1st Grow In Many Years - Tangerine Dream Auto Feminized

[Kip22]

Hi All

My 1st grow in many years. I thought a journal would be fun and hopefully also get some help along the way. Feel free to chime in or tell me I've done something completely stupid.

Setup as follow.
Grow room: 2.5 ft x 3 ft =7.5 sq ft X 5 feet high. Self built fully insulated to r14. I've tiled the floor and side walls for both utility and heat sink properties of the tile. Its outside in my unheated shop and I live in the pacific northwest so its gonna get pretty cold. Right now its about 40f and I expect lows to be about 23f this winter.

Lights: Single 180 watt Apollo horticulture LED. 4x 60 watt equiv 6500k CFLS. I plan to swap these out with 100 CFL's if my temps drop too much. If I can add light to keep things warm enough instead of a heater that makes more sense to me.

Medium: Soil mix. Starting on Pro mix HP for seedlings. Week 2 repot to 2 parts pro mix, 1 part coco, 1 part sea soil. My plan here is that the sea soil will provide some nutes then I'll be using Earth Juice Grow to supplement. Being my first grow I wanted to keep things simple and the earth juice seems to be a well regarded all in one that won't mess with my PH too much.

Phase 1 building is completed. I ran my lights all night and monitored temps. I'm holding a pretty steady 79f inside while its 40f out so I'm ready to plant the seeds. That is with no fans running ventilation though. I've got a 4 inch intake and 4 inch exhaust pipe. My plan is to run a small fan inside 24/7 and one outside on a timer 15 minutes per hour both sucking and blowing the intake and exhaust so I get a bit of a mix of warm interior and new cold air going in. I'll have to play with this quite a bit to keep my temps just right while still getting enough fresh air in there.

Pics to follow.

 

[Kip22]

Photos as promised. All three germinated and sprouted. U can't see the one on the right but its there. Right now they r just in pro mix. My last grows years ago I had issues over watering and lack of light. I've solved the light issue for now anyways and I'll have to be careful about water. I'm assuming they will be good in those pots at least two weeks before re potting into a soil coco promix medium? Should I feed them any nutes soon or is the pro mix good for now?

 

[Dwight Monk]

I'm new to this but I don't think in a soil medium you want to give them any Nutes until they at least two weeks old, them little guys are a lot less forgiving than the older ones.

 

[Kip22]

Thanks for the advice. I'll wait two weeks to feed them anything.

 

[Kip22]

day 5 since sprouting. They look pretty happy to me. Gave them their first watering since sprouting today as the soil seemed completely dry. The three at the back are tangerine dream.

 

[Kip22]

Day 8

Things seem to be moving along nicely. Is it time to move to bigger pots? I think I'm answering my own question here but I was reading two weeks is a good amount of time for first pots.

I'm watering these daily the last three days. The top and side of the cups are crunchy they are so dry by evening each day. I re potted a double that I threw two random seeds I thought unlikely to sprout in one pot and they both came up. Roots were at the bottom and sides. Also I gave them a half of the light amount of earth juice grow yesterday.

The one on the left is a haze extreme from Crop Kings. The three right ones are Tangerine dream auto's.

Edit: Temp is pretty steady at 77.
Thanks!

 

[Kip22]

Looking for some help here. At day 13 and the leaves are curling just a little. I'm hoping its not a major prob yet but I'd like to figure it out before it becomes one. I checked and the pots seemed dry so I watered with no nutes. Temp is a steady 78, small fan running, lights are 24/0.

Any Ideas? Thanks!

 

[Kip22]

Anyone?

 

[Sneakygreen]

Is there a fan on them? Make sure it's oscillating sometimes it can be just the weaker leaves get twisted from consistent air flow on them.


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[Kip22]

Thanks for the reply Sneakygreen. There is a small fan running 24hrs in there but its on the ceiling about 3.5 ft away on low. It is circulating air in there but almost zero breeze at the plant.

 

[Sneakygreen]

Ok other than that it's pretty common for the first leaves to curl a bit on seedlings. Happened on mine too.


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[Kip22]

Thanks!

I'll keep and eye on it and post back if things change.

 

[Kip22]

Okay so I've got a little more curling and a few brown spots but only on the plant at the back closest to the CFL lights. The others are good now. Everything has received the same mix of nutes and no spots or curl now. I did a bunch of reading and the brown spots (correct me if I'm wrong) are either nitrogen deficiency or light burn? Since everything is getting the same nutes ( earth juice grow minimum recommended dose pre mixed 2-3 days in advance of feeding) and the plant closest to the light has spots should I just chalk it up to light burn and move it a bit further away?

Also my temps have dropped about 5 degrees. I was averaging 79f and now I'm 74 due to outside temp drop.

I cant find my camera but I'll try to get some pics up. I don't have a PH or moisture meter either and I'm thinking I need one now to help diagnose issues. Can someone recommend a PH meter for a reasonable price that works?

Thanks!

 

[Sneakygreen]

I don't know if it's lights as cfls and LEDs don't throw offmuch heat. Definitely get onto ph as it could just be off on that one causing a lockout . Temps seem fine and usually light or heat problems leaves curl upward. Got my ph metre on eBay for like 12 dollars


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[Kip22]

pics below. Sorry my camera sucks and doesn't really show the small brown spots on the one plant.
Day 18 for the 3 auto's on the right. The back right is the one with issues.

Also thanks for the help Sneakygreen! Nobody else seems interested in my grow. I appreciate it!

 

[Kip22]

Okay so I picked up some calmag and mixed that lightly with earth juice grow and watered. I also picked up a PH tester with the vial and drops that go in. I took some of the runoff right away after watering and added the ph drops. It looks like I'm between 4 and 5 so 4.5. Should I be ph testing the nute mix before adding it and adjusting it before feeding?

Also what should I do to get it where it needs to be? Any simple home supply I could add?

Thanks!

 

[Kip22]

I think I'm closer to figuring out my issue. My soil mix is 2 parts pro mix, 1 part coco, 1 part organic sea soil (compost). I'm using earth juice bloom/grow and cal mag. I mix up the nutes using low strength right away after watering so they sit open air for 2-5 days depending on when I need to water/feed again. When I take the PH of the nutes I'm about 4.5 so I think that may be my issue with the nutes bringing my soil PH down too much. My question is how should I address this now and also future grows. I read a lot of people add 1 tbps of dolomite lime to each gallon of pro mix used and this covers them for the full grow. Other option is to use something to adjust PH of the nutes before feeding or maybe both?

Thoughts?

 

[Kip22]

I picked up a soil PH probe meter and checked all my plants. All except the one with spotted leaves were 6.5. The one with issues was a little over 5. No clue how that happened as they were all getting the same soil nutes etc????

Should I use a little Dolomite lime to bring it up or something else?

Also the one with issues has just started flowering probably due to stress. The other two are still vegging so I think the yield will be a little lower but oh well. Live and learn I guess.

 

[David Bowman]

Hope all is well in your world.

Is this grow still alive?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

How about posting a 420 Strain Review?

If you need any help with posting photos, please read our Photo Gallery Tutorial.

I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.

 

[Kip22]

Hi all

Yes this is still alive. At 7 weeks I've got some decent buds now. It was touch and go for a bit before I got the nutes and PH dialed in. Probably about 2 weeks in there with zero growth and dying leaves.

I'm curious how much longer do you think these have to go before harvest? Also I flipped the lights to 12/12 today for my other photos. I only have the one space right now so it will probably hurt my yield a little but so be it. On to bigger and better next time around!