Grow Room Follow-up Russian Rocket Fuel grow

[sWeed]

Eight days ago I planted 12 beans of Russian Rocket Fuel from my own collection, to try and replicate or better my most recent grow. This will be the third grow in my new small cabinet. About a month ago I typed up a somewhat long grow journal here, my first, in almost a single long post. I started it late but wanted to post the results and my reflections, since the grow produced really well under the circumstances, and this with my simplest setup, meaning least maintenance so far, growing weed.

I'll be using the same setup and process as last grow, with possibly the addition of a kind of individual SCROG frameworks for each of the final pots/plants. Haven't decided yet.



In short, this is my setup:


Cabinet lined with reflective Mylar, 80x40x130 cm

Small but relatively quiet extraction fan. Only for oxygen/air circulation.
(Temperatures ate not an issue due to LED lights.) Optional home built carbon filter possible, but has not been necessary/used so far.

12 Russian Rocket Fuel seeds planted in coco, drip watered to waste, by Claber Oasis unit(s)

"Gold Label special mix nutrition" (I'll be using the same feed schedule as last time since it seemed to be perfectly dialled in from start).

Controlled Ph 5,8 through the whole grow

300 watt led (Chinese bought, but carefully picked out and proven to work)

One tower fan and one small USB fan shifting air within the cabinet.

Goal is to grow 4 fine producing females in my cabinet


For more detailed info on my cabinet, setup and process, please see my previous post/journal. Or tag along.



I was given a birthday surprise trip to a European Capitol over the weekend, and when I arrived back home yesterday all 12 of my seeds had sprouted and shown its first set of small leaves. I love my automated setup. Haven't done any work on the grow In the nine days that has passed since planting the seeds, other than filling my water reservoir/Claber once before going away on our small holiday trip, Good start.

 

[sWeed]

It's been another six days and the small plants are entering their fast growing period, now around the end of week two. I'm expecting/hoping for some speedy growth up ahead. Russian Rocket Fuel usually shoot away in week three. Last grow I sexed my plants around day 21, and I'm hoping for the same this grow.



I've started work on four small SCROG "cages" I'm trying out this grow to try and up my last yield some. These are being constructed from small wire drawers I found in a local hardware store. I'm cutting out wires to make the openings twice the original measurements, to roughly 7x7 cm. I'm making four of these cages and each will contain one 2 gallon fabric smart pot with a plant chosen from these 12 seedling.



I plan to place these four cages side by side inside the cabinet and try and weave colas on top and on the two narrow sides of the cages. I will be using 300W LED from top, where I expect most results, but also add T5 s around the cabinets walls to give some extra light to possible bud sites on the sides of the cages. One T5 running upward along each side of every cage. It'll all be easier to explain when I can get a picture taken of that setup. I have no idea how this is going to work out. The reason I'm trying it out is that on my last grow, of which the yield was really good considered all circumstances, I had one monster that produced some 12 like sizes colas, while my three other girls each had one or two bit colas and had problems producing anything on lower branches due to issues having light penetrating the massive amount of foliage. Also my plants grew unnecessary tall and somewhat spiny, almost to the point where it could not support themselves. Granted the monster was most likely of the monster bush phenotype that RRF's genetics do contain, and therefore singelhandedly produced as much as the three other plants combined, I still think I can get more from non bushy phenotype plants if I can only get a more even canopy. Anyway, we'll see how that goes. It might also give me enough room in my cab in the future, to start seedlings on a top shelf and thereby get a 2-3 week head start on my grows, as opposed to now when I grow out a full run before starting new seeds.

 

[KsjAuto]

Looks like you have it all dialed in NICE:smoke:
Looking forward to see how it will turn out
Stay green

 

[sWeed]

Ok, so today is day 22 for my current Russian Rocket Fuel grow. Yesterday I transplanted all seven that turned out female. The five guys went into the bin. No seed run this time. I always feel a little awkward "killing off" the guys. Especially when they look as healthy as these did.

Anyhow, they went into two gallon smart pots, just like last time. For me this is really only the second time ever transplanting autos. I've been reluctant at doing this due to numerous posts all over internet telling me how this will/might stunt the already short growth period autos have. Last time I didn't notice any stunting, and today they have already grown about an inch or more so now damage dine really. I'm might be the Russian Rocket Fuel strain that happens to be more forgiving, or it's just a matter of technique, I guess,





These four plants will make it into my cabinet, the other three I'll either let grow in passive daylight in my living room, or give to a friend to do grow however he/she wants.









Up to now this grow has been more or less a copy of my last grow, however this time I'm introducing small wire boxes, one for each plant, to help me individually LST each plant in a sort of SCROG setup. I'm also introducing a wire shelf to my cabinet, to stand all four "cages" next to each other's to let my drippers water to waste, into two plastic containers covering the bottom of my cabinet. Last round I also dripped to waste, with a very good result, but had my pots in double plastic containers where the top container was perforated to let waste water/nutrition run off into the bottom container. It was not optimal, and I think my new wire shelf will make my setup even easier to manage. Also it should help my smart pots to even more air pruning, since roots will be able to penetrate the bottom of my pots a lot easier, and be more exposed to air.

I upgrade from one to four dripper for each plant. I'll be adding more drippers as the plants demand for water grows. I'm actually using two Claber Oasis units to water this cabinet. I tried them for the first time in my last grow and they worked exactly how I wanted them to. The run on small 9V batteries and each hold 25l nutrition/water. For this stage of the grow one unit is enough, but I'll most likely be having to add the other one later on. I won't go into detail how these work here, but in short they let the off a set amount of water every twelve hours. The two units give me a wide array of combinations as to volume and number of waterings (2 or 4 every day)". Anyone wanting to know more on this piece of simple machinery, and how I operate them, check out my last grow, which was also my first journal here at AFN. If you can call it a journal since I first started writing it like two weeks prior to harvest. The grow just had so much going for it, it had to be documented.

Also added to this grow is four T5s, one each along the tall sides of my cages. Four can be seen in photos below, while four will be added to the inside of my cabinets doors tomorrow. Need more magnetic tape : ) I hope these will help produce more flower sites on the sides and lower branches. Especially in combination with my wire cages. In my last grow I had trouble getting light to penetrate the mass of foliage that comes with growing Russian Rocket Fuel.

So, I'll leave this post with a couple of photos of my cabinet this day no. 22.

 

[sWeed]

Oh, and thank you KsjAuto for checking in, I appreciate it. Yes, it's dialled in and really simple. I like to KISS things : )

 

[sWeed]

Today I added the four last t5s to the inside of the cabinet doors which finalizes my plan for this grows setup. So far, so good (so what, according to Megadeth )
Also, I might add, I forgot to tell anyone reading this thread that I actually decided to try the Coco substrate available from IKEA for this grow.. Dead cheap at a package for around €2.5 that makes just about enough substrate when I add 25% rice husk by volume, to fill the four 2 gal pots I use for this grow.
The information on the package tell there is nutrition in the coco to last for the first three weeks (for what type of plants they won't specify).
I considered rinsing the shit out of it but eventually decided not to, and trust my ph balanced nutritioned water dripping to about 20% waste, to pull any crap nutrition out of there. So far no burns or anything. I'm hoping there will be no problems.

And yes, no apparent stunting to growth due to transplanting. Looking ok/good so far. Peace out. Time to smoke some.

 

[sWeed]

There is yet another addition that has to be made to the cabinet. I'm currently missing adequate air circulation, due to the somewhat crammed setup. I've ordered two small bladeless fans with a small footprint/profile that I hope will fit and at the same time be enough to push air around in the grow area. Should arrive early next week.
In the meantime, here's photos five days after transplanting. Everything seems dialed in.

 

[Woolly]

good looks sWeed! Setting yourself up for a nice harvest in a couple months, have plenty of seeds already? i started with 10 RRF seeds and 10 auto assassins - have 3/10 left of each all have been female.. Getting nervous do not want to have to re order these or lose the genetics. We'll be watching this through, happy growing.

 

[sWeed]

Thanks. I have plenty of RRF seeds (in hundreds) I've been growing some 10+ runs in total, and many of these have involved seed production in order to try and sort out some if the nicer phenotypes. These are the first I've planted from my last seed run, two grows ago.

This is day 32 and when I woke up the first of the four hit the top of its cage. Soon I'll begin LST to try and maximize bud sites.

Here's a side by side collage of the tallest, fastest growing one; day 30, 31 & 32. Unfortunately the first photo was taken from quite a different angle but one can still notice the incredible day to day growing of these autos. At least an inch or two has been added to my plants each and every day this week. They really shoot off at week four. I'm hoping my kind of squatty scrog cages wont be to small. Last run they grew really tall. Hopefully some LST will take care of this "problem" : )

 

[sWeed]

Today I took the girls out for the first time since putting them in cages, just under two weeks ago. I did this to check on them thoroughly, add two bladeless small fans to circulate air, and to empty and clean my drip water reservoirs.
They all seemed a healthy green, and no hermies to be seen.
I added two drippers to two of them that seems to be drinking just a bit more. I'll soon be needing to start using the screens/cages to train them.





The fans were attached to the two outermost cages.



The tallest one has started to show plenty of roots coming out of the pots. Good for air pruning to add root mass.



Here's everything put back in place. This took me an hour and was the first bit of hands down work done in 12 days, apart from filling up water/nutrition.