Round 2: Northern Lights x2, 1200x1200 Tent, 315W CMH

[d42zero]

Hey there! It's time for my second journal.. first one went pretty well, albeit with a few little issues which I'll try to avoid this time. This is going to turn into a long ass post but don't feel like you need to read it all, it's mostly for me to get all this written down so I have something to refer back to later on

I'll be using the same equipment in the grow room from last time:

• 1200x1200x2000 tent w/ 5" can-fan sending exhaust outside the room
• 315w CMH Adjust-a-Wings (small reflector)
• Fabric smart pots with coco/perlite mix (approx. 70/30)
• Small dehumidifier capable of extracting approximately 1gal per day
• 2.5kW portable air conditioner in case it gets too hot (it's summer here)

Nutrients and supplements:

• GH Flora Trio nutes, I considered changing to BioDiesel but still have almost enough GH left over for this grow
• Great White myco added here and there
• A silica additive, probably GH ArmorSi since I plan to work from a GH feed chart
• DripClean if I end up setting an auto drip feed system

Based on how my last grow went I expect my schedule to look something like this:

• Yesterday: seeds in paper towel to germinate
• +3 days: transfer seeds to coco in solo cups once roots have popped properly, place under 18/6 light
• +10d: pot up to 1/2gal pots
• +15-20d: pot up to 3gal final pots
• .... etc

I plan to use this GH feed chart for DTW systems which is the one I followed for most of my previous grow, although I plan to start off at 50% strength and see if that's enough as I had a little burning of tips in my last run. At first I'll hand water 1x daily but I'm working on a gravity-fed system that can feed at regular intervals to cut down on the work, as that was a problem for me last time.

The main issues I ran into last grow were mould/rot (on one plant in particular) and re-vegging during flower. I'll be growing two plants instead of three this time so that should help the mould issue, and the re-veg issue caused the plants to grow waaaaay bigger than they should have so avoiding that should help the ait circulation as well. The re-veg issue was probably mainly caused by me pulling the plants out of the tent for a flush during lights-off... to try and avoid that this time I'll set up my drainage so that I can flush the plants inside the tent, and I'll also set my lights-on period to make it easier to work on the plants while the lights are on (and let them sleep during lights off).

I'm in the Southern Hemisphere so it's currently summer... looking at February 2019 the mean temp was 28.2, lowest 21.5 and highest 38.5. The room I'm using is brick-walled with concrete floor and ceiling, and gets almost no sun... so max temps inside the room over the last few weeks have been around 28 degrees even on the hottest days where it's 35-40deg outside. Max temps in the tent are likely to be up around 31-32 with lows around 23-24. I can air condition the room if needed, but would prefer not to.

Here we go!

 

[d42zero]

04/07: posting results first to save people having to go through the whole thread!

Final haul
Harvest #1 - 178.75
Harvest #2 - 58.19
Harvest #3 - 73.72
+13.5 of popcorn that's really only good for vaping or making hash

Including the popcorn, all up that's 324.16g from a 315w light, or 1.03 grams per watt (gpw)!

Lessons learnt

• Automated watering rules. Once I was into veg I set up fully automated watering, so I only needed to mix nutes as the res got low. By the end of the grow I managed to get it so dialled that the res would get low at 2pm on Sunday afternoon, so I could mix between then and the next watering (around 6pm) and it'd run on its own until 2pm the next Sunday. Awesome.
  • The only downside to automated watering that I can see - I can't test two different nute solutions without setting up two identical reservoirs. I love to be able to test things side-by-side so I'm thinking about doing a dual res setup at some stage, but not for a while yet (there are other things I want to work on next grow).
• Tall plants aren't great. I let these grow tall again (similar to last grow), and I decided not to trim any of the lower sites in this grow to see what happened.... predictably I got lots of little popcorn down below. I was expecting that result, but I wanted to see it happen. My next grow will be done using the 4-way SCROG method on GWE.
• Growing in winter is expensive! I had to run a small heater for part of this grow to keep temps up, it seems to have added about $75/month to the power bill I really only grow for myself, so cost-efficiency is something I'm going to have to start considering. I'm going to monitor power consumption much more closely in my next grow and spend a little more time calculating the actual cost.

There's a few things that I could've done better, but my goal this grow was to get auto-watering dialled.... I managed to do that and still hit 1gpw, so overall I'm extremely happy with the result.

Read on if you'd like more detailed information!

 

[The Dirty]

Good luck man, very similar setup to mine so if you have any q's ask away.

 

[d42zero]

Good luck man, very similar setup to mine so if you have any q's ask away.

Thanks! I had a quick look at the first post in your journal and you're right, verrry similar setup! I'll have a proper read through your journal today, might be able to use it as a guide EDIT: I was hooked on your journal by the third post and just finished all five pages, what a great ride and full of awesome info! If I can get half as good resuilts as you I'll be very happy! I've been thinking about a SCROG setup for a while, but I don't like the idea of my plants being connected to my tent... mainly because I would pull the plants out of the tent for flushing. I'm going to try and set up an automated watering system this time though, so that may be less of a problem.

27/01
It's been about 36hrs since I put the seeds in wet paper towel, one seed has cracked but the other hasn't. My last time around all seeds cracked within about 24hrs so I hope I don't have a dud! I have a third seed which I didn't attempt to germinate, so if the second seed hasn't cracked in another 24hrs I'll put that third one in the paper.

 

[d42zero]

28/1
The first seed has a good 10mm tap root, but the second seed still hasn't cracked. Late last night, before going to bed, I checked them and when I saw it hadn't cracked, I put my spare 3rd seed in. Luckily that one seems to just be cracking now, but it'll be a couple of days behind the first one which is a bit annoying :/

Tent got assembled with fan and light today.. girls won't be ready to go in for another few days though, so I'll leave the min/max in there and run the fan for 24-48hrs with no light, then run the light for the same amount of time... that should give me a rough idea of what sort of low and high temps to expect. Not exactly scientific haha but at least I'll have a really rough idea.

After reading a sweet thread on making your own silica solution I ordered 100g of potassium silicate and will give that a go. I found that thread at the right time, some weird stuff is happening with GH here and their stuff is hard to get.. couldn't find a bottle of ArmorSi anywhere. Little bit worried about running out of nutes partway through but I'll sit down tonight or tomorrow night and see if I can estimate what I'll need for the whole grow.. might be able to get any top-ups now.

Heeeere we go

 

[d42zero]

29/1
Liftoff! Less than 24hrs ago this little lady went into the Jiffy puck and the top of the seed was just showing... now she's sitting about 15mm above it

Temp is a little high but not too bad, got a hot weekend forecast but that room stays pretty stable so shouldn't get any worse.

2nd seed definitely a dud, no crack after 96hrs in the paper towel. I put it in a glass of water just in case that gets it going but I doubt it... all good though, the 3rd seed has cracked and has a ~5-10mm root, so she'll go into a Jiffy puck tomorrow night (or maybe tonight if I get impatient!).

Got a trip to the hardware store tomorrow to pick up the last of my new electrical supplies, and an online order should also arrive tomorrow.. that'll be everything I need to get right through to the end of the grow!

 

[d42zero]

31/1
Little bit of a scare... I was checking the length of the root on seed #3 and she got a little bit of a bump while I was moving the paper towel... when I looked yesterday morning her husk had almost fully come off. I very carefully moved her to a jiffy puck but the husk still fell all the way off, and last night she was laying down not looking all that great:

I had a third jiffy puck prepped so I made a nice hole in it and very carefully transferred her to the new one.. the root was only a couple of mm into the first puck so she came out easily. I put her in the new jiffy puck with the root properly in the soil and just the little leaves sticking out, this morning she's stood up and looks a lot healthier!

Temps are going to go up this weekend, there's two 40-degree days forecast (~105F)... there isn't much I can do, but the room is brick/concrete so hopefully it will stay fairly stable. I think there's another hot week forecast in about two weeks then it should start cooling down for autumn.

I finished setting up the grow space last night.. this time around I'm using a res instead of hand watering, and I've set up a little electrical board above it. Everything is secured to the board and the board is secured to the wall, so no risk of anything dropping into the res. I may look at moving the res just to eliminate that risk 100%, but I think it's pretty safe as it is. The room itself is only about 2.3m x 2.5m so it's important to try and use my space as efficiently as possible, and I think this is about as good as I can manage:

All the parts for my watering system are here, so I'll most likely spend this evening getting that ready then most of the hard work's done

 

[The Dirty]

Yeah man a scrog is a technique not for everyone but I'm sold on it. I have drainage and irrigation all sorted so once the net goes in they set in their place.

Thanks for the kind words man, I'm happy with my little setup.

Good luck mate, looks like you'll do well.

 

[d42zero]

Yeah man a scrog is a technique not for everyone but I'm sold on it. I have drainage and irrigation all sorted so once the net goes in they set in their place.

Thanks for the kind words man, I'm happy with my little setup.

Good luck mate, looks like you'll do well.

Yup the more I think about the auto watering system the more I can see how tying the plants to the tent is less of a problem. Only maybe reaching the rear plants for defol but I guess it's only a couple of times isn't it?

 

[d42zero]

01/02
Not much to report other than two happy looking little ladies, #2 has perked right up and #3 is a good couple of inches high now. I'd say their roots are at the bottom of the jiffy pucks so I'll most likely transplant both tomorrow to coco in solo cups.. will check roots in the morning, they're sleeping

 

[d42zero]

02/02
Roots were just poking through the bottom of the jiffy pucks so the girls got new homes today

I have 1gal (~3.5l) and 3gal (~11l) pots to go up to.. last time I went straight to 5gal but this time I think I'll go solo cup > 1gal > 3gal as I had a few problems early on that could be explained by putting them into too-big pots too early. As an experiment I've also decided to use straight coco this grow with no perlite, as adding the perlite is a bit of a hassle so I'd like to see if the grow works fine without it.

Mixed up 2L of nutes at 50% 'seedling' strength from the GH feed chart I'm using, I was going to increase to 100% once that bottle's done but the ppm came out at 296 and the feed chart suggests 250 so I might just stick with that for week 1.

@The Dirty

 

[d42zero]

04/02
My babies are growing by the day

Have settled into a routine of watering approx 50ml of weak nutes when I wake up at around 7:30-8am each morning.. lights come on at 4am so that gives them a little time to wake up then the rest of the day to drink up the goodness. Seems to be generating around 30-50% runoff which is the high end of what I want, but I expect as they grow I'll quickly see less runoff each day.

Humidity is low but I can't do much about that.. running a humidifier but it's just super dry at the moment. They seem to be doing OK though so I'm not concerned.

Reset the min-max meter tonight so daily readings will start from tomorrow.

Watering system is all figured out in my head, once they go in the 1gal pots I'll set it up just with one dripper per pot.. then in the 3gal pots I'll put a second one in. The way I've planned the system there'll be straight connectors in place of the 2nd dripper right from the start, so when it's time to put the 2nd dripper in all I need to do is pull replace the two connectors with the two drippers.

 

[d42zero]

6/2

Min-max 22.9-31.4C, 35-62% RH

@The Dirty

 

[d42zero]

7/2

Added 1tsp of Great White to approx. 250ml of seedling mix and will water that through over the next couple of days. Runoff is down to about 30% now (vs. 50%+ a few days ago) so will increase feeding by 50% from tomorrow. Roots are showing up around the sides of the cups, so it'll be time to transplant soon.. most likely Sunday. They'll go into 1gal (3.8l) smart pots for the next week or two, then they'll get one more transplant to 3gal pots.

Fair chance I'll skip the 1gal pot stage next grow, but we'll see how messy it turns out this time around!

Min-max 23.4-30.6C, 51-78% RH

 

[d42zero]

9/2
Still going strong

Roots have reached the edge of the cups, so I think it's time to transplant!

Managed to repot them while quite high, I'm rather proud of myself

There's an inch or so of clay pebbles in the bottom, then coco on top. Coco (canna brick) was expanded and washed with a ton of water pH'd to 5.8-6.0, then soaked and drained in this week's nutrient solution. Will keep an eye on runoff in the tray to figure out how much to water, then I'll start looking at setting up the auto system

#1 is three days ahead of #2 (due to replacing a dud seed), and at this early stage it's cool to see how much difference three days makes!

Min-max 23.6-30.4C, 51-78% RH

@The Dirty

 

[The Dirty]

Looking good man. I agree with you next time round go from solos straight into the final pot if you have the space.

 

[d42zero]

Looking good man. I agree with you next time round go from solos straight into the final pot if you have the space.

Yeah we'll see how messy the transplant from the 1gal to 3gal pots is...

11/2

Min-max 23.3-28.5C, 57-78% RH

 

[The Dirty]

No point on such a small transplant man. If they're kicking it in a solo cup go straight into your final pot. My 2 cents of course.

 

[Havocsm1]

Following. Nice tent. Very thorough writing. I like the clear solo cups. I am trying that on my current grow too. Good luck I'll be lurking!

 

[d42zero]

Following. Nice tent. Very thorough writing. I like the clear solo cups. I am trying that on my current grow too. Good luck I'll be lurking!

Thanks! The tent is a Seahawk 1.2x1.2, to be honest though the zippers are below average... the front door zipper failed about a month into my first grow, even though the hydro shop guy told me they can be a bit dicky and I was reeeeeeally careful with it I'll be upgrading to a better quality tent after this grow, perhaps even a 1.0x1.0 as this one is pretty damn big!

The clear solo cups are super handy.. I was using them for cloning practice last grow cause it was useful to see how the roots were forming, but they came in handy for seedlings too!

No point on such a small transplant man. If they're kicking it in a solo cup go straight into your final pot. My 2 cents of course.

I've read a few things suggesting that distrubing the roots during transplanting can be good for them, although I have no reason to trust that over any other advice I've read so we'll just see how this grow goes.... but honestly it'll all come down to how much of a mess the next transplant makes hahaha