Greetings from Winterpeg, Canada. First off I want to apologize (yeah, Canadians) if my attached photos are all messed up. So yeah, this is our first time growing and with a legal, medical permit to boot. We started around April 4th from a bunch of seeds I received from a friend of mine( unknown variety, unknown gender lol). I started off with putting a couple of seeds each in one of those Jiffy pucks (along with our veggie garden plants) and waited. After they came up, I transferred them into Solo cups and then into what I'm planning on being their final pot. Money is really tight for us so we are not able to buy a big fancy grow tent, with expensive lighting and ventilation. I have a very small indoor greenhouse structure (15" deep x 30" wide x 40" tall), a cheapie Home Depot pendant style light socket, a Y-socket splitter with two (9w - actual) LED grow lights, a timer, and a small fan. The little greenhouse we have is kind of neat in that it has three "semi-permanent" shelves that can be removed. Everything was started on the top shelf, and now with the top shelf removed our four plants are on the middle shelf. From the photo of the greenhouse, you can see we started off with just a single regular "warm" CFL that was set too high (I'm guessing)and caused all our plants to be really "leggy." This caused the plants to droop to which I responded by propping them up with a straw and coffee stir stick. Some friends of mine told me that I shouldn't have coddled them and they need to grow stronger on their own. Is that true? The final pictures are where I'm at right now. I'm thinking of topping the larger ones soon to promote more axial growth? Well, that's all I know for now. Here are a couple of other details I'll include: 1) Since they were in solo cups, I've had them on a 6-2 lighting schedule as I read that it seems to be better for photosynthesis than the 18-6. 2) Once I transplanted them into their "final" pots, I've been feeding them some fertilizer from another friend of mine, called Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow. It's a 2 part fertilizer (3-0-0) that I've been using on a rotating basis of 2 watering cycles with some of the mixed stuff, and then 1 water cycle with no fertilizer. Looking for hints, tips or suggestions. Please don't roast me too badly lol Jon.
Damn....I was afraid of that too. I am planning on more lighting for sure, but was hoping to keep all 4 plants happy
Do you have any sort of budget to purchase a better light? Or are you able to grow outdoors? Soil or coco?
Yes to both...I was hoping to do CFLs. I know there's a thread on that here which I will dig into. I understand that "daylight" should be used for veg and "warm" for flowering. (Geez.....I hope that's correct lol) . And yes while we are allowed to grow outdoors, our season is relatively short up here in the Canadian central prairies. Our season usually starts towards the end of May with our first frost usually late September.
What about getting 1 60 watt quantum board for $70 or so (after shipping+tax)? That would be tons better than any CFLs. Might want to look into it. Another possible issue is light leaks during flowering. When lights are off it needs to be completely dark (another benefit of grow tents lol)
That's a bit too expensive right now regarding lighting. As for our greenhouse, I have it wrapped up in black plastic
Get that light closer. If you're going with 2 9 watt CFLs, giving them as much light as possible, you may end up with 10 grams total if you're lucky (after months of work growing them). That's why I suggested a much better light. Just letting u know what you should be expecting as far as yield. Lights make a big difference
You can also probably get by useig outdoors for most of you light and use your small indoor to hold them over till they can get back to the sun.
I had my lights a lot lower but because two plants are smaller than the other two I was worried about being too close to the lights. I will lower them though, thanks! As for the amount of finished product produced, I'd be happy with only half a gram lol. Okay, not really but this is basically the experimental run. I'm trying to gather as much info and knowledge as I possibly can and try to maximize what we have. As well, since we are allowed to grow outdoors as well, I would also like to try and incorporate that too....without attracting too much heat and attention from our neighbours and random passers by.
Do some research if you are going to take it outside, I think it has to be in shade and gradually work up to direct sunlight. That's just what i have gotten from being around here never grown outdoors myself. I will be sticking around to watch.
Almost 1 month for the one on the very left 3 weeks for the other 3 Sent from my SM-A530W using Tapatalk
I wouldnt say i kno every thing trying to keep it simple but went in for tops and i use fox farm what are you feedimg them i would say you really need more power i just turned up my ballast from 50 power to 75 percent today so im hopeing to see even more progress now Sent from my SM-A530W using Tapatalk
I know my lighting is an issue right now. On top of that I was just recently laid off from work so currently trying to account for every penny, ya know? I will be doubling up my light source hopefully soon. I'm currently only using 2 x 9w LED grow lights running off a Y- splitter from a single socket. I'm planning on adding 2 more splitters to have a total of 4 sockets available. Since my socket can only "handle" 60watts total, it will be 4 daylight CFLs about 7-15 watts each