First Grow - Outdoor Veg / Indoor Flower, LED + CFL - Bag Seed

Hey GC! I've been lurking on these boards for about a month, waiting to have something worthwhile to post, and that day has finally arrived! You see, we have a female cannabis plant, and it has just begun to flower! I know, that's pretty radical stuff. Well, it's radical in these parts.

I say 'we' because my wife is my partner in crime. We are both new to growing, but she is quite an accomplished gardener. Back in May, she started pushing pot seeds into soil. I supplied the seeds, collected over the last year or two from mostly mediocre bagweed. I guess we had both been ruminating about growing for a while. Anyway, over the course of the summer, seven plants grew.

By the time August came along, it had become obvious that 1. we needed to get these plants, particularly the largest ones, out of sight, and 2. If we wanted to flower these babies, we were going to have to bring them inside to do it. You would be aghast if you saw where we had these plants all summer. We are right in the middle of teeming suburbia, on a little 80 x 100 plot, surrounded by bug eyed neighbors, Republicans all. But, as I said, the wife is quite the gardener. Always lots of gardening activity going on. Plants everywhere. Our seven unusual plants just sort of blended in. At least that's the story we told ourselves and I guess our immediate neighbors decided to buy into that narrative. Jedi mind tricks.

I did a little research and talked it over with the missus, and it soon became quite evident that there was going to be very little tolerance for things that involved ducting or vortex fans or anything of the sort. I was free to use the shower stall in the downstairs bathroom for my little project, but we weren't going to "go crazy." That meant, essentially, 1. no HID for me and 2. best to wait a bit before bringing up the notion of a vegetation room. OK. So for lighting, that left CFLs and those flaky, ridiculous LEDs. So, long story short (I realize I'm getting a bit windy here), I got a 90 watt UFO from HTG Supply. Who can resist ridiculous and flaky?

And then the procession began. One after another, four plants moved from the yard to my downstairs shower stall, where they proceeded to grow balls. I have lots of pictures. Let me know if you want to see them. Four in a row. This was not good luck. But it was OK. Probability was on my side. We would get a girl eventually, and eventually we did. And along the way, tending to the males, I've learned some little things and continued to pick up more info from these boards. This place is great. And often entertaining. Also during the time of male-only flowering, the great interegnum, the missus and I had our conversations about cloning and mother plants and such, so now we have a vegetation room lit by four 4-foot T5 fluorescents. And along the way I picked up a couple of 40 watt 2700K CFLs to keep the UFO company. So things are good. We have our modest little setup. We have our flaky LED mojo going. And we have a flowering female plant without provenance.

So I'm going to try to figure out how to get some photos up. I'm not much fond of inline photos. Too much forced scrolling. I like those exploding thumbnails. Let's see if I can manage it.

Oh, the soil is Miracle-Gro cut with some no-name potting soil. The nutes they got while outside were also Miracle-Gro, applied sparingly. Hey, that's what the wife uses. She's got a house full of plants and a garden full of flowers. The cannabis plants are perfectly happy and healthy till they come inside where I start messing with their pH, hitting them with the Fox Farm nutes and putting them under weird lighting.

So what is our goal in this endeavor? We want bud! We've got dreams, GC, and we're counting on your help to make those dreams come true. We want bud! Is everybody with me? We want to harvest at least 9 grams, dried, of loose, airy bud out of this scrawny little girl. Alright, so we don't have big dreams.

Here is our little girl:


And here are the two sexually ambiguous plants in veg:


All comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

Special, thanks for dropping in.

The first three plants to come inside went under just the UFO. They all came in together and huddled under the baleful gaze of the UFO as a group. It worked. The smallest plant stretched a lot, but it was off to the side. These plants were in large pots.

But as this process was unfolding, I was also reading LED grow logs and coming to the conclusion that things would go better with a side of CFLs.

 

Hey GC! I have a small quandary today. Two of the fan leaves on our little girl have begun to droop, or more accurately the very tips of the leaves have begun to droop. I don't know what it signifies. There is nothing in the Sick Plants sticky that jumps out at me. Opinions are welcome. Here is a picture. See if you can spot the droopy leaf tips:



This same symptom arose in the plant that previously and most recently occupied the spot that our current victim is now in. In that case, the Droopy Leaf Tip Syndrome (DLTS) eventually spread to several of the fan leaves. But then the plant grew balls and the issue became moot.

This plant, our little baby girl, came in to the flowering room from the back yard Sunday night. Since then, she had not been fed or watered prior to the onset of Droopy Leaf Tip Syndrome. I have just given her some water now, but I do not expect that to have a mitigating effect on the DLTS. Watering did not appear to impact the DLTS on the previous plant.

I can't help thinking that there is something going on with the flowering room: temperature, light, humidity, something, though none of these parameters have been in any way extreme. In the case of both the prior plant and this one, the droopy leaf tips did not appear until the plant came inside. Perhaps it has something to do with the shock of the transition.

So that is today's puzzle, boys and girls.

 

Interesting development: One of my two alleged veg plants has started to flower. It's my biggest plant, too, the one that was furthest along when we pulled them inside.

This presents me with a bit of a dilemma. Good news that I have another girl, I guess I was due, but I do not want to be flowering two plants at once. Not with this rig. I suspect that the UFO + two 40 watt CFLs will be somewhat adequate at flowering one LSTed plant. I'd like to test that theory. LED with a side of CFL. If I add a second plant, I'll have to muscle up on the CFLs and then I'll have a CFL grow with an overpriced disco light. Oops. I think I just dated myself.

Plus I don't want to flower a second plant without haven't taken cuttings first. The goal, after all (besides 9 grams of loose, airy bud) is a sustainable, repeatable process. Mother plant, clones, multiple runs with the same genetics. If I can demonstrate that then I can justify spending money on good seeds. Being back on my heels, scrambling to keep up with changing circumstances not under my control does not demonstrate anything of the sort.

I've heard people say they are "throwing it back into veg" on more than one occasion, but I don't really know what that entails. Will simply keeping it in 18/6 throw it back into veg? Is this stressful for the plant?

Sometimes I don't know what I don't know.

 

OK, I did a little scouting about on the reverting to veg option. The Advanced Search function works well.

That's one grower's response to a similar query, and this guy knows his stuff, or so it seems to me. I've read a couple of his grow journals. Not that I'm obsessed or anything.

Reverting the plant to vegetative growth will stress the plant to a degree, so it is not ideal, but neither is it calamitous.

And it is nice to have gone from zero girl plants to two girl plants in the span of a few days.

Hey, and did you check out that cross thread quoting mojo. Yeah.

 

Hey GC! No drama today (so far).

Today I moved some fan leaves around on our bagseed flower child to uncover some bud sites. Here are some pics of those very early buds:



In the vegetation garden, I did a bit of training today on the smaller of my two vegging babies. This consisted of FIMing the two tops and tying down the the two stems supporting those tops:



My original thinking with this plant was to try LBH's 4 Way LST. With this in mind, I topped it a couple of weeks ago. But what we have here is a stretched out plant. I guess the sun was just too far away. Anyway, I certainly won't be pinning those branches down to the soil the way LBH shows in his tutorial. So I guess I'm going to have to play it by ear.

As for today's twin FIMing, this was my first attempt at that gambit. My eyes are not what they once were and they were never very good, so we'll have wait to see how the FIM attempts turn out. I know I cut something off.

Peace out, GC. Go Yankees!

 

Hey, sirbudzalot, thanks for coming by.

Yeah, the Mexican gardeners were really dissing our plants. They're all about the sativas.

Back at ya!

 

Hey GC! Things are all of a sudden looking kinda grim over in this corner of the city. It appears that our lovely little girl is really a hermaphrodite. Nestled in amongst the pistils of the top bud are what look to be a cluster of balls.

I am not absolutely sure about this. The pollen pods, if that's what they be, are just a tad too small for me to get a crisp, clear picture with my camera. But I've danced this dance before. In the past, might be male has always quickly resolved itself into definitely is male. I've never had a false alarm, just false hopes that were soon dashed.

So here's the picture. This one deserves an inline, methinks.

​

Yeah, that doesn't look good.

I'll wait until I can see them with the naked eye before I do anything about it. The missus thinks we should flower her/him/it out anyway. She's getting tired of executing plants. She wants to see some bud grow, even if it's seedy bud.

Meanwhile, I have a bigger plant with more bud sites over in veg central that I'm trying to coerce out of flower because of my one plant at a time stance. I'm getting whipsawed here.

Oh well.

 

Hey Genius, thanks for stopping by.

That's the only plant I have under the flowering lights at the moment. I think I'm looking pretty good on light leaks. My flower room is a shower stall. During the dark period, the entrance to the shower stall is covered in black plastic. Lots and lots of velcro keeps everything buttoned up tight.

This plant vegged outside and it went into flower while still outside just six days ago. That's when I brought it in.

 

Hey GC!

Contrary to my albeit very limited prior experience, there has been no swift resolution on the question of whether the lone plant in my flowering chamber is a hermaphrodite. Three days have passed since the initial discovery, pictured above in my prior post. Here is todays photo of the same top:

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Those pod-like structures so apparent three days ago are no longer so evident and in the spot they once occupied we now see new pistils. So today I am cautiously optimistic. But I'm certainly open to any opinions.

Flowering Day 9+

It's been 5 days since I watered Hermione. (Yes, we now have a name for our flowering plant, girl or otherwise.) The soil is still damp on the surface. This is an issue with LEDs. They don't dry out the surface soil the way HIDs do. On top of that, I have denser than ideal soil. I had a plant earlier where the surface was clearly damp and when it came time to pull the plant down (because it was male), we discovered that the soil below the surface area was bone dry. So sticking your finger in there does not give the same info that it might under different circumstances. Bottom line, short of waiting for the plant to wilt, I do not know how to judge when this plant is in need of water.

I think Hermione is hungry and I would like to feed her, but I do not want to overwater. I will wait and watch.

Vegging

I fed our two vegging plants three days ago, prompted by the yellowing of the lower fan leaves. I'm still getting yellow leaves on the bigger plant, but otherwise the plants seem to have reacted well to the feeding. I gave them a half-strength helping of Fox Farm Grow Big.

That's two waterings for the vegging plants in the same space of time in which Hermione got only one. The soil under the T5s dries out just fine.

Veg Riot

Check out this plant. This is the larger of my two veggers. I've been attempting to do DierWolf's LST around the perimeter of the pot. Take a look at the stalk on this thing. It's like the plant is saying, "Let's see you bend this."



The other thing that strikes me about this plant is the lushness of the vegetation.




There are a lot of potential bud sites on that plant, if the lights can get to them through all the foliage. Check out that last shot for confirmation that this plant did indeed flower on me. The photos also reveal evidence of additional LST activity. Different branches take turns staking a claim as the new top. Meanwhile, all the hanger staples (staples fashioned from hanger wire) originally used to bend the plant down were pulled free of the soil. So now i am trying string and duct tape.

Veg Symmetry

I completed the initial "4 Way" stage of LBH's 4 Way LST on the smaller of our two vegging plants.



And after four days, we can see signs of growth at the two FIMed tops. I guess I didn't totally mess that up.



So that's where we are today here in the House of Alatar. Any comments, questions and, most especially, suggestions are very welcome. Any at all. Don't hesitate. Throw me a bone, here, GC. Nah, it's all good.

 

Just fed our bagseed princess half strength Grow Big and half strength Big Bloom. That should keep her happy for a bit.

Today Hermione is looking very female. I can see, with the aid of the camera, that there is a pistil growing out of the top of one of those suspicious looking podlike growths I spotted the other day. I'm half a step closer to declaring a false alarm.

But it has only been a day since I posted pictures, so I will resist the urge to post some more.

Peace out, GC.

 

I just realized that yesterday's post dropped the picture of my flowering girl. I guess I ran afoul of the pictures per post limit. So here we go, a little pubescent bud porn. All of a sudden, I feel so dirty.



That fellow on the right is Riddick. He's in charge of site security.

 

I was feeling industrious, so I mixed up a neem oil solution and sprayed the veggers. I've been seeing the occasional winged critter in there and the plants did suffer some minor predation while they were outside.

Neem oil mixture:

• 8 ml neem oil
• 5 ml dish soap
• 1 liter warm water

Gave the leaves a thorough spraying, both sides. So as to avoid any burning, I will be giving the plants a break from the lights for the rest of the evening.

I also fed the veggers again. Their soil was dry and they both still have leaves near the bottom turning yellow, which indicates a nitrogen deficiency. So I gave them a full dose of Grow Big this time. If the leaf yellowing persists, I'll hit them with a heavy dose next watering. Nute burn or bust!

I'll probably spray Hermione with the neem oil just before lights out. Come to think of it, that's just about now.... See ya.

 

Hey, GC!

I did some low stress training on one of my two vegetating plants today, the big girl. She looks like she's back in the vegetative swing of things after her recent dalliance with unauthorized flowering. Here she is:



I bent down the top (lower left corner of the image), attempting to continue my very approximate path around the outer perimeter of the pot, a la DierWolf's LST tutorial. I also bent down a side branch that had delusions of grandeur (middle of the image, down near the bottom).

I'm trying to spread out the riotous pile of vegetation that has built up along the curving stalk. I guess that's the general idea of this LST technique. This whole scheme seems to be working. This plant has a lot of tops and they are all pretty much on top. All those leaves are still pretty packed in there, though. I'm going to have to keep chipping away at this.

On this plant, holding down bent branches with hanger wire staples has not been working well for the most part. So now I am using string. Problem is, the string has to be anchored somewhere. I've been duct taping the string to the pot rim. But the side branch I bent today was getting pushed to a spot nowhere near the edge of the pot, so the duct tape option was off the table. So, for that branch I used both a wire hanger staple and some string. I pushed the staple all the way into the soil so that only the crown of the staple, if a staple can be said to have a crown, was above the surface. Then I tied off the string to the sunken staple. We'll see how that holds up. I am optimistic.

I also sprayed all three plants with water as a followup to the thorough neeming they got yesterday. The dish soap, if left of the leaves, can clog things up.

The 4 way is looking droopy today. I over-watered her yesterday. Then I added insult to injury by spraying her down today. So she's not all that happy. Next up: nute burn!



Actually, I should say that I over-watered it yesterday. I have no clue as to the sex of that plant. I am still owed at least one more girl by the gods of probability, however. Here's hoping.

 

Hey, GC! We've have some goings on here at the home of the flowering shower stall. First off, Wednesday brought signs of the nutrient burn foretold in my previous post. I singed Hermione, our flower child, and Big Girl, our confirmed female in vegetation. Here are some burn pics. These were taken Wednesday:



OK, that third photo had nothing to do with nute burn, but hey, it's a nice picture. And do you see the trichomes on the pistils and leaves? Nice. The fly in the first picture was quite dead. I like to think that the neem oil had something to do with it.

Yellowing leaves at the bottoms of the vegging plants continues unabated, despite feeding the plants until one of them showed signs of overfeeding. Why is this happening? I have two possible culprits: soil pH and nutrients in the Miracle-Gro soil inhibiting the uptake of nitrogen provided by the Fox Farm Grow Big.

The soil pH has been a bit of a mystery up until now. Both plants are in 7 gallon pots. I have never gotten any runoff. Well, I got a little once, but before I had a chance to measure its pH, it had run off. Sorry. Anyway, I'm faced with a conundrum. In order to get runoff out of these big pots of MG soil, I need to put in so much water as to surely overwater my plants. And these plants have grown from seed in this soil with unadjusted, very alkaline tap water. If soil pH was not a problem up until now, why is it a problem now?

The other suspect is the time-release nutrients in the Miracle-Gro soil. If that's the problem, then I'll have to flush the soil or transplant into new soil. Given all the LST, I'd like to avoid transplant. Besides, this Miracle-Gro soil is so much fun!

So today I decided I had to act. I poured a gallon of tap water corrected to a pH of 6.8 into the soil of Big Girl's pot. The runoff measured 7.2 (or thereabouts -- I'm using the cheapo aquarium test kit). The soil is alkaline, but it isn't way crazy, N lockout alkaline. That leaves the Miracle-Gro time release nutes as the culprit. Or something else that I haven't thought of.

So I flushed Big Girl with 21 gallons of pH 6.8 tap water. Boy, was that fun. The last few gallons of runoff were almost clear. I put a teaspoon of Grow Big in the last gallon. I keep forgetting to add SuperThrive! Here is what Big Girl looked like after her watery ordeal:



You can plainly see the yellowed leaves. Clearly, action was called for. Hopefully, all that water hauling pays off. She looks kinda soggy, doesn't she? We're supposed to get a sunny day on Sunday. I think I'll put her outside to soak up some infra red and dry out a little. Couldn't hurt and besides, the neighbors haven't had a chance to see her in a while.

 

It's a day later and Big Girl is looking a bit less droopy from yesterday's flush.



Today it was 4Ways turn for a thorough flush. She (being optimistic) got 20 gallons of tap water corrected down to somewhere between 6.4 and 6.8 pH. It's always a bit of a guess with that aquarium test kit. I'm going to have to pony up for a meter at some point. Anyway, all the water came out of the same tap and every gallon got 4 drops of General Hydroponics pH Down. I got before and after pictures this time.



I added a teaspoon of FF Grow Big and a half a teaspoon of SuperThrive to the last gallon. Tha may have been a waste of nutes. She was in no mood for a drink at that point. Anyway, the soil pH is now right where it ought to be and a lot of Miracle-Gro soil nutrients have washed down the drain. Hopefully, the deck has been cleared to address the issue of yellowing leaves.

The weather forcast for tomorrow has gone from sunny to partly cloudy. If there is any decent sun, these two plants will go outside for a few hours for some drying.

Before I flushed 4Way, I spotted some cobwebs on her. Then I spotted a dot sized spider spinning the web. So I got a decent photo and posted it to the Sick Plants and Problems forum, where myles117 assured me that it was a harmless spider, not a dreaded spider mite. Whew! That was my excitement for the day.