Complete Newbie-First grow ever

Ok, so I am posting some pictures and details about my first ever attempt at growing a nice MJ plant. The seeds I started with are nothing special. I got some "decent" quality smoke that was grown in outdoor soil in Jamaica. It was very heavily laiden with seeds. I had half an ounce of smoke, and from that I collected about 30 seeds. So I said what the heck, why not try to grow a couple of these and see what happens.

I do not have a grow room, nor do I plan to invest in any special equipment or elaborate setup. My intention is to just try to grow a few plants from the seeds that I collected, inside my house. If I manage to get anything resembling a smokable bud, then I may invest in a basic setup and grow area. So in essence this is a newbie's grow experiment designed to test the basic's and learn from trial and error with a near zero budget.

Other than the initial half ounce baggie I bought from which I collected my seeds, my total expenses for this grow is 18.00, which includes some propagation cubes, pellets, planting containers, watering tray, and cloning supplement.

I germinated 4 seeds intially, and all 4 seeds were alive and appeared healthy, so I went ahead and put them into some propagation cubes. After a couple of days, I thought, what if all 4 seeds are male? Let's do one more and hope for at least one female. So below you will see the first pictures of my seedlings.

P.S. Anyone is free to post to this thread. I will try to reply to all posts with any questions or comments.

This is the 5th seed I germinated, which was approximately 3 days after my first 4 seeds were germinated and planted. I am adding this picture first because I call this my miracle seedling. The picture is only 1 day after germination. I couldnt belive how much it grew in just one day.

Here are the initial four seedlings. I germinated them in a moist paper towel until they cracked, then planted them in soil from my back yard. Once they were a week old (as here in the picture) I transferred them to the rock wool. These pictures are one day after transfer, so 1 week + 1 day (8 days from germination)

Don't let water get on the leaves of the seedlings it can have adverse affects. They need to be more mature before they get misted or wet.

subbed to your thread my brotha

baddfrog0221 said:

Don't let water get on the leaves of the seedlings it can have adverse affects. They need to be more mature before they get misted or wet.

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Thanks for the heads up. I'll bear that in mind in future.

bongblasts said:

subbed to your thread my brotha

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Great! Thanks for following!

Well I am sad to say that one of my baby's isnt doing too well, and I dont think it will pull through. I'm not sure what happened but the day before yesterday Erykah had a bad night. All day yesterday she was in isolation but it's not a good look. Also her cousin India is having a bit of a rough time. India isnt nearly as bad, but she does show signs of distress as well.

However on a good note, my miracle seedling, Anita is doing ok.

Anita_01 Anita_02

This is Aretha. Her leafs are a little yellow.
Aretha_01 Aretha_02

Here is Erykah. I really hope she pulls through, but I am not expecting her to.
Erykah_01 Erykah_02

This is Gladys. She is yellowing a little too.
Gladys_01 Gladys_02

And finally here is India. She is a bit distressed too, but not nearly as bad as Erykah. I think she will be ok.
India_01 India_02

I think the yellowing shows a lack of nitrogen. But because they are so young, I dont want to give them any nutrients or other supplements. At the moment they are on a cycle of 18/6 and given distilled water. Once they are showing their next set of leaves I will start them on a very diluted regimen of Flora Micro.

Any thoughts or sugesstions are welcome.

very nice i like cant wait to join in and get my mj on the grow + rep for sexiness

I know it's been awhile, but I was too busy to make regular frequent updates. But the good news is, I have documented things along the way and will post some entries and photos for those interested.

First off, one of my seedlings didnt make it. Erykah just didnt survive. That left me with 4 plants to nurture and hope for a female. Aretha, Gladys, India, and my miracle seedling Anita.

I grew all four plants on my kitchen counter, underneath a standard flourescent under cabinet light. I topped them and pruned weaker growth as needed. I was happy to say that most of them were quite dense, bushy and healthy.

Now the time came to take a few cuttings to clone, which I would then force into flower to determine sex. I must add that rooting these plants was VERY difficult. I will get into the exact details in another followup post, however just to summarize, it took on average 3.5-4 weeks to get any roots showing.

Aretha was giving me the best results. She rooted first and out of 4 of the initial cuttings I took, all 4 did eventually root.

Now the bad news.

Yep. You guessed it! Aretha had balls! These started showing exactly 8 days after I started the plant on a 12/12 light cycle. I was sooooo gutted. Especially since Aretha was one of my two strongest plants, and by the time I got to this point, I had managed to nurtue and coax 6 clones from it into a nice root mass and subsequent transplant.

More to come....

Here is a picture that shows a little of the growth that Aretha made in the 8 days of a 12/12 photo period. Needless to say it was explosive. You will see a bit of stretching, but I didnt really mind, as the sole purpose for the clone was sexing. I figured if I got any usable bud that would be a bonus. But it wasnt meant to be.


Off to the left you will see a newly transplanted clone of India. India was about 5 days behind Aretha. So you can see the size of the size of the India clone after 3 days in 12/12.....By the way, those are my tomatoes in the background. In case I get the munchies, I can make a salad.

I then culled the Aretha donor plant (wish I could have called it a mother plant) as well as the clones. And freed up some space.

Roughly 3 days later India showed its sex. BOLLOCKS! Literally. India was male too. Now India and clones culled and composted. It was such a shame as once the clones rooted the growth after transplant was really strong and vigorous.

R.I.P. Aretha
R.I.P. India

Ok. So out of 4 plants, 2 have been male. I am just at the 50/50 odds mark and really hoping that Gladys and Anita are gonna be my females. It would be nice to have two females to work with, which would allow me to select and clone out the strongest. But at this point I would be happy with even one.

Now before going any further, I should add a little background info here. The original post in this thread discussed how I I would do the grow as cheaply as possible using items that I mostly had to hand. This was in large part due to the fact that my girlfriend wasnt going to be too keen on any kind of an investment to grow "another woman". (More on that later too ) Its worth mentioning that I am easily bored. And in the course of our relationship she has seen many of my hobbies, and has often commented that I am expensive. My hobbies tend to cost alot of money, from airplanes, to technology, to cycling, to auto restoration, to videography, etc. I can run up a tab pretty quickly. And even though she often says she has never met anyone who has so much knowledge and skills in so many differnt things, she is a skeptic to the end. "The proof is in the pudding" is a motto she lives by.

Well, once she saw how my efforts had paid off (even though no females yet), and how I managed to take some seeds from Jamaican dirt weed and bring them to life, her perspective started changing. She started doing her maths and suddenly realised how much money could be saved with a little initial investment. (We normally go through an ounce every week to 2 weeks, and at the current price that's roughly around 4 grand a year!) Much to my amazement, she told me to go out and buy the gear to build my setup the way I wanted.

WOOHOO!

Enter the next few items that you will see in the following posts. A separate veg area with 3 T5's, a flowering area with a 400 watt HPS and extractor/filter unit. A couple of propagation items, pots, soil, rooting boosters, and nutrients. The tab was quickly increasing, even though I was trying to keep things simple. We live in a smallish 2 bedroom and space is already very limited (what with all my other hobby supplies scattered about ). The total damage with the newly added kit was just under 500.00. Ouch!

More to come...

Shit. well you seem to have your head on straight. You've got everything down for being a new grower. Good luck, im subbed

Remember that song by Gladys Knight, "If I Was Your Woman?"? Well after both Aretha and India turned out to be male, that song kept running through my mind.

I had a really difficult time getting the plants to root from cutting. I followed a very tried and tested method for taking my cuttings. So I was fairly confident it wasnt anything I was doing wrong. I just had some plants that were diffiuclt to root. The clones never died, they just didnt root easily, and some didnt root at all. I started off taking a cutting, cutting at a 45, covering in CLONEX, and then putting them in ROOT RIOT cubes. Into an unheated humidity dome. Removing the dome periodically for air exchange, wiping away excess moisture, and spraying every 2 to 3 days, depending on the appearance of the cuttings. It took 3 and a half weeks before the first signs of a root. And another week before there were enough roots to safely transplant.

Although the temperature in the dome was within an acceptable range, I thought I would help the remaining clones a bit. I bought an identical humidy dome, only this time with a heated base. All this accomplished was too much humidity (which slowed root growth even more) and dried out the ROOT RIOT cubes. By this time I had a couple of rooted clones from Aretha and Gladys, but nothing from India or Anita. So Aretha and Gladys were both transplanted and switched to 12/12 at the same time.

Over the next couple of days I reviewed some forums and other journals to see if there was anything I could do differently that might help. After finding nothing, I decided to make yet another purchase. This time I got some RHIZOTONIC. I mixed up a small amount to use as a foliar spray. And that evening I gave all the remaining cuttings, and a few new ones a good spray. To my utter amazement, the next morning India has sprouted 6 roots out of the sides of her rooting cube! Obviously the roots were already started, but the added RHIZOTONIC really gave them a boost. So now, 5 days after Aretha and Gladys went into the 12/12 photo period, India joined them.

Most of the remaining cuttings started showing roots here and there over the next week and a half. Some were binned because when I pulled on them gently they easily came out of the cubes. After 4+ weeks there was no root rot, but still no sign of rooting. No point in trying to force them, so I tossed them out and replaced them with a few fresh cuttings. This time the cuttings were scarified, and the end split. Hoping this would allow for better rooting. Long story short...it didnt help. I dont want to spend too much time talking about all the things I tried. More on my cloning saga later.

Gladys went to 12/12 at the same time Aretha did. Eight days into the flowering cycle Aretha showed its sex. Nothing from Gladys. A few days later India shows its sex. Still nothing from Gladys. I took this as a sign that Gladys would show me lovely white pistils, as females often take longer to show their sex. "If I Was Your Woman" seemed to be my new them song!

Finally 17 days into the flowering cycle and this is what Gladys shows me.


I dont want to believe it. It cant be true. Tell me it isnt true!

It's true. Gladys is male. So sad. Especially considering that Gladys was by far the most dense, healthy, bushy and vigorous plant of all. I couldnt believe it!

Here is a Gladys clone at day 17

The smaller plants you see are my Anita clones. (I still have hope)

And here is the original Gladys donor plant in my veg area.

As you can see, Gladys was VERY dense. I often pruned and cut away fan leaves. All the growth you see in the above picture was because I was prepping for another batch of cuttings. I am still so gutted over this one being male.

Out goes Gladys and all the clones.

R.I.P. Gladys

Johnny Retro said:

Shit. well you seem to have your head on straight. You've got everything down for being a new grower. Good luck, im subbed

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Hi Johnny! Thanks for the support. I read alot, hoping to avoid as many mistakes as I can. Inevitably I've made some, but thankfully none very big...yet.

Nice so far man! Other than the males. Dumb ass dudes.

That's pretty cool your girl gave you the ok. I swear I'm in the same boat, love hobbies but only expensive ones. Only thing is my fiance doesn't smoke too much anymore because of her job. Let's me do my thing though!

Can't wait to see were this goes bud, subscribed.

machnak said:

Nice so far man! Other than the males. Dumb ass dudes.

That's pretty cool your girl gave you the ok. I swear I'm in the same boat, love hobbies but only expensive ones. Only thing is my fiance doesn't smoke too much anymore because of her job. Let's me do my thing though!

Can't wait to see were this goes bud, subscribed.

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Hi Machnak. Thanks for coming along. The problem with my hobbies, is I tend to loose interest after I spend the money. I have a feeling I will never loose interest in this though. She does get jealous. Says I spend more time with the plants than I do her. She'll feel better come harvest though!

You're my long lost twin hahaha, I'm the exact same! I swear!

& my girl gets the same way, if only you were in Vegas and our girls got along, we would have so much time to grow while they chit-chat and talk shit about us until harvest came hahahahaha.

Now back to my cloning woes. These plants are taking ages to root. From what I have read from others, is that some
strains are known to be pretty difficult to root. This is comforting in that I am confident I am not doing anything
wrong in my attempts, but it doesnt help my clones root any faster. Not knowing the strain of my seeds doesnt help
either. But I do like a challenge, and not afraid to try things to see what works and doesnt. Having said that I
have seen lots of positve things about aerocloners and bubble cloners. I had already spent more money than I ever
intended to, and just couldnt see shelling out another 75.00+ for a cloner. So I did some research, and spent a day
looking around until I found exactly what I wanted.

This is the fruit of my labour.


After sourcing all the bits and pieces, I made this. I had to find just the right container. I wanted something dark,
but not completely opaque. I have read alot of posts and seen videos where people are constantly raising the lids
to check on progress. With this setup, the container is dark enough to prevent algae (I hope), yet its still possible
to look through the sides to check for progress or problems. I carefully made my plans and chose materials based
on the following criteria:

1. Container had to be dark for reasons mentioned above.
2. Large enough to accomodate up to 12 cuttings, in the event I have more than one strain of mother plant.
3. Small enough to fit into my limited veg area (or kitchen counter in a pinch).
4. Quiet enough as not to arouse undue attention
5. Lockable handles and overlapping lid to prevent spills

I made a few cosmetic errors when I was cutting, and one of my holes was slightly off. But over all I am pleased with
the result. The cuttings you see have been in there for a day and a half. And they are all of my one last hope...Anita.
As the great Anita Baker sings "You're My Everything!" I am hoping she is female, and really hoping this new DIY cloner
will make things a little easier.