First grow journal, alaskan ice, trainwreck and the church

[DodgeDread]

OK so i'm gonna try and set up a bit of a grow journal. this is my first attempt at growing and my first attampt at a journal so don't expect too much but over the course of the grow i'll try to give as much information so that hopefully you lot can lend me your opinions.

So far i'm in early stages, still waiting for germination results.
The seeds i'm growing are all feminised and all from greenhouse seeds. I chose them because of the guarantee they offered and they had some good reviews and a good history. so i have -
10 Alaskan Ice
10 The Church
and 5 Trainwreck
altogether costing £120

was a little wary of the church after hearing about germination problems with an old batch but i've been promised thats been fixed now. (fingers crossed)

The growroom i have is a totally concealed room surrounded on 5 sides by unused rooms and a concrete floor. the walls are very thick and insulated with 2x2, plasterboard, double r foil backed insulation and thin black carpet on the walls. The size i've given to growing is about 7' x 14' x 7',
so far i've just vacuumed thoroughly but may need to consider a light bleach spraying of the carpetted walls.
The lights i'm gonna use to start are 3 x 600w hps but more will be added if necessary.
The fans are gonna be the next step to creating the room as well as the mylar to cover the walls and ceiling. the floor will hopefully be thicker white visqueen if i can manage to get some without buying a whole giant roll. managed to get a load of cheap buckets at morrisons today that'll be perfect for when the plants are larger. they were supposed to be 8 for £1 but the cashier didn't notice them stacked in each other and ended up with 48 for the price of 16! bargain, first bit of good luck! saved about £60 on pots

so i'll try and keep on top of this journal with photos and updates etc but apologies if i'm a bit slow, i'm not the smartest with computers and i'm also usually very stoned...

 

[DodgeDread]

so today i sprayed the walls with diluted bleach, hopefully this will help prevent any kind of mould developing cos i definately don't want any of that. also picked up 16 20w cfls from tescos for 10p each, dunno whether to use these as some kind of side lighting or maybe part of a small cupboard grow elsewhere. or just not at all, let me know what you think.
So far its been nearly a week since germination and they have all germinated but 2 which is no big loss. gonna get more seeds next weekend too just to keep things interesting.
off topic, i smoked some real weird tasting stuff earlier, like nothing i've ever had. tasted very strong but very hashy, not too great a smoke but screwed my head right up! very white looking bud but no idea what it was. too bad. gotta get some more of that though!!
should have some photos up in a week or so of what a medium sized grow room should look like. until then, smoke me a kipper, i'll be back in time for breakfast!

 

[DodgeDread]

OK things actually got moving today!!, started the build of the grow room, got some 2x2 to rig up a false wall, got 20m of diamond reflective mylar and some velcro for sealing the door.

2x2 £16
mylar £80
velcro £10

we've decided for the time being to just have one grow room and keep any mothers in another location. Eventually we're gonna add a seperate vegging area for the next batch

the room is now about 8'x14'x8' with the diamond mylar around the walls, this stuff is supposed to be the best reflective material so we decided to pay a bit extra and get the best. just stapled it all around. didn't cover the ceiling or the floor cos not much light will be reflected from up there and we have another plan for the floor but i'll get to that again.

tomorrow i'm gonna make a couple of mylar racks on wheels using a few old costume rails i found. think of it like the screens they wheel around beds in hospitals. These are gonna be moved around the seedlings to reflect more light on them and can be moved easily as the plants grow.

Took some photos of the room so far, not great pics, they came off my phone but i'll post better ones when i get some batteries for my camera. if you have any suggestions or comments please share
enjoy for now...

 

[DodgeDread]

just a pic of a load of buckets. £4 for the lot!
also found some old bagseeds stashed last night, germinating them now. hopefully at least a couple will work but no loss if not

 

[DodgeDread]

moved the plants into the room today and set up 1 600w hps with a 200w cfl over 19 seedlings. Pics tomorrow.

one seedling had bent so i've held it up with a piece of wire and hopefully it'll pull through. they are looking quite stretched so far but i think thats because they've been growing under only the CFL and it's been a bit too far away from the plants. I'll put some pics up tomorrow and you can see what you think

7x Ice, 7x Church and 5 trainwreck going so far, 1 of each gonna be kept as mothers. the random bag seed still not germinated yet.

 

[burlingo]

looks good man!

subscribed.......

hope you reach your goal and get to travel, as you said you planned to.

 

[DodgeDread]

Repotted all the girls today, labelled em up and got them under a new setup - 2x 600w hps and a 200w cfl

watered them a little but i think we should've given them more for the 2 gallon pots they're in but i'll water again first thing

One of the stems has bent over on an ice and i've held it up with a support so hopefully it'll pull through but will this make the plant stunted or give it slow growth? you can see it in the second pic.

also an idea for you is to make some small cardboard reflective sheets using some leftover mylar, placed between the plants should reflect light back up to the leaves, we're gonna make ones that will fit around all the plants stems soon so hardly any light will miss the leaves

also fixed all wires, cables etc up high to keep from any water spills and added some mylar close up and 2 fans to move air about. all the girls are twitching now in the breeze, you can see we left a gap under the temporary screen to let air pass up under and a fan at either end

The soil we used was just B&Q own brand shit, would've liked something better but it was a good price £10 for 300litres, also picked up a few bags of perlite and mixed it all in a large container about at about a 4 to 1 mix
Pay no attention to the thermometer reading, that pic was taken before the new setup but we're using a portable heater to keep temps up and left a bucket of water to help create some more humidity.

til tomorrow...

 

[DodgeDread]

shit, i'm gettin really pissed off with this picture upload system, this is the 3rd time i've had to individually upload them only to have them vanish

 

[DodgeDread]

this may help someone, i noticed having 1 600w and a heater running at half power used about 0.3 of a kw in 24 hours. a lot cheaper than i thought, i'll check it again later and see how the current setup affects the meter

 

[DodgeDread]

so i think the power use is about 2kw a day for the 2 hps and 1 cfl plus a heater and 2 fans
gonna need to install the ducts and fans soon so that will up it a bit and especially when we get more lights

didn't do much today except help support a few that were bending and give them a watering. one seems to have slightly yellow tips on the first leaves though, hope this isn't too bad but when we start feeding them nutes hopefully we can adjust the balance

ph is around 6.5 at the moment. gonna invest in a PPM/EC meter and hopefully one that does Ph as well. Anyone know if the cheap 7 in 1 meters on ebay work well or not?

Here's a few new pics of the yellowing one

 

[growman3666]

looking good man

 

[DodgeDread]

Added some nutes at last with the watering yesterday. We used miracle-gro as it's the only stuff we have at the minute. about 0.7mg added to 1 litre of water which is about half the recommended amount i think. I'll check on them later and see if its helped. They seem to be all healthy but i have noticed the variation in the AI strains, some seem short, stocky and fast growing, others are the opposite - leggy and slowww. early days yet though.

Also made a few more reflectors out of cardboard and some leftover mylar to place around later.

Here's a few more random pics

 

[DodgeDread]

Some more pics from tonight, i can't believe how much they've grown in a day!!
Btw, the HPS lights are about 24 inches away from the plants, think i might just let them grow up until i notice the heat affecting them before i raise them.

Soil and water are still at about 6.5. I might make a slightly more acidic water mix for the church as the greenhouse guys reckon on a ph of 5.5.

Also I 've forgotten to mention we're keeping all lights on 24 hr right up til flowering in 2 weeks. Is this wise?

Plans for this weekend -
Buy some quality nutes
Fit the lights on chains from the ceiling
Buy more seeds

 

[growman3666]

looking good man

 

[UKcyrus]

o my god



love the space you have to work with...
wish i had that much


looks ace mate.+rep.
i just pulled up a chair!! im here for this one

 

[burlingo]

some look a lil' stretched as you probably have already noticed.

i guess you know how to rectify this?

some of mine that were stretched (all boys weirdly) turned out okay. some of them grew at 45 degree angles! oh how i miss them.

 

[DodgeDread]

To be honest i was a little worried about the stretching at first but since then they've all tightened up and the nodes are only about an inch or less apart so whatever i did seems to have stopped that. A few are growing at angles too which is why i've added tape across the buckets to try and straighten them up and it's working fine, actually i've done away with all the tape now cos most are back to growing vertically. Pics in a minute...

 

[burlingo]

To be honest i was a little worried about the stretching at first but since then they've all tightened up and the nodes are only about an inch or less apart so whatever i did seems to have stopped that. A few are growing at angles too which is why i've added tape across the buckets to try and straighten them up and it's working fine, actually i've done away with all the tape now cos most are back to growing vertically. Pics in a minute...

cool, look forward to the pic's!

i found that my stretched ones turned out to have really nice thick, sturdy stems!

whatever doesn't kill 'em makes 'em stronger.

 

[DodgeDread]

So yeah the stretching has stopped and the stems are sturdy as fuck, i guess it was just because of the 200w CFL they were originally under as new seedlings. I won't use CFLs again, only as supplemental lighting.

Anyway, we got a fair bit done today, rigged up an intake and exhaust fan and fitted hooks onto the ceiling for the existing lights. We're gonna keep the 600w's about 20" above the canopy cos it seems about the right distance. I want to have them as close as possible for maximum lumens.

Ph is still about 6.5 for all, we bought a Ph/moisture checker today but to be honest, you don't need a meter to tell you when the soils wet or dry. A finger is just as good. I'm also chuffed that the Ph of the tap water is 6.5 in my area. Just got to let it de-chlorinate for 24 hours and it's perfect.

Problems
Only problem so far is a few leaves on one of the AIs seem to be curling up, also a tad crispy maybe. I'm putting this down to too much heat, not nutes seeing as i've only added a tiny amount of nutes once in the whole grow. Hopefully moving it nearer the edge of the grow should help. You can see this in the pics (118,119)
Pic 116 (church i think) also seems to be showing signs of browning on the leaf edge, maybe too high Ph for it, see what you think.

Plans for tomorrow are to research/order the next batch of seeds and to maybe start building/designing a small mother/veg room. I think we're gonna get some more trainwreck as i'm really psyched about them and then from Attitude seeds its gonna be between -
Barneys Farm - Red Dragon
Big Buddha - Cheese
" - Blue Cheese
" - Chiesel (see a pattern here?!)
Fantaseeds - Armageddon
Greenhouse seeds - Super Lemon Haze
maybe (and hopefully) some of all of these plus the freebies they offer

 

[burlingo]

nice,

yea i would put the curling down to heat. but there's a slight chance it could be a water problem. but i doubt that. just make sure you're giving them the right amount.

looks good though

good to see someone with lots of research/knowledge under their belt.

the only way is up up high.