Let the grow continue! So got 2 seedlings sprouted the other day, 1 sour diesel and 1 Kerala X skunk, from herbies. Hopefully a third will sprout soon, another skunk if it does. The skunk sprouted 2 days ahead of diesel and its first few sets of leaves are looking a little deformed. Hopefully the next set will come out looking straighter. I'm running a dual box setup, the grow box being the dealzer cash crop grow box with (3) 13 watt and (2) 26 watt CFL's.I upgraded the resevoir from the included 1-gal to a new 4-gal. Light cycle 18-6, no feeding yet, will start slowly on the 3rd or 4th set of fan leaves. I'm still using the included nutrients from dealzer with good results so far with my white widow, you can check that out on my grow box build page. The flower box, detailed in the link, is a 48"x 24"x 18" box with a 600W HPS. I let the widow veg out about 30 days and it got pretty huge, I think I'm going to keep the veg time down on this next set to 3 weeks.
The third plant didn't make it, never even started to germ, so I'm down to these two left. Growth is looking good so far with little to no stretching.
Progress on the remaining Sour Diesel and Kerala Skunk. Lightly feeding them now. I think instead of LST'ing down to the bucket I'm going to train them to the wallls of the box so new shoots can grow in to the light. Make it more like a tall bush than a squat one.
Update Time!! So these plants have taken off really well and grown so much more in the first 2 weeks than my widow did on my first/last grow. Seeing how I will not be around for a few days, I don't think I can afford to let them veg any longer. My continued widow grow exploded when I switched to flower. You can see how much its grown since I put it into flower in my sig. Sadly since it is so far from harvest and I didn't expect it to dominate my flower box like it has I will have to flower this round of Diesel and Skunk in the veg box. I swapped out the 3 daylight bulbs for 2700k and started to LST them both to the side of the box. I'm hoping to train them to grow up the wall and grow in towards the hanging lights in the middle. The skunk is the one on the right, it has a few leaf sets on the sour.
Back from vacation and am impressed with the growth. The diesel pulled her tie off the wall so she really got into the light and burned, the skunk a little bit but not as bad. A lot of side growth has formed and they are both branching nicely. Added a couple more ties to get the tops back against the wall and tied a couple lower branches down in the middle.
[SUB]Sad news, Skunk ended up being a male so now I'm down to just the one Diesel. Shes feminized though so no worries on that front. Temps have been super hot here lately, I'm having trouble keeping the room below 85F, messed with the light schedule a bit so it comes on later at night when its cooler. Flushed out the reservoir tonight, replaced with distilled water. Since I've been slacking on getting distilled, my tap water has been rotting the roots a bit I think. They were turning a grey-grown color. [/SUB]
So its been awhile but the little girl is doing great. Some leaves have been growing into the lights which I've been trimming away, but some hairs are starting to grow so I'm hoping the stretching part of the growth for this plant is over.
Left for a couple days and come back to find her growing into 3 different lights! Definitely some burnt to a crisp leaves. The new nutes I gave her last week at 1/4 strength was still to strong, new growth curled and deformed pretty quick, will give her a few more days and try again at 1/10 strength. Pistils are coming out more plentifully now but the growth was a problem. I undid all my ties to rethink my situation. What I did is spun the net pot 180 degrees, putting the outward growth towards the wall. Then I bent her back the opposite way and tied the top down to the far right net pot. Because of this I had to move all the hanging lights up with the rest since the new training levels out the canopy a bit...
Growth is still great, most fans have 11 leaves and they are about as big as my palm. Everything is still a strong, dark green, except for those shoots that grew into the lights. Put in nutes at a much lower strength and no adverse effects yet. Plucked a lot of bud shoots from the lower branches last night that have no chance of making it through that canopy. Other than they just leaving her be and watching more and more pistils form. I wish my other plant was growing as healthy as this one.
Added 6 cups of nute mix to reservoir, which puts it at roughly 1/10th strength with a 3.5-4 gallon reservoir. I should start keeping track on here exactly how much I put in and when, otherwise its just guesswork.
She seems to have reacted well to the nutes, leaves have gotten a little straighter and pointing a little upward. Just a touch of yellowing on the tips so will keep nutes at same strength for next feeding.
So, due to poor conditions of my second plant I have chopped it to make hash. Therefore I now have space in my 600W HPS cabinet so tonight I moved her to the bigger cabinet and was able to spread her out a little bit. Right now I have the top of the canopy about 16" from the bottom of the hood, temps at 12" below the hood are hovering at 80 degrees. Ambient room temp is up at 78 so only 2 degrees off. When I moved her and was able to open her up I noticed quite a few leaves yellowing and turning brown (Not due to the previous light burns). It looks like a nitrogen deficiency primarily, so I added an additional 12 mL of Cal-mag plus and 15 mL of Probloom nutes to the reservoir. I'm using RO water so I like to add cal-mag more often. Reservoir is about 4 gals so not to strong of a mix.
Now that my second cabinet is free I went ahead and stuck 2 more seeds in some rockwool to germinate. I've tried the paper towel method, shot glass method, and what I find works best is to just put the seed in the medium and wait for it to pop, no worry of damaging the taproot when transplanting. The new seeds are Sweet Skunk Autos. Updates will come on these upon development.
So I've noticed my leaves have been getting worse. Last night I took a look at my roots and they are brown, ugh! So I flushed last night and added 15mL of H2O2 29% to the reservoir. From last night to tonight there was zero change in her condition. Tonight I switched the plant to my other container, little bigger, holds 5 gals. Its a little better light-proofed too. Cleaned the inside of the bin with rubbing alcohol and let the airstone soak in alcohol for a couple minutes. Also did a thorough rinse and clean of the roots, picked out little bits of leaf or whatever is tied up in there. They look noticeably better after the cleaning but still a little brown. Flushed again tonight, pH'd properly and added a total of 30mL of H2O2 29%. Thankfully the bud sites are still unaffected so I'm hoping to be able to sort this root/nute uptake issue before the problem progresses much further.
One of my autos has sprouted and its first set of ridge leaves are peaking out. The other seed I can see has cracked but has not sprouted yet. I'll consider this day 1 of this round's growth.
Added nutes to the diesel tonight. Roots aren't bone white still but are much lighter than before. Started a regimen of adding ice to the res. to bring water temps down to hopefully stop any further root problems. Nute strength added tonight equates to about 1/5th strength. 23mL of probloom, 6 mL of cal-mag, 6 mL of PK 13-14 to a 5 gal res.
Still a lot of yellowing, you can tell in the one comparison pic with a green leaf. I'm hoping she's just hungry from so long without food while I was trying to clean off the roots. Pistils are coming out with lots of crystals on them.
From the Skunk's only 1 sprouted. The other seed cracked a taproot started to form but it just quit. Its doing well, still just a few days up. The Sour Diesel is still yellowing a lot. I can't quite figure it out. Ph is good, temps are good, nutes are good, it still looks like it just wants to die, at least on the fan leaves. The buds are looking good so I'm kinda lost. Not sure if its a real problem or if its just part of this strains life cycle. I don't even know how long is left. From the buds there are, I'm still guessing 3 weeks.
Little guy is still doing well. Roots are growing quicker than either of my previous plants before so stoked for that. The big guy is not doing so well still. Flushed out the res with fresh water and found some surprises in the old water. The existing res had only been in there for 8 days and it had bunch of little floaties and the airstone is covered in crap. Added 15mL of cal mag. The roots are looking better, can see new growth in areas that looks really good and clean. Hopefully recovery is on the way.