Spumantii's First Grow Op

[Spumantii]

I've grown plants two other times- once 15 years ago not seriously, and once with some clones that got taken away from me eventually by some forgiving law enforcement. I was lucky I didn't get charged, I suppose. Anyway I'm excited to join the community to learn and exchange stories or share relating with others who are new and see the same things I might come across along the way, thanks for your interest and hello.

This journal started on November 21 2018- Day 0, after seeds that a friend gave me popped, so I'll describe the startup and then post chronologically with the photos I have. It's so great to be able to share a real time status of the plants because I study but I don't have the experience, and I don't catch things you do yet.

It's an apartment grow, starting in one Mammoth classic 120 (4'x4') with a 600W MH/HPS HID, a carbon filter and vent fan, some venting, a clip fan and some Remo nutrients, 4x3 US G pots with trays. I started with 8 seeds of Northern Lights 5. Things evolved since day 0 and I'm trying to stay about 2 steps ahead of it, not planning everything as something always throws that off, as I'll describe. I'll begin posts in chronological order until I get to real time.

 

[Spumantii]

Pictures from the first week. 2 of these never emerged from the soil, and 2 I killed by accident trying to help them lose the husk. Looking back, I planted half of them upside-down, so they either sprung husk first or I overwatered the peat pellet and they went bad. I was really not getting the light distance right, and the ones that made it lankified, so it was a rough start, but it gets worse. I dropped a pony clip on the tray trying to adjust the height of my light, and one of the lankies had fallen over and faced up earlier that day, hit by the pony clip and got severed against the tray. I tried splinting it on with electrical tape and toothpicks, please don't laugh, I was heartbroken, lol.



Now here's Dec 5, day 14, and I'm afraid to breathe on them. I put them under the MH to stop the lankiness.

 

[Spumantii]

So at this point I've decided to name them 1, 2, 3, and 4, real original I know. 1 is the tall one, 2 is the pretty one, 3 is missing a second true leaf on one side as a result of being a weird seed, and 4 also seems to have had a hard time unfolding leaves. 3 and 4 are both late to the party

Day 18


Day 26


Day 30
I've been as careful as I can not to miss. #1 is topped today


It's in this time that I realize a number of things- space is a premium, and I don't just want to grow 4 plants and then kill them, what good is that? No no, I want to have a clone mother that produces clones that sit around her for a month and a half rooting and vegging, and then flower those as what's the use in admiring and babying these just to go ahead and kill off the pretty genetics?? Maybe I'm greedy, or it's something else but I can't bring myself to get rid of a plant entirely. So initially my thought here is one of these is going to be a mother, and it's going to have to have it's own environment, and the flowering clones theirs, so that means I need another tent, or mother is open air in my apartment, but what about the light heat and humidity being harder to manage, and bugs? And weirdness from lights on or off at irregular times.. And what light should I have for the mother and clones? How much am I going to be spending on power with 2 HIDs? Maybe I need an LED. Maybe I need a second tent, and a second setup..

 

[Spumantii]

Day 31, and I'm beginning some training on #1, she's topped, and I really want to make use of the space so I'm going to be trying to keep growing laterally. #2 just looks like a perfect diamond. The node spacing is tighter. You can clearly see the fact this strain is a hybrid, and my plants show both traits. 1 and 3 are the Indica, 4 is this wild afghan with super fat leaf blades with thick short stems and tight internode spacing. 2 is somewhere between the 2 and just has great color gradient going on too. Really pretty. I can't bring myself to fim it yet.

Also, #4 got itself congested by the wide leaves pushing on each other and it bifurcated itself without me doing anything, at the 2nd node past the seed leaf. Weird. I'm calling this one the mutant now.

 

[Spumantii]

The subsequent week, including christmas. My friend found a seed in his blunana this week! I'm super stoked to see if it pops. I've been training #1 hard, and she's built a bunch of lateral growth as a result. I'm using tiny truckers hitches to slowly increase the pull and also prevent the trunk from breaking.

 

[Spumantii]

The blunana seed did this in under 24 hours! Sweet! Who cares about real estate figure it out later!

 

[Spumantii]

About day 37, beginning training on 2 and 3, having topped both. Leaving 4 on it's own, it's just too weird and I like it that way. It's about this time that I settled on having 2 tents, which would mean 2 lights, and a future rig to move air around both, maybe.

 

[Spumantii]

Dec 30, day 39, and day 7 for the little blunana, which is enjoying a better seedling stage than the others did. I've taken clones for the first time, and I since bought rockwools as that would let me see when they're ready to plant. Shown here are 3 clones, 2 from a branch on #1 and one from a branch on #2. 2 of these were bottom scrag I was going to discard and I thought why not try to propagate because I'm greedy and can't waste any plant. Decided, I'll go shopping for the new tent and light this week.

 

[Spumantii]

So a few things happened, I bought the Mammoth Pro 120 which is the same size footprint but 8 inches taller, has more and better port placement and 2 doors instead of one. I figure, flowering plants get taller right? So I'll flower in that one. I got this light that called itself a full spectrum 600 W equivalent, and it had all kinds of issues. "New" out of the box, it came with no product information, not even the name, no warranty, no contact info. The glass in front of the LEDs was stained like used, the screws were loose, the hanging hooks were loose, and the hanging cables were fixed length and the lengths were a mismatch. What's more, I'll say this for the nature of the spotlight for utility as a grow light, as a grip in the film industry and sometimes lamp operator lamps are either in full spot or full flood- the difference being how blurry the edge is. The trouble with the 90 degree reflectors on LED lights, there are a few. First at that angle the majority of your light is being shot at the floor, so there's very little bounce, so now you have mylar walls for no reason, if you're in a tent. If you're in a tent, you don't have enough vertical space to have that cone do that kind of a job, you need to go to the ceiling, and at that point you've lost like half your light strength. 90 degree reflectors don't work for me. 120s flood the tent so well it's bright from any direction, and there was something about the spectrum on the old one that was just not right, and the tent was.. just dim.

So I returned that sh*t because I've had my eye on the prize this whole time and I couldn't help myself.. It's a good store that sold it to me, not a matter of that

There's a picture here of this leaf I trimmed off #2. It's the first time I'd noticed this, the first leaf it showed appeared on. I began looking it up. Rosso standing guard over the tent.

 

[Spumantii]

Day 42
Working the scrog hard with #1 beginning with #2

 

[Spumantii]

It's the 7th of January Day 46, and I've had the new new light for 3 days, and the plants are literally exploding. It seems like I can't give them enough water. This was a mistake, It turned out I gave them too much and the soil began to choke the big one. I hadn't anticipated needing to transplant anytime soon, I thought 3 gallons would be good following the 'gallon per foot rule' but they have enough lateral growth to make the difference between 2 feet and 4 apparently, or #1 and #2 did.

It's a Spectrum King SK600. I don't think I'll ever need to buy a light again, as I've kind of maxed out the space I have available. This thing is bright AF, it pulls 615 and easily replaces 1000w HID. Honestly it looks like it's more. Anyway the plants love it, and it's not a cheap knockoff. No I don't work for them but I've kind of fallen for this light. I went to the lift and co show in Vancouver recently and found their booth, the guy is going to send me swag, and they replace lights if anything goes wrong. The blunana leaves are huge, and it's still tiny. It popped seed on Christmas day.

The clones (Dec 30) hate me but are alive. Not rooted yet, but one is standing up

 

[Spumantii]

Day 48. I've been watering and watering, and that included food every other day. I was thinking, if I saw the drain tray empty, they wanted water. That was a bad assumption. I started to notice some green algae on my soil and it must have been bricked in there because when I started to notice my biggest one go like this..

I started wondering how, is it still thirsty? Impossible. Too much water? But where's the water going then? Are they too hot? Bad PH? why they look all spider creepy, leaves do this thing where they retract and fold up like window shutters and get all thin. And they go floppy and soft rubbery instead of crisp and bouncy. So I knew I'd overwatered. The biggest one had the worst creepy look and I took a chance assumption it must be getting rootbound. I figured I had another month before that could happen but I wasn't going to chance it. growth all but stopped and I knew something was really wrong.

Rona (Lowe's) has these plastic buckets that hold 50L each so 13-14 gallons should be, better be, enough. That's going to weigh 200 lbs wet, per plant lol. Anyway the dimensions of the buckets happen to be perfect. If you wanted to you could perfectly fit 6 of them in a 4x4 all sitting on their upturned lids for drainage. I put holes in the bottom and a couple in the sides.

 

[Spumantii]

I caught this problem just in time. Transplanting was nerve racking to say the least, holding a tree in one hand and trying to do something with the pot with the other in a confined space. Anyway the roots had completely encircled the pot and the bottom had tinted yellowy tan and didn't smell but didn't look good. The pot itself had some white nastiness in the drain stones, and so for 3 dfays after the transplant I was seeing some of this in the leaves, that's either the plant cannibalizing to build new roots, or that was it fighting off sick roots. I cut the sick leaves after the brown stopped growing. It was only a bout 8 leaves, but I feel if I left that for another day or 2 it sould have been MUCH worse. I'm letting them dry out and watering lightly, only the new soil to encourage them to root out.

 

[Spumantii]

Day 53
Observing #2 and the clone of #2, what I'm really hoping is not a mild case of seed borne TMV. I've been noting #2 and clipping whenever a leaf with the streak shows up, but they continue to appear at growth tips. It did not appear on the clone until the second new set of leaves, It doesn't appear to be suffering but it's a pathogen if I'm right, that weakens plant matter, and that would affect the bud quality. It is also capable of transmission through touch. I can't confirm this is what it is yet. It might be too late if I wait to see if it spread, if it did, I'd have to flower everything and sanitize the whole op, breaking any prospect of sea of green at least until summer. :/

 

[Spumantii]

Day 54, present day Jan 15 2019.

Here's the veg room, and #2 with clone isolated in the flowering tent. Have cut photoperiod on the flowering room daily for 2 days preparing her for switch.

Blunana is 21 days old looking gorgeous. I will use #2's old slot when it gets bigger and be back to 4 mains. Next to it is the clone of #1.

There's some subtle yellowing on leaf tips on 3 and 4, and I wonder if it's light burn. Got some shade hangars to bring the light up tighter to the roof just in case. I might have to switch philosophy and have big moms in the tall tent and roll short flower clones in the short tent..

 

[Spumantii]

Day 55
I took clones of 2, having satisfied the worry about tmv. It turns out variegation on some leaves is natural, and though it can be caused by viral infection, said infections have other symptoms absent here, it has not spread. Infections cannot be confirmed by the presence of variegation, so I'm cloning it. Number 2 has the prettiest genetics so far imo, and also has far more developed preflowers than her much bigger sister. I have a feeling this will mean a nice yield. I switch bulbs in this tent on the 21st making it 60 days from seed pop. Note the 14mm long stipulas on #1.

For cloning I prepared rockwool plugs in little red cups, I put some myco chunks in the cup then mixed about a cup of hot water and added about a ml of 0-0-1 root wash and a couple drops of molasses, shook it up and soaked the plugs in it. Just before cutting after about 10 minutes I poured the excess and cut the bottoms off the cups. I cut the clones off at a mitre and also put a row of cuts in the stem above that to facilitate root end area. Scooped out the gel to make sure I had tons, and got them in the smile of the plugs, pushing them down into the cups squeezes them together and I can also lift it by the cup and see if it's got roots out the bottom. If it works out I'll do all my clones this way from now on.

 

[Spumantii]

A clone I took on Dec 30, which I was sure wouldn't make it. Last of 3 to root, it looked like it was dying every day for over a week and at one point folded up completely. I kept it incubated anyway. Just goes to show life finds a way so don't give up right away. I just can't throw anything away. Now that it's recovered I bet it'll be a bush in no time.

 

[Spumantii]

Quick update day 59
I've been somewhat reluctant.. But I did what I felt was a big trim of low fan leaves from 1/2/3 as access was becoming a problem. I know I've been letting them go fairly natural and 4 is so congested I can't see anything until I lift up these huge fan leaves. It's like a cabbage. I have to trim it tonight, it's got a bunch of lower tops coming up getting stuck against fan leaves. I might have nute burned them all a little bit, the first week of Jan, right after transplant. They're taking just water for now.

I really haven't been watering much at all and they show no signs of it which is concerning. I might have really really been overwatering before.

#2 is on 14/10 for one more day then she starts flower time. Her clones, I've kept them in a dim area or covered by shadow for 4 days now, and they look alright considering. During that time gave the rockwools a shot of water spray. They don't seem to be transpiring much, the dome is clean. They aren't wilting like the last ones did. Next clones are going to be of that indica. The indica and the ones next to it are all northern lights but they look so different, it's as if 1 and 3 grew up and decided to become another strain from 4 entirely.. So I have NL in 2 flavors we'll see.

So far, #2 which is going to start flower, appears to be the best combination of NL traits. Mixed feelings about flowering the mother but space is now a problem. I can keep it going through cloning, how long is that practical for? I also have a cunning plan.. I want to leave a bud and a couple leaves on it after harvest, plant it outside somewhere quiet and come back to it hoping for seeds later haha

 

[Spumantii]

A little trim of the big fans on #4.. Just enough to let these little ones into the light! This thing is hilarious.. The branching angle is so steep it totally engulfs it's own fan leaves and their stems are no less than 6mm thick

Also let the number 2 clones have light and they lay down so hopefully they're almost over the hump and have started roots. Gave the dome a few sprays and put more water on the rockwool.

 

[AfroBunnyLabs]

Things are looking good Spumantii! I used to be reluctant to trim fan leaves, but sometimes its the only way to ensure the little ones get to see the light! Hope everything continues to go well for you!