New Grower Auto Berry Feminized first auto indoor grow for an old gardner...

[Rhyce Saroni]

Light dawns on Marblehead... Doh!

:slaps:

Sooooo... I was sitting in the Green Room aka Auto Zone aka Man Cave South, sipping a cup of coffee and puffin' on a Blue Dream :smoke:grooving on the crop when all of a sudden it hit me :no:...

Check out this picture I took last night, keeping in mind that I'm growing 5 Berry's and 1 Mango...

Notice anything obvious? Yes, 1 plant is much greener than the other 5. Read the strain description Rhyce, oh yeah, Auto Berry's leaves and flowers look blue... Duh! They're starting to get that nice TURQUOISE BLUE hue! Aaaaaaaand, Chica (top right) turns out to be the Mango afterall. Totally different structure and appearance, she's packin' some heat, beefy trunk (1.25 cm) and limbs (.76 cm).

It took me a birds eye view to finally take my bong goggles off and realize this. I feel like such a putz! I really have to start using labels. Good thing the beans are labeled. Ha ha ha!.................................. :Hookah:

It all makes sense really, I was pretty sure but not positive that Chica was the Mango but waffled when I noticed Ella (front right) taking off and looking different than the other Berry's. No... Ella is not a Mango, just a 28 cm tall Berry!

I totally forgot that the Berry's are supposed to look Blue all over. Wow. They'll never look the same.

Ha ha ha, RS

 

[Rhyce Saroni]

Looks like you got it going on RS, hope my 1st grow goes half as well! :thumbs:

Yo Need man, have you started growing yet? I've been in outer space and may have missed this...

RS

 

[Rhyce Saroni]

Hi, Rhyce I used to have two 4x4 tents, one veg and one flower. The way I "tuned" the humidity (they were 3 feet from each other) was to put a humidifier inside the veg tent, keeping it around 65% rh by playing with the output knob. It would vent to the room. The flower tent, with the rh from the veg venting, would stay around 36-40% most of the time. I just had to play with the exhaust fan temp controller to find the sweet spot for exhausting the flower tent, and it would stay stable.. until I spaced filling the humidifier.... lololol

Ohhh... Missed this Waxi. Thanks for telling me about this. I did order a speed regulator for the in-line fan and still have the orig humidifier that was in the veg tent. I'll try this before getting too radical with my other ideas.

RS

Gracia! RS

 

[Need4Weed]

Yo Need man, have you started growing yet? I've been in outer space and may have missed this...

RS

hi RS, I just put 1 fem seed in the dirt yesterday, after soaking. In approx a month I'll have more room by converting an old shower, but it's in part of the house that I don't heat.

 

[Rhyce Saroni]

hi RS, I just put 1 fem seed in the dirt yesterday, after soaking. In approx a month I'll have more room by converting an old shower, but it's in part of the house that I don't heat.

What a great idea. The lights always help with that. Especially in a shower stall. Can't wait to see. You should see little green leaves in abut four days. Most of what I've done takes four days to jump, no matter what I do.

Best of luck my friend

RS :SuperMod Action:

 

[Need4Weed]

What a great idea. The lights always help with that. Especially in a shower stall. Can't wait to see. You should see little green leaves in abut four days. Most of what I've done takes four days to jump, no matter what I do.

Best of luck my friend

RS :SuperMod Action:

Right now I have a cfl in a cardboard box, lol ... just something to mess with

 

[Rhyce Saroni]

What I've learned so far and what I'm doing different now that's working...

Just taking a moment to reflect on my first attempt to grow indoors with auto-flowering ganja. Here's what did and didn't work thus far and why...

I'd gotten free disposable plastic bag pots so I used them. They don't dry out fast enough and don't breathe. Not good on two fronts. The moisture is hard to maintain with young plants and there's limited access to oxygen for the roots. I wound up poking holes in the bags so as to allow more air to the lower soil layers. I'm now using 3 gal (15 liter) fabric pots and love them thus far. My new grow is in these and the level of control they are allowing me with regards to moisture is perfect. I'm assuming that the fabric is allowing the roots to breathe as well. Finally I spray the water on to the ground giving the stuff one last shot at grabbing another oxygen atom on the way to the soil.

Wanting low maintenance overall, I thought I'd try out dripping my water via Tropf Blumat drip irrigation. It was a great idea but was real hard to dial in the right amount of moisture and my soil wound up wetter than I wanted. I ditched it, prayed and waited while the soil dried out and switched to spraying moisture on the soil by hand. It's real easy to use and control the amount of moisture or nutes I put on the soil AND it does not make the soil compact AT ALL. The soil in my new grow is wicked fluffy and perfectly moist like I'd been wanting all along. A dream.

I was using sump water originally (which PHs fine) and it worked real nice. Filtered ground water... Nice. Then the sump froze and I ran out and got a few gallons of RO water to hold me over. Good idea BUT... The water I'd been using has tons of trace minerals in it. The minute I started using the RO water without adding any CaMg supplement my plants showed deficiency and I spent a few days making up for it. I'm back to using snow for now and adjusting the PH because it's real alkaline. Still adding CaMg too. All is well. My big point here is that when I switched from a mineral rich water source to one that had NOTHING in it, I was screwed. I failed to account for the lack of minerals in the RO water. I much rather prefer ground water for organic growing as I believe that it has what tap or RO water are missing.

Being as it's beneficial to get as much oxygen to the roots as one can, I also started bubbling the water with a fish pump and stone in 4 gallons of PH'd water. This worked out well and then I read where someone was using oxygen tabs (used in aquariums abroad) in addition to bubbling water. So I set out to find these things and wound up buying some on-line from a company in the UK. Pet stores in the US don't sell them for some reason. The UK order was taking too long to arrive so I searched again and found that you can get oxygen tablets sold by bait stores which are used to oxygenate water in bait buckets. I've got them now and checked the water after an hour and there were tons of small bubbles clinging to the sides of the bucket and to a dropper floating on the surface so it works. The new grow has received nothing but this water and is currently growing aggressively.

I tried to drip nutrients in the soil via the dripper and of course that was a total crap out. Dripping of organic nutrients turns out to be way too much hassle than it's worth. I wound up totally reversing myself on this one, stopped dripping, began ground spraying and found a person on this site who published an organic nutrient program and have been using it religiously with the addition of Bud Candy (suggestion by a proven AFN grower) and the results are thus far great.

Humidity in the grow room is important and I have a humidifier for that but with two tents (one flower, one veg) in the same room we've now got another problem on our hands. I'm doing a couple of things that are working for now, running the grow room filter/fan at lower rpm and keeping the humidifier in or next to the veg tent and propping the door open to the rest of the cellar and directing the 25% humidity air towards the flower tent. Segregation and control of air flow are the key in this area. When they try to sell you the optional speed adjuster with your fan, buy it, you won't be sorry.

Being an organic gardener outdoors is much different than organic growing indoors with such fast plants. Everything happens so quickly that my outdoor methods would take way too long. By adding a few measuring tools I'm able to tell what's going on in an instant and then react accordingly which is so important when you are growing something that can't wait. Reliable moisture and PH meters are a must as well as a water test kit. Professional analysis are always great to have done. Everywhere I've read says that beyond simple tests like PH, complex and expensive test kits are a waste of money. Let a professional lab do it. In the US the local agricultural extension office will do it for free.

I started my first grow like I was growing photo regulars outdoors and it was perhaps my biggest mistake. Once I'd started reading about how to grow autos, I realized that I'd made a big mistake in that I'd started my beans in little peat pots. I quickly transplanted them and firmly believe that even though I transplanted them at an early age, it was already too late and there is stunting of growth as a result. My second grow is either direct ground sown or germinated in a paper towel and sown directly in the final and only container. Although the strains this time are different, I can tell that there is a marked difference in the vitality and growth of the new crop.

Soooooo... At this point I feel much more confident about what I'm doing and why. If you read through this thread, I'm hoping that you'll find this because some of my hair brained ideas which might have sounded real groovy, were ill conceived by me or the wrong tools provided by others. Don't try them. Learn from my mistakes.

At this point by far in a way, the one thing I can say that I'm doing which has proven to be most radical in my attempts to give these plants their best shot at a full and prosperous life... Is ground spraying. I'll never pour water or nutrients directly on the soil again!!! The new crop has never had anything but ground spraying. The soil is perfect and the plants are happy! The spraying technique is thus far my discovery and at this point I swear by it.

By learning and addressing the major factors that influence the plant's life and particular needs (every species have them), I've gotten things so that I can accurately control them and with proper application of each, get great results.

Best, Rhyce Saroni :tiphat:

 

[Need4Weed]

Well written Rhyce and very informative!

 

[oldster]

Rhyce -

Have really enjoyed follow what you are up to and how diligent you are about documenting. Happy Growing

 

[Rhyce Saroni]

Thanks Need! I was reading through my documentation and figured that I'd better post something about some of the hair brained ideas I try out and whether or not they were worth it. Plus it kind of summarizes where I'm at right now with respect to my current protocols.

RS