First Grow - Sugar Blossom / Rubbermaid CFL

[yeldarb]

Hey everyone, After spending a lot of time reading up I decided to embark on m first grow attempt. My goal is to actually have one plant survive, if I get anything to smoke that will be a bonus.

I was trying to figure a good place to buy from and decided on Hemp Depot. There were located in Canada, had a good reputation, and a wide variety. I didn't want spend too much $$$ for my first seeds. Joey Weed seemed to have the best prices and I couldn't find any complaints. I picked Sugar Blossom a hybrid of white widow. I am quite happy with Hemp Depot, took two 1/2 weeks (during Christmas) to get the seeds which were packed quite sneaky.

I decided to go with a rubbermaid stealth set-up with CFL's. I will go into some more detail regarding that later. I will definitely be changing things up for my second grow as my current one is functional, but not perfect. I've learned that proper planning is important. Hindsight is 20/20.

 

[yeldarb]

Jan 9th, 2009 - started to Germ two seeds via paper towel method. One seed was split before beginning. I figured this would be a bad seed and wanted to get it out of the way.

Jan 10th, 2009 - Split seed is doing well! Tap root showing. Other seed showing no signs.

Jan 11th, 2009 - Decided to place both into pots. I am using MG soil and small pots with good drainage. I had an unopened bag of MG and decided to use it. I've been reading that it's not the greatest so I will change next grow. I won't be adding any ferts during veg due to the MG already having slow release.

My temperature is reading 25 C in the box and 20 % humidity. I added two cups of water and humidity is now at 25 - 30 %.


***Question - should I have full lighting on the plants right now??***

 

[yeldarb]

double post

 

[yeldarb]

These are a few pics:

This a pic of the outside of my rubbermaid box. The electrical cable goes through a hole in the top and is held in place with a small clamp. I have the box sitting on styrofoam to get it off the cold concrete. You might not notice in the pic but it glows aaaaaa lot

The camera is in the top of the box looking down. You can really tell the difference between the 6500K and 3000K. Two pots and two cups with water to see if they help with low humidity.

This is my fan. Passive intake. I screwed up the paint by using the first two coats of white spray paint meant for plastic and the third with normal white paint. This screwed up the bond to the rubbermaid, so I have to be very gentle or it peals. I need more coats of paint but I can't risk making it worse. You should definitely cut all holes before painting.

This one here shows by fan and attached "carbon filter". I am using a normal zip-loc container with the top with numerous holes drilled. I bought carbon filters meant for fish tanks that are square. I take the lid off the container put in the filter and close again. I figured it was quick and easy, and made changing filters easy. Hope it works....

 

[yeldarb]

I checked on the seeds last night by gently moving the soil away. The one that had the tap root showing is doing very well. The other that had yet to show any signs had actually cracked and I saw some white . I won't be disturbing them again, I just wanted to know if the second seed was going to produce a plant because I wanted have two in the container ( so I hopefully get one female)

Covered and drip a it of the water from the cups in the container. The water is at the same temp as the soil so it shouldn't shock anything.

My temperature monitor keeps track of max/min temp and humidity. I checked it this morning:

Max Temp:25.4 C
Min Temp: 22.3 C

Max Humidity: 40%
Min Humidity: 20%

I think everything is going good so far.

 

[jimmy130380]

I checked on the seeds last night by gently moving the soil away. The one that had the tap root showing is doing very well. The other that had yet to show any signs had actually cracked and I saw some white . I won't be disturbing them again, I just wanted to know if the second seed was going to produce a plant because I wanted have two in the container ( so I hopefully get one female)

Covered and drip a it of the water from the cups in the container. The water is at the same temp as the soil so it shouldn't shock anything.

My temperature monitor keeps track of max/min temp and humidity. I checked it this morning:

Max Temp:25.4 C
Min Temp: 22.3 C

Max Humidity: 40%
Min Humidity: 20%

I think everything is going good so far.

i like ur filter
is this ur first go i hope this works out 4 you
it looks like a good setup

 

[yeldarb]

I am going to be making a better Rubbermaid Box for my next grow. The current one as too many little things that bother me. I learned from the first one so it wasn't a waste.

The biggest issue I have it being able to know exactly where the lights are as they shift my I place the top. I have to remove the lights and to to get at the plants.

I picked up these two a wal-mart. they were like 7 bucks, like a Post-Christmas clearing sale on all Rubbermaid.

The tops of these flip up which should make things easier. I will be working on this during the grow so it will be ready for round 2. I am going to make sure to paint this one correctly so I have absolutely no glow.

 

[yeldarb]

i like ur filter
is this ur first go i hope this works out 4 you
it looks like a good setup

Thanks man, I have my fingers crossed

 

[yeldarb]

Jan 13th, 2009

So some good and bad news today. The seed that was slow to show a tap root came through the soil today. Nice surprise to open the box to see a bit of green. At this point I got a little paranoid about why the other one didn't come through first. When I put them in the pots the one showed the tap root and the other hadn't cracked its shell. So I then decided to carefully move the soil above the seed to see how it was doing. I'm not sure yet whether this was a bad move or not. I found that both of the cotyledon were there, but one was brown around the tip. I figured I had it too deep or it ran into some on the way up. A bit of the shell was still attached so I tried to remove it..... this didn't work too well as I pulled the whole little seedling out of the ground! .....I carefully placed it back in... and slowly backed out of room before I caused more damage...


Jan 14th, 2009

So Plant A (First seedling) is doing wicked. It like tripled in size in one day. I can see the first set of leaves starting to get bigger. nice.

Plant B doesn't seem to be doing a hell of a lot. One cotyledon is still brown, one if green. I'm hoping that the root system will begin to reestablish and the leaves and stem start growing. Chances are probably slim. Hopefully its a good sign that the one cotyledon is still green and not going brown.

Overall the box seems to be working out pretty good. Temps are staying in a good ranger and the humidity is a bit low but stable. The only annoying aspect of this set-up is making sure the lights are a couple of inches above the seedling. Hard to tell if it changes position when I close the lid.

 

[yeldarb]

Plant A on Jan 13th, 2009. Its like tripled in size between this pic and today.

Plant B on Jan 13th, 2009. It was hard to get a good pic, but this one shows the brown cotyledon curled over the green one. Its kind of adjusted position today. I hope it can still grow and I didn't kill by messing with it earlier. Who knows though, maybe if I hadn't it wouldn't have broke the surface.

 

[fishindog]

Hey man good luck, im subscribed, im also doing a rubbermaid set up check it out if you like

But hey i was thinking that if you were going to make a new rubbermaid setup i would recommend to keep the old one and just veg in it, then take a couple clones and veg those then move the vegged plants to your new set up to flower....

So then you could veg a couple more plants till yours are done flowering and switch em out so you wouldnt have to wait so long between harvests.....just my two sense

Also you should think about scrogging them, i have seen some sweet grows done that way in rubbermaids i can show ya if you would like...anyways im stoned so im done talking good luck

 

[yeldarb]

Hey man good luck, im subscribed, im also doing a rubbermaid set up check it out if you like

But hey i was thinking that if you were going to make a new rubbermaid setup i would recommend to keep the old one and just veg in it, then take a couple clones and veg those then move the vegged plants to your new set up to flower....

So then you could veg a couple more plants till yours are done flowering and switch em out so you wouldnt have to wait so long between harvests.....just my two sense

Also you should think about scrogging them, i have seen some sweet grows done that way in rubbermaids i can show ya if you would like...anyways im stoned so im done talking good luck

I'll definitely be checking out your grow man. Thats actually a pretty good idea to use the old one as a veg box. It would be cool to try to have some clones or something like that. If I do though I will have to do something about the glowing situation. I can't do anything at this point because of the plants, I'll just throw a blanket or something over it and make sure not to plug the ventilation system if I need to.

I'm interested if anything has actually grown/ tried out Sugar Blossom. It is from Hemp Depot,via Joey Weed. It said it was a hybrid of White Widow made to smell lemony. Anybody try/grow/hear anything?

 

[yeldarb]

Here are some pics from tonight:

Plant A is in the green and Plant B is in the orange/brown

I like how A is actually growing

You can kinda see what I was describing about plant B in the close up. My camera can't get any closer without losing focus. Anyone have thoughts about B? Did I kill it earlier?

 

[fishindog]

Here are some pics from tonight:

Plant A is in the green and Plant B is in the orange/brown

I like how A is actually growing

You can kinda see what I was describing about plant B in the close up. My camera can't get any closer without losing focus. Anyone have thoughts about B? Did I kill it earlier?

Just give em a little time, and dont over water, they are young and dont use awhole lot yet...also no nutes for a few weeks

 

[yeldarb]

So its been 1 full week since I started to germinate the seeds. Man its feels like it was a lot longer than 1 week. Plant A seems to have slowed down growth, it looks like I may have caused a bit of a burn of the leaves. I moved the lights up and that seemed to solve that. Today I actually saw it grow a bit so I think it has bounced back. I was looking at other people's pics of their seedlings at 1 week old and A seems to be around average so I'm happy about that.

B does not look good. I have low hopes of recovery at this point but until all I can see is brown leaves I will leave it to see if it can recover from whatever trauma I caused it earlier. Shit. Lesson learned.

I took some pics to upload but my camera will not connect to my computer....I'll try out another camera tomarrow

 

[yeldarb]

So has anyone tried to grow/smoke Sugar Blossom before????

 

[yeldarb]

So Monday Jan 19 th. That will be day 10 since I first began germinating.

I fecked things up a little bit on the weekend, if anyone noticed my thread in plant problems. I ended up burning half of each of my leaves with my cfls. I just moistened the leaves, watered and hoped for the best. A few people suggested I start germinating again because the chances were pretty low for a seedling that young being burnt. So Sunday morning I put two more seeds into some paper towel and plates and began germinating again.

This evening things looked actually better! The burnt ends of the leaves are dried up and are falling off and the inner half looks green and full of life. The new grow in the middle just had the very tips burnt, and have doubled in size from yesterday. I'm happy that it may survive.

Question: Does a lot of stress like this cause a plant to turn male?

If so it is still probably a good idea I germinated two more seeds. That way I should end up with one female (if I don't kill them all!!!) Shit you know, I really didn't think i could screw things up after having read up on it for months. i guess you don't know until you try.

Anyway the germinating seeds look ok, both of the shells seem to have cracked open a tiny little bit, with white showing in one, and nothing yet as the crack is still too small.

Oh I forgot to mention that Plant B, the one I accidentally pulled out when taking its casing off, passed away on saturday. That was not a good overall day for the grow effort.

 

[yeldarb]

Thursday, Jan 22, 2009

Plant A - day 13

I am pretty lucky i think with this one. It has come back and seems to be doing really well. The first set of true leaves is coming in really good. The seedling doesn't seem to be stretching at all which is awesome due to the height constraints of the rubbermaid. Watering every 48 hrs at the moment. No nutes until flowering.

Plant C - day 4

This seed sprouted its root tip Tuesday morning. It was placed in the pot from the now deceased Plant B. Seems to be doing great, first set of leaves coming in nicely.

Plant D - day 4

The seed sprouted this morning and was taken from the paper towel and placed a new pot. Waiting to see when it will break soil.



I'm going to be kinda jammed for space now that I could end with three plants. I decided to place plant D into a pot in the mid range bewteen the pots currently being used by A & C and their final pots. I should be able to plant two larger and one medium sized pots in the bottom.

What effect does a smaller pot have on a plant?
Anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the three plants when that start crowding each other?

I notice that other people have given formal permission to post in their journals, if anyone has any suggestions or comments feel free to post. And if you have answers to any of questions it would be much appreciated.

 

[yeldarb]

Here's some pics, my camera seems to want to connect with the computer again:

Here is one I posted in plant problems showing Plant A right after being burnt by the lights.

Here is Plant A at Day 14 ( Jan 23rd): There is a huge improvement from the last pic. I'm pumped about the fact this one is still going.

The next one shows Plant C and also all three pots. (D hasn't broke ground yet.)

Here a couple from top of box:

 

[yeldarb]

Plant A - DAY 15

Watered this morning. Growing good. Could anyone comment on the size of Plant A from the Day 14 pic. Is is small due to be burnt?

Plant C - Day 6

Going good. First leaves are coming in nicely.

Plant D - Day 6

Broke ground today!!!! Nice, now it looks like I'll have three plants. Kinda sucks how they are all staggered in size. I will have to make sure to LST Plant more than the others to keep the height equal.

So today I decided change out two of the 23 W 4000K bulbs with the two 42W 6500K I had used earlier in the grow. I switched them intially because I thought it could have overkill. I will be keeping a close eye on the plants today to make sure I don't burn them.