Halfway in my first grow

[TheFxckingHero]

yup, I read on another forum a thread of someone doing an LED test. they spent a lot of $ putting the grow together. I think it was on refeermanseeds forum. I forget. they said in about 5 years from now the price of LED lights/equipment will probably have gone down enough to make it practical to use... very cool.

[Plantsr]

hey man, i totally hear ya. alot of people told me never to use cfls. i went the way i wanted to and bought 2 45 watt 2900 lumens light bulbs from canadian tire. my plant springed up the first day and its looking better than ever. try some miracle grow soila nd some ultra bloom, i got it as advice from a close friend and its working wonders. i also put in some hydrorocks to stop from yellow leaves. perfect. i dont see why ppl diss cfls

[KamelRedLight]

Alright I remembered the batteries but the camera is cheap so the images are blurry. At least ya'll can get an idea of how she's doin. Lotsa growth down below. I want to flower soon, but I don't know if I should because I don't really see anything resembling "alternating nodes." If anyone can tell from the pictures if she's ready to flower that'd be sweet.

[KamelRedLight]

I went ahead today and switched out the daylights with 2700k soft whites. One daylight (the 32w) went with the babies on the top shelf in my ghetto grow box. I don't really have two seperate areas to grow in, so what I did was put the pots in a large cardboard box, hooked up the light right above the plants, and draped a black trash bag to block the light from reaching the bottom. Looks good so far. Pics tomorrow, it's lights out right now.

[GrandPewpil]

I dunno about you, but waiting for alternating nodes takes too long. I let my plant veg for 30 days and it still wasn't alternating nodes. It's now approaching 40 days old and is in day 2 of flowering and I've yet to see any nodes that alternate. I guess it takes 6-7 weeks, be patient.


As for swapping out that daylight flouro for a soft white flouro...isn't that a bad idea? I read soft white flouros may keep your plants growing but they provide the wrong spectrum of light. Your plants will stretch a little bit and won't grow as well as plants vegged under cool white(6500k color temp) flouros.

Well, good luck.

[KamelRedLight]

Alrighty, rise and shine little ones! So far I'm feeling good about the LED + soft white CFL combo. Every node has a second pair of branches on it, and some of those branches have branches. I clipped off the oldest leaves since they didn't look too lively, especially the single blade leaf which was the same ugly yellow the other one turned. The other two had a couple random brown spots and were curled in odd ways. Plus, after reading Dierwolf talk about trimming, I couldn't see a reason to leave those leaves on. As for full scale trimming, I'll wait till I've gotten a plant under my belt. Today I get a new timer to put on the babies, as big mama is going into flowering now. Going to need more light sealing though, because when it was daytime upstairs and nighttime down, a little light did seep in, but no brighter than a moon lit night. Here are some pictures.

[KamelRedLight]

Since I switched out the lights and put her into flowering, my baby hasn't seemed to grow much at all. I gave in to temptations and mildly LST'd, and I think it's helping the new lower growth, but still not too much is happening. Does growth slow down when flowering begins? I see tiny tiny growth out of where the flowers come from, so I'm hoping to see sex soon! Pics on the way.

[KamelRedLight]

IT'S A GIRL!!!!! White hairs confirmed at 2nd to top node! Leaving for Bonnaroo, update with pics when I get back.

[KamelRedLight]

Bonnaroo was awesome! But where the hell were all the buds? Oh well. Big Mama has gotten bigger since I left, and there are hairs comin from everywhere! The slope I put in the stem with the LST helped a lot... looks like I'm gonna have a decent bush. I wish this camera took better pictures so you could see all the flowers. One of the leaves reached up and grabbed the light, burning itself, so I amputated. Other than that we're doin good!

[KamelRedLight]

Regarding the soft whites, I figured that since they have a color temperature of 2700k which is pretty red and close to that of HPS, they'd work better for flowering. I will testify they do little for the vegging, and yeah 6500k lights like the daylight ones I got work a lot better in veg state. I could be wrong, but so far they seem to be doin her good.

[KamelRedLight]

9 days into flowering. Got flowers popping up all over. Here are some blurry pictures. Also a couple shots of the kids, one got burnt while i was away, the other one is staying short and stout. Thinking of full blown LST'ing the tall one.

[nicho69]

they are growing steady

[BoSelecta75]

Looking good. Hoping my first grow goes aswell. I think im gonna attempt some LST on itleast one of the 2 plants i intend to grow (im Germinating atm). You are definetly right about the 2700K for flowering, keep it up.

- Bo

[KamelRedLight]

Hey thanks for checkin in. I didn't get home in time from work to visit my plants, but in the dark it looks good. Tomorrow I might start tieing down the taller of the kids, and make a big ol bush out of it.

Bo glad you're seeds sprouted ok, I'll be watchin your jounal.

Later...

[GrandPewpil]

You won't regret LST'ing your lady, KamelRedLight. If anything, you'll regret not having jumped on the LST bandwagon sooner. I started LST'ing my lady after she recovered from her FIM'ing during the third week of veg. Right now I'm approaching my third week of flowering and I've got a branch from the 3rd node with six nickel-sized budsites developing in addition to the main cola. The extra light penetration works wonders.

Good luck and be careful not to snap your stem since your lady is previously untrained and will resist.