Shankin's Alien Dog Coco To Perlite 3L Hempy

[Shankin]

What strain is it? Alien Tech x Chem Dog (self bred)
Is it Indica, Sativa or Hybrid? What percentages? Hybrid Unable to give percentages as they are bred from personal stock.
Is it in Veg or Flower stage? Veg
If in Veg... For how long? Germinated 5/13/12
If in Flower stage... For how long? Seedling at the moment.
Indoor or outdoor? Outdoor veg / Indoor flower
Soil or Hydro? Soil
If soil... what is in your mix? Coco starter pots with plans to transplant to perlite hempy
If soil... What size pot? Jiffy pots for seedling then 3 liter bottles w/ perlite
Size of light? 400 watt
Is it aircooled? No
Temp of Room/cab? 78 lights on / 68 lights off
RH of Room/cab? 40%
PH of media or res? Not sure what it will be in perlite, but 6.2 going in. Will adjust as needed.
Any Pests ? Web worms from the coco, fixed with Diatomaceous Earth
How often are you watering? As needed (lift to check)
Type and strength of ferts used? Tap water till transplant then OC+


A couple of pics. 20 seeds germinated / 19 sprouts (lost one to a bird...) If you are wondering, thats diatomaceous earth on top. I don't trust the manufacturer of the coco so I pretreated just in case. Still managed to find 2 webworms on my plants and murdered them both. I may regret starting these outside since this spring seems to be the worst bug season to ever hit South Texas, but I had little choice as my grow tent is currently occupied with some very unstable WW x NL x Tan. Dream. Will include pics and a smoke report when crop is done (5 weeks into flower now and just showing signs of trichomes. )

Looking forward to lots of input. Really enjoying the site and all the information flying around here.

 

[Shankin]

Week 1 Update

Plants are growing I had to pull 6 due to damage from the webworms but I bought Liquid Lady-Bug from a local supply store and now the pests are gone. I really don't like starting plants outdoors since I am not in a friendly state so I purchased a new tent today. A VS3600 by Virtual Sun. Figured since I would have more room, I bought more seeds Nirvana seeds: AK-48 x 4, WW x 5, NL x 5, Papaya x 4. 2 free fem seeds that will be a mystery seed... YAY! And Big Bang Fem x 4 from Green House seeds. AK, WW, NL, and Papaya are for breeding stock and I will start a seperate journal for my breeding program once I get it going again. I just moved here from a legal state and had to start over as transporting live plants was not an option. I am not sure why my pictures are not showing up in my posts but I will work on figuring it out.

Anyway, as for the update: Plants are now roughly 2 - 2.5 inches tall @ 1 week. I have the choice to grow this crop in Pro Mix BX or keep with the perlite plan. I am not sure which I will go with yet but I am leaning towards perlite as it is far less maintence with OC+ in the mix.

A few photos (if they show up)

And another attempt at the photos from 3 days ago

 

[Shankin]

Update - Seed plus 14 days

Well, the plants are growing faster than I had expected without nutes. Just tap water for the last 2 weeks and they look much better than my last grow at the same age.

Day 14 from seed photos:

As you can see they all still pretty much look identical. There are 12 plants total with very little variation. Hopefully the phenotype stays true throughout the grow.

My ballast went out and I had to put my current grow outdoors for a couple of days until my replacement came in. I can say that while the ballast isn't the best one out there, the company that makes it was very expedient about getting me a replacement. Ballast went out Monday night and I had my new one running Saturday night. The branding is iPower and I purchased it on ebay, and while the service was great, I must say I will be looking for a better power supply next week. I don't want to have to replace my ballast constantly even if it isn't costing me anything but time. Bulbs maybe, but not the ballast. Going to have to drive to Houston to visit a few hydro shops and see what I can find.
A few photos of my indoor crops (that spent a week outdoors loving the sun):

Thank you guys for stopping in.

 

[Shankin]

I have a question regarding a GDP I am growing indoors. I was not seeing any color change while it was in the tent (straight 400w HPS w/ no supplemental lights). As soon as the ballast went out and they got sunlight for the first time, the hair started to change purple but now that they are back in the tent, it seems it is no longer changing colors. This brings me to my question, is it the UV from the sun causing my plant to take on the purple and if so, will adding a UV light to the tent encourage color change?

 

[Shankin]

Oh, and while I know going with the site sponsers supports the site and all, when looking for a new ballast would anyone have a clue which ballast company rises above the rest? I am not looking for hypotheticals or second hand information. I would like an honest opinion based on personal experience which company/manufacturer provides the best product and service based on the money spent. I am sure I could spend hours in the lighting section of this forum reading over second hand accounts and hypotheticals, but sorting out led/cfl/hps/natural has taken me all morning all ready and I am still no closer to finding the best of our sponsers to send my money to. I am looking for a 600 watt switchable mh/hps ballast. Any opinions?

 

[Shankin]

Still to early in the grow to expect many looks I guess.

 

[glassONglass]

i can't speak from experience but i know a lot of people are getting those JDL (site sponsor) ballasts have been giving nothing but positive reviews as far as i've seen. personally i've used a lumatek digital 600 watt switchable and it wasn't compatible(at the time) with the hortilux bulbs i purchased, which cost me an extra $200 to figure out. now apparently that's been fixed since then, but i lost any respect for them as a company after that incident and lame customer service. plus that thing ran hot!

your ladies look great, even the young ones. did you bring them inside every night to control the light schedule? i would be so nervous about them getting confused and reveging while trying to keep up with something like that.

what kind of setup are the old ladies in? i thought you needed special ferts for coco grows as opposed to the oc+

thanks for sharing your grow with us!

 

[glassONglass]

plus i like your signature quote, gave me a chuckle

 

[Shankin]

Welcome and thank you glass. The old ladies are in homemade supersoil. Lots of burns on them from making the soil too hot so instead of risking this crop I switched to coco. At 4 weeks this grow will go in to a DIY 18 site 3L hempy set up using perlite. I won't be adding nutes of any sort until I transplant. At 2 weeks from seed, I don't think my plants are looking like they crave nutes yet. Afaik I won't need any other nutes with perlite other than the OC+ but in the event that I do, I can top dress with some azomite for micro/trace nutes. This is my 10+ grow and I have long since gotten over spending in excess of $200 per grow on nutes. I am not growing to sell so as long as I am happy with the quality of my grow then all is well. I don't bother with ph either to be honest. Just eyeball them and address any problems that arise.

My grow that is nearing the finish line is a mixed bag of self-bred seeds that I combined when packing up my last grow. Formerly all of my grows were of 1 strain so I could custom make the soil for the strain I was growing. But moving to a unfriendly state has made my previously happy existance a bit less happy. I did bring them in and out but being stuck in military time, I wake up at 5 am anyway and I brought them in @ 6 pm giving them 12 hours of light. It only lasted 5 days so it wasn't much of a big deal. Just annoyed @ the ballast failing after 2 months of owning it. I will be moving my alien dog inside when this grow is done. The grow nearest finishing will be a staggered harvest with some strains finishing in 2 weeks (started the flush today) and and the latest strain still has 6 weeks minimum. So the aliens will get at least 8 weeks of veg time outdoors. I have a feeling they may be too big for my tent if I don't do some serious training before they go in.

As i have never done a hempy grow, is sog the only way to go or can you do a LST or ScROG with it? I have only seen it done in SOG format so I hope someone has some input on this matter.

Again thanks for stopping in and stay frosty sir.

 

[Shankin]

Oh and thanks for the heads up on JD-L, I looked at their line and am leaning towards them. I sent an email to their sales department asking about warranty and the such and I am waiting to hear back from them. I would like a "test drive" but with so many people burning companies that way I am not sure they would be willing to do it. I don't want to pay for something that I am not happy with and can't return it. I am stuck in that situation now.

 

[glassONglass]

i think one of the main reasons they don't use those techniques is the available root space in 2L setups. seeing as you have 150% of their container size, i don't see extending veg time using other techniques being a problem. from what i've seen, scrogging takes too much veg time for anything but large containers. i've seen scrogs where it takes almost three months to fill their screen from seed. as for upkeep time, scrogging sucks unless you have an optimal setup where you can reach every inch of screen. reaching under screens is a huge PITA imho. only did it once but it was miserable, haha.

 

[glassONglass]

and i was wondering whats up with your grow space? any pictures/ info?

 

[Shankin]

20 x 36 x 60 inch tent. Just bought a 4x4 ft tent and once it comes in I will use my current one for indoor veg and the new one for bloom. I hate the bugs here, some scare my dog. It's time to move it all indoors.

 

[Deege420]

looking AWESOME and LARGE +reps!

 

[Shankin]

Thank you Deege. I returned the favor sir.

 

[Shankin]

I wanted to show off some pictures of my current grow. I have 1 GDP hybrid I am growing and have managed to keep the plant at 21 inches. Thats not the part I am proud of. The main cola on the plant is a little over 14 inches long and as big around as a 32 ounce spray bottle as you can see from the pictures. More 2/3 of the plants total height is the cola alone. As stated, the supersoil I made turned out very hot so please excuse the burns.

 

[airblasted]

beautiful!!!

 

[Shankin]

Thank you Air. I hope my new grow turns out that well.

 

[crashnfool]

Pretty tomatoes...

 

[ConqueringLOJ]

What's shakin Shankin! The grow is Looking great so far!