Anthony Suszko: Tony's First Grow

[Anthony Suszko]

Still babies until you get beyond 5 pairs, full strength can burn leaves, no leaves = no good.

Cool, It's what I wanted to know, thanks.. I'll stay with just pond water for now..

 

[The Phantom]

^Agreed, the little ladies will have enough energy to get the first two sets of leaves out (cotyledon or the round leaves first then a single blade ruffled edge leaf second). That’s usually the time I’ll dose 1/4 strength or less of my nutrients, depending on how she is growing. The sit back and watch how fast it takes her to throw out that first true full set of leaves that looks like your typical Mary Jane leaf.

 

[Anthony Suszko]

^Agreed, the little ladies will have enough energy to get the first two sets of leaves out (cotyledon or the round leaves first then a single blade ruffled edge leaf second). That’s usually the time I’ll dose 1/4 strength or less of my nutrients, depending on how she is growing. The sit back and watch how fast it takes her to throw out that first true full set of leaves that looks like your typical Mary Jane leaf.

Cool man, appreciate the details you threw in explaining what to look for.. Takes a little of the stress off lol.. Thanks!.

 

[Anthony Suszko]

6/4/2020
Journal Update: How The Kids Are Doing?

First of all its a no go and huge disapointment on sprouting any of the Maple Leaf seeds from germination to planting.. I think the seeds themselves were on the smallish side to begin with, and once cracked open the tapper root only showed a centimeter or two before stopping all together.. The tap root showed no change after 5 days under the wet paper towel in dark room. I went ahead and planted seeds 1 inch deep in red solo cups anyway and nothing emerged.. I suspect the soil conditions were too tannic- acidic because water drainage was a rusty yellow orange in color. so I'm going to scrap trying to grow anything else until I get some trustworthy seedling soil and proper germination temps..

On the bright side-
The 3 Afghani's that did sprout out are growing wicked quick.. They show nice dark green color and look perky.. I think the booth lighting is fine and in combination with outdoor sun they show no complaints rite now.. They get 6 hours of dark photosynthesis rest. At this stage I started feeding them a half dose of suggested 5 gal formula. Out of the 3 Afghan Regular plants I suspect 2 are female because of compact lower to the ground shape and wider leaf than the suspected slimmer taller male.. ( let me know what you guys think?)

 

[Rexer]

I'm sorry to hear about the maples

 

[Anthony Suszko]

I'm sorry to hear about the maples

Life goes on and need to be happy for the shit that goes right lol.. I'm devistated but OK .. and since this is my first attempt at growing on the fly from a whim and on a budget.. I expect to hit some bumps in the road... I actually wanted to do a test run grow first to knock out some of these road bumps.. but it is what it is.. Maybe on the next grow I'll have the majority of issues all worked out..

 

[Rexer]

Life goes on and need to be happy for the shit that goes right lol.. I'm devistated but OK .. and since this is my first attempt at growing on the fly from a whim and on a budget.. I expect to hit some bumps in the road... I actually wanted to do a test run grow first to knock out some of these road bumps.. but it is what it is.. Maybe on the next grow I'll have the majority of issues all worked out..

That's right, live and learn. You've still got potential to pull in a decent yield!

 

[Anthony Suszko]

6/4/2020
Journal Update: How The Kids Are Doing?

First of all its a no go and huge disapointment on sprouting any of the Maple Leaf seeds from germination to planting.. I think the seeds themselves were on the smallish side to begin with, and once cracked open the tapper root only showed a centimeter or two before stopping all together.. The tap root showed no change after 5 days under the wet paper towel in dark room. I went ahead and planted seeds 1 inch deep in red solo cups anyway and nothing emerged.. I suspect the soil conditions were too tannic- acidic because water drainage was a rusty yellow orange in color. so I'm going to scrap trying to grow anything else until I get some trustworthy seedling soil and proper germination temps..

On the bright side-
The 3 Afghani's that did sprout out are growing wicked quick.. They show nice dark green color and look perky.. I think the booth lighting is fine and in combination with outdoor sun they show no complaints rite now.. They get 6 hours of dark photosynthesis rest. At this stage I started feeding them a half dose of suggested 5 gal formula. Out of the 3 Afghan Regular plants I suspect 2 are female because of compact lower to the ground shape and wider leaf than the suspected slimmer taller male.. ( let me know what you guys think?)

Question for:
@The Phantom
Sprouted from the ground May/24th so it's 9-10 days, how do they look to you ? Are they right where they should be for 9-10 days growth ? and do you see any potential red flags ?

 

[Anthony Suszko]

Udate 6/15/2020 Busy as a Bee,

Lots of stuff happening this weekend. The Afghan girls are growing crazy fast hitting the 3 week veg mark. All 3 got re-planted to large pots and immediately started to stretch out showing zero stress from being transplanted.. Root balls looked really good from being started in 1.5 gal containers but was time to make the switch.. 2 of the girls got head chops. One of them i just had to low stress nip the top off and was good, the other got the classic lollipop chop removing the top. These are outdoor photo's of where plants are positioned on the side of the house.. I worked out the sun tracking where the plants only get moved one time to take advantage of 8 hours of free mother nature's full strength sunlight..
From 10:00AM -5:00PM is the bright outdoor intense light period of their grow. From 5:00PM to 12:00AM they are downstairs in the grow booth under white LED light.. The girls are getting fed once a week every Monday with an outdoor strength batch of Miricle Grow and seem to look good and healthy.. Growing at this rate these plants are gonna look awesome at 7 weeks when I flip to flowering them..



GROW BOOTH construction update:
Lighting got an update, Now running 4 GT LED omni directional LED 500 Lumen bulbs plus 6 incandescent shop light red spectrum bulbs across the top tucked away behind the newly installed bulkhead fascia panel frame up. I bought 3 full sheets of 1 inch reflective silver one side foam insulation panels @ $12.00 a piece and scrounged the 2 x 4 stock from the garage pile of scrap lumber.. The new booth set up measures out to 80" across, 60" to meet the rafter bay. I framed up a fascia panal to hide the lighting and save my eyes from getting burned out ... The plan here is to keep the plants at counter top level and lower the table top which is standing on 8"cinder blocks when the plants stretch for the lights. I can incrementally lower the 8" cinder blocks until hitting the floor.. Because of my bad back, I'm more comfortable working at counter top height instead of having to bend over to work on my plants.
Helfull Tip.. Use a skill saw to cut this stuff and use a micro tooth plywood OSB rated blade. Do not cut on the silver side, it will end up looking rough and hacked up.. Cut white side up and use the + mark grid to help line up your cuts..

HYDRO DREAM UPDATE:
So sitting at my computer kickin it with headphones on and started dreaming of where I fit in the scheme of hydro on a budget when I came up with this 30 gal set up rough sketch and went from there... I got everything here and extra parts and extra lids for around $140.00 from Menards home improvement center. I bought extra lids in case I wanted to switch from 2 plant config to single plant config. I had the spare 800 gal pump sitting around doing nothing , so dare to dream and make shit happen lol.. The inspiration for this set up came from The Phantom and RedZedHead.. Right now I'm going to finish my first grow, and then get the Hydro Boss up and going for my 2nd grow.. The new booth set up will let me run a 4 pot hydro set up and have extra room for a few soil plants.. What this does for me is to get outdoor plants to the 3 week veg stage quickly so I can plant already established plants in the back yard and also grow out mature plants for in the booth.. So it's a multi function set up with room to expand now..

 

[Anthony Suszko]

Journal Update 6/18/2020

Making the Copies..



So with the Afghan plants doing well and not needing any attention right now I decided to take 3 clones from 2 of my strongest plants. I used a 1.5 gal plastic container and an old Goldfish bowl to make the cloning box. The globe fits perfectly ontop of the soil container.. I used Root Boost hormone powder on the tips of the plants and poured some additional powder into the holes before planting the copies.. I'm misting the inside of the bowl and plants every 3-4 hours.. This is the 2nd day and plants are standing up, so I think they are taking..
I'm naming the 3 clones after copy machines.. Xerox, Minolta, and IBM..

I'll update in a week on clone progress..

 

[Anthony Suszko]

Update 7/11/20 finishing week 7 on Monday 7/13/20

Lots of things going on since the last update... I have 4 nice clones and will start up a MegaCrop Hydro bucket at the end of this week. Yes that's right, I sprung for a large bag of MC after frying up the tips using Miracle Grow being overzealous-heavy handed with the proportions in week 4. I went to 5 week using MG but ever since reading the plant description and how it doubles it size once reaching flow stage I wanted to really bulk these babies up and reach 5 grams per gallon with 3 weeks to go in veg. The plants are looking great after a week of 2.5 Grams of MC and have noticed a color change to vibrant richer green with little sprouts popping up all over the plants.. They are getting so big I had to construct tomato cages around them..

Clones
I made a huge mistake with the goldfish bowl cloning chamber.. Way too much humidity in there and plants ended up curling twisted looking like wilted mutants.. I revised the approach and went from cutting, to dipping in hormone powder strait to cups and had success. I now have 4 nice beauties 2 of which I'll soil plant, and other 2 go into hydro on Monday. I love soil because It makes me feel like an old grungy Tie-Dye sandal wearing Hippie and also want to see what these soil grown clones do in MC in the updated booth lighting. Hydro is going to be fun once I bring it up to 5 Grams per gallon MC. I'll go to single pot hydro buckets after 3 weeks in this double pot set up.



Hand Built Tomato Cages
so with the bud formations getting heavy I needed to go out and spring for some cages.. The thing is, everyone was sold out but that was OK, because I'm creative and had a back up plan building my own version using trim stock and yarn as cargo netting. I figured they can get as entangled as they want.. I'll just cut the yarn netting away and recycle the wood staves for the next grow.



Updated Booth & Lighting

The 12 inch 2009 light LED Red-Blue Light panel I ordered from China on whim finally arrived .. I order it on April 27th.. It's laughable but it's OK.. Dealing with Chinese excuses which caused me stress is funny to me now.. This LED panel has no makers mark-brand name or even an instruction pamphlet .. It's actually not that bad and will probably use it for sprouting seeds.. If I had to do it over I woulda gone with just adding 2 more GT omni's spreading the light across more evenly. Not a big deal and Future booth upgrade. The GT omni's are only $14.00 each..

China LED Panel throwing down a column of purple light


My cliche Purple photos along with music suggestion.

 

[oldsmokey]

Crop Kings will buy back and replace all ungerminated seeds as long as you follow their preferred- specified method instructions.. and even if the last 3 Maple's dont tap out, I have plenty to work with.. 3 extra plants may be too much for a first grow lol.. But since I'm only using the Afghani Regs for pollin and sex of those 5 Afghani's is still up in the air. I'm thinking better to start out with few more than less lol..

Wasn't my experience with cropking I grew there purple kush 4 out of 4 hermied on me. When I contacted them there reply was must of been grower induced I told them no way never had a plant Hermie on me ii know bad genetics when I see them. Lots of members here have had bad results with them. I hope your experience is much better.

 

[oldsmokey]

Looks good Anthony I think you were wise to switch to megacrop. Just don't be in a hurry to get to 5 gram/gal let the plants tell you when they want more. Your link is still not working I did a search to find your journal. If you look in my signature there is a link on how to add links to your signature. Makes it easier for members to find and follow.

Cheers

 

[Anthony Suszko]

Looks good Anthony I think you were wise to switch to megacrop. Just don't be in a hurry to get to 5 gram/gal let the plants tell you when they want more. Your link is still not working I did a search to find your journal. If you look in my signature there is a link on how to add links to your signature. Makes it easier for members to find and follow.

Cheers

You can see why I'm a little concerned with Em's grow .. I dont know about giving a teaspoon of Geoflora to a plant that small and what the impact will be.. especially being warned by this group of people teling me not to feed until a 5 segment leaf showed.. but hey sometimes we get used to doing things a certain way and need a reminder or something that shakes us up a little bit? ..

Thanks @oldsmokey for popping into my journal and giving it a look see.. much appreciated.
I'll work on getting the link straitened out.. good advise on not being in a hurry.. kicking it up to 3.5 this week and then to 5 as recomended for flowering phase.. so should be good..

 

[oldsmokey]

I usually am cautious with the first feeding when I have a three fingered leaf it's good to go. There some other very experienced growers here as well that will germinate there seeds in a very low dose of MC. Watch the cotyledon Leafs for yellowing then you know they need to be fed. Then I will feed 2gm/gl MC. You have Emilya watching your back so you should be fine. She helped me last grow when things started to go wrong.

 

[Anthony Suszko]

I usually am cautious with the first feeding when I have a three fingered leaf it's good to go. There some other very experienced growers here as well that will germinate there seeds in a very low dose of MC. Watch the cotyledon Leafs for yellowing then you know they need to be fed. Then I will feed 2gm/gl MC. You have Emilya watching your back so you should be fine. She helped me last grow when things started to go wrong.

I'm learning allot from Emilya and a few others in this group.. Looking back to before joining this group, I had no idea of the amount of studying-reading that's involved just to qualify as a novice.. What i lack in experience I try making for in observation and intuition plus applying my own mistakes but know that only gets me so far.. Its just going to boil down to adding a few more grows to my resume and learning a ton more before i can get cocky lol.. I wouldnt trade the hard work and studying for anything..

Funny- My cotyledon leaves took forever to fall off.. I was thinking to myself maybe I'm doing something wrong because I see others photos with them gone already and keyed into this trying to figure it out... Finally they started to dry up and was relieved.. I thought they were going to hang on forever lol.. but this just shows my lack of hard experience - stored knowledge to fall back on of which i need to keep building on.

 

[oldsmokey]

No matter how long you have been growing you never stop learning.

 

[r0am1ng st0ner]

lookin good. btw it is really hard to find this as there is no link in your signature. Oldsmokey right above ^ has a link in his signature about putting links in or click your name at top of site, go to signature, then look for the chainlink button in that message box and put in the link to this

 

[Anthony Suszko]

lookin good. btw it is really hard to find this as there is no link in your signature. Oldsmokey right above ^ has a link in his signature about putting links in or click your name at top of site, go to signature, then look for the chainlink button in that message box and put in the link to this

Probably sort of on purpose because Emilya kinda talked me into it when I wasn't really ready to dive in yet.. So I probably try hiding it away as much as possible really wanting to start it all over again if that makes any sense? When I get into grow 2 next season It'll feel like starting from scratch & being much more organized.. but it is what it is and im ok with it because i have direction now.. Stupid me chose the middle of the Covid 19 crisis to start my first grow project up and wound up with a ton of delays on everything..

 

[oldsmokey]

We're all here to learn together.