Hi all....2nd grow germinating now! This time it's hydro as intended on my first grow and I will need a little help setting it up right from you guys if you wouldn't mind. 1st n00b question coming up: I have a Wilma Four Pot system and my medium is clay pebbles. Please can I have your opinions on whether to opt for flood or drip? I have a choice of nozzles. The instructions go for flood method, but the guy in the shop said drip for sure...please help! Join in the poll for fun, but written info here would be great. PS Great to be back, hope you all had a great summer! Dammit can't do the poll!!!
i have a 4 pot wilma system growing in pebbles. I have 4 quite bushy 1 ft tall sativa plants on flood, 4 x 15 minutes a day and looking fantastic. flood is designed for rockwool and clay pebbles, well thats what my tried and tested grow shop bloke told me, and it worked a treat in rockwool last grow. infact the best way for pebbles is to germinate your seeds in a peat pellet, then transfer it into a "delta cube", (4 cubes and pellets will cost like £3) just stick it into the pebbles when roots start to stick out of the bottom, then when their big enough, just stick the hydro tube in the side of the delta block. - know what i mean? then you don't have to transplant it. makes life easier buy the sounds of it you probably have a simular setup. this is my second grow, the last time got 3 1/2 oz dry per plant and hoping to do much better this time round. do you have the bud box and all the trimmings?be cool to speak to sombody in the same boat as me. i've trawled through some shit over the last few months.
Yep, that's exactly what the instructions say! That's made me feel better! I am using rockwool...with a kind of pellet...but it's not peat, it's a sort of wooly stuff. I started two of my last plants in them and they worked well. One of those 'pellets' is about 2cm square and I'll plant them into the holes in the rockwool cubes. wow I got about that much for my 3 plants in soil last time!!! I haven't got a box that I bought...I built quite a largeish wooden cupboard...something like 1.5M square (it's not square, but it gives you an idea of the size). I have a large fan, a filtered in line extractor and a tiny PC fan drawing air in. Temperature control is a nightmare. Oh I'm using 400W MH/HPS. I have the range of Canna ferts ready to go. Ph and EC truncheons! I will probably start another journal, but I didn't want to bore people with the early stuff. Thanks for your input, it's much appreciated. I hope you stick around cos with first time hydro I'm bound to need a little friendly help!
well i have a bud bux, cost about 100 squid i think, its light tight, has reflective sides and is 1.5 x 1.5 x 2. im running a 600w hps and a 150mm fan and carbon filter. temperature is a pain in the ass for me at the moment. last year i had it in a room with 2 windows which i always left open, the bud boxes have vents in the bottom, so the fan extracts the hot air as it rises, and draws in cold fresh air from the vents. im in an internal room with a skylight now so im considering forkin out another ton for another fan, because im going from 31 - 24 0c at the moment, and my fan is turning off with my light, otherwise the temp goes to down as low as 20c! im really gunna have to sort it out before flowering thing is you need nearly as much air going in as out. - nightmare
Quite tempted with one of those bud boxes just to make life easier...but it's more expense that I could do without right now, plus I spent probably nearly that much buying the wood and everything to make my cupboard in the first place. I need to get perhaps two more PC fans and install them in the bottom of the door in line with the one I already put in. Later maybe! Temp control has improved a little since organising the space better and pointing the desktop fan at the light. It is still however around 80 which I reckon is a bit hot. Man, this is just the set up while I wait for my sprouting seeds to emerge out of those spongy things....I have to suss out the 4 pot thing, and the wierd timer...not to mention working out how much A & B to use. Plus learning about the EC meter...on and on and on. With one grow under my belt I did a lot of reading early on...now I have a bit more to do!
i bought a 125w flouesant bulb for 20 quid what screwed straight into the reflector i use for the hps. it was absolutly superb for bringing the little beauties on. it gives seedlings just the amount of light spectrum and heat to bring them along, but i know what you mean, things start to get expensive. all in all my sepup is worth about £600 but i got most of it cheap ( but new) from a friend who's housemates wasn't best pleased about him growing. but considering i harvested 13 oz of good bud in 3 months, i really cant complain. it's wicked to see them grow up too
Had a look on ebay...googled, but alas can't find the bulb you mention! I'm poised to buy a 125W/6500K fluro with a reflector...but that's hassle compared to a bulb that screws right into your HPS system for 20 quid!! Can you help me find one? If not I'll go ahead and get this fluro... On my first grow I was glued every day...it really is a treat watching them develop. I learnt from one or two mistakes early on and I'm hoping for much better this time. By the way I am growing an Indica called White Russian. Tested the system with all the flooders and the pump attached..seems good. (Getting excited!)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ENVIROLITE-12...ryZ43555QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem heres one on ebay for 20 squid. dont know if your in america, but this is off the uk ebay. its a 120 watt "envirolite" bulb. Its really handy, because one of my plants wasn't growing as quick as the other 3, so i've hung it beside the runt (as well as the hps) for some side growth, because it emmits the same spectrum needed for veg and its really catching up with the others. But it gives the perfect temperature and light for those nursery stages. Is your light / reflector hard wired into your ballast? it doesn't really matter, it'll just take about 2 quid and 5 minutes of your time to sort it. but it's easily done.
BIG TIP (apparantly) weed is like gold fish - they'll grow to the space they have available. last grow i put the plants dead center of the 12 L pots. when it was time to clean out the tank, two of the edges of each plant were square, because they grow into each other and deprive themselves of light. so this time i've put them an inch square from the outside of the pot, giving them loads of room to grow on each side, which is so important with big bushy indicas. I know alot of growers who swear by it. i fukt up abit this time. im growing dutch dragon, with is 75/25 sativa/indica, when i bought the seeds i thought it was the other way round. last grow i used opium which is 25/75, and still had a couple of bud collars reaching the roof. apparantly theres some clever pruning tricks you can use to keep em stumpy and still get a good yield. fucking hope so anyway. Im lucas by the way. how you doing?
this is me after 1 week in hydro, 3 weeks under hps, and 1 week under fluro before that. room is 2 meters so im gunna leave them veg for another week or so. just readin your diary - it's really cool that you can be assed to do something like that. that bright thing in the right corner is the fluro givin some side growth
Thanks Lucas!! Looking at it, it seems worth the extra £15 for a reflector. Here's what I am looking at: http://www.progrow.co.uk/acatalog/fluorescent_lamps.html and Envirolite 1 Lamp Compact Fluorescent Reflector http://www.progrow.co.uk/acatalog/reflectors.html#a4022 I can just plug it in and hang it...then change over to MH after a week or so I suppose. I hope you might be able to help me with what ppm and EC levels to aim for...quite confusing! I have to find a Canna chart...or read the bottles Your plants are looking pretty good....how long have they been going from seed?
under 4 weeks from seed. i'm telling you those fluro tubes are fantastic dont really see much point in gettin another reflector if it'll screw into the one you already have. it'll have the same screw cap as your hps bulb. if your reflector is hard wired (like mine) you'll have to put a plug and socket between the reflector and ballast, because the fluro plugs straight into the wall. piece of piss. either way it'll be worth it. ps make sure it's a fluro, not a red spectrum or any of those. to be honest, i think people overcook their growing. i dont mean to sound like a pretentious pro because you know im at the same stage as you. but by keeping it simple, taking sound advice and a little love and attention i had a fantastic first grow. most of the people in these forums talk out of their ass, grow with a spitty desk lamp, (which im not knocking, but if you've spend a few hundred squid on a setup, which you have u need to be harvesting bars, not ounces) or repeat shit they've heard. theres even forums to talk about smoking, i mean what the fuck?? its not a lifestyle choice, its just something to do. last time i used formulex for my seedlings and while in nursery stages, iconic grow for veg, bloom and boost for flowering and filled 3 square meters with bush. your not using soil so you dont haveto worry about neutriant supplments. thats the beauty of hydro, all you need is a pump, timer and a bottle of iconic. it feeds your roots exactly what it needs when it wants it. - absolutly brilliant stuff.
Thank you, your input is invaluable! Decided to opt for the fluro/reflector for an easier life! I will probably stick to the Canna ferts as I invested considerable wedge! Got the whole thing: A + B veg and flower, boost, cannazym, rhizotonic, PK...just have to find out what levels for the EC and stuff. I shouldn't need all that for a couple of weeks anyway. Indeed!!! I tend not to read anywhere else but the growing sections. I read a heck of a lot last time and it's taking some self persuasion to trawl out the info I need! **exits to buy fluro**
yep, they sure are popping up! im just wondering, what is the benifit in using loads of seeds? i thought that there would be a higher risk of bugs or mites, and it looks really tricky to look after. this is 3 plants from 3 seeds last grow keep me posted tho, think im setup for this grow, but im always lookin for somthing new to try. the other thing im wondering is clay pebbles dont really retain much water, just give the roots something to bind too, so where are you going to put the tubes? mine go straight to the root under the stalk. maybe it would work better if you used rockwool if you plan on planting 6 seeds to a tub, because they will hold enough water to feed all of your roots, same way as soil would, but not so messy
I've germinated four seeds: one for each pot in the system. The reason I have used seeds this time is that I had to shut the grow room down completely for the summer and therefore could not keep cuttings. I will be using a rockwool cube for each plant that sits one or two layers of pebbles below the surface. I haven't put them in yet, that's why the pots aren't full up. I have to soak them for 24 hours before use and I'll get the water to about 5.8 pH when soaking. Perhaps I should at least get some water to stand for a day to evapourate the chlorine so I can soak the rockwool tomorrow.....the seedlings are poking through already after all! I can't see any tubes on yours, but mine just poke down into the pebbles, one nozzle per pot. I tell you what I hope my plants look like your last grow...amazing bush!!! I ordered the fluro (blue 125W) and reflector. Website says bulb is ideal for seedlings and cuttings.
fair play. thats the way i did it. makes life so much easier and cleaner. wicked. u know the other cool thing (if you get that flourotube) is u can germinate your seeds and get them through the nursery stages in another cuboard or on a shelf about 2 weeks before harvesting the last crop. save loads of time. only just thought of that the tubes are in there, just covered with a bit of foliage. Watering 10 minutes 5 times a day. they look pretty healthy, so ill just keep an eye and adjust if they start drying out/drowning. their taking alot of water for such small plants. about 15 L in 5 days!
Yeah that's definitely the idea...I tend though to have to have a break between grows...next one is christmas and I might do another from Jan 1st.