This will be my first grow journal but 4th or 5th grow overall. I am mostly looking for help of course because this will be only my second indoor grow and my first with any sort of budget 
But of course I have a passion for taking photos of this stuff just as much as I do growing it so there should be plenty of that as well! This grow is planned to be perpetual in 4 stages (including cloner)... hopefully!
The two strains I will be growing are Strawberry Cough and Bubba Kush. According to Leafly reviews the Strawberry Cough is a sativa dominant plant where as the Bubba is almost pure indica dominant coming from Bubble Gum and of course Kush. We are going with a drip irrigation style hydro grow with red clay pellets as a medium. We have a 27 gallon reservoir filled with about 20 gallons of water.
I will be doing 9 plants at a time as my max here is 18 plants for the patients I'm growing for. One of them is my dad, who is helping me with this grow as well. He has done it this way before so I decided to give it a try. Because I know experience means so much for growing this plant and hydro seems especially volatile. I wanted to do a form of hydro because after doing a soil grow inside I realized it was best to be left for the outdoor grows.
I am not too experienced with any other nutrient line than Fox Farms, so while I let my dad use his style of growing method we are going with the Fox Farms line of nutrients for now. Which is what he used before too but he was somewhat set on moving to something else, but I have had great success with Fox Farms in all my grows so we will stick to that until I find something that shows something much better. I like the quality of bud you get from these nutes. I have the full line except the Kangaroots and Microbe brew. Which is Grow Big Hydro, Grow Big (for the mommys in soil), Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom, Open sesame, Beastie bloomz and ChaChing.
I am looking for different strains but it's hard to find the right clones around here. I don't know a lot of card holders that grow in my area. The strains I am looking for and hopefully changing to may include White Widow, Dream Queen or Trainwreck. At max two different ones at a time.
The 4 stages of growing will be the cloner, veg, and two stages of flower. Which is why I'm only doing 9 per stage instead of 18, so I can allow for the two stages of 9 (above 1ft tall) in flower.
So enough words for now here are some pictures of the first grow stage currently operating.
This is day 1, I am currently at day 10.
Still day 1. Mommys to the left.
The two mommys who made all these girls possible
(at day 10 of the first grow cycle)
Here we are 10 days later, not a lot has changed so far
Here are the two moms before the first cycle began, testing out the tent so we could see how the temps hold up.
The tent is located in our shop which is unheated at the moment. We are keeping a close eye on the temps with a wireless unit. With the lights on it keeps a solid 66F with a fan inside to blow air around and one exhaust hole to get some fresh air inside. We have a lot of spidermite problems here and I was told if I kept the temps below 67 they would lay dormant and not be a problem. From what I have read that is a reasonable temp to grow at so I decided to give it a try. Of course we tried to clean out the area best we could to kill off any that could be in there. When the light is off we are using a space heater on a timer that kicks on and keeps it around the same temp.
We have several ballasts and bulb setups and for the tent we have thrown in the 600w Metal Halide which is on for 18/6 right now. Other than that we have two 1000w HPS and a 500w(two 250w in one hood) HPS. We are planning on moving the MH into the flowering room as soon as the first cycle is about a foot tall and replacing it with the 500w HPS to see how they match up for the veg and so we can get a HPS and MH mix for the flowering room.
So far I am following the feeding schedule relatively and all I have to work with right now is a water test ph kit and some ppm test strips that don't seem to work at all. I need to pick up some drip clean I hear and whatever else you guys think I should add. I try to adjust the ph every 2-4 days down to around 6.0 with standard PH down (that orange stuff).
I estimate around 18-20 gallons in my 27 gallon reservoir and I have given them so far:
(3 1/2 days ago) [Following week 1 directions]
17 tsp Big Bloom
11 tsp Grow Big Hydro
(Today a few hours ago, they are looking good) [Following week 2 directions]
17 tsp Big Bloom
11 tsp Grow Big Hydro
So the first 7 days they were living off the seedling amounts of nutes needed and not a lot changed. I didn't add more after 3-4 days (fox farms says feed twice a week, and since I have no ppm tester I'm just gonna wing it) because I was kind of just taking it easy, getting a feel for this and making sure I didn't burn them. Since they have started off so slow (Probably from me under nuting them so much) I decided to stay on week 2 on the Fox Farms Hydroponic Feeding schedule for an additional week. (unless that's a bad idea?)
So a lot of questions I have about just about everything... If there is anything else you want to know just ask! I will try to fill out any spaces I left. I will also be getting the dimensions of the rooms for you and measure the distance of the light from the plants as well to see what you guys think I should change there if anything.
But of course I have a passion for taking photos of this stuff just as much as I do growing it so there should be plenty of that as well! This grow is planned to be perpetual in 4 stages (including cloner)... hopefully!The two strains I will be growing are Strawberry Cough and Bubba Kush. According to Leafly reviews the Strawberry Cough is a sativa dominant plant where as the Bubba is almost pure indica dominant coming from Bubble Gum and of course Kush. We are going with a drip irrigation style hydro grow with red clay pellets as a medium. We have a 27 gallon reservoir filled with about 20 gallons of water.
I will be doing 9 plants at a time as my max here is 18 plants for the patients I'm growing for. One of them is my dad, who is helping me with this grow as well. He has done it this way before so I decided to give it a try. Because I know experience means so much for growing this plant and hydro seems especially volatile. I wanted to do a form of hydro because after doing a soil grow inside I realized it was best to be left for the outdoor grows.
I am not too experienced with any other nutrient line than Fox Farms, so while I let my dad use his style of growing method we are going with the Fox Farms line of nutrients for now. Which is what he used before too but he was somewhat set on moving to something else, but I have had great success with Fox Farms in all my grows so we will stick to that until I find something that shows something much better. I like the quality of bud you get from these nutes. I have the full line except the Kangaroots and Microbe brew. Which is Grow Big Hydro, Grow Big (for the mommys in soil), Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom, Open sesame, Beastie bloomz and ChaChing.
I am looking for different strains but it's hard to find the right clones around here. I don't know a lot of card holders that grow in my area. The strains I am looking for and hopefully changing to may include White Widow, Dream Queen or Trainwreck. At max two different ones at a time.
The 4 stages of growing will be the cloner, veg, and two stages of flower. Which is why I'm only doing 9 per stage instead of 18, so I can allow for the two stages of 9 (above 1ft tall) in flower.
So enough words for now here are some pictures of the first grow stage currently operating.
This is day 1, I am currently at day 10.
Still day 1. Mommys to the left.
The two mommys who made all these girls possible
(at day 10 of the first grow cycle)
Here we are 10 days later, not a lot has changed so far
Here are the two moms before the first cycle began, testing out the tent so we could see how the temps hold up.
The tent is located in our shop which is unheated at the moment. We are keeping a close eye on the temps with a wireless unit. With the lights on it keeps a solid 66F with a fan inside to blow air around and one exhaust hole to get some fresh air inside. We have a lot of spidermite problems here and I was told if I kept the temps below 67 they would lay dormant and not be a problem. From what I have read that is a reasonable temp to grow at so I decided to give it a try. Of course we tried to clean out the area best we could to kill off any that could be in there. When the light is off we are using a space heater on a timer that kicks on and keeps it around the same temp.
We have several ballasts and bulb setups and for the tent we have thrown in the 600w Metal Halide which is on for 18/6 right now. Other than that we have two 1000w HPS and a 500w(two 250w in one hood) HPS. We are planning on moving the MH into the flowering room as soon as the first cycle is about a foot tall and replacing it with the 500w HPS to see how they match up for the veg and so we can get a HPS and MH mix for the flowering room.
So far I am following the feeding schedule relatively and all I have to work with right now is a water test ph kit and some ppm test strips that don't seem to work at all. I need to pick up some drip clean I hear and whatever else you guys think I should add. I try to adjust the ph every 2-4 days down to around 6.0 with standard PH down (that orange stuff).
I estimate around 18-20 gallons in my 27 gallon reservoir and I have given them so far:
(3 1/2 days ago) [Following week 1 directions]
17 tsp Big Bloom
11 tsp Grow Big Hydro
(Today a few hours ago, they are looking good) [Following week 2 directions]
17 tsp Big Bloom
11 tsp Grow Big Hydro
So the first 7 days they were living off the seedling amounts of nutes needed and not a lot changed. I didn't add more after 3-4 days (fox farms says feed twice a week, and since I have no ppm tester I'm just gonna wing it) because I was kind of just taking it easy, getting a feel for this and making sure I didn't burn them. Since they have started off so slow (Probably from me under nuting them so much) I decided to stay on week 2 on the Fox Farms Hydroponic Feeding schedule for an additional week. (unless that's a bad idea?)
So a lot of questions I have about just about everything... If there is anything else you want to know just ask! I will try to fill out any spaces I left. I will also be getting the dimensions of the rooms for you and measure the distance of the light from the plants as well to see what you guys think I should change there if anything.
!
