jayne
Well-Known Member
AKA thank the stars that AK48 is tougher than my ignorance
strain-Nirvana AK 48
just changed to 12/12 light schedule 4/28
vegged ~43 days
DWC
medium-clay pellets
using Dyna-grow nutes, Grow & ProTekt for veg, Bloom & ProTekt for flower
Advanced LED DS XTE 100 grow light
So, complete n00b grower here. Not even a very experienced smoker. Smoked plenty years ago but never even cared what I was smoking or where it came from. Now I'd rather grow my own meds than trying to find a connection. Soooo...here we go.
Put 2 seeds in rockwool starter cubes 3/7. Had built a cabinet and a top feed DWC bubbler. Started a 5 time a day watering system and nearly drowned them both. They survived though. Ditched the top feed feed portion. Monitoring temps and humidity, seemed ok at the beginning. Cabinet in my garage. Temps ranging from 68 to 80 F. Humidity was ranging 60-80% the first week. The week after though, temps crept into the 90s and humidity wouldn't fall below 80%. I quickly realized that living in the crotch of the US wasn't conducive to a cabinet grow in the garage without cooling. Bought a small dehumidifier and used frozen water bottles to keep the temps down while coming up with a better long term solution. Settled on a mini-fridge. Bought a mini-fridge and cut some vent holes in the door and top. Cut a slit for the light in the top. Had to buy a smaller container to hold the plants. Was still hopeful that both would be okay in the fridge.
So, in the fridge. Lots of issues still with temperature. Added a second dehumidifier. Able to keep the humidity below 65% pretty easily (outdoor humidity has been right near 100% for weeks now). Big issue though is that if I have the vent fan going on the top, it pulls the air right over the cold plate, which causes condensation, which causes the cold plate to cover over in ice, which makes it stop cooling. SO i've realized that leaving the fan off seems to work best. I won't turn on the exhaust fan again unless the plants look like they are suffering. Temps have been staying between 60-75 now. Just added a Johnson controller to see If I can make it even more stable.
Gotta be discreet...
So, up until this point, the plants have been overwatered, nute burned, had large temp swings, had a dehumidifier fall on them (one was squished completely under it, the other had about half of its radius squished), the one that was most squished recovered a bit, then as I was moving it to the new container it got dropped and landed top down from about 4 feet up, and had some algae in the reservoir.
So, after vegging for 40+ days, decided to switch the lights to flowering. Turned them to total darkness for 36 hours. When I set the light timer for 12/12 set it wrong so they were in light for about 2 hours.
So in 48 hours, they had 2 hours of light. So I got the timer corrected, then when I put the box over the fridge, it hit the timer and caused the lights to come on 7 hours too soon. So I'm much more careful now with the box.
Since the algae, I've watched the res temps more closely. Its staying around 68 F now. I also change the res every 5 days instead. Its a small res that I've been putting about 1.5 gal of water in. Set the pH to 5.4 and over the next 2 days it rises to 6.1. Let it stay there for a day, then drop it back to 5.4, let it go 2 more days and change the res.
Which brings us to this morning.
Finally accepted the fact that the space was too small for both plants, so Rambo (the smaller plant that survived being dropped and squished) had to go. Pulled her out and put her in the ground out where hopefully no one will stumble upon and it won't die. (I doubt it will survive, but I've said that many times up to this point). I will try to continue to learn from it.
So now here we are.
In new res water with a pH of 5.4, 7cc of ProTekt, 19 cc of Bloom in 1.5 gal of distilled water for a ppm of 710. Res temp of 60F. Box temp of 74F and RH of 50%. Ygrette (because everytime I look at her, I hear her say "You know nothing, Jon Snow") seems much more comfy with her sister gone. I'll get a few pics with the LEDs off later on. Maybe not until tomorrow, but they will come.
Anyway, thanks for watching and stay tuned to see how I screw up and try to kill her tomorrow!
PS I never expected much from this grow, figured it would be wrought with problems while I am figuring things out. Any yield at all I will consider a bonus!
strain-Nirvana AK 48
just changed to 12/12 light schedule 4/28
vegged ~43 days
DWC
medium-clay pellets
using Dyna-grow nutes, Grow & ProTekt for veg, Bloom & ProTekt for flower
Advanced LED DS XTE 100 grow light
So, complete n00b grower here. Not even a very experienced smoker. Smoked plenty years ago but never even cared what I was smoking or where it came from. Now I'd rather grow my own meds than trying to find a connection. Soooo...here we go.
Put 2 seeds in rockwool starter cubes 3/7. Had built a cabinet and a top feed DWC bubbler. Started a 5 time a day watering system and nearly drowned them both. They survived though. Ditched the top feed feed portion. Monitoring temps and humidity, seemed ok at the beginning. Cabinet in my garage. Temps ranging from 68 to 80 F. Humidity was ranging 60-80% the first week. The week after though, temps crept into the 90s and humidity wouldn't fall below 80%. I quickly realized that living in the crotch of the US wasn't conducive to a cabinet grow in the garage without cooling. Bought a small dehumidifier and used frozen water bottles to keep the temps down while coming up with a better long term solution. Settled on a mini-fridge. Bought a mini-fridge and cut some vent holes in the door and top. Cut a slit for the light in the top. Had to buy a smaller container to hold the plants. Was still hopeful that both would be okay in the fridge.
So, in the fridge. Lots of issues still with temperature. Added a second dehumidifier. Able to keep the humidity below 65% pretty easily (outdoor humidity has been right near 100% for weeks now). Big issue though is that if I have the vent fan going on the top, it pulls the air right over the cold plate, which causes condensation, which causes the cold plate to cover over in ice, which makes it stop cooling. SO i've realized that leaving the fan off seems to work best. I won't turn on the exhaust fan again unless the plants look like they are suffering. Temps have been staying between 60-75 now. Just added a Johnson controller to see If I can make it even more stable.
Gotta be discreet...
So, up until this point, the plants have been overwatered, nute burned, had large temp swings, had a dehumidifier fall on them (one was squished completely under it, the other had about half of its radius squished), the one that was most squished recovered a bit, then as I was moving it to the new container it got dropped and landed top down from about 4 feet up, and had some algae in the reservoir.
So, after vegging for 40+ days, decided to switch the lights to flowering. Turned them to total darkness for 36 hours. When I set the light timer for 12/12 set it wrong so they were in light for about 2 hours.
So in 48 hours, they had 2 hours of light. So I got the timer corrected, then when I put the box over the fridge, it hit the timer and caused the lights to come on 7 hours too soon. So I'm much more careful now with the box. Since the algae, I've watched the res temps more closely. Its staying around 68 F now. I also change the res every 5 days instead. Its a small res that I've been putting about 1.5 gal of water in. Set the pH to 5.4 and over the next 2 days it rises to 6.1. Let it stay there for a day, then drop it back to 5.4, let it go 2 more days and change the res.
Which brings us to this morning.
Finally accepted the fact that the space was too small for both plants, so Rambo (the smaller plant that survived being dropped and squished) had to go. Pulled her out and put her in the ground out where hopefully no one will stumble upon and it won't die. (I doubt it will survive, but I've said that many times up to this point). I will try to continue to learn from it.
So now here we are.
In new res water with a pH of 5.4, 7cc of ProTekt, 19 cc of Bloom in 1.5 gal of distilled water for a ppm of 710. Res temp of 60F. Box temp of 74F and RH of 50%. Ygrette (because everytime I look at her, I hear her say "You know nothing, Jon Snow") seems much more comfy with her sister gone. I'll get a few pics with the LEDs off later on. Maybe not until tomorrow, but they will come.
Anyway, thanks for watching and stay tuned to see how I screw up and try to kill her tomorrow!
PS I never expected much from this grow, figured it would be wrought with problems while I am figuring things out. Any yield at all I will consider a bonus!
cheers
