Hi folks, flushed from the (relative) success of my first grow and armed with enhanced enthusiasm and energy, I thought that for my 2nd grow this year I would try doing a SCROG! My first grow was completed in my attic with a 650W HPS lamp and a modest 1.2m square 'box' constructed using painted hardboard from a DIY shop. I grew 21 seedlings from bag seed of which 12 were females generating almost 9 ounces of pure bud. I took cuttings from the female plants that were the bushiest and now that they have finally taken root I have re-planrted my enlarged grow room. I began this grow on 28th April 2005 and have taken some pictures for this journal so you can see how it got moving, but first, here are a few of the original crop and initial harvest! Wish me luck folks as I hope to break the lb barrier this time around!
28th April 05 Time to take some cuttings or clones before harvest. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight I would certainly have taken these before I forced the parent plants to flower. Just another lesson learned the hard way, but then again I was too far in before I read any of the threads on taking clones! What I have tried to do is try lots of new things so please ecxcuse me if yousee me blatently breaking the stablished 'rules' for home growing. It's a bit of fun only rather than a business endeavour so hey! OK, so for my clones I tried two different methods, firstly I took cuttings which I put striaght into warm water before applying rooting powder and planting in tall pots filled with potting compost. These were fed and tied into large plastic bags to take root. I left the cuttings in these bags in a hot sunny conservatory, opening them each day to change the air and misting regularly with a water spray.
12th May 2005 You know what it's like when you change your mind half way through something? Well, that's what this grow is like! To bring you up to speed, I had about 50 spare bag seeds left after my first grow which I had fully intended to grow as SOG again in my original attic space. Having spent a lot of time reading other journals and asking questions, I decided to grow SGROG for my 2nd grow rather than another SOG. Unfortunately I had already germinated all the seeds (apart from 6 which I kept back 'just in case') so by 12th May I had 45 little hash plants growing in a tomato grow bag in my back garden. I know what a pain it was to find so many of my initial 21 plants turning male or hermie and knew that trying to sort out males and hermies from females in a SGROG in a confined space would be impossible, so I thought I needed another contingency! At this point I thought it best to take further cuttings from my SOG and this time I decided to use the 'water method' to promote root growth. More of this later but for now, here are some pictures of my fresh cuttings on a bright window sill together with a few of my initial soil-planted clones too. More on the unwanted 45 later too!
OK, so before you have a cow, I didn't really mean they were unwanted. Just more like surplus to requirements! So, to set the scene, I don't have friends that smoke, I don't intend to sell any of my stuff and I don't want a garden full of plants either. Soooo, what do you do with a whole shit-load of mini cana plants if you live in the country and don't want them in your garden? Well, I thought it would be a nice gesture to take a series of extended walks into the local countryside late at night with a few at a time and plant my 'unwanted 45' where they could get on with it for themselves. Having found a few likely places already, I planted all the gang out over the course of 2 weeks and will leave them where they are, untouched and un-checked until much later in the year. I kept 2 back which I planted in my garden so I can roughly check on the development of my outside grow without having to revisit them. So, birds, rabbits and deer permitting I should have a few wild plants to harvest in the fall!
31st May 2005 Finally I seem to have some developments from my soil-planted clone cuttings as they spurt forth some really wierd looking and deformed leaf growth! I checked here on the board and aparently it's not unusual so hey, I'll just go with the flow. In addition I've attached another of the water clones which have shown no signs of life or development. On closer inspection, the water-based clones are continuing to bud and flower despite being returned to 18-6 lighting inside. I took a small pair of scissors and again trimmed all the buds and flowers way hoping to kick-start a bit of growth with them.
10th June 2005 OK, so by now my little plantlets are starting to really get bushy and I've removed them from their plastic prision full-time so they can enjoy the early summer sunshine! The water-based cuttings are not really doing so well now and after almost 6 weeks I have not seen any descernable signs of root growth and the damned buds keep coming back - nothing if not persistent! As I don't have a separate set-up for my cuttings and I don't have the time to build a nursery for them I have taken the decision to plant the lazy cuttings into soil and see how they get on there! I've still got the large poly bags so that's where they are now although they don't look very happy about it! These pictures show my clones growing away quite hapily although I would certainly advise growers not to put so many in a pot as I have as it would seem that one clone to a pot is the best way forward with this. Another lesson learned!
14th June 2005 OK, so it's time for a bit of DIY to enlarge my attic space and growing area. I will stick with my original 650W HPS lamp and having done a bit more research it seems that some places think this can work with a larger grow area - which is nice! OK, so what I've done is extended out the original area from 1.2m sq to just under 2 square metres using a rough framework to support my white-painted hardboard walls. Within this area I have 3 long growing trays to collect surplus muck and water which I will sit my pots on. For this grow I am using 9 pots, each of which is approx 14 inches deep. My screen is 1.2 metres square and uses 2 inch square plastic fencing material for the grid which is positioned approx 22 inches high giving the plants about 8 inches to grow before reaching the screen. In addition to the 8 plants in 6 pots below the screen I am also growing 4 more taken from my cuttings to use as future mothers for my next clones, as well as 3 new plants which I have grown from seed too. These are non-feminised 'Orange Bud' plants, the seeds for which I bought online via Grass City. I have germinated and grown these in my house and have just transfered them into my new grow area but I have kept them separate from the main SGROG grow for obvious reasons.
OK, so that brings my journal up to date. Sorry for the info-burst but the development of the clones into healthy little plants was soooo slow that it wouldn't have made much sense if I had pinged pictures up of the same activity each week. So, my plan is to use the 8 plants under the screen to fully fill the grow area and see how much I end up with! I guess we all need a target to work to so having got almost 9 oz from my previous grow with 12 plants, this time I want to break the pound barrier with these 8! You will see that I've got 3 Orange Bud plants in separate pots outside of the SCROG too which I hope to grow and take some through to seeding for next year (assuming at least one is female!) and so managing that will also be a new challenge with this grow too. I have 4 little clones in with the 3 Orange Bud plants to grow as potential clone mothers too for later in the year and that doesn't include the very sickly looking cuttings that failed to root in water and are not doing too well now in the soil. I'll show you those in my next update together with some more of my grow set-up too. In addition I guess I should fill you all in on what else I have ongoing too. OK, I don't have a fan or extractor in my attic but the smell wasn't too bad last time so I haven't bothered again this time. I also don't have a thermometer up there either as there is nothing I can do about the temperature. I also don't have a soil testing kit but am using the same basic soil mixture that I did last time. Soil mixture - I am using 30% non-peat based potting compost, 30% Tomato compost from a grow-bag, 25% topsoil and 15% Perlite for aireation and drainage. Ferts - During the Veg stage I will be using basic tomato ferts for growth and when I begin to force flowering I intent to use Dr Hornby's 'Big Bud' and Advanced Nutrients 'Overdrive' which I ordered towards the end of my last grow. The last grow only had about 2-3 weeks on this at the end of 8 weeks flowering so I'm hoping that using it earlier will pay me a divident! Lighting - I currently have the plants on 18-6 and will be misting them daily and watering them infrequently. Your questions - Hey, I've only done this once before so it's a jorney of adventure for me but I will happily answer any questions you may have! My questions - as I think of them I will throw them open in this thread. The first is a touch premature as it relates to the dose of 'Big Bud' and 'Overdrive' I should use with my water during flowering, but that's a few weeks away right now! Perhaps if there is anyone here from Advanced Nutrients, please could you add some directions for dirty-growers as well as thse that you already have for hydro set-ups? Your thoughts and opinions - hey, we've all got 'em so if you have any thoughts or idea's, please feel free to share them. I'm a newbie and this is just a bit of a hobby so nothing too technical or deep please (lol) and yes, I've read the rules on one plant to a pot and blah blah blah, but it's a bit of fun and the plants are in, so, wish me luck and fingers crossed for a monster harvest later in the year!
good luck with it all .... it doesnt look like you have much of a screen for 5 plants ... also dont forget they will be tangled when you come to repot them .... i found that out the hard way lol
Aye, grow coming along well looks like, grats. Yes one plant to a pot lol other than that really well done. As far as the nutes go, I'm in flowering and have only used veg ferts until yesterday. I made a flowering guano tea and fed my female papaya. Have a bit left over from the last soil grow and no cash hehe. Whatever it tells you on the label to use, cut it in half or quarter to start. Just my rule of thumb mind you. You can always up the doseage as you see how the plants react to it. Look forward to seeing more here soon, cheers . . Gg
HIGH All, a great start to a great Journal....so as you know now one plant per pot, you only do it once right. You will notice a big difference when you have one per pot. The fans are not only for ridding your attic from the smell but Also for air movement and bringing in Fresh air (plants love) and sucking out the Stale air. As for AN I haven't used, the Ferts I use are good enough for me..but hey check this out I'm sure this will come in handy.
Real good thanks Shamen, I trust you are equally effervescent? I've lots of fresh pictures today and the little buggers are growing along quite nicely! GG - thanks for that, the folks I ordered it from suggested halving the doses too which I did, increasing slightly with each water. I did over-do it at the end of my last grow though and suffered a bit of fert burn. No point making mistakes unless you learn from them so I won't be doing that again. Fert and watering - two things that are much better under-done rather than over-done! UNOIT - many thanks, it was a bit technical for me so I'll just half it and see how it goes. As for ferts during the VEG stage, I was intending to stick with Tomato fert although I'm open to suggestions folks! As for the fan, fresh air and so on, I've not really got the option as I hope these latest pictures will show. What I've tried to do is give you a better idea for the size of my set-up although it still isn't clear how large it is. OK then, these first two show my screen around my grow area with the other 3 of the clones below the screen
OK, so here are another 5 pictures. 6 & 7 just show the plants under the screen. 8 gives you a glimse of the 3 Orange Bud plants that I've grown from seed. As you know I'm looking to bring these to maturity and pollenate them so I've got some more seeds to play with - sod's law would mean that they will either be all girls or all male! 9 Shows you my little plantlets under their screen 10 is taken 'landscape' with a 2 litre bottle in front so you can have an idea of scale. This bottle stands about 15 inches tall! (apologies for the dark ring under the pictures. I've used a wide angle lense with my camera and that's the shadow that it casts with my flash!)
As you know, I'm breaking the cardinal rule of one plant per pot with my SCROG, but if the 6 pots below the screen, only two are doubled up and this was so I could hopefully fill in the empty spaces at either end (plus I had some spare clones!) Picture 12 shows you a little more of life under the screen while pic 13 shows you my proud Orange Bud plants.
Just a final, if sad note to today's update relating to the second batch of cuttings that I took way back on 12th May. Well, they didn't start to grow any roots at all and after 5 weeks of being in the water, all they wanted to do was continue flowering. I took a pair of very small sharp scissors and again removed the unwanted buds and tried again before deciding to change tactics and move them from the water into soil. The soil clones did take some time but did root eventually so I duplicated the process again. This time the clones which by now have been off the plant for over 6 weeks really didn't like the change as you can see. I've not given up quite yet, although what is left of the cutings are now out in the summer sunshine where they will either sink or swim. Looks like some of them have already given up the ghost, but hopefully, against all odds some will survive!
HIGH All, bummer on the Clones Bopper....but the Buds you cut O.F.F.F. will become the growing part of your Clone..it's best to leaf the Bud on and it will revert back to veg in time.
Thanks mate, one to remember for next time, although I intend to take my clones before I trigger flowering next time!