Intro
This is my first grow and I could not be more excited. I'm not a patient shiela, so this will definitely be a test of adulting. But it will be totally worth it to get some quality bud instead of manky bushweed! My other half Lupin shall be appearing throughout.
Our grow room is a spare bedroom which needed a lot of TLC due to neglect and damp issues. Currently it is nearly done! Just waiting for the paint to dry so Lupin can install the lights.
As a complete novice I'm super keen for any advice or suggestions, so please feel free! Hope everyone enjoys. <3
Set Up
After much research, a few impulse buys, and several embarrassing trips back to the local hydro store for things I forgot, my equipment looks like this:
Electric ballast
600W HPS globe
400W HPS globe
2 x Light fixture with reflector (Lupin got confused and thought we needed one per globe since I hadn't explained we wouldn't be using both at once, but this actually works out well as you'll see.)
6 x plastic pots
pH kit (shitty one, totally getting a pH pen on my next shop)
Coco A&B
Monstabud
Coco Perlite Mix 70/30
Seeds! All auto feminized:
White Widow Max
AK47
Big Bud
I'm going for what I hope will be a setup with the least chance of everything going tits up. Also using Pure Water so I don't have to wait 24 hours to leech off the unwanted chemicals. It's pretty spot on with pH too so I'm quite happy with it.
Germinating
So somewhat naively, I assumed that the hours and hours of research I'd done prior to my first grow would make this a relatively painless process. Despite how difficult everyone said it would be, I though I was the exception and everything would go according to plan. I really should have remembered one of my trusty mantras: Noone is special. Life is shit. Murphy is a cunt.
You may have guessed this doesn't go well.
I started with three seeds in damp paper towel between paper plates - all lovely and labelled so I knew which seed was which. I used three different feminized autoflowers - White Widow Max, AK47, and Big Bud. Our grow room still in progress, I popped the plates inside a box in the laundry. Seeing as it's winter here and Satan is ice skating to work, I stuck a wee heater in the room. And left it on high. And went to bed.
In a totally unforseeable turn of events (for anyone a few tinnies short of an esky) I awoke to dry as fuck paper with three unhappy seeds.
I decided not to give up on them yet, and wet the paper towels up some more. I also grabbed a new Big Bud seed and gave it the same treatment but using ceramic plates. I figured just one would be a good idea this time due to my 0/3 track record. But after another day and night nothing had changed, so in a last ditch attempt I threw all three seeds from the paper plates into a cup of water and shut them in the laundry.
3 hours later we had liftoff!!
One of the mystery seeds had cracked, and was showing a 1cm tap root. Small I know, but since my next attempt was going to be germinating straight from my medium, I decided not to push my luck and planted it straight into one of my pots. They'd already been flushed with pH 5.8ish water a couple of days earlier and seemed to be at the right 'moist but not super wet' level. I think. I actually have no frame of reference for this. While sticking my fingers in things could be considered a hobby of mine, I haven't had much cause to apply this to a soilless medium made of coconut husks. Yet.
Anyway, that all happened around 8pm. The following morning the other two seeds had cracked as well. Still only tiny tap roots, but into the coco they go go. I gave some more water to mystery plant #1 as the top inch had dried out overnight, this time with a little cal-mag. I probably could have gotten away with not doing this watering, but the buzz is you can't overwater with coco, and I needed to counteract the dryness of the heater. Then I covered all three pots in glad-wrap to bump up the humidity and left them to be, apart from turning the heater off during the warm part of the day.
That's where we're at! My patience levels are similar to Trump's self-control with a Twitter account, so this next step will require many cones while we wait to see if the babies show themselves. Wish us luck!
Jade Tonks - 12/06/2017
Morning Update - 13 June
This morning I was greeted with a beautiful sight!
The first mystery plant has a sprout So pretty. Also the Big Bud seed I had left between ceramic plants has cracked a lovely tap root... so now I guess we're going with 4 plants.
I planted the Big Bud this morning as well. If this one sprouts I shall call it Bruce Buffer. Because reasons.
So here's how they stand! Will keep you posted.
This is my first grow and I could not be more excited. I'm not a patient shiela, so this will definitely be a test of adulting. But it will be totally worth it to get some quality bud instead of manky bushweed! My other half Lupin shall be appearing throughout.
Our grow room is a spare bedroom which needed a lot of TLC due to neglect and damp issues. Currently it is nearly done! Just waiting for the paint to dry so Lupin can install the lights.
As a complete novice I'm super keen for any advice or suggestions, so please feel free! Hope everyone enjoys. <3
Set Up
After much research, a few impulse buys, and several embarrassing trips back to the local hydro store for things I forgot, my equipment looks like this:
Electric ballast
600W HPS globe
400W HPS globe
2 x Light fixture with reflector (Lupin got confused and thought we needed one per globe since I hadn't explained we wouldn't be using both at once, but this actually works out well as you'll see.)
6 x plastic pots
pH kit (shitty one, totally getting a pH pen on my next shop)
Coco A&B
Monstabud
Coco Perlite Mix 70/30
Seeds! All auto feminized:
White Widow Max
AK47
Big Bud
I'm going for what I hope will be a setup with the least chance of everything going tits up. Also using Pure Water so I don't have to wait 24 hours to leech off the unwanted chemicals. It's pretty spot on with pH too so I'm quite happy with it.
Germinating
So somewhat naively, I assumed that the hours and hours of research I'd done prior to my first grow would make this a relatively painless process. Despite how difficult everyone said it would be, I though I was the exception and everything would go according to plan. I really should have remembered one of my trusty mantras: Noone is special. Life is shit. Murphy is a cunt.
You may have guessed this doesn't go well.
I started with three seeds in damp paper towel between paper plates - all lovely and labelled so I knew which seed was which. I used three different feminized autoflowers - White Widow Max, AK47, and Big Bud. Our grow room still in progress, I popped the plates inside a box in the laundry. Seeing as it's winter here and Satan is ice skating to work, I stuck a wee heater in the room. And left it on high. And went to bed.
In a totally unforseeable turn of events (for anyone a few tinnies short of an esky) I awoke to dry as fuck paper with three unhappy seeds.
I decided not to give up on them yet, and wet the paper towels up some more. I also grabbed a new Big Bud seed and gave it the same treatment but using ceramic plates. I figured just one would be a good idea this time due to my 0/3 track record. But after another day and night nothing had changed, so in a last ditch attempt I threw all three seeds from the paper plates into a cup of water and shut them in the laundry.
3 hours later we had liftoff!!
One of the mystery seeds had cracked, and was showing a 1cm tap root. Small I know, but since my next attempt was going to be germinating straight from my medium, I decided not to push my luck and planted it straight into one of my pots. They'd already been flushed with pH 5.8ish water a couple of days earlier and seemed to be at the right 'moist but not super wet' level. I think. I actually have no frame of reference for this. While sticking my fingers in things could be considered a hobby of mine, I haven't had much cause to apply this to a soilless medium made of coconut husks. Yet.
Anyway, that all happened around 8pm. The following morning the other two seeds had cracked as well. Still only tiny tap roots, but into the coco they go go. I gave some more water to mystery plant #1 as the top inch had dried out overnight, this time with a little cal-mag. I probably could have gotten away with not doing this watering, but the buzz is you can't overwater with coco, and I needed to counteract the dryness of the heater. Then I covered all three pots in glad-wrap to bump up the humidity and left them to be, apart from turning the heater off during the warm part of the day.
That's where we're at! My patience levels are similar to Trump's self-control with a Twitter account, so this next step will require many cones while we wait to see if the babies show themselves. Wish us luck!
Jade Tonks - 12/06/2017
Morning Update - 13 June
This morning I was greeted with a beautiful sight!
The first mystery plant has a sprout So pretty. Also the Big Bud seed I had left between ceramic plants has cracked a lovely tap root... so now I guess we're going with 4 plants.
I planted the Big Bud this morning as well. If this one sprouts I shall call it Bruce Buffer. Because reasons.
So here's how they stand! Will keep you posted.