This is going to be my journal for the next few months. I recently ordered myself a 4x2x5 grow tent. I'm using a T5HO 4bulb 4ft light. I will be growing from seed. Two Bubba Kush/Power Plant and 2 Bubba Kush/Fire OG. Hope at least ones female. Better chances by growing four at once. I plan on running veg for the full length of typical Bubba or till it starts to pre sex so I can get rid of males and clone females before I actually change them over to flower. I'm hoping this will be enough light for 2-3 plants in the small space. I will use a small fan as well in the tent. Oh and I'm planning to do a bubbler grow with this as well. I will be using fox farms nutes as that is what I've been advised to use. Any advice? Oh and I'm not expecting anything huge or anything just first grow till I get better.
Got my tent in and set up last night. I'm expecting light to arrive tomorrow and then everything else Thursday. Currently i am adjusting the cooling system for my tent so it runs at a constant 70 degrees. Just a rough estimate that the light will give off about 5 more degrees so it should run on a constant 75. If its off ill still have a few days to adjust temps before seedlings go in.
I currently have 2 seedlings growing in pots. One in a 3 gallon dwc and one in a 1/2 gallon bubbler (milk jug temporary while I wait on buckets and net pots that have been delayed for some reason). I also have 5 other seedlings under a humidity dome and 2 are almost ready to move to pots. If need be I can make more homemade bubblers while I wait. No hydroponics stores anywhere around so I'm at amazons mercy due to a inventory mistake but they are promising a partial refund and free overnight shipping as soon as they get in. So I'm guessing Monday or Tuesday. My tent I running between 74 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit. I used two bathroom exhaust fans connected with 110 watts. One for exhaust one for cold air intake. Plus its only drawing .7amps each so not a big burn on power. Two air pumps capable of running a total of 100-150 total gallons. Will update more.
Woke up this morning and checked my babies. They are doing great. All 4 now have there first set of true leaves. Looking good at this time.
From what I have been reading it would seem that 24/0 is not a great light cycle for seedling as it is during the night that the plants focus on developing their root systems and as we all should know a strong root system leads to a strong plant with lots of growth. I'm going to run 19/5 light schedule increasing to 24/0 by an hour each week. I'll let everyone know what effects this has.
Plants looked great last night when I got back in from my poker game last night. Looked really good when I checked them just before giving them their down time.
Man... Frankly I was doing this journal as a recommendation from a friend as a means of keeping track myself as well as if there is something I may be doing what another, who happens upon this, may have already went through. Now to satisfy your curiosity and appease you I give you pictures.
So this morning at 430am I was quite surprised. My second set of true leaves, that I thought were only two leaves, turns out to be two sets of three leaves. So relieved. I thought maybe I did something stressful that caused my plants to only grow two new leaves... So relieved.
So just changed the water for all my plants. Gave the kids 1/4 strength nutes with water change. I should of taken pics before i put them into dark cycle so when I turn the lights back on ill take pics for the update. Root structures all looked great and my one dwc looked awesome. Can't see to much of the root structure in my bubbler jugs but I do have too structure reaching near the bottom in them. They all have visible third nodes starting to form. All about three inches in height except for one that's at about 2 inches but all doing great.
Ok photo update time. There is a three day gap from when my first seed was moved from humidity dome. First was dwc plant. It's showing the most growth (as expected) and was one day ahead of the next two. Those two are in bubbler buckets. Then the fourth plant was put into a bubbler the next day. I didn't realize those few days would make such a difference, but there is an obvious difference in growth on all the plants lol. I don't forsee it making too big of a big difference in the end though. Will just have a little less veg growth overall. Actually now that I am writing this out I do think it was a total of a four day span with two days between number one and plants two and three.
Ok so last night was the first full day of 1/4 strength nutes and I'm not feeling to good now. My roots on my dwc plant were nice and white all over before nutes and now they are slightly brownish. I'm hoping its just from the absorption of the nutes from the fox farms big bloom seeing as how its a brownish dirt color from the bat guano and worm castes. Anybody have any input?
Well what fears I did have that I may have messed are completely gone. The babies are looking and doing great as of this morning before I switched lights off. After I turn lights on and wake them up ill get a pic update in.
Ok here's a pic update. Plants are doing wonderful. At 12 days of growth right now from seed. When they get to be a little taller and I can actually fit a soda can under the light I will in order to give a size comparison. I've been giving them 20/4 for light since sprout. Read that it is fine to give them 24/0 but also read that cannabis plants focus on root growth during the dark periods so I elected to give them 20/4 for the first 2 weeks to help get them a jump start on root growth. Starting Friday they will go to 24/0 so they can focus on as much veg as possible.
Damn I woke up this morning and checked on the babies. Had to raise one side of my light to get it away from one of them. They have seriously overnight sprung up. At least one had a preteen growth spurt overnight.
After examination earlier tho morning after I actually woke up I checked on them to give them a good visual inspection and I noticed so blackening on the tips of my one gallon bubblers but not my dwc bucket. I checked for mites or anything but didn't see any. Yes I used a magnifying glass. Only thing I'm left with is nute burn. I did top off my bubblers with nute solution and not regular PHed water but i only have to top off my dwc once a week so I'm pretty sure that was a screw up on my part. Pretty sure I caught it early enough that they aren't hurt too bad. I drained my bubblers immediately and replaced with regular PHed water. Hoping I see some improvements by tomorrow morning.
Well to put any doubts as to whether it was spider mites or nute burn the plants are looking awesome. All three have well defined third nodes with fourth being highly visible. My dwc plant was well ahead of the others as far as growth, but as of this morning I'd say that the other plants are just about even with it. I'm not sure if it was the nutes or the distance from the lights that caused it cause I moved the bubblers closer to the light than the dwc due to plants stretching for light or so it appeared at the time at least. So in response I have raised up my dwc plant to the same level from the light as the bubblers. Oh and it was nute burn cause some of my yellowing has cleared up. I know any parts that died from this are gone but its just a few leaf tips so should be ok. I'm about to raise my light up and put a screw in for my scrog. I'm using a basketball net due to it being suggested for such a small grow by a friend that's been growing for a while now.
I decided to not put in my screen for the scrog. Decided it was best to keep this as simple as possible since it is my first grow. No reason to take any unnecessary chances.
Plants are looking great. When I topped off their water yesterday I topped it off with PHed water with 1/8th dose of nutes. So there's not really alot of nutes in each grow at all so shouldn't have to worry about nute burn. Topped one plant today and want to give it a couple of days to make sure I did it right before I go onto the others. I'm only planning on topping each plant one time then just going doing a little lst. All the plants have established and sets of five finger leaf sets.