Alright, I have a new grow, and a new grow journal. My grow space is a rubbermaid tub set up on its end. The area is just over one square foot. It is currently lit by 86W of a mixture of daylight and warm white CFLs, and I plan to add 46W more soon to bring myself up above the 100W per square foot threshold I usually shoot for. The current photocycle is 24/0, but I'll probably switch to 18/6 when I get it together and get my timer set up. The soil is just generic planting compost mixed with perlite. I actually used it in my last grow and over fertilized, but I gave it a good flush with tap water pHed to around 6.5. I have one seed from a breeder in play, a Delicious Northern Lights Blue, and four seeds apiece from two crosses I made about a year ago. Both have the same unknown sativa mother, but she was fairly vigorous, quite leggy, low-yielding, long-flowering, fruity-smelling, relatively potent, with a trippy high. The father in one case is another unknown sativa, this one even more vigorous than the mother, but with otherwise similar characteristics. I'll call this cross MxM since the actual strain of both parents are a mystery. The other father was a Lemon Skunk. The females from the same package of seeds produced buds that were disappointingly fluffy, but had a nice lemon scent, high potency, and a couch-locky high. I'll call that cross MxLS. I don't expect any of the F1 crosses to yield particularly well. My current employment situation dictates that I may have to move suddenly in the next few months. I graduated from college a few months ago, and have started pumping out applications for grown-up jobs all over the country again. If someone were to hire me quickly, and want me to start work soon, I would have little choice but to abandon the grow, destroy the plants and move. Therefore the grow itself is a gamble, and veg time even more so; that's why I'm using seeds I'm not particularly attached to (a freebie and something slightly more predictable than bagseed). I soaked the seeds over Saturday night, and planted them Sunday. The NLB is the only seed to get its own pot because I wasn't sure how many of the crosses would sprout. Yesterday the NLB was up, although it was looking a bit peaked when I checked on it today. Today all four of my MxLS seeds had broken the surface, and one of the MxM seeds was up as well. This is the grow space as it stands. Here are the MxLSs And here is my NLB It's not much to look at right now, and for that I apologize, but photo quality should improve as the plants get bigger, I promise. Thanks for checking out the grow!
One more thing. The fertilizers I intend to use for this grow are Maxicrop, Down To Earth Acid Mix, and Down To Earth Flower & Bloom Mix. That is all.
These pictures are from Friday. On Friday I installed an extra 46W of CFLs, but I discovered that I was out of splitters and I would have to come up with a new plan. I had an open socket on the existing fixture that I was able to use, but I had to use a spare light socket I had lying around and suspend it from the fixture. This was the result: I've been thinking I might keep it that way. I don't currently have the ability to raise or lower my lights, so having one of them down amongst the plants seems like it could be advantageous. It seems to have stopped the stretch, and I think I can come up with some sort of a diffuser for it to keep it from burning the plants when they get big enough. My Northern Lights Blue is having some trouble; one of its cotyledons is damaged and it seems to be stunting its growth. The good news is that it's upright, I just hope it starts putting on some weight soon. The MxLS is doing pretty well. They stretched something awful, but they still seem to be doing alright. MxM is doing just as well as the MxLS, maybe even a little better because they stretched less.
The situation hasn't changed much from Friday. The MxM and MxLS are starting to pop out their second leafset, and the Northern Lights Blue is still kind of stuck. I tried to bend the damaged cotyledon back a bit after I took the pictures, and I was to lazy to take more pictures afterward. MxLS MxM And the NLB
Yeah, it's kind of like a game of chicken, the sooner I flower the more likely I am to actually make it to harvest, the later I flower, the bigger that harvest will be. Thanks for stopping by. No, the number one rule is don't tell anyone. I'm not too worried. I've done sixteen plants to a pot before. It DOES make things kind of a pain, but it's still doable. I'm actually planning to do some repotting today, but it's already quarter to one and my sister-in-law is coming for dinner, so no matter what I do, everything must be back in the closet before she shows up. You are right, I would be better off starting in solo cups and repotting from there, but I tossed my cups when I moved and didn't feel like going out to buy more, so yeah, I'll deal with the consequences.
I must apologize for my laziness, I've been sitting on this picture since Sunday, and I have even more from earlier that I just probably won't post. Here they are, in all their tortured grandeur: It's been a wild last few weeks, and I'm gearing up to start it over again, and yeah, I probably should have never started this grow. Anyway, the picture. There's some overwatering damage in the older growth, a touch of Mg deficiency in the newer stuff, but I'll give them all a light feeding when I water tonight, and the scraggly ones don't get as much light as the rest of them, but the recovery from the torture has been quite good. What's been happening is lots and lots of travel, because when you're unemployed there is no good excuse to not go visit your relatives for the holidays, especially when they have work for you to do. Back in early November, I had some overwatering issues, so mostly I didn't water, and I enlarged my drainage holes. Then Thanksgiving rolled around and I went over hill and dale and left my plants unattended for two and a half weeks after giving them a heavy watering. Luckily, the drainage holes are still too strong and I stunted their growth by overwatering them. Normally I'd be bummed, but it meant they didn't grow into my lights while I was gone. I could post the pictures I took when I came back, but we all know what scraggly overwatered plants look like, and again, lazy. We are currently on day 12 of 12/12, three of the plants have shown sex, and of the three two have been culled because they were male. What's left are two MxLS, and three MxM. Only one of the MxLS has been positively identified as a female, the other may or may not be, and the MxM will probably take their sweet time, before the big one decides it's male and bursts into flower while I'm gone and seeds everything. I'm currently preparing to leave for what might be another 2-3 week trip, so I will probably over water in preparation for that tonight, and have supercropped anything tall enough to cause me to worry about the lights rather heavily. Oh, and devillover, all of my pots except for one contain only one plant now. Thought you'd be pleased by the progress.
I took these pictures a week ago when I got back. The plants had been untended for three weeks. All of the plants are doing alright, but I'm going to have to chop prematurely. The MxLS is doing quite well, and might actually come close to finishing before I have to chop. It got a bit cold while I was gone, so some of the leaves have purpled a bit, but I'm quite pleased with the growth. They're starting to smell a bit, and they smell like citrus hops, it's a good thing. The MxMs are tall and scraggly like they always are, and starting to bud out nicely. One of them looks like it would be a pheno I'd want to keep around, but it's going to get cut down with the rest of them shortly before I move. It would be great if I could afford to wait around for 8 weeks for them to finish up.
Ok, here's the news. I harvested a few days ago, and I have pictures from that. If anybody wants to see them, I'll put them up, but if not, I don't want to bother because I'm kind of busy these days.