First Grow - a reflection on lessons learned, and credits

This week I harvested the last of four plants, and thought it might be useful to myself (for the future) and hopefully to others who bother to read it, to post a reflection on how it went, the lessons I learned, and to tip my hat to those who have helped me considerably through this intensive learning process.

Starting out

I started back in April, with a large number of seedlings of different strains - an attempt to work against the odds of me killing some, and the different strains because, well, I like variety in my smoke.

LESSON No 1: Growing multiple strains is a pain in the ass for a multitude of reasons. I urge new growers to stick to a single strain for their first go.

LESSON No 2: The fewer plants, the easier it is to achieve good results on those plants. In retrospect, a single plant in a huge pot with huge roots, yielding 15-20 oz, would have been preferable - but no guarantee of good results (more on that later).

Choosing seeds

At first I had nine seedlings on the go, with the intention of reducing to 4-6 plants. This was far too many, as I found later on that my 2m high, 120cm sq area tent was nowhere near big enough to contain this many plants.

I chose to include two autoflowering strains that I got as freebies, a Flash Babylon and a La Diva.

LESSON No 3: Autos and photoperiods DON'T MIX. I should have stuck to photos, which provide a much better yield. Running them at the same time in the same tent meant the autos had to endure 12 hours of dark a day, further affecting yield (and bud density).

I spent a lot of money on a pack of 5 feminized Blueberry seeds from Dutch Passion. In the end I culled four of these as they were runts, and only took one to harvest.

However, the real winner, by far the highest yielding, most resinous plant, was a freebie Super Lemon Haze from GHS, which was given to me several years ago before I even dreamed of growing, it sat in a drawer as I thought one day I might plant it in the countryside. More on this seed later.

Growing Medium

I decided to use coco coir as a medium, and this was a good choice. It meant that the inevitable mistakes I made with feed were easily corrected, as coco coir flushes through with every watering, removing excess nutes.

I vegged the plants for about a month under a MH bulb, at first 250W, but I increased to 400W after about two weeks to reduce stretch and encourage more vigorous growth. I made a mark on the wall for the maximum height I wanted to achieve, based on the premise that plants can grow 2-3x their height when switched to 12/12. My flowering bulb was a 600W HPS

LESSON NO 4: I went away for a weekend when the biggest was just under the marker. Big mistake, it grew like a monster in those three days, far surpassing the marker, and causing big problems later on (heat, humidity, light stress).

Other Kit

It was around this time I started to realise the mistakes I had made in terms of the kit I bought. I was on a tight budget, as are a lot of new growers, and bought the cheapest inline fan and carbon filter I could get. The fan caused big problems - it was so noisy, I had to wrap it in two double comforters to reduce the jet-engine din it produced. I also had to replace a lot of ducting with acoustic ducting.

LESSON No 5: You buy cheap, you buy twice. That inline fan (Vents TT 5") was not up to scratch. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to replace it, and had to stick with it, constantly paranoid that the neighbours could hear the racket it generated. Now, at the end of the grow, still running to provide ventilation to my drying buds, it sounds like it is about to fall apart, with a loud rattle accompanying the whine and whirr.

I also had problems with the circulation fans I used causing too much noise. I had a small clip fan and a 15" oscillating desk fan in the tent - not enough for the number of plants I had - and no matter how I placed them, I could hear them downstairs. I ended up using Celotex (aka Kingspan) blocks to rest the fans on, but they were still noisy.

For pots, I used 15 litre pots, sat on risers to keep them out of the waste water, which drained into two large work trays, each 120cm wide.

Nutrients

I spent more money on nutrients than, in retrospect, I realise I needed to. I used Canna Coco A&B, Canna Rhizotonic and Cannazyme. Next time I won't bother with the Cannazyme, as I don't intend on reusing the medium.

During flowering I added in Buddha's Tree nutes: Meta Boost, PK 9/18 and Flower Burst (a freebie that apparently gives you a week head start on flowering. Later on, my extensive research taught me that really, I needn't have bothered with these. The meta boost supposedly helps prepare the plant for the higher nutrient levels given during flowering, but the PK 9/18 was, it seems, a bit of a waste of money. It cost about $150 USD for the extra nutes, and I think I would have got similar results with careful dosage of the base nutrients and the meta boost (which is a lot cheaper than Canna Boost).

I found nutrient choice to be, by far, the most confusing part of the learning process. I would urge new growers to learn from my mistake....

LESSON No 6: Keep the nutes simple.

I had issues at one point that looked like a cal-mag defiiciency. Feeding them cal-mag resulted in manganese lockout. The solution was to flush out and re-feed with base nutes, and the problem went away.

I fed them every other day, which seemed to work quite well. After one day, the medium was still moist, but after two days, in both veg and flower, the pots were dry and light and ready for more. On one occasion, due to unexpected guests, I had to leave them three days in the height of flower production. They looked terrible after that.

LESSON No 7: If you can set up an automatic watering system, it is in your best interests. It would allow for trips away, and other occasions when you can't tend to them. It also would help if, like me, you have kids that you don't want knowing about your stinky attic. Finding a window of time when the lights were on (temperatures meant I had to run lights at night) but kids are out, when I could water the plants, was a nightmare.

Environment

I used a passive intake, a 5" exhaust through a carbon filter, and two circulation fans. This would have been plenty, had I not opted to grow four plants in this small space. Humidity and heat were a nightmare, not least because I was growing in the height of summer - both big mistakes.

LESSON No 8: If you can, only grow during cooler months

LESSON No 9: Don't overcrowd your grow room - one massive plant is better than four overcrowded, stressed out plants.

If you have to grow in summer, consider an AC unit to reduce heat and humidity, but this is no solution to overcrowding. At one point, a branch snapped toward the back of the tent, and I didn't notice. The dead buds started to rot, and disease spread to another bud. Luckily, I spotted it before it spread too far, but if I hadn't overcrowded, it wouldn't have happened at all.

Earlier, I mentioned I let the plants veg too long. In the case of the sativa-dominant Super Lemon Haze, this meant the flower tops got far too close to the light. This resulted in heat stress, foxtailing, and the main buds not being ready when the rest of the plant was. Deciding when to chop became very difficult.

The Chop

Having multiple strains meant different harvest times. This caused a particular problem - where to dry the buds? I had originally thought I'd be drying inside the tent - the exhaust providing gentle air exchange and the carbon filter killing the smell. But, with plants still growing, this wasn't possible. I hung my early harvests in a cardboard box, and placed this outside the tent, pushed up against the air inlet, with a holes in the box so that air was drawn through the box and into the tent - thereby keeping the smell contained. This dried the buds a little too quickly, and those buds are too "crispy" now. The Super Lemon Haze, a MONSTER plant, with a yield in excess of the sum total of the other three plants, is having the drying environment it deserves, and is hanging in the tent in the dark.

The Cure & Processing of Concentrates

The autos were harvested around a month ago, and are curing nicely. Every day the flavour improves.

I have made water hash from the leaves, and all the popcorn buds are being stored for making some BHO when the time comes. The BHO will be a mix of all four strains. I can't wait - the concentrates are, in my opinion, the biggest reward of the grower. Before I grew my own, I would harvest for a friend, for a payment of six ounces of bud, plus all the leaves I wanted to make hash with, 50% of which I would keep for myself and 50% would go to him. The hash was always the best part!

The Credits

If you've made it this far through my wordy ramblings, well done. This section is for me to convey my heartfelt thanks to all those on RIU who have coached me through this steep learning curve. Growing cannabis can be daunting for the uninitiated; you have to read until your eyes bleed, and you still have a list of a thousand questions. In reality it is a lot simpler than you might think - certainly, my next grow, which I hope to be at least a year away (I need a break!) will be a lot simpler and, I hope, a lot easier as a result. It will be one plant, given the love and attention it needs, with no money wasted on nutes it doesn't need, and that money spent on higher quality environment control and automated feeding instead.

But, I digress, so - THANK YOU everyone who has helped me. Too many to name, but those who have engaged with me know who you are. I have some MONSTER buds which wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you guys. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

What's that, you ask? The yield?

About a pound.

kidding. Actually, the truth is, having become self-sufficient with my own harvest, the weight no longer matters to me. If I had to take a stab in the dark, I would guess it's about 12 oz all told. I could be way out. Who cares. All I know is I have plenty!

Flash.