Johnny 5spot8
New Member
This is a journal of my very first grow. Many mistakes were made, but compared to gardening outside this was the healthiest plant I've ever grown (no bugs). Pictures begin first week of flowering stage.
3.5 Gallon Hempy Bucket $4
Perlite / Vermiculite / Hydroton mix $15
180w (90w actual) Generic UFO LED from eBay $55
GH Flora series nutes $50
RO Water ~$10
Seeds: Northern Lights $45/5=9
Reflective Photography Hood from ebay $12
~45w of CFL scavenged from around the house
airstone+pump scavenged from aquarium
pH pen $12
ec Meter $10
pH up/down $15
TOTAL ~$192
So I bought 5 feminized Northern Lights seeds from Nirvana because I wanted the least odor possible. I mailed them $45 cash and received the seeds in the mail about 2 weeks later. I won an eBay auction for the light which is why it was so cheap, also it has no white LED lights.
I germinated the seed in a shotglass and a day later dropped the sprouted seed in the hempy bucket. 4/7 Perlite, 1/7 Hydroton, 2/7 Vermiculite. A day later the seedling poked through.
I don't expect my light to have much penetration so I want a short bushy plant with an even canopy and I decided to use the mainlining technique to achieve this with 8 tops. I topped the plant at the 3rd node when it had 6 total nodes and attempted to turn the top into a clone (fail). I also left the growth tips from the 2nd node as I wanted to use them for clones later. I tied the two new tops parallel to the ground and would soon discover this was my first blunder.
The next day I looked at my 2 new tops and discovered one of them was severely severed where it meets the stem. I had bent it too much and now the bottom 20% of the branch was still attached, but the top 80% was severed, and over the previous day had pretty much closed up. The wound had mostly healed up already so it seemed too late to reconnect the split parts with tape, so I just took some stress off the branch and decided to wait and see how well it could recover. If it turned out to be a lost cause I would re-top the plant down to the 2nd node which I had luckily not stripped the growth tips from.
The plant was so young that a couple days later the snapped branch had fully recovered and was as thick as the other side, but slightly more vertical since I eased up on its training.
A few days later I topped it again, and a few days later topped for the last time, and 8 main tops. Cuttings were taken from the 2nd node branches and were successful. I used rooting powder this time and planted them directly in hempy style solo cups with a 2 liter bottle as a humidity dome.
Other then snapping my branch in the beginning, Veg had gone smoothly. I used the nute schedule on the Flora bottles from 1/2 to 3/4 strength. Oh ya, one other mistake I made was not filling up the Hempy bucket high enough with substrate. I could have easily put another inch and a half in there.
Total veg time about a month. I didn't take any photos in veg, but internodal spacing was extremely tight. The light was certainly capable of taking a plant through veg in great shape.
3.5 Gallon Hempy Bucket $4
Perlite / Vermiculite / Hydroton mix $15
180w (90w actual) Generic UFO LED from eBay $55
GH Flora series nutes $50
RO Water ~$10
Seeds: Northern Lights $45/5=9
Reflective Photography Hood from ebay $12
~45w of CFL scavenged from around the house
airstone+pump scavenged from aquarium
pH pen $12
ec Meter $10
pH up/down $15
TOTAL ~$192
So I bought 5 feminized Northern Lights seeds from Nirvana because I wanted the least odor possible. I mailed them $45 cash and received the seeds in the mail about 2 weeks later. I won an eBay auction for the light which is why it was so cheap, also it has no white LED lights.
I germinated the seed in a shotglass and a day later dropped the sprouted seed in the hempy bucket. 4/7 Perlite, 1/7 Hydroton, 2/7 Vermiculite. A day later the seedling poked through.
I don't expect my light to have much penetration so I want a short bushy plant with an even canopy and I decided to use the mainlining technique to achieve this with 8 tops. I topped the plant at the 3rd node when it had 6 total nodes and attempted to turn the top into a clone (fail). I also left the growth tips from the 2nd node as I wanted to use them for clones later. I tied the two new tops parallel to the ground and would soon discover this was my first blunder.
The next day I looked at my 2 new tops and discovered one of them was severely severed where it meets the stem. I had bent it too much and now the bottom 20% of the branch was still attached, but the top 80% was severed, and over the previous day had pretty much closed up. The wound had mostly healed up already so it seemed too late to reconnect the split parts with tape, so I just took some stress off the branch and decided to wait and see how well it could recover. If it turned out to be a lost cause I would re-top the plant down to the 2nd node which I had luckily not stripped the growth tips from.
The plant was so young that a couple days later the snapped branch had fully recovered and was as thick as the other side, but slightly more vertical since I eased up on its training.
A few days later I topped it again, and a few days later topped for the last time, and 8 main tops. Cuttings were taken from the 2nd node branches and were successful. I used rooting powder this time and planted them directly in hempy style solo cups with a 2 liter bottle as a humidity dome.
Other then snapping my branch in the beginning, Veg had gone smoothly. I used the nute schedule on the Flora bottles from 1/2 to 3/4 strength. Oh ya, one other mistake I made was not filling up the Hempy bucket high enough with substrate. I could have easily put another inch and a half in there.
Total veg time about a month. I didn't take any photos in veg, but internodal spacing was extremely tight. The light was certainly capable of taking a plant through veg in great shape.
