KazKin's First-Ever Grow - Journal

Hey there guys and Gals of Grasscity! i have been keeping a diary on paper of my observations and movements regarding my first ever grow. unfortunately i didn't start taking any photos until today (day 9 - transplant day) but i think my diary is descriptive enough to at least give you an idea of where i'm at, and i'm sure many of you know what you'd be looking at in the first week anyway.

so here we go, sit back, have a rip of your favorite strain and enjoy the show!

here is a photo of my grow cupboard, unfortunately my lights, fans, filter and timer haven't arrived yet, so i'm still using the LED lamp but it seems to be going well for now

Edited by KazKin, 27 September 2011 - 07:29 AM.

[Reserved]

you never know when i might need this post

So here we go:

three days before day 1: (16/09/2011)

germinated seed popped today with a 5mm tap root on a moist paper towel with a ceramic cup upturned over it. Planted in a jiffy peat cup using Yates seedling mix and left it on the windowsill

19/09/2011 - Day 1 (24/0, Veg) Morning: bone dry soil but a small loop of growth just popped out of the soil while i was sleeping, gave it 2.5mL of aired tap water
Evening: Loop of growth is now roughly 5mm tall but the cotelydons haven't emerged yet. gave another 5mL of water and put an LED desk lamp over the pot and shoot at a distance of 1.5" from the loop

20/09/2011 - Day 2 (24/0, Veg) Morning: still slightly moist, loop now bigger, approximately 7mm tall and the cotelydons are starting to emerge from the soil
Evening: Cotelydons split open, first leaves already showing at approximately 2mm long each just poking out of the gap and the seedling is now mostly upright and about 20mm tall

21/09/2011 - Day 3 (24/0, Veg) Morning: now totally upright, first set of leaves approximately 5mm long each and total plant approx 22mm tall. moved lamp up to a height of 10mm from the leaves as it was nearly touching
Evening: height hasn't seemed to change much during the day but the stem has thickened and the first leaves have opened up a bit more and have grown to nearly 11mm across (5.5mm per leaf)

22/09/2011 - Day 4 (24/0, Veg) Morning: now the seedling is approximately 4mm from the lamp so grew approx 6mm in the last 24 hours. Leaves are now bigger, approx 13mm across. moved the light to about 10mm from leaves again and gave it a thorough watering as it was a little dry.
Evening: Now approximately 7mm from the light, grew 3mm while i was at work. canopy is now approximately 12mm wide and the leaves are very lush and green.

23/09/2011 - Day 5 (24/0, Veg) Morning: needs some water, grew about 2mm overnight, canopy doesn't seem to have changed.
Evening: seems to have reached another 2mm towards the light and the canopy is now approx 15mm across (7.5mm leaf length). could do with some water maybe but i'll leave it to dry overnight, i'm aware of many new growers overwatering, i don't want to be one of them

24/09/2011 - Day 6 (24/0, Veg) Morning: Seems to have grown a little more. also between the two first real leaves i can just see the start of the second set of leaves! Giving it some water as i will be away tonight.

25/09/2011 - Day 7 (24/0, Veg) Afternoon: Just got home, left the lamp approx 10mm above the plant before leaving last night and came in this afternoon to find the leaves pressed against the light. It grew 10mm overnight. the soil is still damp so it doesn't need water but i moved the light up to 1" from the leaves

26/09/2011 - Day 8 (24/0, Veg) Evening: Seedling is now approximately 10mm from the light so unless somebody is playing tricks on me, (which i doubt as i'm the only one here at the moment) it grew nearly 15mm in 24 hours. now it is about 40mm tall. each first leaf is now over 1/2" long with the second set of leaves around 3-4mm long. still hasn't started spacing out between the cotelydon leaves and the first leaves unlike the outdoor plant i have sitting in the soil outside the window. perhaps the light intensity outside isn't as good and maybe the proximity of the light to the indoor one is causing it to bunch up... could this be a problem in the future?
Still only feeding plain aired tap water. won't be watering it tonight. soon i will move it off the desk where it is sitting now and into it's cupboard in the garage. perhaps this will happen at transplant time. thinking of transplanting it at a 45 degree angle to make LST easier. Debating whether to LST or SCROG, thoughts, given the dimensions of my cupboard?
i moved the light to about 15mm above the plant and decided to check the drain hole under the pot; HAHA the tap root has emerged from the hole, transplant may take place tomorrow now.

27/09/2011 - Day 9 (24/0, Veg) Seedling grew a couple more mm last night. Decided it is definitely time to transplant as there are now two roots poking their heads out of the drain hole. made up a mix of Vermiculite and Organic Potting mix in a 50:50 ratio (no science behind this, i just figured 50:50 is a good place to start) and transplanted it much deeper than it was in it's first cup. now the poor thing is only an inch tall but hopefully, the stem that is now in the soil will develop more roots.
the second set of true leaves are now approximatel;y 4-5mm long. i gave it some water to help it settle in to it's new home, just a couple of mL but nevertheless i may not water it tomorrow as the compost seems quite moist out of the bag and it seems good for now.
Not sure when to start nutes. it is still very green as you can finally see in the pictures so i don't think it needs any yet.

Looking good. Dont start nutes for a couple weeks.

yeah i was going to wait until it started to show some signs of deficiencies

does anyone know what training i should do given my limited depth in my cupboard? i can go almost 6' tall but only half a foot deep and about a foot and a half wide

Im growing in a tent that is 6 inchs taller then that. You'll be plenty fine.

LST Training, Topping, Femming, Using a SCRoG, these are all techniques to either keep the plant short and make bigger yields. What are your plans as for lighting in the near future. The lamp your using will not be efficient enough. You may stretch the seedling if it doesnt get the proper lighting, now you dont want it to stretch in your limited space do you?

my problem is my space isn't that limited in height, 7' could make some monster plant, my problem is width, i have less than 2' of width and only half a foot deep, but i'm still goin g to give some training a go as i dont want one huge cola

also, absolutely, there's no way i'd get even a decent juvenile plant with 7 tiny led's in a desk lamp let alone a mature one. i have on the way (in the post) a 130W Growlush 2700k CFL, a 130W Sunbrite 6400k CFL, and a 10W 168 blue and red LED spotlight to go in. i did have a wacky idea to use CCFL tubes as grow lights, i still may use some for a veg/clone area on the right hand side of the cupboard

Remember those 130W bulbs are going to add a lot of heat. Should make plans for the weekend to add some ventilation. Inline fans are great, check em' out. I have a 125Watt 6500 Feliz bulb, and that bitch is bright as hell, lots of heat.

T5 strips are great for vegging, whats your wacky idea?

i will only be using one CFL at a time due to the size of a 130W E40 globe... but i think 8000 Lumens from one globe should be more than enough for one plant.

my wacky idea was to use CCFL's instead of CFL or HPS or MH or LED's...

i might end up using the CCFL's for the clone/veg section as they produce NO heat, run off 12v and are bloody cheap. i'm thinking 6 ccfl's 1" above all vegging plants will be heaps of light...

these are CCFL's: 2 x 300mm CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent) Lighting Kit- White - Jaycar Electronics

oh also ventilation is sorted, i have a 4" fan on the way which i'll be attaching a carbon canister to once things get smelly, that'll be mounted above the lamps right at the top of the cupboard and i'll have a 6" roughly sized vent down the bottom somewhere as a passive intake. just have to wait for the fan to arrive as i don't think it'll be a good idea to put the 130W in before i have enough ventilation...

then again i could always try, it isn't warm outside yet and this cupboard is outside

I suggest not using that large bulb until you get a proper exhaust fan. That bulb will heat up that cabinet space in no time. Easily seeing 105F+ in no time. Good that you have one on the way.

As for the lighting, either do it right or your not going to get the results you should. For vegging you need to use Metal Halide or CFLs with a Spectrum of 6500k. Your 6400k bulbs will work great. But if you upgrade in the future look into Metal Halide.

For flowering you either need a High Pressure Sodium bulb or CFLs with a spectrum of 2700k. Walmart will have both of these for very cheap. Get some mini fans to go inside also.

my problem is the depth of my cupboard, it is only about 6-8" from the back wall to the door so most MH and HPS globes and their reflectors don't fit. i'm thinking of perhaps reappropriating an outdoor floodlamp (one of those 150w things they use to light up real estate signs and shop signs) but those are 2700K so i'd only use it for flowering if i use it.

either way i have these CFL's so i'll use them for a few grows, learn some things and make some mistakes along the way and work up to a bigger cabinet to replace this one one day and some MH/HPS goodness

How wide is that area? Maybe you could fit a 4 tube T5 in there with 4 1foot tubes. That would be wonderful for vegging.

15.5" wide x 7.5" deep x 64" high

i could possibly fit 2 x T5 in there but i think i wont get anywhere near as much light output as the frankly monstrous E40 CFL that i have sitting in front of me...



this thing literally fits in the space with it's base and bracket being only 5mm from one wall and the end of the globe about 10mm from the other side... haha

if that's not an effective use of space i don't know what is!

Did you pick up the extra size socket to power it? I got mine off ebay.

yeah i got the globe with the holder and a base that i had to actually dremel a bracket off it to make it work, i'll post pics tomorrow

too high to figure it out right now

Update time!

28/09/2011 - Day 10 (24/0, Veg): folks days 10 and i think not much growth has happened from the indoor plant today but i did notice a dark mark on one of the leaves, see pics below. also i put the outdoor plant into the cupboard under the LED lamp today because it is absolutely pouring rain here and it was looking very limp after it's transplant. it has been raining solidly for 24 hours! so i figured it could be worse than being in a nice warm and dry cupboard. anyway, i am slightly concerned how wet the plant is so i put the new light in the cupboard also, but i don't think i'll turn it on until i come home from work so i can monitor it and make sure it doesn't burn my babies as i still don't have ventilation sorted. here's some pictures also.

the cupboard with light installed, see it just fits!


and damn it is bright!


and our 10 day old indoor baby, can anyone figure out what the dark mark on one of the leaves is?


the outdoor girl, looking a little stretched from the slight lack of light where i put it outside but now inside it has already perked up a little. i thought it had been overwatered but after being out in the rain all day it looks so much better so either the seaweed extract food i've been giving it to help it root in the poor soil outside was too much (although it never showed burn) or i quite simply wasn't watering it enough. i think from the next water i will start soaking the soil so i get runoff as so far i've just been dripping water onto the surface of the soil

Edited by KazKin, 28 September 2011 - 09:40 PM.

hey there blades!

update time:

i've been away for two days so i decided that as i don't have ventilation in my cupboard yet due to slow shipping from ebay, i would move my whole shebang to the bathtub while i was away







as you can see they seemed to love it, the indoor one is now quite large, over an inch tall since i buried the stem on repotting and the leaves are way over an inch long each too, also the first three point leaves are coming out now

the former outdoor one is now kicking ass and it's first three prong leaves are much bigger than the indoor one (it is 2 weeks older to be fair, it just had a hard life for three weeks in crappy sandy soil outside before i did much research on good soils)

here are some macro pics of the babies, well as macro as i can get with my dodgy samsung 10mp digital camera

Indoor girl




Outdoor girl


also i think i need names for my babies so i'm going to open it up to the board:

i want some suggestions for names and i'll run a poll

Plant numero uno, plant numero dos, plant numero tres... lol thats how I name all my non-exotic strains.

yeah i was thinking like actual names, i think i'll call the plant that has the 1 on it (the actual indoor one) Nancy (after Mary Louise Parker's character in Weeds) but i'm still not sure what to call the other one...