Edit: Whole setup has changed Post 9 to see my baby, she finally decided to grow the fck up lulz. Ok so first some pics from my first grow. (Total Failure just flushed them a few days ago) Ok with my first grow I started with 5 fem'd seeds from Nirvana, I think they were AK seeds but I can't really remember. All 5 seedlings were growing pretty nicely when twoards the end of week 2 I decided to buy some CFLs to supplement my LED ufo. I set up 4 CFLs inside the box (18x18x42 box pretty tiny) and the next day when I got home from work and checked on them the box temp was in the 100s and my babys were fried nice and crispy =[. 3 of the seedling were total gonners but I kept the 2 that had been the most robust and fastest growing and decided to see if I could nuture them back to health. Never ammounted to much the pics below are of when I finnaly pulled them out. This was after 9 weeks of veg time on 24/0 they went down the toilet. I used distilled water and checked the runoff each time I watered them the PH on the runoff was always good. I can't give exact numbers because I am just using the drops that change the color and holding up a chart to compare for now. Pretty sure I definetly overwatered in the beginning but from about week 4 until the end I stoped watering until they were completly dried out. Plant 1 Plant 2 Sorry for fuzzy ass pic Roots, was suprised the larger of my two failures had a really shitty root mass what gives here lol. Ok so the lighing I have in the box now to start the 2nd attempt. I have a 90 watt ufo w/ 3watt leds (no idea what brand just says "custom made" It came with the box Heres a link to the box, don't waste your time telling me what an idiot I am for spending a grand on this box. Trust me I already know and am planning out how I want to build a tent next to use for flowering and use this box for veg. http://www.actechwi.com/Soil-Grow-Cabinet-p/mst-181s.htm The following are new lights that I have added to the 2nd attempt I have 4 of these bulbs I was able to snag for free http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004MXALFU/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Then I have one more bulb that is similar to those I picked up from Lowes. I got these cheap as hell off Amazon when they went on sale. No idea if they are worth anything but I spent less than 10 bucks on 2 of them. Will velcrow them to the side of the box for side lighting or something. Still waiting on them to arrive. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WCK96M/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Ok so here is a pic of the box and how I have it set up right now. I had planned on doing 2 plants and transplanting from solo cups, into 1 gal smart pots, then finally 2 gallon smart pots, however no shit my dogs ate my smart pots. Had washed them all out and had them folded up next to my box in the closet and my dogs decided to play tug of war with them. The suspects So all I had available to transplant into was a 7 gallon smart pot, fcker barley fit into my box and is going to be a PITA to get in and out so I can PH test the run off etc. Not really sure if I will be able to get it in and out very much to be honest. Oh well, with this giant pot I want to LST the plant in a spiral going around the whole pot. So far I germed 2 seeds on the 3rd, they both had tap roots in 2 days. I put them in soil (FFOF) on the 5th and they took another 3 days to break the surface, Sprouted on the 8th and are now on day 15 of veg. One seed did not make it, grew to about 1/2 an inch and still had the shell on the top. I left it for another week before I finally just touched it lightly with my finger and it fell over dead, this was while they were still in solo cups. Concerns I have with the plant right now is, 1. The transplant did not go smothley, it was actually pretty rough. I saw what I thought could be a root poking out of one of the drain hole in the bottom of the solo cup so I decided to transplant before it became root bound. I tried to be gentle and cut a slit down 2 sides of the solo cup so I could open the cup up like a clamshell and (hopefully) slide out the plant, soil and all right into the new pot then fill in around it. Well that did not happen. 90% of the soil came tumbling out while my poor plant was still stuck in the cup with her roots totally exposed and barely any soil. I delicitly picked it up by the stem and placed the rootmass into the hole I had in the soil then gently covered it with soil. I transplanted last Friday so on the 19th, the leaves have started to canoe up a little which actually happened in my first grow and I want to nip that in the butt whatever is causing it before it gets worse. The above ground growth has not really started again since transplant either, hopefully this is just because there is alot of effort being used below ground to expand the root system going from a solo cup to a 7 gallon pot. So far I have been watering in small ammounts often just keeping the top soil moist around the seedling and then also watering less frequently in a circle about halfway between the seedling and the outside of the pot figureing if she gets thristy she can put in the work and reach out with her roots for the water farther awway. Dunno if that will help build a better root system or not but it seems like it wouldn't hurt in my head atleast =]. I have the FF trio of nutes but don't plan on using any for another 3 weeks or so. Right now I have my fingers crossed that she is just expanding her roots and not much will be going on for another week and then I will see the above ground growth start again. Well I think thats it for my first post, I welcome all critiques I really don't want to fck this up again lol. Will post an update once a week unless something significant happens. Edit: Box temp stays between 73 - 78 and the humidity stays around 50%
Well your first grow wasn't a total disaster. Hopefully you learned the importance of managing the environment for your plants. Keep the temps at 78 for best results. I would suggest getting that light off the dirt, and hung up, for safety reasons. Next, I would suggest making it simple to check pH. Aside from your environment, that's the next key point to maintain. Finally, I would suggest moving that fan so it blows indirectly over the plant. An oscillating fan is best, and if you can't fit one in a small cab, then just crank up your exhaust fan, until you see the leaves moving a bit, and that will do the trick! Looking good, keep it up! Glad to see you have some lazy helpers there, too. =)
Thanks, I will raise the UFO up as the plant grows for slide lighting it is rigged up with a pully system, I have to have the bottom of it touching the soil so I can angle it down right now instead of letting it lay flat against the side of the cab. The other light I plan to have shining up into the growth, Still trying to decide how I want to rig it up. I was thinking about checking the PH while I was at work today and I think the best way will be to have multiple saucers. I can lift the pot a few inches until enought runnoff drains for me to test, then have the gf pull out the saucer and replace it with a clean one. Also I moved the fan to the top of the box and pointed it down, the plants leaves are moving just a little bit now but it will have to be good enough until I can go look for a small ocsillating fan. I also have nothing to set the fan on so will have to rig it up somehow so it is hanging from the ceiling and can still oscellate in a way that the hanging lights don't block 90% of the fans output. Here are some close up pics I just took, day 15 of veg but I have not noticed any change since the transplant. Does anyone have an idea about what is causing the leaves to roll/canoe up? It happened in my first grow also but alot more extreme than what this one is showing so far. Looks really small to me comparing to other peoples journals
Was looking for a replacement fan Thinking of getting this http://www.amazon.com/Lasko-4006-Clip-Stik-2-SPEED/dp/B000RL0O1C/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1374628298&sr=8-12&keywords=small+oscillating+fan
So here is the update Girl is nute burned; I gave her a first feeding on the 26th it was a half gallon of water with a 1/4 teaspoon of FF Grow Big (PH'd correctly after I added the nutes), was not sober when I did it and knew I probably shouldn't lol but was getting impatient with not seeing any top growth whatsoever. Well I got what I wanted and she finally started growing above the ground but about 3 days after I fed her she started burning. Today I plan to water/flush her and get those nutes out and then setting her out in the sun for the day to hopefully dry the pot out some. Have not watered her in 10 days and there is still plenty of moisture in the bottom half of the smart pot. Even though she has grown over the last week after I fed her some nutes she still looks really small at this point. Its day 27 of veg and its not even 4 inches tall =[ One difference I have between this grow and my 1st one though is for the last week whenever I open the door to my box the smell of the bud hits me in the face like a semi truck, my previous 2 plants never smelled even though they were much older than this one. This plant reeks of dank =] and atleast I know my filter is working as intended =]
Quoting myself from 1st post "I got these cheap as hell off Amazon when they went on sale. No idea if they are worth anything but I spent less than 10 bucks on 2 of them. Will velcrow them to the side of the box for side lighting or something. Still waiting on them to arrive. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WCK96M/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" I just hooked these lights up yesterday and they took my box from a steady temp of 78-80 degress to 84-86. Not sure if I want to take them out or not. Not really concerned with the amount of light they put out because I got them so cheap and figure more light is always better. Maybe the extra 5 degrees of heat will help dry the bottom half of my pot out a little quicker.
If I were you I'd get like 3 small internal computer fans and set them up in your room. super low power usage and will dramatically solve heating issues.
I would have to partially agree with wwpk, the new temps are too high. Either a couple of fans to try to lower the temp or turn off some of those lights. Even just one of your lights are more than likely enough to keep your plant growing. All the new growth looks good, no burn or curl. It might be growing a little slow, possibly stress related. But from my experience growing from seed always seems to take a while to get going. Yours is progressing faster than mine. This seedling took just under a week to crack open and shoot a tap root, a week and a half to climb out of the root riot cube and throw out some roots, and it has been planted for about another week and a half in this picture. Total it is about 3.5 weeks from putting the seed in a cup of water. I havn't seen you mention a ppm or ec meter at all, I would suggest getting one (~$10 online), it will help with preventing nute burn. All in all, you seem to be doing pretty good, keep up what you are doing and most important, be patient.
Here is an update lol Edit: Better pics inc in a few mins Excuse poor grammer/spelling was toking while writing all this lol. Day 102 of VEG LULZ First here is how my soil plant is doing. I eventually LST'd it. Right now it is 2ft 3 inches tall and has a diameter of 2ft. Actually thought this thing was going to be a goner for the longest time. About the first 8 weeks it was such slow going and I had pretty well given up on it. Eventually it just took off and exploded growing from 8 inches or so to this in the last 4-5 weeks with ZERO changes (Lights/Nutes/temp all same, just increased nutes as it was growing I am actually feeding almost the full recommended dosage on the FF veg nutes now) The growth explosion started about a month ago while it was still in the small 18 inch x 18inch cabinet. Plant overgrew that thing so fast I almost couldn't get the damn thing out lol. Thought I might end up killing my baby just removing it from the grow box, whoops. I do have better lights on it now though, have a 600 watt MH on the hydro plants and a 400 watt HPS over the soil plant. , The plant has been on 24/7 light schedule from the beginning. Will be vegging using 18/6 in the future, damn power bill has gone up quite a bit since getting the new lights and air pump Anyone have any idea why all my leaves taco? Its all my plants on all my grows lol. Dwc or Hydro. Room temp is 74 and temp at canopy level is about 85. Could it possibly be the strain? I thought it was temps but I got that under control long ago.
I have a 3x3 tent that actually arrives today and I will be kicking this baby over to flower this weekend after I get everything set up. Now for bonus pics, once I had pretty much given up my soil plant was ever going to grow and figuring I had failed my 2nd grow attempt I decided to try my hand at hydro and set up some bubble buckets. These other 3 plants are the same strain Nirvana Papaya and are only 48 days from seed. They will probably go into the flower tent in 2 weeks or so. I am just using the lucas formula with the Maxi bloom. Started around 200ppms and now I have them around 800ppm PH 5.7-6.0 range Water temp is constant 70 degrees, luckily I have not seen any sign of slime or other nasties. I don't do water changes every week. Just top off, not changing the water and cleaning the buckets out until I flip them over to flower. So far so good, they will be going in 7.8 gal buckets for flowering. Roots are nice and white and have great mass on 2 of them. One has been a runt from the beginning but seems to actually be gaining some ground on the others now. Unfortunately I have nobody available to take a pic of them while I hold the plant up at the time. Can someone help me diagnose if this is a nute deficiency on the leaves? This stuff actually started showing up when they were only on their 5th node or so but never got to out of control and didn't seem to be hurting the plant much considering how fast they are growing. Also I don't think its pest/disease because it has not spread to my soil plant. These are growing at lightning speed for me compared to my first grow and the the slooooow start of my 2nd grow.