400W Mars II LED Original Amnesia & Critical Kush

[nugwrasslin]

Hello 420Mag grow room!

After lurking for a long ass time, i'm here live bringing you coverage of my very first indoor grow.

I have read many journals and taken in hundreds of pages of knowledge, I only hope to grow something as beautiful as the plants I have seen on this site.

I started the grow on Dec. 10th 2015 from Dinafem feminized seeds. Two strains. One Critical Kush and One Original Amnesia.

What strain is it? Original Amnesia, and Critical Kush
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? What percentages? OA: Sativa, CK: Indica dominant
Is it in Veg or Flower stage? Vegetative stage
If in Veg... For how long? 28 days.
If in Flower stage... For how long? N/A
Indoor or outdoor? Indoor
Soil or Hydro? Soil
If soil... what is in your mix? Fox Farm Ocean Forest amended with 10-20% perlite.
If soil... What size pot? 5 gal smart pots
Size of light? 400W LED (Mars II)
Is it aircooled? Yes (W/ 63 CFM fan attached to 200 CFM carbon filter)
Temp of Room/cab? 76 Average
RH of Room/cab? 30-50%
PH of media or res? 6.5 or lower
Any Pests? Not sure, yet.
How often are you watering? Every 3-5 days.
Type and strength of ferts used?
Advanced nutrients Grow A+B, Voodoo Juice, B-52, Sensi Cal-Mag
First and second feeding (every watering) I mixed nearly full strength batches of the Grow A+B, Voodoo Juice, and B-52. Each plant received .5L. Tap water used. Tap water is filtered through 30 micron carbon filter. Relatively hard and acidic water.

Third feeding was 1 liter each at approximately half strength.

​

In time for the fourth feeding I received my Cal-Mag order as I believe I have/had identified a calcium or magnesium deficiency (maybe both). With the fourth feeding, I also flushed with poland spring 3L jugs (one whole jug per plant) and then mixed their feed at 50% strength and gave each 1.5L on top of the flush. As well as the flush, a 2ml/liter foliar spray mixture made with the Cal-Mag was sprayed on the plants.

For my fifth and most recent feeding I mixed an 80% strength dose of nutrients for my plants into 3 liters and fed each of them 1.5L. This occurred on the 4th of january.

​

I decided to finally post my journal today because I feel that the extensive knowledge of the posters and readers of this forum will be the best resource in dealing with some issues that have cropped up as of recent.

Day Zero:
Seeds planted in FFOF in red solo cups with plenty of holes placed into the bottom. Soil pre-moistened.
I built a nice soil warming setup with some old soil warming cables and chicken wire. I will post pics after I get plant pics up and running.

This equipment allowed both seeds to germinate extremely quickly with the soil constantly at a 75 degree F temp. This was an extreme relief as I have had terrible luck with germination in the past, in fact before buying FFOF, I killed almost 20 bagseed!

Day 3:

OA Sprouted!

Day 4:

CK Sprouted!

Day 5:

First feeding occurs, as described above.

Day 6:

Here is a pic of my 6 day old seedlings.

Day 9:

Seedlings at day 9.

Day 11:
I transplanted from red solo cups into my new 5 gal smart pots. CK bent over big time during transplant and bounced back like nothing happened. (Beginning of a trend here with the indica plant... a trend of my stupidity)

Day 14:
Third feeding as described above. I noticed a small hole on the leaf of the CK plant. Still not sure what this is but i'm sure it's gotta have something to do with my bad water (no ph or PPM count aside from some cheap test strips I have) or my aggressive feeding schedule.

Day 14 critical kush, take note of the little hole that formed. Not sure what to make of it.

Day 14 sativa chugging along.

Day 19:

Starting to see some burn or pH issues appearing on the leaf. I opt for a deep flush and I use poland spring water for the flush as well as mixing with my nutes from this point forward. My logic was that if I have acidic water (which was confirmed with pH strips indicating 6.5 or below from the runoff of both plants) than I should keep it in check with neutral water. Here is are pics of my sad overwatered and flushed droopy plants.

Original Amnesia

Critical Kush

Day 24:
Still chugging along with minor burn or calcium or magnesium or pH issues. At this point I have begun LST. With the sativa's lanky growth, it is really responding well to the LST.

Day 25:
The indica CK.. not nearly as much. It's so short and shrubby.

On day 25 both plants were fed 1.5 liters of poland spring + advanced nutrients as well as the same foliar spray I have been applying.

Day 28:

This is today, and today I made a silly mistake which I hope my beautiful indica kush plant will bounce back from. Remember that trend I was talking about?

Not responding well to the LST at all... or maybe I just don't know what LST is and my dumb thumbs chose to supercrop this poor plant. The stem snapped with an unpleasant crunching when I tried to lead the plant into the circular shape that is working so well for my sativa. I quickly taped up with some scotch tape and I am hoping she bounces back.

She still looks beautiful from above but the true test will be if those nodes are still alive here in a few days. I'm going to be real sad if I did irreparable damage.

Thankfully my original amnesia is still looking wonderful and is so easy to train. The stem is beyond pencil thick and moving towards permanent marker territory. I'm stoked!



Anyway, sorry for all my rambling. I hope you enjoyed reading it at least a little bit!

I appreciate any input you guys may have for me, regarding the broken stem, LST training, and especially regarding any nute burn or pH lockout issues I might be creeping towards.

I'm happy to finally be apart of the community after reading for so long.

 

[nugwrasslin]

re: 400W Mars II LED Original Amnesia & Critical Kush

Gonna add in some additional comments.

Im getting what appears to be redness in the stems of my critical kush indica plant. Magnesium issues?

My main concerns with these plants right now are surprisingly not related to the broken stem today.

There are some light brown small splotches scattered across the older growth fan leaves on each plant no bigger than half a mm. A couple near the leaf edges and a couple not. As well as the splotching, one leaf tip on the sativa showed definitive signs of nute burn.

I am having what appears to be slight nutrient burn or a calcium or magnesium deficiency in my plants. I realize that my images above might not relay that information well so we/I can hopefully figure out what kind of deficiencies I might be dealing with and rule out the possiblility of any pests.

 

[nugwrasslin]

re: 400W Mars II LED Original Amnesia & Critical Kush

Here are a few more photos.

There is leaf burn on both of the plants as seen in the above pictures. Is it spider mites? cal or mag deficiency? creeping pH issues?

 

[nugwrasslin]

Anyone out there with me following this grow? Im getting lonely!

I have more photos to upload, will post after they finish loading to the gallery.

My babies are getting big and i'm getting stoked! Probably going to flip in the next one to three weeks.

 

[nugwrasslin]

Day 33 LST Action for my Orignal Amnesia

Close up of the stem action for my OA.

They both got a nice watering of 4.5 liters of poland spring each with approximately 3 ml per liter of Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow A, and 3ml/L of Sensi Grow B, as well as the same amount of B-52. I also started supplementing with Sensi-Cal/Mag although I regret buying this product due to it's relatively high nitrogen content (4-0-0)

Pictures of my ladies the next day. They perk up quick~!

 

[nugwrasslin]

Getting closer to the flip!

Day 41:

Picture of my plants from yesterday. This was taken after I implemented some more LST, just trying to arrange the stems in the best way possible for the highest number of colas. It's starting to get very crowded in my closet and I think I might need to defoliate. (Although I have been trying to avoid this as much as possible)

A second shot from yesterday. The plants were flushed with 18 liters each of poland spring diluted with my tap water. My tap water is acidic spring water that is filtered through a 30 micron HDX high flow carbon filter. Even with this filter i'm still not super happy with the quality of my home water.

After the flushing they each received a nearly full strength does of Advanced Nutrients Sensi Grow A/B, B-52, Sensi Cal Mag, and Voodoo juice because of the flush.

Day 42:

Shot of my original amnesia from the face on. I've been turning the plants a quarter of a turn every day and I feel that the next picture doesn't do the size of the OA justice. Maybe that's just because of how much the kush plant has exploded recently!

In spite of everything my critical kush plant has just exploded in size. The stem has completely healed from the break and she just looks beautiful. They both look beautiful! I'm so happy with how everything has been turning out.

Gonna be flipping to 12/12 soon because as you can see i'm starting to run out of space. The back wall is only 26 inches so my space is already fairly limited.

I will probably need to perform some defoliation, because even though I have exposed lots of additional bud sites with the LST, many more are still hidden and not growing to the size that I would like to see.

Hope everyone is enjoying my journal! I'd love some comments or advice seeing as this is my first real grow.

 

[nugwrasslin]

Here are some close up shots. I'm obsessed.

 

[KidGrow420]

I'll jump in. If I would of seen this earlier I would of been along for the ride since the beginning..
I'm just about to open up my garden for the day and let my guys go to work. When I get back if you want to ask some questions I'm sure I can help you out. They are turning out really good tho. I'll go over the "LST'n" when I get back as well.

 

[nugwrasslin]

Hey man thanks for stopping by!

 

[Lazarus13]

Whats up, Nug? I just saw this thread and decided to follow along. Im a bit noobish myself so i will answer and help out as i can but if i dont know something I'll keep my mouth shut and let the more experienced growers chime in. Kidgrow is here so you have at least 1 experienced person watching. I can tell you that those spots you were asking about do not look like mites. I just dealt with them a few months back so i do know what they look like. They would be a lot of small black/ brown spots all over the leaf and you would have small webs on the undersides of the leaves and tiny tiny black things under there too. They look pretty happy and healthy to me so far.
lSTing my laat indica was a learning experience. They tend to grow so short and bushy at first i didnt really know what to do to improve it. What i ended up doing was just sort of pulling the branches out and tying them down to open up more space for the light to get in to the lower branches.
I also had a branch snap like you. It all but broke completely off the plant but i taped it and waited and checked it. The first time it wasnt healed enough so i put the tape back on and waited another week. In that time it had healed up enough to remove the tape and eventually grew a big knuckle at the break point, like super cropping, and ended up being one of my biggest producers. I'll check back in a little later to see how things are progressing. Stay green, man...

 

[nugwrasslin]

Good to have you Lazarus13. I feel like we must have very similar situations with our Indica. After snapping the stem I taped mine up as well and then re taped it a second time when the plant pushed the tape off. Now it looks like an awesome super crop knuckle too!

I'm stoked to hear that your snap ended up being a benefit for you because that really has my hopes up for my eventual yields. (Barring any drying/curing fuck-ups.)

 

[arteekay]

Here's an extreme example of what these plants can survive:


Before



After her accident



A week later



Last night


Her under-bits, lollipopping happened over a couple of days, pretty easy to see where she snapped off in 'her' accident:

 

[nugwrasslin]

Gonna be updating with a big stash of pictures here in a few minutes!

Day 52 of vegetative. Flipping to 12/12 for flowering in a few days

 

[nugwrasslin]

Got a little sidetracked by cleaning my car and a delivery from UPS!

Got my Advanced Nutrients Bloom fertilizer today. Sensi Bloom A+B and pretty much the whole line up to grandmaster. I also got a pipette pump and I have a 25 mL pipette coming monday for nutrient measurement. (too much spilling with a teaspoon and tablespoon)

I also got 2 4 socket light adapters. I'm going to throw in 8 more CFLs into the closet.

Vegetative Day 52 Critical Kush and Original Amnesia. These were taken before I started hacking into them with a final defoliation. I wanted to open up some more room for bud sites to pop up.

Another shot:

Here is some leaf burn? or something on one of the older critical kush fan leaves.

Here are the results of the first major defoliation I did to this plant. Up until now I had been hesitant to chop at the plant but after eating up almost 50 pages of a post by Light Addict (his 2013 plant of the year) I decided defoliation is a must.

The next shot shows my critical kush on day 46 up close after the defoliation:

Same thing for my original amnesia:

Here is the stem to my original amnesia plant. It's bigger than my thumb.

This is the apparent actual draw of my "400W Mars II" LED light. In the following picture you can see the draw of all my current lights including the 400W LED, a 25W LED, and a 26W CFL. I wonder why the LED is drawing so much less than advertised.

Here are the results from the defol on day 46. (Day 51)

The plants are looking great a couple days after the defol.

Original Amnesia Day 51

Critical Kush Day 51

Here they are on Day 53 of vegetative. Definitely looking to flip to 12/12 very shortly as space is certainly at a premium. I have these too poor ladies crammed into this closet which measures 27 inches on the back wall and 31 inches on the side wall.

Here is the plant tie holding down the main stem for my Critical Kush plant. I originally wanted to train it into the circular shape that has worked for my Original Amnesia, but the stem snap that happened early in this plant's life prevented that. It is a long flat plant but it works well for the space, if not better than the circular training for my OA plant.

This is another shot of leaf burn on the Critical Kush plant. Both of these sick leaves in the next two shots are old fan leaves but it still concerns me when I see signs of illness anywhere on my plant.

This leaf burn/necrosis? is definitely something I dont like to see.

Here is a top view of my critical kush plant after some more low stress training today. I keeping pulling everything back and low for more and more bud sites. I'm hoping there is no crowding or mold issues during flower. Nothing another fan can't manage i've been telling myself.

Top view of my original amnesia plant from the training today.

Both of my plants today on day 53.

I hope everyone is enjoying following my grow! I'm really excited to be moving into the bloom phase of my first indoor grow I should be flipping in 4 to 6 days once i'm sure the plant has recovered from the recent defoliation.

 

[nugwrasslin]

We're at day 55 of vegetative lighting and mission control is on high alert.

I'm going to post a picture that has me worried before I update with all the tree porn.

As plain as day my humidity indicator is showing 70% R.H. I'm starting to worry about the prospect of powdery mildew.

I'm a total novice but from what I can tell I don't see any powdery mildew on any leaves but i've pulled some fan leaves from the bottom of my plant that look like maybe they have downy mildew? I don't know...

I'm getting this noticeable wet smell in my plant area after sitting near it for awhile. After the smell of cannabis fades from my nostrils I can detect this sort of "wet boat" smell. If you've ever been inside any boat you probably know what I mean.

Wondering if I trained my plants too huge now. Is my only option to purchase another light and expand into a second space for flower?

 

[nugwrasslin]

Now that the breaking news is out of the way...

I bring you a special from our reporter out in the field Stanky McNugz on the state of my beautiful girls.

Here you can see the underworkings of my original amnesia plant. I opted for the circular training with this lady, and she danced that salsa well!

Here you can see the main stem of my critical kush plant. Definitely couldn't train her in a circle...

The plants have been clearly sexed for awhile now lets see those pistils... Main stem C.K.

Original Amnesia Day 55 veg top view

Both plants day 55 top view

sick fan leaves pulled from my C.K.

sick fan leaves pulled from the undercarriage of my O.A.

all the pulled leaves, sick and the bag of healthy leaves from the big defol I did.

Hope i'm not boring anyone! Happy to have anyone following along who is here with me.

 

[KidGrow420]

This leaf burn/necrosis? is definitely something I dont like to see.

That's a PH fluctuation issue. What's your PH and ppm's at? When the PH jumps up and down to fast it can create "spikes" in the nutrient uptake and have some pretty ugly results. When dealing with a PH flucs. it's burning, or depriving the roots. Which in-turn is burning the leaves above ground. It looks like you had a little PH fluc. Nothing to serious to worry about. Just make sure to correct the PH to optimal levels (soil 6.0-7) As time go's on the issue will fix itself. But the burned leaves will not re-generate so either clip em back a bit or defoliate.

PPM's? PH?

 

[nugwrasslin]

I don't actually have any ph indicator equipment or ppm/tds/ec either. I have some aquarium test strips that only indicate from 6-8.4 ph

Any time i have tested runoff it has sat at or below 6.5 but for all I know it could have cruised way into acid territory multiple times.

I believe my well water is somewhat acidic, so about half of my feeds have been done with poland spring water which is supposed to pH at about seven with pretty low TDS, but I got lazy and started using my well water for the last few feeds.

I really need E.C. equipment but even the lowest I saw was around 200$ and those were used old ones. I'll probably just buy distilled water and mix nutes with that from this point forward.

 

[nugwrasslin]

Quick photo upload, I will rotate and repost pics tomorrow with more details.

Day 58 from seed, lighting schedule changed to 12/12, plant flushed and fed with advanced nutrients bloom stage ferts + additives at 33% strength for the sativa and 50% strength for the indica.

Updated exhaust fan setup, cleaned growing space.

Bathtub of shrubs

 

[OrganicMan]

Subbed mate looking amazing! It will be interesting to see and compare results keep up the great work