Arjan's Haze #3 in Soil - LED/CFL

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Oh and I totally forgot to welcome the real Potchimp with bandages on his head to my grow!

Welcome!

Don't worry, every surface over here is padded with pink fluff so it's impossible to hurt yourself. I wish I had some smoke to offer though but that's another story.

 

[JB42]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Sounds like a plan mate!! I defoil at them stages in flower too. Didnt seem like they took too long to bounce back. Its good to test though, thats why we are here. I'm loving watching yours as its what im re-searching at the min.

They look really good and dont be hard on yourself you wont f it up they great plants!

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Day 47 from seed, Day 5 of 12/12

Today we are gonna look at the plants in a new light. It was sunny so at noon I put the plants by my living room window to introduce them to the natural world. Might do this more if we get a sunny march. Its always nice to not have to look at the plants in the strange blue-pink-yellow glow of my closet.

After 5 days of 12/12 I still see no white hairs just a few undeveloped pre-flowers. The timer has actually been at 11.5/12.5 the whole time so the dark cycle is slightly longer then the light. I'm starting to get impatient for flowers but at least they are stretching a bit.

As you can see the 'big plant' is no longer the biggest of the two despite having a much larger pot. I think my soil is not good for such a big pot since it holds moisture too well and might not have properly dried out between watering. The plant in the small pot is really doing great though! I'm gonna really let the big air pot dry out now and hopefully she can catch up.

Anyone have any other ideas why the air pot plant is lagging behind? It was always the biggest but after second defoliation it just slowed down compared to the other one.

Anyway instead of calling them 'big plant' and 'small plant' I'm gonna refer to them as 'air pot' and 'regular' from now on.


Meet Regular Orange

Meet Air pot Black

Half an hour later the sun was too low so I put them back where they belong!

 

[JB42]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Easy Inkdot mate!
They look great mate, ive just had mine out adding more light (another 250w CFL) .

Has the airpot one had most defoil done to it? With it being the biggest then the other catching without the 2nd defoil? Is that correct? If so it says something about defoil to me. I got my 2day youger ones in smartpots to catch up as well.

They looking really healthy , both of them! Good job Inkdot , keep it up mate.

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Hey mate!

I think they were both equally defoiled. No big difference in treatment at least not intentionally. But I usually water at the same time and I think that might have been the problem. The air pot could have been too wet inside slowing down metabolism.

 

[4twenty4all]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Hey Inkdot, looking awesome! I'd agree with ya, your soil looks very clumpy and easily compactable so I bet the roots were too wet and lacked oxygen. Great work with the topping and defoliation, your plants are nice and bushy.

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Day 1 of flowering!


Yay finally! It took me 52 days from seed to get there. One hell of a long time for plants that are about 9-10 inches tall. I believe I can do it much better and faster next time if I grow the same strain with a different soil mix. This soil is doing the job don't get me wrong but it's like 90% peat moss, no perlite, very little sand. It's too dense and water retaining but still the plants are super healthy and that's all I can ask really.

No I lied...
I can ask for HUGE colas as well. We'll see about that later.



So anyway... Yes, Flowering!

Both plants have shown their first white hairs today, orange pot more so than air pot. I'm not gonna attempt close up photos of that magnitude with my old iphone 3 camera but you'll see for yourself next update.

Yesterday I was kinda bummed about the air pot plant. It was not thriving as the little orange pot was. I thought it was because it had not dried out enough. But it turns out I'm a stupid noob and I basically water starved it. It was looking very sad with hanging leaves, no energy, no pop. I shoved a wooden stick (those that you use as support for flowers) in one of the air pots holes and left it there for half a minute to test the moisture level on the deep lower parts of the pot. When I pulled the stick out it was bone dry and covered in soil dust. Ops!

Therefore I watered both plants heavily with veg nutrient solution (2 ml/l BioGrow, 1ml/l BioBloom, 1ml/1 BioHeaven) and within two minutes the hanging leaves of the air pot plant were all perky and smiley!! I later watered some more with pure water and egg shell powder because the soil was still not saturated. I found that if you let soil dry out enough it takes a few tries to get all of it wet again. The first watering tends to create wet pathways through the medium and all subsequent water will take the route of the wet highways leaving pockets of dry soil in between. After an hour or so the moisture is more evenly distributed and you can carefully water some more to wet the drier parts.

I totally underestimated how much it drank! Today they grew as much as in the last three days combined (at least true for the air pot plant) and I finally saw white hairs!



So on to the pictures:


Nice leaf top lit by LED, back lit by CFL!

Now random photos in no particular order

Peace!

 

[Lester Freeman]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Sweet! It seems like I'm gonna get 10g Moroccan later this week!

I know someone who knows someone who knows a grandmother who knows the guy!

This will make the 70 days wait much easier.

 

[Smokemupm8]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Awsum mate Glad to hear theyre showing sex now!! It seems like your plants MAY have been lacking light power IMO.. Pls dont take offence to this, but just thinkin with the right amount of CFL s in 44days you should have larger girls?? What have you got lighting them for Veg?? You ve prob answered this before, soz, but with my cfl's I get good growth and theyd be around 2ft in that time with my set up, so it just made me wonder why theyre a little smaller, thats all.
Ive sprouted a bean which will be raised with CFL s for the most part, so you can tag along for that soon see how I go with my setup and if its ok you may get sumthn out of it hopefully? :/
Anyways cant wait to see some buds on em mate Take it easy, Smokemup

 

[bde0001]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Day 29

Below is a picture of my grow space. How do you think I should train my plants for optimal use of space? I have defoliated all big fan leaves already to promote side branches. Do you think I should also top them? Or do something else perhaps? I have a lot of height in my closet, but not too much area. The plants are also sitting on cardboard boxes to raise them up towards the lights at the moment. If they grow much taller I can lower them as well as raise the LED lights a bit.

Otherwise, the plants are filling out again after the cuts three days ago. I can't wait to start flowering in 1-2 weeks.

Untill next time! and

wow, I like how you are using the cfl's and led. That must save a shit ton of electricity and keep the heat low compared to a mh/hps. But why do you have the led so far away? I'm not experienced with leds, but I would think that you could bring the led a lot closer and you will have faster growth and less stretch(arjans haze is a tall plant, yes?)

 

[PotChimp]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Sweet! It seems like I'm gonna get 10g Moroccan later this week!

I know someone who knows someone who knows a grandmother who knows the guy!

This will make the 70 days wait much easier.

It'll make the first two days easier anyway.....

 

[JB42]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Easy Inkdot mate,
Plants look great now, ready for flower, cool they FEM. Do you reckon the 55days from seed has something to do with recovery time on a defoil. I've been watching yours to come to terms with heavy defoils and it looks to me like they take a long time to recover and by the end of it they have just replaced the leaves you have taken and will need to be defoiled again in flower.

Mine are less than a month old and not too far behind now with only 1 topping. I'm going to defoil some pans to reveal some branches , but thats it. Then when 2 week into flower I will reveal all bud sites.

What do you think to all that mate?

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Awsum mate Glad to hear theyre showing sex now!! It seems like your plants MAY have been lacking light power IMO..

Smoke, I have a 240 W Blackstar LED and 2 65 W CFL. I don't need more light due to heat. I already have to run this closet with an open door and fan outside to get some circulation. Remember this is a small humble closet grow I can't grow monsters like you . When I move next time I'm gonna make sure I have room to build a proper grow room with proper space, air circulation, properly placed exhaust etc. Then I'll buy bigger lights.

Easy Inkdot mate,
Plants look great now, ready for flower, cool they FEM. Do you reckon the 55days from seed has something to do with recovery time on a defoil. I've been watching yours to come to terms with heavy defoils and it looks to me like they take a long time to recover and by the end of it they have just replaced the leaves you have taken and will need to be defoiled again in flower.

Mine are less than a month old and not too far behind now with only 1 topping. I'm going to defoil some pans to reveal some branches , but thats it. Then when 2 week into flower I will reveal all bud sites.

What do you think to all that mate?

Yeah, its all about when and how you defoil. Don't write it off based on this journal! For this grow and strain I should have skipped the second one or at least done less of it and been able to flower just as big plants earlier but then I wouldn't have learned this.

The first defoil was done right and they recovered quick and got a lot more bushy. Second one was not properly done and the timing was not right. Still an experiment that was worth a few week more on an already long project and not all is negative. Now I got the best shaped plants I've ever done ready to fill my space with flowers!

wow, I like how you are using the cfl's and led. That must save a shit ton of electricity and keep the heat low compared to a mh/hps. But why do you have the led so far away? I'm not experienced with leds, but I would think that you could bring the led a lot closer and you will have faster growth and less stretch(arjans haze is a tall plant, yes?)

Optimum distance for this LED is 20" veg, 14" flower. Right now distance is 17" but they just started stretching properly. I've bleached plants before that been too close.

Arjans Haze #3 is not a tall plant. According to Greenhouse its "the shortest sativa in the world" but thats coming from the guys who sell it.

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

It'll make the first two days easier anyway.....

Lol you beast!

 

[JB42]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Yeah mate im not writing off defoil , I do it myself, just not on a massive scale. Anyway they look great and will obviously stretch out bigger than 10inch. Keep it up inkdot!

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Thx JBC!


I've considered the discussion about lights so today I got some new boxes to put under my plants to raise them up a bit more. Distance to LED is now about 14-15" now I can just remove box after box as they keep stretching. Ideally I don't want them much closer than 12" since I think the LED will bleach/burn the leaves unless they are slowly slowly conditioned to take more.

The 240W Blackstar is pretty powerful and I had problems with bleaching when I grew Tangerine Dream.

 

[JB42]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Yeah was thinking that was a bit too high but im no LED guy so couldnt really say. They looking great anyway mate!

 

[Inkdot]

Re: Arjans Haze #3 in soil, LED/CFL

Distance of LED to canopy depends a lot on chip power (wattage of individual LED chips) and what lens system is being used (focus). The effective range varies between different products. Some mega LEDs should be over 40" from canopy.

It seems that for LEDs like mine the distance should be 18-24" during veg and 12-16" for flower. Looked around some more and seen some go close as 8" during late flower but others having severe light burn problems from 12" so it also depends on strain and how the plants were raised etc.

I'm gonna keep a close eye on the plants the following days and if all looks good gonna keep them where they are at until they reach 10" from canopy then I'll remove one box to put them at around 14" again and just keep doing that until stretch is done.

Anyway my inter node space has been tight maybe about 1" or a little more (before stretch) so I don't think too little light has been an issue so far.

 

[Inkdot]

Flowering day 5 mini update



Not much talking today, more looking! Can you see some of the white hairs popping up all over?

Peace!