Marq's poor mans grow

[marq]

Ok everyone, as I said in my introduction, I'm slightly worried about one of my babies. In fact I think I did something wrong early on but I'll get into that more later. Firstly, let me get some pictures put up and hopefully they're a good enough quality for you all to help out. I just don't want to lose this one because I was betting on her being the one I would use for cloning. I'll get more into my current setup soon as well, just want to get these pic's posted.

My setup:
1 4' Flourescent with 2 T12 Plant & Aquarium GE Ecolux's
1 4' Flourescent with 4 T8 Unknowns (Color temperature 4100k) Just added last night
Very little air movement currently, only using one little computer fan I found laying around but it moves some air and is hanging from the first light fixture.
I'm currently using Miracle Gro soil out of a lack of anything better. My local wally's world and Meijer must be crap because they have garbage lighting and little selection on soils.
It is winter though so I guess I'll cut em some slack for now, lol.

I germinated these little babies in about an inch of water in an egg carton that sat on a water heater for 36 hours. Out of 28 about 13 survived after being planted. Numbers 1 - 12 all had little sprouts with number ones being the largest at about 1/4' and the others at about 1/8'. They were all planted on the 19th of December last year and most were transplanted about a week and a half ago with the final two being done just today.

These are all just some bag seed that a neighbor had but it was some decent spice .

 

[marq]

Ok, here is the one I'm worried about, I'll edit my first post here soon to give the exacts of my current setup.

She's never been this droopy before. I did put a little more soil on her to help give her some support up higher, but this droopyness only came last night. Any prognosis?

Here's a top image of her (with all these I'm speaking optimistically).

Another another side view

 

[marq]

All of these plants I have a feeling tried to escape some stagnant air in the cups they were in. They were all started in solo cups with only halfway filled with dirt. Once they started they shot up fast towards the top of the cup and then stopped there. The light was close so it didn't seem like they were stretching towards it but I don't know. If you look close you'll be able to see this in Number 5 where her bottom is really skinny, is this a problem?

On a better note I think I have a stronger speciman in number 6. Here's her standing tall:

Another her top view:

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

I would def. recommend getting more air moving through the plants, that will hep strengthen the main stem and the plant as a whole... sometimes over watering can bring about that droopiness, just something to consider

 

[marq]

I was considering that (the over watering that is) and I'm usually pretty good about it but I added more soil for support and then drenched it so hopefully letting her sit awhile will bring her back. I do need more air flow and possibly some form of C02 generator. I do spend about an hour with em everyday breathing on em so not sure if thats enough CO2 or not.

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

just having a box fan or a bedside fan blowing on them will help tremendously with stem development... c02 is usually used during the flowering stage (I prefer around week 2) using c02 during your veg cycle is just going to speed up the cycle itself. How big are you planning on letting these get?

 

[marq]

I need them to stay small and was considering on starting the flowering in 2 more weeks. That would give them a full month of vegetation but I'm not sure if this will be too soon. I'll have some more lights (moving to CFL's around that time) with color temperatures of 2500 and 5000 which I'll use an even mix of. In total I plan on taking the two strongest and segregating them into a closet which I'll fit with some sort of nice airflow and these bulbs. I'm thinking I'll be pushing 10600 lumens for two plants which started flowing at about 1 foot tall.

Does that sound like a decent plan?

I also plan on using 2' flouro hoods which 2 2' T12 bulbs mounted with the hood tops on the walls as the plants get taller. This would surround the plants with 4 sides of light for the 12/12 schedule. This would probably give me about 15280 lumens when they first go into flowering, then each foot they grow they'll get an additional 4680 lumens. Obviously these will be distributed through the whole length of the plant (I'm thinking they'll grow to be about 3 - 4 feet tall at maturation?).

Not sure, this all I'm still trying to figure out.

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

expect them to get a MINIMUM of 3x the size they are when you switch schedules. keep your CFLs as close as you can without touching the plants, this will encourage less stem growth between nodes and more of a bush-like quality. I prefer to let the plant kinda tell me when it wants to go into flowering, some people have a set height... 14" is typical.

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

oh, if you're going to top them, LST or SC them, you'll wanna do it soon... that's definitely one way to keep them smaller and bushier

 

[marq]

I'll look into that more, I saw Boss's grow and he's the main inspiration for the use of CFL's. Need to research the cropping methods more as they need to stay small. I'm debating on a closet from my local retailer which I might try to go with a multi level grow room for the different stages. I'll draw something up if you wouldn't mind giving your opinion .

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

more than happy to man, there are some great examples here for various methods regarding plant manipulation, I'll see if I can track a cpl down for you

 

[Need2FreeWeed]

here ya go... the site messed up the formatting, but it tells you about everything and how to do it. Hope this helps

 

[Cherma]

marq, howzit going?

Ok, here is the one I'm worried about, I'll edit my first post here soon to give the exacts of my current setup

.

She's never been this droopy before. I did put a little more soil on her to help give her some support up higher, but this droopyness only came last night. Any prognosis?

Since the cups were changed out as I recall, the red ones with little soil in them but youngins coming up. These plants are looking healthy from here, the droop as you see to me is natural. Yes a fan will help strengthen up the stems for you.
Changing out the lights as you say will increase the lumen output.

 

[marq]

here ya go... the site messed up the formatting, but it tells you about everything and how to do it. Hope this helps

Thanks for this, I'll be looking more into it as these ladies will have to stay as small as possible. My space will be slight confined. I'm trying to find the closet that I was looking at but the damn retailers website just isn't easy to navigate, lol. Hopefully I'll find it so I can get its dimensions and draw up my idea. I'll keep you posted.

 

[marq]

Heres my idea for how I'll be setting up my grow. Initially that Tote Hood (a cut up tote with fan holes on the long sides used in a previous incandescent experiment) will house 2 2500k 42w CFL's and 2 5000k 42w CFL's each giving off ~2680 lumens and eventually house 3 of each. I'll need to construct some sort of carbon filter to clean the exhaust and am debating on using the fans from the hood to accomplish this. I still have to figure out what fans I'll be installing in this 'hood' but will more than likely use a fan from coolerguys.com since they have a wide variety of computer cooling fans with some serious cfm that should push plenty of air past the lights to keep them cool. Being CFL's they shouldn't put off a whole helluva lot of heat so this is why I was debating on using their power to clean the exhaust from the closet.

I'm not sure on which lights to use for the 2' 'ers on the sides but I'm thinking something along the lines of a 3000k 2' T8 at ~800 lumens each. With this light setup do you think I'll be giving the plants the proper light spectrum? This is the main thing I'm worried about as I'll not being going with any kind of HPS which kick out A LOT in the red spectrum which seems to be the range for flowering. I'm hoping this lighting strategy will be sufficient. Keep in mind I'll only be flowering a maximum of 4 plants at a time and I'm hoping to keep them under 4/5' each.

 

[marq]

Number 5 is starting to perk up thankfully so she and the others have only been getting spurts of water. I've also start an 'excercise' routine. Basically I've decided to go with a low stress technique and hopefully its not bad on the plants. Instead of tieing them down for a week, I just nightly coerce their branches downwards so they rest in a perfect horizontal position for awhile. Sure they fight back up but they tend to keep this position until after their sleeping period and it appears to be bringing light into their inner nodes and allowing growth there. I'll snap some more pictures tonight. Hopefully in a week I'll be posting some nice high res photos as the wife and I have decided to replaced our scrapped Kodak. Lets hope things stay the same and we get this camera (I'm quite excited ).

Peace for now.

 

[marq]

Number 5 from the label side

A view of the inner growth (Phone only has 1.3 megapixels so its low quality)

And the top

Number 21

21's Inner node

Number 6

6's inner nodes

These are 3 of the ones I'll be flowering first so a lot of my attention is spent on them. The others may feel a little neglected but they'll stay in veg for awhile. I haven't exactly figured out how I'm going to rotate these. I'm tentatively thinking that if number 5 does in fact sex as a female I'll let you flower with no disturbances just because she's the shortest and bushiest and if 6 also sexes as a female I'll clone the hell out of her (at least until a few take) then I'll let her flower untouched. I'm not too concerned about the harvest amount at this point but rather more concerned with getting a good strong mother to stay in a veg room and maybe start up some sea of green process for a nice perpetual harvest. If I were to get a mother should she be in a rather large container so she doesn't get root bound? I do plan on keeping her around for awhile. Also, if I clone one when its in a flowering stage, will that clone be in veg or will it try to flower? I'm not sure how this all works. Is there a way to sex them without putting them into flower?

 

[shaggy_420]

lookin good man
will you be using the same lights during flowering?

 

[marq]

Not at all, I'm looking into some 6500k, 4100k and 2700k CFL's that are currently on sale. I'm thinking of 18 of these puppies for 4 flowering plants (maybe only 3 or 2 depending on size). I'm currently thinking of an even mix but am starting to think that I should lean on more of the 2700k's for the red they'll give off.

 

[nbk380]

I got 5 plants and some clones w/about the same amount of cfl's. yield shot up to over a oz on 3 of them when i bent them at 30 inches tall. I like a 2 red to 1 blue ratio for flowering and reversed for veg. it's a nice mix. the red spectrum tells them girls to flower and the blue just keeps it real.