56W Led ledgrow.eu, Lst, Organic, Bagseed. Vertically Challenged Real Micro Grow.

Alright, let me preface this by saying I'm such a cheap bastard, I don't even own a camera. I am missing some progress photos and I'll dump 1.5 months worth of pictures on these first few posts.
 
Apologies in advance for the wall of text.
 
I have spent 200euros on the lights and around 50 on the box, pots and DIY incidentals. I created my own soil and will not be using any nutes. This is my second attempt at growing.
 
[TLDR] My first attempt wielded a very small amount of super dank, embarassingly fluffy and light bud under the mediterranean sun, of which it saw 5 hours per day for a staggering 5 months. This time, after having learned more about growing plants in general, I'm going indoors. Due to space and financial limitations, I'm also going micro. [TLDR]
 
First picture is my soil:
 

 
~ 40% home compost (including a lot of grass clippings and other plant waste along with compostable foodstuffs) from a rural area
 
~ 40% manure from sheep who eat grass clippings up in the mountains
 
~ 10-20% fake-ass perlite soil for drainage.
 
I used it to successfully flower a Dorset Naga chilli pepper plant last summer in a 10 gallon pot. The peppers where really hot. After leaving it in the rain for the duration of the winter, I split it up into 2 3-gallon pots and let it cook for a month (and yes, I have gnats).
 
Next up, my setup when the seeds broke ground on the 22nd of April:
 

 
As you can see, I have a very small vertical area in which to work with. With the light up to the topmost possible possition (almost stuck on the lid) I only have 50cm from the bottom of the box.
 
Here are my plants at 6 days old:
 

 
My light has 3 settings (seedlings, veg, flower), I used the seedlings setting but it did stretch them a bit.

 

My plants at day 16 of veg and after fim.
 

 
Since I was growing bagseed and had no way of knowing which plants would be female, I decided to put two in each rectangular pot, and one in the round, small one.
 
I then started training the plants from both ends to the center of the pots and go 12/12 just before both plants overlap in the middle.
 
 
[TLDR] The small round pot also has shitty soil dressed with a bit of manure on top. Not expecting much from that one, I would probably be better served if I had closed that area off with a reflective surface. [TLDR]
 
 
Also, I'm ashamed to admit I'm using aluminum foil for now, hopefully I'll upgrade to windshield reflectors by the last few weeks of flowering.

 

Two days after going 12/12, 29 days since breaking ground.
 

 
In the first pic you can see the two tops meeting close to the center. The plant on the right was trained to go back to the right in a spiral and the big one got spread around the pot. The one on the right actually looked a lot smaller once I took off the large fan leaves.
 
In the second pic you can see more of the same. Except in this one case, the one on the right was a male, which I removed and then the big one had all the space for itself.
 
The third pic is my runty tiny bastard with the crap soil, that's really not getting enough light to flower. This will be evident in the next pics.
 
Finally, please disregard anything you read on the white tags, my seeds where really fucking mixed before I put them in. They're all Albanian hybrid bagseeds anyway, I'd be surprised if two seeds from the same plant would give two same plants.

 

Alright, moving on to flower! Day 44 (yesterday).
 
 
So, I left these poor bastards in their box for 2 days without being able to water them or check them and I had some of the tips reach the light and get a bit burnt.
 
 
The dual pot:
 

 
The single plant pot:
 

 
One of the pots, no idea which, it's a messy LST, that's for sure.
 

 
My best looking bud so far. Also the most crispy one.
 

 

After some of the tops got a bit crispy I realized it was time for another LST session. This time, I used a bit of wire along with the hemp string. These are some pictures immediately after I trimmed the biggest fan leaves and trained the plants lower on their pots.
 
I'm hopping to get a couple more pictures today to show how they reacted to the training.
 

 

 

 
It does feel like I saved a bit on vertical space on this LST, but I don't know how much more the plants will stretch during the rest of their flowering.
 
Alright, so that's it for now. God willing, I will be updating this thread on an ongoing basis for the rest of this grow.

 

Thanks for dropping by Joe, you're right about me rushing the veg stage a bit.
 
I was getting anxious about my space so I turned them over at around 25 days or so, if I recall correctly. My biggest worry so far seems to be that some of my branches are really weak/thin, I guess that's what happens with the removal of fan lower leaves, maybe also because I didn't have a good fan on these plants from the beginning.
 
Great canopy you've got there,  will you go scrog with the plants that you'll keep?
 

 

 
I'm actually LST'ing by hand, but same principle, yeah. Trying to get as many budsites as possible. They look better now than they do in the last picture since many tops hadn't yet turned upwards then.
 
 

 
Yeah, I was actually inspired by mrbear's PC box LST's and I wanted to grow with LED, plus I had very limited space, so I thought, LST+those lights, I could make something happen.
 
We'll see how it goes.

 

Update time! Day 55 from seed, 28 days 12/12
 
Aerial view of my vertically challenged box:

 
Small lake of Green (Not quite a sea yet, maybe next time) :

 
Vanity shots:

 

 

 
 
Sorry for the bad quality pics, I have very limited light over the box. I should probably take more pics with the LEDs on.
 

 

Fed with compost tea today, 1 part generic store bought seaweed, 1 part home compost and 1 part (somewhat) local farm manure. Brewed for 36 hours and stirred by hand every so often.
 
The lights seem to be pretty efficient for the limitied watt output and I'm overall happy about the prospects of this grow. 
 
I also deliberately broke quarantine today and placed a small basil plant in the box. The basil was a cutting from an outside plant and probably had some mites and eggs on it. I am stress-testing my setup, I believe my plants to be healthy enough and to have progressed enough that I don't get screwed by the mites.
 
It probably wasn't my best idea ever, but I'm really curious as to how easy or hard it is to get a spidermite infestation in an indoors grow. Right now my plants seem well fed, healthy and resiliant.

 

Day 42 of flowering, around 70 from seed. Spidermite free so far, also put a couple of ladybugs in there, not sure if I really need them. Oh, and I've officially got a camera!
 
This is my two-plant pot. There's the top-heavy plant on the left, and then an indica-looking gal on the right. She's got few branches and is much more frosty on her leaves, even though she's not progressing as fast as her neighbor on the left. Actually, the one on the left has very little trichomes in comparisson to both other plants in my grow.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Here's my single plant. She's a thirsty little thing, I'm hoping she's a native/landrace sativa strain from the area where I live in, but there's no way of knowing for sure. She's also constantly getting new growth on the top of her colas (especially the main one) which is has me worried as I'm running out of my (already limited) vertical space.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
And the aerial view, just one pot in.
 

 
I'm gonna be feeding them again tomorrow with an aerated compost and manure tea + molasses. How do the plants look to you guys? I'm not very happy with the growth I'm seeing, I think the area I'm trying to work with is too small for my pots.
 
Also, one girl is going too fast, but only has light buds and few trichomes. The other two are going slow, but have better trichome production. While I realize genetics play a huge role in this, I'm surprised at the difference.
 
Anyway I'd love to hear some thoughts and input from you guys, how do the plants look to you for 42 days of flower? Do they look stressed? Am I underwatering or overwatering? Any help and ideas would be appreciated!

 

3 Months from Seed / 2 Months of 12/12
 
Feeding with compost teas and I don't let the soil go completely dry. Got a bit of a herm on the one with the fat buds (photos at the bottom).
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Joe, thanks for the kind words once again! I'm very happy about how the grow is turning out, although it hasn't been without problems! The girl with the fat round buds (ripest-looking one) has put out a few bananas. Can't complain though, I'll be chopping her soon anyway and I'll keep some fem seeds for testing and experimentation!

 

Heh, if you don't mind I do actually have a couple of questions I've been looking the answers for!
 
First up, can you tell when I should be chopping these girls? Especially the one that's starting to mature and yellow, I think it's getting there but can't tell for sure.
 
Regarding the hermie seeds: Will all plants that have been pollinated by Hermie produce only female seeds? I was actually hoping to cross Hermie with my single plant to see what happens. I already placed some pollen on a short bud close to the root of the plant I want to breed Hermie with (I also read that this reduces the chances of my other plant going hermie as well). But I would then like to make some crosses off of that in the future. What I'm trying to say is, if I cross Hermie with Single Sativa Girl, will all SSG's seeds be female? Or just the seeds that Hermie produces with her/himself?
 
Finally, I really need a couple suggestions for a 4' exhaust fan. I don't need something super strong, since my box is pretty small and I need it to be kinda quiet, but at the same time PC fans have NOT been working out for me. I don't want to go super expensive, but I do need something reliable.