1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

[WillGrow510]

Hello! So excited to be here. It has been since forever I have smoked down and never really grew before. Now that it's legal in Cali, it's all I can think of. Can't wait for the licenses to come out, so I'm growing my own! So, after much research, here we are:

Thai Stick Seeds purchased from supplier in the U.K.
Soil is Black Magic potting mix with about 30% MG pearlite. I know, I know. Only option I had at the time.
4x 42w CFLS 2700 2,650 lumens each
3x 40w CFLS 2700 2,750 lumens each
No reflectors, yet.
2x cheap 45w (25w actual) red and blue spectrum LED panels 9,000 lumens each
So, about 340 actual watts and about 36,850 lumens. I will have the CFLs hanging on the top pointed down and the LED panels on the side giving them some side illumination.

I will have a custom cab I'm making that has a 3'x4' pallet as a base with 2" reflective rigid foam insulation around the edges. The bottom of the pallet and top will be open for air circulation. I will have all lights on a timer running a 18/6 schedule. We will see if I need to adjust temp or humidity after it's all built. It will be sitting on dirt under my house and will stand 4' high.

Right now I have my plants sprouted by soaking in water for 36 hours then putting in wet paper towels. I actually tried to pop 3 different strains for a total of 12 seeds but this is all that took off. Sure it's my lack of ability, but by all accounts they all should have popped. Oh well. At least I have the 4 Thai Sticks and at least they are all the same strain. That's good. They are regular seeds so we'll just have to see how many are going to be female.

So, the four seeds all cracked around 12/12. I put them into Jiffy pellets and they emerged on 12/19. This I will call day one veg. I have them under one of the LED panels in a temperature controlled box at 72 deg just to get them established. They are going well now. I am still working on my cab. Hopefully it will be ready to roll soon.

No nutes for now. The pearlite has a few nutes in it. I will be using General Organics Go Box when the time comes.

So I'm certain you figured it out. Cheap DIY start to see how it goes. I will probably upgrade at some point, but just playing around now. Total investment including seeds at this point is about $150.

 

[WillGrow510]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

 

[illizm775]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

Like the set up and would like to sit in. Love to see those babies in action. :thumbs:

each to their own and mine to smoke

 

[Killian]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

I was thinking about growing Thai stick and Old School together in a future grow. Are you planning on doing some training? Sativa's can get quite tall and it sounds like you are limited on height.

 

[WillGrow510]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

Like the set up and would like to sit in. Love to see those babies in action. :thumbs:

each to their own and mine to smoke

Welcome Illizm. Happy you're here!

I was thinking about growing Thai stick and Old School together in a future grow. Are you planning on doing some training? Sativa's can get quite tall and it sounds like you are limited on height.

Hey Killian, welcome. Ya, fer sure some training. I have been looking at a lot of grows with this strain and it is clear this is probably not the best choice for my first run. But I had to order some seeds and have learned so much from then to now. I will make it work and keep training them to grow out rather than up. The good news is the four foot limit is to the walls on my cab but I have another foot or more until I run out of vertical space. I already have other seeds I purchased that are much better suited to my skill and growing environment, but we'll play against the odds and see how these turn out. I'm a big fan of "play to your strengths". Thai Stick, first time grow under a house with CFLs AINT it.

Thanks for stopping by! Would love to see an Old School grow alongside some Thai Stick.

 

[Weaselcracker]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

What breeder are the Thai Stick seeds from?

 

[WillGrow510]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

What breeder are the Thai Stick seeds from?

Marijuana-seeds

 

[WillGrow510]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

So I came across Snuggs tutorial on this site that demonstrates how to make a cheap CFL reflector. Looks like I'm gonna end up making two of these. Pretty cool, looks easy. I'll update after I get it done, but for now, here's a photo from Snuggs post. Madddd reppppps.

 

[WillGrow510]

re: 1st Grow Thai Stick CFL & LED 340 Real Watts Soil With Gen Organics

Quick update:

Got the cab erected (hehe). It's real stuffy under the house. I may need to funnel some air into the cab from outside. Shouldn't be hard. We'll see. I just put one of the sets of lights in there to check it out for now.

Also I FIMed my plants for the first time. We'll see how they respond to that. I'm hoping I can finish the cab tomorrow and maybe the lights. It's been raining out here like crazy.

Looking to repot them into 3 gallon fabric pots real soon too.

Cheers!

 

[WillGrow510]

Quick update:

Got the cab completed. Initial temps sitting at 61 degF, but I'm sure it's going to go up. I will feel good so long as it sits around 65-68ish. Got the fan going just enough to stir the air and give a tiny breeze. I also put in a small 40w heater in their to help a little. Initial humidity is around 65%. I will have to see how the temps and humidity settle down in this new set up.

Also transplanted the boys and girls. Gave them half strength Gen Organics for the first time. They were drooping just a bit a little after transplant. I'm thinking they will perk back up a bit. Got some good shots of the roots. Sprinkled a little Mycos on the roots and in the hole where I transplanted them into.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks and cheers!

 

[Killian]

Looking healthy. That plant has a great root structure so your watering habits must be spot on. Nice start.

 

[WillGrow510]

Week "4" Veg Update

Okay. I'm calling this a week "4" update because We suffered a misstep and have to set the clock back so the plants have time to recover. When I transplanted, I made the new soil far too wet. They stopped growing and got very droopy. It was like this for over a week until the soil finally dried out enough so the roots could take on some more oxygen. I mixed in a full range of the Gen Organics at half strength to a gallon of water and mixed that whole gallon of water into a 12 gallon mix of black gold potting soil with pearlite. Whoops. So, here we are now. About 10-11 days after. The plants have somewhat bounced back and have started growing again. I have decided that any future watering I do will be shaken up real well to aerate it so the roots can get even more O2. Mixed up 1 liter of water with more GO nutes at half strength that ended up being about 500ppm and split it up umong all 4 plants. We'll see how that does. Less is more as I learn to get a feel for how,these guys are responding. Note. Do not over water. Learn how to properly water and transplant. There is so much information out there. Don't assume you know. It seems intuitive. It's not. Don't assume you know... you may end up having to add weeks to your grow to allow time for your plants to recover. Lol. So, the pics are here. I will work on my CFL grow light hoods this weeeknd.

Cheers!

 

[WillGrow510]

Quick update, plants looked great last night. Lots of new light green growth on all four. You can really tell when they respond to something. They seemed to significantly grow up and out. Looks like the water level and nutes are where they need to be. No more droopy yellow leaves. I'm not pHing anything at this point due to the belief that e soil is automatically regulating this and I'm not pouring a ton of fertilizer on them. This weekend I'll do a little LST and take some more pics. Just in two days growth, I can see I'll have trouble with height on this strain unless I work hard at keeping them trained. They are 4 weeks old, but spent over a week trying to recover from the overwatering. Any thoughts or comments are surely welcome. Thank you for looking.

 

[WillGrow510]

Another update, Got the reflectors in so now I'm rocking 7x 42w CFL's. Gonna be 8 just as soon as I can replace a broken Y splitter. Turned off the 2 25w LEDS just because they are positioned too high to do anything now and honestly the plants are completely bathed in the warm CFL light. So, I watered very lightly with a nutes mix of about 550 ppm of Gen Organics. Used my pH kit for the first time and had to add a good bit of pH up to get it to 6.5. Not that it needs to be pHed, but wanted to try it out seeing as I'm going to coco on the next grow. Also did a little topping and LST'ing. Gonna check them out over the next week. Right now they are averaging around 10"-11" tall. Trying to even out the canopy before throwing the switch to 12/12. More photos soon.

Cheers.

 

[WillGrow510]

Okay. Here's a shot trying to get an idea of sex in pre-flower. Hard for me to tell. Also, looks like I got some singed tips. Hard to believe it's from over feeding. Only fed twice in their lives and both times was around 500ppm. Do you have any ideas?

Peace.

 

[WillGrow510]

Well, here are some photos of where we are now.

Thai Stick A

Thai Stick B

Thai Stick C

Thai Stick D

I gave them a watering with plain water. Not too much. They were pretty dry. In 3 gallon pots with soil, I add about a quart of water. Later today, they were visibly droopy and noticed some very slight eagle claw and slightly singed tips on a few of the leaves. A couple of the top leaves were a little twisted too. Weird. We'll see how it works out. My thought now is I watered them a bit too much and a bit too much nutes. I have not fed them much at all, only twice now in 4 weeks at about 550ppm. So, maybe this strain likes very light watering with very light nutes? Perhaps another problem?

Thanks!

 

[Killian]

I'm on my first grow so I don't have much experience but to me it looks like your on the right track. The plants look much healthier than the previous pictures.

 

[WillGrow510]

Family photo with a new Purple Haze Auto Fem baby in the back ground.

 

[ThaiStick]

WillGrow . . . subscribed to this thread very interested to see how it goes
Love the Thai Stick from when I was in the USN back in the last century, it left a lasting impression.
Have some Sweet Thai seeds from Sweet Seeds lined up for my next grow so I hope to learn something following you.
Looks like we are off to a good start.

 

[unwindingcarr]

what is your ph of your water and ppm going I use general organics my ppm is normally around 700 1400 if I double feed grown a variety of strains now never had and issu with nut burn.