Twist's Blueberry, CFL & LST

[DenialTwist]

Well after years of smoking the stuff I am finally in a position to be growing it...so this is the journal to go along with my first growing experience!

Seeds: Blueberry.
Set up : CFL.

After much deliberation I decided to go with Dutch Passion Femminised Blueberry Seeds. It seems to have a euphoric high, and should grow to heights of around 1m. Perfect for my set up.

I've decided to go for CFLs and I when I started off I hooked up 9 18W ones. Each is supposed to generate 120W so I could be going with an incandescent rate of 1000W. Today I added another 5 CFLs on a side wall making it a total of 14 18Ws....giving an incandescent ratio of 1500W and consuming 252Ws. Now I am not 100% sure of CFLs and am thinking of moving to t5 Plant pro CFLs which have a higher blue-green spectrum, but in the meantime the setup seems to be doing fine for my 5 girls.

So...a few pics of the setup.

[AugustWest]

nice flouro setup man.. they look really nice.

what kinda soil is that?

[DenialTwist]

Cheers man...I took my time when it came to setting up the grow area, and I think it shows.

I had originally planned for only the top fluoros but I realised that when I put the fans on the temp would drop to 16C, a bit chilly. Also, I figured it could do with more light so today I added the remaining 5. Failing to plan is planning to fail they say and luckily hooking up the electrics wasn't too bad. Temp is now at 25...yummy...I hope I can increase the humidity as well. Fluoros really do not generate much heat at all.

As for the soil I went for a bag of garden compost, no slow releasing chemicals or anything. As organic as I could find...then 30% perlite I think. So far they seem to be doing well. I had some overwatering at the beginning and I still tend to water too much as well but I am getting better.

I tried nutes last week but was so afraid of burning them that I ended up giving more water...talk about making the problem worse, but they seem to have settled down. I think I am going to make my next watering on tuesday. This time I got Miracle Grow All Plant nutrient (24-8-16) if I recall properly.

[DenialTwist]

Thought I would update this while having a j. I've lowered my lights down to about 20 inches above the plants and I am hoping not to give them light burn. The fluoros don't give out much heat so that is not a problem, but I am firing 1000W down at them.

LST is showing its effects, and I can't thank Dierwolf enough for his post, it is already making a difference to my grow. It's good to know those kind of guys exist. Many thanks once again kind sir.

I'll try and post some porn soon but can't seem to focus the camera properly as it is too bright. I'll wait until the lights just go off before taking a couple of snaps.

One thing that really impressed me is how this beautiful plant reacts. The main stem is now at 90 degrees and parallel to the soil, and I am just starting my next 90 degree turn to bring her round the circumference of the pot. On each node, there is a shoot aiming upwards, looking just like a main stem, and all this works because of gravity. Ahh MJ so beautiful and so smart!!!

I calculated that for the stem to go round the pot it would make the plant about 30 inches, I guess I could be getting around 10-15 shoot offs.

So fingers crossed the lights don't burn the plants. Soil is still wet from my previous over-watering situation so hopefully soon I will be able to start the nutes.

[CaliCoast]

Looks good so far man, good luck!

[IMgreen]

yeah, nice job so far!

[st-james]

Hey your plants are looking great. Nice growth.

Why do you have the lights so far away though? And especially with those low wattage cfls. You can put 42w cfls 1 inch from a plant without burning it...

[lobsters]

Nice grow dude... I am pumped to see how blueberry grows... I want to grow that fo sho... But for now, it's bag seed... boo... lol. Props.

[DenialTwist]

Cheers for the support guys.

Originally Posted by st-james

Hey your plants are looking great. Nice growth.

Why do you have the lights so far away though? And especially with those low wattage cfls. You can put 42w cfls 1 inch from a plant without burning it...

At the moment I have the lights about 20 inches away from the plants. The fluoros are 18W each * 9 and I am a bit afraid of light burn. I have the symptoms of over-watering at the moment which I interpreted as being from too much light (yellowing & curling of leaves).

My total incandescent Wattage is close to 1000 and that is what is making me nervous...

[DenialTwist]

Ok...I've taken a few more pics so time to update the journal. I've always found hemp such a beautiful plant, so many varieties of the female plant that are just marvelous to stare at...just like the female body.

I'm really enjoying this part of the grow. My setup is doing it's job, i've survived germinating, understood the simple principle of watering and just about got the hang of nutrients. Seems I can just watch them grow and enjoy Wolf's LST technique.

I found a couple of other blueberry journals that have some amazing pics. I can't wait for the day my leaves start turning purple but I am now conscious of the fact that LST is going to add a considerable amount of time to my grow. Hopefully this will mean loads of good quality smoke!!! Ahhhhhhhhhh.

So here comes the porn...

[DenialTwist]

I just wanted to post some pics to show how quickly plants respond to lst. The underlying principle of lst is gravity, so the first pic shows the plants just after pegging them down and the second pic is the plants after a couple of hours.

[DenialTwist]

I can't believe I just wrote an entry and then surfed away from it before publishing...ahhh I must be quite pleasantly stoned. So...2nd attempt.

I was wanting to get a few thoughts out about LST. Basically I saw this entry in Wolf's LST thread, especially the pics that were attached.

Originally Posted by bapro

I have been perfecting my LST method ....... low lying main stems just above the surface of the soil .......then when they bloom , think out the underbrush ...

The plant tells you what it needs and when .....

These are only two plants ...... but they should bust out what i count as high as 22 colas EACH !!!! we will see how big they are

The way the plant is so uniform all around is astonishing, especially getting them all at the same height. They guy or gal, counted 22 colas. WTF????

Now hopefully I have managed to suss uploading images. So here is what one of my girls is starting to look like...

I now find myself needing to slow down the growth of the first colas so that the rest of them can catch up, especially as I still need to go around the whole pot (no pun)!

I take it that fimming/topping is the answer to my needs but I don't really get it. Even though I have read the excellent post in the beginers section. I guess I will have to go back to it and re-read it a few times.

Well, I didn't manage to space the pics out how I would have liked, 3rd pic is bapro's!

[lobsters]

LMFAO!!! Garden of Weed-en!! Too good, too good...

How many plants are you lst-ing? I only see two and the others aren't? I am just really confused so sorry if I completely missed something vital.

[Jstromz]

yo i had about 350 in actual watts with cfls..most under 5 inches away..they will not burn unless touching basically..i tried it

[DenialTwist]

Originally Posted by lobsters

LMFAO!!! Garden of Weed-en!! Too good, too good...

How many plants are you lst-ing? I only see two and the others aren't? I am just really confused so sorry if I completely missed something vital.

Hehe...the garden of weed-en just popped into my mind and I had to roll with it.

I have a total of 5 females, all of which I have started LST on. One of them has just shot way ahead of everyone else, while the other ones have a slightly more stunted and bushier grow, all of which I am pegging down as they grow. I bought feminised seeds from DP and I hope that they really are all girls and that the one that shot ahead is not a hermie. I've heard a few experienced growers comment on the fact that the plants that usually grow the quickest tend to be males. Fingers crossed that is not the case.

I am just about to start nutes and I'm going with Miracle Grow for it. I over watered about 10 days ago and that seriously slowed my grow down, but things are now settling so fingers crossed there should be some considerable growth in the coming days.

When I look at the girls the signs of over-watering (yellow leaves) is evident up until the 3rd leaves, after that the leaves are nice and green, so I can kind of date back my mistakes. As long as you learn from it....

Originally Posted by Jstromz

yo i had about 350 in actual watts with cfls..most under 5 inches away..they will not burn unless touching basically..i tried it

Thanks for the input Jstromz. I have been thinking about lowering the lights further. I realise now that LST will seriously increase the amount of time I am growing these girls. All good though cause hopefully there will be loads of stuff to smoke at the end of it, so maximising growth is quite important. I will go and lower the lights further. The only problem is that when I LST them the side leaves end up being quite high before settling down, and I don't want them to burn.

Anyway...I am going to have my first j of the day and then I will lower the lights.

Oh...I am also getting a bonus from work so I am seriously considering spending a bit of cash and going for t5's, but I have 14 lights in total and this could be expensive.