Thanks for tuning in for another Teehee grow. I can''t believe it's been a full 3 months since I jarred up my last mega-harvest!
I will be interested to see what the quarterly electric bill will be like, as this is the first time I have not had the set up running 24/7 in about 4 years.
It's been lovely not having the fans on.... living rurally, I've really enjoyed the peace and quiet.
Alas, it's time to put a stop to all that, and finally get another grow on.... don't wanna run out of bud, and there's a house inspection in May.
Also it's getting into Summer here, and it's gonna be a hot one... temps are already up in the mid 30°C's, and it stays up in the mid to high 20°C's at night.
I'm used to growing Autos under 24/0 lights, and in the Summer, I have to run air-con 24/0 as well.... I was chewing up the 'leccy, so this time I thought I should run some photoperiod plants instead.... that would make a big dent in my lighting bill, but the fans will still have to be on 24/0 as well as the air-con.
There's a few reasons why I haven't been growing during the last 3 months...
Big thanks to @Dinafem-Mark for having a word with Santa and getting the elves to pack this lot up for me....
A very fabulous Humboldt T shirt and a little bag stuffed with goodies...
...skins, roaches, grinder, sticker, and most importantly:
I have a nice big seed collection, about 180 seeds in all, mainly Autos, but a few Regs and a few Fems.....
I’ve only grown Autos, except for my ill-fated first ever home grow back in the UK, where I grew some Barney’s Farm feminised ‘Pineapple Chunk’ in a fancy wardrobe and RDWC set up, which I chopped early and destroyed the evidence before emigrating in a hurry, ahem.
So as I’m a relative newbie to photo's, and crossed to the ‘dark’ side, please join me on my latest quest!
I have a shiny pack of Dutch Passion's 'Des Frans' sitting there that my main man @DutchPassionTony sent me last year, and I've been desperate to try some after reading AutoMaster's numerous reports as to how strong she can be. This would be a nice addition to the new Dinafem Fems that Mark sent me.
We had a mental storm on Friday, ripped trees out of the ground, lines came down and we had a power cut for 24 hours..... not a good thing if I'm planning a photo grow......
Mind you, my tent is hardly what you call 'light-proof' - this is just the front door, lights on.....
There's a few other rips, dodgy zips and thinned out bits, so it's gonna be hard maintaining a dark period during the (bright) heat of the day, as I was planning on doing.
On top of that worry, I opened the little bar fridge that I have up here for my oil and seeds.... the fucking thing had defrosted during the power outage, and filled the lower compartment up with water.... the compartment where I keep the seeds!!!!!
The whole lot was under water, so I had to go into salvage mode, fuck Christmas, seeds came first.
The Dutch Passion metal cans all leaked, I poured out the water and found the paper packets inside were drenched... luckily they are lined with plastic, and after opening a few with shaky sweaty hands, I realised they were sealed water tight, and all good.
The Dinafem cans also had leaked, but the seeds inside were in plastic vials, and they were fine. The new 'prize' seeds didn't even make it to the fridge, cos I'm such a lazy stoner.
So Chrissy was back on!
I always grow 4 plants in 20L airpots, so that's not gonna change.... apart from that I now realise they are 25L.... I went through 2x 50L bags of Coco.
I've decided on:
These are some top drawer strains!
The plan is to grow these out, take a few cuttings before flipping over to 12/12 and re-veg the cuttings for a second grow to end just before the May inspection.
They take 8-9 weeks in flowering, so with 4 weeks veg, this grow shouldn't take much longer than any of my big Auto grows... they've tended to take 12-15 weeks in total, so these Fems will be much the same.
After years of growing Autos, I feel I know the cycle of the plant reasonably well, and I'm ready to join the big(ger) boys. I know they are Fems, but it's a step closer.... I have some old Regs sitting around, but I can't be arsed dealing with males. My grow time is precious and I need to get good results each time.
I got my trusty 25L airpots and filled them with coco, soaked them with EC 0.7 feed made up of 0.3ml/L House and Garden Cocos A&B, 0.1ml/L drip clean, 0.3ml/L Roots Excellurator and 0.3ml/L Nitrogen boost mixed into EC 0 rainwater. We've had loads, so the tank is full to the brim.
I planted the seeds about 2cm under the surface, covered each pot with clingfilm and stuck them under a Skyline 400 LED at max height for a bit of warmth.
This is them before plonking some card on top to keep the light out....
They usually take 48-72 hours to show their heads, so I'll let you know how they go.
I usually use a Bluelab Guardian, trusty, reliable and quick pH and EC readings. Unfortunately, my pH probe has been giving me grief for the best part of a year... I replaced the probe and I'm still getting weird readings... a good pH2 or 3 over what it should be. and I can't recalibrate it, because the unit brings up an error message whenever the pH is more than pH1 out.
I've been faffing around making 'recalibration' solutions of varying pH's to nudge the set pH down, but it never quite gets there, so I am gonna have to send it off to get looked at..... luckily I have an old Bluelab pH pen that recalibrated correctly and works, so although it's a bit slow compared to the instant readings that you get with the Guardian, it will do until I get my Guardian sorted.
I also have a Bluelab truncheon, but that seems to be about EC1 lower than it should be.... WTF.... these can't be recalibrated, so I'm stuck on that one. Luckily I keep a spreadsheet of all my grows, and I've listed the amounts of each additive I've given with each feed, and the resulting EC's, so I can always refer to that if needed.
So that's it for now, hope you all have a great festive break, and I wish the best of health, wealth and growing karma to you all for 2019!
I will be interested to see what the quarterly electric bill will be like, as this is the first time I have not had the set up running 24/7 in about 4 years.
It's been lovely not having the fans on.... living rurally, I've really enjoyed the peace and quiet.
Alas, it's time to put a stop to all that, and finally get another grow on.... don't wanna run out of bud, and there's a house inspection in May.
Also it's getting into Summer here, and it's gonna be a hot one... temps are already up in the mid 30°C's, and it stays up in the mid to high 20°C's at night.
I'm used to growing Autos under 24/0 lights, and in the Summer, I have to run air-con 24/0 as well.... I was chewing up the 'leccy, so this time I thought I should run some photoperiod plants instead.... that would make a big dent in my lighting bill, but the fans will still have to be on 24/0 as well as the air-con.
There's a few reasons why I haven't been growing during the last 3 months...
- we had a house inspection in Nov, so I couldn't do anything from Sept to Nov.
- I had loads of bud from the last grow..... loads of it, man!
- I've been waiting for a package from Dinafem with my prize for winning the AFN Dinafem Best Picture competition in November.
Big thanks to @Dinafem-Mark for having a word with Santa and getting the elves to pack this lot up for me....
A very fabulous Humboldt T shirt and a little bag stuffed with goodies...
...skins, roaches, grinder, sticker, and most importantly:
- Blue Amnesia XXL Auto x5,
- Gorilla Fem x5
- Purple Afghan Kush Fem x6
I have a nice big seed collection, about 180 seeds in all, mainly Autos, but a few Regs and a few Fems.....
I’ve only grown Autos, except for my ill-fated first ever home grow back in the UK, where I grew some Barney’s Farm feminised ‘Pineapple Chunk’ in a fancy wardrobe and RDWC set up, which I chopped early and destroyed the evidence before emigrating in a hurry, ahem.
So as I’m a relative newbie to photo's, and crossed to the ‘dark’ side, please join me on my latest quest!
I have a shiny pack of Dutch Passion's 'Des Frans' sitting there that my main man @DutchPassionTony sent me last year, and I've been desperate to try some after reading AutoMaster's numerous reports as to how strong she can be. This would be a nice addition to the new Dinafem Fems that Mark sent me.
We had a mental storm on Friday, ripped trees out of the ground, lines came down and we had a power cut for 24 hours..... not a good thing if I'm planning a photo grow......
Mind you, my tent is hardly what you call 'light-proof' - this is just the front door, lights on.....
There's a few other rips, dodgy zips and thinned out bits, so it's gonna be hard maintaining a dark period during the (bright) heat of the day, as I was planning on doing.
On top of that worry, I opened the little bar fridge that I have up here for my oil and seeds.... the fucking thing had defrosted during the power outage, and filled the lower compartment up with water.... the compartment where I keep the seeds!!!!!
The whole lot was under water, so I had to go into salvage mode, fuck Christmas, seeds came first.
The Dutch Passion metal cans all leaked, I poured out the water and found the paper packets inside were drenched... luckily they are lined with plastic, and after opening a few with shaky sweaty hands, I realised they were sealed water tight, and all good.
The Dinafem cans also had leaked, but the seeds inside were in plastic vials, and they were fine. The new 'prize' seeds didn't even make it to the fridge, cos I'm such a lazy stoner.
So Chrissy was back on!
I always grow 4 plants in 20L airpots, so that's not gonna change.... apart from that I now realise they are 25L.... I went through 2x 50L bags of Coco.
I've decided on:
- 1x Dutch Passion 'Des Frans' - 100% Sativa, super strong cross of 'Destroyer' x 'Destroyer'
- 1x Dinafem 'Gorilla' - 60% Indica 40% Sativa, cross of Chocolate Diesel x Chem Sister x Sour Dubb
- 2x Dinafem 'Purple Afghan Kush' - 100% Indica, cross of Purple Kush x Pre'98 Bubba Kush
These are some top drawer strains!
The plan is to grow these out, take a few cuttings before flipping over to 12/12 and re-veg the cuttings for a second grow to end just before the May inspection.
They take 8-9 weeks in flowering, so with 4 weeks veg, this grow shouldn't take much longer than any of my big Auto grows... they've tended to take 12-15 weeks in total, so these Fems will be much the same.
After years of growing Autos, I feel I know the cycle of the plant reasonably well, and I'm ready to join the big(ger) boys. I know they are Fems, but it's a step closer.... I have some old Regs sitting around, but I can't be arsed dealing with males. My grow time is precious and I need to get good results each time.
I got my trusty 25L airpots and filled them with coco, soaked them with EC 0.7 feed made up of 0.3ml/L House and Garden Cocos A&B, 0.1ml/L drip clean, 0.3ml/L Roots Excellurator and 0.3ml/L Nitrogen boost mixed into EC 0 rainwater. We've had loads, so the tank is full to the brim.
I planted the seeds about 2cm under the surface, covered each pot with clingfilm and stuck them under a Skyline 400 LED at max height for a bit of warmth.
This is them before plonking some card on top to keep the light out....
They usually take 48-72 hours to show their heads, so I'll let you know how they go.
I usually use a Bluelab Guardian, trusty, reliable and quick pH and EC readings. Unfortunately, my pH probe has been giving me grief for the best part of a year... I replaced the probe and I'm still getting weird readings... a good pH2 or 3 over what it should be. and I can't recalibrate it, because the unit brings up an error message whenever the pH is more than pH1 out.
I've been faffing around making 'recalibration' solutions of varying pH's to nudge the set pH down, but it never quite gets there, so I am gonna have to send it off to get looked at..... luckily I have an old Bluelab pH pen that recalibrated correctly and works, so although it's a bit slow compared to the instant readings that you get with the Guardian, it will do until I get my Guardian sorted.
I also have a Bluelab truncheon, but that seems to be about EC1 lower than it should be.... WTF.... these can't be recalibrated, so I'm stuck on that one. Luckily I keep a spreadsheet of all my grows, and I've listed the amounts of each additive I've given with each feed, and the resulting EC's, so I can always refer to that if needed.
So that's it for now, hope you all have a great festive break, and I wish the best of health, wealth and growing karma to you all for 2019!
and welcome back to the grow game 
even if you are playing for the other side 
at you nice and early 
happy new grow 
