Update day 11 - THe thing about 5 gallon pots, when fully saturated, is that the amount of time it takes for them to evaporate/absorb most of the moisture takes about a week or even more, under ideal temps and humidity. So, they are still moist and only the top inch or so needs some water as the rest of the pot is pretty wet. I am going to take pics the day before next watering and then do new ones in 3-5 days from then.
Plant update - All the plants are doing pretty strong, except one of the dealer plants is more pale, the two babies are doing well, and my noob mistake of keeping the light too high has been fixed as the babies have not stretched at all and are showing true leaves MUCH faster than the faster sibling sprouts. The one dealer plant is a monster, the main stem/stalk is nearly a cm thick and the fan leaves are as big as my fist. I hope it is a female, I really do, she is easily a candidate for leaf tucking and LST, shame she is a not an auto, I would be taking the AF of the month on that one. The dealer plants, have to be skunk, there are no flowers, they are not even in true vegetative state yet, and when you rustle them they reek for a second or two.
Grow room update - I installed a window mounted air conditioner and attached a LUX Win100 programmable outlet thermostat, except one caveat, the air conditioner I installed does not resume cooling once plugged in.. Le sigh, big oversight, didn't even think about it. So now I have to either swap it out with a bigger one that does resume upon power reconnection, or just go turn it on and off manually, I like automation though. I have added another 24 hour timer to a power strip that controls 3 added cfl's and the intake fan, everything but the exhaust fan shuts down for 4 hours from 12 - 4 am. The exhaust fan has to stay on 24/7 remember that!
Things I have learned thus far..
1. Keep your light short, 16-18 inches for an air-cooled 600w MH from top of plant of canopy for first week, then 12 inches from second week on or as heat signature determines.
2. PH PH PH Jesus PH... if you are growing in a soilless mix, PRE-TREAT your mix 5-7 days before germination, if you have ordered seeds from the UK, once you have tracked your package to the US now is a good time to get the medium ready. Flush your soilless mix with distilled, RO, or other neutral clean water and test run-off, if it's low add some dolomite lime ( about a cup and mix it in the soil ) and then re-saturate the soil, wait two days then test run-off again, do this until at 6.3 or whatever you prefer, as long as it is inbetween the ideal ph levels, and then allow it to evaporate and dry out until it is just moist, NOT SOAKING, wait till the top area is dry then moisten with a spray bottle or a watering can till the top layer is re-moistened. Apply the same directions with sulfur when your PH is too high. Congratulations, you have just gave your babies the perfect growing medium and saved yourself nearly any headaches for the first 2-3 weeks. Just keep the damn thing moist and you have nothing to worry about for a while. If you have a bucket w/ water for raising humidity in your grow space, take the run off collected in the run off pans and just dump it in it, that way you save yourself from having to fill it up, if your water starts to get cruddy, or with algae, just add a capful of bleach.
3. Try to either silver colloidal and make pollen from one plant and self pollinate it for feminized seeds, or if you get a male keep it and collect pollen and make some seeds on the lower rung branches of one of your plants, when it is time for a second grow, you will A. Not have to worry about buying or importing seeds and have your own, and B. Make 1-2 test plants. THis way you can try to narrow down an incremental nute regime for the nutes you prefer to try to increase yields! If one dies oh well, flush the soil and replant!
4. THe bigger the pot, the longer it will take between waterings,IN THE FIRST THREE WEEKS (give or take) 5 gallon will take a 6-9 days before next watering, 3 gallon 4-7, 2 gallon 3-7 and so on.. take that in consideration. it takes approximately, or in my opinion, about 1/5th the volume of soil in water to saturate the pot, so 5 gallon pot needs about 1 gallon water to saturate the pot completely. This is highly dependent on preexisting moisture levels however so results vary.
5. Never allow young leaves to have prolonged exposure to your soil or water, both will cause leaf damage, death or spots.
Thanks for reading! If I am wrong or incorrect on anything I have said feel free to correct me.
I saw this in an earlier comment in this tread: "I am worried about the really big and really doing well plant though, not worried so much as I am taking extra care with it as it seems to especially be a really quality plant, I hope it goes female. I am still conflicted on 18/6 and 20/4. Anyone chime in on your opinion about that? Ed Rosenthal seems to say that the more light the better during the seedling phase, even up to 24 hours, but I honestly think that every plant should be able to rest a bit. Every picture also has information when you rest your icon over them so if you want details be sure to just let your cursor hover over the pic for a few seconds without moving it. So any opinions and words of advice?"
with hydrated lime:thumbs: (found some at ace) Helped my soil ph in now time
