1st Grow - Soil - CFL - High DIY Level

[PlanetJ]

Hey all,

Since most of what is to follow is made possible by your collective knowledge, I thought I'd share the experience to your amusement and my future reference

What strain is it? Badly cured bud bagseed.
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? I hope someone will tell me along the way ...
Is it in Veg or Flower stage? Veg
If in Veg... For how long? 2nd week of their life
Soil or Hydro?NPK 9-5-3 bio-soil
If soil... What size pot?No clue .. didnt pay attention, just bought the one below bucket-size.
Size of light?4x 45w 6500K 2900lm + 2x 23w 4000K 1300lm
Temp of Room/cab? Hitting 19C low, and 32C high, using a 10cm in-line fan with passive intake, running lights at night.
RH of Room/cab?35% low, 60% high, using a wet towel in there for extra humidity given the amount of airflow in there.
PH of media or res? 6.5
Any Pests ? Me
How often are you watering? When the top layer is 3cm dry, and my meter tells me the same for the next 3
Type and strength of ferts used? 1x NPK 12-10-18, small amount, when adding soil for stability, cuz I wasted their start with a lack in lumen ... thus almost (I hope) killing one of them.

I started from bagseed, which I soaked for 18h in tapwater ~ 30C, which cooled to room ~ 19C.
I filled my pots with soil, poked a hole in there with my finger, about 2 cm deep, and dropped them in, and covered them.

Here is the area they started .. under a 2700K 1500lm lamp, about 1,5 meter away .. so if you are wondering how I get them to look like spaghetti, there ya go

My first 2 seedlings are breaking the dirt ^^

Day3

End of Day3

Day4 .. I wonder if they are missing something ....

Day5 .. maybe ... nah ..

Day7
This is where I realized they where missing something, and since my order from China didnt arrive yet, I had to do with what was available .. which was: 3x 2700K 1200lm .. I added 3x 4000K 1250lm and hoped it would be enough ... notice the professional arangement of lights ...

Day8 .. we love the light, but please, give us some suport!

Stuff for my growbox that I had to order came in: my thermo/hygrometer, a 10cm in-line fan, 1m flexible duct, a wallpiece for that duct, a 4-in-1 plant sensor (ground PH/temp/humidity and light intensity)

I used 8x 61cm x 122cm hardboard, rough side in, to create a 61cm x 61cm x 122cm growbox, supported by about 12m of 1,5cm x 3cm 'beams', lined with alu-foil and held together and light-tight with nails and screws and tape where needed .. I'd hate to have to move it.

My plants seem to like it tho .. altho there is little too much airflow, and thus I placed a wet towel in there, and I keep it wet for some extra hydratation.

Day10 Notice the one of the far right .. it look like she is the strongest of em all .. ...

Day11

Here is the one I drew attention to again:

And the others:

Day12 Crap .. did I kill her ? At this point I added a little nutrients, and soil for support of the long stems .. later that day:

Uh-oh .. that doesnt look good ...

Day14

The rest seems to be doing fine ?

Except for this one ... at this point I flushed the daylight out of her, poked holes in the dirt for air and quicker drying, and had a fan blowing over it:

Day15
Finaly my bulbs arived, so now they are under 4x 45w 2900lm 6500K .. as the 5th was a d.o.a. So I added in two 4000K 1250 lm's .. and hope it will do.

Notice the tip .. still hope ..

Room conditions:

End of day 15 notice the coloration on the leafs ..

I officialy pronounce her dead:

How to mount lights without spending money

This morning I took her out of the ground .. and am somewhat amazed:

That was it .. all the roots she had :/ Now she's in water, but I think it's too late ..

The rest is still going strong tho, but they seem to want food

Day16

Thanks for watching!

 

[Alkhemist]

good luck!!

Subbed

 

[BudBGrowin]

Cool! good luck!

 

[mainlylost]

Any guesses what caused the one to die?

 

[PlanetJ]

The root looks underdeveloped .. but what I did to all four of them prior to this, is feed a very small amount of nutrients, and top off the soil in order to provide support for the way too long stems (due to how I tortured them to sprouts).

The other 3 seemed to be okay with that .. I have no clue what caught this one .. it didn't recover. I have no clue how roots shoold look at that age .. but my feeling is that it should be more branched and more of them, given the age of 2 weeks.

 

[PlanetJ]

Day 17 - 20

One plant down, 3 going strong. None of the others seemed to mind the food .. they look quite happy I think.


Day 17:

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benjamin

Day 18

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benjamin

Day 19

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benjamin

Day 20

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benjamin

Overview

Comments are welcomed and any suggestions as wel!

 

[TaylorMade420]

for cfl they are looking top notch mukker, some advice tho i would either top now or start lst'ing them maybe make a screen, cfl doesnt have a lot of penetration so a nice even canopy would help get as much lumens as possible onto the buds, if its in your budget maybe switch out cfl for a 250w hps which will get you more bud in the long run either way dude, good job

some reps

 

[CO Finest]

Nice job. Your main problem was you had your lights way to far away from seedlings and over stretched them. The one with the signal root showed you it did not have enough light. Cfl are weak so you should keep them as close to the seedlings as you can. If you put your hand under the light you can feel the heat so if it does not burn your hand then it will not burn your plants. The 4k lights are not a good range to really use. But to each own. 2400K and 6500k work the best for plants. Just my 2 cents. As of now your grow look awesome. Nice and green

 

[PlanetJ]

for cfl they are looking top notch mukker,

Actually, they are the most budget I could find

[$10.59] ADDVIVA ® E27 45W 2900lm 6500K Daglicht ESL / CFL 5.5T Half spiraal lamp (220-240V)

some advice tho i would either top now or start lst'ing them maybe make a screen, cfl doesnt have a lot of penetration so a nice even canopy would help get as much lumens as possible onto the buds,

I have been reading and re-reading an studying How To: Bend and top your way to a 1 pound monster but thought they where still too small compared to plants in that topic. I deffinately plan on topping and LST-ing. If you guys think it's time to top, I'll top

if its in your budget maybe switch out cfl for a 250w hps which will get you more bud in the long run either way dude, good job

If this works out with about 200 gram total dried tops, not to mention the rest of the material and QISO, then I'll be able to buy a proper setup allowing to go perpetual.

some reps

Thank you very much Given these are my first 20 days of experience in actualy growing, that's a cool little piece of extra motivation there

 

[PlanetJ]

Nice job. Your main problem was you had your lights way to far away from seedlings and over stretched them. The one with the signal root showed you it did not have enough light. Cfl are weak so you should keep them as close to the seedlings as you can. If you put your hand under the light you can feel the heat so if it does not burn your hand then it will not burn your plants. The 4k lights are not a good range to really use. But to each own. 2400K and 6500k work the best for plants. Just my 2 cents. As of now your grow look awesome. Nice and green

The 2700K and 4000K have been replaced once my order came in with 4x 6500K 2900lm lamps. I added two 4000K cuz I thought it might help .. given this remark, I'll switch em out for 2700's. As soon as my lights hang high enough, I plan on moving the light on the far right to the botom, to shine on the sides of my girls. I have another 6500K 2900lm bulb coming in, as one was DOA, but once it gets here, they go into flowering I think (takes about 15 days)

Thank you for your feedback!

 

[Antics]

You made some of the same mistakes I made, nutrients too soon. I ended up losing the first 2 I started after a PH correction panic.
As for underdeveloped roots, I'm not sure that was the case. When I transplanted my two, both had deep root structures visible along the sides of the pots. It's my guess, that too many nutrients (Or in my case, baking soda to correct the PH) actually kills/burns those finer roots. It looks like a few of the others had some minor nutrient burn in your earlier pictures, but looks completely cleared up now.

The rest of your plants look amazing. As for bulbs, I found a 4 pack of 6500K 45w CFL on Amazon for $20, and 2-4 packs of 23w 2700K at home depot for something.. $9 each or so? Something like that.

Keep rocking though, they look insanely healthy and happy.

 

[Alkhemist]

heya dude...

yep, as stated above, not enough light=stretch... too much nutrient too soon=nutrient burn or death ESPECIALLY at such an early stage. tbh with you, if you can get a good foundation soil with added goodness like blood and bone meal, fish meal etc etc you wont need to feed.. and when i grow in dirt, i start with my own supersoil blend which means i don't actually feed them at all until i turn to flower.. with the exception of silicates and amendments if and when needed.

they have really come away well though bro! looking great, healthy and well on their way to good internodal development. TaylorM made a very good point with regards to training to meet your lumen output.. if you don't have an HID light system yet then using a screen or some lst'ing with defoliation possibly- will go a long way to allowing light to penetrate to those areas you want it to.

excellent work so far mate! keep it up

plus reps for the diy work

 

[Alkhemist]

just a quick add... you can actually top whenever you want.. "mainlining" and this "fluxing" will top immediately after the cotelydons- the first laterals, or you can top after the 3rd set.. or whenever you like bro

goodluck!

 

[PlanetJ]

just a quick add... you can actually top whenever you want.. "mainlining" and this "fluxing" will top immediately after the cotelydons- the first laterals, or you can top after the 3rd set.. or whenever you like bro

goodluck!

I'll try tonight ... but I'll probably end up uploading pictures with intended places to top and an ' all clear' before actually doing it

 

[PlanetJ]

Here goes nothing .. topped them, fed them a conservative amount, and watered them decently ..

The tops ...

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benjamin

Thanks for the pointers, tips and comments so far, keep them comming

 

[PlanetJ]

Given guidelines for photo upload, I'm not sure if I'll continue this journal with pictures. I have issues with the stone-age gallery interface, which forces me to edit photo's on either my phone (not going to), or put them on my computer first, edit them there, make sure they are they right ones cuz I cant change them afterwards, and then press upload.

I'm kinda lazy .. sorry.

(If someone knows a way to upload to this gallery without having to first edit (rotate) them and making sure you upload in the right order (names are are not used for sorting, messing up their order if I dont take care to upload in the desired order), that would be great!)

 

[PlanetJ]

Please, for the love of the flying spaghetti monster, do something about your gallery! It takes me about 8 times as much time as any other dumb picture platform to upload and categorize my pictures... like imgur.com

Seriously .. if you wanna take copyright of my pictures, do it in a way that makes me feel happy .. dont make me run around two stupid upload forms and provide no option to even see the name or metadata. It's 100% pre-2k, and should be dead and burried.

Having said that, here are some updates:

Day 22 for the girls, had their head ripped off yesterday, and gave 'em some nutes and water.


Plant 1 (12 hours after topping)

Plant 2 (12 hours after topping)

Benjamin (12 hours after topping)

 

[PlanetJ]

End of day 22 for the girls:

Plant 1

Plant 2

Benajmin

 

[420]

Hi PlanetJ,

We advised you via pm, however maybe you have not seen it yet so here it is again.

Hope all is well in your world.

Thanks for writing back, and please know we do appreciate hearing your point of view. Personally, I appreciate the chance to explain the rational behind our policy in this area.

We need our members to use the gallery because it's the only way we can ensure the presentation of content on our site. When offsite photos are used they can be deleted, moved, URL's changed, or other things outside done to them by the 3rd party host or member - outside of our control. This results in dead link's, red x's, photos of non-uniform size, and other artifacts.

We do know that using our gallery may be a little more work for our members, but it keeps the forum in better shape for viewing and we retain the professional look we are aiming for.

It's true other sites allow any photos from a myriad of sources, but they'd made the value judgement that missing pictures and broken links are a lessor issue for them.

We do know this can be frustrating sometimes and that's why we uploaded all the photos for you, as a good faith gesture to show you we wanted to work with you on this issue.

Our settings allow you to upload 10 photos at a time with each photo no larger than 1 meg. We've picked this size limit because we feel it's the optimal trade-off between storage cost and the point of diminishing returns with screen display resolution.

I appreciate your time and cooperation on this issue. If you ever need anything please feel free to send me a PM and I'll do my best to help you out.

Thanks again for your understanding and support, we are truly grateful.

Given guidelines for photo upload, I'm not sure if I'll continue this journal with pictures. I have issues with the stone-age gallery interface, which forces me to edit photo's on either my phone (not going to), or put them on my computer first, edit them there, make sure they are they right ones cuz I cant change them afterwards, and then press upload.

I'm kinda lazy .. sorry.

(If someone knows a way to upload to this gallery without having to first edit (rotate) them and making sure you upload in the right order (names are are not used for sorting, messing up their order if I dont take care to upload in the desired order), that would be great!)

 

[PlanetJ]

I did, and replied It would be great if the usage of your gallery became just as easy as growing with the help of this community