New Grower Starting off in coco with Autoseeds GSC

[oldnewbdude]

Hey everybody. So excited to be a part of the group. Been lurking and learning from you all for a while now. Figured I would start my own journal and stop hiding out. This is my first time growing cannabis but I'm a decently skilled gardener otherwise. I grow a lot of veggies and flowers with my partner every season but my indoor gardening had been limited to seed starting. I figured I could probably keep some girls alive through harvest in soil but I wanted to try to get bigger yields first run. I wouldn't want to make anything too easy on this old brain of mine so I dived right into soilless. I am pretty far along into the grow currently so I will try to go through and remember what I did at each stage.
Here is my set up:
-Botanicare CocoGro with ~10% chunky perlite
-3 gallon/11.5 liter fabric pots
-CLW SX250 (4x50watt COB)
- Advanced Nutrients pH Perfect Coco Grow and Bloom
- Great White myco
-GH Floranectar
-AN Sensi Cal-mag
-AN Big Bud Coco & Overdrive
I'm in a 3x3ft (90x90cm) tent with a 200cfm extraction fan

I started 2 seeds in Rapid Rooters using the hole that is provided. I don't know if they couldn't find their way out or if I kept them too wet but the first two seeds split and showed a little rootlet but never left the ground. After 10 days I trashed them (one was my Dreamberry freebie so sad) and started my two remaining GSC beans. Second time I inverted the rooters and made my own hole and had both germinated in 48 hours. They stayed under a T-5 until roots showed out the rooting plug and then went into the final 3gal pots under a 125w CFL reflector. Once the ladies had 4 or 5 nodes I swapped in the COB light.
I decided to test ANs claims that their coco specific base nutes contained all the Ca, Mg, and Fe necessary before adding in any supplements. One girl seemed to be okay with that but the other started showing interveinal chlorosis by the second or third set of true leaves. Before I could get my Calmag supplement dialed in she had a handful of brown necrotic spots on her lower leaves. Finally found a happy place with 0.5ml/l Calmag and 1ml/l base nutes (1/4 recommended strength). The new growth greened up on my sensitive girl and no more brown spots showed up, the unfussy girl didn't mind some extra micronutrients either so I kept their feed the same. Now in flower I'm still using 1ml/l bloom n

utes and 0.5ml/l calmag but supplementing with bloom boosters. I will be totally honest with you, I am a lazy gardener so I have yet to even think about a pH pen or TDS meter. I'm just watching the ladies closely and making sure they are happy. So far so good.
I thought the early deficiency issues were going to stunt the little girl but she was just a late bloomer. Seems I may have a couple different phenos going which you will see in the pic in this first post. I lost the photo evidence from the first few weeks due to getting a new phone but I will make a post for each week I do have. Btw these girls got past cotyledons February 8th. Currently working on week 9. I look forward to learning more from you guys and hopefully having your help through the end of this grow and harvest.

 

[St. Tom]

Hey everybody. So excited to be a part of the group. Been lurking and learning from you all for a while now. Figured I would start my own journal and stop hiding out. This is my first time growing cannabis but I'm a decently skilled gardener otherwise. I grow a lot of veggies and flowers with my partner every season but my indoor gardening had been limited to seed starting. I figured I could probably keep some girls alive through harvest in soil but I wanted to try to get bigger yields first run. I wouldn't want to make anything too easy on this old brain of mine so I dived right into soilless. I am pretty far along into the grow currently so I will try to go through and remember what I did at each stage.
Here is my set up:
-Botanicare CocoGro with ~10% chunky perlite
-3 gallon/11.5 liter fabric pots
-CLW SX250 (4x50watt COB)
- Advanced Nutrients pH Perfect Coco Grow and Bloom
- Great White myco
-GH Floranectar
-AN Sensi Cal-mag
-AN Big Bud Coco & Overdrive
I'm in a 3x3ft (90x90cm) tent with a 200cfm extraction fan

I started 2 seeds in Rapid Rooters using the hole that is provided. I don't know if they couldn't find their way out or if I kept them too wet but the first two seeds split and showed a little rootlet but never left the ground. After 10 days I trashed them (one was my Dreamberry freebie so sad) and started my two remaining GSC beans. Second time I inverted the rooters and made my own hole and had both germinated in 48 hours. They stayed under a T-5 until roots showed out the rooting plug and then went into the final 3gal pots under a 125w CFL reflector. Once the ladies had 4 or 5 nodes I swapped in the COB light.
I decided to test ANs claims that their coco specific base nutes contained all the Ca, Mg, and Fe necessary before adding in any supplements. One girl seemed to be okay with that but the other started showing interveinal chlorosis by the second or third set of true leaves. Before I could get my Calmag supplement dialed in she had a handful of brown necrotic spots on her lower leaves. Finally found a happy place with 0.5ml/l Calmag and 1ml/l base nutes (1/4 recommended strength). The new growth greened up on my sensitive girl and no more brown spots showed up, the unfussy girl didn't mind some extra micronutrients either so I kept their feed the same. Now in flower I'm still using 1ml/l bloom nView attachment 1179222utes and 0.5ml/l calmag but supplementing with bloom boosters. I will be totally honest with you, I am a lazy gardener so I have yet to even think about a pH pen or TDS meter. I'm just watching the ladies closely and making sure they are happy. So far so good.
I thought the early deficiency issues were going to stunt the little girl but she was just a late bloomer. Seems I may have a couple different phenos going which you will see in the pic in this first post. I lost the photo evidence from the first few weeks due to getting a new phone but I will make a post for each week I do have. Btw these girls got past cotyledons February 8th. Currently working on week 9. I look forward to learning more from you guys and hopefully having your help through the end of this grow and harvest.

great work buddy and a massive afn welcome

 

[oldnewbdude]

Now for the time travel to the past. Here's week 3. If you look closely at the girl on the right you can see her brown spots on the leaves closest to the bottom.

 

[oldnewbdude]

great work buddy and a massive afn welcome

Thank you for the warm welcome! I can already tell you guys are awesome.

 

[oldnewbdude]

Week 4 they really started going ape shit. I've grown a lot of species but rarely seen growth this vigorous. What an incredible organism (I'm a biology and chemistry teacher so I can't just say plant lol)

This was two days later

 

[oldnewbdude]

So they blew out my 3x1.5ft tent in 4 weeks and I had to do something. I was finding wet pockets where leaves were overlapping so much. I was terrified and didn't want to do it but I began defoliation at week 5 just to get air flow through the jungle. The first girl started flowering at this time and I thought the sensitive girl was close behind. (I was wrong) After the haircut they traded places so the problem child is on the left now. Thought she was gonna stunt for sure at this time.

A couple days later... what haircut

And the slow one

 

[oldnewbdude]

About this time I gave up on the slow one. I was quickly running out of room and was very close to culling her to make room for the early girl I knew was going to flower. I was so enamored with the pistils popping out I stopped photographing the slow lady.

They both switched to Bloom nutes at this point because I was too lazy to mix separate solutions for each plant. I figured I was gonna cull the other one soon anyway (wtf was I thinking?)

 

[oldnewbdude]

At this point defoliation once a week had become absolutely necessary. I don't mean a couple leaves, I'm talking a grocery bag full. These things bushed out like nothing I've ever seen. In her infinite wisdom my partner suggested I buy a bigger tent, not sure why I hadn't thought of that (actually yeah I'm cheap). Ladies moved to a 3x3ft and just kept growing. Top cola starting to look like something.

 

[St. Tom]

At this point defoliation once a week had become absolutely necessary. I don't mean a couple leaves, I'm talking a grocery bag full. These things bushed out like nothing I've ever seen. In her infinite wisdom my partner suggested I buy a bigger tent, not sure why I hadn't thought of that (actually yeah I'm cheap). Ladies moved to a 3x3ft and just kept growing. Top cola starting to look like something.View attachment 1179243View attachment 1179244View attachment 1179245

Healthy girls under good lights can take every bit of space available I grow in a 4x4 and I've had that jam packed with 4 girls also I defoliate all the time if need be as long as there healthy

 

[oldnewbdude]

By week 7-8 the early girl is showing good growth, not too much stretch and a ton of nodes with pistils steady pushing out. I totally feel in love with the blooms and didn't get good photos of the whole bush or the slow girl. Can you blame me? She's so pretty and started smelling like coffee and cream cheese, yum.