This is my second grow. The dry harvest from my first grow (from bag seed) is in my avatar. Here are the details: Space: A broom closet in my kitchen 14.5" x 14.5" x 60" high Medium: "Coast of Maine Bar Harbor Blend" w/fungus gnats ( Bar Harbor Blend Premium Potting Soil ) + perlite + a bit of "Wonder Soil" coco coir in the "germination pit" + a couple teaspoons worm castings. Container: 4" plastic pot for now. Lights: 1x 42W 6500K CFL + 1x 40W 2700K CFL. (Total 82W CFLs) I have a 150W HPS for flowering. Ventilation: Two PC exhaust fans and one PC intake fan blowing on the lights and plant. Seed: Sour Diesel x East Coast Sour Diesel cross, 90% femmed seed. Nutrients: I gave her a few drops of Blue Mountain Orgainics Super Plant tonic (diulted in a quart of water) (Super Plant Tonic). Haven't given her any nutes yet aside from this "tonic". For flowering, I have BMO "Flower Power" (Flower Power) I have Miracle Gro Orchid food for veg, when she is ready. Odor control: None yet, but I used a colander with carbon in it last time, and I'm planning to use it again. The ventilation might seem like overkill for 82W and 1 plant, but this small closet gets HOT. I made a "false ceiling" out of foam core (1/2" rigid foam sandwiched between paper, available at art supply stores), and placed it as close to the lights as possible. It's 73 outside, 78 in the kitchen, and 84 in the cab unless I leave the door open or turn the a/c on. With the door open or a/c on the temp in the cab is usually around 79 or 80. My plan is to switch to the 150W HPS when the weather gets cold enough. (I can leave the window in the kitchen partially open.) Enough boring details, here are some pictures!
After I took the last pictures I moved the lights up, (closer to the exhaust fans), and topped her just above the 4th set of true leaves. (I removed 5th set that was just beginning to emerge.)
Unfortunately, I let her get root bound in the 4" pot. She's a little starved for nutes, too. I tried to loosen up the tangled roots a bit without damaging too many. I repotted her into a 6" pot with Wonder Soil coco coir and perlite. I also removed as much loose soil around the roots as I could in an effort to remove as many gnat eggs/larvae as possible. So far I've killed about 15 adult fungus gnats. I'm hoping to fix the fungus gnat problem before I put her in a 3 gallon pot. The Wonder Soil has water-absorbing acrylamide polymers in it. I could do without them, but they're supposedly non-toxic. The Wonder Soil also has worm castings in it, supposedly.
She got wilty after the transplant, so I moved her further from the lights and misted her. She's doing good now, 2 days later. I'll try to get a picture up later. The soil smells a tad rotten, but not too bad. Maybe some roots died after the transplant. After looking at my pictures again I think she wasn't so root-bound that I needed to loosen up the root ball. I could have handled it less. Live and learn. She has some yellowing of leaves and needs food, but the soil is still moist and I want to let it dry out first. I should have fed her before the transplant or when I watered her in after the transplant, but the MG perlite has a small amount of fert. in it, so I didn't want to over feed her. Turns out I under-fed her, which is what I always do. DOH!
She finally had her first dose of fertilizer -- 3/4 strength MG orchid food. The runoff is a bit darker than it looks in the picture. Is this normal? My non-MJ plants usually have brown runoff similar to this, but my last MJ plant had clear runoff. Is it just the soil I'm using?
The real dark runoff is from the coco, in your wonder soil. It's completely normal and nothing to sweat. I usually just buy plain jane coco, what ever is on sale. Then flush it several times, checking the runoff TDS until it's only 10-30 ppm over my water TDS. . Coco enriched soil, or coco mediums are calcium hogs. If you have some Cal-Mag or Mag-I-Cal, add 3 to 5 ml per gallon of water, every other feeding. This will prevent a calcium deficency early on, which can stunt growth. This is a common issue, with coco, and knowing ahead of time, you can prevent it. Hope this helps. .
Thanks, OhSoGreen!! Very helpful tip about the calcium issues with coco. I've planted wheat grass in the wonder soil (for my cats), and I don't recall the brown run-off, but I probably wasn't paying attention. I'm going to transplant into a 3 gallon pot, and I have to buy some new soil. I'm hoping to find some FFOF. Here are some new pictures -- Day 25. I lost the first 2 sets of leaves, but the rest of the plant looks okay. It's gotten pretty bushy. The runoff is even darker now.
11 days after the transplant, those dastardly gnats are back. Yesterday I saw a couple, and today I saw at least 10. Killed a few and put a fly-paper-covered stick in the closet. Tomorrow I'll add as much perlite to the top as I can. I found a tip on another forum (while I was researching FoxFarm potting soil) that recommends a dish-soap solution: Fungus Gnats
I don't have any CalMag or Mg i Cal, but I have bone meal. I've read that it is a good source of calcium. I'm going to mix some in when I re-pot her. I meant to put it in beore but I forgot. Would this be a good way of preventing calcium deficiency, or does it take too long to break down? Here's the bone meal I have: Espoma Bone Meal - Garden.com
I finally transplanted into a 2.5 gallon pot yesterday. I had bought a 3 gallon pot, but I don't have enough soil to fill it. For the soil mix I used: 4 wafers of the Wonder Soil coco coir (the last of it) about an equal amount of perlite 1 quart of worm castings a couple tablespoons of bone meal old soil that I saved from my previous plant. I may regret using the old used soil. But she had to be transplanted, and I couldn't find anything but MG in stores. Amazingly, she didn't get wilty after the transplant. I moved the lights up a bit and misted her and turned off the intake fan to reduce transpiration. If the roots don't have to move as much water up to the plant it helps them recover from any damage that might have occurred during the transplant. So, now I want to LST, but I'm a scared! I should have done it sooner, but I wanted to wait until she was in her final pot. Now I'm afraid of breaking a branch. I'll switch to the 150W HPS when I'm sure she's gotten over the transplant.
Thanks for stopping by, abrahamx! Unfortunately I lost the big fat leaves. They were the third set. Oh well, guess I'll have to veg a little longer to compensate.
I dont mean to thread jack, but i just have a question for someone with more experience. If i was to flower a plant that was the size his is now, roughly what would my yield be? I know it could get greater, but basically what i want to do is get more than a pathetic yeild, but try to keep the grow time as low as possible. Possible 12/12 from the start? And to the OP. Very nice job. I want to see how this turns our for you.
Nice grow man! I can't wait to see her flower for ya. Those buds in your avatar are lookin quite tasty. That's a pretty vague question. Some strains hardly stretch at all, and some can be flowered when they are seedlings and give you 6 oz each. Lighting also would have a huge effect on this... Are you running 100w of CFLs, or a 1000w HPS? No one can give so much as a guess unless you were to give a whole lot more details then you have, and at that point you would be thread jacking.
Thanks, blazinout! I don't mind the OT -- I'm happy to have visitors! It is hard to answer your question, though. Some people do 12/12 from seed, especially in SOG (sea of green) set ups. So search around and see what others have done. Downshift is right -- the more light you have, the better your yield will be. Lots of people flower plants of this size. Thanks for checking out my grow, DownShift! I harvested the plant in my avatar in June. I was running about 105W of CFL in this 1.5 sq ft closet, constantly struggling with heat issues and tweaking the cab. I bought the 150W HPS about half-way through flowering. She yielded about 1.5 oz. and it was very tasty bud! I'm not sure how long to veg this plant. I want to see her stable in this less-than-ideal soil mix. She seems to be fussier than my bag seed plant. She was nutrient deprived before, (that's why I lost 3 sets of leaves, I think) and now, after 2 doses of fertilizer she has a couple of yellow leaf tips (nute burn, I think). I gave her plain water after the transplant.
I started LSTing the two main branches on on day 38. I try to pull them down a bit more every day. The second picture is what she looks like today, day 40. I switched to the 150W HPS yesterday.
I guess I got carried away with the LST, because she's too wide for the cab now. And I have so much vertical space! After I topped the 5th leaf set (way back several posts ago), branches started growing from all the nodes. I think the plant wasn't actually nitrogen deprived -- I think the leaves dropped because branches were growing in their place. They didn't show typical nitrogen deficiency signs of gradually going from green to yellow. Anyhoo, I flipped the lights on Nov. 1. So far no signs of sex. In my pictures you can see my "carbon colander". It's two wire mesh colanders, nested, with carbon in between. I put some weatherstripping foam tape on the rim, and the whole thing is held in place with two pieces of picture wire, tied to hooks on the wall. I have two PC fans on the other side of the colander. The 38mm fan is doing most of the work. It's a Delta AFB1212ME, but I don't know the specs because Delta changed the fan and their specs don't match my fan's amps (.40A), so the CFM, dBa and static pressure must be different too. It's kinda loud, but not too bad. There's also an 80 CFM duct fan on the light hood. I put a piece of ducting on it so the hot air goes to the colander. I also wrapped it in foam because it makes a choppy sound. The foam didn't really help, but the fan has been quieter lately. I took two clones last night -- the two lowest branches. I hope they live, even though I don't have a veg space for them yet!
Today is day 8 from when I saw the first pistils, but the flowers are not developing as fast as I want them to. At least they don't seem as developed as other plants I've seen at 1 week of flowering. There were a few days last week when the temps went as high as 86, and after I fixed that (by switching to a larger carbon colander) she started to grow more pistils. What a fussy plant! Temps are now about 77 at the hottest. I now think I shouldn't have topped or LST'd this plant. Or maybe I should have topped earlier -- then she would have had fewer nodes from which to grow new branches. She's too wide for this cabinet. The tops are not even, but if I keep training them to be level in height the plant is just gonna get wider. It's under a 150W HPS, which is 100W per sq. ft., but only the top leaves get any light. The rest of the plant is in shade. The two clones are 13 days old. I think both have rooted, but the smaller one isn't feeling well. I think I need to fix their environment.
Two days ago I repotted from a 2.5 gallon plastic pot into a 5 gallon Smart Pot Smart Pots - Container Gardening, Hydroponic Fabric Containers (a polyester fabric container), with Monrovia organics potting soil. I know it's risky to repot a flowering plant, but thankfully she seems to have not been stressed. I guess I'll find out when I chop if it was worth the effort (if roots grow into the new soil). She seems to have stopped stretching, for the most part. She's gained only a tiny bit (if that) of vertical height during the last few days. There are 6 main bud sites. Is that too many for this small space? There are several smaller bud branches that I should probably prune off.