12/12 from seed

[budhisattva]

My last grow was a nice learning experience. This time I wanted to do something new, so I decided to try 12/12 from seed. I am using bag seed of a fairly good quality. I basically started the seeds normally, put them in dark plastic cups until they grew a little bit, then transplanted them to 6" pots until they showed sex. After showing sex, they were transplanted into the pots in the photos, which are about 12" in diameter and 12" or so tall (a little small I know, but what I have to work with at the moment). I ended having 10 females out of those i started (well about 65% or so). One of them never got to be more than about 5" tall but was solid bud from the bottom, about 3" in diameter. Out of the other 9 that are still going, one is nearly done. She was always the strongest grower and has a solid christmast tree shaped set of buds, but never got taller than about 10". The others grew to 14" pretty quickly and some are still going and I guess will get to 16-18" before they quit. I'm currently growing with CFLs. Basically 2 27w CLFs per plant, though they are fairly tightly spaced and share alot of lite. Anyway, I'm very pleased with this 12/12 approach. Its super easy and fast!. Here are some pics:

Anyway, just happy with the progress so I thought I'd post

Budhisattva

 

[happiehippie]

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.....I may have too give this a high....or I mean a try good job man.

 

[happiehippie]

whats up man....when did or have you, know when too harvest? and how is it how long from seed too bud? great job man
Hippie

 

[budhisattva]

Hi happiehippie. Thanks for the comments

I didn't start them all at the same time so there are plants of various ages ranging from 2-2.5 months old. The christmas tree is the old (though the shortest) and I expect that she will get harvested this weekend or maybe next week.

I basically divided up my available space into a sort of grid. There are a total of 10 spaces (5x2) in my grid. In this grid, a little humidity dome for starting seeds takes up 1 space. I can fit 4 of my starting cups in a single grid space, 2 6" pots, or one full female pot. I should have already started some new seeds but have been busy lately so I haven't. But the idea is simply that whenever there is a space available...start something in it.

I did harvest the little 5" plant last week...a little bit prematurely. About 50% of the trichs were cloudy, and the rest were clear. However, its growth had pretty much halted and I was in the need for some green, so I went ahead and pulled it and let it cure for a couple of days. It was pretty good, but would have been better had I let it finish and gave it time to cure properly. The rest of them I will harvest normally, which for me is when most of the the trichs are cloudy and maybe 10% or so are amber. I haven't experimented with this much yet, so maybe over time I will tweak that...but this is my understanding based on reading so far.

Soon I will complete a little hydro system that I am building for future rounds. I plan to continue to stick to 12/12 from seed because its easy, no pruning required, pretty fast, and I only have one room, and this eliminates the need to have a room for veg separate from room for flowering room. However, the tight space can make it difficult to water and I also use much more soil this way (and its too cold to compost right now), so I'm hoping to see if I can get a little more efficient with a simple hydro setup that I have devised (will photo and journalize when I get that going). I also hope to swap out the CFLs with a 400w HID light when I have the opportunity (read spare cash). After this I'll use the CFLs for supplemental lighting or I'll make a shelf in my little room where I can start the seedlings without having to take up space in my little grid...we'll see how that part goes or if its even necessary. I think with my hydro setup I'll be able to get 10-15 flowering females going (assuming 12/12 to keep them from being too bushy), which is probably enough.

Budhisattva

 

[eBUD]

wow budhisattva that interesting. So how many days are they? What yield are you projecting? I wonder if this could be another quick grow tip coming here. Im watching this post like a hawk now.

 

[happiehippie]

sweet man...im also making my first hydro 5 gal. bucket drip system and now I believe im trying the 12/12 way also. keep the good work up man.

 

[eBUD]

PS by days i ment since they showed their sex. lol sry too high

 

[stratlogic]

I've always wondered what kind of nute regimen do you use for a straight 12/12 from seed grow? Do you start with a vegging mix or budding mix....I've always wondered. I've seen nothing but good results and was considering trying to attempt it in a hydro setup.

 

[Cherma]

Never doing a 12/12 in a Hydro I can say that we call these "Stunters" a term where we have only 12 hours max light here. And by doing so, we pull off crops in 47-90 days seed to finish.If by seed, start them, sprout them up using a soil mix of Pro Mix, Lime, Lomfosco ( Rock Phosphate) wood ash,FF Big Bloom & Earth Juice Bloom, greatky enhaces the flowering power. But yes, I would prepare your soils with more of a flowering type of fertilizers.

 

[stratlogic]

Up to 90 days huh? It seems that if a 12/12 start to finish took up to 90 days, it defeats the purpose of that method. In 90 days using the more traditional method (4 weeks vegging, 8 weeks budding) you could yield far more. I've been under the impression 47-60 days was typical for this method. Am I missing something?

 

[budhisattva]

ewps, I've been slacking on checking in here :/

ebud: I'm not sure exactly, I don't really track all that very well. I always start off with good intentions but tend to forget They all showed sex though in 2 weeks or so

stratlogic: I certainly can't claim to be an expert. I'm sure that the actual growth rate could be better if I had more experience..but I'm getting there. In general I have used very little nutes up to this point. I have mixed a fairly rich soil (approx 1/3 each of various composts, perlite, and peat) and have never really seen many signs of problems from lack of nutrients. Occasionally, I have done some feeding with some fish nutes. I have not had much in the way of equipment to check pH and whatnot, so I have been pretty conservative in that area trying to interfere if things didnt' look healthy, as opposed to trying to maximize the rate. I expect to do more of the latter, a little bit at a time, as I do more. In fact each of the plants even within this group of plants has done better than the last. The most robust one (not very far into real budding yet), was actually almost dead right at the beginning. I also had high pH and too much nitrogen in my early plants, which i believe stunted the growth of some (my little christmas tree was cool looking and delivered about .5oz, but it was never tall, grew pretty slow, and is only half the height of the others which are now all around 18-20". All in all though I think the main limiting factor I have at the moment is lights, which I hope to remedy before too long. I think that already at this height the bottom portions of the plant aren't getting enough light with my current setup. I also have my new hydro system designed and built for the most part (with lots of hints and ideas from your cabinet grows in fact) and will be putting it into action as soon as enough of these plants finish that I have room to do so. I also have the appropriate fox farm nutes and a pH/tds meter to appropriately monitor my hydro system when I get it going.

In regards to your comment about 90 days, I certainly could be off but that seemed pretty fast to me. So far I haven't had the traditional method produce in that period of time, though this could be due to my techniques and a need for more lights (or something else). Of course if I get better and can get things down to 47-60 days that would rock All that said, I don't think the advantages of this technique are limited to that of time (though that is a major portion) When done properly, they never spread out and get bushy...they grow straight up..so you can fit more into the same space without having to prune. I haven't really pruned anything other than pulling off some dead leaves at the bottom of the plants. The other plants that I have going are just under 3 mos now (approximately...as I said i suck at dates), but still have a little bit of time to go on them. I expect that most of them will get me in the 1-1.5 oz range, though I coudl be wrong. Some of them have stretched and gotten a bit bushy, and so I'm not sure how much they are going to fill in and how they will perform.

I have been trying to upload pictures tonight, but its been going slow and keeps ultimately failing. I will reupload them again tomorrow and show you how things are progressing.

Budhisattva

 

[Aratilis]

what kind of CFL are you using budhisattva? they have warm temp color range in your pics. is it an ordinary CFL?