Covert newb grow Journal

Sunday August 02, 2008

Lights:
24hours

Nutrients:
N/A

Ph:
6.2

Added 3/4 cap of Ph down

Temperature:
68 A/C was on when checking.

General notes:
-Moved over 4 of the white widow seedlings to the hydroponic table.

-Clone 2 is booming and quickly starting to over grow her neighbours. I have decided I am definitely going to make clone 2 a mother plant for future grows. It is a healthy looking female so might as well. I will keep a White widow mother also if I am able to seperate them after cramming multiple plants per pot (big no no) In future grows I will be planting only
clones and not placing in pots at all in order to maximize the usage of the area.

That second picture really shows how great your plant is looking! And your root system looks great too!

you going to have a widow jungle....
I should add I am doing da happy feet dance for you...
amazing what getting rid of a tin foil wrapper can do...

Air temp isnt the issue here, you dont want to freeze the plants.

The issue is with res temperature. When ppl say 68 its because at that temp there is a great deal of oxygen in the water. At res temps above 75-80 there is way way less oxygen in the water. As im not the hydro guy I dont have any cheap solutions to this. Res coolers are like 400 bucks.

But your plants roots are suffocating.

Huh, roots suffocating? Sure they are.......

-2 air stones and air pump going 24/7 in the reservoir

-4 frozen water bottles in the morning that are replaced with 4 more frozen water bottles at night placed in the reservoir

-16 drain cycles a day which pulls fresh air into the root system

I think you are trying to cut up my grow yet don't have a leg to stand on, thanks for the input though.

I will update more tomorrow but after a hour of messing around with this new light I finally found the broken wires in the ballast and patched them up.

The pictures are as it is warming up, not nearly as bright in the picture as it is now. I will probably have to run the A/C more often now as this light really pushes out the heat. We shall see what happens over the next couple days. Time to wire up a box for the mothers plants to live in.

August 06, 2008


Lights:

Grow / flower area - 24 HR, Upgraded veg lighting to 400W HPS ballast with MH conversion bulb for main grow area, 30K lumens. Still using 7 x 2' HO T5 fluorescents for side lighting.

Mother Plant area - 24 HR, Mother plant has 9 x 2' HO T5 Fluorescents.

Nutrients:
25%

PH:

Main grow area = 5.8
Mother Aeroponic = 7.0
Added 1/4 cap PH down

Temperature:
74F

General notes:
-Moved all seedlings to the hydroponic table.
-Made makeshit mother area using aeroponics.
-So far mother plant seems to be enjoying the new home, Since taking off the twist ties and allowing it to expand it has really pushed out in every direction. Need to keep a close eye on this unit and find a more efficient way to keep it the correct temperature in the res. Very small res and ice too close to the roots will not be healthy.
-Moved largest plants in garden to one side furthest from the light.
-Since this light generates a rather large hot spot underneath it I believe it wise to only let these plants veg for another week, two weeks tops before switching to a flower cycle.
-Next grow I will modify the closet to be a flower area, and the current grow dresser to be the aeroponic area for the mother plants. It will allow me to run the air conditioner less and easier general heat dispersal.

lookin' good man

Thanks Inebriation, trying to make things the best they can be until I do a tear down and re-design of my growing area next round. Nothing crazy just putting so many lights in such a small place is a real ball buster and I figure the closet in the next biggest box I can use

August 08, 2008

Lights:
Grow area - Placed 400W MH on timer, On 6:00AM - 12:00AM
- 6 x T5 on 24/7

Mother area - 10 x T5 on 24/7

Nutrients:
25%

Ph:
6.0
Added 1ml PH down

Temperature:
76f

General Notes:
-Scrapped idea for DWC mother plant area, got rid of box for mother plant. Placed lights on walls and crappy cardboard stand setup in closet.

-Transplanted mother plant in to a bucket of soil until I head to the store for a proper pot and more soil.

-Oscillating fan moves across the mother.

-This morning my mother plant was in dire need of a drink. It was severely wilting and losing strength in her stems. Watered soil and misted leaves she is all perked back up again.

-Installed a small windshield in the grow area to prevent wind burn from the one intake fan.

-Removed lower lighting from hydroponic tray. It really encouraged growth for seedlings near it but later when the plant grew larger leaves permanently resting on it do exhibit heat stress / dead spots.

-Heat distribution was a general issue so I moved the ballast next to the A/C which is working out very nicely. The ballast is now running much cooler and A/C is doing a better job actually removing the heat from the room directly at a source.

-Electrical distribution is adequate for now but I would still like to purchase another short heavy gauge extension cord in order to distribute the total amps being drawn from any one outlet to the levels of a PC. Currently there is still a good chunk of amps (10) being pulled through one outlet group, nothing alarming just better safe than sorry especially in an old apartment.

-Took pictures, the seedlings are funny they have leaves that are almost as long they are tall.

-Nutrient burn still seems to take place on ALL my plants at 25%. I will go even lower next reservoir change. It seemed like I was adding a very small amount even this time when using the liquid medicine dispenser measuring device but that can't be the case.

Just checkin in, man, everything looks awesome. I notice the cardboard mounting for that fluoro, you tryin to steal my styyyle?! I'm gonna make my whole next set up out of pizza boxes and yuengling bottles.

Hey Ogrelung, ya you know it bro I am ghetto The cardboard is suppose to be temporary but who knows I am sick of removing and mounting my lights in different places.


August 12, 2008

Lights:
-24 hour fluorescent
-18 Hour HID

Nutrients:
25% + 1 tsp per 4 gallons of epsom salt, and 2.5ml per 4G of Calcium additive.

Ph / Water:
-Emptied, rinsed, wiped, refilled with R/O water
-5.7 Ph
-321ppm (YAY got my TDS meter) My tap water is 125PPM by comparison with no nutes, and the R/O water with no nutes is 1PPM

Temperature:
-I need a new thermometer I tossed mine out with the grow dresser

General Notes:
-Moved all the grow to the closet in order to ease the heat, and control light better in my room while sleeping.

-Plants will now have at least another 18" of possible growing room with the possibility of enlarging it vertically even more if I desire. There is also more horizontal room for the plants to stretch out a bit more.

-Moving the grow was messy and I accidentally topped a plant, all plants are doing well enough for a first grow. Still seeing signs of nutrient burn here and there, some plants are so close and growing so full that they are completely blocking out lower branches causing them to wilt and die.

-Mother plant is doing well, removed dead / dying leaves, many leaves have touched lights and are in bad shape but on the whole it is doing fine and still growing. I water the soil plant with aquarium water since it has had time to sit around being aerated + it has built in fish emulsion lol. Watered the plant until there was some run off Late August 11th, shouldn't need
water again for at least a few days, minus the odd spritzing I am addicted too.

-Need to setup the fans better right now they are hanging in the grow area which is sort of odd.

-I am hoping to start the flowering process this Saturday / Sunday. The White widow are very small still but I really need to just find one WW mother in the bunch then toss her right back into veg so I have 2 mothers from different strains. First grow is all about learning and getting mothers for future 2.5 month turn around harvests which is going to kick ASS!!!!

-Need to buy a new thermometer.

-The picture of my hand and a leaf are neat because I am 6'4" and can palm a basketball the leaves are HUGE

-Stalks on the first 3 in the hydroponic table are thick, probably 3/8" to 1/2" depending on the plant and how close to the hydroton you look.

Everything looks reeaal nice .

MrsMcGreggor said:

Mylar:

A highly reflective polyester film that comes in varying thickness, the most common being 1 and 2 mm thick.

Click to expand...

Where can you get this? I've been looking for it and having no luck at all.

po

Try Lowes or Home Depot, ours have it but the dumb ass fifteen year olds working there just have no idea what it is and stare at me dumbly hoping I just walk away. Wrose comes to worse you can go ghetto and start eating a shit ton of doritos. The insides of the bags work great and plus..doritos, man.

ogrelung said:

Worse comes to worse you can go ghetto and start eating a shit ton of Doritos. The insides of the bags work great and plus..Doritos, man.

Click to expand...

Bahahahahahaha Too funny.

Ever get your flowering going and find a WW mother? Been forever since your last update it feels like.

Inebriation said:

Ever get your flowering going and find a WW mother? Been forever since your last update it feels like.

Click to expand...

Ya I have been a bad gardener lately. I let my reservoir get low on water and allowed the plants to eat most of the food. I stunted the growth and caused some necrosis to occur in the odd spot but nothing crazy.

I added more food, fixed the water etc.... I am getting impatient and want my first batch to get to the next cool stage of growing so I am going to start flowering tomorrow. 7am-7pm lights.

I hear you don't want to clone clones so I will be flowering the whole garden then rescuing the first white widow female to show. I will probably let the 12/12 get going a few days then do a update with pictures etc...

Right now I am sitting on two mature plants (veg wise) and the white widows are about 8-12" tall Should be some fun!

Ah; sorry to hear 'bout the stunting. What part of your crop was hit by the necrosis? Roots, leaves, stalk? Sorry for asking, I'm just curious. Lookin' forward to seeing what becomes of this grow. Good luck on the rest of it at least.

powhitetrashomie said:

Where can you get this? I've been looking for it and having no luck at all.

po

Click to expand...

Go to the camping section of Wal-mart or a sporting goods store and look for emergency blankets. It is almost as good and really cheap (<$2 per blanket size sheet of reflective surface).

ALuckyShot said:

Ya I have been a bad gardener lately. I let my reservoir get low on water and allowed the plants to eat most of the food. I stunted the growth and caused some necrosis to occur in the odd spot but nothing crazy.

I added more food, fixed the water etc.... I am getting impatient and want my first batch to get to the next cool stage of growing so I am going to start flowering tomorrow. 7am-7pm lights.

I hear you don't want to clone clones so I will be flowering the whole garden then rescuing the first white widow female to show. I will probably let the 12/12 get going a few days then do a update with pictures etc...

Right now I am sitting on two mature plants (veg wise) and the white widows are about 8-12" tall Should be some fun!

Click to expand...

I thought it was okay to clone from a clone? I mean, if you cut off my finger it would still contain the same DNA and RNA that it did before, and if you cut a piece off that it would too. Thats probably a real stupid analogy. Anyway, thats something id really like to know about because that might limit my gardens flexibility a bit. Post some pics when you feel up to it, been waiting on an update. Keep us posted!