So this is my first indoor grow and I have grown outdoors a few times before but with clones. This is my first time using seeds and moving indoors. Previously I grew strains like early riser, duck foot and red bud because they are some of the strains that will finish where I live before the brutal winters roll in and mold takes your entire crop. With that said I'm excited to be able to control the environment and produce a quality product. I acquired seeds from a friend and received about 100 various seeds. I opted to germinate King Louis, gorilla glue skunk and a couple mystery seeds that are supposedly all killer strains. The gorilla glue was a guaranteed female. None of the others were but I used the seed sexing method and although it is not 100% it certainly increases your chances of having females. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to spot any males before flowering starts but if I can't I'll top them and flower the tops and find out that way. I'm growing a scrog grow inside of an upstairs bedroom and inside the bedroom I constructed a 4'x8' box (like a tent) Basic concept is to use the box as just another barrier to prevent bugs or anything that could damage the plants from entering the environment and to help control smell. Inside the box the buckets go on the floor and when the plants are tall enough I'll move the lights above the break and tie up the screen to start scrogging. I am going to top the plants when they are big enough and at the moment I have 4x4 of the 4x8 set up. The plan is top clone off these plants before flower and buy another set of lights and start the other side of the 4x8 as a seperate grow so I can go back and forth and keep an even flow coming out. I plan on growing for personal use for me and my wife but l am not sure the yield I will have with a 4x4 scrog under t5s and having this be my first grow. I'm assuming I will harvest roughly 12 ounces. I currently have 3 t5 lights that are 4 bulb fixtures that are 4' long by 1' wide. I have all 3 set up on one side of the box and I have them sitting about 8 inches above the plants. Before flowering starts I am going to purchase a 6" carbon filter and hang it from bungee cords in the center of the box and vent it to the outside and back around to the other side blowing the filtered air back in. The plants are all growing in miracle grow potting soil. Mixed with a commercial grade compost from a local company. I need to get a couple small fans to blow on the plants to help strengthen the stems. All but the gorilla stretched to about 5" before I transplanted them. At which time I put just enough dirt up the stems to make them not so top heavy. If you can think of anything I'm missing right now that will make my grow better please tell me. If you see anything I'm doing wrong please tell me. I want to get this right because I'm sick of buying weed. But I'm also sick of growing basic outdoor. I don't want this crop to end up just some ok stuff too. I want it to be killer so I can use all the help I can get.
Personally florecent lighting iether tube or CFL spirals are only effective for vegative growth. And lack in the light penatration needed for flower production. The most yeild I personally achieved was 14 grams after trim and cure. Used 100watts of florecent wattage. Few weeks of veg and 8 flower weeks. In 2 galon container
The size and density of your buds is directly proportional to the amount of good strong flower lighting the plant does or does not get. CFLs are wonderful for vegging a plant, but are horrible when it comes to producing buds...unless you light up that room so bright with them you could see it from space. LOL If you want to maximize your production, you'll definitely have to go with a different type light for flowering. HPS work great but the problem with them is heat and for what you're doing, you'll a couple of good size wattage ones to cover that area sufficiently and will have to install ducting, in line fan, etc. to pull the heat off the lights. On the other hand, the LEDs flower beautifully as well but the problem with them is that to get one of any quality at all, you're really gonna have to shell out some bucks. But the lighting you flower under has everything to do what the quality of your product at harvest. Fluorescent bulbs will flower off a plant but it just doesn't have the strength to really make that plant want to grow. But it takes time to get from seed to time for flowering, so do some research and figure out what you need to do to get the most out of your room. Don't know if you've ever done one before and not sure why you opted to go with a scrog on your very first indoor grow, but hey...your thing. They are quite labor intensive so get ready to spend a lot of time tying down plants. Two or 3 plants should be plenty for you and the wife's personal consumption...depending on the strain and yield. Of course, I don't know how much you guys consume, but if you can take 3 healthy lush plants and run them through flower with some good strong light, you can harvest several ounces after cure. Good luck!! Welcome to the world of indoor growing!! Most fun I've had in years. LOL TWW
So some slight issues with location so the set up is moving and in the mean time they are still running under the same lights just in a closet for the mean time. These pictures were taken 3 days ago. Which would have been the 20th so the t5s are definitely working and doing what I need them to do so far. Any advice on when to start topping?
The biggest of the plants is the gorilla glue. The second biggest is the mystery plant. I can't wait to find out what it is. And the other pics are Louie's. The skunks and the other Louie's are roughly the same size. Just didn't have good quality pictures. Looks like the plants are bushing out nicely so I'm not worried about the height of the lights it seems to be about right.
Just some pics of what's happened in the last few weeks. Topped the plants then Grew the plants about 16-18 inches in height then built the scrog netting. Used deer fence with 2 inch holes stapled it to a 2x4 frame. Seemed to work better than most string set ups I see. After setting up the netting I stripped the plants. Removed big fan leaves and stripped the lower stems bare. I put the plants under the net and started the weave. I added a bigger fan for heat and air circulation reasons and then I left the plants for 3 days and when I came back noticed they had wind burn damage. The fan was too strong and too directly on them. So we fixed that issue and they just started to pick back up from the stress of everything they just went through. Plants are just about ready to flower. I'm thinking8 more days of veg and we will move to 12-12. I will keep everyone posted periodically. In a couple weeks when we start throwing flowers I'll add more pictures.
And ignore those 2 plants in the middle lol those aren't mine. My friend who owns the house I'm using has some outdoor stuff growing and he cut those clones a while back and just hasn't taken care of them. That is NOT my doing. I just don't care about his shit sweet bud outdoor. Lol
Screen was filling up nicely so I pruned the fan leaves off of the plant one last time to let some light penetrate and get some of the lower Growth to burst towards the top in a last ditch effort to make the screen during the flowering stretch. After pruning off the fan leaves I gave it about 4-5 days to recover I trained them some more and finally flipped the lights to flower last Sunday which was June 19th. I waited 2 days before doing any training or watering. The response I got when I opened my grow was amazing. Temps were running a little high now that summer is here and with my grow being situated in a shed outside its hard to really combat heat in a shed. The introduction of the carbon filter and a couple extra fans seemed to help keep temps in the mid 90s if the temp outside is around 85 or so. I can live with that but now I am under flower and I shut my lights off during the day and run them at night. Temps now stay no more than 5-7 degrees higher than outside. The first time I checked on them after the initial flip was a big shock. They responded with a fierce thank you to the darkness. I was vegging under 24 hours light so they really appreciated the break. Initial stretch sent the tops about 2-3" through the screen. On Thursday the last time I was at the grow I had around 45 tops on just one plant and all of them should make the canopy. There are maybe 7 or 8 that may fall short of the screen. So that's pretty exciting considering I have 6 plants. All are different strains so each is growing differently. I noticed the skunk is tending to bush out rather than get taller so I had to jack them up closer to the canopy in order to fill the scrog. There is a ton of growth but it all seems to be condensed. I should have tied them down in the veg stage more but I was too concerned with having them get tall enough to reach the screen. After topping they just turned into shrubs. They are definitely liking the training from the screen now. The gorilla seems to have slowed down in the last week. I'm not quite sure why because it was the most rapid growth for a while. Still the biggest just not as bushy as some of the other I feel as though I will have less tops. But it is still early on in the flowering stage and a lot happens in the next 3 weeks. I was nervous flowering under the t5s but after enough research I am extremely confident my 3 light t5 set up is going to produce top shelf bud for the best price around. My current set up is running me 37$ a month. I have 3 four foot four bulb t5 fixtures with the 65k cool watt bulbs. The lights are 57 watts. From what I see on forums people are using a scrog set up under t5s with rock hard nugs and lots of them. I'm so excited to see if I can prove all my friends and the people on this forum wrong by harvesting some top notch under some less than top notch lights. I feel rather confident right now. Not sure if I flipped too early or not I read that flipping too late with t5s is a big problem if you run out of room and have to let them grow up. Light penetration will not reach the lower buds which is why I am using a scrog in the first place so I opted to flip at what I feel was less than 50% but was I supposed to gauge that 50% on having 50% of the squares filled or 50% of the screen filled with the fan leaves on it? I figured it was more of the second one however I pruned my fan leaves off for more growth on the lower so I tried to just wing it. Lol I feel I flipped at the right time based on the amount of growth I have had so far. About 3 more weeks of growth and then it's all buds after that. I will post new pics tonight after I go to train and water. The downfall of having your lights on at night is you have to tend to the garden at night. 8pm-8am is my window. Night folks I'll keep you all posted. Maybe one day there will be some skepticists that read this and decide to grow with t5s lol who knows I guess we will find out somewhere around August 25th
Added some flora nova bloom into the mix last watering. Things are looking good for the t5s so far. Can't wait to start seeing some buds.
You'll need atleast some kind of higher par value and more red spectrum to get flowering to work properly Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Grasscity Forum mobile app
So swap some of the bulbs to red jay? I've read with the t5s most people are getting better flower results under the 65k bulbs because they are already a little under powered. But maybe you know from experience everything I'm trying is based on hours of research but there's not a whole lot out there on t5 scrogs. The ones I do see are either 100% success or 100% failure where people switch to hps halfway through flower. I'm just really curious to see what I come out with. There's a guy that grows t5 scrogs "aj grows a lot" and his stuff comes out fantastic. I'm trying to mimic his results with my twists. My lights are 7 watts stronger than his with the same number of bulbs. I'm hoping for similar results but he's dialed in and I'm fresh. I'll definitely try the red bulbs with the 25k spectrum and see how it does compared to the 65k on the next run if this comes out ok.
I never used a t5 for anything other than veg in my buddies garage a few years ago but we took them outside in spring to finish up so idk how they will work. I just know red orange and yellow spectrum is key to growing healthy rich in tricome buds. But I suppose if you have enough light in there it should give some kinds yield just not like the yields one would get under a 1000w hps bulb. I ran both metal halide and hps at one point for 3 weeks to mimic the peak of summer and into fall I took the mh lamp off and left just the hps. I'm still under hps and almost finished with my one plant. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Grasscity Forum mobile app
None of your pictures seem to load. But if you insist on using Floros... Definitly fill that trelis with as many heads as possible. Then get that floro light inches from the crops. Let it rip... If you don't like the end result after 1 or 2 runs then you know you gotta fork out the funds for an led at least. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Heading into week #3 today is day number 20 of flower. Skunk sprouted the first flowers. Everything else is catching up and finally started throwing flowers too. Since the last time I visited the grow 2 days ago my plants only seemed to have grown maybe an inch in height so I stopped training tonight. Every time prior I was training. I visited the grow religiously the last 20 days and kept a schedule of watering and training every time I visited which was every other day. However sometimes I stopped and trained on my off day of watering as well. The water schedule is still a gallon per plant every other day. But every other water I use 2 1/2 table spoons of flora nova bloom. Things look good so far. I see some small webbing on the buckets under the scrog but nothing really on the plants. I'm going to get some spider mite weapons just in case but I don't think I actually have mites I think they are bigger spiders but I am unsure because I couldn't find a spider. However I have no damage on the plants and no webbing on them so I think I'm alright. I moved a 4" fan down there to move some air around. Here's some pics of some of the flowers on the different plants. When they progress I'll explain which ones are which. But for now I'll keep it simple. Wish I would have gotten a pic of the entire screen but I let the wife take the pics this time and she didn't grab a full shot. Also I'm hearing that pruning during flowering can stress to the point of causing hermaphroditism. Can anyone shed any light on whether removing fan leaves on the scrog during flowering stresses enough to cause that? I also waited to lollipop some of the plant just to see what shoots were going to make the screen. Now that I don't see much more stretching I lollipopped everything that wasn't going to make it that was remaining. Does anyone know if this could be enough stress to cause that? And one more question a friend of mine that's growing outdoor with me has a plant that is a sweet bud and a clone off the same mother as 42 others and right now there is probably about 15 hours of daylight where we live and this one plant has started flowering up the stem on the top. It's definitely flowering and it shouldn't be. Has anyone experienced this? There is some shade where it is but I've never seen that cause an issue. And it was under t5s for a while and then due to size restrictions he ended up moving some of them under a t8 shop light for like a week which I didn't recommend by the way. I'm wondering if this could have caused it? But why did none of the others get affected by this If anyone can shed some light that would be cool. Peace out its time to spark this thing up with some blueberry Happy toking! Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Also my lights are slammed on those now. I just hoist them to work. Thanks chief for the tip they fucking love it. They are maybe 5 inches from my screen and I usually come back every other day and my tops are 1-2" from the lights so my growth was about 3-4" every 48 hours after slamming them. A ton more of the lower shoots made it about 6" to the screen too and have all been bent over 4 times and created more tops on their own. So it made a big difference. I've heard to slam them before but to hear it from someone who scrogs and has success makes me take the advice and that's what I'm talking about. Chief what's up with nutes to finish with? I was thinking of using Moab at week 5 Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
hey i found it! lol did ya switch to 6500k bulbs? the redder spectrum is beneficial to budding. the scrog is looking tits though!
How many bulbs do you guys think I should Swap? One red one blue one each or 2 red on each? Or one red on each? I'm not sure if I should do a full swap to complete red. I keep hearing of better results with the bulbs I'm currently running. But if I don't take advice then why am I asking for it right? So how many should I swap?