1st Grow - 4 Strains - 2'x3' Closet - CFL Veg - Mars-Hydro Reflector Flower

:thumb:
thnks for the encouragement!
happy to hear others are watching.

btw for the record. i did some online research about passive intakes, to make sure im not suffocating my exhaust with too small of an intake.
it seems that most opinoins say that the passive intake should be twice the size of the active exahust, in order to maintain the proper vacume, and still get good airflow. and in some cases even to make the passive whole 3-4 times bigger if the airflow isnt good enough, while still maintaining negative pressure.
so in other words, an active exhaust of a 6" fan, should have a 12" hole for passive intake.
im gonna try this and see how it works.
obviously in each case, it would be adviseable after making the hole bigger, to check and make sure theres still a good vacume in the room.
 
Whew. Glad I'm not the only one here. Thanks guys :).
I always figured it would be the other way around- a smaller hole for the intake to create more negative pressure. Mine is about half of the size of the out vent. Probably not a life or death decision though.
 
hey weaselcracker. if you think about it, it makes sense, that a passive intake hole should be significantly larger than an active exhaust. since the active exhaust should have a much stronger air pull, than an empty hole of the same size...
in any case i ended up making the passive intake exactly twice the size of the exhaust, and i still feel a breeze being pulled through the intake when the door of the tent is closed.
 
hey everyone. heres an update into week 2 of flowering. (end of week two.)
whoever it was that commented in the begining that the leaves dont look sativa, please take a look again and tell me if you still think so...
the maui waui has the thickest leaves. but the durban poison, and the medi haze both seem to have thin leaves.
one of the colas of the medi haze, even has an 11 finger leaf ;)

im trying my best to maintain an even canopy, but there are of course some buds that are choosing to shoot higher than the others. if i pull the down to lower them, or tuck them too much, im afraid that ill lose some potential bud mass. but everything still is wihin around an ince and half of each other except in one case which can be seen in one of those pictures, where there were abunch of low bud spots. instead of cuting them out, i meade sure they were exactly into the screen. so it seems that theyll be ok.

heres the pics, theyre not labled. but if you see a thicker leaf, its the maui waui.
unnamed45.jpg
7795.jpg
6966.jpg
51068.jpg
41344.jpg
31740.jpg
22001.jpg
 
hi everyone!
heres some updates and photos. end of week 4 of flowering!

something really intresting to note, is that the two strains which up till now were the biggest during veg (durban poison, and medi haze, the most sativa dominant strains,) theyre flowers are smaller and thinner, than the maui waui flowers. the mawi waui is around 70/30 sativa/indica. whereas the other strains are supposed to be around 90/10 sativa indica. is this one of the natures of sativa flowers, that theyre thinner and smaller than indica?


i have a question.
most of the buds are about 4 to 5 inches above the screen. however theres a few that have thin long stems, that are only about 1 to 1.5 inches above the screen.

should i cut those stems off, in order to allow the plants to put their power into producing the bigger buds? or is 4 weeks too late into flowering to do that, and itll just damage them?
heres a pic where u can kind of see what im talking about:
IMG_36967.JPG
im pointing to the lower ones


WELL, heres the rest of the pics. i finally figured out how to take pics under leds, using the white adjust feature on my camera. so most of these pics were taken with the correction of the white balance.
the buds dont look as frosty to me as other pics ive seen online from other growers ;(, am i doing something wrong, or is this just too early into the flower to get really frosty?

IMG_36887.JPG
IMG_36979.JPG
IMG_36957.JPG
IMG_36948.JPG
IMG_36896.JPG
IMG_36886.JPG


IMG_36863.JPG
i really just love this one. it almost looks like a fake background...

IMG_36825.JPG
IMG_36797.JPG
IMG_36745.JPG
IMG_36727.JPG


another last question:
i think that i may have been underwatering. ive been so careful of the warning to overwater, that maybe its possible im underwatering? ive been waiting till the soil gets real dry. something that i noticed is that, when i wait for things to get dry like this, when i water, the water goes straight the soil and comes out the bottom in a matter of seconds.
whereas when the soil is a little more moist (where only the top inch or so of soil is dry), the water takes around a minute or two to get runoff.
so could this be a sign that the soil is too dry, when the runnoff come out the bottom instantly?

thnks!
 
You may be letting things get a little too dry, Happyjoy, but not by much. The main thing you want to do is make sure you get your pots thoroughly saturated when you do water. Soil is like a celluloid sponge. If you let a kitchen sponge get dry and and then hold it under a stream of water at first the water will bead up and run off the surface of the sponge. One must get a little water into the sponge before it will start drinking it up.

When the soil is fairly dry the same thing happens. The water does not soak in, it runs across the top of the soil. Taking the path of least resistance, it travels down the junction between the soil and container and out the drain holes - runoff.

It can be difficult to tell if you have properly hydrated your containers in a scrog because you can't lift the pots to see if they are heavy. What you want to do is water your pots in stages. Put a little water on the surface of the pots and let them sit for ten minutes or so. Then, go back and add more water. Repeat this a couple of more times.

What you will find is that the runoff will happen with the first addition of water. The runoff will subside with subsequent additions. When the pot is thoroughly hydrated the runoff will be more of a seeping of water than, well, runoff.

I don't get the impression that you are letting the pots get too dry between waterings as much as you may not be getting them well watered when you do water.
 
Here is a picture that shows what I'm talking about. I gave this plant one single good shot of water resulting in considerable runoff. Then I popped it out of the container. If you look close you can see where the water mostly ran down the junction between the soil and container without saturating the root ball. Just take time and water your pots slowly in stages and your plants will be happier.

wpcln_2.jpg


Ha ha digital. Did you click the link to laugh at my avatar?
 
Here is a picture that shows what I'm talking about. I gave this plant one single good shot of water resulting in considerable runoff. Then I popped it out of the container. If you look close you can see where the water mostly ran down the junction between the soil and container without saturating the root ball. Just take time and water your pots slowly in stages and your plants will be happier.

wpcln_2.jpg


Ha ha digital. Did you click the link to laugh at my avatar?

Really Awesome info here! Yeah I clicked it HAHA!
 
Things are looking great Happy. :thumb: Plus reps for that. You're doing an awesome job.
PeeJay has taken the time to give you some great info on watering. Unless you are regularly seeing wilting plants, you are not underwatering. I know it's hard to restrain yourself from watering when the pots are half dry, but there are benefits for the plants if you do.
Buds gain most of their stickiness in the last half and especially last third of flowering. Yes sativa buds are often smaller and thinner. And even if they aren't smaller, they're always (in my experience anyway) less dense. Fluffier.
 
thnks peejay for that info, and good pics. it makes alot of sense.
thanks weaselcracker for ur thumbs up.
as far as digital guy, u seem really stoned. but it made me laugh, so thanks too!
do you guys think watering 3 gallon containers, once a week, in 80F weather, with average 50%humidity, is normal during flowering?

also most importantly,
should i be cutting off the buds that are just above the screen? theyre about 3-4 inches shorter than the rest and are on thin branches. or is it too late to cut them off and it will only shock the plant? what dyou guys think?
 
That watering routine sounds normal enough - those are fairly small plants in 3 gallon pots. Though actually I have no real way of knowing, other than the fact that your plants are doing fine. Flowering plants use less than vegging ones. A plant can handle drying up to the point of just beginning to wilt a teeny bit, though I try to avoid it. At any rate, as they say, if it's not broken then don't fix it.
I'm on the fence about cutting the lower buds. Not about them 'shocking' the plant, because no that won't happen, don't worry. But I don't know how much difference, if any, it will make to overall yield. I could go either way. Usually I trim most of those at about week 3. Perhaps I would leave them at this point and use those little buds to chop and smoke when I'm looking to sample the plant. I usually start smoking samples from my plants in the last few weeks, especially if it's a new strain I'm curious about.
 
yeah they do seem to be pretty small.
i must have done some real damage in the the first few weeks. repotting 3 times because of soil problems.
my first soil was very dense and heavy. also i didnt use any nutes for the first few weeks. in addition i was also in 95plus temperatures for the first few weeks.
so i guess all thsoe mistakes somehow effected everything.

live and learn ;)
 
nice grow journal .... you only need to add more light .... only 1 96X3 panel is clearly not enought for a 2X3 area, use 2 of them and you will have a very nice light power and distribution.

happy growing.
 
hey dark side of mike.
im not so sure if the light is the problem....

the actual scrog is not 2x3. the room size is 2x3. but the actual scrog is about 2.4x1.5 almost everything is directly underneath the lights except for an inch or two on the sides.... which im pretty sure the LED should be covering.

i think the size issue might be due to a few factors.
1)being that the two plants on the sides were growing and strecthing much more than the middle one, i did an extra topping on most of the branches on those two big plants. i just realized that even though their buds are smaller, but they have many more than the middle one... so im thinking that is probably one of the main reasons
2) when i put them under the scrog net, i purposely put turned each plant, so that the largest part of it was facing towards the middle of the scrog, that way they wouldnt stretch out of control to different parts i didnt want them too.

as far as the general size issue. i think it has to do with the fact, that i didnt actaully transplant into the 3 gallon containers, untill around 1.5 weeks before flowering, since i didnt have the LED light yet, i didnt want to move them into bigger containers till i got the light.
so im guessing that they didnt relaly have room and time to spread out their roots. hence the size.

so i learned from a bunch of mistakes
1)to make sure to transplant to bigger container early enough in the veg.
2)i dont think i will top certain plants, and leave others, in the future. its too difficult to maitnint uniforimity with a scrog that way.
i think its best to keep all the plants on the same topping schedule.
especially in my case where theyre all sativa dom.
 
ok you are right then .... 1.5 X 2.4 is perfect for 1 panel ... your buds are nice looking, not bad for a "fail" ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom