Greets all. Been reading the forums for a bit and decided to start my own. Grew 5 bagseed in peat discs for a few days and transplanted them to 5 gals once I saw roots on the bottoms of their peat discs. It's about day 5, and I have two sets of a 65w 5k and a 50w 2700k giving light to plants as shown: (Will put pics up later) _______________ |X...................X| | .................... | | ..OO- ..... -OO | | ....... |X| ....... | | .. OO- .... -OO | | .................... | |X___________X| Where the X's are plants and the O's are my CFLs. It's about day 5 since sprouting. Even in the peat discs, there was one plant that grew before and faster than the others. Currently, the plant in the center is the biggest and greenest, and the other 4 on the outer edge are a paler green and one them looks like there's about to be the beginnings of yellowing in the very center of the leaf. Comments? I also have a sheet high covering of tinfoil to reflect light back. Its too dark without one and i already had the foil. For 230w of CFL it's pretty much daylight in there. I have some fish emulsifier 5-1-1 and some grammas molasses. I watered them today and made a fresh bucket of water to evaporate. However since my soil is 1-1-1 i'm guessing that they are trying to grow fierce and can't. I put 3 tablespoons of fish emulsifier and 4 teaspoons of molasses into the 4 gal of water and will begin that feeding cycle tomorrow if the dirt gets dry enough. For the sake of completeness, they grew on 20/4 in the peat discs, and once I transplanted them I switched it to 19/5 to give some more time to stretch their roots a bit. I'm also guessing that my strongest plant is also a different type from the other 4, as the biggest plant is bordering on twice the size, green hue, and fan leaf size. Temps avg 80F though i'm thinking it's off by 5-10F and should be around 72ish. Humidity avg's 45-55% (controllable). Lights are about 2-3 inches from plants. FYI: Molasses is thinner than honey, and fish emulsifier smells and looks like straight diarrhea. Cheers.
Tin Foil causes the light to be concentrated in very small places, and sort of acts like the sun through a magnifying glass. You can seriously burn your plant if you're not careful, i say ditch the tin foil before you really regret it.
Just an update till I can get a hold of my cam. Gave my babies a half of a (small)advil bottle of my fish/molasses water and they looked better before their night cycle. They looked even healthier this morning and I gave them a full bottle. Going to see how they do in a few hours and might give them another bottle. Between the heat and the dehumidifier my pots get dry real quick. Also, my info is a bit hazy, will tin foil or too much heat cause what looks like N deficiency?
Going from 20/4 -> 19/5 showed a nice growth spurt. My best plant gave me a leaf set and a half (so 2.5 total), the rest got bigger and greener (Still just two leaf sets). They're loving the light nute treatment. The babies were thirsty this morning and after their full advil bottle of nute water almost instantly straightened out. Yesterday they were pretty stiff and full of water, this morning they were kinda like an empty balloon but they weren't drooping yet. I'm thinking of giving them a half bottle a few hours from the end of their day and I switched them to 18/6 to see if that grows them out some more. They've gotten wider than they have taller, and I think i'll keep the main stems short to make LST easier. I'm also going to wait a few more leafsets till I start breaking stems. Maybe instead of the half bottle, i'll give them a full bottle and sprinkle it around the edges of my pots to encourage a larger root system. As a note: I find watering with a small advil bottle convenient, because the younglings don't need more than this, and it will be easy to judge when they need more since there will be a gradual negative water margin. My pots don't have any holes in the bottom, so this prevents me from overwatering. Closer to the plants death I will be flushing. I'll be sad to put holes in my virgin buckets but who knows, I might not even have to. As a final note, I don't think they were getting enough water AND nutes from my OP. One leaf on a plant is kinda scrunched and I remember not quite watering the peat discs the transplants were in on the first nute. I'll also use this space to say that my dirt is from Bowvung Organic Manure & Humus 1-1-1 and the peat discs are 0-0-0. The N sup is fish emulsifier 5-1-1 and the last is just molasses. I've already gone over the CFL setup with the foil, and growth is just explosive really from day to day. I'll def be getting a sheet of mylar once they grow a bit more. For now the environment, height, and nutes they're getting aren't showing any problems so I won't try to fix anything yet. Oh, and for anyone wondering, I also have a DIY carbon filter with some flexible duct. I put the filter in the middle of the flex duct and i'm waiting for my babies to get dank before I throw the filter into my fan. I think altogether my costs have been 100-150 USD. If we were assuming a second grow, my costs would more likely be 50. I'd have my nutes, buckets, and lights leftover. Only need to get new dirt and nutes if the grow was larger. For math purposes, I have 5 plants. Didn't want to grow one strong sucker and have it be male. Cheers.
Continuing from the last post, (pics are going up today) I ended up giving them a full bottle which they enjoyed, and raised the lights about an inch. Yesterday they only got 1 bottle in the morning, and didn't look too bad at night so I let them dry out a bit. Even though my lights are giving each plant almost equal amounts, my main plant is a day or two ahead of the other 4 - which produced it's 4th leaf set this morning. Going to top it later. Already fed them, going to top my main plant before I take pics. Cheers.
Welt, here are the pics. high MP cam, had to dumb it down a bit for size (shame, looks so good extra close up) A few of the plants felt like they needed water, so I watered all of them. They get a little bigger with each day. Up until lately it's been a leafset about every 2 days. I'm going to begin a physical notebook to record my actions and the plants reactions. I wonder if the reason for the plant in the last pic being so green is where it is (in the center bucket - that plant is also my strongest). I also wonder if the other plants paleness is coming from their being that much closer to the tin foil, or because they're in front of the lights instead of beneath it = less chlorophyl? The stems on the outer ones are fairly weak compared to the center plant. I mean, they're strong and tough but not quite the girth that the center one has. At least as i'm looking at the pics now, in order, I started from the bottom right plant and worked counterclockwise with the center plant being the last shot. Hopefully we can get some feedback and learn me something. We already have the mylar bit down - that'll be coming soon. Everything else is in other posts. That last shot is of my really crude setup. Just a cat cradle style thing with some foil taped to the inside and some old resilient wire wrapped on some of the foil edge to give it rigidity. That brown thing in the corner is my dehumidifier. If you notice from the open box pic how I cut the foil in between the buckets, the dehumidifier blows against the buckets and the foil kinda acts like a directional fan and lifts up to blow inside the box. I think that's about as crude as it gets for a wannabe pro grower. Though I saw a guy LST a single plant with one CFL in a foot and a half cupboard - that was amazing. Cheers. EDIT: My bucket of water is almost done, going to up the nutes by a teaspoon or two in about a week.
Ok so this morning the outer plants got bigger, greener, and leafier. Started my grow log. Nothing really new, they haven't gotten that big. From what you guys can see, I should still be waiting a bit to top those yeah? Gonna top the 4th set and then begin LST. Cheers.
nice plants man their looking really healthy put the lights a bit closer though, cfls dont produce much heat so u might as well give your plants as much intensity as you can.
Well I want to incur a bit of stretch #1 (good tip otherwise) and #2, today was the hottest it's been this summer. Was so hot in that room you could almost sweat just standing in there. Humidity is still sitting around 50%, temp read at 100 but it was more like 88ish. Nothing I can do about that. I'm trying to circulate air around the house and I thought to leave the room's window fan on exhaust but i've noticed it just makes that one room the hottest. I put it to intake, gonna see how warm it gets for a few days while I have another room's window fan on exhaust. No worries, i have a filter Gonna use it once i need it though.
So they grew a bit more today, all of them have nicely beginning 4th sets, i plucked the strongest top yesterday and did the other 4 of them this morning so they heal as long as they can today. No news is good news! Cheers. EDIT: just finished doing routine maintenance. Noting that drainage of poured water isn't as fast as it has been, so i'm not going to feed them tomorrow.
Alright, the lack of water for a day showed decent growth - plants have plenty of water. I gave them their bottle today, i might not water them for another day and see if a bottle a day is too much. I've noticed that the stems and stalks are fairly fragile. Maybe it's because they're only two weeks old but i'm getting the feeling that their size isn't natural and i'm missing nutes. So my attempt at topping failed. Plucking the leaf set only plucked the majority of the top on all the plants, but one plant (not the good ones thankfully) I ended up removing the entire set AND top and it didn't look like it grew at all. I know it takes a few days for the plants to recover, but I wonder what i'm going to get from here. If anything i'll see what happens to the 4th leafset growth and then top the 5th correctly with tiny scissors. I think i'm missing phosphates. I have nitrogen in the fish turds, potassium should be from the molasses, but I have nothing for phosphate. The soil is 1-1-1 and the fish turds are 5-1-1 so there has to be enough in there to satisfy the plant but I know it wants more.
Just LST'd my plants today. The growth was a little explosive over the last day. The one plant i managed to top correctly has already began growth and I am leaving that plant alone until it grows out it's two other branches. The other 4 plants (including my best) have been regularly LST'd and are now all bent. I gave them water and will put up some more pics later once they start going to the light for a good shot.
OK so last post didn't get put up here. These are a few days old and a day or two after I LST'd. The new news is that they responded very well to the LST and lack of water. I felt the LST was going slowly until I dried them out for a day. My babies are just starting to smell and some of the internodes look like they have hairs on them but not the ones i'm familiar with looking for. One plant has produced extra leaves at the internodes. You'll all have pics likely tomorrow of the new update. This means i'll have to put my filter fan up finally. Also, I added a wee bit of hydrogen peroxide 3% to my remaining water only because i'm guessing there's some microbial stuff happening in my buckets and i'm sure the plants would like that given the hotter weather. My current water lasts only for a few more days, (or until the weekend) and then i'm mixing the fish emulsion, molasses, some hydrogen peroxide, and a bit of epsom salts. I will also begin using seltzer water since I think the plants are big enough for that now. Cheers.
So my babies are getting bushy as hell, regular LST is treating them VERY well. I will say though, that the plant I topped correctly, is a whole several days behind as if it was in cryo. I would suggest for the impatient not to top your plants because you'll need to add several weeks to your grow time if you plan on topping every node and scrog or SoG. So as for the current problems on my plants, they're showing nute deficiency again - good thing i'm preparing a fresh bucket of water and i'm going to increase nutes for them by 2x from the last time. They're also showing tiny scorch marks on the tips but there's no more than a few per plant. Suggestions? Maybe I should raise my lights up an inch or two? Currently they're 2 inches from the plants. (Epsom Salts and Seltzer spray begins next week!) Cheers.
Lights are fine where they are, put your hand underneath, if it's not too hot for your hand its not too hot for the plants. My plants recover very well from topping and new growth and branching can be seen clearly the next day, it works better on different plants and depending on how much light you've got in there. Put some pictures up so we can see this nute deficiency, I don't care to comment on it without seeing it as I don't want to misadvise.
Sorry it's been a while, life called. So, they've been growing pretty nicely so far, no problems here. Only thing I can't figure is if i'm not giving the plants enough nitrogen nutes. The fish emulsion is only 5-1-1 and I gave it 1.5 tsp per gallon - last water was 1 tsp per gallon. For these pictures, they were on 1 tsp/gal fish emulsion and 1 tsp/gal molasses for the last month or so, and starting yesterday their new water is 1.5 tsp/gal fish, molasses, epsom salts, and a few oz of hydrogen peroxide 3% Over the last few days i've also been spraying with seltzer water about 3x a day. The box pic is dark from the camera auto-adjust to calm the lights down. Also notice in one picture a dead leaf next to the standing plant - that was an absolute bottom leaf that's been slowly turning like that. It WAS the worst leaf in my group but the rest have minor scorching on the tips. I'm also a bit concerned about the leaf hooking - i've read calcium will help with that but I don't think crushing up some tums in their water will help. Suggestions? Cheers and happy growing. EDIT: All pictures except for the one with the dead leaf in it are being LST'd. I'm going to begin on the other once I see it happy up a bit. (Reasons why that plant may be limping as opposed to the others considering identical grow conditions? (of course save for LST) I would think because that plant hasn't been LST'd it's not getting enough light like the others are. Maybe that will change in a few days.)
Sup all. Since those last pics, not much growth. LST seems like slow going, but definitely NOT as slow as topping. If you're on a schedule or a budget, topping is not for you! Just to let you all know, instead of buying mylar, I had some flex duct tape laying around and the optical reflection compared to the shiny side of the tin foil just doesn't compare - like looking at headlights vs high beams. I also have 1/3 of the roll left! I was able to cover my existing tin foil in a layer of the stuff which also helped give it some rigidity and keeps it pretty straight. My next pic update will showcase it's greatness (p.s. - the roll I think only cost me about $10) Cheers. EDIT: I just wanted to add this a day later cause I just noticed that after spraying my plants with seltzer water they turn really dark green as if that was the only nute they were missing - even the bottom leaf that's starting to turn yellow got some of it's green back. I also don't think I have the appropriate nutes as I haven't seen much of a difference from adding peroxide and epsom salt. Could anyone comment on crushing up some tums to put into the water to fix the leaf hooking? I know they're not exactly water soluble but would the plant still be able to leech from it?