Hi all, I've finally done it: my first grow box... edit: in order to make it interesting I've decided to grow different strains: Skunk #1 x 2 Critical Wappa x 2 not sure if it's a good idea or not, but it's more exciting for sure. Here is the setup: 1.75 x 2 box, 250W (now a mixed spectrum bulb, will switch to HPS for flower), cool tube. I've cracked the seeds about 1 week ago and the seedlings are now in soil (light mix). They have been under light for 5 days. observations at this stage: - conditions are not really optimal: even after installing the cool tube, the air is getting around 73F (at night) and 82F (during day time). I guess that's still hot, and I am worried about summer approaching. It will get much warmer here. will probably need an A/C. Humidity is varying between 30 and 40%. Again, I know it's not great, but it's not an easy fix... Should I spray the leaves with water maybe? would that help? - lots of streching. those things are growing very high, and were actually falling over. I had to tie them up to some chopsticks in order to maintain them vertical. anyone knows the reason? not enough light maybe? the guy at the grow shop was pretty convinced the 250W bulb should be enough for 4 plants. - the first leaves are already showing some yellow marks on the edge (see pictures). Not sure if this is lack of water or something else, but it seems unhealthy for such a young plant. any advice here? - not really sure about how much to water. I understand I should only water when the surface of the soil is dry, but how much am I supposed to put in there? a glass? a bucket? next improvements coming up: I just bought some reflective foil (not mylar but looks pro anyway). I will install this as soon as I have a bit of time. Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I'll post pictures as often as I can.
Nice setup. For the stretching try lowering the light, they might chill out. Grab a soil PH meter for the yellowing, but I wouldn't adjust the PH of the soil until they are bigger. For watering... for me it's always been a feel thing, but most good PH meters come with a mositure meter. Good luck bud! Edit: Actually sorry yellowing might be casued by Nitrogen deficiency, checkout http://www.planetganja.net/overgrow/growfaq/97.htm
i guess i have to get this ph meter at some point... looking at the photos on this site (great link by the way), I would say the problem could be heat damage, but it's so damn hard to keep the temperature down. Even with the cool tube, it's hard to have the lamp too close to the plants. Maybe my fan is not strong enough? I will add a carbon filter to the setup when the plants start smelling, and that will reduce the airflow again, raising the temps... not really sure what to do at this point. I'll just wait a couple of days and see how things go.
finally installed this reflective foil. My plants look much happier now! The tips are still a bit yellow (looks dryed out) but this only seems to affect the first set of leaves. The new ones coming out seem healthy. Fingers crossed it was just temporary heat damage... just in case someone wonders: the ducting is much longer than actually needed, but this is on purpose as I wanted to test the performance of the fan. As soon as I plug in the carbon filter, I'll optimize the setup and shorten the tubes.
--6th day under light-- i've turned off the light for two minutes to take a few flash photos... Could anyone confirm whether this is Nitrogen deficiency or just heat damage? I was under the impression that I did not need to add any nutrient before a month with this light mix (Plagron light-mix with Perlite - bought it at the local grow shop) Thanks for the feedback!
-- 11th day under light i've started giving the plants some all around fertilizer 2 days ago to solve this Nitrogen def... They look quite good now, although the stems are much longer than i expected. not sure i will be able to remove the chopticks at all now. it seems that they would still fall without them. temperature is stable now, due to cooler weather over here. but humidity is still quite low (around 25-30%) Also, I realized that the soil has compacted or something, and the pots look almost half empty. I'm not sure whether I should try to repot those plants in the same pots but with more soil underneath... any thoughts? is that safe?
--15th day under light-- plants are growing nicely but after seeing those yellowing tips, I concluded it was probably a Nitrogen def and bought some fertilizer (HESI TNT Complex NPK 6+2+4). This seemed strange since I thought I would not have to add fertilizer the first month with this Plagron light-mix with Perlite... So 3 days ago, I put about 5 cl fertilizer with 1 liter of water for each plant (pH measured at 6.4) but since yesterday they are showing some yellowing on all the tips (see photos below). I feared for a nutrient burn and flashed with 1 liter of clear water for each plant. The runoff water looked a bit yellow so I guess that was a good thing, but the yellowing seems to continue to progress today... any advice on this? Am I doing it right or does anyone think this could be a nutrient deficiency after all? thanks!
follow up: definitely over fertilized. I read the instructions wrong... could not believe it. http://forum.grasscity.com/sick-plants-problems/811127-nutrient-burn-def-please-help-first-grow.html a big thanks to naturesforce on the sick plant forum for helping out... I am now flushing the pots with about 5 litres of pH 6.7 water for each plant. hope that will do the trick and avoid further damage. will post follow up picts as soon as i see any result.
i found a few flying white bugs today... Rhapsodyrcks from sick plants forum diagnosed as white flies, so I had to run to the garden shop and get some spray for my girls. Hopefully this will be enough. Otherwise, the plants are still growing nicely. No further nutrient burn damage, so that's good news!! I can see new branches and leaves growing every day now Not 100% but I think the leaves are kind of looking tired and looking downwards... maybe it's just normal but I'll keep monitoring. I'm already thinking about topping 2 of them since they are clearly growing upwards much quicker than the other 2. Maybe it's too early though, as they have only been under light for 17 days. edit: after looking around, it's clear that I can top them now... 2 of my 4 plants have clear tops so I did cut those out... actually one of them really just "broke" out as I was bending it to make the cut, but it snapped quite clean so I hope that will also be ok. I also FIM one just to see the difference. will wait a bit for the 4th one.
-- 18th day under light -- Look at those plants! They are growing so quickly I suddenly lost count of new leaves and branches!! The bug spray seemed to have worked. I could not see any whiteflies today... hope they won't come back. A few days back, I added a couple of 23W CFLs. Not sure if that will have any effect, but it looks disco (!) and I read somewhere that cold light was enhancing bushiness over vertical growth, which is what I need in such a small box. Also makes taking pictures much easier with white balance Also plugged in the carbon filter today, as I was starting to smell the plants! I heard it was Bob Marley's death anniversary yesterday, so it kinda smelled like MJ everywhere in town anyway... I'm starting to look at some SCROG setup, since it looks so cool! but those plants are so bushy that i'm not sure if all 4 will fit in the end... edit: the pictures show where I've topped and FIM'ed... will post follow up photos
i have 4 plants in my 20"x"20" box. with a scrog setup. I would Highly reccomend it. IT can double your overall yield.
Where did you get your box? I like it alot. Did you build it or buy it? Plants look good bro did you get rid of the gnat problem? I seem to have eliminated mine. Was fucking annoying. They were flying around in the house as well.
the box was actually a kitchen sink frame from IKEA IKEA | Kitchen cabinets | AKURUM/RATIONELL system | AKURUM | Base cabinet w shelf/2 doors) I got two of them and mounted one upside down on top of the other. That is what gives this nice horizontal bar in the middle. very convenient for this box! then ordered a custom door panel. total cost about $120 I think. The flies seem to have dissapeared... but i'm careful and will keep monitoring. They were also all around the house. hate them!!
What fan are you using and how are your temperatures with the carbon filter installed? I've got a 250W cooltube cabinet set up as well and am having trouble with keeping it under 90F in there with 72F ambient temp. Looks like your light might be a little high, for best intensity it should be as close as 5" (think I'm at 8" now, was getting light bleaching when it was closer)
The fan is a small inline 129 CFM. As for temps, it usually varies around 82F for ambient of 72/73F. I just plugged the carbon filter in today, and was expecting it to reduce the airflow, but actually it does not seem to affect it as there is no change in temp. Good news! I use the CFLs as temp buffers : I try to keep them on as much as possible, but will turn them off when it's a bit warmer than usual... Since they only raise the temp by 1 or 2 degrees, I feel it's worth it. but in the end, I'm still not sure about all this, since the position of the temp sensor seems to affect temp reading a lot! There can be a 5 degree difference depending on the angle I position the device... so my plants could actually be cooking at 90 degrees. What I do is try to find a position that is a bit "average": around same height as the plants, but not directly under light and not 100% in shadow either... Again, I'm just experimenting and could be totally wrong. You're right that my lights might be a bit high. I'll try lowering it a bit tomorrow...
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-- 22nd day under light-- I've been gone just under 3 days for a week end abroad and I must say I was a bit anxious to leave the girls alone. After all, it was my first time away for that long on this first grow First thing I see is those leaves looking very tired... It's funny, I've read several times on forums experienced growers saying they can tell by the weight of the pot; but to be honest, until now I thought that was a pretty useless indication to someone like me, who had no idea what the correct weight should be to begin with... Well, let me tell you, when I lifted the pots today, I immediately KNEW they were WAY too light! They felt like the soil had been replaced by foam. Now I understand why they call this "light mix". Second thing, there is some crazy bushiness and leaf density on those plants. There are many new branches, but they all seem "stuck" under those giant leaves on top. Strange but whatever, as long as it keeps growing, it looks good to me. The 2 topped plants seem to be already growing new tips. That's fast! The one that was FIM'ed is showing some strange messy growth, but it's still too small to tell what is going on. Finally, there are those weird orange marks on the bottom leaves of each plant. They all look pretty unhealthy. I accidently damaged one of them while moving the pots around and trimmed it a bit, but I really wonder why I should not just cut off all those sick leaves. Not sure what they have, but none of the newer leaves are affected so I'm tempted to say it could be the fallout from that earlier over-fertilization. Any other feedback is welcome!! hope you enjoy the pictures