New Grower First grow - Zamaldelica Express, Double Grape, Creme de la Chem

[terp182]

Here’s a spot for my first ever grow. I’m drafting several others’ grows, following their templates as closely as possible. Here are the details (this first draft is on my phone and I’ll update with more info later).

Strains:
Zamaldelica Express
Double Grape
Creme De Le Chem

Tent:
4x4x4

Lights:
MarsHydro SP-3000
MarsHydro TS-600
I’ll probably add another 3000 before this is said and done

Schedule:
24/0

Medium:
Mix of Botanicare coco/perlite, Roots Organic Original, and perlite, with a more soil-heavy mix on the bottom and slightly more coir on top.

Nutrients:
Megacrop, Sweet Candy, CalMag

Pots:
3x 5gal Autopots (tall fabric rolled down to about 3.5 gallons)

Soaked everything through with the Megacrop seedling concentration that Bushmaster and BriefBrief used.

Tent is consistently 75-77 F and 60-80% humidity right now. Capped the temp on the controller at 77 since VPD was going high at 79/80.

I had a hiccup similar to Mannik where I think I didn’t keep the seedlings moist enough before Day 5, so they may be slightly stunted. I also diluted their first feed to 50%, which may also have affected them. After getting them moist again they perked up, and I adjusted my feed schedule to every few days instead of every 5, for now anyway.

I’m a little concerned with the lighter green interior part of the ZE and the shading on the CDLC The light was a little close at 11 inches so I backed it to 17 and they all seem happy.

Looking forward to documenting this grow here! I’ve learned so much already just from others’ journals. EDIT: I was counting days from seeds wet above and in the pics below, instead of days since sprout. Future posts will be corrected. The DG and ZE below are Day 6, and the CDLC is at Day 5.

 

[fauxnacho]

Got all the gear for a great grow here bud

 

[terp182]

Is this something I should be concerned with? The Zamaldelica is looking a little ragged with some yellow internal splotches. She got watered a couple days ago, temps at 76ish and humidity around 65%. The light is at just over 25% at 17” from the tops. Any ideas?

 

[terp182]

Day 12 DG/ZE & Day 11 CDLC
As I said in the edit to my first post, I'm now correctly counting days from sprout instead of days from seeds wet, so this is 6 days from the first set of pics, not 2 as the red labels indicate.

The Double Grape is taking off already, almost reaching the sides of the pot. I put a little wire around her just to bend her a couple times but I need to really school up on LST before I play with her any more, after I top her in a week or so. The CDLC is showing some signs of stress but steady growth, just not quite as much as the DG. The ZE seems like it's in struggsville though, getting some lower leaf curling after a watering yesterday, with increasing lighter greens in the center of the new growth leaves and the lower leaves curling down. I'm feeding her the same as the other two (over fed last night I think with the curling, just a few days after the previous watering) under the assumption the light green/yellow and low growth indicated she was deficient of something. Backing off for a few days to let her recover. I'm keeping humidity around 60-75% with my gf's aromatherapy thing, the small fan is going in the corner, away from them and the exhaust set to kick in at 78 degrees (varies from 73-78). And I "topfed" the plants each with about a 1/2" of the Roots Organic soil last night, just to balance out the top of the mix since it was coco heavy for the seedlings' first week.

Any ideas on how I can help the Zamaldelica recover, or does she need anything different? Her strain notes said she'll take lots of nutes, not that I was trying to push the boundary at ~5.9 ph and 500ish ppm megacrop, sweet candy and calmag. I'm all ears though since she was the main reason I started this whole experiment - it's my girlfriend's strain/christmas present. Any and all tips are appreciated!

 

[terp182]

Day 18 DG/ZE & Day 17 CDLC
Although the DG and CDLC are doing well, the ZE continued to struggle with more leaf burn on the bottom leaves and in response to this thread I realized the nutes were likely stacking up since I wasn't watering to runoff. All three got the flush with ~200 ppm water (3mg/gal calmag with .5 g/gal MegaCrop) for ~3 gallons each. ZE initial runoff was 1000 ppm/5.9 ph, and I got it down to 480. CDLC and DG were both 750 initially, brought down to just under 500. All three are looking much happier for it a day later. Very glad to have caught the other two early before they got more stressed. Next time, if starting with a similar coco/dominant mix I'll start off at .5 g/gal MC instead of 2 g/gal, including the initial soak. I started LST on the DG just below the 5th node last night, with plans to top back to 5 after the 7th node grows out. Next watering will be more ~300 ppm to runoff, targeting ~450ish ppm runoff. LST is my biggest concern in the next few weeks, along with topping and cloning the tops, hopefully.
.

 

[terp182]

Day 25 DG/ZE & Day 24 CDLC
All three plants are looking much happier since the flushes (I flushed the ZE and CDLC a couple days later with 200 ppm down to ~480 runoff). Lots of good growth on all three. I topped the ZE and DG a couple days ago and started light LST. The CDLC is growing super dense and is a day behind so I'm just trying light LST with her. I started bottom feeding the DG 3 days ago with ~465 ppm/6.0 pH (1.5g/gal MC and .5g/gal SC, with 3g/gal CalMag), and then filled the reservoir yesterday with the same mix and lower CalMag (2g/gal) for ~390 ppm.

Since turning on the pots, I've noticed some clawing on the ZE - the fan leaves are bending downwards slightly. I'm definitely keeping an eye on it, but not sure what to do either way. Any suggestions? I'm running them 24/0 now since we were getting some ~10-12 degree temp swings in the 4 hours of dark I had them on. Not sure if that's ideal. Also, I added one of those Michigan Mushroom CO2 bags since I impulse bought one online one night. Pics of the progress are below. Any and all tips are appreciated!

 

[terp182]

Updating this with more "educational" info, since my girls are struggling. I'm also discussing this in the "Dialing in Megacrop" thread around page 51.

They were looking decently healthy and stretching for a few weeks, and after a feed change (from ~550ish PPM to 650 PPM), the new nutes were 4.5 g/gal MC, .5 g/gal PK, .5 g/gal epsom salts, .5 g/gal drip clean. At 650, I saw nute burn on the tips, so I diluted to <600, pH 5.9. Now all three plants are yellowing, especially those top leaves getting lots of light. Also noticed some brown patches popping up on the CDLC and red/purples on the DG. So last night I added 1.5 ml/gal CalMag to try and correct the apparent Cal deficiency. I also lowered the light intensity a bit to reduce the nute stress while they adjust.

I'm about done with MegaCrop. I can't seem to dial in the sweet spot with mag issues, as best as I can tell. I may have been stressing the girls with the 100% Mars SP-3000 at 21" as well. It's all learning, and I didn't expect perfection but I did hope to be better dialed in by this far into flowering. If it won't be too traumatic, I'm going to swtich nutes to something more reliable. Open to any suggestions for Autopot compatible, simple nutes.

Hopefully someone else learns from this!

 

[fauxnacho]

Hi bud definitely don't worry about not getting it perfect on your first grow. Especially with what is a pretty advanced setup. Do you need to run autopots and dial everything in precisely? Without experience that would be so hard to get right. A couple of grows in just a decent soil mix and a normal pot with simple feeding might be a smoother intro to growing.

Four fems in 15-20L pots of soil mix could fill that 4*4 under your mars hydros with a little training. Biobizz is cheap here and easy (just using grow, bloom and maybe fishmix, not all the other products they have). Feed/water every 3-5 days according to their schedule and you basically can't go wrong. Whatever you choose going forward just stick with it and you'll get ya reward

 

[terp182]

Thanks for the encouragement! I ran some greens and peppers in hydro/DWT this spring, and had the pH stuff already, so I’d originally planned for just coco/perlite and MC, thinking it would be easier than dwc.

It’s pretty clear I need to dial it way back for sure. I think next grow I’ll run soil/perlite in the autopots and regular soil next to it like you described. I really like the automation aspect of the autopots, but need to figure out the nutes first.

 

[terp182]

Starting the final bit here on days 64 and 65 for the final bit of this first grow. I’ve held the temp at 76 during lights on, kept humidity at 51%, and tried to keep the MegaCrop around 530ish PPM and around 5.7/5.8 pH. After a bad feeding around day 45 with added epsom salt, I had to flush all three (with 515 PPM), after which the CDLC recovered nicely if not super productively, and the ZE and DG both appear yellowish and with some spotting leaves, bud budding up nicely. Pics are attached and the trichs certainly look cloudy but I’d really like to see if they bulk up some more. Just to be clear - I’m looking for increasing amber trichs at around 10% or so, correct?

Looking forward to getting these three across the finish line. I’ve already got the next 4 lined up and ready to go!