Hey everybody,
tronN00dles here! This isn't a live grow diary per se as the grow is complete and I just put my harvest into jars for curing. I figured I'd write an entry to recap my experience for this, which was my third successful grow. I learned a few lessons along the way and if there's any take-home messages for anyone reading, it's that weed is friggin' resilient! I encountered numerous problems along the way, and occasionally thought about chucking it and starting over - I'm very glad I didn't! I ended up with 122g of nice bud from a single plant and a 135W LED. Not bad!
Setup & Equipment
20" x 36" x 60" Vivosun Tent
HLG 135W v2 Quantum Board
4" AC Infinity Exhaust Fan + Carbon Filter
Pro-Mix HP
5 Gallon Fabric Pot
4x 6" Clip-on Fans (cheap Canadian Tire brand)
Honeywell Soothing Comfort Warm Mist Humidifier
Honeywell Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier
Honeywell 250W Heatbud Personal Heater
BlueLab pH + TDS/EC pens
Dr. Meter Lux Meter
I setup my tent in the walk-in closet of my master bedroom. For exhaust, I ran 4" duct through my wall and out through a 4" air diffuser in my master bedroom, just over the closet door (see below). Of course, this got pretty stinky during late flowering - even with the carbon filter - so I'll be changing this up next time around. I wasn't able to vent directly outside, nor did I want to vent into my attic. My master bedroom has a carbon filter of it's own, as my wife and I limit smoking to the bedroom. I also had a dehumidifier to soak up extra moisture in the bedroom, and there is a fresh air supply from the HVAC system in the bedroom as well. All in all, I had our master bedroom set up as best I could to keep it comfortable as it literally served as an exhaust room for the grow. Fortunately my wife is a proper stoner so she was onboard! See below:
Growing Medium & Germination
I grew with Pro-Mix HP, a 'semi-soilless' peat moss-based medium, in a single 5-gal fabric pot. This was my third grow overall, and my first time using Pro-Mix HP. My previous two grows utilized Fox Farms Happy Frog. I used pH-adjusted tap water (more on that later) for all waterings.
I soaked a single Cheese XXL by Dinafem autoflower seed in a shot glass of water which I let sit in the dark for 16 hours or so, until it sunk when I poked it. I poured the water-and-seed onto a paper towel folded on a plate, which I put in an open zip-lock bag in my tent. On my first grow a year or so ago, I really failed at germinating seeds. It took a lot of trial-and-error to find something that worked for me. I read a lot of conflicting information about the seed needing to "breathe", so I ultimately landed on the paper-towel method with an open zip-lock bag. The bag keeps the paper towel from drying out, and I guess it being open lets some air get in. I also used my space heater to keep the temps at around 20 deg C.
It took around 24-36 hours for a nice taproot to emerge.
Watering & Nutrients
I'm fortunate to live in a Canadian city with fairly clean tap water (it's also excellent that cannabis is legal here, and anyone is allowed to grow up to 4 plants
). My TDS is around 30-50 ppm with a pH of ~7.5. Initially, I was using apple cider vinegar to bring my pH down to around 6.5, but eventually decided to stop this and get some proper pH-down (Root Farm brand). I think the apple cider vinegar may have contributed to some pH problems throughout the grow until I switched to pH-down during pre-flowering.
As for nutrients, I used the GH Flora Series (10-part), feeding every other watering. I played around with pH and usually watered/fed somewhere between 5.8-6.3. The GH feedchart currently provides light, medium, and heavy feeding guidelines. Going full-strength light feeding, I'd get around ~500ppm during flowering. This was one my first hiccups, as I initially was feeding quarter to half-strength of the light dose, i.e., under-feeding my plant! Moreover, as I was frightened of calcium deficiencies, I found myself feeding extra calcium even during the 'water-only' feedings, thereby throwing off my nutrient ratios! Even worse, little did I know that Pro-Mix HP is actually full of dolomite lime, and doesn't even need calcium, at least not for the first couple of weeks! More on these nutrient problems later...
Lighting
I used a HLG 135W v2 Quantum Board -- the slightly older 3000k model, not the newer R-spec. I also monitored LUX using a cheap LUX meter on Amazon. A word of warning here, these are no match for a proper PPFD meter, but they can give some some insight if you know what you're doing. They basically can tell you the relative light intensity of one part of your tent compared to another. Careful of guides online that say stuff like "20,000 LUX during veg, 60,000 LUX during flower, etc." That's malarkey. It depends on the spectrum of light coming off your board. Fortunately, HLG provides PPFD to LUX calculators specific for their lights. I won't go into much lighting detail in this blog post, but I will say this: read up on DLI and PPFD requirements for the various stages of cannabis growth -- this information can be used as inputs into light-specific LUX calculators. I ran my grow at a 20/4 lighting schedule, and with my specific light, I landed on roughly 7,500 LUX for the seedling, up to 25,000 LUX for vegetative growth, and up to 45,000 LUX for flowering.
Seedling / Early Veg.
Once the taproot emerged, I popped the seed into my medium and it sprouted in a day or two:
From there, the thing took off! Really nice fast growth -- probably from the 'starter' nutrients already in the Pro-Mix. Again, at this time, I was feeding quarter-strength light nutrients, which were basically negligible looking back on it. Within the next 7-10 days, everything was swell:
It was after two weeks or so the nutrient deficiencies started to emerge. You can see the lime-green color in the picture above. By this time, the starter nutrients in the Pro-Mix were depleting and I was underfeeding the plant. Still, it didn't look too bad, and it had 5 nodes, so I decided to top it and start LST'ing. Note, this was my first attempt at topping, so I was a little nervous:
It was after topping that the problems became obvious. Again, I don't think it was the 'fault' of the topping, rather than at this point the plant was being underfed nutrients in general, and overfed calcium to boot!. On top of this, I was using a cheap Amazon pH pen with apple cider vinegar. I ultimately ended up getting a proper BlueLab pH pen, and found the cheap one was way off! Again, looking back, the problems I was seeing were mostly pH related.
Late Veg / Early Flowering
Now comes the "dark period". You'll notice I have practically no pictures of this period. Why? Well, the plant looked gross! It was yellowing fast, hardly growing, and just looked sickly in general. I thought long and hard about giving up. At around week 5, the thing looked like it was being taken over by orange rusty spots, which I now attribute to calcium toxicity. I even flushed it in the bath-tub twice! Anyway, once I got my BlueLab pH pen and finally got my nutrients in check, I was entering flowering. The plant started to show signs of improvement, but the nice green color never really came back. It was yellowish/lime-green for the practically the rest of it's life.
The picture below was taken a strategic angle to make it look better than it actually was, but it's pretty well the only picture I took during the phase. On the plus side, the LST was going well and I had a nice canopy.
Late Flowering
Although dark green never really came back, the buds certainly started fattening up and getting frosty once I got my nutrients and pH in check:
Ripening, Flushing & Recap
At this point, I was getting some pretty heavy duty canoeing of the leaves -- I can only attribute this to the early nutrient deficiencies as my temperature was in check.
I figure now is a good time to point out a few other key things that I have not yet stated. First off... VPD Charts! Temperature and Humidity are key! I think one of the things that saved this grow, in spit of pH and Nutrient problems, was keeping the plant comfortable. Look up VPD charts, and use those to guide your temperature and humidity. I think this is a good example of just how promising your yields can be if you can keep your environment in check.
Also, in terms of lifespan, I let this go for 13 weeks. I basically followed the GH feedchart photoperiod schedule, which allows for 4 weeks of vegetative growth, 8 weeks of flowering, and 1 week to flush. I used the GH FloraKleen flushing solution in my final week.
Harvest
After the 1 week flush, I kept the plant in the dark for 24 hours prior to harvesting. I'm not sure if that actually does anything...
I wet trimmed, then hung the buds to dry in my tent for 6 days, keeping the humidity at around 55%. At this point, the stems weren't really bendy anymore, and today I put them in jars with Boveda humidity packs. In total, I yielded 122 grams of dried bud:
Lessons Learned
Anyways folks, here's a summary of the things I learned on this grow:
1. Follow VPD charts to guide your temperature and humidity
2. Cheap pH pens are inaccurate; BlueLab pens are awesome!
3. Don't go by 'half-strength' or 'quarter-strength' feeding guidelines. Look up ppm ranges and go by TDS/EC! Aim for ~500-550ppm during flowering.
4. Keep your nutrients in balance.
5. Be careful of calcium toxicity.
6. If you're not venting outside, your house will smell like weed during late flowering even if you have a carbon filter.
7. Never give up! The plants can bounce back!
Thanks for reading.
-tronN00dles
P.S. Cultivator’s Club? @420Forever
tronN00dles here! This isn't a live grow diary per se as the grow is complete and I just put my harvest into jars for curing. I figured I'd write an entry to recap my experience for this, which was my third successful grow. I learned a few lessons along the way and if there's any take-home messages for anyone reading, it's that weed is friggin' resilient! I encountered numerous problems along the way, and occasionally thought about chucking it and starting over - I'm very glad I didn't! I ended up with 122g of nice bud from a single plant and a 135W LED. Not bad!
Setup & Equipment
20" x 36" x 60" Vivosun Tent
HLG 135W v2 Quantum Board
4" AC Infinity Exhaust Fan + Carbon Filter
Pro-Mix HP
5 Gallon Fabric Pot
4x 6" Clip-on Fans (cheap Canadian Tire brand)
Honeywell Soothing Comfort Warm Mist Humidifier
Honeywell Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier
Honeywell 250W Heatbud Personal Heater
BlueLab pH + TDS/EC pens
Dr. Meter Lux Meter
I setup my tent in the walk-in closet of my master bedroom. For exhaust, I ran 4" duct through my wall and out through a 4" air diffuser in my master bedroom, just over the closet door (see below). Of course, this got pretty stinky during late flowering - even with the carbon filter - so I'll be changing this up next time around. I wasn't able to vent directly outside, nor did I want to vent into my attic. My master bedroom has a carbon filter of it's own, as my wife and I limit smoking to the bedroom. I also had a dehumidifier to soak up extra moisture in the bedroom, and there is a fresh air supply from the HVAC system in the bedroom as well. All in all, I had our master bedroom set up as best I could to keep it comfortable as it literally served as an exhaust room for the grow. Fortunately my wife is a proper stoner so she was onboard! See below:
Growing Medium & Germination
I grew with Pro-Mix HP, a 'semi-soilless' peat moss-based medium, in a single 5-gal fabric pot. This was my third grow overall, and my first time using Pro-Mix HP. My previous two grows utilized Fox Farms Happy Frog. I used pH-adjusted tap water (more on that later) for all waterings.
I soaked a single Cheese XXL by Dinafem autoflower seed in a shot glass of water which I let sit in the dark for 16 hours or so, until it sunk when I poked it. I poured the water-and-seed onto a paper towel folded on a plate, which I put in an open zip-lock bag in my tent. On my first grow a year or so ago, I really failed at germinating seeds. It took a lot of trial-and-error to find something that worked for me. I read a lot of conflicting information about the seed needing to "breathe", so I ultimately landed on the paper-towel method with an open zip-lock bag. The bag keeps the paper towel from drying out, and I guess it being open lets some air get in. I also used my space heater to keep the temps at around 20 deg C.
It took around 24-36 hours for a nice taproot to emerge.
Watering & Nutrients
I'm fortunate to live in a Canadian city with fairly clean tap water (it's also excellent that cannabis is legal here, and anyone is allowed to grow up to 4 plants
). My TDS is around 30-50 ppm with a pH of ~7.5. Initially, I was using apple cider vinegar to bring my pH down to around 6.5, but eventually decided to stop this and get some proper pH-down (Root Farm brand). I think the apple cider vinegar may have contributed to some pH problems throughout the grow until I switched to pH-down during pre-flowering.As for nutrients, I used the GH Flora Series (10-part), feeding every other watering. I played around with pH and usually watered/fed somewhere between 5.8-6.3. The GH feedchart currently provides light, medium, and heavy feeding guidelines. Going full-strength light feeding, I'd get around ~500ppm during flowering. This was one my first hiccups, as I initially was feeding quarter to half-strength of the light dose, i.e., under-feeding my plant! Moreover, as I was frightened of calcium deficiencies, I found myself feeding extra calcium even during the 'water-only' feedings, thereby throwing off my nutrient ratios! Even worse, little did I know that Pro-Mix HP is actually full of dolomite lime, and doesn't even need calcium, at least not for the first couple of weeks! More on these nutrient problems later...
Lighting
I used a HLG 135W v2 Quantum Board -- the slightly older 3000k model, not the newer R-spec. I also monitored LUX using a cheap LUX meter on Amazon. A word of warning here, these are no match for a proper PPFD meter, but they can give some some insight if you know what you're doing. They basically can tell you the relative light intensity of one part of your tent compared to another. Careful of guides online that say stuff like "20,000 LUX during veg, 60,000 LUX during flower, etc." That's malarkey. It depends on the spectrum of light coming off your board. Fortunately, HLG provides PPFD to LUX calculators specific for their lights. I won't go into much lighting detail in this blog post, but I will say this: read up on DLI and PPFD requirements for the various stages of cannabis growth -- this information can be used as inputs into light-specific LUX calculators. I ran my grow at a 20/4 lighting schedule, and with my specific light, I landed on roughly 7,500 LUX for the seedling, up to 25,000 LUX for vegetative growth, and up to 45,000 LUX for flowering.
Seedling / Early Veg.
Once the taproot emerged, I popped the seed into my medium and it sprouted in a day or two:
From there, the thing took off! Really nice fast growth -- probably from the 'starter' nutrients already in the Pro-Mix. Again, at this time, I was feeding quarter-strength light nutrients, which were basically negligible looking back on it. Within the next 7-10 days, everything was swell:
It was after two weeks or so the nutrient deficiencies started to emerge. You can see the lime-green color in the picture above. By this time, the starter nutrients in the Pro-Mix were depleting and I was underfeeding the plant. Still, it didn't look too bad, and it had 5 nodes, so I decided to top it and start LST'ing. Note, this was my first attempt at topping, so I was a little nervous:
It was after topping that the problems became obvious. Again, I don't think it was the 'fault' of the topping, rather than at this point the plant was being underfed nutrients in general, and overfed calcium to boot!. On top of this, I was using a cheap Amazon pH pen with apple cider vinegar. I ultimately ended up getting a proper BlueLab pH pen, and found the cheap one was way off! Again, looking back, the problems I was seeing were mostly pH related.
Late Veg / Early Flowering
Now comes the "dark period". You'll notice I have practically no pictures of this period. Why? Well, the plant looked gross! It was yellowing fast, hardly growing, and just looked sickly in general. I thought long and hard about giving up. At around week 5, the thing looked like it was being taken over by orange rusty spots, which I now attribute to calcium toxicity. I even flushed it in the bath-tub twice! Anyway, once I got my BlueLab pH pen and finally got my nutrients in check, I was entering flowering. The plant started to show signs of improvement, but the nice green color never really came back. It was yellowish/lime-green for the practically the rest of it's life.
The picture below was taken a strategic angle to make it look better than it actually was, but it's pretty well the only picture I took during the phase. On the plus side, the LST was going well and I had a nice canopy.
Late Flowering
Although dark green never really came back, the buds certainly started fattening up and getting frosty once I got my nutrients and pH in check:
Ripening, Flushing & Recap
At this point, I was getting some pretty heavy duty canoeing of the leaves -- I can only attribute this to the early nutrient deficiencies as my temperature was in check.
I figure now is a good time to point out a few other key things that I have not yet stated. First off... VPD Charts! Temperature and Humidity are key! I think one of the things that saved this grow, in spit of pH and Nutrient problems, was keeping the plant comfortable. Look up VPD charts, and use those to guide your temperature and humidity. I think this is a good example of just how promising your yields can be if you can keep your environment in check.
Also, in terms of lifespan, I let this go for 13 weeks. I basically followed the GH feedchart photoperiod schedule, which allows for 4 weeks of vegetative growth, 8 weeks of flowering, and 1 week to flush. I used the GH FloraKleen flushing solution in my final week.
Harvest
After the 1 week flush, I kept the plant in the dark for 24 hours prior to harvesting. I'm not sure if that actually does anything...
I wet trimmed, then hung the buds to dry in my tent for 6 days, keeping the humidity at around 55%. At this point, the stems weren't really bendy anymore, and today I put them in jars with Boveda humidity packs. In total, I yielded 122 grams of dried bud:
Lessons Learned
Anyways folks, here's a summary of the things I learned on this grow:
1. Follow VPD charts to guide your temperature and humidity
2. Cheap pH pens are inaccurate; BlueLab pens are awesome!
3. Don't go by 'half-strength' or 'quarter-strength' feeding guidelines. Look up ppm ranges and go by TDS/EC! Aim for ~500-550ppm during flowering.
4. Keep your nutrients in balance.
5. Be careful of calcium toxicity.
6. If you're not venting outside, your house will smell like weed during late flowering even if you have a carbon filter.
7. Never give up! The plants can bounce back!
Thanks for reading.
-tronN00dles
P.S. Cultivator’s Club? @420Forever
