This is my very first grow and I thought I'd document it on here. It's taken a while to get this grow started but thanks to these forums, Jorge Cervantez, and the great folks at American Express, I've finally managed to set up a grow room to grow me some great weed! 8'x11' grow room 2x 400w MH lights for vegging 2x 600w HPS lights for flowering 6" exhast fan 4" inlet blower 5x 5 Gallon bubble buckets I'm growing it at a good friend's house who has an extra bedroom, perfect for a growroom. Unfortunately he lives 15 miles away and I can't visit him everyday so I can't really keep a good record of the details, but I try to keep the ph between 5.0-6.5 and the temperature stays around 85 degrees during the day and 75 at night. I don't have a ppm meter but I'm using RO water with the Lucas formula. I burned the plants a little early in the grow (the only part of this grow that's been easier than expected ) It was taking me forever to find a shop with decent clones so I finally settled on these 3 different strains a club had samples of. They only had two of each strain and I didn't want to wait however long it'd take to get more clones of just one strain and these guys already had roots coming out their rockwool blocks so I decided why not and got them: 2 Bubblegums, 2 Purple Hazes, and a fifth plant I couldn't quite make out the name of on the label. It didn't really matter though, I don't really trust strain names since a grower (or in this case, a cloner) can give them whatever name they want, plus I've always wanted to come up with my own strain names so I renamed them: Skunk 101, Purple Purple, and my personal favorite, Motherfucker I'm growing each clone in a 5 gallon *rumplebucket* with a 5 gallon reservoir and two air pumps spread across them. I got the clones and put them in their buckets back on July 10 but I didn't plan on documenting the grow so I only took a couple of cellphone pics over the past few weeks. I'll bring my camera now though and take some much better pics of the room and the plants. Anyways, here are the babies on the first day: The 2 on the left are Purple Purple, the next 2 are Skunk 101, and the rightmost one is my <3, Motherfucker. Here they are 4 days later, roots were just peeking out of the net pots so I lowered the lights. I've got the 6 inch inline fan blowing air directly out the two light hoods. This makes the light virtually heat free and I can have the plants practically touching the bottom of the hood without worrying about burning them. I keep it a little bit higher though, about 6 inches; otherwise the edges of the plants don't get any light (I lift the lights for pics) 8 days into growing all the plants are growing great, except for Motherfucker, who is growing like...well, a motherfucker. The pictures don't do it justice but he's huge compared to the other plants. I didn't take pictures of the roots, but they were already making a root ball, it was incredible, I'd never seen anything like it (although this is my first grow and maybe I ain't even seen nothin yet) (lights are off) I went on a cruise so I was away for 9 days and was super worried for the plants but fortunately I came back to a B-E-A-Utiful sight! (17 days) The right plant in the second pic is the runt of the group. All the plants got a little bit of nute burn but it looks like it hit this one the worst so he's been growing pretty slow compared to the other plants. August 1, 22 days into veg <3 August 6, finally got around to putting the screen on. I would've put it up a week earlier if I could, but I ened up having to wait. Motherfucker had already shot up past where the screen went and it had a pretty thick stem thick stem so I had to put the screen a little higher than I wanted, 17". Unfortunately the runt isn't even touching the screen yet August 9 Training shoots is fun! EDIT: It is not. It looks like runt might have some algae growing in the bucket, the water level tube is getting greenish. I put some bleach in to hopefully clean it up. August 13, after 34 days of vegging I switch out the lamps, ballasts, solution and set the timer to 12/12. Time to flower!
hell yeah man, you're gonna yield nicely if everything goes well. those rumplebuckets sure are awesome. good job man!
Thanks guys Just got back from the room, the plants look amazing... ...for the most part. I just noticed some weird looking damage on some of the leaves, never been there before, and it looks like parts of the leaves are ripped It's on a couple of the newer leaves and I have no idea what caused it. Obviously a pest, but what kind? The only thing I think of that can do that is caterpillers, but I couldn't find anything around the plants. Anyone have any idea what it is? I'm gonna search the forum but if anybody knows or has any ideas, don't be shy. EDIT: I think it might have something to do with the leaves getting torn on the screen when I pull them under it
Thanks, though I'll definitely be getting one for my next grow so I can play around with the ppm. Yeah, I'm using 0-3-6 for the top-off water. What's K+?
It's a girl! Just had to go change out the nutes, the plants drank 10 gallons!!! of water in just their first week of flowering. Holy crap, I'm gonna need a bigger reservoir! I'll be damned if they aren't putting that water to good use though, just look at this canopy! Shoots are coming out of everywhere, there are so many of them! It's becoming back-breaking work just reaching over and training them all under the net lol, but it'll definitely be worth it when buds are (hopefully) growing out of every hole. Not a fan of heavy pruning, just enough to get some air flowing through. I figure if the leaves are still green they're doing something and any of those stems still have a chance to shoot up and flower.
Looking good man, cant wait to see the finished product. Building me 3 buckets this weekend and a box to grow in.
Nice, buckets are definitely the way to go, they make these plants explode. What happened to your outdoors grow?
Looks great man I think you will be pleased with your end results with the setup you have chosen. A well educated first grow I would say.
Thanks, I really wanted to do my first grow *right* and went all out on it -- or as far out as my credit cards would let me. I booked up on growing beforehand and read a lot of forums and magazines to see what looked like the best system, lights, way to grow, etc. and went from there. Even with all that though, I learned soooo many things during the actual grow that showed just how un-educated and newbish it really was. But I can't wait till my second grow to apply everything I've learned so far and make an even better grow! Thanks for the comments everyone, I really enjoy reading all your grow journals, they were an inspiration to start growing and although the weeds my inspiration to keep growing, all the other grows are still exciting to read about
Canopy update, 16 days into flowering Pictures really don't do it justice, it's way more packed than it looks. Buds are starting to form on (almost) all the plants (pics didn't turn out too good) so thankfully I'm just about done with the training. In other news, this SoCal heat Hit 95 in the room today. Worst part is I can't really do anything about it and that makes me a sad panda
No expectations, I'll be plenty happy just to harvest Thanks bud My mottos always been Go Big or Go Home! It's been taking the buds forever to really start growing (I blame the heat) but 34 days into flower they're finally here! Welcome to the Motherfuckin jungle! Motherfucker just keeps growing and growing, he's up to my neck now, it's ridiculous! I actually had to take my light off the yo-yos and attach it directly to the ceiling to keep him from getting burned A few days ago, the runt still hadn't started flowering so I trashed it But then the other plant of the same strain still hasn't started flowering either, all it has is these big bumps at the base of the stems I have no idea what they are and if something doesn't happen with it in the next few days I'm gonna pull it too.
That's what a male looks like? Hmm, I thought there'd be a bunch of little balls or something. Well then, I shall send it to the hell from whence it came!