Hi guys, thought I'd create a journal here as my second seed has germinated. I'm still an amateur when it comes to growing, however have had plenty gardening experience prior to this, so I'm really looking forward to this grow. On March 1st I planted my first seed, some bagseed that turned out to be hermie. I had no clue of the genetics, just knew it was some really good stuff for street weed, so took a punt. Needless to say, the seed germinated, leaving me without a paddle...you get the picture. I had no lights, no equipment, no nutrients. I decided to do it on a budget, nothing serious, maybe put £40-50 in to it, about what you'd expect 1/4 oz for, as that's what I usually buy, and maybe at least get a decent yield in return (1/2 oz - 1 oz). I decided to purchase a 5 pack of the most obscure light bulbs ever, from a company called Semco, 45w 6500k CFLs. Along with this I got a 4 way photography CFL splitter and a 4m E27 Lamp Socket. By this point the seedling was getting bigger and bigger, reaching a whopping height of 20+ cm, whilst only having cotyledons and being very very thin. But, it looked healthy, nice and green, no miscolouring. The increasing size was a problem, but luckily I got my first CFL over it, while waiting for the delayed 4 way splitter. Luckily, it only really needed one ('supposedly' 45w) CFL and took off from there. By this point I had ordered some Levington Tomorite, tomato fertilizer, very cheap with an NPK of 4-3-8, only cost £3 delivered for a good litre of the stuff. Since I had all of the stuff to get a plant going, I kitted out a closet to be my grow room, it stands at around 2 foot deep by 2 foot wide, and has a headroom of about 1.4m. A trip to Aldi for some more tin foil was on the cards, so I went and picked up a roll for 69p, absolute bargain, and proceeded to cover the whitewashed walls with the tinfoil (matte side, not shiny). Above this the CFLs were fitted into a DIY holder, attached by chains, hanging above the plant. As for the plant, it was originally in a 300ml approx glass filled with old miracle grow, that most likely had a fair amount of the nutrients run out of it while it was in the perforated bag in the garden, but in the new closet set-up it quickly got transplanted into a 5L, which it absolutely dominated. After battling constant heat problems I soon discovered the plant had grew to be a hermie, or maybe just full blown male. I ended up cutting the plant as there were potentially 2 or 3 female preflowers and the rest were clearly male, and harvested all of the heavily sticky and odorous leaves for making some shitty low grade hash. That brings us to now. After cutting the plant, I realized I still had a Northern Lights Auto seed that my friend had gave me, so decided to germinate that (March 1st). Straight into the wet paper towel, and within 12 hours the taproot was visible, just pushing out between the seed casing. The next day I filled a glass with soil, and a very small amount of crushed dry leaves from my last grow and planted the seed. It popped through very quickly, still with a helmet on, and proceeded to grow a good inch or so just like that. The seed casing started worrying me by March 9th so I decided enough was enough and took the casing off myself, popped off quite easily, however I thought I had ripped a cotyledon At this point I decided to say no to the constant heat the CFLs were booting out (2x 45w 2700k's and 2x 45w 6500k's, however the 2700k's seem quite a lot brighter, so I'm not sure if these Semco 6500k's actually are 45w). This led to a prompt ebay search for LED lighting, and the standout for my small closet was the reasonably priced Mars Hydro 300. This ultimately led to a shopping spree, in which I bought 2x Mars Hydro 300s for a friend, and 18 more seeds from Gorilla Seeds! I chose 5 Critical Autos in one order, with 5 free seeds from Barneys Farm, and 3 Quick One Autos in a separate order with another free 5 seeds. These seeds arrived today, and I ended up getting (all fem) 2x Blue Mammoth Autos, 2x Critical Kush Autos, 2x Critical Kush, 2x Pineapple Chunk and lastly 2x Chronic Thunder. At 17:30pm I decided to pop one of the Critical Kush Autos as it could probably keep up with the other seedling (which has gotten off to a relatively slow start, despite a rapid germination) and would probably just about fit in the closet with the Northern Lights. At 11:00pm I checked the Critical Kush Auto seed, and the tap root had shown. In just 5 hours. Amazing. I'm sure I'm just getting lucky here. Currently the Northern Lights Auto is just over 2 inches, with its first set of true leaves about 0.6cm in length. Off to quite a slow start despite the germination. The good news is, it still has both cotyledons in good shape, no ripping or tearing, just how you would want them to be. Tomorrow I plan on getting up quite early, getting a new bag of soil from a discount store, I've found cheaper ones can sometimes be better, partly because they're not chock-full of nutes that most people forget are there. However, I must admit I am tempted by Coco and the likes. Perhaps after work about this time tomorrow there'll be some healthy cotyledons showing, but I'm not expecting it, not everything is going to go as fast as it has! Details: What strain is it? 1x Northern Lights Auto + 1x Critical Kush Auto Are they Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? Both Indica Are they Seedling, Veg or Flower stage? Seedling Indoor or outdoor? Indoor Soil or Hydro? Both soil, Northern Lights auto = 100% Miracle Grow / Critical Kush = 65% compost, 20% Sand, 15% Perlite, plus a base layer of Perlite. Size of light? 1x Mars Hydro 300 (140W Actual), potentially 1x 45w CFL in the future Is it aircooled? No, door cracked for ventilation, some breeze makes its way through one wall in the roof, which does help a tad. Temp of Room/cab? Approx 24-28oc RH of Room/cab? Unknown How often are you watering? Not often at all, currently once a week at the most. Type and strength of ferts used? None used as of now; however will use Levington Tomorite. NPK = 4-3-8. Doses start extremely weak, and remain infrequent, when it reaches maturity doses increase to almost full dose, once every other week. Thanks for reading everyone, mildly stoned at the moment so if there's any gibberish, feel free to correct me Regards,
Figured I might as well ask it here, hopefully I'll see a response before I go to sleep Which would be better, sterilized top soil or rich peat compost? I'd have thought the peat would be better, but I'm no expert, and can't quite justify £20+ a bag for coco...at least not right now. Maybe one day I'll see the light haha Edit - Oh and with it being peat based compost, that means it'll probably have a low pH, which is good, as my tap water is coming out around 7.5 before being left to stand. Also think I'll get Verve compost, they tend to knock out some decent soils, and also a bag of perlite to mix with it.
Definitely time to hit the hay, however not before creating a plan for soil mix. Thus far I'm thinking: 60% Peat based Compost 20% Perlite 20% Builders Sand Perhaps I'll go 65% Peat Compost and 15% Sand, not sure yet. But it'll be around that amount.
Woke up this morning and checked the girls, the Northern Lights seedling is looking the same, with a purplish hue. The Critical Kush seed in the paper had dried up quite dramatically overnight, so I immediately soaked the tissues again before heading off to good ol' B&Q. I ended up picking up a 125L bag of 37% peat based Verve/John Innes compost, a 25L bag of builders sand and a bag of perlite, sum total of around £17. Went with a mix of approximately 65% compost, 20% sand, 15% Perlite, excluding the base layer of Perlite. The initial wetting of the soil was slow as hell, but it eventually soaked through and drained out the bottom a bit, so I added another layer of soil to absorb any excess around the Critical Kush seedling. Speaking of the seedling, from the paper drying out it had a very small brown bit on the root, the most minute brown tip on the root, however all else looked fine and well. I'm thinking it won't even affect it, because of how small it was. We shall soon see. As for potting arrangements, I'm going to leave these in their containers until the first sign of a root at the edge of the glass/plastic, or just when they seem big enough for a 5L. It'll most likely be before the roots even show any sign, purely to avoid damage to the roots. Curious to see how this Kush seed grows compared to the Northern Lights in the soil mix I made, compared to just straight old miracle grow. That'll be interesting, I'm hoping my soil mix proves to be better, I'm sure it will be with vermiculite. Thanks for reading
Got some pics of the growroom/closet setup and the Northern Lights Auto seedling. I think the seedling is 4 days above ground, showing development of its second true set of leaves, I think the medium was a little wet for the seedling to start with, but seems to be drying out to a nice level now, should be good for a while yet. Looking forward to seeing these two progress, hopefully the Critical Kush's medium gives it a boost to keep up with the progressing Northern Lights seedling. Oh, and in the first picture where the two containers are, under that lid is a 5 Litre pot sunk into the cupboard, so I have the entire cupboard as headroom. I think I'm going to stick to 2 Auto's or 1 photoperiod plant per grow in this cupboard, what do you guys reckon, Pineapple Chunk or Chronic Thunder next? Think I'm going to do another photoperiod grow. Edit - In the picture of the Northern Lights seedling under the Mars Hydro the potting medium looks like very wet mulch. I can assure it isn't mulch, despite a few leaves, and isn't anywhere near as wet as that looks
Update: Got home from work and the Northern Lights seedling is looking great, I think the seed being stuck to it put it a day or two back, but now it's kicking off, the first true set of leaves have grown almost double the size and the second set are becoming more and more noticeable. As for the Critical Kush seedling, it hasn't broke the medium yet, however, I'm sure while I sleep it will break the surface and grow upwards. At least I hope...
Hey CodeName47, thanks for stopping by! The Northern Lights auto has beefed up quite a bit since the last pics and has a clear second set of true leaves. Growing quite slowly so far, moved her a fair amount closer to the light. I'm thinking 24" was maybe too far for her, so went for somewhere around 12-14" away. So far she has been under the light at that distance for 12 hours and shows no physical signs of burning, and seems to be liking it all the same. As for the Critical Kush, I watered the soil as it had dried out a fair bit and as the medium takes a while to soak, the seed floated to the top from under the soil. The tap root has grown a fair bit, about 1cm long, but no sign of it sprouting just yet. Taking its time for sure, but no rush I guess! I was tempted to pop another seed on the off chance this doesn't work out, but the seed seems in relatively good health, the root looked slightly translucent instead of rich white, but I'm sure it will be fine. If not, oh well. It was a free seed from Barneys anyway. Thanks for reading
Hey all, its been a fair while since I've updated this so I thought I'd pop back. Some shitty things have happened and I'm sour, but I'm pretty darn sure it's piss poor genetics. The Northern Lights was growing fine, but ended up yellowing, pretty sure it turned out to be root rot, I transplanted it a few days after noticing the first yellowing but even then it was too late. This is also happening to a friend of mines grow with the same seeds, and his soil is always moist at the most, never sopping. As for the Critical from Barneys... It germ'd and just seemed to stop in its tracks, until it withered away. So I decided to pop another Barneys seed to replace it, which also capitulated after germinating, which brings me to the Blue Mammoth Auto from Barneys I currently have in which is a small seedling, not looking great. I can't think of anything other to blame than poor genetics, because I popped a Quick One Auto from Royal Queen Seeds, using the exact same method and within 2 days it has a taproot over an inch long, and within the last hour the seed has popped open and the cotyledons are about to upright themselves to face the light. Looking TOTALLY healthy, unlike the other ones that take a week to get to this stage and then stop. Interesting. I think I'll stick to doing 1 good quality assured seed and 1 bingo seed from Barneys each grow haha Looking forward to seeing how this Quick One seed does, I've been getting fed up with the free seeds from Barneys. Maybe their photoperiods have a better quality than their Auto's, but I don't hold much hope. Either way, they were free so I'll take it. I'll get some pics up in a few days
Hey all, few updates and pics today! First of all, I've took in a Northern Lights plant that was in poor state, it had 4 nodes, but it has been cut back to the 1st node but has no leaves there, apart from 1 dry leaf and the 2 virtually dead cotyledons. The roots were surprisingly healthy though for its size so I'm going to see what I can do despite having no real leaves. I've put a humidity dome over it in hopes it'll maybe resurrect the current leaves providing they're not too far gone. On top of that I decided to pop another Quick One auto, which is now about to upright itself and have the cotyledons part. These Quick One seeds are really smashing it so far, 6 days from seed and she looks like this after having a few hours a day on the roof in the sun She really seems to be enjoying the natural light on top of the 18 hours LED light. As for the bottle she's in, soon she'll be transplanted into a 5L, I'll probably give her another week. It's very handy for putting out in the light, warms up nicely from the sun too. Aside from that there's not much else other than that I've got a Critical seed on the go from feminisedseeds, I sold my friend 4 of the other seeds so he can do his grow at the same time, gives him some reference and hopefully this grow goes well. Oh, and last night I decided to germinate a Pineapple Chunk seed from Barneys farm. It's currently in a clear plastic tumbler which is going to be wrapped to prevent light leaking, it's only 500ml, if this seed actually survives from Barneys I'll do a micro grow in that pot, should be interesting So, 6 plants on the go and I have a 2x2 cupboard... I'm expecting 2 to die though, one being a free seed from Barneys (not the Pineapple Chunk) and the rescue plant. Leaving me with 4. It'll be 3 main plants, and the micro plant, perhaps they'll all fit under the Mars Hydro 300 with some supplement from CFLs. I was only really planning for 2 but I'm going to go with it and see if it can work, that's part of the fun sometimes Thanks for reading, be sure to comment
Hey SmokeSara, the garden is looking super good thanks to the Mars Hydro! I'll get a picture or two of them, the room is super cramped, but they're doing good.
So, the big plant and the smaller budding plant are both about a month old, the biggest being just a week older, the other 2 plants that aren't budding are just about to turn 4 weeks old. I'm super happy with how this grow has turned out, considering how cramped the cupboard is. The big Quick One Auto has so many budsites, it's insane, looks great and still has 3-5 weeks left! They're currently in an unused/spare room, and are absolutely loving it. Here's the smaller quick one The ones at the back of the cupboard are Critical Auto (Left) and Pineapple Chunk (Right - The only photoperiod). The worst looking one is the Critical, the leaves look superb, but the actual plant is extremely leggy. It seemed content in just growing small and bushy, but the Quick ones rapidly cast a shadow over it, prompting it to basically push its canopy up, whilst not growing any new leaves. It'll have a few weeks after the quick ones finish up so it'll probably pad out and spread. Lookin' good! Oh and I'd like to add that the only plants to have received nutrients are the two quick ones, and they only received 2 small doses, other than that they've been given plenty of tap water and fish tank water. The big quick one some how even got Nitrogen clawing, presumably from the fish tank water, despite not being given actual concentrate nutrients.
I'm not sure whether it is late to tie down the Critical, I saw many people use this way to avoid the plants get so high.
Yeah, I think I'm going to give her to a friend with a free cupboard, and he should be able to tie her down. He needs a light too, so while he runs the CFLs, I'm going to tell him to get a Mars Hydro, definitely great bang for buck!