First Time Grow, 2'x'2 Tent,135W LED, Please Help Me Along The Way

[Gresus42069]

Hi Everybody,

I've just started my first proper attempt at growing and would like some feedback and tips please.

My setup is as follows:

Tent: 2'x2'x5.5' (60CMx60CMx160CM).

Light: HLG 135W LED.

Fans: 4" centrifugal fan with speed controller + carbon filter (exhaust). 4" inline fan (active intake). 6" clip-on fan (move air around inside the tent).

Medium: Canna Terra Professional Soil

Nutrients: Veg - Canna Terra Vega, Canna Rhizotonic, CannaZym (Flowering I will use Terra Flores and PK13/14 + CannaBoost, as per the Canna Grow Guide)

Unfortunately, the seeds that I'm using are from a friend and I have no idea of the strain or anything. If this first grow is succesful I will look into getting something nice (not easy to ship seeds to where I live).

My game plan is to have one plant in here. I aim to top it twice (4 main colas) and maybe do a bit of LST.
I started with 6 seeds planted in little pots and 3 of these popped 3 days ago (9th of Jan). I will keep all three going as long as possible and select the strongest to keep in the tent. If there is more than 1 female I'll keep the others going outdoors.

Today is the 13th of Jan and I plan on introducing some nutrients with their next watering. I haven't watered for about 36hours as I think I had overwatered them and can see that the soil is still slightly moist. One of my seedlings was reaching for the sun and over the last 24 hours has started going slightly droopy. Another one of my seedlings also seems to have slightly mutated leaves. Do you guys think that the above problems have been caused by overwatering? I plan on feeding them again this evening or maybe tomorrow morning depending on how the soil looks later.

Another potential issue is that the temp inside my tent was quite high yesterday. It was sitting around 30-31c. I added an active air intake today and have managed to bring the temp down to about 28-29c. Do you think that this is possibly the cause of my droopyness?

Any feedback or help would be greatly appreciated.

This is all so exciting and I want to try and do everything that I can to make this a success!

Thanks!!

 

[InTheShed]

I'm a soil grower but I don't use the Canna line of anything. I can tell you that sprouts like slightly damp soil, not wet at all, and rarely need to be fed until the cotyledon leaves start to yellow, usually somewhere around 14-20 days.

28º C is pretty hot for seedlings. Is it the light that is making it that hot? Seedlings also don't need much in the way of light at that age, so they may be curling away from the light. You could easily go with a 23w CFL bulb about 6" away at this point!

Don't worry about the mutated leaves. Most plants outgrow that.

 

[Gresus42069]

I'm a soil grower but I don't use the Canna line of anything. I can tell you that sprouts like slightly damp soil, not wet at all, and rarely need to be fed until the cotyledon leaves start to yellow, usually somewhere around 14-20 days.

28º C is pretty hot for seedlings. Is it the light that is making it that hot? Seedlings also don't need much in the way of light at that age, so they may be curling away from the light. You could easily go with a 23w CFL bulb about 6" away at this point!

Don't worry about the mutated leaves. Most plants outgrow that.

I've started using a spray bottle to lightly squirt them instead of giving them a full on water. I also think that I'll hold off feeding them with nutes for another week or so (hopefully they'll recover a bit).

The light has minimal heat emitting from it. I'm pretty sure the heat issue is because of the room that my tent is located in and unfortunately I can't move it. I turned my light down to about 50% power, so hopefully, that helps a bit.

Thanks for your help.

 

[InTheShed]

Update us as it goes!

 

[Big Sparks]

I have basically the same (veg) set-up. Although, right now i've got my old MarsHydro 98x5wat Reflector series over my seedlings in the 2'x2' because its been a little cold lately and the MarsHydro runs a little warmer to keep my babies toasty through the cold evenings. I'll be tagging along BTW.

 

[Gresus42069]

Thanks for the help guys.

Not sure what's happening but they aren't looking too good.

I couldn't help myself and gave them a few squirts with water yesterday, which probably wasn't the best idea.

The soil is really really dry now but I still think that they look overwatered.

It has been roughly a week now and I'm starting to think that I should start germinating some new seeds and try again in some solo cups.

Do you guys have any ideas as to what's going on? Do you think that I've stressed these too much and should hit reset?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[InTheShed]

They look like they should be okay once they get some roots underneath them so I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet. In terms of watering, you should water in a circle about 3" out from the stem, and then pour a little right down the middle for the tap root. Don't spray the top of the soil or the plant. The roots are down under the surface so getting the top wet doesn't help that.

Heat could still be your problem. Fan leaves also move away from the light if it's too strong but you said you turned it down to 50%. Have you lowered it? Do you have a lux meter?

No nutes yet, yes?

 

[Gresus42069]

They look like they should be okay once they get some roots underneath them so I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet. In terms of watering, you should water in a circle about 3" out from the stem, and then pour a little right down the middle for the tap root. Don't spray the top of the soil or the plant. The roots are down under the surface so getting the top wet doesn't help that.

Heat could still be your problem. Fan leaves also move away from the light if it's too strong but you said you turned it down to 50%. Have you lowered it? Do you have a lux meter?

No nutes yet, yes?

Thanks, I'll keep them going while I start to germinate another couple of seeds.

The light was turned down to about 50% and is 20inches away from the plants. Heat hasn't gone above 30c and probably sits at around 28c.

When I watered them the other day I mixed 1ml of Rhizotonic into about 250mls of water (recommended 1:250 ratio for this stage). I would have used probably about 50mls to feed all 3.

 

[Gresus42069]

Hi Guys!

Update time!

It's been a couple of weeks and I almost gave up on them but I'm very pleased I didn't!

I topped them all 2 days ago and have just turned my LED onto full blast to see if it'll make any difference.

I think the problem I was having before was that I actually underwatering them quite severely. I've given them a few waterings with nutes and they seem to have exploded over the last week.

There seems to be a slight yellowing on the tips of some leaves now and I am wondering if this is nute burn or still some of the residual effects of prolonged underwatering. I will only feed them nutes every second watering going forward, so hopefully it doesn't get any worse.

Do you guys think that I should transport them into bigger pots now or wait? I wanted to go from this to their final pots but I'm not sure if I'll have space in my tent to keep vegging these 3 in 5-gallon pots until I select the winner. I would ideally like to transport them to their final pots to avoid stressing them any more. Do you think that it would be better for me to wait, go up to maybe an interim 3-gallon pot or just transport them to their final pots now?

Photos were taken 10mins after the lights switched back on (18/6 schedule), so they look a little bit droopy!

Any tips or advice you can give me is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[InTheShed]

Completely forgot this thread existed! Three weeks without an update is like 3 months around here.

In soil I feed every time I water, which is only when the pot is really light. Do your nutes say not to?

Don't let your pots sit in standing water. It will rot the roots.

Don't transplant until you see loads of roots coming out of the holes in the pot, and if there already are, wait 3 or 4 days after you topped.

I'm not seeing nute burn.

I'd go into the next size up, as going too large now will make it difficult to prevent overwatering (too much soil for the small amount of roots).

Welcome back! Update more often so we can see what's happening as it goes .

 

[Gresus42069]

Completely forgot this thread existed! Three weeks without an update is like 3 months around here.

In soil I feed every time I water, which is only when the pot is really light. Do your nutes say not to?

Don't let your pots sit in standing water. It will rot the roots.

Don't transplant until you see loads of roots coming out of the holes in the pot, and if there already are, wait 3 or 4 days after you topped.

I'm not seeing nute burn.

I'd go into the next size up, as going too large now will make it difficult to prevent overwatering (too much soil for the small amount of roots).

Welcome back! Update more often so we can see what's happening as it goes .

Thanks mate! I've been super busy and didn't realise quite how much they had grown until I checked my previous post.

My nutes tell me to use them every watering, so I'll just keep using them every time then unless I see anything that worries me. I haven't worked my way up to full strength yet, I'm probably at about 75-85%, so I'll ramp it up to full slowly.

As for roots, I can't see anything coming out yet, so I'll just wait and then go up a size and then transport again when that gets too small. The less there is for me to screw up the better!

I'll try to update this thread every week or as questions pop up.

Thanks for your help!

 

[InTheShed]

My nutes tell me to use them every watering, so I'll just keep using them every time

LOL!

Keep us posted .

 

[Gresus42069]

Time for an update.

In my opinion they're looking quite good! I topped them last week, transferred them to bigger pots and began to low stress train them.

1 of my plants is looking a little bit weird now though. The top leaves are kind of yellow/lime green and have a strange looking texture. I think this could possibly be wind stress as this one was in the pot I had directly across from the fan.
You can see from the photos that the soil is dry in that pot as well. It's happening in that particular area of the tent (switched pots around before and the same thing happened there). I think that this may have also been caused by the fan, so I've adjusted the fan to aim higher. Hopefully this helps.

Do you guys have any ideas what's causing the issue above? Do you think that it could be wind stress or a deficiency of sorts?

 

[InTheShed]

Hard to eliminate two possible things at once, and the shape of the leaves could definitely be wind stress. The color could be a result of that as well if they were forced to transpire at a high rate because of the airflow, but I can't say for sure. Point the fan at the side of the tent and have it oscillating and see how the new growth looks.

 

[Gresus42069]

It's been a while since I've given an update, so here you go!

I think that all 3 of my plants are female!

I've transplanted 2 into 5-gallon fabric pots. My original plan was to have 1 in the tent and 1 outside but I couldn't bring myself to killing the little one, so I'll just keep it going in a small pot outside.

I've managed to get some seeds online and now I want to finish these up as quickly as possible and give some well-known strains a try! I switched my light to 12/12 yesterday to begin flowering and am hoping that moving the others outside will start them flowering at the same time. I'm going to start feeding my plants the flowering nutes going forward.

I think that they're looking great! It looks like my attempt to top and LST have worked pretty well. My indoor plant is super bushy and looks like it will have a few colas, it'll be interesting to see how much it grows over the next few weeks. The other 2 have been outside for about a week and they've stretched massively over that time!

 

[InTheShed]

hoping that moving the others outside will start them flowering at the same time.

If you're in the Northern Hemisphere then yes, our days are shorter than 12/12, but they will be getting more and more light with each passing day, so I'm curious to see how flowering goes outside now.

 

[Gresus42069]

If you're in the Northern Hemisphere then yes, our days are shorter than 12/12, but they will be getting more and more light with each passing day, so I'm curious to see how flowering goes outside now.

Southern Hemisphere. We're sitting at around 12/12 now and it'll only be getting darker for longer

 

[InTheShed]

Oh gotcha...flower away!

 

[Big Sparks]

If you're in the Northern Hemisphere then yes, our days are shorter than 12/12, but they will be getting more and more light with each passing day, so I'm curious to see how flowering goes outside now.

Id like to see that too. Should make for a right proper experiment there.

 

[Gresus42069]

Uhhhh no!

I'm starting to think that the plant I've kept inside may have hermed or been a male the whole time!

I've noticed what looks like "balls" appearing all over the plant.

Could you guys please help me?!?! I thought that it was showing pistils and starting to bud but I may have been mistaken