Going to try and grow my first plants ever and need some advice

[TheNarrator]

Faic, you say to give them a Heft before and after watering, what is this?

Pretty confident Faic means that it's good to give lift your pots off the ground when they are dry and get a feel for their weight. Then when you water the pot will of course be much heavier. So then as the days pass you can lift the pot and get an idea of how dry the soil is by its weight

 

[djwintz]

Makes sense, thank you all for your input.

 

[djwintz]

Well my plants are indoor and in soil. 5 out of 5 broke ground yesterday. They just shed their seed casings also this morning. I turned on the light this morning on a 18/6 ratio. The room temp is 27c and RH is 39%. The plants are under a 600watt HPS light and are about 3ft from the light. The soil is moist but not "wet". Everything looks ok but if you read something in this post that doesn't sound right please let me know. Hopefully all is well.

 

[Faic]

Sounds like everything is under control for the moment. Keep an eye on your pH and watering (don't over water).

 

[djwintz]

Keeping the room temp at about 27-28c but the RH is down to 25%. Is this ok for RH? I'm thinking this should be ok as in real life out doors they grow fine with low RH in some dry areas.

 

[Faic]

The low humidity is ok vs high humidity (mold). You'll be watering more often due to faster transpiration. Someone else would have to go into any botanical issues regarding RH in the 20's. Like Eimi ;3

For now though concentrate on keeping them watered properly. The low humidity will be a major issue when you harvest though, since that can lead you to dry your buds too quickly then they taste like hay :/

 

[djwintz]

9 Days since they broke ground. What do you all think? Size, stretching, temp, RH? Light just came on before pic was taken so temps and RH are off a bit. Opinions please.

 

[djwintz]

Thanks Faic. Posted a picture. Temps and RH are not up yet as I just turned the light on. But they are usually around 27-29c and RH is 20-25% after the light has been on for a bit and things stabilize.

 

[Faic]

Ok, here's a couple thoughts from the pics and your bit of write up at the begining.

First, they look a little stretching to me, but I don't know what plants look like growing under hps cause I do CFL. But I like to see the cotes right down just above the soil, not several inches. These could be sativa too, I don't know what blueberry is, and I'm too lazy at the moment to find out If it's sativa, then it'll grow lanky so just keep it in mind over your grow.

You'll want to start thinking about how to LST them now, not later. They look like they could end up tall so get planning now.

Get that tv hooked up for them, they'll grow much better with daily doses of gerry springer and reruns of Master of the Universe.

Is that a garden probe pH meter? Take it outside and throw it. As far as you can. Preferably in a direction away from human populations. Get on amazn and get a pH testing pen. It's worth the 10-20$ for one just in the amount of headaches you'll avoid.

Those sheets and pillows or whatever that stuff is, if it's not made out of hemp, you'll want to remove it from the area. Cannabis plants are known to hermie when they're in close proximity to man made fibers or that inferior cotton. If that's real silk, get rid of it right away, your plants will look at that, and go back into perpetual veg trying to get fibers so fine. Now you know where industrial hemp came from.

And with five plants, you're going to need a much bigger table.

Otherwise, Over the next week or so as you bump em up to full nutes, you'll see the color richen and you'll want to closely observe how they grow. And I'm talking internode length, numbers of branches etc. This will all be important as you train them, and will be very helpful in future grows so you can manage the growth better. Unless you're just going to grow verticle plants, then life is much simpler ;3

 

[djwintz]

Hey Faic thanks again for the reply. I should start by saying these plants are Kings Kush and not the Blueberry I mentioned at the start of my post, they sent me different seeds. They say the Kings Kush are Indica. The tester you see is a soil dampness tester. They are only on that table for a few more days. I have a 4.5 x 4.5 x 6ft tent coming with a fan and charcoal filter system, fan is 490CFM. I was told to keep the plants at least 3ft away from light, 600watt HPS. I will be repotting into their final pots in another week or so. There will only be 3-4 plants going into the tent as I don't know if the tent would handle 5 plants. When I replant should I bring the soil level up just below the cotes, and by cotes do you mean the first two little round leaves at the bottom? I have watched some videos of LST, topping and FIM ing and think I will play around with those types of things to keep them shorter and bushier. I have also been reading about RH and most say to have a higher RH while in Veg. Mine was 20-30%. So I just went and bought a Humidifier and set it to keep the room at 60%, is this a good RH%? Thanks again and any more advice is very welcomed.

 

[Faic]

Ok. So if they're indica heavy they should stay relatively shorter and wider, but yeah, the little paddle leaves. When you repot, repot up to those. As your plants grow, you want to watch for that stretching and lower your lights accordingly. You don't want unneccessary vertical growth.

Soil dampness tester is second only to a pH tester of the same type, toss it. You need to learn the weight of the plants dry and watered. You don't keep the soil moist or damp, you water and let the plant drink the soil basically dry, then water again. Avg is 3-5days depending on pot size and plant cycle. But in soil, you must learn to keep the soil cycling.

Ok, so going into a tent, that's cool, but. You have 5 plants, what are you going to do with the extra you don't stick in the tent? You gonna get rid of em? I don't think so.... lol. Now, 4.5x4.5 you can grow 5 plants in that. I had a hell of a time with three in 33x 51.

This is your first grow and you've already chosen some roads to go down without knowing it. You're going to have to train the plants to keep them manageable and short enough for your space and lights. The good news is you have powerful lights with good penetration, so you can grow 'vertical' plants vs scrogging. You just can't let them get over what, 3 feet tall.

I would strongly recommend you simply keep them pruned and topped once, maybe twice (but then you'll need to really keep on the pruning). This will give you 2-4 tops per plant, will give you enough 'work' to learn what it takes to train a plant (still not enough to easily scrog lol), and will give you a good view of how the plant really grows, and I mean bud size vs potency etc.

If you FIMM (it is FIMM not F.I.M), you can end up with 8 tops on a plant, that's way beyond your gardening skills. Scrogging is also beyond your skill level.

At this point, dismiss any thoughts of yield other than 'there will be a harvest'. You can manage your plant to affect yeild , if you know what you're doing.

You will need to low stress train to keep the tops low enough, or even. You'll want to keep the plants bushy enough to satisfy your desire for yeild, but you can't save every bud site. You'll have to pinch off lower buds and some inner buds potentially to keep things airy enough for circulation. You can also add more fans in the tent, but managing the plant is better than addressing issues.

This is going to be a lot to keep a handle on with 5 plants.

And you must choose when to switch to flower, do not follow the seed bank or strain avg time. If you only have 3 feet of vertical space to work with, including the pot, you'll need to flower when the plant is roughly a foot tall. Not at 6 weeks. Your plants can potentially double in size when you switch to flower, so with 5 plants in 4.5x4.5, you're going to switch to flower 'early'.