What's up fellas! I'm growing again after taking about 6 months off, pretty excited about it. Ordered my seeds last month from Herbie's, picked up 3 Headlights Kush autoflowers and 5 feminized Liberty Haze. They sent me some good freebies too, WOS Strawberry Blue and Critical Sensi Star, 2 excellent strains that I'm familiar with. Started my autoflowers, 2 out of 3 sprouted on 3/28, third one is a dud. Didn't realize they were regular when I ordered them, not feminized so yea, hoping for at least one female. 250w hps 24/0, 5 gal fabric pots over a layer of hydroton with organic supersoil. I used Pro-mix BX as my base, 1:1:1 with compost and perlite. Nutrients per cu ft: 4 cups tomato tone, 4 cups GRD, 2 cups kelp meal, and a myco product. I also use ½ tsp silica per gal every other watering. Like to take my time, I'm in no hurry to plant everything at once. Will probably fire up my 4x8 in a week or two to get the others started, or I could finish these autos under my 1kw and just use this box for vegging. Which makes more sense but I am curious what the yield will be if I finish them under this light. So this is my new beginning for 2015!! Feel free to pull up a chair and discuss anything grow related, this is my favorite hobby and I love talking about it with like-minded people. Cheers!!
Congrats on starting up again, I too am starting again after a longer break and i am growing LH as well so I am looking forward to seeing yours grow. Have you grown it before?
Hey thanks for checking it out, never grown LH before but I'll be sprouting some this week. Definitely following your grow... did the same exact thing as you, run my light 24/0 because of low temps lol. Like to stagger my harvests too, we have a lot in common.
I switched mine to 19/5 around the 2-3 set of true leaves and they really took off, so I would recommend giving the LH girls a dark period they seem to like it better
I'm along for the ride. It's always a pleasure to see your grows. Keep us up on those veggies too eh?
Good news everybody!! 2 confirmed females Tomorrow will be 3 weeks from sprout. This past week I top-dressed with ¼ cup kelp meal and 2 cups of compost in each pot. Then I brewed an AACT to help break things down, which they got today. 2½ gal water, 3TBSP molasses, and a cup of compost. The tea brewed at 60f so I let it go for 3 days, normally I would use an aquarium heater and brew it at 72f for 40hrs. I use a 20w 45lpm Hydrofarm air pump with the brass nipple removed and 5/8" tubing over the entire port for more airflow. The air diffuser is made out of pvc, which is so much easier to clean than airstones, just pop the arms off and hit em with a bottle brush under hot water. And here it is in action: (that's my half-ful jug of molasses in the back, on it's 4th grow, not bad for $18) During the flowering phase I'll add a ¼ cup of jamaican bat guano to that recipe. I planted Liberty Haze, along with a few vegetables... baby watermelon, mini pumpkins, cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, squash, and garlic. Last but not least, I'll be testing out some free samples from Supreme Growers... I'm no corporate whore but the shit was free and it's stuff I can actually use (they charge $30/bottle for some of these) so I'll give them a shot: There's one missing because it was on the floor, but it's called "soil blast" and it's supposed to contain beneficial bacteria, it's a powder that gets mixed and watered right in. Silica is useful of course. Mycos... this bottle of powder supposedly has 4 types of mycos so I'm going to use it for my veggies too, 2 different bottles of kelp-naturally useful, the only one I don't see myself really needing is the Budcharge. I'm thinking I will try it on one plant and see how she reacts. In any case, these are all supplements, they're not supposed to replace a nutrient regimen. If anybody wants to try this stuff out I'll pm you the reps contact info as soon as I find his card, I'm sure he's got plenty of samples to give out. So that's my week in pictures. Not a lot of bud shots yet, but I promise they're coming!! Cheers fellas!!
It's been an uneventful week, just a lot of sprouting going on. Liberty haze is about a week old. ^ mini pumpkin plant, top pic is prolific straightneck squash, tomatoes, more pumpkins, dwarf watermelons, and I think the carrots are sprouting too. Haven't planted my garlic yet, still looking for a specific type of container. If not I will just plant a bunch of them in a 5 gal pot but I'd like to grow them separately for experiments. Day 31 They're both experiencing slight calcium and magnesium deficiencies, brown spots + interveinal chlorosis indicate both so I fed them cal/mag today. I've been tucking the fan leaves on the smaller plant but the bigger girl isn't receptive to my efforts. Last watering they got soil blast and kelp blast along with silica, and the watering before that was myco blast, which is probably redundant since I've been applying Xtreme Gardening mycos from sprout. Next watering will be the suprekelp and budcharge. Oh yea, I moved them under the 1kw the day after my last update, 11 days ago.
Alright, so I ditched the autoflowers. Not impressed. Decided to go big, I want another 1½ lbs off my 1kw so I need to mix up some fresh supersoil. Re-used my old soil on my vegetables after soaking it with Soil Blast and they're loving it. I picked up a tip in the Advanced Growing forum about chitin, apparently there are multiple benefits to using it in your soil: http://forum.grasscity.com/advanced-growing-techniques/1359349-increase-thc.html?p=21621234 "All crustacean shells contain large amounts of Chitin, a polysaccharide. Chitin is broken down by the enzyme Chitinase, which forms Chitosan. By adding crab, lobster or shrimp meal to an organic soil there is no need to foliar spray the specific compound because it's already been taken in via plant roots constantly - not just during your foliar sprays. By using crab meal vs your specific single compound I additionally gain the elemental benefits of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Calcium (Catbonate), Magnesium & more, as well as triggering your plants natural defense mechanisms (SAR's) It also works to buffer the pH of the soil medium. Does plain Chitosan do that?" - Jerry111165 This is in a discussion about increasing THC, I never knew that crab/lobster meal had such benefits. So I decided to mix a fresh batch containing this wonder ingredient. Amazon has 4lb bags of Neptune's Harvest crab shell for $13 with free shipping (works out the same for sites that charge $5 and add $8-$10 shipping).. not the cheapest but far from the most expensive. I will keep my eye out for better deals but this will have to do for now. Mixing soil. 5 gal Pro-Mix BX, 5 gal composted cow manure, 5 gal perlite. This makes 2 cubic ft of soil to which I add: 8 cups glacial rock dust 8 cups Espoma tomato-tone 2 cups kelp meal 2 cups neem meal 2 cups crab shell meal I cut the recommended dosage of 6 cups of meals per cu ft to 3 because the tomato-tone contains blood and bone meals. This X4 for about 60 gal of soil cooking in my rubbermaids. Deciding on a layout. I'm going to cram a lot of plants in here so this isn't final, I can fit 5X 10 gal pots under the 1kw side and a shitload of smaller pots under the 600w, in addition to the 3 extra 10 gals. I also cut off about 5 ft of ducting from my lights, so that should help with temps this summer. But this is what I'm working with: In the 5 gal pots are 2 tomato plants, a longneck squash plant, and a mini pumpkin plant. (I think, pumpkin seedlings and watermelon seedlings look exactly alike, so make sure your marker is permanent lol). 10 gal pot in the back has 2 squash plants, 10 gal in front has a shitload of watermelon seedlings with deformed leaves. Only one of them seems to be normal. I'm preparing a nutrient tea using 4 gal water, 2 tbsp kelp meal, 2 tbsp alfalfa meal, ¼ cup compost, and 1 tbsp molasses. Will brew for 48 hrs. I'm posting 2 pics a few seconds apart so you can see that "dead spot" is actually dynamic, it's in constant motion so I'm confident that it's not detrimental to the microbe population. Plenty of agitation here, those clumps will be completely broken up in a few hours. Finally, my one Liberty Haze, which is extremely pungent in the veg state... before I flipped on the carbon filter this one tiny plant was stinking up half my basement. I will take a bunch of clones off her since she seems to have an excellent terpine profile. Just topped her today above the 4th node, so she's got 4 pairs of branches. What I'd like to do is fill out the 4x4 1kw area with 5x 10 gal pots with LH clones, possibly flowering this mother in the 250w box. By the time clones are ready for 10 gal pots the soil will be fully cooked. My plans are always changing though, any opinions on what I should do at this point are appreciated. Still undecided on exactly how I'm going to go about this grow, will probably end up with a mix of clones and seeds in there.
Great update man. I never liked the way autoflowers performed either. Glad to see you moving on to bigger and better... I especially love the idea of the hydroton in those lids that you set your smart pots on to absorb runoff.
Thanks man!! Best part about using hydroton is it's washable and reusable, unlike perlite. Spent maybe a half hour picking out roots and rinsing it off in my slop sink, most of that time I just let the water run over it to wash away accumulated salts and clay dust. It's only my second run with it but I can see this stuff lasting indefinitely for my purposes. Those are 16" hydrofarm saucers btw: https://www.hydrofarm.com/p/HGS16P ...$3 each is better than $1.50-$2 for those cheap-o clear plastic saucers from wal mart that crack and break after one grow.