Hi Folks,
This is my first post on the forums. I am not really that new, I have been perusing the threads regularly for about a year as i learned my way through my first grow, I have just never had a desire to post before. I don't really get into the whole social media thing, largely because I don't feel that I have anything important to add to the discussion most of the time. This time, however, is about getting guidance and feedback to be a better grower and to be a part of a community around something I enjoy very much.
I'll apologize in advance for the verbosity of the post, I tried to be thorough but that can sometimes wind up as long winded.
------------Boring background TL
R stuff-----------------
I'll make the background here short. My wife has really bad back pain, PTSD and depression. She was on 13 hard core medications and we weren't even 30 yet. At the suggestion and insistence of some acquaintances, friends, mentors and even doctors she tried the herb. Looks like mother Earth's remedy works better than man's cause she has been able to drop all but 3 of the meds. We were living in the south and neither of us really enjoyed going to the seedy side of town to meet our connection and we certainty didn't appreciate being labeled criminals for something that wasn't affecting anyone around us. Our families weren't much help in either regard, military and cops, go figure. So we moved to Washington state, no regrets.
My wife has her medical license and I do the growing. Something about it is very calming after a long day of work. The plants can be frustrating for sure, but the don't talk back or argue. They tell you everything you need to know if you can just read the signs right.
--------The setup------------
I have upgraded my equipment over the last year as I became more emotionally invested in the outcome. My pride wants me to get the most/best yields I can, even if I don't need them all
Currently I have 2 tents:
2'X2'X3' used for cloning and some vegging
3'X3'X6' used to finish vegging and flowering
I started with some simple LED light bulbs but I soon expanded
300 watts Mars LED
2x 600 watt VipraSpectra v600 LED
I use the 300 Watt in the smaller tent by itself. It seems to give off just the right amount of light based on where I place it that I can do seedlings or clones in the front of the tent and larger plants in the back.
In the larger 3x3 tent I have the 2 600 watt lights almost side by side at around 14-16 inches from the tops of the plant. I have had plants suffer from light burn before but this Pineapple Express doesn't seem to mind in the least.
For ventilation I have a larger inline fan with a carbon filter in the 3x3 tent that is on a variable speed controller currently set to max speed to handle the heat from the 2 600W lights. The smaller tent also has an inline fan though much smaller and I don't currently have the carbon filter hooked up, it just isn't necessary at this point in time.
I use 1 and 5 gallon smart pots with a local organic soil called Recipe 420 - Emerald Triangle Blend. I throw in a pinch of earthworm castings and I add some vermiculite and perlite, about 2 handfuls each.
I use tap water that has sat out for a few days in a bucket to let the chlorine evaporate. I PH it to roughly 6.0, however I recently broke my PH test meter so my accuracy on that has decreased for the moment. For nutes I went with FoxFarm Grow Big and Tiger Bloom. I generally mix roughly 3 table spoons worth of the correct solution with 1 gallon of water for a full-grown plant every other feeding. At full tilt I have to water each plant every 3 or so days or risk the plant drying out. I spray my girls twice a day usually until the go into flowering.
The 3x3 tent has a small clip on fan to circulate the air. It does not oscillate unfortunately but it seems to get some good airflow at the canopy level.
--------------My First Grow------------
I bought a small amount of seeds from Amsterdam Seed Bank. 3 Northern Lights, 3 AK-47 extreme, 3 Borderline, and 5 pineapple express (these were the free seeds). I started the pineapple express first because we had the most of them and failure would be less detrimental. It took us to our 4th seed to get one right. I kept it in the greenhouse outside with some extra lights to give it the proper light cycle for about a month and a half. That’s when I bought the Mars Hydro 300 watt LED. I vegged her for another month or so and then flipped her into flowering.
I didn’t notice anything that looked odd during the flowering period and she was producing some nice looking buds so I just kept doing what I was doing. I finally cut her down after around 7 or 8 weeks. I didn’t exactly keep a log. I used a dehumidifier to dry her out at 60% RH for a few days, then at 55 for a few more, then finally at 50. I put the buds in jars and burped them once a day for a few weeks. I forgot to weigh the buds before the drying but all told after trimming about ¾ of an ounce off I still netted around 4.3 ounces. Not bad for my first attempt I figure.
The buds were extremely fluffy, not at all like what I buy at the stores but they are still plenty potent for a couple of beginners like me and my wife. 1/3 gram usually sets my mind right but I am a noob at this so that will probably expand later
. My wife usually smokes the other 2/3rds to finish out the joint 
.
--------------My Second Grow: The Girl with Flowers--------------
I have a monster cropped Pineapple Express plant in the flowering stage at the moment. She went into 12/12 over a week’s time, culminating on February 14th. Mostly a coincidence on that date, I think. By monster cropped I mean that I took the clone in about the 3rd week of flowering from my first plant. This thing is crazy branchy. I am actually a little worried that I let it get too branchy. Many of the branches are still pretty thin and I am not sure they will hold up the fully formed buds. Lessons learned the hard way I suppose, but since this plant is SCroGged I can just tie the tips to the netting.
This girl finally started popping flower pistils about 2 days ago. As I mentioned in the equipment section she is under 2 vipraspectra v600 lights at about 14-16” distance. There is also an exhale 365 CO2 bag in this tent. The lights come on at around 10:30 am and go off around 10:30 at night. The exhaust fan is on the same timing at the moment. I water her every 3 days with nutes every other watering. I stopped spraying water on her once the pistils started showing.
The room does not seem to go over 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the RH stays around 30 to 40%. Watering days tend to make the RH go a bit higher but not for too long.
-----------------Vegging: Current crop--------------
I am apparently absolutely terrible at keeping seeds alive in the first week or so. I managed to pop 2 of the Northern Lights seeds with no issue but then they would just slowly die. I think I had too much light and water. Luckily the 3rd time is the charm and the final seed is going strong after 3 weeks. At the same time I also started one of the AK-47 extreme seeds and she is also going strong.
I had already taken a few clones from the current Pineapple Express and 2 of them managed to survive. I took another set of clones just for giggles and managed to get one of them to stick so there are now 3 Pineapple Express clones in veg alongside the Northern Lights and AK-47 extreme. My hope if that there will still be enough room in the small tent to continue vegging all of these until my other plant is done flowering in another 6 weeks or so.
I intend to use one of the clones to hermie into a male so I can make some more seeds for the Pineapple Express since I am down to only 1 seed now. I have read a few threads about using colloidal silver to do this.
I am planning to create a fogger cloning box to up my clone success percentages. I am at about 1 in 5 at the moment, if that, so almost anything would be an improvement. I have been using Root Tech cloning gel but I think my real reason for failure has been just too much water in the rockwool rotting out the bottom stem.
Anyways, my intentions here are to get comments on how to be a better grower and to log some of my successes and mistakes. Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for more updates over the coming weeks.
This is my first post on the forums. I am not really that new, I have been perusing the threads regularly for about a year as i learned my way through my first grow, I have just never had a desire to post before. I don't really get into the whole social media thing, largely because I don't feel that I have anything important to add to the discussion most of the time. This time, however, is about getting guidance and feedback to be a better grower and to be a part of a community around something I enjoy very much.
I'll apologize in advance for the verbosity of the post, I tried to be thorough but that can sometimes wind up as long winded.
------------Boring background TL
R stuff-----------------I'll make the background here short. My wife has really bad back pain, PTSD and depression. She was on 13 hard core medications and we weren't even 30 yet. At the suggestion and insistence of some acquaintances, friends, mentors and even doctors she tried the herb. Looks like mother Earth's remedy works better than man's cause she has been able to drop all but 3 of the meds. We were living in the south and neither of us really enjoyed going to the seedy side of town to meet our connection and we certainty didn't appreciate being labeled criminals for something that wasn't affecting anyone around us. Our families weren't much help in either regard, military and cops, go figure. So we moved to Washington state, no regrets.
My wife has her medical license and I do the growing. Something about it is very calming after a long day of work. The plants can be frustrating for sure, but the don't talk back or argue. They tell you everything you need to know if you can just read the signs right.
--------The setup------------
I have upgraded my equipment over the last year as I became more emotionally invested in the outcome. My pride wants me to get the most/best yields I can, even if I don't need them all
Currently I have 2 tents:
2'X2'X3' used for cloning and some vegging
3'X3'X6' used to finish vegging and flowering
I started with some simple LED light bulbs but I soon expanded
300 watts Mars LED
2x 600 watt VipraSpectra v600 LED
I use the 300 Watt in the smaller tent by itself. It seems to give off just the right amount of light based on where I place it that I can do seedlings or clones in the front of the tent and larger plants in the back.
In the larger 3x3 tent I have the 2 600 watt lights almost side by side at around 14-16 inches from the tops of the plant. I have had plants suffer from light burn before but this Pineapple Express doesn't seem to mind in the least.
For ventilation I have a larger inline fan with a carbon filter in the 3x3 tent that is on a variable speed controller currently set to max speed to handle the heat from the 2 600W lights. The smaller tent also has an inline fan though much smaller and I don't currently have the carbon filter hooked up, it just isn't necessary at this point in time.
I use 1 and 5 gallon smart pots with a local organic soil called Recipe 420 - Emerald Triangle Blend. I throw in a pinch of earthworm castings and I add some vermiculite and perlite, about 2 handfuls each.
I use tap water that has sat out for a few days in a bucket to let the chlorine evaporate. I PH it to roughly 6.0, however I recently broke my PH test meter so my accuracy on that has decreased for the moment. For nutes I went with FoxFarm Grow Big and Tiger Bloom. I generally mix roughly 3 table spoons worth of the correct solution with 1 gallon of water for a full-grown plant every other feeding. At full tilt I have to water each plant every 3 or so days or risk the plant drying out. I spray my girls twice a day usually until the go into flowering.
The 3x3 tent has a small clip on fan to circulate the air. It does not oscillate unfortunately but it seems to get some good airflow at the canopy level.
--------------My First Grow------------
I bought a small amount of seeds from Amsterdam Seed Bank. 3 Northern Lights, 3 AK-47 extreme, 3 Borderline, and 5 pineapple express (these were the free seeds). I started the pineapple express first because we had the most of them and failure would be less detrimental. It took us to our 4th seed to get one right. I kept it in the greenhouse outside with some extra lights to give it the proper light cycle for about a month and a half. That’s when I bought the Mars Hydro 300 watt LED. I vegged her for another month or so and then flipped her into flowering.
I didn’t notice anything that looked odd during the flowering period and she was producing some nice looking buds so I just kept doing what I was doing. I finally cut her down after around 7 or 8 weeks. I didn’t exactly keep a log. I used a dehumidifier to dry her out at 60% RH for a few days, then at 55 for a few more, then finally at 50. I put the buds in jars and burped them once a day for a few weeks. I forgot to weigh the buds before the drying but all told after trimming about ¾ of an ounce off I still netted around 4.3 ounces. Not bad for my first attempt I figure.
The buds were extremely fluffy, not at all like what I buy at the stores but they are still plenty potent for a couple of beginners like me and my wife. 1/3 gram usually sets my mind right but I am a noob at this so that will probably expand later
. My wife usually smokes the other 2/3rds to finish out the joint .
--------------My Second Grow: The Girl with Flowers--------------
I have a monster cropped Pineapple Express plant in the flowering stage at the moment. She went into 12/12 over a week’s time, culminating on February 14th. Mostly a coincidence on that date, I think. By monster cropped I mean that I took the clone in about the 3rd week of flowering from my first plant. This thing is crazy branchy. I am actually a little worried that I let it get too branchy. Many of the branches are still pretty thin and I am not sure they will hold up the fully formed buds. Lessons learned the hard way I suppose, but since this plant is SCroGged I can just tie the tips to the netting.
This girl finally started popping flower pistils about 2 days ago. As I mentioned in the equipment section she is under 2 vipraspectra v600 lights at about 14-16” distance. There is also an exhale 365 CO2 bag in this tent. The lights come on at around 10:30 am and go off around 10:30 at night. The exhaust fan is on the same timing at the moment. I water her every 3 days with nutes every other watering. I stopped spraying water on her once the pistils started showing.
The room does not seem to go over 80 degrees Fahrenheit and the RH stays around 30 to 40%. Watering days tend to make the RH go a bit higher but not for too long.
-----------------Vegging: Current crop--------------
I am apparently absolutely terrible at keeping seeds alive in the first week or so. I managed to pop 2 of the Northern Lights seeds with no issue but then they would just slowly die. I think I had too much light and water. Luckily the 3rd time is the charm and the final seed is going strong after 3 weeks. At the same time I also started one of the AK-47 extreme seeds and she is also going strong.
I had already taken a few clones from the current Pineapple Express and 2 of them managed to survive. I took another set of clones just for giggles and managed to get one of them to stick so there are now 3 Pineapple Express clones in veg alongside the Northern Lights and AK-47 extreme. My hope if that there will still be enough room in the small tent to continue vegging all of these until my other plant is done flowering in another 6 weeks or so.
I intend to use one of the clones to hermie into a male so I can make some more seeds for the Pineapple Express since I am down to only 1 seed now. I have read a few threads about using colloidal silver to do this.
I am planning to create a fogger cloning box to up my clone success percentages. I am at about 1 in 5 at the moment, if that, so almost anything would be an improvement. I have been using Root Tech cloning gel but I think my real reason for failure has been just too much water in the rockwool rotting out the bottom stem.
Anyways, my intentions here are to get comments on how to be a better grower and to log some of my successes and mistakes. Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for more updates over the coming weeks.
