First Time - A Family Grow

[macd420]

So, we had some trouble posting over the weekend but here's the latest.

As we mentioned we had some babies that were struggling after maybe drying them out a bit to much and also allowing them to jump up way to fast in in the first week. We think our lights should have been much lower and we also used a warm light that we maybe we shouldn't have used very early. So, we had some band-aids on them to hold them up and we increased the watering a little at first to give them a drink and pop up again, then mostly spray on the soil when they were dry not to over water. We continued once a day feeding of 2 teaspoons of nutrient water with a ph balance of 6.5. This was also wrong in the first few weeks and we had a ph level of about 7.5. Couple of other changes through the weekend were: added root complex to water on Saturday (Day 13). Still thought we might be too far from the light lifted with books on Sunday (Day 14).

I am happy to say they did very well over the weekend. Here's how each of them have done over the past few days: The first picture in each group is Day 11 at the start of the Band-Aid stage when everything got a little too dry, the second is Day 13 after changing to spray and regular feedings, third is Day 16 today.

D1 - First to start growing out of soil was really struggling come day 11 and we really had to prop her up. I am happy to say she made it through nicely and we are working on continued strengthening of the trunk.


D2 - Has remained a little bit shorter than the other Ds and has been a slow grower, which is not a bad thing from what i hear. She was having some trouble by day 11 with opening up her leaves but the increased moisture did the trick and she appears much happier with this mix.


D3 - Was the one that started a little late but then climbed past D1 and D3 after the first few days but then slowed down and a few others have past her since. She too was struggling by Day 11 but has also done well over the weekend and is well on her way to recovery.


D4 - Was in a lot of trouble and really had to be held up with some tight wire to get her to stand up at all as of Day 11. By Day 13 she was looking good tho and the leave growth has been good. Now she is standing on her own and looking quite strong again.


D5 - Could be the best one of the whole bunch right now. It didn't look outstanding by Day 11 or anything but it wasn't really hurting either, but by Day13 and now Day 16 she has undergone some really nice leaf growth. we can clearly see the 2nd set of leaves with 3 separate leaf parts and we can also see the start of the 3rd set of leaves as well. She is getting close to the Vegetative Phase.


D6 - Is a little bit skinny right now. The leaves remain small and almost rolled under a little bit. She is looking stronger and still doing OK. Her first pic can been seen with D5 above here are the others.


D7 - I don't have a day 11 picture of D7 but you can see her root exposed in the earlier picture above. This is the one that always sort of grew out of the soil strange. Ultimately we ended up covering some of the exposed stem because of the way it was growing and I think it looks better. It is much lower to the ground than the others because of this but its leaf growth looks good. In this most recent picture you can see some white residue on the leaves. This happened over night. I have been regularly spraying the leaves since we when dry on Day 11 and the improvements have been good but I think this white is due to the spray. However, I did lift the plants yesterday getting them closer to the light and I noticed this today for the first time. I think that the water on the leaves was dried too quickly because of the light and the water. I am going to reduce the spray and i have lowered them back to what they were because I have noticed some of the other plants being burnt on the edges just a bit.



I will continue with the Jiffy Cups later on.

 

[Buddy_Williams]

just abit of advice, you will be able to make all the little ones grow bushier (so to speak) just by simply cover the stem with abit extra soil....keeping the seedling from stretching....and that all depends on wether or not you have enough room in those cups to do that........

just my .02, keep it up....wish ya the best

BW

 

[macd420]

So, I have been reviewing the current state for all of the plants. I just finished up the Dixie Cups and this one is about the Jiffy Cups since the dry out time on the 11th day. For the most part the Jiffy cups were in better shape during the dry time that occurred last week. Remember in our case the Jiffy Cups are also a day behind the Dixie Cups since they started slower and were not put into the cups until a day later. So the Jiffy's are a little shorter which is good and some look quite good but others not so great.

The first set is J1 - J4. All of these are doing well and look good with the leaf growth and strength of the plant itself. Here is a Day 11 pictures with them all in the foreground and J4 behind J1 in the first pic and then each of them alone on Day 13.


By Day 16 they all continue to do well maintaining good leaf growth. They are a little behind that of D5 but I really like J2,3 and 4.


J5 - J7 have not been doing as well. This was the group that was having trouble loosing the seed shell and has been a stick without the head popped off for a while now. J7 was doing better but really didn't want to open all the way up either. Heres a picture of Day 11, J7 is behind J6 with the leaves closed.


By Day 13, J6 didn't make it and I took it out of the group, J5 doesn't look to be too far behind that and may not make it either. J7 on the other hand has opened its leaves and looks like it wants to try. We are hoping for a late bloomer on this one and hope she makes it. This is how J5 and J7 look currently.

 

[macd420]

just abit of advice, you will be able to make all the little ones grow bushier (so to speak) just by simply cover the stem with abit extra soil....keeping the seedling from stretching....and that all depends on wether or not you have enough room in those cups to do that........

just my .02, keep it up....wish ya the best

BW

Buddy, thanks. we have been trying to figure out how to do that in the existing cups as you say also not sure if it should be done a little at a time or not. they have continued to look good and the leaves are getting bigger now and the upward growth has slowed down. I am worried they will become top heavy if some of the root is not covered. Right now I was hoping to wait till we get to the bigger pots, which is suppose to be soon. I have heard 3 weeks in these little pots and I have heard wait until you see 3 sets of leaves. We are close to both of those, maybe by the weekend.

 

[macd420]

So, couple days since the last post and run down of all the girls. Have noticed a couple of things and continue to make minor changes to keep things going well. First we saw a lot of the white residue on the leaves again, even after dropping them back down away from the light on Monday. So we changed out the water in the spray bottle from the mixture of nutrients to just plain water and also limited the spraying to once, maybe twice a day.

We also lost J5, this is the other one that never really popped the shell off and was a single stick. She was dead as of 9am Day 18. I did a quick look at the root base to see what was going on. There was very little root as expected and the soil was loose and dry. This little one really needed more water and should have been left to grow in the incubator in a wet moist environment longer than it did along with J6.

Having looked at J5 I was curious what was going on with J7, there only slightly bigger sister, so i decided to pick her up a bit since she is quite short and away from the light. After considering that I also picked up D2 and D7 to get them closer to the light as well. Both of these plants were buried in the soil and their cups were very wet and almost broke apart. I am happy we found this I think we want them to dry out a bit to get the roots to run and get strong.

We have some really good leaf growth on a few plants and are hoping to put them in bigger pots over the weekend. I could use some advice on this. Does anyone think that some of these plants are ready for that or will be in a few days? I have heard when we see 3 sets of leaves growing. we are at the start of that now and will be much bigger by Saturday. Also, I am hoping to bury some of the trunk in the soil when i transplant to make it shorter. How much is safe to do? I don't want to bury too much and kill it.

 

[Buddy_Williams]

So, couple days since the last post and run down of all the girls. Have noticed a couple of things and continue to make minor changes to keep things going well. First we saw a lot of the white residue on the leaves again, even after dropping them back down away from the light on Monday. So we changed out the water in the spray bottle from the mixture of nutrients to just plain water and also limited the spraying to once, maybe twice a day.

We also lost J5, this is the other one that never really popped the shell off and was a single stick. She was dead as of 9am Day 18. I did a quick look at the root base to see what was going on. There was very little root as expected and the soil was loose and dry. This little one really needed more water and should have been left to grow in the incubator in a wet moist environment longer than it did along with J6.

Having looked at J5 I was curious what was going on with J7, there only slightly bigger sister, so i decided to pick her up a bit since she is quite short and away from the light. After considering that I also picked up D2 and D7 to get them closer to the light as well. Both of these plants were buried in the soil and their cups were very wet and almost broke apart. I am happy we found this I think we want them to dry out a bit to get the roots to run and get strong.

We have some really good leaf growth on a few plants and are hoping to put them in bigger pots over the weekend. I could use some advice on this. Does anyone think that some of these plants are ready for that or will be in a few days? I have heard when we see 3 sets of leaves growing. we are at the start of that now and will be much bigger by Saturday. Also, I am hoping to bury some of the trunk in the soil when i transplant to make it shorter. How much is safe to do? I don't want to bury too much and kill it.
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I know that there was a topic out there in these forums (Rollitup), for issues just like this.......I just can't remember for the life of me what the title of it was.....at any rate i'll try to give you the jist of what it was about. The guy had made a cloning box out of a small fish tank, seran wrap, peat pellets, and a waterbed heating pad.....

He covered the opening of the fish tank, about 2/3rd's in the seran wrap, leaving (what looked like to me) a 2 to 2 1/2 in. gap for air. He also had a picture of three clones side-by-side, showing the correct way to bury the peat pellet.

At any rate man, once i find that link....I'll post it to you asap......very informative....

Hope I was able to help,

BW

 

[macd420]

thanks buddy, sounds interesting.

I did take your advice and have replanted all of them into larger cups. Nothing too big at this point because I have heard that this can be dangerous but I figured can't be any more dangerous then letting them go too long without good support. I moved half the first day and wanted to see how they did. The looked ok this morning so I did the rest today. The Jiffy pots were very easy to transplant without any issues really. The Dixie cups were a little harder. Hoping now that they are getting enough water. Any advice on if I should now increase watering because of the new cup size or if I should just continue with 2 tsps for a while longer.

 

[bonze309]

When using cfl lighting you need to put to light rite on top of the plant almost touching. You will see a big change! Will help out alot. Just tryn to lend a hand. Good luck will be watching. Another thing when transplanting let them dry out a lil bit will be much much easier to work with next time.

 

[macd420]

When using cfl lighting you need to put to light rite on top of the plant almost touching. You will see a big change! Will help out alot. Just tryn to lend a hand. Good luck will be watching. Another thing when transplanting let them dry out a lil bit will be much much easier to work with next time.

Bonze309, thanks for the advice. We are trying to keep them as close to the light as we can, we have been pretty consistent at about 4" from the bulb itself. I worry about getting too close because we have seen some burning of the leaves already, which is likely due to the spray that we used to put on them. We have stopped the spray and are waiting for the plants to recover from the burning leaves before we try to get them any closer to the light.

 

[macd420]

Well we are still out here and still going. Been a couple of weeks since our last post, busy busy, puff puff pass.

Anyway, we just entered our 6th week and some plants continue to do very well. Others seem to be struggling. As a quick update mentioned briefly before, we have transferred our girls to slightly larger plastic cups about 2 weeks ago and we buried them deeper to help create a stronger bushier plant. Seems to be working ok for some. We have lost one more plant and some others are struggling a little. We have at least one that seems to be doing very well and is 4" tall. We continue to feed daily two teaspoons of water (10ml) and have adjusts some of the plants closer to the light for some of the smaller plants.

Here are some new pics.

 

[mammal]

somthings not right there mate, im no master grower so i cant tell you exactly what, but alot of those plants look 2/3 weeks old not 6.

what the cause is i cant tell you. could be lights/watering/nutes/ph.

 

[macd420]

Well, I have pretty much given up on the Grow Journal as you can tell, but I wanted to post some new pics of our babies in our 16th week now and we started budding. We have 5 plants left all about 18 inches high!

I would like to know if anyone can tell me how long I should be in bud stage and what I am looking for as signs of being done. Kinda hoping for New Years bud at this point.



Any help would be great.

 

[ultimate procrastinator]

They started budding how long ago? You say they've been growing for 4 months? That is long enough for a whole grow cycle, even for a sativa.

 

[macd420]

Yes, started budding a week ago. I was trying to get them to at least 12" and healthy before I started budding. They were under CFLs from the beginning and we had a few periods of bad watering and light which stunted their growth for sometime.

I purchased HPS lights and put them under those about a week ago, they have gone nuts since then. I am thinking of keeping under HPS for about 6 weeks total and then dry them for like 8 weeks.

Does that sound right? I am not too wrapped up on timing but more interested in what i am looking for to know when they are done. I have heard that I will see some red hairs and that they should almost be done at that point.

Thoughts? Anyone?

 

[DrGreen007]

Mate Big Pot BIG PLANT Transplant into big pot as soon as you see the cotyldons the very first leaves as roots will have gone rootbound after a few days in them cups thats yur main prob i go 9 litre to 18 or 6 to 12the time you used for germinatin cud have been used better aswell i find soak the seed in a cup ov water then stir every 6 hours put the cup in dark warm 30 - 35 c when seed sinks usually 6 hours later you plant in your medium i usually put them in a nute soaked sponge called root riots brilliant things and they will have sprouted in roughly 36 hours so 48 hrs you got a plant take them out the humidity dome strate in your first pot under your lite dont feed nutes for first 2 weeks if you got a nice soil the canna range is excellent for skunk plants its made for them
just some advice
check my journals see my method i think it works great
also your plants looked like my very first attempt but honestly they shud have been twice the size if not more
keep it up mate

 

[macd420]

Thanks Dr Green, that is great advice the next time around. I totally agree that they were in small pots for way too long and that restricted root growth and likely got waterlogged too.

Right now they are in 1Gal pots and they seem to be doing fine. They are in Budd stage now and I am trying to know when they are done. What is it that I am looking for to identify when Budd phase is complete?

 

[DrGreen007]

thers loads different ways really somepeople smoke some every few weeks so they can get it how they want it but ive never done like that but if yu do take the bud from the middle just anuff for a pipe\bong or simply by the look when the orange hairs on the buds start turn a little darker and are nice amount ov crystals on the bud yourl no when they ready just look for them sighns and your be ok good look