So I have finally convinced my girlfriend that growing for ourselves is worth the investment, and entirely possible in our TINY apartment. I have grown a single bag seed plant before, in a really half-assed manner about 10 years ago....and now I am in the mood to do this correctly. Specs: Seeds - 5 Neville's Haze Fem seeds from Greenhouse, 1 Utopia Haze Fem from Barney's. Lighting - 600 MH/HPS Soil - 3 parts coast of maine organic garden soil (has mix of salmon and lobster compost, blueberry compost, sphagnum moss, and other "ruffage"), 1 part pearlite, 1 part worm castings. Space - I'd say about 5'5'' of head room, 3 feet wide, just under 2 feet deep. Lined top to bottom with white poster board (shiny-ish side out). So Far: Germinated seeds according to greenhouse instructions (in distilled water for 24 hours, then in between some paper towels). All 6 seeds sprouted under 48 hours, tap root was visible, but just really beginning to poke out a bit. At this point seeds were put about 1/4 to 1/2 inch into the soil mix (inside jiffy pots), tiny bit of distilled water over the top, and placed under the MH light a good 3 feet above. So far no sprouts, but they have only been in soil for about 12 hours, keeping my fingers crossed. Questions Remaining: I need to buy pots, and am trying to balance my two competing problems: I need the pot to be large enough to support a good sized plant without any issues (leaving open the possibility for extensive LST if these Haze strains get too tall), but I can't fit 6 5-gallon buckets in my space. Anybody have suggestions on size? I have been looking at 3-4 gallon pots, is this enough space? What are the pros and cons of 24 hour lighting vs 18/6? I was planning 24 hours... How hot is too hot? I'd say my room is above 80 degrees, but I doubt it's as high as 90. A small fan will be purchased one of these days when Im not quite so broke. For now I just open the door whenever I'm around...but I am not always around. Thats it so-far! Thanks for all the help and interest, more posts to come...hopefully they will contain info about living plants.
Week 1 is in the books, and I figure it is time to update this log for posterity. What's New? About 2 days after dropped into soil, all 6 seedlings popped above the soil line. The Jiffy pots my seedlings were in (4" jiffy pot) didn't hold a very large volume of soil, and on top of that my soil is very very light and airy.....as a result the soil would dry out thoroughly over the course of 12 hours. This meant I had to be very vigilant with watering these bitches, kept the soil moist (not wet), and tried to keep the under layers of soil from drying out completely. 600 watt MH light is still about 3 feet above the seedlings Decisions, Decisions... Decided I don't like the idea of transplanting in Jiffy Pots. I don't like the idea of (A. a bunch of peat wrapped around my root ball, holding excess moisture and changing the moisture dynamics of my soil around the roots...and (B. Decomposing peat will generate heat in my soil, and the idea of a super warm overly moist casing around my roots seems like asking for some sort of rot. So I decided I would tear jiffy pots open, and transplant the seedlings before the roots poked into the wall of the pot. This happened way sooner than I thought, a few plants had roots poking through the bottom of the pot, so I figured it was time to carefully move into 10 inch pots. Plants with roots embedded in the jiffy pot wall had the jiffy pot ripped away, but I left the bottom around the roots so as not to disturb the growing roots. Week 1 Recap: Plants are now all in 10 inch pots under 600 watt MH light, about 3 feet above. All Plants have developed/are developing their second set of fan leaves, and appear healthy. No listing, wilting, yellowing or anything funky just yet. Having problems uploading pics....only 1 for now, will get the rest up tonight.
Well I'm bored, so I may as well update this sucker. Torched a bunch of plants with 600W MH since my last update, have a few kills under my belt. But a few have made it out alive, and will hopefully soon flower. 1 Nevilles haze, and 1 Utopia Haze. Took 4 clones from each plant today, will veg mothers for few days more before 12/12 So far has been 4 weeks to the day from seed.