First Grow, Super Lemon Haze, aero, from seeds

SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
Thanks to the lovelies here on RIU I decided to take the plunge. Nov 1st my tent and light arrived so I started building out my system. Currently I'm growing 10 Super Lemon Haze, 2 Cheese Candy and 1 Holy Grail (the last three seeds were Herbie freebies!).

Design: I started out with Stinkbud's system in mind but am rethinking parts of it. The plants are sitting in the aero-cloner and doing nicely.

  • Tent is a 4x4x7 from Virtual Sun, sitting in the garage, plenty of room.
  • Lights are this system here. I know that's not the best system out there but money is super tight until after the first, I can expand/improve lighting at that time.
  • Venting is a simple inline fan pulling through the hood into the garage, which will get cold this winter. I'm hoping that keeps it at an acceptable temp.
  • Water is being ph-balanced and treated with GH's trio. Currently keeping the nutes low since they're still in seedling stage.
Grow: I started the seeds before I was really ready, so getting the tent setup was a bit of a scramble. Regardless it's working out nicely. I started the seeds in rapid rooter. They are all sitting in 2" net pots filled with washed aquarium rocks.

So far my only problem was the initial setup of the cloner. I didn't have a powerful enough pump and several of the rapid rooters dried out completely!! I know I set several of the girls back quite a bit with that fuckup, but we're past it now.

Hope everyone enjoys. Here are some pics. The last one has some burnt tips so I dialed the nutes pretty far back. Should help her recover.

Oh, I know 600w is a bit low for this many plants, but after the first I'm adding another 600w which should get me plenty of light.
 

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Cornishi

Cornishi

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SativaSumo said:
Fuckin' sweet! Let me know when you start it up, I'll follow yours too!
Click to expand...
Will prolly be late January when I pop em. They'll be strange as for auto's they're meant to be super fussy. Preferring 16/8 lights instead of 20/4.

Will be something new anyhow.
Wish I'd had picked a bigger grow room but sadly I can only get 4 plants in my space with my air pots.
 
SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
Not sure of the day count since the seeds went in at two different times. Let's just call it 17 days, making Nov 1st the official day of the en-seedening. Is that a word??

Anyway, I came in tonight and found water on the lid of the res. Turns out my new pump blew a spray head out! Look at the image of the spray assembly, on the left side. @Atomizer would appreciate that! :)

Gonna hit up the "my plant is sick" forum about the one plant with curled in leaves. Beyond that I think they look great. The roots aren't as developed as I would have hoped (again with the issues with some of the net pots and rapid rooters drying out completely!) but I think they just need an extra week or two in veg before I start working with them for real.
 

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TopDogTHC

TopDogTHC

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Looking good. Mine are curled too. Only the first set though. Would be interesting to see what answers you get about it.
 
SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
OK, Turkey Day and a really bad bout of flu sweeping through the house have prevented regular updates. I've finally completed my variation of Stinkbud's setup. I only have two rails with ten pots in them total. There's room for at least one more rail, if I wanted it, but I think ten plants in a 4x4 are more than adequate. On the other hand, even with ten in there, the girls still have plenty of room to spread out. Also, it's kinda hard to see but the crossbars are adjustable up and down. I can move either the light or the rails to get the amount of "sunlight" my ladies want. Not sure how useful that will be, but it's there if needed.

This is the end of their fourth week (seeded about Nov 1st) and I'm giving them a few more days before starting to FIM/Top them. The really big girl in the back left is a cheese candy and she's so damn tall that FIM'ing won't work, I'll be topping her back to about the same height at the rest of the ladies. My current goal is to flip them sometime around the middle of the month, or no later than Xmas day. Harvest sometime around middle of March and smoking this by April? Herbie's site says these ladies run 9-10 weeks of flower, so I guess that's about right.

All in all I'm super happy with how this grow is going. Two main concerns are:

  1. The movable crossbars are a good idea but the PVC pipe isn't strong enough and will start to sag as the ladies get heavier. I'll need to reinforce that at some point. Probably will just change out the PVC horizontal with a wooden dowel of the same size.
  2. The garage is starting to get funky. I don't have a filter yet, but will get it soon. Will NEED to get it soon. Already it smells like someone just hit a pipe in there. :) Can't imagine what it will smell like when I flip the ladies. Can't wait!!
 

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SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
So I done fucked up, real good. Fortunately my girls are hardy and recovering nicely. What did I do? About a week ago I let the res go dry and didn't catch it for almost 48 hours. When I opened up the tent all those beautiful leaves were laying down, completely dehydrated and they looked like a salad that had been microwaved on High for 10 minutes. Ugh. I immediately replaced the water and the perked back up. But by then many of the leaves were already damaged, with dead spots and deformities in them.

In the past week new growth has taken over. I just spent about an hour working on the system and making sure they are nice and healthy. Most of the damaged leaves have been trimmed and I'm giving them a few more days to clean up.

Honestly, I've never felt so bad for doing something to a plant before. Last week when I found my ladies in such dire straits, I was out in the garage refreshing the rez and just apologizing to them over and over and over. I was dumb for not checking the rez more often.

Oh, I changed them from a 5 gal rez to a 10 gal. Should help prevent operator fuck-up. At least on THAT topic. :)
 
SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
OK, hope everyone had a great holiday. We're in the second week of the new year and its time to post again. Several pics from over the last few weeks to get everyone caught up.

Current status: The ladies are doing great. They are about 3 weeks post-flip and doing well. I haven't seen any indications of hermie's in the group, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. Rez management is good. I recently picked up a Bluelabs EC pen but I'm still a little confused as to which part its supposed to play. At this stage I *think* its supposed to let you know if your ladies are drinking more water or eating more nutes so that you can keep your rez at the right levels w/o replacing the whole thing? Is that about right?

Here's my notes from my first use with the pen...
----
Starting Conditions:
Jan 9th
64 degrees
10g of fresh water from hose at 320ppm

GH Flora series nutes:
Running Wk 9 - 7.5/0.0/15.0
Means 5T/0T/10T
Measured 1200 EC

ph=6.75
Adjusted to 5.75

EC =1130
----​

I ran into an issue with my rails. Turns out I didn't secure them thinking that their weight would hold them in place. However, the plants had different ideas. If you see the pic attached of the rails you can see that the one on the left is kicked WAY out of level. Why is this an issue? The damn plants have kicked this so far over that the rail now leaks straight out of the holes the ladies are coming out of! The only solution is a large bucket beneath the rail to catch the drippings. Sigh. Could I possibly force that rail back into level? Sure, but the ladies' main stem is hella thick and strong, and I am hesitant to risk supercropping them an inch above the root stem. :P
 

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SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
Deep into flowering now, not much to report but that they are doing pretty well. I've got two that just won't stop growing, settle in and start making flowers. Not sure what's going on with those ladies. The rest are looking great and doing well.

Next week I'll be getting a USB microscope to start examining trichomes with. Fun fun!
 

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TopDogTHC

TopDogTHC

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You using a jewellers loupe/magnifying glass? I wasn't gunna bother using one but glad I did now or I'd of chopped way to early.
 
SativaSumo

SativaSumo

Well-Known Member
Actually I used to be a professional photog years ago. Still have a little bit of kit. In this case it's a Canon 70D, 50mm 1.4 lens and extension tubes. Nice results overall, but I still have so much to learn about macro photography. Look for more pics over the next few days as I play with the gear. :)
 
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