bakermancanvw
New Member
Hello fellow cultivators,
I come to you with opening my first grow journal as a humble noob hoping to learning all that i can. I actually debated wethere i would make this journal because I am actually more than halfway through my first run already but just discovered the site through research and realized this journal feature is perfect not only to have people help with knowledge as the grow is going but to digitally log the progress. So far i've been writing everything down till now so i'll try and tell the story from the beginning and get caught up to the current state. That being said here goes the journal....
Once i decided to grow my own smoke i began doin lots of research on the subject to make it happen as smoothly as possible and get a head start. I knew going into this its a science and and also an art, not somethin that is easily mastered.
When i do somethin i do my best to do it right and not go cheap on anything so i dedicated the entire extra room in my house to this setup to have the optimal environment.
Thought about having just the whole open room but was concerned about possible light leaks from around the door and there were tons of benefits to running a tent for me like easier light control, climate control pest control, reflectivity for light efficiency etc so i set up a 5x10x7 gro tent in the spare room. it takes up more than half of the room.
After lots and lots of reading not only on grow knowlege but on cost/benefit knowledge one thing i was sure of is that i wanted to go LED. HPS is obviously tried and true but at how much it would cost to run not only the light but all the extra vent equipment to manage heat it would be cheaper to just buy weed and not grow. I was skeptical of all the hype I was reading and it really was hard to pick through it but i ended up with 2 360 Extreme Flower panels from advancedled. Very expensive but i plan on many grows and they will pay off by my math as long as i can get decent yield.
Another thought was maintenance. My friend who cultivates (same friend i got my 8 blueberry bullrider clones from) spends endless hours on his rooms and while i would love to do that i simply work way too much. After reading about systems i went with the greentrees hydro flood/drain system and bought 2 extra buckets for a total of 8 sites and upgraded to a 30 gallon res. Seemed really simple and basic which so far it has been and pretty low maintenance.
Regulating temp and RH with a huge portable AC unit. I bring in fresh air from the outside to the inside of the room which is filtered though the unit. The fresh air current is directed straight at a single opening in the tent where it is then drawn through the tent passively by a 6" vortex fan on the opposite side of the tents roof. A 12" ocsillating fan keeps it all circulating.
So its all been set up and running mid november. i got it all dialed in and bought some nutes before getting the girls.
Recap on the setup:
5x10x7 grow tent
2x360 watt extreme flower advancedled panels
greentrees hydro bucket system with hydroton
8 blueberry bullrider plants from clone. i know its a hybrid not sure of percentages, seems to have more indica trait
14,000 btu portable ac unit,12" oscillatig fan, and 6" vortex for ventilation
20lb co2 tank on regulator and timer (did not get this untill week 3 of flower)
ph/ppm pens
Hydrologic RO 100L
Close to 5.8 ph as possible
Nutes:
GH Cal/Mag
Botanicare Kind base/bloom/grow
Orca root treatment
GH Amino treatment
Mad Farmer B-1
Mad Farmer M.O.A.B.
Mad Farmer N.U.T.
BIG SWELL
Veg stage.
From the get go i may have been at a disadvantage with some of the clones. they werent exactly the healthiest looking i've seen and the roots were underdeveloped on 2 for sure, but its what i had available...
I plopped the jiffy cubed clones in the buckets on Sept. 23 with the lights on 18/6, kept clear plastic cups over them to retain humidity during the transition into veg. I figure the first week of the clones being in the pots is a "take" period and i dont count it as a veg week. i started my veg timer on Sept 30 with the plan of harvesting around xmas or new year.
after the clones were in the buckets for about a week there was noticable growth from me top feeding the plants plain RO water so i started up the brain and set it for flood every 4 hours for 30 minutes. i then added base nutrients at half strength, cal mag, a little orca and b-1
Couple weeks into veg plants look fine but they are very dark and arent growing as fast or as big as i hoped. Couple days after that i see the "claw" effect on almost every leaf. I had done what i had done so much research trying to prevent and overdosed! My plants were getting too much N ! I learned from experience that chemical nutes are much more concentrated than i even researched. Everywhere says half strength but even that was too much.
One thing i love about this bucket system is its easy to flush. no experience with other systems hands on but imagine this is one of the easiest.
When i noticed the "claw" i RO'd a ton of water. put about 3 gallons of ro water through the top of each bucket to flush which gets auto pump from brain back to res, drain res then refill , super easy. that seemed to fix the issue and the new growth looked healthy after i put in less nutes.
So they grew healthy again and i let them veg untill i flipped to 12/12 on oct 25th. just short of 4 full weeks not counting the 1 week "take" period after transplant.
Flower:
I had read so many times about people doing 36 of dark before 12/12 but i didnt want try anything like that i just went straight to 12/12 and i noticed the change only 2 days later the little hairs popped out and flower progress has been steady.
I experienced defficiencies in the plants r2 weeks into flower.Had 2 that suffered pretty bad Ca defficiencies (the same 2 that were runty from the get go) and almost all of them were somewhat P and K defficient over the last week. they are just over 5 weeks in flower now so i suspect i was just off on the timing of switching nutrient ratios. After i switched to 12/12 i wasnt sure when the nutrient demand would change so i changed the res after 1 week with more PK and then again after week 2 of flower.
Each time i noticed any kind of issue i would flush with RO water and try to rebalance the nutes to the stage of growth, but i think for someone like me its just a matter of doing it a few times...
Also i've found its very hard to tell if there might be "lockout" happening. I dont think i had one though, i suspect i just got scared of the N toxicity in veg and was too cautious in the transition to the flower nute. I can see now that once they start to flower their needs change almost immediately since the change in light is immediate and not gradual like in nature.
Just added the 20lb CO2 tank last week and that gets me up to date!
One issue i've been having all along is PH. it keeps going down which to me is unusual because everything i read says the ph will go up in hydro. Every day i have to ad a little PH UP to the res to keep it at 5.8 or else it will drop to 5.5 or less in 24 hourse and if i let it go longer it can get to 5 or less. My local hydro store guys says ph up is bad but what else can i do? why does it drop so low in the first place? I always use fresh ro water, put in cal mag first as instructed, then the other nutes.
Still have past growth that shows past defficiencies but the buds look dense, smell good and are super sticky and trich loaded. If the final product isnt the best at least i should be able to make some good hash!
I have uploaded some pics to the gallery but they arent inserting from mobile so i'll have to do it tonight when i get home and ill post the setup pics and bud pics. Sorry to keep you waiting!
I come to you with opening my first grow journal as a humble noob hoping to learning all that i can. I actually debated wethere i would make this journal because I am actually more than halfway through my first run already but just discovered the site through research and realized this journal feature is perfect not only to have people help with knowledge as the grow is going but to digitally log the progress. So far i've been writing everything down till now so i'll try and tell the story from the beginning and get caught up to the current state. That being said here goes the journal....
Once i decided to grow my own smoke i began doin lots of research on the subject to make it happen as smoothly as possible and get a head start. I knew going into this its a science and and also an art, not somethin that is easily mastered.
When i do somethin i do my best to do it right and not go cheap on anything so i dedicated the entire extra room in my house to this setup to have the optimal environment.
Thought about having just the whole open room but was concerned about possible light leaks from around the door and there were tons of benefits to running a tent for me like easier light control, climate control pest control, reflectivity for light efficiency etc so i set up a 5x10x7 gro tent in the spare room. it takes up more than half of the room.
After lots and lots of reading not only on grow knowlege but on cost/benefit knowledge one thing i was sure of is that i wanted to go LED. HPS is obviously tried and true but at how much it would cost to run not only the light but all the extra vent equipment to manage heat it would be cheaper to just buy weed and not grow. I was skeptical of all the hype I was reading and it really was hard to pick through it but i ended up with 2 360 Extreme Flower panels from advancedled. Very expensive but i plan on many grows and they will pay off by my math as long as i can get decent yield.
Another thought was maintenance. My friend who cultivates (same friend i got my 8 blueberry bullrider clones from) spends endless hours on his rooms and while i would love to do that i simply work way too much. After reading about systems i went with the greentrees hydro flood/drain system and bought 2 extra buckets for a total of 8 sites and upgraded to a 30 gallon res. Seemed really simple and basic which so far it has been and pretty low maintenance.
Regulating temp and RH with a huge portable AC unit. I bring in fresh air from the outside to the inside of the room which is filtered though the unit. The fresh air current is directed straight at a single opening in the tent where it is then drawn through the tent passively by a 6" vortex fan on the opposite side of the tents roof. A 12" ocsillating fan keeps it all circulating.
So its all been set up and running mid november. i got it all dialed in and bought some nutes before getting the girls.
Recap on the setup:
5x10x7 grow tent
2x360 watt extreme flower advancedled panels
greentrees hydro bucket system with hydroton
8 blueberry bullrider plants from clone. i know its a hybrid not sure of percentages, seems to have more indica trait
14,000 btu portable ac unit,12" oscillatig fan, and 6" vortex for ventilation
20lb co2 tank on regulator and timer (did not get this untill week 3 of flower)
ph/ppm pens
Hydrologic RO 100L
Close to 5.8 ph as possible
Nutes:
GH Cal/Mag
Botanicare Kind base/bloom/grow
Orca root treatment
GH Amino treatment
Mad Farmer B-1
Mad Farmer M.O.A.B.
Mad Farmer N.U.T.
BIG SWELL
Veg stage.
From the get go i may have been at a disadvantage with some of the clones. they werent exactly the healthiest looking i've seen and the roots were underdeveloped on 2 for sure, but its what i had available...
I plopped the jiffy cubed clones in the buckets on Sept. 23 with the lights on 18/6, kept clear plastic cups over them to retain humidity during the transition into veg. I figure the first week of the clones being in the pots is a "take" period and i dont count it as a veg week. i started my veg timer on Sept 30 with the plan of harvesting around xmas or new year.
after the clones were in the buckets for about a week there was noticable growth from me top feeding the plants plain RO water so i started up the brain and set it for flood every 4 hours for 30 minutes. i then added base nutrients at half strength, cal mag, a little orca and b-1
Couple weeks into veg plants look fine but they are very dark and arent growing as fast or as big as i hoped. Couple days after that i see the "claw" effect on almost every leaf. I had done what i had done so much research trying to prevent and overdosed! My plants were getting too much N ! I learned from experience that chemical nutes are much more concentrated than i even researched. Everywhere says half strength but even that was too much.
One thing i love about this bucket system is its easy to flush. no experience with other systems hands on but imagine this is one of the easiest.
When i noticed the "claw" i RO'd a ton of water. put about 3 gallons of ro water through the top of each bucket to flush which gets auto pump from brain back to res, drain res then refill , super easy. that seemed to fix the issue and the new growth looked healthy after i put in less nutes.
So they grew healthy again and i let them veg untill i flipped to 12/12 on oct 25th. just short of 4 full weeks not counting the 1 week "take" period after transplant.
Flower:
I had read so many times about people doing 36 of dark before 12/12 but i didnt want try anything like that i just went straight to 12/12 and i noticed the change only 2 days later the little hairs popped out and flower progress has been steady.
I experienced defficiencies in the plants r2 weeks into flower.Had 2 that suffered pretty bad Ca defficiencies (the same 2 that were runty from the get go) and almost all of them were somewhat P and K defficient over the last week. they are just over 5 weeks in flower now so i suspect i was just off on the timing of switching nutrient ratios. After i switched to 12/12 i wasnt sure when the nutrient demand would change so i changed the res after 1 week with more PK and then again after week 2 of flower.
Each time i noticed any kind of issue i would flush with RO water and try to rebalance the nutes to the stage of growth, but i think for someone like me its just a matter of doing it a few times...
Also i've found its very hard to tell if there might be "lockout" happening. I dont think i had one though, i suspect i just got scared of the N toxicity in veg and was too cautious in the transition to the flower nute. I can see now that once they start to flower their needs change almost immediately since the change in light is immediate and not gradual like in nature.
Just added the 20lb CO2 tank last week and that gets me up to date!
One issue i've been having all along is PH. it keeps going down which to me is unusual because everything i read says the ph will go up in hydro. Every day i have to ad a little PH UP to the res to keep it at 5.8 or else it will drop to 5.5 or less in 24 hourse and if i let it go longer it can get to 5 or less. My local hydro store guys says ph up is bad but what else can i do? why does it drop so low in the first place? I always use fresh ro water, put in cal mag first as instructed, then the other nutes.
Still have past growth that shows past defficiencies but the buds look dense, smell good and are super sticky and trich loaded. If the final product isnt the best at least i should be able to make some good hash!
I have uploaded some pics to the gallery but they arent inserting from mobile so i'll have to do it tonight when i get home and ill post the setup pics and bud pics. Sorry to keep you waiting!
