Good Morning, Afternoon, Evening etc AFN,
Been lurking for a while now, gathering ideas and information. Now seems to be the right time to step out of the lurky shadows and say Hi!
Here's yet another grow journal, log, random spattering of pics and all that, hopefully I will learn more about what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong and what else I could be doing.
So I decided to take the plunge to grow after years and years of extortionate bud prices getting ever higher, I've gone for a small cupboard setup which can house between 5 and 8 plants.
I'm growing in a soil mix, had a hard time finding anywhere local that stocked suitable soil mixes so in the end went for a bag of seedling mix and some all-purpose peat compost and a healthy dose of Perlite, at roughly a ratio of 2/1/1
Again, as with the soils, I had a hard time finding decent Nutes available in stores in the area. After many hours wandering various garden centres and DIY/Gardening type shops I eventually went for Baby-Bio (I know, I know... ) and Wilkinson's Tomato food, with the respective NPKs - 10.6/4.4/1.7 & 5/6/10.
I've been feeding with Nutes (Baby Bio at 1/4-1/2 strength maximum and the Wilko feed at 1/2 strength) every other feed since week 2 or 3, on the off weeks they have had either pure water or water with a molasses solution mixed in at roughly 1 teaspoon per 1.5lt of water.
Each watering consists of 1 pint (1/2 litre) of water with either the nutes or molasses in, then another half pint of pure water to help ensure there isn't a big salts build-up at the plant base. They seem to be loving it.
I've also been using a molasses solution (at a much weaker concentration) as a foliar feed every other day or so.
I'm using a 20/4 time period with 2x 105w 2700k CFLs for flowering and also have a couple of 6400k bulbs for the first couple of week's, the layout can be seen here:
Temps between 75F and 90F all seems good.
The Cabinet was a 2 drawer, 2 door affair, that is now "hollowed out" with the drawer facings attached to the doors to give a stealth look, and it was more fun than not doing it...
The reflectors are made from Celebrations tub's lids, cut in half and the card backing from A4 writing pads taped, on the long sides to the halved choc tub lids, lined with Emergency blanket and parked ontop of the CFL ballast. I was quite chuffed with them as they cost me next to nothing and made a noticable difference light the plants receive.
I've built 3 light traps to cover, 2 exhaust and one intake. The exhausts have a carbon filter for cooker hoods built in but I have also made my own cylindrical filter which I may attach during late flowering. I can get photos of it and discuss how I made it if anyone is particularly interested.. that is, assuming it works!
Onto the plants:
The germ date for my oldest 2 (1 Shortryder, 1 Bubble) is around the 27th Dec 2012, being my first time attempting a grow I managed to create and fall foul of a catalogue of errors, even though I'd read and researched for weeks before starting, so they have been severly slowed and are currently ~10days into flowering and just beginning to start exploding with pistles.
I've also had to LST both adults, I had planned for this but hadn't expected the LST to need to be so aggressive... (Shortryder left pic, Bubble right pic)
Anyway, they seem to be doing well. That is now I've found out what "too much" Baby Bio does to young autos...
As can be seen in the above pics, I have stripped down the lower branches and stubby growth now that they have truely entered flowering - having seen a lot of mixed feelings on this I decided to take another plunge and give that a go as both adults were beginning to become very bushy with lots of off-shoots. I guess this is due to the LST helping the lower nodes get better light and thus spreading the growth around?
The younger plants (left side of the cabinet pic) were germed on the 5th Feb 2013 or thereabouts, and seem to be doing just fine. They have very recently started their flowering cycle.
In general the second set of plants are doing much better than their predecessors - faster growth, no nute burn slowing etc and a feeding schedule that has been tested already. Here's some pics
That's the Shortryder just before a water, I've named her Dappy. She grew about 6cm horizontally whilst being 1mm under the ground and only seemd to figure out up was a good direction, when I blocked her path with a match. Women drivers....
And here is my 2nd Bubblelicious girl, this one has the smart genes and went straight up.
All the above pics are about a week old and so the girls have gone through various stages of growth, will throw more pics up as and when I get the time to
Finally, we have a little bag seed hopeful -
With a little luck, this baby will turn out to be female and I'll have a mother I can take some clones from.
I'll be germing 2 more seeds in the coming week I imagine, I am intending this to be a perpetual set up.. when I get them germing (soggy paper towel in zip lock bag method) I'll get them included in the thread.
As a side note, I'm looking for a taller cabinet to convert into a flowering chamber for the plants as I dont fancy LSTing every plant I grow from now on.
The more eagle eyed may have noticed I neither mention nor have a pH monitor.. it's simple really. I don't have one! I know that water from my area, when filtered through a BRITA filter comes out at 6.5, whilst it doesn't tell me what my Nuted water is at, or what my rootzone or run-off is at, I know I'm starting in the right area and so far (touch wood) I have yet to have any pH issues.
Thanks for taking the time to read my sprawling post, hope some of you have some related tid-bits or links I may find useful.
Happy smoking AFN :smokebuds:
Been lurking for a while now, gathering ideas and information. Now seems to be the right time to step out of the lurky shadows and say Hi!
Here's yet another grow journal, log, random spattering of pics and all that, hopefully I will learn more about what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong and what else I could be doing.
So I decided to take the plunge to grow after years and years of extortionate bud prices getting ever higher, I've gone for a small cupboard setup which can house between 5 and 8 plants.
I'm growing in a soil mix, had a hard time finding anywhere local that stocked suitable soil mixes so in the end went for a bag of seedling mix and some all-purpose peat compost and a healthy dose of Perlite, at roughly a ratio of 2/1/1
Again, as with the soils, I had a hard time finding decent Nutes available in stores in the area. After many hours wandering various garden centres and DIY/Gardening type shops I eventually went for Baby-Bio (I know, I know... ) and Wilkinson's Tomato food, with the respective NPKs - 10.6/4.4/1.7 & 5/6/10.
I've been feeding with Nutes (Baby Bio at 1/4-1/2 strength maximum and the Wilko feed at 1/2 strength) every other feed since week 2 or 3, on the off weeks they have had either pure water or water with a molasses solution mixed in at roughly 1 teaspoon per 1.5lt of water.
Each watering consists of 1 pint (1/2 litre) of water with either the nutes or molasses in, then another half pint of pure water to help ensure there isn't a big salts build-up at the plant base. They seem to be loving it.
I've also been using a molasses solution (at a much weaker concentration) as a foliar feed every other day or so.
I'm using a 20/4 time period with 2x 105w 2700k CFLs for flowering and also have a couple of 6400k bulbs for the first couple of week's, the layout can be seen here:
Temps between 75F and 90F all seems good.
The Cabinet was a 2 drawer, 2 door affair, that is now "hollowed out" with the drawer facings attached to the doors to give a stealth look, and it was more fun than not doing it...
The reflectors are made from Celebrations tub's lids, cut in half and the card backing from A4 writing pads taped, on the long sides to the halved choc tub lids, lined with Emergency blanket and parked ontop of the CFL ballast. I was quite chuffed with them as they cost me next to nothing and made a noticable difference light the plants receive.
I've built 3 light traps to cover, 2 exhaust and one intake. The exhausts have a carbon filter for cooker hoods built in but I have also made my own cylindrical filter which I may attach during late flowering. I can get photos of it and discuss how I made it if anyone is particularly interested.. that is, assuming it works!
Onto the plants:
The germ date for my oldest 2 (1 Shortryder, 1 Bubble) is around the 27th Dec 2012, being my first time attempting a grow I managed to create and fall foul of a catalogue of errors, even though I'd read and researched for weeks before starting, so they have been severly slowed and are currently ~10days into flowering and just beginning to start exploding with pistles.
I've also had to LST both adults, I had planned for this but hadn't expected the LST to need to be so aggressive... (Shortryder left pic, Bubble right pic)
Anyway, they seem to be doing well. That is now I've found out what "too much" Baby Bio does to young autos...
As can be seen in the above pics, I have stripped down the lower branches and stubby growth now that they have truely entered flowering - having seen a lot of mixed feelings on this I decided to take another plunge and give that a go as both adults were beginning to become very bushy with lots of off-shoots. I guess this is due to the LST helping the lower nodes get better light and thus spreading the growth around?
The younger plants (left side of the cabinet pic) were germed on the 5th Feb 2013 or thereabouts, and seem to be doing just fine. They have very recently started their flowering cycle.
In general the second set of plants are doing much better than their predecessors - faster growth, no nute burn slowing etc and a feeding schedule that has been tested already. Here's some pics
That's the Shortryder just before a water, I've named her Dappy. She grew about 6cm horizontally whilst being 1mm under the ground and only seemd to figure out up was a good direction, when I blocked her path with a match. Women drivers....
And here is my 2nd Bubblelicious girl, this one has the smart genes and went straight up.
All the above pics are about a week old and so the girls have gone through various stages of growth, will throw more pics up as and when I get the time to
Finally, we have a little bag seed hopeful -
With a little luck, this baby will turn out to be female and I'll have a mother I can take some clones from.
I'll be germing 2 more seeds in the coming week I imagine, I am intending this to be a perpetual set up.. when I get them germing (soggy paper towel in zip lock bag method) I'll get them included in the thread.
As a side note, I'm looking for a taller cabinet to convert into a flowering chamber for the plants as I dont fancy LSTing every plant I grow from now on.
The more eagle eyed may have noticed I neither mention nor have a pH monitor.. it's simple really. I don't have one! I know that water from my area, when filtered through a BRITA filter comes out at 6.5, whilst it doesn't tell me what my Nuted water is at, or what my rootzone or run-off is at, I know I'm starting in the right area and so far (touch wood) I have yet to have any pH issues.
Thanks for taking the time to read my sprawling post, hope some of you have some related tid-bits or links I may find useful.
Happy smoking AFN :smokebuds:
