... or offer constructive criticism. You can skip all the pork, take a look at the pictures and give me some advice? TL/DR, the plants are stunted, and I'm curious what others think is wrong with them. I know conditions aren't ideal, and the specific reasons they don't look happy. Fyi, they were last watered five days ago and were finally dry enough to water again today, but I also transplanted today (I know, I know) with fairly moist soil... as expected they weren't anywhere near root bound. Tomorrow I will provided them with a fraction of the water they usually recieved (until runoff), which will be less than 1.5oz of water... if the moisture from the new soil isn't enough. Jeez... I suck at posting now. I built this grow cab a couple years ago and never used it, other than running it empty to get a baseline on performance. It is literally two square feet... plenty of room! I've worked with a lot less and grew beautiful plants. I dropped these seeds on August 15th, late in the season, outdoors, where they stayed until seven days ago. It snowed last night. They sprouted on the 19th with vigor. Black bagged them on the 31st, until September 2nd... 36hr of darkness. I'll provide some irrelevant information, for the people who stumble across this post. Wild swings with temp and RH, along with prolonged exposure to cooler temperatures reduced their ability to grow properly... I'm well aware of their stunted growth and why. Here's some info: 45-55F w/ lights off, 85F with them on. 50 RH at night, 25 w/ lights on. That's just one day while they were in the grow cab. Still dialing it in, but it's only getting colder, which I'm working to counter with some elbow grease... the cab is in the shed, with a wicked draft - but still warmer than outside. Anyway, temperature and RH along with the soil not drying fast enough (five days for last watering), and the soil among other things not being ideal. I needed higher temperature and better airflow within the cab to dry the soil at a reasonable 2-3 day rate. The interior fan comes on with the lights and goes off with them... not ideal, I know... need to rewire it. It's a neat setup that I know would work well (with better bulbs) if I were prepared to do a grow in it. It's like an intermission grow... after my last harvest I started these seeds, meanwhile preparing a larger grow room. So it's not a big deal if these crash and burn but it'd be cool if they don't. They're seeds from a controlled pollinated grow back in 2019, NL/Maui Wowie (can't remember the exact strain name). The plan was a SOG, 12/12 from seed. Well shit... I wrote enough for now. I'll post the pictures separately once I figure out how to do it... hold on
Aside from the cooler temps stunting their growth, they're not getting quite enough light, and the spectrum is a bit off since I don't have any 5-65k light, and the roots are a little cool esp at night.... and due to these things the pots didn't dry out as quickly as they did before going into the cab. What else am I missing? Oh, they were perky as can be, until after a day or two in there. I know they could probably use some N... was waiting for them to dry up so I could feed them. The pictures have descriptions. Can you read them? I'm like a forum newbie, either a lot has changed here or I smoked those memories. Relearning 20210921_212118 by Dirt King posted Sep 21, 2021 at 11:17 PM 20210921_205657 by Dirt King posted Sep 21, 2021 at 11:17 PM 20210921_205642 by Dirt King posted Sep 21, 2021 at 11:17 PM 20210921_205653 by Dirt King posted Sep 21, 2021 at 11:17 PM
Those pictures were taken today. This picture was taken on the 14th... seven days ago? To show how nice and happy they looked... all three MW looked like this. The NL all tend to have distorted appearances initially, even in past grows... just something in their genetics I suppose.
Holy shit, I may as well be high as a kite right now... but I'm not. I'll improve my posting-fu. Sorry about the CF Omg. I forgot why I was typing another message. Oh yeah! Because the plants are droopy, and possibly yellowing, but the droop was the biggest concern. The distance from light has been increased from the initial 1-2" for the UV and 27k respectively. We'll see if it helps. The UV barely gets warm so I had it close... maybe too close. Trying to get the temp and rh on par is a game of musical chairs currently what with outside forces changing. The hue in the cab is different from the pictures, so don't be fooled. I need white light to see them properly... they may not actually be yellowing. Tomorrow I'll do that and update with a couple pictures. And... apparently I did grow in here before. I just don't remember it. I'll look back on my posts to see what I can find that might help. I really need to quit toking... if I can remember to do it
Yeah, I might swap out the UV for 65k, and maybe another 27k. Been considering an overhaul on the lighting, including removal of the carbon filter since I don't care about the smell. The UV actually works well at keeping the plants short and nodes tighter, which is nice for SOG, but that plan is a little skewed now that a few were transplanted. The UV is each 8w and the 27k is 15.5w, for a total of 47w. What would you suggest for lighting?
The 8w uv is completely usless. The 2700k 15.5 w will grow plants well but it's still very weak on watts.
Actually, the UV has a purpose and is quite effective for that purpose. I underestimated it's capability and function initially, thus disregarded it entirely. But out of my curiosity and interest to learn about nature I decided to dig deeper. UV light does indeed serve a purpose, but most people find it unnecessary for various reasons, and for the most part I agree. They're best used in combination with other spectrums - never as the sole source of light. And this cab was built for the purpose of experimenting with the UV spectrum. As for the overall wattage, as a means of measurement for light efficiency, I'm within the acceptable range - just barely... not ideal, or exceptional, and yields won't be either. But as I said, my intent isn't yield. That said, more watts are welcome. And since SOG is out now, and I'm not documenting the experiment at the moment, I may as well swap the UV for higher wattage 5+k and another 27k. It was something that I was considering doing to combat the increasingly cooler temperatures outside. Along with replacing the exhaust fan with a higher CFM on a controller, allowing better heat mitigation and increased wattage range. We'll see how involved I get with it... my main focus is on preparing the new room. Btw, I was wrong about having never used it to grow before. I did, and a few pictures were uploaded to the forum... I have absolutely no recollection of it, except for the incident I posted about in the sick plants section. Found those posts while exploring the new forum features.
For anyone interested, here's a link to the forgotten grow. There's a follow up on the next page with pictures of the plants prior to the treatment with H2O2. (Something that was unnecessary... wasn't WPM, but rather foot powder) I wasn't aware that someone asked me about one of the plants until now. Their quote indicating which picture they were referring to has since been replaced with "" but I presume that they were asking about discoloration and the form taken on by the plant in the third picture on the next page. The answer, to their question would be "too much UV, or just enough" depending on the growers intent. [URL]https://forum.grasscity.com/posts/24691278/[/URL]
I fell asleep early last night, but I did check on them tonight. They were all dry enough for a feeding. The N should help them perk up. I turned off the grow lights and put them under white light to have a better look at them and to the naked eye they're a healthy green. As for the droop... Maybe it's just the genetics. I don't remember what the MW looked like the last time I grew it, and I don't have the pictures on hand to compare. And come to think of it, the NL in here might be a cross with MW, because I did use NL pollen on one in a past grow. I think I'm just going to brush it off and keep chugging along.