Hi this is my first time posting on here, I thought i'd start making a journal for my first grow and see if anybody would like to follow me on this adventure and maybe comment and help along the way. I purchased some Northern Lights seeds from Crop Kings. I began my germinating process on Saturday, May 23 by putting 2 seeds in a glass of distilled water for 18 hours then i put them in a wet paper towel and into a Ziploc bag and placed it in my drawer for my dark spot. yesterday which was Monday, May 25, it has been about 24 hours since they were put in the drawer so i pulled them out to check to see if they had germinated and success! 2 out of 2 germinated. I planted them right away in 3 gallon pots, each under a lamp with a 6500K CFL bulb. Currently have a humidifier running to bring up the humidty levels it's about 60% and temp is at 77F. My CFL grow setup is quite ghetto and incomplete, i dont have a closed environment for my plants right now, i have a room to grow them in though. I will post pictures for it soon for people to see. Basically they're just in a enclosed fenced area in the corner of a room. I do not have any reflective material surrounding my grow space yet, I'm in progress of figuring out something to build around the grow area so i can use my reflective insulation that i had bought. I'm probably going to build like a case out of cardboard or something so i can line the area with the insulation. Materials used: I'm using Promix BX Soil 23w - 6500K CFL Bulbs (do have 2700K will be switching to those later)
Do you think 23W is enough? I'm using 30W for my seedlings, though I've opted to go 2700k all the way. Also, try to get some kind of an old cabinet or a closet from somewhere like your local recycling plant. Or build one yourself from plywood. It's easier to get reflective walls and a good ventilation there. As far as reflecting goes, use tin foil until you get something better, like mylar. And how far are your lamps from the seedlings? Add some pictures as well.
I've seen other people use 23w and it seemed fine. i will probably switch to 2700k later on i know being an autoflower doesn't really matter but yeah lol. As for ventilation i'm just opening my door to the room and letting it air out once in awhile as well as a oscillating fan blowing around the area for air flow. My lamps are about 4 inches away from the seedlings. here are some pics i took this morning. One has broke ground. **Update the other one has also sprouted**
one plant seems to be missing a sprout leaf as you can see in the picture, and on the single sprout leaf it seems to have a yellow spot. It may be from light burn so i've moved the lamp a bit higher up so it's not as intense, probably around 5-6 inches away now. the lamp did have a reflecting shield so maybe it was a bit too intense for the plant. Does anyone have any idea why it only sprouted 1 round leaf? i doubt it got injured somehow hopefully it doesn't stunt her grow at all, her blade leaves did come in immediately though. This picture is of the second plant, the lamp i'm using for her doesn't have a reflective shield, so she seems to be fine, she's more darker in colour and her soil seems to be more moist than dry compared to the other. Her leaves do seem a bit droopy though.
If there's anybody following my posts feel free to comment or just to say hi 'd love to hear what you guys think. So after moving the lamp further away it has now recovered a little, she's looking more dark green in colour and the leaves are much healthier looking as they are more perky. as for the second plant she's growing fast, seems to be stretching for that light but it's not even that far away from it, it's like maybe 4 inches away from the bulb itself. i hope it's doing okay.
they look nice man im going to have my first time grow in about 2 weeks from now using a 130w 5500k cfl the whole duration do you think the 130w cfl will be too much for the little babies when they sprout man? sorry for not answering your question as i am a nooby too! Edit: whilst scimming and scanning online i think once your plants grow a little more try using either low stress training (tie down the main chute with string or something) or use SCROG method. http://www.growweedeasy.com/scrog-tutorial check the link i posted, its basically growing the plant sideways until 2nd week of flowering, it allows a maximum surface area of light to penetrate the plants and they grow nice and short and bushy! tell me what you think - Galva
Each plant will need about 100 watts to grow in the bigger stages One light is enuf for seedlings..my cfl veg box has 200 watts of cfl coverage ..
Update the plants are doing well, there has been a few incidents though for one plant the smaller one it had purple leaves for a day i think it was because of a temperature drop so i put a heater in the room to bring up the room temp and it seemed to have went away. That plant is growing a bit slower as it was stunted with the loss of one of it's cotyledon leaf when it broke soil. The second picture is a day old photo of it, have been busy so having been making updates sorry guys! The first photo is of the other plant which seems to be doing alright, I did find it bent over one morning possibly because the fan as it's kinda tall and skinny still so I surrounded the base with more soil to strengthen it and it seems to be fine now. Leaves for both are looking healthy i think. The leaves do seem to be curling upwards for the taller plant, is that normal? because i know curling downwards is bad it could be due to over watering or Nute burn causing the claw effect lol. I've also just added 2 more 23w 2700k CFL bulbs to the lamps with an Y adapter so each plant has 2 bulbs shining down on them. I know the wattage is way too low for a good grow. I don't think i'll be adding anymore bulbs to my setup as it's my first grow i'm just figuring things out. I know i probably wont have a big yield but maybe down the road i'll invest into something better. plus electricity is expensive!
Took these pictures this morning i believe it's Day 12 since they were planted, They are looking alright, the taller one still has leaves curling upwards slightly, does anyone know what that could mean? They are starting to smell as well. I hope 2 23w bulbs per plant will be decent enough.. i know it's actually barely enough lumens for the plants for a optimal grow but possibly for my next grow i'll try and see if i could come up with a higher wattage setup for bigger yields.
I haven't really shown my ghetto setup yet so here are some pics i took on the weekend of the setup that i have in my grow space. Just watered with spray bottle so leaves look a bit droopy here cuz of the water droplets, And The next two pictures were taken Monday, they seem to be doing fairly well, no signs of light burn or anything. The small one is very stunted and bushy, not sure if that's be a problem, i hope he will stretch out a bit, i did feed it some nutes (0.5 ml of Foxfarm Big Grow) today so hopefully that'll help his growth. As for the other one it's looking great nice and tall with great looking nodes, They're both on their 4th node it's just one is very stunted. They are both on their 3rd razer blade leaves the next node coming seems to be spawning the 5 bladed leaf finally