M&M Grow

[Caber1]

My wife and I have taken the plunge.

So far so bad. lol

We seem to be professional up to the point where the seedlings sprout their second set of leaves. And then death comes a knockin'.

The first attempt we took the germinated seeds and put them in 1" rockwool cubes. They made a half ass attempt to grow, but as the pictures show there wasn't much life after the first week.

Back to the drawing board. We go out and buy some coco-cubes, heat pad and small gravel. We germinate and start the germinated seeds in the coco cubes.
All seems to be going well and then I think that I try to add nutrients to the water too soon or I just over water. We are not sure which.

Third time. We germinate and start in coco-cubes. This time I buy some small plastic starter pots and perlite.
I do this because I read somewhere that the roots need darkness and when I just had the coco-cubes in the tray there was nowhere for the roots to go.
I did have small gravel sized (the baked stuff,can't think of the name) in the bottom of the tray, but I found that there was no heat getting through it from the heating pad.
I put the coco-cubes in the pots and then filled in the rest with perlite. I then put perlite in the bottom of the tray and away we went.
Everything was looking good and then this.

I don't know if you see the yellow or not.
I have been trying to water every second day, but sometimes the pots feel so light that I think they must be dry and need water.
Am I wrong?

I had an easier time raising my kids. lol

 

[Caber1]

Some more pictures. Can't seem to pick up the yellow with my camera, but you get the idea.

One more

 

[Hightide805]

I had an easier time raising my kids. lol

haha they are like little kids, always gotta keep up on everything.

do they feel dry? not all mediums hold water the same, might want to water every day, check ph, no nutrients till like 2 or 3 sets of leaves then introduce the nutrients slow.

good luck

 

[Caber1]

I don't know. Last time I watered too much and I think it killed them.

I looked at some roots tonight on the worst out of the bunch and it looked like maybe some damping going on(brown tips on the white roots)

As far as PH I always shoot for 5.5 to 5.9. They always seem to be healthy at the beginning.

If I can keep them alive I won't introduce nutrients until I put them in the ebb and flow table.

By the way Hightide thanks for using the word nutrients. Just a silly pet peeve, but I hate seeing nutes,nuts and all the other abbreviations.

 

[Caber1]

Wow it sure is busy in the ongoing section of the journals.

Grow everybody grow.

Here is my latest input. As of tonight, the 17th of March I have transplanted one of my seedlings to the big kids room.

The water was a little cold so rather than pour it over the transplanted seedling I just ran the water into the table and let the 6" cube soak it up and then stuck the coco-cube into the square.
I have four 600 watt halides. For the first two nights I will only run two and see how the seedling does.
Here are some pictures of her in her new home.

The only thing I have to figure out now is how often to run the watering cycle each day.

 

[flyfishinrock]

With that large of a cube (6x6x6?) it should keep moist with a daily flush while the seedling is still small. But first did you pre-treat the rockwool? I didnt see that in your post in case you have not its real important to do. Also I'd be willing to bet you one 600 watter would be more than enough light for a few weeks. I wish you luck on the grow

 

[Caber1]

Flyfish! Do you know how much of a pain treating rockwool that size is?

The first ones I didn't, (and they seem to be fine as long as I keep an eye on the ph in the reservoir)and then when I started a new table I was going to, but it was such a pain that I just said "fac it."
So two blocks in the new tray are treated with 4.0 ph and the rest aren't.
We shall see.

 

[L8tNightSkunk]

Nice setup always nice to see new members/growers... were taking over... good luck on your grow

 

[Caber1]

After I transplanted the first lonely girl I was looking at the other seedlings and I decided to just go ahead and do them all at the same time.
They were all doing less than great, so I figured they couldn't do any worse in the ebb and flow table.
That was a week ago or so and this is how they are doing now.

As can be seen they have recovered and we are going in the right direction.

There are times when I worry though. I have been giving them a once every 24 hour flood. I'm using Botanicare vegetative formula-3-1.5-4 and I'm also using 35% hydrogen peroxide, 4.5oz in my 15 gallon reservoir.My ph is 5.2 and my ppm reading is 780. Water temperature a steady 68 deg. f
I was thinking that I would start to shorten the time between floods to 12 hours and start going two floods a day because they were looking so healthy.
The next thing I know two of my plants are starting to display that "I've been overwatered droop" and so I'm thinking I might have pushed it a little bit. I did give them their miday flood and then 4 hours later they went for their 6 hour sleep and when the lights came back up everybody looked perky and happy.
Scratching my head over what to do next. One thing I will do tomorrow while I'm thinking this over is maybe dilute my nutrients just a little bit because as you can see by the photo there is a bit of burning going on on the tips.

So I'll dilute the reservoir a bit and do some more reading and searching for reading (not much information on ebb and flow table grows out there) on grows and see If I can't keep these babies healthy and happy.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Yeah, that does seem like a little bit strong (780 ppm) for such young plants.

 

[flyfishinrock]

I would definitely dilute it, down to the 300ppm range. Also try to bump the ph up a bit if you can, to 5.5 to 5.8. This should happen when you dilute the nutes.
To treat the rockwool use a 5 gal bucket and fill with ph5.5 water, dunk em for a half hour or so and they should be good . Adding additional floods would be my next step, with the diluted mix 3 or more floods should be safe as long as the water drains out well; the rockwool wont hold too much water if it dosent sit in a "puddle". IMO you do need to flood more often as the ph will swing wildly within the cubes if not flooded more regularly. I tend to flood every 1 1/2 to two hours for full size plants and 2 to 4 hours with smaller ones, the water level at flood being half to most the way up the rockwool.
I have two years experiance with flood tables and would be happy to help when I can, pm me if you need to.


Congrats, you made it well past the two leave stage!!

 

[Caber1]

As I said in an earlier post there is a lot to research and learn.

I learned a lot from the Grodan site and figured what the heck, they make the stuff so they should know what is what.
According to them the Rockwool cubes only need one flooding a day in an Ebb and Flow table, so this is what I've gone with and as you can see the plants seem to be doing all right.

As far as nutrients go I've gone form relying completely on ppm and have taken a rough guideline from the Grodan site and set my nutrient level to read between 2.0 and 3.0 EC. I'm at about 2.8 so far and I'll just keep an eye on things to see whether to move the EC level up or down when I mix the next batch of nutrients.

 

[KillAton]

Looks like you have a great start.

 

[Caber1]

Received the good news the other day when I saw the first signs that at least one of my plants is a female. As you can see in the photo the first telltale signs are there

Now it's just a matter of waiting for the others to show their true colors.
I started with 7 in the tray and now we are down to three.

I was thinking about clones for a while, but I think these plants have had too many stresses so once they have flowered and been harvested I'll start from seed again and hopefully take what I've learned and have that much better of a yield.

 

[Pericodaking]

Very good looking plants you have there Caber, how many days old would you say they are?

 

[L8tNightSkunk]

Looking good!

 

[Doctor Dread]

Very nice plants man, green and healthy!

+rep for a great start!

 

[Caber1]

Thanks for the nice words folks. I wish I could say nice things about all the grows on here except my internet speed leaves a lot to be desired.
So what that means is every time I try and look at a page with pictures it takes forever to load. Very frustrating.

These plants have been in the tray for 25 days as of today. Considering how much more I could have growing I can't wait to flower these bitches and get on to the next crop.
Another reason I can't wait is because I'm out of smoke and my vaporizor has way to much dust on it.

 

[mafcs]

What's your light schedule man?

 

[SouthernOnt]

I'd take a clone from one of the ladies and while they flower put her under one of your 600watt MHs and make her a mother anything planed for the summer?