Skunk #1 Sensi Seeds: First-time Grow West Australian

[WestAussie]

I threw away my skunk #1's cuz they would not flower like the others. I had three different plants do this. I kept one as long as possible. At 8 weeks it was barely spitting out white hairs. My system was linked to others and all the other strains were loving it. Maybe i got a bad batch, but it wasn't for me. I wish you luck.

Yeah, that would be disappointing. Thing is, I aint done this before, so I'm happy for whatever I can get. When I've got a few successful grows under my belt and cloning material in abundance then I'll be able to afford to be fussy. Right now I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

[tricka]

Yeah man tap water should be ok, but i do know that WA water aint the best so mayby half and half, have you got anyway of testing the ppm and pH? as for the bennies where are you getting them from, you havnt added extra have you? or is that just from the coco peat, de chlorinate by adding DO via an airstone if you cant sit it out over night, i have a 20ltr bucket always sitting near full dechlorinating

Yeah its funny like that with my outdoors i was yeah what ever, but now ive spent like 2G on my set up, im paranoid as fuck trying to not over love em!

 

[doingfine]

i just put my seeds in the corner of a folded damp paper towel inside of a sealed plastic bag and open the bag and check once a day when they pop put them in the growing medium

 

[WestAussie]

UPDATE:

So I got home from the vineyard and my suspicions as to the reliability of my housemates was justified. The coco jiffy starters were almost dried out....

That said we have cotyledons AND true leaves on 2 of the 3 Skunk seeds that germinated. The one that hasn't DID have one at some stage and it appears to have dried out and colapsed on itself. It's still green at the base with some purpling, so I'm going to see if it recovers.

Also, my housemates found some really old bag seed which I put to germinate before I went away. 3 of those puppies popped (out of 10...) and so I've put them under the hood with the others. I'll probably just put those outside in soil pots. I want to concentrate on the skunk, but if I don't get a female from those I'll grow them and keep the pollen sacks and cross them with any female from the bag weed seed at some point.

It's time to get these 2 into a proper pot. I'll be constructing my system today.

Hope you had a good easter, and lest we forget while we're at it.

 

[greenjumble]

From what I see in your pics you need to add more light. They are stretching pretty badly. If your using CFL's then you want 1x26watt per plant or throw a Metal Halide conversion bulb into your ballast and put that over all over them. You don't want them to stretch too much because they may collapse. Also you don't really need the humidity dome if you keep them well watered. Very gentle fresh air movement to strengthen the stems would be a good thing.
Hope your having fun The first grow is a wonderful and exciting thing!

 

[tricka]

Fuck give the prick a clip across the ears from me as well!

Any way wozzy thats Barra mate, just hoping they are girly girls eh' i actually just put 4 germed Skunks into RW then, i didnt wanna lag too far behind ya!.... and you were right 48hrs and all had their tails out

 

[WestAussie]

Thanks Greenjumble.

The girls are out in the sun today (cool 25C today), so they'll be getting plenty of light. I'll move them in this evening and put them under the CFL (1 cool, 1 warm). I don't think at this early stage when they're so small they'd need more than that. Hopefully I'll have the growspace ready for them by tomorrow morning.

 

[WestAussie]

Fuck give the prick a clip across the ears from me as well!

Any way wozzy thats Barra mate, just hoping they are girly girls eh' i actually just put 4 germed Skunks into RW then, i didnt wanna lag too far behind ya!.... and you were right 48hrs and all had their tails out

Yeah, I was fucking ropable!

But we'll be fine. I should get something by the end of it all. I'm gonna do an inventory of all my kit today. Tomorrow I'll be bringing home the 600w HPS and a cooltube. I'm so shit at building stuff that I'm a little concerned I might suck at errecting the growspace.

We shall see.

 

[tricka]

Hahaha good stuff mate...throw some pics up for us all, nothing is shit if ya do it yourself!

 

[greenjumble]

A 600w will produce nicely. Go real easy on the nutes to start. How are you doing your coco? Premix with nutes in it? Plain Bricks and then adding your nutes as you go?

 

[greenjumble]

keep the HPS away from them to get started and just drip with water and NO nutes. You may already know that but most people starting out burn or kill their plants by adding nutes too soon. If you haven't bought you coco you might consider just going organic soil and teas. You get great taste and production. coco and hydro require alot of attention and measurements in the beginning.

 

[WestAussie]

A 600w will produce nicely. Go real easy on the nutes to start. How are you doing your coco? Premix with nutes in it? Plain Bricks and then adding your nutes as you go?

I wasn't going to presoak, but I suppose I could. Not sure exactly what the advantage of that would be. I've just broken up the bricks with tap water. I was going to mix my nutes up in my 75L res, which should last 2 and a half days draining to waste. So I can tweek the nute concentration quite regularly. What do you reckon?

 

[WestAussie]

keep the HPS away from them to get started and just drip with water and NO nutes. You may already know that but most people starting out burn or kill their plants by adding nutes too soon. If you haven't bought you coco you might consider just going organic soil and teas. You get great taste and production. coco and hydro require alot of attention and measurements in the beginning.

Well, I've got the coco ready to go, so I might as well use it. I was thinking of starting with some fish emulsion and plain water (adjusted to pH of 5. and then using the CANNA VEGA A and B nutes ($33 a bottle from Bunnings) later on when their roots have proliferated into the new coco.

Maybe I should presoak the coco in a fish emulsion solution.

I'm open to suggestions, as I said, so feel free to tear my n00b intentions apart.

 

[greenjumble]

The coco should expand quite a bit if you leave it over night in water. One brick will fill a large pail when allowed to expand. Mainly when running coco your going to have to watch for Calcium deficiencies as the coco absorbs it and takes it away from the plant. O your mix will always have to include additional calcium.

 

[WestAussie]

Sorry it's taken my so long, but I've had a pretty full-on week with Easter and Anzac day (5 days off WTF!?) and trying to get this grow room up

I was going to build the grow space myself, but in the end I realised that any pretentions I have of being good with my hands was complete and utter delusion. Plus, I don't have many tools up here in the big-smoke so it was going to be a big ask. Anyhoo, so when I went to get the 600w HPS I bought a 1.4m x 1.4m x 2m grow tent (A$380.00 from The Growroom in Cannington).

Anyway, my space is up. I also spent A$150 on a fan and it sucks like a cheerleader on prom-night. Ah yeah!....

Anyway, this is a quick update. I'll go into the rationale of some of choices later today, and post more pics.

Peace and pot!

PS. Kind of shitty I didn't get a 1000w. I'm only getting 29w per square foot, which is a little low for flowering, but ok for veg....

 

[greenjumble]

Make sure you get a gentle breeze blowing on those little guys sot their stems strengthen up. Looks like a nice setup. You will do well with ur 600w. Enjoy

 

[tricka]

Im so glad they are looking healthy after their little run in with ya house mate lol.

You bit the bullet and bought a tent ey'....probally best man if it didnt hurt the hip pocket, easy to clean and assemble, and provides a good climate with airflow, plenty of mylar, perfect i think, and you got 300mm more on each side...!
My advice would be the same as GreenJumble and get a desk fan in there, nice and gentle, baby steps
And also bury their stems a little with some more coco....but all good brother looking nice with the set up. mine were out of the ground on the 29/4 they are now in my bubble cloner. Yipee!

EDIT: they have been on 80ppm/EC 0.17 for a week at ph 5.8 stable (i lie, it got up to 6.02 in a week ), i just added an 1/8 mix of nutes....this took it to 150ppm/EC 0.3....will let ya now if i burn them hahaha

 

[WestAussie]

So this is what I'm doing.

The girls are on an 18/6 day/night cycle and they're getting feeds at 17:00 and 05:00 for 3 minutes every day. I originally had it programmed for 2 minutes each watering, but I wasn't convinced the medium was wetting enough. My concern is that while the medium is being topped up by the watering regularly enough, I don't think there's enough draining going on - enough flushing. I'm concerned salts might build up at some point. I have no evidence to suggest that they have, but I'm just feeling that will be the case. I'm thinking now that it might have been a good idea to mix some perlite in with this coco... Any thoughts? I'm also worried about lateral penetration from the drippers. I don't want the water to simply drain down, I also want it to spread too, if you know what I mean.

I'm worried about the roots having access to enough oxygen, but I can't see any runoff happening which says to me the medium is absorbing all of it, which in turn makes me wonder about water-logging at some point.

The system is set up to drain just fine. The coco was put on top of a layer of hydroton, inside a bag. So I know it drains fine. It's just that with 4 x 4L/hr drippers going for 3 mins per pot, I still don't see liquid pouring out into the waste bucket (if I tilt a pot I get runoff though, but only what's left in the outer pot). Not sure what to think.... :-/

Moving right along. As you can see I have a fan in there now, so I'm hoping those two skunks on the right will harden up a bit. They've definitely stretched compared to the other bag-seedlings on the left (they also germed about 4 days after the Skunk too). They (the Skunks) also have a green stem to them, as opposed to the darker almost purple stems on the left ones. I'm hoping against hope those Skunks aren't both male, as I hear they stretch more than fems do. I know it's far too early to tell so I'll just sit tight and keep treating them like princesses.

Anyhoo, pics will be up in a jiff.

PS. In the third pic you can see how much the fan is sucking in the tent's sides. It's a doosey!!! I imagine if/when I have a charcoal filter on it that that will no longer be as pronounced.

 

[ozgirl]

Oh Awesome wetsaussie, im so happy to see you finally have a grow under way, and looking great so far too I'll sub, and follow your grow, good luck.

 

[WestAussie]

So as usual I went down to the farm over the weekend and when I came back of course the first thing I did was go and check on the babies. Well -- oh how things have changed! The skunks have grown prodigiously and the stems have really thickened up. Meanwhile the two bagseed seedlings are well established and really showing indica traits now. They're dark-green, hugging the medium and wide in the leaves. The skunk is a little lighter in colour. Really interesting to see such a stark difference.

I increased the watering to 4mins, twice a day and now I'm getting some run off into the bucket, so I'm not so worried anymore. The colour of the runoff is a dark brown which must be the coco still. Does that shit ever clear up??

I'm thinking of doing a hand-watering of Seasol (not Powerfeed) just to improve the humic lvls in the coco. Apparently that's good when using this particular medium. Any thoughts?

So far I'm really stoked at how everything is coming along. I expected a few more dramas to be honest. Maybe they're all in the post....

Anyhoo, let me know what you think. And thanks for the support and feedback Trick, Ozgirl and Greenjumble.

xoxox