First Grow, Afghan Kush Ryder,DWC,bubble bucket, G3 UFO LED & more!

Hey guy's.

First I would like to thank this website for giving me he motivation,inspiration and knowledge to get my proverbial feet wet in the world of growing. I lurked here for a long time before creating a account, read threads for hours, and all that good stuff.

So first off I am growing WoS Afghan Kush Ryder in a Bubble Bucket kit from HTGSupply inside a grow cabinet I made.

Here is the cabinet, I got it at WalMart for about 50%, there was a mandatory middle shelf for rigidity but that woulda been bad for overall height so I screwed in some support brackets top and bottom an a cross brace (black piece) in the back.





Here she popped her tail on 11/11/11


Homemade humidity dome action


She was looking a little yellow after the dome and made a "is she a lost cause" thread in Sick Plants you can check.

Here she is @ 9 days old inside the net pot for the first time with well washed hydroton


Here she is today, 2 weeks old. She has 4 roots that have escaped the net pot and look to be about 3" long as of this morning. Shes a midget which kinda concerns me but I hope she will start to stretch a bit.

Once she get's taller I will fill the rest of the net pot with hydroton and remove the mylar from the inside.


My nutes will be GH Flora Series, Grow,Micro and Bloom

My lights are a G3 90w UFO LED from HTGSupply. Not the cheap eBay ones, HTG manufactures their own LED lights with the correct specs for growing unlike the cheapy's and stand behind their product so I went with them.

I am also using 4, 26w 6500k CFL's (2700k in bloom) which will be the surrounding light for the sides. I will ony be growing 1 plant at a time so she will get plenty light and it will be adjusted everyday, twice if necessary. I couldn't and didn't want to go HID because this cabinet is in my bedroom and I live in a 1BR apt in which my electricity is included, and I didn't want to duct a cool tube in my bedroom, even tho I ama HVAC tech and have access to all the goodies yall use I can get for free (maybe one day when I get my own house)

 

Day 15 not much change, except a lot of new root growth. It went from one 2"root 2 days ago to 4 or 5 reaching for the res. I'll take a pic of that in a few

 

I moved my lights up in hopes to maybe have her grow taller, some people have told me she is very very small for 17 days old. The CFL is about 6" away and the UFO is about 18" or so.

 

Day 18 starting to see some growth! Roots are growing rapidly, ph is been steady around 5.5 and the ppm hasn't moved much.

 

Day 20. I moved from half strength "seedling and cutting" feeding chart to the veg.

 

Day 23 on my vertically challenged first grow. Ph has been a steady 5.7 without any help from me, ppm is about 500.

 

Day 26: she's showing sex already? New growth coming in quick. The roots look good and healthy and white.

 

Day 30. Growing quick now, just did the weekly res clean/change.

 

Day 33. Had a PH problem thanks to my unreliable "checker" made by Hanna or whatever. She went about half a day in a ph of about 7 and she showed it. Bounced back quick, and now I think she's starting to flower( could be wrong it is my first grow). I switched 3/4 of the CFL's to 27k.

 

Day 39

This is my first run and I hit my first major problem when I res changed 2 days ago. I've been reading a lot of threads and most people are saying their ppm during flower is 700+ and I was at about 425-475. So when I filled the bucket with fresh distilled water I went by the GH flora chart and my PPM was about 790. Well within a few hours she burnt the hell up. Leaves curling down and major yellow spots and dead tips! I immediately dumped and flushed the roots with pure water and dumped that out also. Now I am in hopefully recovery mode, 300 ppm, she's starting to look better I've been majorly bummed the last few days about it.

 

Thanks man, I have seen that guys vids. There isn't many AKR grow journals online, or I should say finished ones, because when doing my homework before the grow and during also I have researched a ton.Most the AKR's I have seen are smaller than mine, she is currently 21" tall and is the width of my 2x2x5 grow cabinet. Im hoping she recovers from the burn also.

 

Day 42: Res changed today, tomorrow is Xmas and don't wanna be bothered doin that in the moring.

She is about 28" tall at this point and has engulfed my 2x2 grow box. I am going to need to move the UFO higher with a different hanger setup because she just won't stop growing and the light is less than 8" away!

There are buds everywhere! If she stays healthy I hope for big things, the pictures are from my iPhone and don't do justice tithe amount of bud sites but there all over!

 

Day 47

The little popcorn chicken buds are showing some frost on their leaves. Not too much change since last post. She's about 27-28" tall with small bud everywhere. She seems to drink about 40ppm every 10 hours. I keep it at about 500ppm after the burn incident.

She won't be done at day 55 by far, but I did lose some time at the beginning when I let her sit in the dome 5 days too long waiting for some roots.

I never thought it would get this tall from looking at other AKR plants in grow journals. My G3 UFO is at the top of the cabinet now because I don't want to burn the plant which I think I did when I had it 8inches away. (not heat burn)

 

Happy New Year!

Day 50:

Res changed this morning, two days ago I started using Advanced Nutrients "Nirvana" after reading a lot of good things about it, and when at the hydro shop it was right there and thought might as well. Still using half strength bloom chart on the GH Flora series I'm using also.

 

My CFL's barely give off any heat, I can grab the bulb easily with my hand. The CFL's are usually not closer than 2" from the plant as I adjust them twice a day. As for LEDs even tho they don't give off heat, the intensity of the light can damage the leaves which I found out the hard way when I had it closer (under 6")

On HTG's site( it is a G3 HTG UFO) it says it shouldn't be closer than 1' away (12inches) and my plant grew so tall that my UFO is one inch off the ceiling of the cabinet and still about 8" away from the top. My cabinet temps stay mid 70's and the humidity about 40-45% with no extra help