Uncle Roach Clip
420 Member
Greetings to my first grow journal. I provide a summary of the relevant specs at the end if you want to skip over all the details, which I provide here just for context.
About me: this technically the 2nd solo grow I've ever done, but it might as well be my first. In 2001-2 I tried to guerilla grow 10 plants outdoors in eastern Canada. I bought clones off a friend but have no idea what strain they were. I was over-zealous about camoflaging the plastic buckets with moss and stuff to prevent detection and most got eaten right away by bugs before they were over 30 cm. The ones that survived the bugs eventually got eaten by deer. The following year I bought more clones and partnered up with a friend who followed Cervantes' book and got pretty good results, again doing guerilla planting in another location. But I kind of just helped him with the labour and didn't learn as much as I should have about the process.
So now that it's legal in Canada I'm giving it a try by myself for the 1st time. I have a backyard vegetable garden that gets lots of good sun and I intially bought an 8x6x6 greenhouse as a nursery for our veggie seedlings. But the rules here require cannabis grown outdoors on municipal properties to be in a covered structure, so I will house my plants in that for the duration of the grow, once it's warm enough to leave them there overnight. Until it warms up I have them under a 600W Likesuns LED growlight, in a homemade grow tent I cobbled together from 2 cardboard boxes, gorilla tape, Velcro tape and tinfoil.
Since I'm a noob I'm starting with only 2 plants. I did some research and learned that autoflowers in general are easier for beginners, and in particular GG#4, which is one of my favourite strains to smoke, is said to be pretty straightforward. So I ordered 5 of cropking's GG#4 auto fem seeds to start with (plus 5 WW fem and 5 OG Kush fem, for later grows). I germinated them with the paper towel method. They went into a glass of mineral water i May 11 and 16 hrs later I poured them onto the paper towel on a plate and followed the rest of the instructions. They seemed to crack pretty quick but it took a while for the taproots to come out. I think I had them in too cool a spot at first but when I put them on a heat pad they came out pretty quick. All in all from putting them in water to planting them in soil it took 5 days. If anyone has any suggestions or comments about how long this took I'm grateful for all feedback.
Today the taproots reached roughly 1cm so I decided to put them in their pots. I read that autflowers are more sensitive to stress and anything that stalls them out will cost in yield and potency because they more or less grow on a fixed schedule that is coded in their DNA rather than induced by the hours of sunlight they receive. So I potted each of the germinated seeds in a 10G plastic pot, which I had previously filled with a DIY soil mix consisting of 3 parts peat moss, 3 parts composted sheep manure, 2 parts perlite and 1 part vermiculite. I potted the soil mix about a week in advance and after soaking it through I took a few pH readings. It came out just about in the 6.5~6.7 range.
I don't know if I needed pots that big but I figured I had better err on the side of caution. I'm grateful for any feedback on my chosen pot size, soil mixture, and current soil pH, though I suppose the most important feedback will eventually come from the plants themselves.
I used the thick end of a chopstick to make a 1.5cm hole in the surface of the soil and planted the seeds with taproots facing down, and covered them without pressing down too hard. I put them under full light with Veg + Bloom both turned on. Is this correct?
I also put a mason jar upside down over each seed because I was reading a blog by someone who recommended doing that until they sprout, or even until the cotyledon appears. Anyone have any opinion on this one way or another?
My plan is to start them in this set up and then as it warms up at night over the next 3 weeks or so, to move them outside for good after hardening them off a bit. But once they're outside I still plan to use the lights on them in the morning and maybe even after sunset because the greenhouse doesn't get much direct light before 12 or after 8 pm.
Basic specs:
Indoor/Outdoor grow (1st 3 weeks in homemade 18x36x24 cardboard tent, after that in 8x6x6' UV resistant outdoor greenhouse)
Strain: GG#4 auto fem
Number of Plants: 2 to start
Breeder: Crop king (I think)
Medium: DIY soil mix (3 parts peat moss, 3 parts composted sheep manure, 2 parts perlite, 1 part vermiculite)
Potting: 10G black plastic
Light: 600W Likesuns LED grow light (veg + bloom) for 1st 3 weeks, then natural sunlight + supplemental LED light afterwards
Target temp/humidity: 23-26 celcius, 40-50% humidity
Thanks for reading, and sorry for writing so much for my first entry. It's quarantine though - what the hell else do I have to do?? Haha. Any and all feedback from the growing community is much appreciated. I'll attach some photos below in case anyone is curious to see what my setup actually looks like. And if anyone notices in the photos that the thermometer is reading 13 degrees celcius it's only because I had just brought it in from the greenhouse where it's pretty chilly today.
About me: this technically the 2nd solo grow I've ever done, but it might as well be my first. In 2001-2 I tried to guerilla grow 10 plants outdoors in eastern Canada. I bought clones off a friend but have no idea what strain they were. I was over-zealous about camoflaging the plastic buckets with moss and stuff to prevent detection and most got eaten right away by bugs before they were over 30 cm. The ones that survived the bugs eventually got eaten by deer. The following year I bought more clones and partnered up with a friend who followed Cervantes' book and got pretty good results, again doing guerilla planting in another location. But I kind of just helped him with the labour and didn't learn as much as I should have about the process.
So now that it's legal in Canada I'm giving it a try by myself for the 1st time. I have a backyard vegetable garden that gets lots of good sun and I intially bought an 8x6x6 greenhouse as a nursery for our veggie seedlings. But the rules here require cannabis grown outdoors on municipal properties to be in a covered structure, so I will house my plants in that for the duration of the grow, once it's warm enough to leave them there overnight. Until it warms up I have them under a 600W Likesuns LED growlight, in a homemade grow tent I cobbled together from 2 cardboard boxes, gorilla tape, Velcro tape and tinfoil.
Since I'm a noob I'm starting with only 2 plants. I did some research and learned that autoflowers in general are easier for beginners, and in particular GG#4, which is one of my favourite strains to smoke, is said to be pretty straightforward. So I ordered 5 of cropking's GG#4 auto fem seeds to start with (plus 5 WW fem and 5 OG Kush fem, for later grows). I germinated them with the paper towel method. They went into a glass of mineral water i May 11 and 16 hrs later I poured them onto the paper towel on a plate and followed the rest of the instructions. They seemed to crack pretty quick but it took a while for the taproots to come out. I think I had them in too cool a spot at first but when I put them on a heat pad they came out pretty quick. All in all from putting them in water to planting them in soil it took 5 days. If anyone has any suggestions or comments about how long this took I'm grateful for all feedback.
Today the taproots reached roughly 1cm so I decided to put them in their pots. I read that autflowers are more sensitive to stress and anything that stalls them out will cost in yield and potency because they more or less grow on a fixed schedule that is coded in their DNA rather than induced by the hours of sunlight they receive. So I potted each of the germinated seeds in a 10G plastic pot, which I had previously filled with a DIY soil mix consisting of 3 parts peat moss, 3 parts composted sheep manure, 2 parts perlite and 1 part vermiculite. I potted the soil mix about a week in advance and after soaking it through I took a few pH readings. It came out just about in the 6.5~6.7 range.
I don't know if I needed pots that big but I figured I had better err on the side of caution. I'm grateful for any feedback on my chosen pot size, soil mixture, and current soil pH, though I suppose the most important feedback will eventually come from the plants themselves.
I used the thick end of a chopstick to make a 1.5cm hole in the surface of the soil and planted the seeds with taproots facing down, and covered them without pressing down too hard. I put them under full light with Veg + Bloom both turned on. Is this correct?
I also put a mason jar upside down over each seed because I was reading a blog by someone who recommended doing that until they sprout, or even until the cotyledon appears. Anyone have any opinion on this one way or another?
My plan is to start them in this set up and then as it warms up at night over the next 3 weeks or so, to move them outside for good after hardening them off a bit. But once they're outside I still plan to use the lights on them in the morning and maybe even after sunset because the greenhouse doesn't get much direct light before 12 or after 8 pm.
Basic specs:
Indoor/Outdoor grow (1st 3 weeks in homemade 18x36x24 cardboard tent, after that in 8x6x6' UV resistant outdoor greenhouse)
Strain: GG#4 auto fem
Number of Plants: 2 to start
Breeder: Crop king (I think)
Medium: DIY soil mix (3 parts peat moss, 3 parts composted sheep manure, 2 parts perlite, 1 part vermiculite)
Potting: 10G black plastic
Light: 600W Likesuns LED grow light (veg + bloom) for 1st 3 weeks, then natural sunlight + supplemental LED light afterwards
Target temp/humidity: 23-26 celcius, 40-50% humidity
Thanks for reading, and sorry for writing so much for my first entry. It's quarantine though - what the hell else do I have to do?? Haha. Any and all feedback from the growing community is much appreciated. I'll attach some photos below in case anyone is curious to see what my setup actually looks like. And if anyone notices in the photos that the thermometer is reading 13 degrees celcius it's only because I had just brought it in from the greenhouse where it's pretty chilly today.