WW - Ice - Northern Lights - B52

Hi All!
It's been awhile since my last grow...about 3 years.
But I was cleaning out my old grow equipment and found I had some left over seeds from previous grows. Since I am one that hates to waste I figured the least I could do is see what I could do with these seeds.

So I sprouted them and now have:
2 = White Widows
2 = Ice
5 = Northern Lights
3 = B52

They are one day popped as of this writing.
All look good except one of the ice seedlings. It had some trouble with the starter leaves sticking together. But it looks like they have separated without surgery so we shall see.

This will be a deep water culture in home made bubblers.
I will be veggin these under a 400W MH.
Flowering will be done under a 1000W HPS.
Hopefully I will get mothers from the WW and Ice (2 or my favorites)

The grow area is a 3'x6'x8' closet painted flat white.
Fresh air is vented from the outside or AC depending on temps.
I took one of these and fabricated duct work for it. One end sits in a window or connects to my window AC and the other forces air in at the bottom of the cab.
The cabs outlet vent has an inline blower with a carbon scrubber that vents to the attic. This way I have a constant flow of fresh air coming from the bottom up through the plants and filtered before entering the attic. There is also positive pressure in the room since the outlet is smaller than the intake. I read somewhere once that this was a good thing.



My last grow with this cab resulted in a nice quantity of cured premium bud and I had some temp problems until I got my ventilation straightened out:




I'll post some picks of the babies as soon as I dig out my camera and charge the batteries. Think I need to take a couple of tokes of motivation here first.

There is just nothing better than growing IMHO.
Except perhaps enjoying the fruits



Let the Fun Begin!!

LowGrow

 

Well I finally got my cab all cleaned out and everything hooked up and ready to go.
I went and did a little shopping last night. I bought some flat white paint to give the slightly dull white in the cab a facelift. I also bought some linoleum flooring to put down in the cab over the carpet.
I ended up putting this face down on the floor as the back of the flooring is Flat White and not shiney as to cause any burning.
Since my 400W MH bulb is about 10 years old I also picked up one of these at Home Depot. I was happy to find it for under $30. Nice and bright it is.

I bought a couple of new 5 gallon buckets also. These will be for my 2 choice plants. The aluminum tape I bought to cover them with is a little bit too thin I think. Guess I'm going to have to break down and spend the extra for the thick stuff. I'll keep this other for sealing vents and reflectors and such.

I did manage to find my camera and the rechargable batteries. Just need to find the charger now. Not really much to show yet except seedlings and the cab.

One thing I do different from a lot of people is I sit my potted seedlings in a tub of water with 2 airstones and a pump running. This way I can get my floros down close and still keep the humidty high. Note that the water is not high enough to make the rockwool wet but just keep it damp from the humidity.
I have done this for years with good results.

I do change the water every day though and bleach out the container since the water is exposed to light. Don't want to take any chances on growing anything else besides my babies.

I'll leave them in this until they have roots coming out of the bottom
Then they go in the buckets and the MH light goes on them. They'll get about 4 weeks of intensive light therapy before going 12/12 under the 1000W HPS if all goes well.
I usually start the light about 36" above the plants and slowly move it within 2 feet in a week or so. A lot depends upon how the plants act towards the light. If they can take it with the light closer then it will be closer. It only takes about an hour to see if there are any negative effects. If so I back it off several inches.

I did have a couple of babies that would not open their first leaves because of the inside seed membrane cover holding them closed. I operated on them and removed this. They seem to be coming to life from what would have been certain death.

I'll be back in awhile with some pics.

Peace
LowGrow

 

2 Days Old



The 2 babies I operated on that would have died. They seem to be coming around.



Delivery Room



Can you find the Stanley Blower? I modified a box to wrap around it. Then cut holes in the desk to run the duct work. Then the intake duct goes through the green bag(cut holes in the bag on bottom and the back facing the window) on top of the desk and out to the window. The flow goes to the cab. You can barely hear it when it is on.



Pic of the vented sun systems reflector



A home made manual light mover. Looking at putting a motor on it.



Cab Fresh Air Intake into the cab from the stanley blower. I am painting the cab tonight.



The White Widows. Hope there is at least one girl out fo the two

 

There better be some girls in there or I quit

I still have some of the WW bud from several years ago and it still packs a punch every time I smoke it.

I sure would like to restock with that
Fingers crossed

LowGrow

 

Well I had the Hopeful girls under the big light for a couple of nights now.
They loved it the instant I turned it on. It almost looked like I saw them growing by the hour. The light is about 28 inches over them and they show no signs of stress.
I do have a small fan blowing on them to strenghten their stems and keep the air circulating around them.

I also now have them in a bin with super oxegenated PHed water.
The pots are about an inch in the water but the rockwool is not so it just stays moist. Once the roots hit the water the rapid growth will begin.

The 2 plants that I operated on are doing fine. In another week you won't be able to tell they had a hinderance.
I did have one of the 12 that popped up that the seed would not split on. The sprout's tail seems very healthy so I managed to gently take the seed covering off. I know it will most likely die but for the moment the little leaf ball seems happy and is turning green.

So that leaves me 11 healthy plants and one that is a ball.....
They are about 5 days old now.

I'll wait to see good root growth through the clay pellets before I put them into their buckets.

Another thing I did, since I have my box in the room I work from (I telecommute) was to run a kill switch for the entire operation mounted under my desk. So if someone comes around I don't want to hear the noise, one flick of the switch shuts it down without having to scramble to the box to hit the power-strip button. I keep it under lock and key and hate trying to hurry to quiet the noise when someone un-anounced comes around or need to kill the lights when I hear a helicopter in the neighborhood.

I remember when I was a kid and was bored my mom would tell me to go watch the grass grow. Guess I took her advise!

 

Lesson learned, if your rockwool is old do not use it!

I noticed the babies hadn't grown for a day and that is unusual at that age. Usually you can see daily growth. Plus I have seen this before. So I took the weakest one and opened up the rockwool to have a look inside.

As I feared the roots were not growing through the rockwool and all of the plants were rootbound. So I cut each cube open lengthways and put in some perlite creating a hollow channel of perlite to allow the roots to grow through to the bottom. I then loosely folded the rockwool back together and tied a band around them to hold them closed while I put them back into their netpots.

I knew there was a chance of killing them but they were going to die if I didn't do something.
So today I opened the cab in fear of seeing a bunch of dead seedlings, but low and behold the girls leaves have all perked out and there are roots coming out of the bottom of a couple of them!!
Even one better, the seedling that was a ball that I removed the shell from, it has shot out leaves and appears like it will be ok.


So after a slight delay and some doctoring I am back on track it looks like.
I usually start my seedlings in peat pots except the last time I grew (3 years ago) I tried rockwool and it seemed to work fine.
This time around I guess the rockwool had degraded somehow and they became dense and wouldn't let the roots grow through. I thought they looked a little different from what I had remembered.

Next time I start from seed I'll buy new rockwool or use peat pots for the seedlings.

So let my setback be a lesson, never use old rockwool and make sure whatever you use is good and loose to allow free root growth.

On an off note, me and my youngest son, who is over 18, just recently started smoking together. He kept mentioning how he had never smoked out of a bong and was wanting to. It seemed like a good time to teach him some economics and physics.

So I took him to home depot and spent $10 on plumbing fittings instead of the head shop to spend $100.

This little baby, that we named the baby killer, will knock you socks off and straighten your pubes! I'm adding a 45 degree elbow for a mouth piece. We're then going to paint it black and put some art work on it. Then we'll put several coats of clear finish over that. I'm going to replace the metal pipe fittings with brass fittings also.

The reason we call it the Baby Killer? Once you put a bud from your baby in there it is soon toast. As are you.

This thing is like flushing a toilet. The draw is so strong it puts out most lighters so I had to pick up a grill lighter for it. But DAMN! You want to talk about a blast from the past. This thing will definitely curl your toes while cooling your smoke!
I don't think my son said a word for about an hour after we tried it except to say "WOW" though I did see a couple of sideways mushroom clouds coming from his face when he was hitting it

The top bowl is removeable leaving the large party bowl if desired.




You can't use a normal lighter

 

Everything is looking good today.
One thing I noticed, when the light first comes on in the morning the PH will be a bit high. After about an hour of lights on the PH drops and comes back close to what it should be.
So I am wondering, is it the light that is causing the PH to drop or the temperature change?

 

LOL......the stand works pretty good. I'll customize it to hold the bong properly someday when I'm bored.

I know this bong is only for special occasions. It burns the hell out of a bag of weed.
I was looking at running a trigger connected to a lid via wire and a series of small pullies.

When you push the trigger it covers the carb and opens a lid on the bowl for lighting. When you let off the trigger the lid closes, stopping the herb from burning and being wasted while you get knocked in the head from opening the carb.

 

Yeah, I had a shit load of bud last crop. The WW buds were huge from that 1000W light. So where the other buds but I kept all of the WW for myself and let the rest go.
One thing I can say is that I do still get high on it every time I smoke it.
But it will be nice to have something fresh and not so couch locking. It defnitely turned over time.

Makes sense about the scrubber. I think I need to increase the blower size, It was a little warm last time.

The babies are looking good and the one I had to remove the outer seed from is thriving. So that gives me 12 to start with. I hope to take some mothers. Hopefully one will be a white widow. An ice would be nice also.
The northern lights are looking the best out of all of the seedlings and will probably be my biggest producers. Of course B52 is a large producing strain also.

I guess I am going to break down and buy a light mover instead of making one:
HydroFarm: Hydrofarm 6' Light Track [eco-5590] - Light Movers, Lifts, Yo-yo, Hangers & Brackets - Grow Lighting Systems, Fixtures, Movers, Ballasts, Sockets, Reflectors & Components - Horticulture Source

 

Well it's been a few days and the hopeful girls have come a long way though it seems a bit slow to me. Perhaps I am just being impatient though. I know starting from seed is slower....sigh...
I'll post some pics tomorrow, too "relaxed" at the moment to get up

I do have a mixed variety of shapes and sizes.
2 of the tallest will be males I would bet. They seem to have a male look about them imho. Unfortunately one of these is a white widow. The other ww plant looks a bit deformed, but healthy and growing. They might not be males but sometimes male plants just look different from the others. Sometimes ... but not always.

The roots have grown through the rockwool so I am relieved about that.

I have had them on 1/8 mixture of nutes for the past 3 days in a small homemade ebb and flow system I made for them. Actually I had very slow growth until I put them in this.

I'm going to up the mixture to 1/4 strength today as they seem to be wanting it.
Though the WW that I think is a male did burn a little the first day of feeding. But it is now thriving and the biggest of the bunch.
All of the others enjoyed the first meal just fine with almost instant results. You could actually watch as they got a deeper green when I first fed them. It was pretty cool.
They all are definitely hungry today it looks like.

They'll probably go into their bubblers next week if they're ready. I want good healthy roots before I put them in or it is just a waste.
Then 2 to 3 weeks of vegging depending how I decide to grow them. I do want to make sure to get some good clones pre-flower. I know I can do it after they sex but I have had some issues with that in the past and don't want to chance it.

So kewl! I have some babies heading towards adulthood

 

I wonder if males are more prone to burn on the first feeding?
Anyone know of any studies done on this?
I have noticed that the males get a bit more stretchy and sparse look about them and I have gotten pretty good about identifying them. But there are always ones that can fool you both ways.

It's fun to get seeds going and all but give me clones any day!

Well, I gave them their first 1/4 strength dose today. So far everything looks ok.

I think I slowed them for about a weeks worth of growth due to the old rockwool. But now that the roots have made it through I can see almost hourly growth it seems like.
I just want to hold off putting them into their bubblers until I absolutely have to. Dealing with friggin 80 gallons of nutrients is a lot of work. Especially when you don't know what their sex is.

I'll try and get some pics up later.

 

sounds logical and most likely applies in nature but in an indoor controlled environment where all receive the identical treatment it seems like some are just prone to being males or else all would be girls wouldn't they? (i wish)
I believe the last time I started from seed about 25% were males.
I kind of hope about 6 will be males out of the 16 plants. 10 nice plants will be plenty I believe if I go for the larger growth. I love having the extra large buds on the bigger plants.

It looks like the feeding went well for the babies. The light green is turning darker and the leaves are stretching wide and looking happy. It's amazing how plants in hydro can react so fast to changes.