GMSkunk's 1st Grow (Hydro: White Widow + Northern Lights)

[gmskunk]

Hmmm... I wonder what happened? I'm glad to hear they are doing much better. ;-) They look great!

lol which time?

WW1 had pH problems (lockout) in the beginning as well as a nute deficiency (added dolomite for cal/mag supplements) pretty much throughout the entire grow...I'm still not confident in my nute recipe.

NL1 was severely under watered week3 or 4 of flowering. It seems to be wayyy less sensitive to pH and nutes deficiencies.

the two most important things I have learned thus far...
1. monitor pH like a hawk
2. nutrient recipe/dosages are plant dependent

I've got the pH monitoring down, but still feel a little rookie on the nute needs for WWidow. I'm going to be doing the same grow as soon as these bitches are chopped and we can all see how much knowledge I retained.

 

[Ms.Fox]

the two most important things I have learned thus far...
1. monitor pH like a hawk
2. nutrient recipe/dosages are plant dependent

Very good! + REP!

You'll get it right for the WW... Be patient. Did you just lower the amount of nutes you give that one?

 

[gmskunk]

If my set up is half as good as urs dude i will be a very happy man!! looks quality dude...

toke on bro

your setup doesn't mean shit if you don't maintain a suitable environment. when embarking on this journey, my focus was on the setup. I completely underestimated the accuracy needed with regards to environment and nutes and therefore never did much homework in those areas (until I had problems in week 3 of veg).

- environment -
temp:65-80deg
reservoir temp: 68-72deg
humidity: 35-55 during veg, 35-40 during flower
lights: do you have enough lumens/penetration for the number and size of plants you want to grow?
pH: also plant dependent, but I now shoot for 5.5-5.9 (which unfortunately requires min 1x day adjustment given my setup -- bigger reservoirs provide larger pH buffer which is nice when your grow room is in the attic)

 

[gmskunk]

Very good! + REP!

You'll get it right for the WW... Be patient. Did you just lower the amount of nutes you give that one?

when the lockout began, and after looking at hundreds of "nute burn or deficiency" pictures (my head was about to asplode), I decided to up the nutes banking on a nute deficiency...MISTAKE. I was then informed that I needed to flush first, and do a much better job with pH levels (thx McBudz). I laugh in retrospect...here I am, have no idea what my pH levels have been, what nute deficiency I *think* I'm experiencing and just decided to pour more nute into the res.

Post-flushing, I slowly nursed the WW back to health by slowly and steadily upping the nutes back to 600ppm. This caused me to over veg (by 1.5-2 weeks) since I didn't want to flip my room to flowering mode while the WW was still @ 150ppm (my growbox is small). So my flowering beauties are now leaning towers has they attempted to pierce the sky (and failed).

The WW1 never did turn back into a lushes fully green bush after that. The new growth was green, but a few of the shitty looking leaves never dropped off. Also, a lot of the fan leaves had purple lines along the stem attaching the leaf to the branch (micro nute deficiency?)

Other than that, the only real difference that I noticed was that the WW1 seems to require more ca and mg then the NL1. The NL1 stayed nice and green up until it drank all the water in the res. while I was out of town and sat in a bone dry res. for 3-4 days. Even then I nursed it back to health and the shitty leaves that didn't fall off returned to a vibrant green.

Do you think maybe WW requires lower ppms? Its hard for me to tell but I'll be using calmag (instead of dolomite next time) and I'll be on top of pH so we'll see what if any other problems I run into next time.


FWIW, I'm currently pushing 800-900 ppms for both plants (using dolomite, BigBud (freebie with my ANS order), ANS bloomA+B).

 

[gmskunk]

Also, quick question which I can't seem to find via search.

When hanging the bud post chop for 3-5 days, do I need to block out all the light?

The reason I ask is that I'm going to chop the NL first and let the WW continue on for a bit until the tric's change. I want to hang dry the NL in the grow box. since I don't want the delicious stank to seep out...

 

[Ms.Fox]

You know, I just believe every plant is different. You have to "get to know" each plant individually. You should dry your harvest in a dry dark place. ;-)

 

[gmskunk]

You know, I just believe every plant is different. You have to "get to know" each plant individually. You should dry your harvest in a dry dark place. ;-)

crap...I'll have to rethink my harvest setup (but I'm getting pretty good at rethinking by now

 

[tgadfgadgf]

Gm skunk nice journal. I just went through the whole thing. I notice you thought about going to a ebb and flow because you wanted to change. What's wrong with the Dwc that you have. I'm a big fan of the dwc that's why I asked. With my ph I check in the morning and at night and it stays constant between 5.5 and 5.8. I use R/O water with Dutch Masters nutes and somehow it always lowers it to the right ph. I use a 5 gallon bucket with 4 gallons of water.

 

[gmskunk]

Gm skunk nice journal. I just went through the whole thing. I notice you thought about going to a ebb and flow because you wanted to change. What's wrong with the Dwc that you have. I'm a big fan of the dwc that's why I asked. With my ph I check in the morning and at night and it stays constant between 5.5 and 5.8. I use R/O water with Dutch Masters nutes and somehow it always lowers it to the right ph. I use a 5 gallon bucket with 4 gallons of water.

My box is small and unfortunately, because of the way I designed the door, I'm finding it a REAL pain in the ass to change the reservoir every week. Its not so much of a problem when the plants are small, but once they get 1/2 way into flowering, I started dreading the task. Also, with my bucket+room setup, it is virtually impossible to try SCROG'ing which I was very interested in. These issues would be virtually eliminated with the ebb/grow where the res. would be situated outside of my grow room.

However, in seeing how well these bitches have done despite my constant neglect, I'm actually going to give this system another go. I've concluded that the majority of my frustrations came from OVER-vegging and then having to deal with plants that were just too damn big for my box. I figured for $500, its worth another shot.


reH fluctuations...
My pH has a much worse fluctuation and here's some observations I have about that..
- I used a bucket-in-a-bucket design until the last 3-4 weeks and was only using about 2-2.5 gallons / bucket. From what I've read on here, smaller reservoirs have larger pH fluctuations
- pH fluctuations increased with the size of the plants which seems intuitive seeing as the bigger the plant, the more water/nutes she drinks.
- my buckets were not air tight around the lid...possibly leading to greater evaporation.

 

[exAkT]

how are u into this for 500?? how much was your light??

 

[gmskunk]

The $500 referenced in post 30 was what I was going to spend to get the ebb+gro system.

 

[gmskunk]

I chopped down NL1 this morning. Took about 4 hours start to finish. I'm planning on going back over the buds more thoroughly once they dry out a bit more. They are currently in my grow box (~78F | ~45RH) with all light blocked out.

(sorry in advance for the shitty pics).

the tiny undeveloped buds and leaf trimmings are going to be turned into hash...

 

[gmskunk]

preliminary smoke report: so I broke a branch when changing the NL1 over to the final flush on 6/11. I left it hanging in the grow box for 4 days and then in a paper grocery bag for the past 2 days. Last night, it was dry enough to get smoked...

smell: NL1 was smelling very fruity up in the box...not so much skunk, but more like a citrus'y aroma. After hanging the nug and drying it out a bit, that smell subsided quite significantly. I smelled the citrus smell if handling it and especially after I grinded it up.

taste: we thoroughly cleaned out the bong before smoking so that I could get the full taste. It tasted nice and fruity...pretty smooth actually...more so than I was expecting. I was curious if I'd get a chlorophyll taste since this bud hadn't been part of the flush and so had full nutes up until the minute it was chopped(broken) off. But then I realized I didn't have any idea what chlorophyll tasted like . Guess I'll have to wait a few weeks until the rest is completely cured to see if I notice a difference.




This shit got me hella stoneddddddddddddddddddd. One large bong rip had me fucked for 2.5 hours. Not a lot of creep. I was the highest within 10 minutes of the rip and it seemed to maintain for about 1.5 hours and then began to subside...but that could just be because of the delicious baked chicken dinner we ate afterwards. LOL I had 1/2 of a 5 lbs chicken + loads of potatoes and carrots. nom nom nom

I'm so happy! Very big sense of accomplishment. All the blood sweat and tears that went into building and planning, then all the hours of monitoring and all the *LEARNING*...I can't wait to give it another go as soon as the WW1 is chopped, dried, and cured and my box is free for another grow.

 

[gmskunk]

flushing WW1 as of this past Sunday. Will be chopping her down and hanging her up Thursday afternoon.

 

[Aussiebonger]

Well..... that was a great fucken read!!! thanks for the journal.

 

[gmskunk]

Well..... that was a great fucken read!!! thanks for the journal.

glad you liked it, thanks for stopping by...

NL1: Final Weight = 102 grams. At the outset of this endeavor, I was hoping to yield roughly 4-4.5 oz/plant, however, I'm still super stoked about this ~3.5oz pull. It has a glorious, citrus'y, oh-so-delicious STANK to it. Nom Nom Nom Nom.

note: these are the big gallon size freezer bags. The one on the right contains the largest buds and makes for some nice eye candy. Again, sorry for the crappy pics...

I used the alcohol method on the clippings and tiny tiny stalk buds to make some hash. So I'll also be whipping up some hash butter tonight, maybe mixing in the remnants of my (hopefully) very last weed "purchase" as well as some vaped bud. Then tomorrow morning, bake some delicious treats and wander down to the local theater to catch "The Hangover". I could think of worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

WW1: Chopped her down Thursday morning. Definitely going to be a smaller yield than NL1, but the hash should be much better since there are more tiny tiny buds that will make for better hash than smoke. She's currently hanging in the grow box at a nice 68F and 38RH. Once she's all set, I'll be scrubbing out the box and germinating some more seeds (sure wish I had the room to clone; maybe next house).

 

[gmskunk]

Got my new camera today...

NL1

12 mega pixels ... pretty icy

 

[gmskunk]

WW1 is almost dry. I weighed it a few days ago and it came in at 72 grams. I'm guessing its down to about 2oz about now. I'll check it and take pictures of the final product today or tomorrow.

Other than that, I've cleaned/prep'd the room for round 2 and will begin germinating another NL and WW seed this afternoon. I'll start a new journal for that grow which will hopefully entice me to keep a more frequent and consistent update pace.

 

[HazeSeeker]

Nice and sweet nugs , well done m8 , well done
+reps

 

[gmskunk]

Nice and sweet nugs , well done m8 , well done
+reps

Thank you.


Journal numero DOS!!