Casey J.'s "First Grow" journal....

[CaseyJ]

I am growing for the very first time and I am psyched out of my gourd! I'll journal my babies all the way to the end.

Grow Room size:
6'x3'x8'

Equipment:
600W Earth Worth Gorilla Farmer grow light and ballast.
In-Line exhaust fan mounted at the top of the grow room connected to 6" flexible ventilation tubing which exits outside.
42" oscillating tower fan.
Sunleaves hygrometer/temperature gauge.
Sunleaves surge protector.
1 gallon capacity humidifier.
Rapitest pH tester.
Watering can and spray bottle.
12-3 gallon pots filled with the following soil mixture...

Growing medium:
40% Fox Farms Ocean Forest soil
40% Fox Farms Happy Frog soil
20% Perlite

Nutrients
Advanced Nutrients: Ancient Earth (veg and flowering)
Advanced Nutrients: Iguana Juice-Grow+Bloom
Advanced Nutrients: Mother Earth Super Tea-Grow+Bloom
Advanced Nutrients: Bud Blood (flowering)
Advanced Nutrients: Big Bud (flowering)

First grow seed selection:
White Widow (5)
Outlaw (5)
Chemdawg (1)
Afghan Kush Special (1)
[these last two were freebies. They are similar in habit and flowering period as the White Widow and the Outlaw.


Here's where I am at....

9/21/2012 (Friday)

Grow room completed and ready for plants.

Seeds arrive in mail!

Seeds are planted 1/4" deep in 4" plastic drinking cups filled with moistened growing medium. I sprayed the top of the soil after planting and covered each cup with plastic wrap and a rubber band.

Then I put the cups on a tray and set it in the grow room under ordinary lighting conditions where I could monitor them.

9/23
One seedling pops the surface, followed by a bunch more over the next several hours. As seedlings emerge, they are uncovered and put on another tray under the grow light with maximum distance between seedlings and light.

I give all my new seedlings a girl name to help keep track of issues that might occur with particular plants during their growth cycle.

The unsprouted seedlings are kept just outside the grow room with their plastic covering still on as I monitor for their emergence.

9/24
The final seedling emerges. Now they are ready to sturdy them up over the next week or so before transplanting into their 3-gallon.

Right now my babies are in the grow room basking in the wind and soaking up the light, getting bigger and stronger.

I'll post lot's of pics as soon as I get my camera up and running again.

Casey J.

 

[ImaRedneck]

Good luck, did you germinate them or just pop the seeds right into the pots? I'm not sure what I'm going to do I hear pre-germing them can be really bad, but I normally just pop them right in the pots and set em outside. Good luck though!

 

[MagicMarkOkie]

I'm 3 weeks in with some White Widow (first grow). Very excited. I FIM'd one of my WW, and left the other 3 growing. One of them died about a week ago. Hoping out of the 3 I get one nice big mother! Can't wait to see some pics and compare sizes with mine at that age.

Here's WW#4 and #2. #4 is the one I topped. #2 got transplanted to soil after a nute deficiency scare. They aren't very big, but I'm hopeful. Good luck!
View attachment 2352276View attachment 2352277

 

[ottomatik]

Nice setup CaseyJ, i'm subbed in for the ride. Looks like you have a real solid game plan for a first grow, can't wait to see how they turn out. I'm in my first grow myself

 

[CaseyJ]

Good luck, did you germinate them or just pop the seeds right into the pots? I'm not sure what I'm going to do I hear pre-germing them can be really bad, but I normally just pop them right in the pots and set em outside. Good luck though!

hey redneck, I got some drinking cups poked a few holes in the bottom and filled each with moist FF soils and perlite mix. I put my seeds 1/4" deep, sprayed the top pretty well and covered it with plastic wrap and rubber binder. They all popped quicker that I could imagine!

 

[CaseyJ]

I'm 3 weeks in with some White Widow (first grow). Very excited. I FIM'd one of my WW, and left the other 3 growing. One of them died about a week ago. Hoping out of the 3 I get one nice big mother! Can't wait to see some pics and compare sizes with mine at that age.

Here's WW#4 and #2. #4 is the one I topped. #2 got transplanted to soil after a nute deficiency scare. They aren't very big, but I'm hopeful. Good luck!
View attachment 2352276View attachment 2352277

If your setup is anything like mine, then your WW's should start putting on alot of growth very quickly! I'll see if I can get a pic of my biggest WW up soon. Over 6" I me thinks!

 

[CaseyJ]

Nice setup CaseyJ, i'm subbed in for the ride. Looks like you have a real solid game plan for a first grow, can't wait to see how they turn out. I'm in my first grow myself

GL on your first grow! What are you growing?

 

[CaseyJ]

Here's an update and a few more pictures of my girls.

Notice the size disparity between my largest and smallest plants. Sophie, like all of my White Widow's [except for Avery] is putting on some serious green. She is breaking 8", and I swear she was only 6" yesterday when I topped her! I think it's her fan leaves that are stretching upward. On the other hand, Bonnie (Outlaw) is the smallest plant, only half the size of Sophie. She looks much better today over yesterday when I fertilized her.

Needless to say, I topped her today before taking her picture. She had three true branches then the terminal growth, so I'm OK with topping her while so short. Her inter-nodal length is pretty tight. I also topped the remainder of my plants as well.

Overall, I am amazed

at how frickin' awesome my first grow is going!

 

[ottomatik]

GL on your first grow! What are you growing?

Thanks! Have Paradise Seeds Delahaze, Nirvana Master Kush and Kaya Gold going right now. Day 39 of flower and getting anxious

Your girls are looking great and are definitely growing fast! I'm going to top or FIM next round for sure, still trying to figure out which is better. Keep up the good work and keep the thread alive

 

[CaseyJ]

It was exactly three weeks ago today that I got my weed seeds in the mail and plopped them in the soil. I don't know when you start counting the day's of your grow, maybe someone can chime in, but if I start counting the day I planted my seeds, then I'm on day 23 (my favorite number...it shows up everywhere!)

I keep written records of all my grow room activity; these I call my "Grow Room Reports". I'll post what my report forms look like in the future so you all can check it out. It really helps me to keep track of all the variables in play, the overall health of the plants, document all fertilizing and watering of plants, and any issues that need to be addressed.

During the germination and seedling stage I did a report every day, but now that I'm into veg, changes take place at a slower pace, so I do a report every time I need to water or fertilize, that's about 3-4 days right now.

Today I did my second grow room report in the veg stage, and I must say, I am very, very pleased with how things are going. I'm going to need some advice in a minute, so hang in there.

Anyway, today I took each plant from my grow room, watered them, looked them over, measured them, and sprayed my plants with my foliage spray followed by a few spritzes of water. I spray with water after I spray with the foliage spray just to make sure I don't have any unwanted concentration of nutes on the leaves, and this is why.

On one of my big White Widows, Sophie I think, there are a few yellow spots on a couple leaves where it looked like she might have gotten too strong a solution on those particular leaves. See pics. Just two leaves though, so I'm not worried. All other plants have no signs of nutrient burn, but just to make sure that doesn't happen again, I spritz it with water after spraying with the foliage spray.

Once again, as I pointed out in my last update a few days ago, there is a rather large height disparity within my plants. Bonnie is only 5" tall, and she has grown a couple inches since I topped and nuted her, which is good. Sophie and Opal, both White Widows are close to 12". The cola's that have emerged from when I topped these two plants are as tall as Bonnie!

I would say there is width disparity as well. Most of my plants are fairly compact. But Sophie and Opal have long branches and and the inter-nodal distance is quite large compared to my other plants.

Needless to say, I had to get some 2x4's this morning, cut 'em up, and raise the level of the shortest plants even more to get them to canopy level.

If you look at my pictures, you'll see a picture of a side branch off to the right side of the picture above the other growth. This is one of the first true branches from Sophie, and it is taller than her split cola's!

Now this is where I need some advice. I want to keep all my plants at or below 12" until I go to flower. Should I super crop this side branch? Bend it until it's damaged and perpendicular to the main stem? This is what I think I ought to do, but what do you think?

Another question in regard to this tall side branch. Will this turn into a bud site? Will all side branches turn into bud sites given enough light?

Now for the tall cola's. When should I super crop these cola's? I put a couple pics up where I topped Sophie and the two new shoots that have grown 5" since Monday. I don't know if its too early to super-crop this tender new growth.

Here are some more questions regarding when to flower. I wanted to veg a full month before going 12/12, but now I am beginning to think I could begin flowering sooner. Given the size disparity of my plants, when do you think it would be best to begin flowering? Isn't there a "Pre-Flowering" stage? Or can you just "flip the switch" and get them all to flower? Would putting my shorter plants to flower at the same time as my taller plants affect yield much?

So if you all could help me out here with my questions I would really appreciate it. :smoke:

Oh, BTW, on one of my pics I have my four tallest plants in the back and my four smallest plants in the front, just so you can get a better idea of the height disparity.

 

[CaseyJ]

If you are familiar with my last journal entry last Friday, you know that I had some concerns about size disparity...some plants were @ 12" while others were in the 5-7" range with most falling right in the middle. I didn't get any responses so I had to do the research and go with my gut on what to do. I also readjusted my grow strategy a bit to better accommodate 12 plants in a 6'x3'.3" footprint.

First of all, I realized I had to get medieval on my tallest plants

. That means super-cropping. My first attempt resulted in a broken stem because I didn't squeeze and collapse the stem before bending it down. After that I got the hang of it pretty quick. That was Saturday.

On Sunday all branches I SC'ed were pretty much back to their original height

, so I SC'ed those branches AGAIN, and also felt comfortable doing this to a few more branches on other plants. Those plants are vigorous growers, so I had nothing to fear really; I knew they would rebound beautifully, and I really needed to subdue vertical growth on the tallest White Widow's.

Monday I had a revelation. Growing twelve plants with the pots bumping up against each other would not result in good, bud-yielding growth below the canopy, so I had to get aggressive and get rid of it all! If my grow room were to be at all successful (remember my goal is any yield over one pound of dried bud) I would have to lollipop my plants.

So that's what I did yesterday, and today. I stripped the leaves off of the bottom third of all my plants, so that all of the plant's energy would not be wasted on non-essential growth. And the plants are doing just fine.

In tending to my plants I have realized that the side branches will eventually turn into bud-producing sites. These pop through the fan leaves, revealing their bud-producing terminal, and BTW, it is a beautiful sight to behold!

So each specific plant has a particular number of cola's that I will focus all my attention on. Most have eight, but one has ten, and one has six, one has seven, etc.

The way I see things, I will not induce any more cola production on any more of my plants. Rather, I will focus all my energy on producing the biggest, fattest cola's given the number of cola's designated for each particular plant.

Another change in my overall strategy is to grow my shortest plant to about 12" before flowering, Hopefully I'll keep my tallest plants no more than 16" before flowering. I can grow my tallest plant to about 42" when flowering is completed. The short ones will just have to be built up on boards to keep them at canopy level.

So that's my renewed strategy. Overall, things are going fantastic. My grow-room is an ocean of lush green, all plants are beginning to see the effects of the nutes administered last Friday. If all goes well, I expect to begin flowering in a week or two. My Advanced Nutrients Organic flowering nutes are on their way!

I think I am getting the hang of things. In the pics you can see my grow room as it is today. You can see some of the growth I pinched off, and how some of the plants now look now that they have been lollipopped. And on two of the pictures you can see the supercropping I did this morning on a White Widow, and how I used a couple of sticks to train my cola's to fill in an open area.

 

[CaseyJ]

Some of my plants are growing like crazy with three at around the 21" mark. This is even after I have done aggressive super-cropping techniques on some branches that were collapsed and limp. Now they are back stronger than ever. I have two plants at 11", these are the shortest, and all the others are around the 15-18" mark.

These babies are ready to flower! This morning I put nine of the shortest plants into darkness for 24-36 hours to see if I can get them to gain a few inches on the tallest plants. Sunday morning I will begin the 12/12 flower cycle.

Check out my plants. Keep in mind I got my seeds in the mail just a month ago! I took these pics yesterday, and since then they have grown even a bit more. Lot's of bloom sites.

 

[SilentJudge]

Wow that's looking really good , great job ! Keep,us updated

 

[CaseyJ]

This is the sixth day into flowering, and as you can see, I got quite a jungle on my hand. Needless to say, this will be the last time I do twelve plants at a time. I think six, eight at the most next time.

It's been very difficult managing all my babies, but under the circumstances, I think I am doing ok. I have definitely learned a few things this first grow and will approach my next grow armed with the wisdom to make things go much easier.

All plants have the telltale signs of female gender with the little hairs all over the place, but I want to monitor things to make sure I don't have any hermies in the bunch.

Now I have a question that maybe the pros can help me with. Is it stressful to move plants around on the grow room floor, or should I keep things basically in the same place, moving some plants in front in order to water the ones in the back and then putting the plants back the way they were?

I just think that the plants get used to receiving their light from the same direction, and by moving them around it might stress them out. I realize that some of the side branches only go halfway up the plant and these wont produce the best buds. But if you look at the canopy, there are plenty of quality bud sites that receive the best light.

Another question, and this concerns me quite a bit. My most aggressive plants are putting on an inch of growth a day. And I only have about 18" more to work with, max. So will the rate of growth slow as the flowering cycle progresses? My tallest plant is 32" tall, while the shortest is about 16-17".

Any guesses as to how big my yield will be? My goal is a pound. Do you think that goal is achievable by looking at the pictures?

How many grams of dried bud do you think I can get out of each cola? I counted 78 bud sites, but like I say, not all are at canopy level right now.

Thanks, guys and gals

CaseyJ

 

[hotrodharley]

+rep for this guy!!!!

 

[crazymanny00]

i think you will grow a pound, all looks really good

 

[Dice Clay]

it doesn't stress them at all to move them.. .I rotate the plants and play musical chairs with them quite often.. .When you are working with a limited footprint under a single 1000watt light I have found it is necessary to do that shuffle in order to distribute the light amongst the plants more evenly, and since you have a 600 watter (which is great!) and also have 3 more plants than I usually run under a 1000watter, I would think moving them would help with your height disparity as well... your set up looks beautiful.. great canopy... It makes it sooo much easier with uniform height!! Keep up the good work can't wait to see the results!!

DICE

 

[CaseyJ]

Hey, I am day twelve into flowering, and there are now small buds on my plants:hello:. I have never watched a cannabis plant flower and bud out before, so this is very exciting stuff. I am confident that all my plants are females.

The most prolific strain is the White Widow...it is just a vigorous beast that can take a beating and it just keeps on growing STRONG! I highly recommended the WW for beginners, as long as you have the vertical space...they do get tall.

My White Widow girls are Opal, Sophie, Iris, Avery, and Shannon.

I have had to use Low Stress Training because they literally grow 1-2 inches a day. Have never done LST, but I think I am getting the hang of things. I have been using twist-tie material to bend the top 6-8 inches horizontally and attach the other end to a stake in the pot. The point where the long twist tie is attached to the branch is where the branch eventually goes vertical again. Very cool to see how effective this is, AND, I can see how this can improve overall yield by allowing other branches near the canopy to become bloom sites.

My favorite girl is Betsy the Chemdog. Just a beautiful plant, the buds are coming in strong, and I just got a feeling she will be very potent!:smoking:

Lexi, the Afghan Kush Special plant is very compact, has very strong branches, at the same time boasting eleven bloom sites right now. She hasn't taken off yet, but I can tell she will put out some buds very soon.

Teela, Mila, Summer, Bonnie, and Lindy are the new Dutch Passion strain "Outlaw". These all have fine, narrow leaves. Some Outlaw branches have very definite buds growing, while the others do not. Also, the stems on some of the Outlaw's are pretty flimsy, and I can tell I am going to have issues once the buds start coming in and the branches get heavy, but I am prepared to stake.

As you can see by the pictures, there isn't a whole lot of light below the canopy level. This has resulted in lots of leaves dropping off, which, IMO, is a good thing; I want the plants to focus all of their energy on the growth of the canopy level veg growth and the buds. Yeah Baby!

So what do you all think?

 

[CaseyJ]

FLOWERING DAY 23

It's been awhile since my last report. I am a bit overdue. I am into my twenty-third day of flowering, and I am enjoying my first attempt to grow my own medicine. I have discovered that growing twelve under a 600W HPS is labor intensive, so for my next grow I am only growing six. 2-OG Kush, 2-Trainwreck, and 2-Chemdawg.

Things are pretty tight in my Grow room. Every day I take my plants out of the grow room, I look 'em over, pull leaves, trim, prune, train, water or fertilize if needed, then carefully place them back into their grow space for that day. I rotate my plants daily so every six days two plants get their time directly under the light.

The Outlaw strain from Dutch Passion (I have five plants-Teela, Summer, Mila, Bonnie, and Lindy), a Sativa dominant strain, is taking forever to show forth it's flowers, but I am starting to see some real progress. Mila is the farthest along, with nice, pistilated flower heads with the others close behind. I presume another week and they should start filling out rather well. Summer had some stem rot and I had to reduce her to a single cola plant

. The rest of her looks healthy though, so I expect all is not a loss there. A few grams?

Outlaws have a twelve week flower time, which will push my patience to it's limit, but after reading an Outlaw grow and smoke report, my patience will pay off with a few ounces of powerful, top shelf smoke.

The White Widows (I have five of these too; Sophie, Opal, Avery, Iris, and Shannon) are sturdy and hardy plants, filthy with buds

. They are getting stacked on the colas too. Fun to watch these fill in. I am seeing a frosty coating of trichomes on the buds, which is amazingly cool! I never thought they would stop growing vertically, but things have slowed down a bit. I will still have to move the fan on the ceiling in order to get the light up a few more inches.

Betsy the Chemdawg is amazingly sexy. Even frostier that the WW's. She is going to be a strooong smoke, eh? She is not too fussy, has beautiful leaves, doesn't stretch a whole lot, and believe she will be very potent, which is why I want to grow two more Chemdawg's on my next grow.

Lexi the Afghan Kush Special is a short, compact plant with sturdy branches, and she is the cutest thing ever!

She has always been the smallest of all my plants and didn't grow much vertically until the last two weeks. Now her cola's are reaching for the sky and stacking buds on like crazy! All her colas are confined to a vary compact circumference, making her a joy to take care of.

I began my fourth week of flowering just yesterday, and I cannot begin to imagine what these plants will look like in another month! I will be in AWE!

My grow room is in the basement under the stairs. I am going to be adding an additional wall very soon so I can start SOG growing. It makes perfect sense! I will germinate and veg my next crop while the current crop is in their final month. I plan on using 2 125W CFL's, which should be adequate for vegging six plants for 2-3 weeks, then off to 12/12 as I take my last plant's goodness from the flowering room. This way I should be able to produce a crop of potent medicine every two or two and a half months.

 

[DarkStar73]

Casey Jones you better watch your speed!!! Good luck on your grow!!