Indoor- Organic - Super Soil - Tent Grow - Bag Seed With a Side of FLUX - 2014

[TiptheScales]

Me and the wife are long time readers, first time posters. It is because of this site, and all the In Progress and Completed Journals that we decided to start our first grow. You guys rock!

Our Setup:
Secret Jardin Dark Room v2.5 DR120
600W Switchable dimm-able Apollo with 6" cool tube reflector
Active Air 6" fan on Ventech speed controller with charcoal canister
We are using TGA/Subcool's supersoil in 5 gallon buckets(bottom 2/3rds, with Happy Frog in the top 1/3rd), and no other nutes during the grow at all.

Seeds are a random mix of bagseed from the last few years(all from high-quality dope, most of the time just one or two seeds found in an ounce bag).

Just recently, we got an ounce of OG Kush(so they say), and got probably 30 healthy seeds out of it. We are saving these seeds for the next grow or two, no sense wasting them on our first!

So far we have thirteen warriors in a seed flat with dome under the lights. We didn't germinate or pre-soak the seeds at all, just dropped them into moist seed discs. 12 random bagseeds, and one of the "OG Kush". The OG kush is getting FLUXed in a 13 gallon wide pot, the others just plain LSTd.

We are hoping for 5-6 plants total in the tent, so we shot for double to cover dead seeds. The tent is running 78-80 degrees with ~45% humidity. I am thinking the humidity will go up some once we have all the soil in there holding water. To get this temp, i had to turn the fan waaaayyyy down. I am gonna get some foam insulation to sit the tent on, the room is warmish, but I think a lot of heat is getting lost to the cold concrete floor(basement).

Today is day four, and we have one soldier showing an inch, 10 others I can see dirt pushed up out of the pods already.

Thanks for looking! Stay chill...

 

[TiptheScales]

Day 1:







Day 4:



and now, Day 5:







Woke up this morning to find all 13 of the little girls had popped and we could see green on every one. Also, each one had a root coming out the bottom of the peat laying in the tray, so we put them into solo cups filled with Happy Frog. Guess I better get the rest of our buckets ready if they are gonna grow like this.

I would have never expected to get 100% germination on these old seeds that have been laying around for years!

The wifey named all the girls while we were at it, so we can follow their progress all the way to the end.

If you see anything stupid, please don't hesitate to say so, this is our first grow so we will take any advice we can get!

 

[BuckSwope]

Welcome to 420 Tip! Thanks for taking the time to share your journal with us. By reading your first post, you guys seem to have a handle on things right now so I'm going to pull up a chair and watch you do your thaaang!

 

[TiptheScales]

Day 6.





One of the babies we could see green in the soil, but it just wasn't popping up like the rest. I dug around in it this morning, and found we had put two seeds in one disc, and the taproot on the second seed was holding the stalk down on the other plant. this other plant was much bigger and had a taproot all the way down out of the peat disc into the soil in the cup, so i yanked the little one. Bailey is now stunted a little, but I am guessing she will catch back up, it was only a day or two...



ClaraBelle is the first one who sprouted, and for now, the biggest, but don't sleep on Thelma(top Left on the group shots above). Here is ClaraBelle today:



Thanks for looking!

 

[TiptheScales]

Yesterday was a day of rest, so we are jumping to today, Day 8. All the girls are progressing along nicely, even Bailey, who was stunted from the double seed incident.



The biggest girl, ClaraBelle has some strange little yellow spots that popped up in the last day on her leaves. I tried to capture them in a photo, I am not sure if you can make them out or not. We shall see what becomes of her. If you got any ideas, that would be cool. We are trying not to worry, but she is our oldest Daughter at this point!


Smoke!

 

[BuckSwope]

Looking good guys!! Glad to see them all sprouted and looking healthy. Keep up the good work

 

[TiptheScales]

Day 10 is here, and the girls really took off last night!





I don't have room for 13 plants in the 4x4! If all of these stay healthy and turn out female, we don't know what we are gonna do. Might just go ahead and order the 4x8 that we were gonna work up to, so we can have the 4x4 for veg.

Thanks for checking things out BuckSwope!

 

[BuckSwope]

No problem. You can tell both of you have really put in the work to make this grow happen so it's great to see. Keep up the good work. By the way, good call on the new tent size. 13 girls will be some work, but it's definitely a pretty sweet problem to have.

 

[TiptheScales]

Major problems! I am sorry for the lack of updates, life gets crazy sometimes and you just wanna crash when you get done for the night!

Over the last 10 days, our babies have been thru a lot..

Some plants are clawing(nitrogen toxicity? but we are using store bought Happy Frog?!), some are showing signs of heat stress, others light stress. The one "supposed" OG Kush is the only plant I would say isn't showing signs of any issue. I am lost. We transplanted a few days ago, thinking maybe we had a drainage issue and the roots were not getting enough air. All of these issues were happening before the transplant also to some degree, but not as bad...

They all have the same soil (Fox Farms Happy Frog), and they all get the same tap water from the house. I have verified(as best I can) the PH of my water is 6.5-7.0, the soil pH is 6.5. testing the run off water, i get right at 6.5. the temp in the tent is 77-79 degrees, and the humidity hovers right around 45%. The light is a good 4 feet from the plants. I am using the lower vents on the tent for passive air intake, carbon filter mounted up high, and I have a oscillating 12" fan gently blowing over the top of them on the lowest setting.

I feel like the environment they are in should be damn near perfect, but i guess what they say is true. you can read and read all you want, but nothing beats experience. And we have none!!

Any recommendations or guesses as to what is going on here? is Happy Frog too hot? is that why I am seeing nitrogen toxicity? should I flush a gallon thru each one of them or something? I have been questioning everything... I am on 24x7 lights, I have even been thinking about that causing the issues..

On to the pics, hopefully someone can break it down for us!


and the one "healthy" girl:

 

[BuckSwope]

Sorry to hear of all the problems Tip. I know it can be super frustrating trying to figure out what the hell is going on, but from the looks of it, it seems like it's something easily fixable. According to your grow room, you are literally doing everything right in regards to the environment (maybe a little increase in humidity to 50-60% may help your plants transpire more during veg), but that's really nitpicking. Temps, ph, soil ph are all spot on.

Happy Frog is a great starter soil for seedlings. I used Ocean Forest which some claim is a little hotter for seedlings (and more rich than Happy Frog), but I didn't have any issues with nute burn/toxicity. The plants that are showing significant curling don't necessarily remind me of nitrogen toxicity, but instead, a combo of light/heat stress with over watering. Nitrogen toxicity is usually accompanied with very dark green leaves, but it's mostly strain dependent. How often and how much are you watering? A good rule of thumb that I use is to pick up each pot/cup to feel the weight (before and after watering) and dip my finger in up between my first and second knuckle to test moisture. Light and dry, water. Heavy and moist, don't. This method hasn't let me down yet on when it's time to water. Now, I doubt it's heat stress given your current conditions which leads me to believe that it has something to do with your light cycle. There's debate on whether 24/0 is better than 18/6 vs 16/8, etc, but from my own experience (although being very limited) and research, once a plant hits the 2nd week from seed, there needs to be a dark period for plants to process certain biological process (ie: storing sugars/nutrients, repairing damage from the light). Since your plant isn't getting a dark period, there might be a chance that its unable to process the food that's already provided in your Happy Frog soil which is leading to your problems. My suggestion is to cut back your light cycle to 18/6 and if you're over watering, to try out my method to determine when it's time to feed. Let me know how it goes.

 

[TiptheScales]

So we decided to take a little time off from posting and see if the plants normalized any. It has been a little over a month, and all in all, they are looking a lot better. In that month, we transplanted them into the the 5 gallon buckets they will ride in till the end. The buckets were filled with the SuperSoil mixture by TGA/Subcool. It is nice having them in 5 gallon buckets now so we don't have to water so often and watch them like a hawk. Today(which is day 53 from seed) we also switched them to 12/12 under the HPS bulb. I am worried that they are all gonna grow so much during bloom that the tent will get crowded and they will get into the light, so we arguably did the switch a little early. If this was a mistake, we will just adjust on the next grow.

Some of the girls still show some signs of the previous issues we had with them. we did switch to 18/6 instead of 24x7 based on your last post BuckSwope, and I feel like it helped. We lost three of them, they just never took off from day one, and I got sick of watering them and just worrying about them in general and pulled them a few weeks back. We also got the humidity up in the high 50s low 60s, and lowered the temp to the mid 70s. I think this also helped a lot. The plants seemed to spruce up from the temp/humidity changes AND the 6 hours of darkness, so big time thanks for that!

And here are the new pictures. now we see what everyone was saying about how hard it is to take pictures under the HPS bulb!


Sorry about the sideways pictures, I uploaded those pictures twice and every time, the site turns them sideways...

Stay chinked my friends!

 

[Light Addict]

Here, things look better than before at no mistake so well done!
How did the fluxing go, if at all? I'd of happily helped in anyway just holla at me if you ever need a thing!

 

[TiptheScales]

Whats happening Light Addict! We had every intention of shooting for a Flux setup on the one confirmed OG Kush seed(and LST on the others), but when they were all having issues we decided it would be best to let them get healthy, and that took till just recently unfortunately.. We are believers though, so fluxing is in the future for us, next grow! We are planning to take clones from this grow, and a second tent of the 4x8 variety is part of our plan. We'll keep the 4x4 for Veg, and use the 4x8 for bloom. There should be plenty of room in the 4x8 for fluxing! We will use some of the, uh, "profits" from this grow to buy the next tent and two more lights, etc.

Thanks for stopping in!

 

[David Bowman]

How did this grow turn out?

We would love to be updated with some pictures and info.

How about posting a 420 Strain Review?

If you need any help with posting photos, please read the photo gallery tutorial: Photo Gallery Guide: How to Resize, Upload & Post Photos

I am moving this to Abandoned Journals until we get updates.

Thanks and hope all is well in your world.

Love and respect from all of us here at 420 Magazine.