1st Grow - Cheap Setup - Northern Lights

[Eyetim9]

Long time toker first time grower. Sooner or later it should be legalized nationwide but in the meantime.....

2 northern lights seeds germinated on April 9th or 10th.

Apollo 600watt MH/HPS light w/ ballast and timer and adjustable rope hangers from amazon for 265$ I believe.

Had some 2ft wide white tin (some kind of metal) roll in the garage that I used for the walls/siding. This is all setup under the basement stairs.

After day 3 of germination in jiffy pellets they popped out with 2 good sized leaves and I put them right into 5 gallon pots of miracle grow organic soil. I know I've read a bunch a bad things about regular miracle grow soil but seriously couldn't find much of anything at Lowe's a couple months ago, just moved dam near Canada from Texas in March.

So yeah this grow turned into an organic grow....

 

[Eyetim9]

 

[Eyetim9]

 

[Eyetim9]

Differences were noticeable pretty fast.

 

[Eyetim9]

The slow grower had a bad leaf. At this point it was still just organic soil and water. No nutrients at that time the only thing I could think of was bad PH levels and maybe cold basement temps.

 

[Eyetim9]

Once the bad leaf was crispy i clicked it/tugged it and it fell right off.

What I also thought was the slow growing of this one was fungus gnats that were starting to infest my plants/roots.....but I am not sure. One plant was thriving...the other not...

 

[Eyetim9]

Started using duct tape to capture the lil bastards, along with straight up vacuuming them up mid flight.

 

[Eyetim9]

Started LSTing, it being my first time and low confidence I was afraid to top them.

 

[Eyetim9]

 

[Eyetim9]

I believe around this time I had started with Alaska Fish emulsion and Alaska kelp extract for the only nutrients so far. Trying to keep this organic.

 

[Eyetim9]

I plan to go with a circular LST with the stronger plant

The little runt wasnt responding to the LST fast enough for my tastes so i released it from its ties. Clipped all it's lower fan leaves and within few days new dwarfed node finally began to stretch out.

 

[Eyetim9]

By this time I a alternating molasses + water and water fish emu + kelp extract + molasses and straight water. Trying to get a pattern down. So far no newt burn symptoms or what not. The 600w is at full strength now, the power box that came with it has a dimmer, i thought that the plants were getting light burn so I turned it down to 75% and raised the light as much as i could (about 25inches) but now they are prime into the vegetative state that it's at 100% and with the nutrients they have they seem to be fine with max light and just about max dosage of nutrients.

Vacuuming the fungus gnats got tedious so I bought some of those mosquito dunks and sticky fly traps and that seemed to help. I tried letting my soil dry out to kill off the larva but the 5 gallon pots are so big the soil at the very bottom always was moist. I stuck a chunk of a dunk in each of the drain holes and broke up a dunk for the top soil, later topped it off with more organic soil. This seemed to do the trick, I believe the sticky tape did the best hanging in the back. But some gnats are still around, but not bothering me as much anymore because there are much much less around.

 

[Stinky Snid]

Sorry to interrupt the flow of your journal. But just wanted to grab a seat and watch quietly. Great chronologuing so far, I'm enjoying the lead up... How much more previews before the show starts?

"Hey sit down already" okok sorry please continue...

KiG cheers

 

[Eyetim9]

I also placed two tomato plants in the grow area, because there is so much light power and my family loves tomatoes that i figured not to waste that light and put it to good use. Hope no pest randomly arise from this somehow...

 

[Eyetim9]

I also placed two tomato plants in the grow area, because there is so much light power and my family loves tomatoes that i figured not to waste that light and put it to good use. Hope no pest randomly arise from this somehow...

Also I started with the MH bulb but it must have been a cheap bulb because it busted itself within a week or so, but the company replaced it but I did not bother changing out the HPS bulb as I read that it is ok to do the full grow in HPS lighting.

 

[Eyetim9]

Hey snid, welcome and thanks. I've been following your contest grow for a few weeks now. Leialoha is beautiful and I bet smokes great like you said.

Umm we are up to date on the pics just about. So no more previews hehe. I have been thinking they are pretty small for their age....But the big guy is blowing up lately, with the LST I can tell all the colas it's going to have. I'm just wondering how long should the cola stems be before putting into flower mode? I know they should double in size once in flower mode. Basically I was just hoping to harvest a few nugs at least in mid July to sample for some visiting family, I know I don't want to rush it because realistically I'm sure it's going to be end of July when I should harvest or even later.

 

[Stinky Snid]

I don't think that little one is going to do much by July. Unless these are autoflowering then you've got 8 weeks minimum after you change the lights to 12/12. So July is not going happen man, sorry. You can go to 12/12 anytime really, as you said they usually double in height during the Stretch. Colas will all grow straight up from your mainstem without training, the mainstem will just be the biggest one.

As for the tomatoes, they definitely won't help the pest situation. Some folks use h2o2, for organic solutions you'll have to do some research. I use a food grade insecticidal soap. I'm looking into soil drenches, that's what I'm researching now...

KiG

 

[Eyetim9]

Thanks, I'll look into that if these gnats get out of hand. I also try not to rush my harvest time and go for the most out of my crop.

 

[Eyetim9]

Most recent pics, because they seem to be growing fast.

Big guy

And Runt

 

[Eyetim9]

So after comparing my Big guy plant to another persons (On this website) that planted his 3 days later then mine I see his plant is 5 times bigger than mine...I don't believe his grow is organic but...Does organic grows grow smaller than non-organic? Could my high PH level be the sole cause of my slow growth? There was some yellowing/lime green leaves in the beginning, but ever since I started on the fish emulsion and kelp they look more green than ever and seem to exploding with new growth. But my PH is still high, I believe it got to 8 or close to 8 the other day, but a day or two later I treated them with apple cider vinegar and that seemed to bring it down some. I plan on watering them again with apple cider vinegar to see if i can get it closer to PH 6.

On my next grows I plan on getting a digital PH tester and getting some organic PH down for sure.