First grow. "Opium" clones in soil, 400w MH/HPS. Comments/advice welcome

Day 23:Temp= 72-82 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=35-42%

Gave the girls a good watering with nutes last night after I posted and they've put on another growth spurt, thought that might be partially due to another factor. I had to a power outage last night and some weirdness with the MH bulb/light timer this morning so I ended up using my HPS instead of my MH bulb today. I switched it back in once I was home from work, but the 8-9 hours they had under the HPS might have something to do with the visible amount of growth. The girls look healthy and happy, so not much else to add today thats related to the plants.

Ok, just a side rant. I keep getting into arguments with people from the MMJ industry on these boards, and it's starting to make me rethink my whole position on growing commercially. I started out by running the numbers on my own grow using standard business accountings methods, and then got my caregiver to start letting me run his numbers and help with his books ( sorry, i don't do income taxes. I'm not that kind of accountant), and the more I study the numbers the more convinced I am that most of the growers are charging much higher prices then they should be. Now, i will admit that most of them are just doing what they are used to doing, but this isn't the black market anymore, and when you start looking at the real costs to produce one ounce of MMJ it becomes obvious that the growers/dispensaries sales prices include one heck of a big markup. Very, very few businesses run a profit margin of over 25%, but even using conservative estimates it looks to me like the average margin in the MMJ business is more like 40%(or higher). Everytime I point this out on a thread I get jumped on by people from the industry that tell me i don't know what I'm talking about,that I'm full of shit, etc, and frankly they've pissed me off enough that I'm about ready to put my money where my mouth is and take my caregiver up on his offer to take me on as a partner. If I decide to do this it will be with a single goal in mind- to prove that you can grow commercial quantities of high grade MMJ at a cost that allows you to retail it for less then $250/oz while still running a profit margin of between 15-25%, and to either force other growers/dispensaries to become more reasonable with their prices or to go out of business as they lose customers. I'm sorry if my attitude offends anyone, but i find the attitude of the growers and dispensaries that think it's reasonable to expect someone that consumes about an ounce a week to spend over $20,000 a year for their medications offensive, and think it's time someone showed them how competition benefits the consumer.

Day 32:Temp= 72-82 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=35-45%

Another long time between posting due to the camera owner not sending the pics to me quickly.

New weeks data as of 2/6 was:

1) 14.5" + 3.25" growth
2) 7.5" +3.5" growth
3) 15" + 3.5" growth
4) 11.5" +3.5" growth
5) 14" +3" growth'
6) 11.5" +3.25" growth

Plant #3 finally started to stop growing sideways and turned upwards, and as of today it's put on another 2.5" worth of upwards growth since the measurements listed above were taken. Technically I should have switched to the flowering light schedule 5 days ago, but HTG supply had my new 600w light on back order so it's going to be another day or two before it's here. I could go ahead and start with the 400w I'm using for veg, but plant 3# needed the extra veg time anyway.


After reading the foliar feeding thread on the advanced cultivation board I decided to go ahead and try it out for myself, so I've been giving my girls a light misting with 1/8th strength FF Grow Big for the last 4 days. Haven't really noticed much of a difference yet, but I'll give it some time and see what happens.

Day 34: 74-86 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=25-32%

Had a bit of a major setback today. My new 600w finally showed up last night and I spent a half hour or so getting it set up so that i could start my girls flowering today. As the pics from a couple days ago show my girls showed absolutely no signs of spider mites (until yesterday, and I misread them as slight nute burn from foliar feeding), but today they are obvious and i have a number of leaves showing signs of having been fed on. I proceeded to mix up a couple quarts worth of neem oil spray and soaked every single leaf on every plant from both sides as well as the stems, then misted them all with the stuff again for good measure, all while merrily humming "kiwl da wabbit, kiwl da wabbit" like elmer fudd in between boughts of telling the spider mites what i thought of their entire ancestry in insulting detail.

Problem is, the infestation is bad enough that the Neem may fail me, in which case my fall back is Azitrol. Since using Azitrol during flowering tends to leave you with a chemical taste to your buds I'm going to have to keep them on 18/6 for ANOTHER 3-4 days to see if the neem has done the job or not. I didn't find but a single strand of web during my spraying and that was tiny, so I'm hoping I managed to catch them before they've had time to multiply very much and that the neem will be effective. I DID see an awful lot of black things on the undersides of the leaves while I was spraying, which is the main reason I'm worried about the neem failing.

Also, made some major environmental changes. The plants were getting too big to fit in the closet comfortably, so I move them out into the room tonight under the 600w with a HPS bulb in it. They've got more airflow so I was able to drop the light down to about 20" (it was at 24" in the closet with the 400w), though I'm going to keep a careful eye on them for the next couple days for signs of heat stress. The temp in room was up to 86 an hour ago, and since they are in a much more open area the buckets of water aren't working well and the humidty has dropped into the mid-high 20's. I also discovered that my girls do not react well to being manhandled, and my grow room reeks at the moment. I opened up the window and its clearing out, but I may end up needing to invest in some sort of odor control system beyond the fan/open window method sooner then I had planned on. All and all the evening has been quite an experience, and that doesn't even count the new grow I started under my 400w (3 dj short unreal blueberry clones).

Hot Shot Pest killers work well also. Neem oil works over time. Since you are trying to go quickly use the chemicals or the hot shot bombs. I can relate to plants getting to big haha. I'm giving one of mine away ;p. Looking good keep it up!

Thanks gold. Those are the no pest strip things, right?

Day 35: 74-86 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=25-32%

I'm really start to hate spider mites. I'm not sure how fast the Neem is supposed to work, but as of today I still have adults hanging out on the bottoms of a good number of leaves on all but one of the plants, though they don't seem to be doing any more damage currently. Lot of eggs showing on the underside of the leaves too, but I have no way to tell if they are dead/dying from the neem or if they just ignored the stuff. I spent some time on the worste effected plants scraping the mites and eggs off with my finger nails, and after seeing a thread over in the "bugs" forum I gave a couple of them a hot steam bath using a hand steamer (it's one of those one's you use for steaming dress clothes so that you don't have to iron them). I may have gotten a few leaves a bit too warm, but overall the plants came throught it just fine (though I'm not sure how effective it was as a treatment yet). Only other thing I've done is adjust the fans speed and aim so that its putting a much heavier breeze through them in the hopes that it will make more of them fall off.

Other then the mites the girls are doing fine, though all the handling the last couple days has made them put out some serious smell (the neem oil may be part of it too, I can't tell for sure). Keeping the temperature down in the room with the 600w is proving to be a bigger challenge then I had expected as well. With the 400w the only time it got over 80 was when the outside temp was up above 60 , but with the 600w it's sat between 82-86 most of the day despite my opening a window to let in outside air (and carry out the smell) thats only 35 degrees. I knew I was going to need to relocate the grow to the basement once late spring and summer rolled around due to the temperature issues on my second floor, but I may just need to do it earlier then planned. Will require a ton of work though, because my basement doesn't have nearly enough electrical outlets, the only currently existing water taps are for my washing machine, and the whole thing is unfinished with bare concrete walls right now. I HATE playing Joe Handyman dammit!

Took me a lil under 2 weeks to kill my spider mites and I caught them early! Neem oil stops egg reproduction/hatching so you're trying to kill many generations. So naturally it takes some time. Yea they are the strips. Good luck with the temps they are quite high. I got leaf twisting and aversion at straight 80F but perhaps the leaf is hotter from ambient heat. I gotta raise my 600's build a new rig outta PVC. Humidity is pretty low and it's gonna effect transpiration. Try adding a lot of standing water around your plants to get it to at least 35%+ Optimum humidty is related to temperature. A grow at 80+ degrees should have around 55-60% RH. Whereas one in the 70s should have 40-50%. Good Luck man!

Growing,

I've got a 5 gallon bucket filled with water on each end, a damp towel hanging in front of the fan, and I mist the air around the room with water several times a day. I live in Colorado, so really low humidity is pretty standard, even in winter. Once I can get the smell to dissipate and can keep the window shut most of the way it should go back up by at least 5%, but I may end up needing to get some sort of humidifier if i want to push it up over 35-40%. I'd really prefer not having to add any more electrical devices yet thoguh.

As for the temperature, I can always adjust the houses thermostat down a few degrees, and raising the light will also drop the temperature a bit (my tempt/humidy monitor sits alongside the plants so i get the temp under the lights, not ambient room temp). I've noticed a bit of leaf curling and the new light is better then double the lumens they are used to, so I was going to raise the light a bit tonight anyway. It doesn't change the fact that the grow will have to be moved eventually, but it's not like I need to head over to home depot for the supplies to build the room in my basement tonight.

On the bright side the basement will be cooler and trap humidity better.

Yeah, that's one of the main reasons to move down there. Plus I can set things up pretty much however i want since all I need is some framing with mylar/panda film for walls to serve as the rooms. The big expense is going to be the electrical work, since there is only one outlet (besides the ones for the washer/dryer) in the entire basement right now and I can't run a veg room, flowering room, and (eventually) cloning area off a single extension cord.

Damn, yea I heard that. Electricity is a bitch! My last grow I lost 48 plants and 5 grand cause the power fried. Note to self from now on only rent places with circuit breakers. Luckily the one I'm in uses an electric stove. Insta 50 amp circuit. Hahah

Day 39: 74-86 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=25-32%

Hasn't been a good few days for my girls. I was still seeing spider mites a couple days back so I gave them another dose of neem, but it looks like I overdid it. As of tonight I'm pretty sure I've wiped the mites out, but I've also lost quite a few leaves to Neem OD because I didn't rinse them off either soon enough or thoroughly enough. On most of the plants it's cost me less then 10% of the leaves, but on one its more like 40% and has also cost me some new growth. I rinsed the heck out of the leaves today with plain water , and assuming that only the leaves that show signs of OD currently end up dying the plants should be ok. I'm going to discontinue using neem for about a week, and then use a lower dosage as a weekly preventative the day before I give them a shower.

This is their 4th day of flowering and they really aren't showing a lot of growth right now, though I put that down to the fact that I've been pulling off a lot of dead leaves so they just don't look as full as they did before. They aren't really gaining much in height right now either, which could be a result of the mite infestation, treatement, general manhandling, or the major change in environmental conditions. I changed so many things at once that getting everything back to where they are happy may take a while to work out.

In regards to foliar sprays...never exceed dose listed by manufacturer. There is little lee way with sprays. A higher dose will harm plants, whether it be phytotoxicity or leaf drop. If not applying a spreader sticker it is smart to go over a second time, soon after, with water to help rinse the leaves off and ensure you don't get burns from pooling.

If the mites were stressin you, you should have just got hotshot pest strips versus overapplying neem.

Growing,

I was using the neem every other day because I had read on a couple threads that it needed to be reapplied that often when dealing with an active infestation, and that it would be safe as along as you rinsed the leaves off with water the next day. I didn't exceed the mixed dosage I was supposed to according to the bottles directions, but since everything I read said that you had to get the bottom leaves well coated I ended up spraying a lot more then was probably needed on each plant because they were so bushy. They didn't start showing signs of OD until the third application (6th day since i started treatment) so either the level on the leaves built up gradually or I did a really lousy job of rinsing them on the last spray. My guess is that it was the gradual buildup, since neem is oil based and spraying the leaves with water isn't going to remove all of it.

I did add a hot shot pest strip to each room (set in the center between the plants), but that was more to prevent a new infestation then to kill off the one I already had. From what I read on he box they aren't as effective if there are drafts, and I have fans going in both areas so I didn't want to rely on them alone.

Yea you have to turn off your fans and all that. So during the night cycle which is when you have nothing running. You put in the pest strips. It builds up kills the pests. Then just exhaust the room with your fans during the lights on.

Most products will have dosage listed by the concentration of the solution and # of application/week or x number of days. Like my Bio Need says: Repeat applications 2-3 times on a 7-day interval. When infestations are heavy, apply on a 3-4 day interval until populations are reduced.

That sucks if your bottle didn't have the weekly application information. Pretty uncommon.

I hope all this doesn't reduce your yield. It probably wont do much. But if you blow it again bro your fucked. Outta get out of jail free cards...

Day 42 (6 of flowering): 74-86 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=25-32%

Well, I've lost a few more fan leaves, but overall the neem overdose seems to be playing itself out. The plants haven't grown a whole lot this week, though that doesn't really surprise me considering the changes in environment and the amount of stress they've been through. The two tallest were showing some early signs of burning on the top leaf tips, so I raised the light to 25" (was at 21" before) and that should hopefully take care of the problem.

My other new girls seem to be coming along just fine. The two that transplanted easily look to have put down some good roots while keeping a full set of green and healthy leaves, and have even put out a fair amount of new growth (though they haven't grown upwards much yet). The one I thought I might lose has recovered and put down a decent enough set of roots to be able to sart producing some new growth itself, so it will probably make it. The loss of most of it's large fan leaves this early may slow it's development down a bit compared to the others and it may not have as large a harvest, but better then losing it to transplant shock.

Got a bit of a dilemma about what to with my grows in the long term. As of today I have the ability to grow up to 48 plants (2 people on the registry with 24 plant recommendations from the Dr), but I really don't need that many to meet our needs and really don't want to mess with growing commercially. What i want to do is set up a perpetual grow that guarantees me that I will produce at least 2-3 oz of dried bud every week. I don't know if I want to harvest weekly, bi weekly, or what though. I also want to maintain about 4 mother plants from different strains and have each harvest be a single strain, but I can't decide how to I want to handle the cloning process. There are too many products out there and i don't want to waste money on something fancy when something low tech does the job just as well. Im guessing that I can do all that with about 20-25 plants and still have some fudge factor for plants dying, underproducing, etc, but thats just a guess.

Day 51 (15 of flowering): 70-84 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=20-25%

Been a few days since my last report, but I haven't had much new to report until the last few days. My girls spent the last week recovering from the Neem OD and continued to shed leaves, though at a much slower pace. At last some of it is the natural aging of the plant at this point, since everything I've read has said to expect some leaves to yellow, dry up, and fall off as they got older and stopped working as efficiently. I also think I has some issues with nutrient lock up in the soil, and went ahead and gave them a shower about 6 days ago. I didn't do a heavy flush, just enough to get them to run through for a bit, and they've responded by putting on a growth spurt (tallest is up to 25" now) and have a bunch of bud sites forming up all over them. I went ahead and went back to giving them nutrients with their watering yesterday, and this was the first week they've really gotten the high P nutes, so I'm hoping the rest of the problems I'm seeing will start to disapppear in a few days.

No access to the camera, so no pictures currently. Biggest issue i have is that I have some leaves curling downwards as if they were suffering from heat stress, but the room isn't really hot enough and the light is 32" up. The other things thats wierd is that some of these are leaves in the middle of plants whose upper leaves aren't curling at all. I've also still got issues with leaves going yellow and dying for no apparent reasons, but as i mentioned above some of that might be age, especially considering that at this point they are two weeks older the originally planned for. Overall most of them look really good, and the only one that really seems scraggly is the one thats always tended to put all it's growth towards one side-that side of the plant looks great, but from the other sides it looks bare. They've all started budding on the tops, but I've also got bud sites all over them in other places, and I may just end up with plants that have multiple main colas from the way some of these sites are forming up.

At this point I'm just guessing, but based on the growth it looks to me like between the mites and my over reaction that my plants shut themselves down for about 7-10 days. Not sure how that's going to translate when it comes to harvest time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes longer then the anticipated 8 weeks for these girls to be ready. I'll try to get the camera over here sometime in the next few days so i can post some pics, but I'm at the mercy of someone else's schedule on that.

Day 57 (21 of flowering): 70-82 during light, 62-70 at night. Humidity=25-33%

Another week down, and the girls seem to be coming along fine, only problem is that I'm continuing to have fan leaves curl up and die on me. It's not the top set though-it's the ones below that. It may just be me, but the pattern seems to be that the plant will put out a new set of fan leaves towards the end of the stalk, a bunch of smaller leaves around the bud site, and then the fan leaves that are directly below that point start to die. This is just a guess, but it seems to me like this is actually just part of the natural cycle since the plants seem healthy overall. It's just surprising how quickly it happens, since a set of leaves will look fine one day, start to curl the next and be about ready to be plucked off on the third. It's also not effecting all of my lower fan leaves, only some of them. I THINK that most of the ones that are dying are leaves that have been around for a while, but it's not like I kept careful enough track of invidual leaves to be sure.

The camera owner finally came by and took some pics today and is supposed to send them to me this evening. Based on previous weeks I'm guessing it will be more like Wednesday before I get them, but I'll post them as soon as they show up.

I suppose I should give an update on the new girls too, since I don't have a seperate grow journal for them. The two that rooted well have come along just fine, and are actually in better shape then my first set of plants were at this point (week 3 of veg), but the one that almost died on me isn't doing much. She's added some new small leaves on top and the way they are standing almost straight up tells me that she's still working on her roots, but her lower leaves (the ones she started with) are starting to yellow up and die. The lack of fan leaves has really slowed her down, and my biggest concern is that the smaller leaves she's been relying on for photosynthesis and energy production are going to wear out before she's gotten her roots well enough established to produce replacements for the fan leaves. I'm not worried about her dying, but I am concerned that she won't ever develop properly and won't ever be worth putting into flower. If I had a cloning set up I'd be tempted to pull her out of the veg room and put her back under a lower power cloning light

the pic u wanted people to guess about is resin looks to be a lot

Your right- That's a ball of resin that's been building for several years. I keep it in the freezer, and add more to it every time I clean my pipe. Now I just need to figure out what all i can do with it/make it into, since I really don't need it as a last ditch emergency stash any more. That's the one thing i really like about dispensaries- there is never any worry about whether they are going to have product for sale, or any need to wait 2-3 days while they get ahold of their connection.