Teach Me How To Grow! - Cheese Fem In Soil

[whitefang]

Hey all,
Has been a long time since I have grown. Maybe 10 years or more. I used to have some knowledge but have forgotten most of it.

So here I am again. Ready to grow once more. This time I have the means and the motivation. I am going to start off in soil, get some experience under my belt and give hydro a go. I plan on growing several mothers and doing a lot of cloning.

At the moment my setup is pretty basic. What I do have is plenty of space. I have 2 separate rooms I can use. Both are approx 10ft by 10ft.

What I've done so far.

Stripped carpet out of room and blocked off window. Spent several hours with disinfectant and sprayed / wiped the room from top to bottom.

Setup hooks for my fluro lights I am going to grow with, I have had these lights for a long time. 3x 32w cool daylight 4ft bulbs per shade. I have 2. Going to get some more lights sooner or later. Just not sure what to buy at this point. I don't mind spending money on quality. I have an existing 600w balast that I was going to use for flowering but might look at some MH for veg also.

The seeds I have are feminized cheese. I've got 10 but only planted 5.

I opted to plant the seeds directly in soil and not germinate in paper towel etc. I remember from the past I always had a better germ rate directly in soil. I reckon you are better off just planting them, the less touching the better?

Seeds went into seedling mix 21/05/16.

4/5 sprouted so 80% germ rate. I believe the 5th was a dud as I dug it up and it was still just a seed.

Let us begin.

The above were taken one week after the seeds were planted.

 

[whitefang]

Ok. This will bring us up to date. I have repotted in 2.5gal pots. I probably did this a bit early but it is done now. I also toasted up the two first proper leaves. Think I had the lights a bit close, thought this was hard to do with fluros - my bad.

Soil mix was compost, soil, perlite and pumice. I mixed this up in a tub.

Here are some photos. Not sure why some of them are sideways, they were straight on my computer.

3 weeks from seed. Using polystyrene to keep pots off the ground.

 

[Canna Montana]

Hey there. I'll sub up to your journal. Feel free to ask questions. I'll do my best to help you, if not I'll find out if possible. Have a great day and enjoy those babies!

 

[Stinky Snid]

Hi there whitefang, haven't read that book since I was a kid. Sick wolflike grow instincts man. The foam under the pots is a good idea... I wouldn't worry about the early uppoting they do great now that they've got some dirt to play in. Lights are all different, they didn't seem to close to burn them...but the plants will let you know, eh... Good job on the adjustments. Was there a fan blowing air under the hood? This would allow the lights to remain somewhat closer by reducing surface temps.

Wishing you lots of luck, keep up the good work and...

KiG cheers

 

[whitefang]

Thanks for the comments. Appreciate the thoughts.

We are moving a long. Will start to post more regularly as things develop.

Where we are at as of today - 40 days since seeds in soil

I was struggling to get the room fully lightproof. There were cracks showing through the door. This is probably going to end up my veg room but want it light tight anyways. So I built a frame and got some panda. Still need to find some stick on zippers to make myself an inner door.

Have also turned on the 2nd row of lights. Another 100w - not much but has warmed up the room a little.

Getting to the point where I need to start making things happen. I need to buy intake and exhaust fans. Any suggestion on what sized fans? Do I need one for intake and one for exhaust or can I have passive intake? I can easily cut a hole through the exterior wall near the bottom for an intake and i will exhaust through the ceiling. I will most likely buy an ozone generator for flowering.

Struggling with cold temperatures, getting down to around 60-65. Think I need to put a heater in there to bring the temp up a little. Can also feel the high humidity when I walk into the room. This is around 85%-90%.

Lighting - I have brought 9 400w MH bulb with integrated balasts. They were really cheap x warehouse lighting. Figured I could use a couple for veg????

Nutrients - Still just feeding plain water. Might look at getting some nutes soon. Will start with a mild solution.

Here are some photos of where we are at:

frame for inner door:

panda on frame: (still need to tape down edges)

some pictures of the ladies/mothers. These are a few days old

Going to start cloning in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be making up ebb and flow buckets. Going to be fun!!

 

[whitefang]

50 days since seeds in soil

10L pots are too small. Getting hard to water and maintain turgidity. So stepped up to 30L pots. Will see how I go, I may end up with 50L pots. Remember these are my mothers.

I finally picked up my 9 x 400w PSMH vegging lights. They're awesome. They have the ballast integrated into the light. Can't wait to get them hooked up.

Here are some progress photos. Going to wait another 2 weeks then start cloning.

 

[mouser]

Those plants are looking great. Awesome root development! I'll sit over here and watch if you dont mind.

 

[triggz2k15]

Hey there dude.
Girls are looking really healthy, and I'm loving the idea behind your setup. fair play diving in with the whole room. I hope you and ur girls are well and in good health.
Looking forward to seeing more pictures.
Triggz.
Peace Love and Respect.

Sent from my SM-A300FU using 420 Magazine Mobile App

 

[whitefang]

60 days veg

I have somewhat of a conundrum. I think I should have started cloning at least a week ago (probably earlier). They have grown considerably since being in the larger pots. Amazing what you can do with 200w of fluorescent lighting!

If I clone now, I will have to leave the clones unattended for a full 6 days. Due to the mothers size, I'm thinking I might just have to take this risk. I might take 4 clones off each plan for a total of 16, I plan on using a bubble cloner I made. Just with PH 5.5 water and some airstones in the bottom and a dome over the leaves. What do you think? Will they last 6 days unattended? The other option is to wait another week until I am able to keep an eye on them which I think the mothers will just be getting out of control by then. They need a trim up.

In the interim, I have done some LST on the mothers. Unfortunately I broke one of the main stems on the last plant I was LSTing (more like High Stress Training ). I'm not too worried though, I probably would have used this for cloning anyway.

Here are a few photos, I really need a better camera!

To LST, I just drilled some holes in the top of the pot and used some garden strip to bend the stems down.

Before:

After:

 

[whitefang]

Hi all,
Time for an update.

Clones have been in the bubbler for 2 weeks. They are taking a long time to develop roots. They are just starting to sprout now. The first 8 days they were completely unattended. When I checked the ph it way up - arouind 7.5, have since been monitoring this daily. So think this will have slowed things down. Also I took the cuttings from the top of the plant which would add another few days to the rooting process.

Mother plants are huge. They're almost too big. I need to hurry up and get the clones into veg so I can take another round of cuttings. I can raise the lights more or swap out to 400W MH - what do you think?

Have tidied up my veg room quite a bit and got a shelf to get stuff off the ground. Think I have humidity a bit high, getting condensation on the ceiling. I don't have an exhaust fan yet. Going to sort this tomorrow.

I bought a carload worth of stuff from the hydroponics store yesterday, so am looking forward to setup my flowering room over the new few days. Need more stuff from the hardware store first. Will keep you posted with photos.

Ok, I'm onto uncharted territory. I have never grown hydro before. I'm going with 6" netpots and hydroton. I really like the look of the RDWC setups, going to give this a go. I'm either going to go with 5Gal buckets or 4 larger totes with 4 sites per tote, would connected all these together and have a master 'bucket / tote' for all the action.

In the meantime, here is some photos. (none of the goodie pile yet

 

[Stinky Snid]

Can't wait to see the new flower room. Way to build up the excitement, that's journalism! Those fluorescent lights are doing good for the mothers, but a mh would also be a good boost. If you can mitigate the excess heat and space required then I'd say go for it. It's your garden...

Keep up the good work and...

KiG cheers

 

[whitefang]

Hi all,
Time for an update.

I still haven't made it to the flower room yet!

Now have a total of:

4 mothers in soil. These are approx 3 feet tall.
8 clones in vegging in RDWC, for about 10 days.
6 clones just planted into soil.
19 Clones freshly cut, trying rockwool cubes with rooting hormone in humidity dome.
Going to cut some more clones for the bubbler tonight.

Not quite sure what I'm going to do with all the clones! but it's fun practicing and figuring out what I'm doing wrong.

This is my first time with hydro. I got a quality pH pen (bluelabs) and a trash ppm meter - it does seem to work ok though so not bothered.

I decided on a RDWC setup. I didn't like the idea of 5Gal buckets as they have rounded surfaces where the bulkhead fitting would go, if they were square I would have gone for it. So I decided to go with 15Gal totes. I only have 2 at the moment but I have the fittings and totes to add in another 2. I might even have 2 in the veg room and 2 in the flower room then just move the netpots.

My res is just a 10Gal rubbish bin. Works quite well with the flip lid. Nice and easy for access to add nutes or get some water out for testing.

Res stats:

EC = 310-350ppm (0.5 conversion)
Temp = 68f.
pH = 5.2-5.8

Bit worried about the res temp, don't want this to go any higher.

haha, I installed a 150mm fan in the veg room. Well, vent in the veg room and the fan in the roof. To start with I just used standard ducting and screwed the fan to a beam. Wow - this thing sounded like a freight train was going through my house. Trying to lie in bed and sleep was hard work! I could only handle 2 nights then turned it off. It did it's job really well but too loud. So I made a polystyrene lined box and got some R6.0 insulated ducting. That sure made it quieter! Only put it in today so will see if I can still hear it when I go to bed.

Some photos...

 

[whitefang]

Hello all,
Time for an update.

Have got some action in the flower room.

Am going to get the RDWC going in there this weekend. However in the meantime I decided to flower 2 of the mothers. They were all getting quite large. Moved them to 12Gal pots, they have been flowering for 10 days.

Sorry for the poor quality photos.

Have a humungous air pump with 30 outlets coming + picking up a water chiller tomorrow.

 

[kefflan]

helo everyone, Im new here just want some help with knowing if my plant is a male or female

 

[Stinky Snid]

Sweet deal on the new gear, always nice to get new grow toys. Plants are doing great, any flowers yet, how the progress. Keep up the good work and...

KiG cheers

 

[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?

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

Sending you lots of love and positive energy.