So I've been doing a ton of reading on this forum and learned a lot from many of the threads here, so I've decided to try and start my own micro grow. I do have a little bit of experience with outdoor growing, but this is my first try at indoor. These are all of the materials I have been given: 1 box lined with aluminum foil measuring 20"x20"x40" 3 CFLs 27w 5500k 1 CFL 25w 3300k 2 computer fans, one blowing out, one blowing in All of these things were given to me so I have not modified the setup really at all Now I am about to be in week 4 of my grow, but here is a little history: Week 1 10/22 Germinated 2 Lemon Skunk seeds from marijuanaseeds.nl (or something like that) in moist paper towels 10/23They both popped the next day so I put them into some seed starter soil in red solo cups. starter soil consisted of: Peat moss, perlite, and a very small amount of bat guano 10-2-1 10/26After 3 days they were out of the ground with their little cotyledons Week 2 10/31 I watered them each 100 mL and one plant seemed to be growing a little faster 11/03 watered them again same amount a few days later (3 I think) Week 3 11/06 I watered them 150 mL each this time and they both were working on their 3rd set of leaves -side note: (the faster growing plant developed 5 fingered leaves on the second set, while the slower growing one only developed 3 fingered leaves on the second set. Any significance to this?) 11/09 Anyways, yesterday morning I watered the babies each with 100 mL of water and 3 drops of Fox Farms Grow Big Later in the evening I decided to transplant them into pots each 1.5 gallons here is the recipe I used: 10% seeds starting mix (perlite and peat moss) 90% Fox Farms Ocean Forest this made about 3 gallons of mix and to this I added: 1 tbs of blood meal 2 tbs of bone meal 1 tbs of bat guano 10-2-1 2 tbs of dolomitic lime I then transplanted the plants into this soil and this is where I'm at. I'm probably only going to water them with plain old tap water for the next few weeks since I went so heavy on nutes in the soil. By the way I have some pictures, I'm not sure how to add them in the text but I think I attached them correctly. So, does anybody have any comments, helpful guidance, or questions? (Maybe some help on how to post pics in the text)
Your light temperature is in the wrong scale. You should go for 2700K and 6500K. Although looking at your plants, they look healthy. Try mounting the lights horizontally so instead of pointing down because most of the light energy leaves the bulb on the side. Just a reminder that if you are using tap water to let the chlorine evaporate for 2 days at least.
Hey, thanks for the advice man. I just went out and got 1 more bulb thats a 26 watt 6500k. Unfortunately the store only had one so thats all I have so far to go with the other 5500k bulbs. I decided to take out the 3300k, because it wasn't really helping me out too much. I would have gotten more bulbs with higher wattage and with a temp of 6500k, but they are hard to find! So far the one bulb I found today has been the only daylight bulb that I have even seen in stores around where I am. I may just have to get some more online. By the way, do you think I have enough wattage? Also, as far as the horizontal lighting goes, I'm not sure I can reconfigure the bulbs this way, but do you know if there is a way for me to rig something to reflect the light downward? I'm thinking of just putting some foil in the corners at an angle to project the light coming from the sides of the bulbs downward to the plants. As far as the tap water goes, I never even knew to let the chlorine evaporate out of the water before using it, so thanks a bunch for that info man! For an update, the last couple of days the plants went through very little shock after the transplant, they are still growing fast so I decided to try my hand at FIMming them today. I posted some pictures but they are taken with my phone so its a bit blurry and you can't really tell where I cut the shoot apical meristem. Hopefully I get a bunch of heads! Enjoy
In my experience, the color temperature isn't as important as some people make it out to be. I have vegged plants under 2700k just fine, and I've seen people flower under 6500k without any problems. Also, PLLs only go as low as about 3200k and those work great! Going with 6500k during veg and 2700k during flower certainly won't hurt, and it will probably help slightly, but it won't exactly ruin your grow if you don't go exactly by the book. Good tips about the tap water and mounting the lights sideways. Nice man, they're lookin healthy! I've tried FIMming once, and failed at it. I normally just do a little bit of topping and some LST if I want my plant bushier, it seems to be a pretty simple and relatively non-stressful way of training a plant.
Downshift, thanks for the reply. This was actually my first try at FIMming so I'm not sure if its gonna work out for me either. By the way, your cab grow looks pretty sweet. Today I checked on the babies and they are doin real good, just starting to seperate into at least two tops, so maybe I did the FIM correctly. I'd post pictures, but I don't have a camera good enough to show the new growth coming out. The only problem I've been having so far is with my light timer. It doesn't turn on in the morning just about every 4 days... I'm not sure why but its messing up my light cycles. I'm hoping that its not gonna stress the plants so much that they start to turn into Hermes. I'm going to get a new one tomorrow. I'm still trying to figure out how to make some kind of drip system to water them because i'm gonna be gone next week for 5 days. If anyone has any experience or ideas I'd appreciate any help
So today my plants were looking thirsty, I checked the soil and it definitely needs some watering, but I decided it would be a good idea to test the pH of the tap water before using it. It turns out the water I have been using is way too high, over 8! So, I have decided to wait until I get buy some pH down tomorrow before I water the little ones. My next concern has to do with my soil. I have noticed a small amount of yellowing/browning at the very tip of the two bottom sets of leaves. It is a very small amount of yellowing, but I think it is nute burn. My concern is this: I haven't been using liquid ferts so I'm not sure if flushing the soil will work since all of the nutrients are in the soil, and (this may be a little complicated) since I have been watering the soil with a pH that is real high, shouldn't my plants be taking up less nutrients than they are able to? AND, if I start watering the plants with water that is the right acidity won't it cause them to start taking nutrients better and therefore burn more? I'm thinking of transplanting them into plain old FFOF instead of the FFOF that I enriched with blood, bone, and guano. let me know what ya'll think. BTW, if these things stay alive, I'm considering trying the SCROG gig, i've seen and heard good things.
well, for those of you that might be interested in this grow, here is another update. I bought myself some new supplies yesterday to keep better control of my grow: 1 PH/Light/Moisture reader that goes right into my soil 1 bottle of GH PH up solution 1 liquid PH tester kit 1 thermometer/humidity reader I felt that I really needed these things and they were real cheap! So I decided to do a small amount of flushing with a gallon of water that i made a PH of about 6.5. I then used my new soil PH meter and got a reading of about 5.8 which seems a little too acidic but it should be ok. The bigger plant is starting to grow at least 4 heads I think, and the little one... well I'm not sure if I made the FIM cut low enough on it because it doesn't look like anything changed. My temp has been at about 78 with about 40% humidity which I think both readings are good. The hottest my box got was 88 because I turned the fans off for a little while today... not gonna do that again. The plants still have very small symptoms of nute burn but I don't think its gonna affect them too much because they are still growing strong. Other than that these things are really growing fast! I'm considering adding two horizontal lights, and I also want to try CO2 enriching the box, maybe with sparkling water and a spray bottle? I still need help with figuring out how to make these girls (hopefully) live on their own for 5 days next week. I am going on a 3 week vacation a week after I get back from the five day one so I really need to figure this one out! Help would be appreciated, but here are some pics to oogle at
lookin good man! Side lighting sounds like a good idea, but don't even bother with the CO2. Unless you do it the right way with a bottle of compressed CO2 you'll never get your concentrations high enough to make much of a difference. Your efforts would be better focused on ways to increase ventilation, which would supply the plants with more fresh air meaning more CO2. I feel like for 5 days you shouldn't have much of a problem, just give em a nice watering right before you go and maybe turn down your lights and ventilation for that time to make it last a little longer. Also, maybe try an aqua-globe, those little glass globes that you stick into the soil and they slowly release water. 3 weeks is a bit of a stretch, though, unless you set up a drip system or something that's likely going to kill em.
Thanks man! I figured I would have to set up a drip system for the 3 week vacation, but i'm not sure how I'm gonna go about doing it. I might start flowering these things right before I leave but the only problem with that is that if one turns out to be male, I won't be around to kill it, so I'm not sure what to do about that. As for an update, I decided to start tying these down so I can train them and get nice bushy plants. They are responding well to the LST and they started facing back up to the light in a matter of hours! A sad thing happened to me yesterday... my bong was shattered by my dumbass friends... I guess shit happens... but here are some pictures
hey man those plants are looking good, keep it up! i'm looking to start my own grow inside a box, like yours, however i have no experience and little knowledge about how to do it. this threads helped me a little bit so thanks for that good luck with the plants while you're on vacation, i hope they survive! ill listen in closely to this thread to see how you go and try gain some knowledge about growing oh and what a shame about your bong happy toking
Thanks for the support man! I'll give you as much info as i can because i too learned how to do this grow solely by reading the forums here. The internet is a wonderful thing haha. Not much went down today, I just tightened down the string I'm using to train them and trimmed off the bottom two sets of fan leaves on both plants because they were real small, shaded, and they were in the dirt. The axillary buds at all the nodes are all starting to grow a little faster and the plants are becoming bushes especially the bigger one. Does anyone else think these look like two different strains when they are side by side? Or could it be that the differences are because of their difference in sex? Also, I noticed that both plants have a good amount of stink to them, the bigger one more than the smaller one. In my experience, the MALE smelt stronger during veg then the females, am I crazy or is this normally the case?
Watered em' real good today before I left. I really hope they survive 5 days on their own... I used water with a PH of about 7ish, my PH tester is not exactly super accurate. My soil PH after I watered it was a little bit too basic. It was almost up to 7 as well. I would say about 6.8. I'm not sure if the PH goes down as the soil gets more dry. I decided to bend the smaller plant a little for some more LST. I didn't tie it down or supercrop bend it, I simply just pushed it over a little so it will probably prop up to normal pretty fast. I lowered the plants a little to about 5 inches away from the bulbs. I wanted to leave plenty of room for them to grow for the 5 days that I can't check on them.
good luck. with a healthy watering 5 days shouldnt be too bad. i was watering every 3 days when my plants were about that big, though i wouldve added some perlite to the soil for water retention. just water them as soon as you get back. i'll be building my own drip system in the next 2 days and i'll be posting up a 'diy-how-to', so when you get back, i'll post the info up here for you
Looks good. Don't be worried about nutes as long as soil and water PH is good and they haven't shown any signs of abuse in about a week you are good to go. Just remember they react slower in soil than hydro
Thanks for the help guys! SOW, the DIY on the drip system would be very much appreciated. After I got back today to see how healthy these things are I really don't want them to die after my next vacation. Todderfran, thanks for the input. I'm hoping that my PH doesn't get too out of whack when I'm gone for a long time from these things, but I guess like you say that the PH in soil is a little easier to handle. I just got back tonight and these babies were still doing great. I got home just in time to water them. They are much bigger now and I am almost positive that my FIMing worked. One plant is forming into 8 tops! The other is forming into 6 tops! I'm stoked since this is my first try at it. The weird thing is... On the plant that is splitting into 8 tops, there are two VERY small hairs (posslibly pistils?) sticking out of the very top node. It is super small and I don't have a magnifying glass but it looks like a tiny bud. I'm wondering how this could have formed since the light cycle is 18 and 6. Maybe its from when my old light timer would sometimes malfunction and never turn on in the mornings? OR for some reason I thought I heard that an early flower could mean the plant is a HERME. I hope that its just a sign that its a girl. I also decided to take off the string I was using for the LST, I would rather just keep FIMming them so it grows a little faster and then I can SCROG them. I'm thinking of taking clones soon too, although I'm pretty sure there a little too small still. My plan is to flower the tiny clones to determine sex in the next two weeks before I leave for 3 weeks, so I can kill any males and then leave the plant(s) to flower while I'm gone. I'm not sure 2 weeks will give me enough time though...
Welp I think I have a hermaphrodite. Yesterday when I watered them I discovered two really small pollen sacks on one of the top nodes. I am still not sure whether or not the two hairs on the top of the plant are from a flower, but I am sure that the plant has male parts so either way, Herme or not, its no good. I'm still real confused as to why the plant is even flowering at all since I'm still on an 18/6 light cycle. I watered each plant about a half gallon of water at a PH of 6.5. The soil was close to the same PH. I decided to try cloning these things for the first time too. I took two cuttings from the supposed male and 3 from the unknown plant. I used little Jiffy pots and a tiny bubble thing for the cuttings. My box has been a little cool lately, 68 in the day and down to 53 at night so I am concerned about the cuttings survival in such cold conditions... but I'm not sure I have any other options. I'm gonna try to sex the little cuttings before I go on vacation so I can know the true sex for certain.
get those temps up about 10*. when a plant becomes stressed enough to hermi, it does pretty crazy things, thats probably why its flowering out of cycle. I know i didnt get back to you on that drip setup, but i'm still ironing it out. you can check out my grow log to see what i have so far, but it wont quite work so i'm still ironing it out. however, lowes sells these drip bottles for like $6, they are kinda like those aqua-globes only alot more ugly. but they work very well for soil. i just didnt want to use it because my growing medium is too light and would get flooded. sad news about the she-male, but i hope the rest turn out well for you
Thanks Sleeve, I decided to turn off my fans for the day to keep temps up so now its at about 75 degrees. Its hard to keep the temps up at night though because its been below freezing outside lately and my box is in my garage. I think the cold temps while I was gone on vacation maybe could have caused enough stress for the one plant to herm. I checked out your grow btw, and I'm not sure I have the skill to rig up a drip system like yours, but the lowes deal sounds like it would work.
Its been two days and it seems like my clones are still doing great. The one plant stopped budding flowers of both kinds as of now. Its too bad I'll probably have to kill it, its such a healthy, bushy plant, and its got 8 tops, o well hopefully I can repeat the same healthiness in a new plant on the next grow. Both plants are super green and healthy, with no yellowing or signs of deficiencies. The taller plant has some weird lookin fan leaves but its just because I cut them way back when I FIMmed it. i think I might have a lot of success with the clones. BTW I made some sweet green chocolate chip cookies last night, although I didn't think they would be very strong. I had 23 grams of leaves and cuttings from my summer outdoor grow, although most of it was from a male plant. I ate a good amount of the dough and one cookie, and I was stoned off my ass! Maybe the male leaves are slightly good for cooking!