LlamaBomb's 1st Grow - Multi-Strain

[LlamaBomb]

And I'm back with a much needed update.... Soooooo where to start.....

April 19th (Day 42 Veg, Day 7 Flower)

So those hiccups I was having should be solved with this:

So I did go with the 2x 1000 watt solistek dimmable ballasts paired with Silverstar 6" a/c hoods using a 6" Vortex fan, 1000 watt hortilux MH and 1000 watt HPS. Plus 2x heavy duty timers (different brand). I don't believe my previous ones can handle the lights and may have been a source of my problems from the start. So once everything is setup and in its home I will be testing it all without timers and see if I now have back ups which are never bad.

So plants your all like screw the gear man show the girls off. Well without further adieu (wish I gave them stripper names now)..... hehe

So this is my trained God bud.... it's wonky and my mistake plant hehe. Screwed up topping this one, split the stem down the middle and yea pretty much my don't do this plant. Not much growth out of it lately. Don't know if I'm get much from her but we shall see.

This is my trained Mighty Mix. Not the best training but being my first ever grow and obviously first time trying lst, I would say it turned out ok so far... I believe it is almost ready to go into the flower room as it is now Day 42 in Veg so 6th week.

Please correct me if I'm wrong in switching it this early. Thanks...

Flower room... kind of a bitch to take pictures in there as my basement isn't lit very well and once the lights are on the orange is crazy... any clues on taking better pics minus removing plants? Anyway....

Untrained Mighty Mix (left) and Indoor Mix (right) up front and Candy Cane autos in the rear... Candy Cane on the left is just under 5'. The Candy's are on 17th day of flower nutes at the moment.

The untrained Mighty Mix has started to blow up in the last couple days and went from 2' to just over 3' in the last week. The untrained Indoor mix is working through a nitrogen toxicity, fed it with micro nutes only no grow bloom this time... next feeding I'll be switching over to flower nutes on these two.

Now the manufacture of my nutrients just go from grow to bloom nutes with no crossover in between. I am wondering if I should follow this or easy them in. The candy canes I switched over instantly with no ill effects that I know of (again noob so I don't know if I did do wrong or not)

So what would any of your recommendations be on switching over then?

Whew! That was a lot of typing on my phone.

Sorry for being so long winded and asking so many questions throughout this post.

Hopefully by next update I will have had time to set all the new stuff up for some better pictures I've been promising the whole time.

I will also try and hit the 420 smoke-e-thon tomorrow but I work which sucks. I'll try and roll one up to blaze on the roof or something hehe.

Cheers to all and Happy 419.75. Will see you hopefully tomorrow or next update for sure. Stay safe and smoke proud.






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[Kundal1n1]

Happy 420! I gotta say I love the boxes of shinies.. drool.. haha. Plants sure are looking nicely. I'm eager to see how they will be fattening up with crystalicious buds! Interesting to read as well that one of your plants is having a nitrogen overload.. I'm in the same boat.. but some plain water will solve that I'm sure.
Nice update btw, glad everything is working out for you. I do like the LST you've done, it looks really great and bushy results. Multiple colas for the win! Enjoy the day. Happy 420!

 

[LlamaBomb]

Happy 420! I gotta say I love the boxes of shinies.. drool.. haha. Plants sure are looking nicely. I'm eager to see how they will be fattening up with crystalicious buds! Interesting to read as well that one of your plants is having a nitrogen overload.. I'm in the same boat.. but some plain water will solve that I'm sure.
Nice update btw, glad everything is working out for you. I do like the LST you've done, it looks really great and bushy results. Multiple colas for the win! Enjoy the day. Happy 420!

Thanks kundal1n1. Hope everything is going well with yourself as well and happy 420 my friend

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[dick23rk]

Hey there. I missed out on all the action here at 420 mag yesterday, was off doing other things of course lol.
Very nice update llamabomb, loving the new equipment and I bet the ladies are to! I would have to say that mighty mix looks like it could be ready to flower now, really depends how big you want it to get in the end since it will stretch again once it goes into flower. Totally your call but it would be fine if it went now.
As for easing into the bloom nutes, that is what I am planning to do. I don't want to shock them straight into it so when I make the switch on my schedule I am going to start out at half strength and work it up again til it's where the plants are liking it. This way I will be sure that I wont get any sort of toxicities or nute burn from the added/different amounts of nutrients going on.
Hope that helps ya out with making a decision if you haven't made one already lol. Hope ya had a good 420 as well bud! Things are looking great over there, keep it up.

 

[LlamaBomb]

Hey there. I missed out on all the action here at 420 mag yesterday, was off doing other things of course lol.
Very nice update llamabomb, loving the new equipment and I bet the ladies are to! I would have to say that mighty mix looks like it could be ready to flower now, really depends how big you want it to get in the end since it will stretch again once it goes into flower. Totally your call but it would be fine if it went now.
As for easing into the bloom nutes, that is what I am planning to do. I don't want to shock them straight into it so when I make the switch on my schedule I am going to start out at half strength and work it up again til it's where the plants are liking it. This way I will be sure that I wont get any sort of toxicities or nute burn from the added/different amounts of nutrients going on.
Hope that helps ya out with making a decision if you haven't made one already lol. Hope ya had a good 420 as well bud! Things are looking great over there, keep it up.

Thanks man. Unfortunately life has been busy busy as of late so I haven't had time to stick up the new goods yet.

I will be switching the MxM over to flower room when I do that as I would like to move some fans and get more room in their first.

As for the nutes my brand doesn't mention any cross over while switching so this go I didn't. My candy canes were switched over instantly and don't seem to be affected. I do believe I am getting a slight Mg deficiency in most of my plants though as some yellowing/browning and very small holes are appearing, up'd Cal mag 1ml so will see right away here when the lights go back on. Cheers man. Thanks for stopping in as always.

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[dick23rk]

Ah that's never a good thing. Hope ya got er corrected now. *knock on wood* Somehow I haven't any real issues yet when it comes to nutrients. Not sure how I made it this far without something going wrong lol. Guess I will know what to expect next go around with the same strain at least and that I will keep sticking with these nutrients I'm using for now until I decide I'm ready to step it up a notch to something else. Best of luck with your little issue, I will check back tomorrow and see how things went if you're around. Take care

 

[LlamaBomb]

April 24th (Day 45)

Update time.....

So this weekend has kinda been a nightmare with setting up the air cooled lights.

I'll start with yesterday (April 23).
Me and a buddy thought we would tackle the light switch nice and early. By the time he left this is what we had.

Light hoods connected together via 6" ducting with a 6" fan pushing fresh room air(yes lots of debate on that) through the lights. With separate 4" exhaust fans pulling air through filter and out of room.

Basement->Fan-> Ducting->Lamp->Ducting->Lamp->Ducting->Out

As I thought about it, I assumed the light would bounce through the ducting from my veg room to flower room and vice versa. Obviously this is no good and I'm sure the fan wouldn't enjoy cooling both lights. So we hooked both rooms up like this.

Filter->Fan->Ducting->Light->Ducting->Out

Now I ran this for a night with the 1000 HPS and damn does this new bulb and hood throw some heat... feels way stronger than the last bulb I was using..... wonder how long that bulb has been used for? Hmm Anyway lowest temps I could get was 77.4f which is much better than the 82-83f I had before but really all that money for 4-5f really? Oh well.... till I smelt it outside the tent...

The fans I was using are too big for my filters and we're past the scrub limit. So to keep my rooms at 77f I was screwing my filters. Choice was made and I did this....

Each room:
Basement->Ducting->Fan->Light->Ducting->Out
Filter->Fan->Ducting->Out

So basically a modified version of #1 setup. Requires me to go buy another fan tomorrow to run Veg room again, which kinda sucks as I'm rather tired of spending money at this point and just wanna smoke my first grown greens. At least temps are now at 75.6f which I can deal with for now... might get a slightly larger fan for room exhausting so I can control temps a bit more.

Now the girls....

So remember the God bud I was calling my don't do that plant/mistake cause I screwed up training.... well I threw it out cause I seen no new growth for a while and I didn't feel like wasting any more nutes on it.

On to the rest...
I switched the Mighty mix I've been training over to the flower room yesterday while I was changing the lights and the rest are doing awesome

Trained Mighty Mix (Promise better names next time)

Indoor Mix

Untrained Mighty Mix

And just some Cola shots on the Candy Canes cause I got in a rush.

The Candy Cane is putting off a crazy crazy citrus smell. Like BAM!!!! Mr Clean ain't got shit on this plant. I really hope I flush, harvest and cure this bud right.

That brings me to a question.

Flushing: I was planning on trying to look at Trichs and see when their 90% milky /10% clear and start feeding with just pH'd water with extra run off... does that sound right??

I'm guessing since no pistils have started to change in color I have a little while before I need to worry about that but please let me know what you guys/gals think.

Thanks for reading or passing by.

Don't feel like working tomorrow. Wish I could do this for a living instead hehe.

Cheers all


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[dick23rk]

Hey there bud. Nice equipment ya got there! Here's a suggestion on the way the ducting is set up. Couldn't you just attach your carbon filter to one end of the light hood and then the fan and ducting on the other side? Kinda like this.. filter>light hood>fan>ducting>out ?? Or maybe even add some ducting between the filter and the hood if needed? You can get fresh air by opening up the vents at the bottom of your tent. With the fan running and the vents closed it would cause negative pressure so that when you open the vents at the bottom it would pull in fresh air due to the negative pressure. That is how I've seen it done before. Might make things a little easier and less hectic for ya. Your filter is a 4" and the rest is 6" correct? You could buy a changeover adapter to make the 4" filter fit onto the 6" inlet on the cooled hood. That would make for less fans being run.

As for your flushing, it will take about 10-14 days for the flush to be done. So it all depends on what kind of smoke you are looking for. Each strain may take a little longer than another to get to where you want it but that would be a general idea.

Things are looking nice otherwise my friend. Sad to hear you got rid of the god bud. Not to sure what would have happened there, maybe it was just stunted from the experiments? Either way, the first grow is always the big lesson teacher! Your next grow I bet will be amazing compared to this one which is still a good go for the first time! You're doing much better than I did when I first started growing indoors! haha. Keep up the good work over there! Best of luck, take care.

 

[LlamaBomb]

Hey there bud. Nice equipment ya got there! Here's a suggestion on the way the ducting is set up. Couldn't you just attach your carbon filter to one end of the light hood and then the fan and ducting on the other side? Kinda like this.. filter>light hood>fan>ducting>out ?? Or maybe even add some ducting between the filter and the hood if needed? You can get fresh air by opening up the vents at the bottom of your tent. With the fan running and the vents closed it would cause negative pressure so that when you open the vents at the bottom it would pull in fresh air due to the negative pressure. That is how I've seen it done before. Might make things a little easier and less hectic for ya. Your filter is a 4" and the rest is 6" correct? You could buy a changeover adapter to make the 4" filter fit onto the 6" inlet on the cooled hood. That would make for less fans being run.

As for your flushing, it will take about 10-14 days for the flush to be done. So it all depends on what kind of smoke you are looking for. Each strain may take a little longer than another to get to where you want it but that would be a general idea.

Things are looking nice otherwise my friend. Sad to hear you got rid of the god bud. Not to sure what would have happened there, maybe it was just stunted from the experiments? Either way, the first grow is always the big lesson teacher! Your next grow I bet will be amazing compared to this one which is still a good go for the first time! You're doing much better than I did when I first started growing indoors! haha. Keep up the good work over there! Best of luck, take care.

Thanks dude

Yea I had the 6" fan hooked to filter through a reducer then light but my filters aren't rated to the cfm the 6" fans pull so I was getting smell outside the tent with that setup and since I'm pulling the room air through light it wasn't adequately cooling I believe.

The problem I have now is I used a old pillow case as a filter for the in to the light and it's too restrictive (sucked my ducting together) and not cooling light enough. So I will be changing that to something more along the lines of a furnace filter just for dust. Also I need longer exhaust tubing as it is exhausting too close to the room raising the ambient temperature as well. Just want this sorted so I have one less thing to worry about.

Anyway thanks for the comments and suggestions. Cheers bud

Thinking a A/C would have almost been better at this rate but will see I just gotta get this worked out or dim the lights to 750 instead of 1000 for summer

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[LlamaBomb]

Oh ya and about the flushing I do understand the 10-14day thing but my question was more of a when you start flushing then how long to flush. Am I looking for trich color just starting to amber or most cloudy with some still clear? I understand that the high is a bit different when there at different points. I guess I'm looking for opinions on that really.

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[LlamaBomb]

So I went to the hydro store yesterday after work to go buy some grow bags for some veggies I wanna start. I bought some 1 gal bags, take them home and think to my self "damn these look a lot like the 3 gal bags they sold me to do this stuff in". Well turns out they sold me 1 gal bags .... so my candy canes are only in 1 gal bags... well there goes a nice harvest on those.... boo.

I will be paying more attention to the smaller things I do now hehe.


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[STIHL LOGGER]

Yo LLama, Just read thru the thread man.. Niceee. You are very well on the right track bud. Great goodies and great set up. Keep it up man!

 

[LlamaBomb]

Thanks STIHL LOGGER for the read thru. I appreciate it and the kind words... definitely saying this is my learning grow and hopefully will do better later.

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[STIHL LOGGER]

Just keep on keepin on man. Always try to stay positive. Problems arise and are usually easily fixed. Its when ya get frustrated that issues become compounded. Stay learning and keep havin fun bud!

 

[LlamaBomb]

So I will hopefully have time for better update later tonight witb pictures but .......

I got my temperature problem solved!!!!

Should have read the "how to choose correct size of fan" thread as I didn't include resistance of filter and since I switched my room size the little 4" I was using was inadequate for the cubic footage (also read that 4" ducting can only push 120+/- cfm).

So I upgraded to a 6" 435cfm fan and now I can control temps all the way down to 68f without any internal circulation fans. I am incredibly happy that I solved that problem now since I have spent quite a bit of money and time trying to get a proper 1000w setup.

Next upgrade is going to be a DWC system and possibly Scrog. I am hating the grow bags I choose to grow in as the soil settles like crazy every time I water, no matter how gentle I try and be. I think I'm going to pick up some pots just so I can use the last my sunshine mix without having to deal with them crap things.

Any way sorry for rambling but just in case some one else has temp issues this may help.

Till later.... cheers



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[arteekay]

Based on the pics of your Candy Canes on the 25th, I'd say you got at least another two weeks before you start thinking about flushing for a week or two.

The 7 weeks flowering time on the Crop King Seeds site doesn't include veg time, which is generally 3 or four weeks.

 

[LlamaBomb]

April 27th (Day49)

Ok so this is where I'm at.....

CKS Candy Canes auto's:

Time in Veg room under 18/6 (was with my photoperiods)= 35 Days

Time in flower room (12-12)= 14days

Been feeding these two bloom nutes for 25 days...

Based on what I can see through my phone camera they are still mostly clear and lots still haven't swelled. I have a magnifier but honestly it's shit and I need to basically touch the plant with it. I think I'm going to go grab just a loupe and see what I can see. I just really don't wanna blow the flush period with these.

I know the coloring doesn't help but what are your opinion on these?

I have read some people's harvest time on these is 85 days or so. Guessing I'm going to be a bit less than that but not sure how much.

CKS Mighty Mix:

Time in Veg room= 35 days
Time in flower= 14 days

Been using bloom nutes for 6 days now.

All seems well with this one... really growing outward. I would have done something to contain/train this one but since it's my first grow I just wanted to see how a regular plant grew.

VSB Untrained Indoor Mix:

Time in Veg= 35 days
Time in Flower= 14 days

This one has also been fed bloom nutes for 6 days now.

VSB Trained Indoor Mix

Time in Veg= 44 days
Time in Flower= 6 days

This one hasn't made the switch to bloom nutes. I was waiting till the next feed to switch.

And there she be for now... my seedlings that I have started will be transplanted and photographed this weekend when they enter Veg Land hehe.

Hope all is well with everyone out there. Time to smoke and chill. Cheers

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[LlamaBomb]

Based on the pics of your Candy Canes on the 25th, I'd say you got at least another two weeks before you start thinking about flushing for a week or two.

The 7 weeks flowering time on the Crop King Seeds site doesn't include veg time, which is generally 3 or four weeks.

Thanks arteekay I just updated with some kinda chappy trich shots I'll will try and do better for you tomorrow

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[arteekay]

Why move the autos to 12/12? Space I'm guessing?

I remember well how much we stressed about the flush on our first grow. Somewhere around here is where we started debating when each would start getting flushed and finished. Within a page or two is ShiggityFlip's post on how he does his finish, and we follow anything that guy suggests, since he literally saved our first grow a few months before.

For your first grow, I'd honestly recommend you note what you see through your scope or loop as research only, and finish your plant(s) off the rest of their general appearance, flowers not leaves.

I've only been here 6 months, and already I've seen dozens of first time growers finish their plants far too early, sacrificing half or more of their yields because they spotted a couple sugar leaves with amber trichs on 'em.

 

[LlamaBomb]

Why move the autos to 12/12? Space I'm guessing?

I remember well how much we stressed about the flush on our first grow. Somewhere around here is where we started debating when each would start getting flushed and finished. Within a page or two is ShiggityFlip's post on how he does his finish, and we follow anything that guy suggests, since he literally saved our first grow a few months before.

For your first grow, I'd honestly recommend you note what you see through your scope or loop as research only, and finish your plant(s) off the rest of their general appearance, flowers not leaves.

I've only been here 6 months, and already I've seen dozens of first time growers finish their plants far too early, sacrificing half or more of their yields because they spotted a couple sugar leaves with amber trichs on 'em.

I moved the autos to 12/12 mostly because of space and one of my 400w MH burnt out leaving me with only one 400w in a 5x5 tent so I switch them with the rest to my 1000w HPS. I also wasn't 100% knowledgeable on auto flowers, my brother just tossed me some seeds so I went at it hehe.

I will definitely have a read through what you have linked there for me. Also thank you for the help with the signature. Cheers and thanks for the help and stopping in to my little garden.

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