7/09/13: Went down to check on the girls this morning, and although all the ones with bubbles look great, almost all the others are showing a bit of yellowing on the leaf tips, the Sour D being the sole exception (would have some pics for you guys, but the plants are small and my camera sucks doesn't really properly show it) it being about 2 1/2 weeks since the were planted and the fact that the plants not yet bubbling haven't had a drink of nutes stronger than 1/4 strength made me think that they had used up the fuel in their cotyledons and were now getting a bit starved for nitrogen, so I mixed them up some water with nutes just over 1/2 strength, ph'd it to 5.6 and gave them all a good drink. Hopefully that is what they needed, maybe by tomorrow I'll have a better idea if I was accurate in diagnosing this. The yellowing is only at the leaf tips of the first set of leaves to push up AFTER the cotyledon, the set above shows no such deficiency on any of the plants. Also disturbing. Checking the reservoirs of the bubbling buckets, in less than 24 hours the ph went from 5.8-5.9 all the way up to a range of 8.3-8.8 I immediately corrected the ph, but it seems a rather large jump, the medium must still be quite alkaline, really regretting not flushing out this medium before I started, and also regret not having started in jiffy cubes or some other medium the plants could take initial root in better than this perlite, it's fine for spreading roots through, but not so great for anchoring them. My first grow though, you live and you learn, what can I say....
7/10/13: Very frustrating day today. I'll go into the worst of it here in a bit, but first things first, got up this morning, and went to check on the ladies. They looked like perhaps the feeding yesterday did them good. Still too early to tell, but the yellowing certainly doesn't seem to have spread any more. Checked the bubbling buckets and once again, the ph had jumped considerably (this time in the 7.8-8.3 range) Corrected once more, but almost out of ph down, and don't have $ to get more this second.... But now, now came the fun part of my day. My brother gave me all the 400w MH ballasts, reflectors and bulbs. When he had them installed he had a master electrician set it all up, and when we disconnected everything, we left a couple ballasts hooked up to a chunk of main power wire and still left jumpered together so we'd have a blueprint on how to install them. Regardless, that sort of thing is one of my weak points and I don't trust myself to do it, so I got help from friends who knew more about that sort of thing than me. When my friend hooked them up, he followed, as best he could the way they seemed to have been originally hooked up, so thought it would be a simple matter of installing the new breakers and turning them on but we hooked up the 2 extra 220 breakers today and when we flipped the switch, nothing. So had another friend who knows more about electronics than that friend give it a go, and we got them going, but only intermittently and it was clear something was not hooked up right. So that friend went down to the local Hydroponics shop and they gave him some advice on how to hook them up. He came back and followed their advice... and we lost 2 ballasts. The lights would turn on initially, seeming normal, then they would go out and the ballast would start humming loudly, we'd immediately turn off the breaker, but when we kicked it back on the ballast was completely unresponsive. We tried hooking it up both on 110 and 220 and got the same result both times, so lost 2 ballasts. I still have a couple backups (and the blown ones just need a transformer replaced) but was beginning to get really frustrated at this point, the friend said they had tried to help him best they could at the shop, but the resident electrician had not been in and perhaps he would be today, so we grabbed a good ballast and a blown one and a bulb and hood for good measure. Well, I had been hearing nothing but great things about this grow shop from several sources, and I have to say, I was completely underwhelmed on my first (and final) visit. The electrician was there, but he refused to give me any advice on how to hook it up (worried that I'd blame him if it didn't go right) He told me to google the model # and look for a schematic online (I googled it extensively, and couldn't find anything remotely resembling a schematic) After my buddy left, I hung around at the grow shop for a few, looking around at what they had on hand and felt completely ignored by the proprietors, even asked them about a couple things, and when i went over to look at stuff, they didn't even come over and try to assess my needs or ask me what I was looking for in said product (I was dressed a little raggedy, maybe it was just the fact that I don't look like I have dollar bills coming out of my asshole) But I didn't care for their attitude or lack of attentiveness and their prices were no better than the other grow shop I've been to locally, and at least over there, they've made me feel like a valued customer. Never spending a dime at that place. (sorry for the rant) So now apparently, I need to hire an electrician to get my HID lighting up and running. The only problem with that is that I've spent so much money getting this up and running and to a state at least to where we can have the autoflower room pushing out medicine at full capacity, that just to pay our bills right now, I need to make a couple thousand dollars in about the next 20 days. I can do that, but no more than that, which leaves nothing to pay an electrician, and I really, really don't like the thought of having to run those plants off a 4' 4bar T5 for a whole nother month. That is really going to stunt the potential of these plants, and we need them to produce.....
What can we do besides what we can do?
