear's 4th fluro then HPS grow

[urgr8estfear]

UPDATE DAY 035 24/7 (from seed) DAY 9 12/12 presexing

Yeeee! I can walk again without the aid of metal sticks!
This means more regular updates from me with photos every 3 or 4 days.
I'm taking my own signature's advice really serious this time, I wait with the waterings until I see symptoms of underwatering.
Also, I still have not added any nutes and the bottom leaves are still green so that's OK too.

Every day now I check for signs of sex, but none of the plants have shown yet.
I really hope they show soon, they need to be repotted but I'm not planning of repotting any males.

The plants are running at temperatures from 20C to 30C with RV% between 50 and 80.

General impression of the plants is good, no issues so far.
Here look :




And wiggely I've checked out those links. I know that journal!
AugustWest's SCROG is a big example for us all.
Definately more efficient then my LST jobs, but I'm not sure by how much.
Here look at my LST job from the second flowering of my second grow :

Still I want to put a number on the difference.
See how much difference there really is and I'm willing to sacrifice some yield for that.
Not to mention sacrificing my time, LST is really time consuming but it keeps me off the streets I guess.
Have a nice grow!

[Extinctx11]

Im using your log to keep tabs so keep posting!

[SmknVTEC]

August also uses 10-20 gallon bags. Big difference there too.

[urgr8estfear]

UPDATE DAY 042 24/7 (from seed) DAY 16 12/12 presexing

Damn this presexing takes forever.
Because of this (and the fact that the bottom leaves turned yellow on one of the plants) I nuted them slightly.
I identified 3 probably males but I'm not really that sure.
Trouble I have distinguishing 1 ball from 1 female preflower.
(you know round versus elongated and all, me not being familiar with Sativas and such)

I always like to have both a male and a female next to each other before I start axing.
Just to prevent any unecessary errors on my behalf.

So not much things of interesting going on right now, boring waiting for the most part.
Check every day, you know the drill.

Here this is what my growbox looks like now :


And hey hello Extinctx11!
Welcome to my show!
I've checked your grow. Looks nice!
Its going to be difficult to compare for I will veg for about 2-3 months.
This is only the presexing stage to weed out the males.
Good luck!

[SmknVTEC]

Are there any alternating nodes on those plants? I can't see any. Maybe that's why it is taking so long because they are not sexually mature. If there are alternating nodes it just must be the sativa dominant strain.

Let me make sure I understand here because your wording is a little confusing to me. It is day 42 from seed day 16 on 12/12 so they went 12/12 on day 26 of life? Or they were on 24/7 for 42 days plus 16 days 12/12 for a 58 day old plant? Which one; A or B? What happened to 14 days 24/7 then 14 days 18/6, preflowers show in about week 5 all by themselves? I thought it was you and I who discussed that.

Finally, you don't like MH for vegging? Either scenario above that the case maybe, they seem like they could be bigger by now. Not criticizing by any means I just thought by now you would be a full HID man.

[stopsnitchin]

looks good

[urgr8estfear]

SmknVTEC let me explain some things.

I'm growing Nirvana Cali Orange Bud, which is a Indica/Sativa mix.
Supposedly its more of a Sativa when judging smoking effect. (head high)
That's why I chose this because I do not like the couchlock thingie.

Yesterday, it was 42 days ago since I stuck the seeds in the soil.
16 days ago I went from 24/7 to 12/12.
Yes indeed we discussed doing 24/7 for 14 days then 18/6 for another 14.
I (allmost) tried that on my previous grow : 14 days 24/7, 9 days of 18/6 and then I got worried about heatwaves (like last year) hitting me in July or August.

During heatwaves like that the attic in which my growbox stands easily becomes 40 Celcius.
Normal HPS ballasts are made for environment temps up to 30 Celcius, and I think running in a 40 Celcius environment is pushing it too far even with a fan cooling the HPS ballast.
Basically I don't want to run the HPS and ballast combo at 40 Celcius.
Normally in environment temps at 30 Celcius 400W ballasts operate at around 70C internally. If you go to 40 Celcius internal temps will rise to 90C or maybe even 100C without additional cooling. This is a problem!

I like being on the safe side, standard ballasts that come with fluros are good up to 40 Celcius, the manufacturer says so, and I know from experience the thermal protection kicks in around 45 Celcius fluro ballast temp.

(I'm one of those idiots who actually checks the environment specs for the equipment I operate)

So I decided my previous grow had to be finished by the end of June, which left me with only 1 month of vegging and 2 months of flowering, so there I skipped presexing thing all together.

***** back to this grow ****

You are totally right about the alternating nodes.
There are none.
I did some counting, there are 8 or 9 node-level on each plant.
The three plants I'm pretty sure are males even do not alternate.
I remember somebody told me once flowering can be induced after 3 node-levels OR when they start alternating.
I guess they were wrong or it simply does not apply to all strains.

A MH bulb would indeed result in bigger plants as compared to now.
The difference in vegging between fluros and MH per lumen is not as great as between fluros and HPS during flowering.
Vegging can use blues and reds while flowering does not.

I'm just being a cheap bastard I guess!
I already own the fluros......

just wondering....since the fluros will die one day....do MH bulb/ballast combos come in 100W to 200W flavors?

If the plants are only a few weeks they are quite small still effectively making a 400W MH very inefficient.
I remember a 400W HPS covers 0.7m^2 nicely with my growboxs surface area being 0.72m^2.
In the first few weeks the surface fill ratio of my growbox will be crappy, making any high power HID very inefficient.
I want low power because of low surface fill ratios.

Do you understand why I'm hesitant to go with MH?

The allmighty Euro!

[SmknVTEC]

Yeah man, I forgot about the high attic temps. That's a great reason why not to do MH. As far as I know the MH bulbs come in 150, 250, 400, 600 and 1000 watts. I don't know about the 100 and 200 watters. You could just use HPS all the way through. That's what I do. Of course your heat problem will still be there but, they now make that Hortilux hps bulb which has blue in it so that it can be used for veg. That's what I have. I did break down and get an MH light though, but have yet to use it.

People flower plants on 12/12 from seed. It can be done before alternating nodes but, I think as you are finding out, the plant really doesn’t start to flower until it has reached those prerequisites.

[urgr8estfear]

UPDATE DAY 047 24/7 (from seed) DAY 21 12/12 presexing

Allright. I figured out who's who.
I also know why I had such a hard time distinguishing the males from the females in this grow.
For some reason the females in this grow do not produce any pistil hairs for me to observe even after 3 weeks of 12/12.
But now the males are unmistakenly obviously male.
Here look :


You see?
The males are obvious but why I'm not seeing any white pistil hairs on the females is anybodies guess.
Maybe it's a CaliO thing I dunno.
Ideas about this anyone?

So I'm down to 5 plants now. Plants F1, S3 and S9 were male.
Time for me to get my hands dirty and repot my 5 girlies!

[Extinctx11]

Man I recently made a huge mistake and trashed what I think was a female because it wasnt showing pistils because my other plants showed their pistils right away when it started to grow the tiny "pods" so I assumed it was male.

man 2 weeks later I let this other plant go that wasnt showing pistils... it took another week before it started at all... apparently some show pistils right away some wait until your about to break down.

I had to do 24 hours darkness to reverse my lighting schedule (lights on at night instead of day) the next day the questionable ones were showing pistils... so from now on I think when I see "pods" but no pistils im going to 24 hour darkness them just to pop a pistil and confirm sex... Vtec said it wasnt a bad thing.

[urgr8estfear]

I hear ya.
If there's one thing I've learned so far about growing MJ plants is that there are vast differences between strains.
Even between plants that are supposedly the same strain you can find quite a lot of differences.
Especially with crossbred plants that are not first generation plants you end up with more genes from either side of the pool.

I was just really suprised not to see any pistil hairs yet, since my previous 3 grows all showed alot quicker. I wonder if this is a COB trait.

Some people say an apple IS an apple.
Bullshit!
An apple is LIKE an apple, none of them are the same.

Good thing I'm taking my time with this stuff, I have no fear of accidental pollination since I'm presexing and will veg for at least another month.

Haste is usually a bad thing indeed.
Which reminds me, I really need to get a SCROG screen fast.
Too much 'snake like patience' can be a bad things as well.....

[urgr8estfear]

UPDATE DAY 049 (from seed)

And so I got my hands dirty.
I put my 5 remaining girls in 3 30liter containers. (about 8 gallons)
Comparing styles is what this grow will be all about.....and getting me some nifty smokes ofcourse.

2 plants in 1 container will be LST-ed.
2 plants in 1 container will be SCROG-ed.
1 plant in 1 container will be SCROG-ed as well.

This way I hope to be able to put some numbers on the LST vs. SCROG question when it comes down to yield.
Also I will determine the difference in yield between two plants that share one container and one plant that has the entire container for itself.
I know SCROG should beat LST and I know 2 plants in 1 container will compete for the available space and may yield less.
Question in my mind is 'by how much'.
When this grow is completed we will know.
Here look at some of my handy work :





Right now I'm vegging at 18/6 with 12x18W of fluros.
6 4000K tubes and 6 2700K CFLs. 216W total.
Ofcourse I will try to maximize the canopy before I switch to 12/12 with a 400W HPS.
Like in my last grow I'm running with two layers of medium inside the containers.
1 10L layer of hydro granules (which the roots are gonna love...again) and 1 20L layer of soil mix.
The soil mix is 40% cocopeat, 40% general potting soil (with a bit of nutes included, no slow release stuff) and 20% seedling soil.
In order to up the soil's pH a bit I've added about 200 grams of lime.

So that's it. All set for some serious growing, no more repotting.
Questions, comments and/or better yet advice anyone?

[greeny909]

Looks good. Looking forward to the results of your tests (scrog VS lst, 2 plants sharing 1 pot VS seperate pots).

[SmknVTEC]

I don't see any pistils on the plant labeled "F".

[urgr8estfear]

Originally Posted by SmknVTEC

I don't see any pistils on the plant labeled "F".

See DAY047, three of my posts back...
If it's not 0 then it must be 1