300w LED 4 Red Eye DWC Wardrobe Grow

Hey guys, thought I'd just give a bit of an update.

I checked on them this morning (like I do every morning) and seedling 4 was showing signs of what looks like light bleaching so after posting on the sick plants and problems forum I moved the light up to just over 2ft above the tops of the plants, hopefully it will correct its self in a few days.

But other than that everything seems to be going great! (finally). Seedlings 2 and 4 are showing really nice root growth out of the net pots (1 and 2 aren't showing any roots but seem to be doing fine still though) and that little bit of magnesium deficiency has almost cleared up.

 

Yeah so am I! Great, I'm glad you're interested.

Day 17 and they're all looking great, seedling 1 is still very small but that's because shes around 5 days behind the others, and seedling 4 is still a little bleached from the LED, but I've moved the light up so it should disappear soon enough.

1


2


3


4


The roots on 2 and 4 are looking great, still no sign of 1 and 3 roots though...

I've decided I'm going to start adding nutes once the ppm starts going down, as soon as it drops below 300 then I'm going to dump the res and refill with the nutes and water. That way I know the plants need it and I don't burn them all.

That's about it guys, anything changes and I'll be back!

 

Haha, it's not dumbness, you don't start out knowing everything!

PPM stands for Parts Per Million, it's sometimes called EC or TDS. It's basically a way of measuring the amount of minerals in the water you use (it includes things like calcium, potassium, magnesium etc), this also includes the Nutrients you add to the water afterwards.

For example when you're growing seedlings you want a low ppm/ec because they're only young and can't take up that high of a concentration of minerals and chemicals, when they're older, for example 8 weeks, they're obviously a lot bigger so can handle a higher concentration.

The lower the base ppm of your water the better because when you add nutes the ppm will go up, you want as much control of what's in your water as possible to stop things like deficiencies and nute burns happening from not knowing the concentrations of certain elements.

Depending on what your water is like from your taps and where you live the ppm could be anywhere between about 50 in some of the best cases or anything up to 1100 like mine (although most people's are between 100 and 300), of course, 1100 is way to high for seedlings and small plants and that's why I had to change to buying water from Sainsburys (tests at about 240).

You must have an okay ppm from your tap otherwise your previous grows would have showed a lot of problems (like mine), but you should probably invest in a ppm meter, they're not too expensive and they help a lot to see how often you need to Change your nutrient solution.

I'm not an expert by any means but that's how I understand it. I'm sure there are some threads on here that will give you a much better understanding though so if you want to learn a little more then check them out. Hopefully it helped you a little though!

 

Yeah DWC could definitely handle that but you might just want to use soil as its a lot easier, there is a lot more that can go wrong with DWC and it will go wrong quicker but if its done right then it will work very well.

You'll probably need more than a 125w cfl, I'd say at least two if you want a large yield (more light more buds!). Research into topping/fiming/scroging etc those methods will definitely increase your yield by a lot.

You'll be better off posting in the absolute beginners forum because people who will help you in there know a lot more than me haha, your questions will get answered though, just be patient!

 

Day 21 from sprout (very early I know haha).

I changed out 5 litres in the res with new water because I had a 5L bottle left over. I thought it would be good for the plants if I swapped out a little bit because I won't be able to buy any more water until next week. I'm going to just buy like 15 bottles and get it delivered from Sainsburys, still only like £16.50 and that's 3 res changes.

I also added 1ml of each of the flora grow bloom and micro, the recommended would have been 5ml but I don't want to nuke them, if they don't show any bad signs before I change the res out next week I'll probably change to half strength (2.5ml) then.

PH is at 5.9
PPM is at 390
Water temp is at 19
Air temp is at around 27c
Humidity is around 37%

The only thing I am a little worried about it the fact that one of the 4 plants is doing absolutely fantastic, I'll add some pictures tomorrow because they're in the dark at the moment but she's about 3 times the size of the other 3?! I don't know why the others aren't growing as fast but the one that has is completely over taken the others! Is there any thing I can do to speed up the other 3 because I'm pretty sure they shouldn't still be that small on their third week. they're all growing their 3rd sets with their 4th just about showing while the big one is on her 4th, growing her 5th and she's just generally bigger all round. Not sure what's happened but I'd rather them all be the same size haha.

Other than the unknown stunted growth and part res change that's about it. I'll update you guys if anything changes.

 

Right, today I decided to add another 1ml of Grow, Bloom and Micro (thinking of using the Lucas formula next grow just to see if its all that but thought I'd leave it this time as its my first grow. Also thinking of doing a 1 plant scrog in a 20l res but again, not on my first grow.) Just to bump it up a bit as they are 3 weeks old now. That gives me a 2ml of each in total in just over 20L (the recommended would be 5ml for that much water) which also comes out as 450ppm, that should be okay right?

How high are everyone else's ppms in week 3? One of my plants has 4 true leaves and its 5th are almost out (also about double the size of the others) but the other 3 are still on their 3rd with very small 4th ones coming through. Not sure what stunted the others but there's nothing I can do now haha! I'll put some pictures up when I'm home as I'm at work at the moment.

If anyone could point me in the right direction in amount of nutes and the right ppm for week 3 then I will be very grateful!

 

Now I'm home I've taken some pictures so you can see the difference in size.

This is the big lady:



And these are the other 3:







Here's a shot of all 4 (you might need to zoom in haha):



I think it's just because the big ones roots where the first to come out and hit the water, so it had an advantage from the start. The smallest ones roots have just come out from the bottom of the net pot and the other 2 have roots in the water but just not as many as the big one.

Also one of the big ones leaves has got 6 blades not 5, she's a bit weird looking but still looks great!



If anyone has any suggestions why there was such a difference in growth I would love to know! Cheer guys!

 

Yeah I had the LED at 24" above for the last week and a bit but I've moved it down to just over a foot above now because they're over 3 weeks old and they aren't showing any bad signs. I'll leave it there until they all reach about 3 inches and then drop it again.

The others are starting to speed up a bit now so its okay, I know they won't catch up but at least they're looking bigger, I'll cut the leaves on the big one and that should bring them a bit closer together in size.

Thanks a lot chronicibus!

 

I changed out the res yesterday as it was about 2 weeks since it was first filled. It now has about 17 -18 litres of water in, it did have about 22 but as they all have roots touching the water I dropped it a little.

All the plants (apart from the smallest one) are showing lots more growth now as they have a lot of roots in the water. The smallest ones roots still haven't hit the water yet but I'm going to keep her going until the end (hopefully) just because I might as well and it would be interesting to see how she grows.

My ppm is now at 390 with 2.5ml of each of the GH Grow, Bloom and Micro and 1ml of Cal Mag. I know it's only at half strength still but the smallest one will probably die if I add more so I'm just going to see how they take up the nutrients. if the ppm starts dropping then I'll go for 3.5ml of each GH nute instead. I added the cal mag because 2 of the ladies where showing magnesium deficiency but they seems okay now so I'll stay at 1ml.

The big lady is starting to turn into a bit of a bush, I would prefer her to grow up a bit more than out as I'm limited to outwards space but she'll probably stretch up once she starts flowering so that'll be fine.

I'm going to let them all get to about 10 -12 inches tall before i flip because that way even if they triple in size then I'll still have enough space. The biggest is about 4 inches at the moment.

Here's the smallest one (remember, 4 weeks old tomorrow hahaha)



And here are the other 3







As you can see there is a huge difference in size between the first one and the last one. Both of them where germinated and planted at the same time as well haha!

 

Hey guys, it's been a while but now the plants are really getting bigger and that's starting to present a problem with space, not height wise but width wise.









As you can see the big lady isn't really growing up, more out and is starting to grow into the other plants areas.

This might seem like a really stupid question but when they all get bigger surely it isn't good for them to be all squished up together. Also when I put them into flowing I'm worried about them running out of horizontal space and then causing no light to get through into the lower levels.

Is there anything I can do to stop them growing out as much? I don't want to start trimming the leaves off the sides if it will cause them stress.

Other than that everything is going great! There are a few signs of calcium and magnesium def but I'm not too worried as its only on the lower leaves.

When would you guys put these ladies into flower? I was thinking when they get to about 10" so they don't get too big?

Any help with the width problem would be greatly appreciated! Cheers guys/girls!

 

Right it's been a little while since I posted on this journal but everything is still going great! Since I last updated a lot has changed size wise, they're now about 15" tall ( I say about because I can't put the tape measure through all the leaves haha) and I've also switched to flower.





As you can see its a bit of a change from last time. Everything is still great, temps are fine, ph and ppm are fine (although the ph keeps dropping quite fast, I keep putting ph up into the res though). Ppm is at about 800 and I'm still using just GH Grow Bloom and micro. All plants are 100% female also.

I decided to leave that little one as everything I did to try and help it just wasn't working, it must have just been a bad seed because it's still only like 2" tall haha.

I'll update again in a week or so with some more pictures.

 

Right it's been just under a week since the last update and as I have nothing to do I'll update for anyone interested.

They've grown a lot more since last week but I think they've just about stopped now, the tallest being just about 18". I also added a piece of ribbon (because I didn't have any string) to hold up the branches by the door of the wardrobe because they where starting to get a bit too heavy, and if they're not too heavy now they will be when there's nice big buds on the top

The ppm is stable at around 1100. I'm using the instructed measurements on the side of the bottles for my mix, I know most people use less than it says but they don't seem to be showing any bad signs from it so they must be liking it. That's 10ml of General hydroponics micro, 15ml of bloom and 5ml of grow per 10 litres.

Temperature is always between 16 - 18c and always has been since the start of the grow.

I try to keep the ph between 5.4 and 6.6 but for some reason the PH keeps dropping so I have to ph my top up water to about 8 to re-balance it every 2 - 3 days.

They're almost in week 3 of flower and will be on Friday the 3rd. I'm hoping to finish them around the 1st of May which brings me to this question: when shall I start flushing them? I know it's supposed to be around 7-10 days before harvest but is there anything I can judge it by, like when a certain ratio of the trichomes are cloudy for example? I just don't want to flush too early and then have to chop to early :/

These pictures where taken about 5 minutes ago so they're up to date:

 

When I say temperature in that last post, that's the water temperature, the air temperature is from 23c lights off to about 27c lights on.

 

Right, it's now the 8th so I thought I'd do another update. All plants are still doing great, roots are still nice and white and plentiful, leaves are bright green still and the buds are starting to develop nicely.

PH keeps dropping between top ups but I just adjust the PH of the top up water and it sorts it out enough. The lowest it got to was 4.5 but there where no bad signs so I guess that's okay now.

I'm still not quite sure when to start flushing. is there any indicator in the size of the buds etc? Or shall I just flush around the 20th of April as I flipped on the 20th of March and the suggested flowering time is 55 days?

I'll upload the pictures I took yesterday as I'm at work right now but obviously they're not much different. The buds are looking great!





Any questions or comments I'd love to hear them!