Hey everyone,
Just wanted to brag a bit and to get some advice. This is my first grow and I am very pleased with progreess up to this point. My basic timeline has been as follows:
1) Recieved 10 clones from another grower (2-24-10) These were set into 9" diameter pots with Fox Farms Organic Potting Soil. Our lighting system is 1000 W HPS light with the Vegatative Spectrum bulb. Watering was done every 48 hrs with about 4 cups of water per plant. This allowed some drainage into the trays beneath the plants.
2) On 3-27-10 we noticed some miner changes in the foilage, yellowish leaves with brown spots. An indicator that the plants were rootbound. We transfered our plants into 5 gal pails using Fox Farms Organic Potiing soil. We started adding Fox Farms grow big to every other watering 3 tsp/gal. Each plant required 6 cups of water to cause drainage.
3) On 4-6 we moved the plants around allowing more space between the pots,
4) Today 4-14-10 our plants, on average, are 30 inches tall and approximatly 30 inches in diameter.
We are now ready to cull our next generation of clones in order to get them started. We are planning to use Clonex for the rooting compound and Growdan for the rooting medium. Once we have culled the clones we will be removing the interior leaves as well as any external leaves that prevent light penetration. We are staging our plants for the flowering cycle by placing 3 plants at a time into the night cycle. We will be spacing this out by 2 weeks between each grouping of plants.
We will be changing our bulb to the flowering spectrum and utilizing Grow Big as the nutrients for the flowering phase.
We are doing this so that we can have better control over the amount of bud/flowers we have to deal with. This will also allow us to see if production increases between groups of plants. We will be using the color of the trichromes to determine when the flowers are ready to harvest and dry. We will be pulling them off the plants as they mature, allowing any remaining flowers to develop fully.
One of the questions that we have is how to estimate yield. We want to do this simply to determine if we are making any mistakes. We also had 1 plant that exhibited stunted growth so we will be allowing that plant to remain in the full light cycle until the rest of the plants have completed the flowering process.
For our next cycle we are considering double planting the clones directly into 5 gal pots. We will be divideing the session into 3 groups of 4 plants, with each group divided into 2 sub groups of 2 plants. We will be treating the sub groups has follows. 2 plants will be maintained with leaves trimmed back and 2 left with foilage intact. We will keep the plants in vegatative stage util they have reached a hieght of 18-24 inches. The first group will then be moved into flowering phase. This will be repeated exactly 2 weeks a part.
We are considering this method of growing to better determine yields and potential.
Does this make sense?
Are we forgetting anything that could be problematic?
When changing over to the Grow Big should we water with plain water a few times before using the new nutrients?
Any help will be appreciated, I will monitor this thread and respond to comments. I will also provide some pictures if anyone wants to "see" what is going on. Thank you for your time and patience with these issues. We are following the guidelines for the state of Michigans Medical Marijuna Program.
Just wanted to brag a bit and to get some advice. This is my first grow and I am very pleased with progreess up to this point. My basic timeline has been as follows:
1) Recieved 10 clones from another grower (2-24-10) These were set into 9" diameter pots with Fox Farms Organic Potting Soil. Our lighting system is 1000 W HPS light with the Vegatative Spectrum bulb. Watering was done every 48 hrs with about 4 cups of water per plant. This allowed some drainage into the trays beneath the plants.
2) On 3-27-10 we noticed some miner changes in the foilage, yellowish leaves with brown spots. An indicator that the plants were rootbound. We transfered our plants into 5 gal pails using Fox Farms Organic Potiing soil. We started adding Fox Farms grow big to every other watering 3 tsp/gal. Each plant required 6 cups of water to cause drainage.
3) On 4-6 we moved the plants around allowing more space between the pots,
4) Today 4-14-10 our plants, on average, are 30 inches tall and approximatly 30 inches in diameter.
We are now ready to cull our next generation of clones in order to get them started. We are planning to use Clonex for the rooting compound and Growdan for the rooting medium. Once we have culled the clones we will be removing the interior leaves as well as any external leaves that prevent light penetration. We are staging our plants for the flowering cycle by placing 3 plants at a time into the night cycle. We will be spacing this out by 2 weeks between each grouping of plants.
We will be changing our bulb to the flowering spectrum and utilizing Grow Big as the nutrients for the flowering phase.
We are doing this so that we can have better control over the amount of bud/flowers we have to deal with. This will also allow us to see if production increases between groups of plants. We will be using the color of the trichromes to determine when the flowers are ready to harvest and dry. We will be pulling them off the plants as they mature, allowing any remaining flowers to develop fully.
One of the questions that we have is how to estimate yield. We want to do this simply to determine if we are making any mistakes. We also had 1 plant that exhibited stunted growth so we will be allowing that plant to remain in the full light cycle until the rest of the plants have completed the flowering process.
For our next cycle we are considering double planting the clones directly into 5 gal pots. We will be divideing the session into 3 groups of 4 plants, with each group divided into 2 sub groups of 2 plants. We will be treating the sub groups has follows. 2 plants will be maintained with leaves trimmed back and 2 left with foilage intact. We will keep the plants in vegatative stage util they have reached a hieght of 18-24 inches. The first group will then be moved into flowering phase. This will be repeated exactly 2 weeks a part.
We are considering this method of growing to better determine yields and potential.
Does this make sense?
Are we forgetting anything that could be problematic?
When changing over to the Grow Big should we water with plain water a few times before using the new nutrients?
Any help will be appreciated, I will monitor this thread and respond to comments. I will also provide some pictures if anyone wants to "see" what is going on. Thank you for your time and patience with these issues. We are following the guidelines for the state of Michigans Medical Marijuna Program.
