First Grow - 1000w - Ebb & Gro - MMJ

Went out of town for a couple of days this weekend and came back to quite a terrible scene. All of the plants on the right half of the room had fallen over onto themselves. They were laying on the floor basically. It didn't look good.

The dehumidifier filled up in that period and the humidity shot up to 80% or so for about 8 hours. This might have contributed to the problem. Either way, I definitely had to get some support going on. I didn't take it seriously before, but I do now. I went out to some garden stores looking for something that might be easy to install on full grown plants. I thought about more fencing, or maybe cutting tomato cages and wrapping them around the plants. Eventually I happened to stumble on these cool half square cages. They are thick and heavy and can support themselves and the plant with no additional tying or anything. Just placed them next to the plant on the side it naturally wanted to fall. I got some rubber coated wire too to do some more wrangling. All in all I think it turned out pretty good.

You can see the poor sativa on the far right isn't much of a plant. Maybe now it will get more light and fill out a little more, we'll see.

Here is the cage I found online. They are pretty pricey, but I can't imagine a better support system. You can move them around so easily. I am going to buy some more for the next run.

handycage

And no, I'm not getting kickbacks from these people or something.

 

Seeing some spotting on lower leaves, and some slight curling all around.

I noticed the plant doesn't seem to be taking up nutrients at a very fast pace any more (hardly at all in fact), and growth seems to have stopped in general.

So I finally went and sprung for a Hanna digital PH meter. I think there might be a major problem with the PH and that stupid liquid tester just isn't cutting any more.

I won't know til this evening when lights are on, but hopefully I can easily remedy it.

I also figured I should throw a big airstone in the reservoir too. I know I should have done that from the start, but better late than never, right? Picked up a 20W active air commercial pump, and a HydroFarm 8" air stone disc.

So, my first grow isn't without problems, but I am really hoping this is all stuff I can overcome with only 20 days left of flower.

Wish me luck!

 

Thanks! I don't know why he was so interested. Noticed he was banned recently..

I am going to do some work in the room tonight, take some pictures and post an update tonight so check back.

 

Well, I guess I wrote a big post today with pictures and everything, and hit preview, but never post. Woops.

Anyway, I got my PH meter, and a little green LED light so I could do minor stuff in there in the dark. People on various forums attribute the spots and curled leaves to either a PH imbalance, or a calcium/magnesium deficiency. I happened to have a little bottle of MagiCal that came with my Ebb & Gro, so I tossed that in the reservoir. It came out to less than the minimum recommended amount for 50 gallons of water, so I'm not too worried about it screwing anything up.

After some hassles with the new PH meter, I finally got it dialed in. Looks like my reservoir is reading 6.4. That is the first time I got a real read on it. From what I have read, you get better nutrient uptake at slightly lower PH, so I will add a little PH Down tonight and see if I can bring it down to around 5.5-5.7.

I cut off all of the bad looking leaves. There were about 15 or so on the left side plants, only near the bottom. This way I'll be able to tell if new ones appear. The top leaves on the right side plants are curled like tacos, and making what some people describe as a "claw."

Otherwise the plants still look great. Reservoir is near full so that everything is running pretty diluted right now until hopefully things clear up.

After I drop the PH a little, I guess just wait and see.

Dropped my new airstone in the res with the giant pump and it looks like a drum of water that has been brought to a rolling boil. Pretty crazy. I guess that will keep things mixed up real nice though...

 

I think I am going to start some new clones this week, so that they have nice big roots when this run is over, and I don't have any downtime.

I am looking at some different strains. I think right now I am going to go with a Skunk #5. I'm also thinking of White Rhino. We'll see. I'd like to get the cuttings in my cloner this week though and get this party started.

I never did post pictures of the cloner I made. It's a partially original design and works quite well.

 

Well, I planned on harvesting on the 24th, and so I started to flush the plants with just water last night. Drained the reservoir and filled it back up with good ol' tap water.

Plants look OK. There are spots that definitely suffered a nutrient burn. Between that and when they fell over and snapped some big stems, I think growth got stunted big time around that point. So, my first harvest won't be stellar from a Gram Per Watt perspective, but it was definitely a learning experience and of course there are still plenty of nice buds in there.

I have the tools now and some experience to avoid the problems that cropped up on this grow. I will apply both to my next grow and shoot for a higher output. It would be nice to be able to consistently get 1 GPW, if nothing else, just for a personal challenge.

We'll see how it goes in the next week.

I need to get some more equipment here in the next week. I need 12 more pots for the Ebb & Gro system, another quantum ballast, bulb, and reflector. I already have the light mover.

I am going to clean out this room real good, bleach it down, and probably put up some panda film. Couldn't hurt, right?

One thing I do currently to keep the room clean is that I spray some spray bleach on the floor before I walk into the room, and always hand sanitize with a bottle by the door. Most germs and other things are transferred to new places in the home via your feet, so it's probably a good idea. It only takes a second, and spray bleach is $.99 a bottle.

 

These pics are from last night. Probably the last pics until harvest.

 

Seems like that took a lot longer than 3 months.

Got almost everything chopped down and hung up to dry last night. There are 3 small plants in pots still waiting to be taken down. I was pretty critical of everything and overly worried, but in the end it all looks real nice. I think yield could have been bigger, but I am pretty proud of this for my first grow.

I will probably just add one more thing to this journal, and that will be total dry weight. And that will be when everything is dry of course.

I will start a new journal for my next grow soon. It will be Skunk #5, 2000w, 24 buckets, 2 light movers, and hopefully a nice CO2 setup.

Pretty cool how those plant stands I was so happy about also double as drying racks...

See you next time...

 

Well, so I got everything dry, trimmed, weighed and in jars to cure. Looks great. Total was 500g, almost on the dot.

That's not bad. Pretty average. Now that I have a baseline, I can see what happens when I use a high-yield strain and CO2.

I even made a little ghetto hash from the trim. This was done with the "gumby" method, using just a kitchen screen, time, and gravity. I think I'll buy some bags next time.

Well, that was fun. I don't know what else I could add to this journal, if I think of anything I'll post it.

Next time, I am going to spread my pots out a little more, put cages on everything, and also I am going to trim all of the lower stuff out at the start of flower. I think those 3 things will make a big difference.

 

Found some huge jars at the hobby shop.

 

Thanks!

 

Thanks!

 

Thanks!

I agree that it was pretty crowded. Especially before I got the cool cages set up.

I just started a second grow and plan to space everything out quite a bit more and also trim the lower stuff off when I switch to 12/12. I am hoping to get a lot bigger top growth this way, but we'll see!

Thanks again!