Ramjam's Libert Haze & AK-47

Hi everyone. I've been reading these boards for a few years now but this is my first post. I'm growing Liberty Haze and AK-47 in soil. I have a grow cabinet and also a grow tent. I usually use the cabinet for veg and the tent for flower. I'm starting this grow from scratch so I'm going to use both to veg and flower. I'm growing 6 Liberty Haze plants from feminized seeds and 8 AKs non-formalized. I meant to order the AKs feminized too by I screwed up. So at this point I'm just hoping at least half are female.

So far the seeds have cracked and have been planted this morning in cups. I'm using Dr Earth organic soil mixed 50/50 with perlite. I will be using Roots Organic veg and Buddha bloom fertilizers as well later on. I used this combo on my last grow with pretty good results.

For this grow I'm going to take all of the female plants all the way through flower without taking any clones. It's my last grow here because I'll be moving in the spring. So the idea is to grow as much as I have room for and then pack it up till after we get settled into our new house.

On a personal note my fiancé is expecting our first child. We just found out last week that its a girl! She's due in February so it's going to be a hectic next couple of months. I'd like to get these plants into flower as soon as reasonably possible to hopefully finish before she has the baby. I figured if I kept a journal that it would help keep me on point and make this my best grow yet. I'm looking forward to hearing the insight from the experts whose posts I've been reading over the past few years.

I'll post some additional details after they break soil. I have a lighting issue too that I'll need some help with but it's too late to get into now.

 

So I'm running into my first challenge early on with this grow. The seedlings are just breaking ground and a week from Tuesday, I'm going out of town for 5 days and I don't have anyone to water my plants. My future brother-in-law was going to but he can't and he's the only other person besides my fiancé that knows about it. So I'm SOL.

I messed around tonight trying to make an automatic waterer from a water bottle. I drilled 1/16 hole into the lid which is he smallest drill bit that I had, cut the bottom off, buried it in a test soil cup and added water. Well the water runs straight through it in about 2 minutes. That wasn't even close to working so I'm back at square one.

Another thought that I had was to put the cups into a plastic container or containers, water them well, and cover with Saran Wrap for the 5 days that I'm gone. I'm sure that will keep plenty of the moisture in but I'm worried about the lack of airflow.

The last thought that I had was some sort of wicking system. I can't really picture how it could work though since I would have to disturb the soil which I really don't want to do since the seedlings will only be a week old at that point.

So I'm thinking at this point the covered option seems best to me. I'd like to hear if someone else had an opinion or suggestion though.

Thanks

 

[quote name='"zombiefryd"']Try popping a few pin holes in the waterbottle instead of cutting the end off. Maybe try it with just a hole in the cap.[/quote]

I was going to ditch the idea but I decided to give it one more go for he sake of being thorough. This time I held a pin from a new dress shirt packaging with needle nose pliers and heated until red hot with a lighter. I poked one hole through the bottom of the water bottle. I heated the pin again to poke a hole through the lid. I didn't push the needle all the way through the cap though. I just pushed it enough to make the slightest hole. When held upside down in the air one drop falls about every full 2 seconds. So I think that this may actually work. The only problem now is that the cups aren't big enough to bury the bottle without disturbing the seedling. I'm still running it in a test cup to see how it works.

I'm still thinking of a wick setup with cotton strips on top of the soil in a coil around the seedling. I just didn't have time to mess around anymore with it tonight. I've attached a couple pictures of the newborn plants. All have broken ground and look good! One plant was kind of growing sideways or upside down so I carefully adjusted it. We'll see tomorrow if it is going to make it or not probably. I've also attached a picture of a nice bud of Great White Shark from my last grow. Enjoy!

 

[quote name='"zippy657"']have both these strains... dropping the ak right now actually lol (been waiting a minute for singles to stock and finally got one). Subbed. Ill be able to post up a few pics for comparison's sake if you stick with this too.[/quote]

Awesome man! Good luck and I'm looking forward to seeing the pics.

 

[quote name='"zippy657"']have both these strains... dropping the ak right now actually lol (been waiting a minute for singles to stock and finally got one). Subbed. Ill be able to post up a few pics for comparison's sake if you stick with this too.[/quote]

I've actually never smoked either by I've heard a lot of good things. I figured I'd pick a couple of cannabis cup winners that weren't around in my area.

 

Looks awesome! You have 21 more of those flowering?

 

What kind of total yield do you expect? I don't really know what to expect out of my grow. I will be flowering 6 under 400w HPS and 8 under t8 flourescents. Unfortunately too it will depend on how many of the 8 are female since I accidentally bought non-feminized seeds.

 

So it's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm just finally getting around to posting an update. I ended up using a wick setup to water my seedlings while I was on vacation. I'm pissed at myself for not taking a picture to post because it worked better then I could have hoped for! I couldn't believe how much my plants grew while we were away. I cut strips of microfiber towels and put each loose end in gallon jugs (2 total) with the middle part wrapped around the tops of the plants. I needed to elevate the jugs just a bit to let gravity help. When I came back the jugs were empty but the soil was still moist for a couple if days. I think that another key part of this working so well was the 50/50 perlite to soil mix let the roots breathe. Otherwise I think it would've been too much water.

Right now I'm working on transplanting all of the plants to 2 gallon bags. I'm also waiting for a fluorescent light that should be coming this Friday so that I can move the Liberty Haze plants into the tent to finish vegging and ultimately flower. Right now I have them all packed into my cabinet but its pretty tight.

Here's a couple of pics before I started transplanting. Keep in mind those styrofoam cups are 32 oz.. I thought the bigs cups would buy me a little more time before needing to transplant but these suckers are taking off!

I'll post some more pics this weekend after I get the tent setup. The next step then will be figuring out how high to setup the scrog screen.

 

Here's an update. Got all of the plants transplanted into 2 gallon bags. The 6 Liberty Haze are in the tent. I posted a few pics with the ventilation system to help paint the picture. The 8 AKs are in the cabinet. So far so good with everything. The next thing I am working on is putting screen in to scrog both areas. After that it should be smooth sailing as far as the labor intensive work goes.

I'll post a couple of pics after the screen is in. Enjoy!

 

I put the screens in last night. I used cotton string to make the screen with 2" square holes. The screens are 7 inches above the top of the pots.

I'm a little worried that 6 Liberty Haze plants in the tent might be a little crowded. The tent measures 36"x22". Does anyone have any experience growing Liberty Haze or AK-47 using a SCROG setup? I wonder what kind of stretch I'm in for. I have a lot more room with the AKs so I'm not as worried about those.

Here's a couple of pics with the screens in. You can see my assistant Walt helping out.

 

Out of the eight AK-47s, four have clear preflowers and unfortunately, three are male, one is female, one looks like a male but I'm giving it another couple of days to be sure, and the last three runts are TBD. It's a bummer that I had to pull three of the best four AKs tonight but oh well. So far I don't see any preflowers on the Liberty Haze plants but they were feminized seeds to begin with so I'm hoping for the best.

The tallest AK and the tallest Liberty Haze plants are just touching the screen. I FIMed all of the plants tonight. I'm going to keep a close eye on the the Liberty Haze so that I don't flip to 12/12 too late and overcrowd the tent. I think I'm probably about a week from flipping. The AKs will take longer to fill the screen since I had to weed out a few males already and he cabinet is bigger to begin with.

Here are a few pics. The first two are pretty clear shots of male preflowers. The third is a female preflowers but you can't really see it in the picture. The last is just a wider shot showing the Liberty Haze tent. Enjoy!

 

So I'm all but sure that the questionable AK-47 is a male. It only has one preflower that I can see so I'm still going to wait a little longer to pull it. It's a real bummer that out of the five AKs that are showing sex, four have been male. So of the AKs, I'm left with one good female and three runts that still haven't shown any sex. I still haven't noticed any preflowers on the Liberty Haze plants but I'm going to take a closer look tonight.

I've read that Liberty Haze stretches a lot (2x-3x) which would probably overcrowd my tent with six plants in about 5.5 sq ft of space. So I'm going to move two of them to the AK cabinet since I have the extra room in there now. I didn't originally want to do that because my 400w HPS light is in the tent and I only have florescent lights in the cabinet. I'll let them veg a little longer in both the tent and especially in the cabinet since I have the extra room now. My daughter is due Feb. 9th so I'm getting a littler nervous about the harvest being so close to then. If I flipped to 12/12 next Friday (11/23/12) sixty days from then is Jan. 22nd which is only 2.5 weeks before she's due. And she could easily have her by then. But that part is pretty much out of my control now so I'll have to roll with it and make everything work.

All of the larger plants have taken well to the FIMing it looks like. I also wanted to note that I've been feeding with full strength Roots Organic Buddha Grow for every other watering. So far I've been watering probably every 5 days but I can tell the plants are using water a little bit more quickly now. I'll post some updated pics after I move the plants tonight.

 

I went ahead and moved two of the Liberty Hazes from the tent into the cabinet. I think that the tent will work a lot better with just the four plants. Here are a few updated pics. The back three in the cabinet are all females (2 Liberty Haze and 1 AK). The front four are TBD.

 

Another thing that I forgot to mention. Right now we rent the house that we live in and are planning to buy a house in the spring. Our lease was coming up so I needed to talk to the landlord about renting month to month. He's real cool and totally leaves us alone. But I was worried that he was going to want to come over and check the house out to see if be needed to do any work after we moved out. Well I finally talked to him and he was fine with the month to month and he's not coming over! So that was another weight off of my shoulders today. I was imagining hiding all of the plants in my car, cutting screens down, and packing up the tent. I would have made it work but it would have been a shit load of work that I don't have to do now!