First serious grow! LEC 315 in a 4x4 tent (Philips elite agro CMH)

Just opened the tent, looks pretty good! Starbud got her period!

pics of her first preflower later tonight!

Starbud was definitely sturdy enough for some real lst so I just did that, also, it helped me get a pic of her preflower
last night when I transplanted them I removed the ties from brazil amazonia and midnight kush, they've already bounced back.

I tied starbud down pretty radically though. wonder how long til she peeks up at the light again. there's definitely gonna be a few flower tops on her and I'll be sure to keep that tie in place.

I just raised the light a few inches, hope that helps with the leaf curling, especially on brazil amazonia and midnight kush

Your garden is so beautiful! I love the Kush leaves

I bent a plant over when it was small because it was blocking the sun from an almost finished plant. The bent plant eventually straightened back up and now is the shape of an upside-down question mark!



Cheers,
Mo

Nice! I want something like that to show off to friends and family. My dream is to one day train a plant going one direction, and then have it double back on itself and spiral around the stem, it'll take years!

Thanks for the kind words everyone! keeps me extra motivated to join club CMH, and on what I'm considering my first grow it amps me up and makes me not wanna let you down!

Got home from work and saw starbud was pointing straight up at the light again, bouncing back quickly from LST. I removed a paperclip from the chain tying her down, bringing the top further down, and hooked the plant onto the chain higher up in a second spot. before I went to work I tied down one of her taller branches in the opposite direction of the main stem. My main idea is to almost scrog her, trying to make it so if you're looking straight down on the plant from above, you can't see the pot. I want every branch to be a cola, so I'm thinking I'll try to keep the canopy super even and dense at about the level it is now, just filling out more and more until the area 51 lights get here. The day they get here I'll fim the tip on her, to try to focus on making every branch/future cola fill out a bit, and then 5 days to a week later start 12/12

midnight kush isn't showing much growth, but she's not turning funny colors or shriveling up or anything, so let's hope in 12 hours when I check on her, node #9 opens up.

Querkle is actually doing pretty well, goin' on nine inches, those leaves at the top are nodes 6 and 7. I've read that she does well topped but I dunno if I want to. I'm definitely not gonna lst her though, too short in the first place. What I keep thinking is to either supercrop her or just let her go as normal.

Brazil amazonia is still boring. slow vegger for sure. and I've read she could take 100 days to flower! I should have thought about that in more detail earlier. Also, I can't be positive on the sex of brazil or querkle yet,

Fool's gold, for being 10 days behind, Is definitely growing fast, to say the least. I'm thinking she'll produce well for being a bit behind.

Burmese kush and afghan kush are still behind for sure.

Last year I played around with LST, it is incredibly fun, I plan on doing some artsy fartsy bending and training this year now that I know my way around a little bit. This was my favorite, but it sadly wound up being a male

YES YES YES!!!!
EXACTLY! Sweet plant dude that's art,

oh no! I turned the big fan on to blow the plants around a little, came back a few minutes later and the autoflower had leaned/blown over significantly! I tied her back upright, hope she's okay though.

was trying to see if I could try to fix the slight bit of canoeing in a lot of the other plants, and the claws on that one. I'm mostly thinking it's underwatering as far as the canoeing goes, not gonna overdo it though.

otherwise still chuggin' along!

Sorry it's been so long! large update


I think querkle is a boy, but it might take a bit longer to know for sure Hoping for the best. I'm half tempted to try to find a way to keep it if it is a male. It's growing really dense and bushy, starting to go faster, the stems smell awesome and grapey with a little finger rub, It might be a really good male for breeding, especially because it's not OG. everything is crossed with damn OG. I don't see very many people breeding tga strains except tga.

Midnight kush is doing well. Just over a foot tall with 10 nodes. I'm almost thinking about some kind of training for her, depending on the stretch she might get too tall!

I really LSTed the hell out of starbud!

Brazil Amazonia was short even before the minor lst, but now she's bushy! I like the way her leaves look, and I think I saw a preflower the other day, though I could have been mistaken. Nice to have a sativa hanging out.

Fool's gold is going like a champ! I was getting her mixed up with querkle until I separated them. I'm a goon and I covered part of the lens with my finger so as not to confuse it with the other plants, but looking at the full size image, that was dumb

Afghan kush is also speeding up

Burmese kush is picking up as well, she's got roots sticking out the bottom of her 2 gallon pot, so I think now's about the time she should start popping up.


The blue kush autoflower is doing good. developing buds. I bought flowering nutes today and I've just been giving regular water to this one for about a week, I'll start her flowering nutes next watering. I'm getting pretty anxious for those lights to arrive from a51, I want to be able to keep her under pretty direct light but I'm also totally ready to up-pot the fools gold, burmese, and afghan, I just need the space that would be afforded by those lights. I'm pretty sure with those two rw-75s I'll have enough light to stuff my 4x4, anybody have any thoughts on that? It'd also be nice to have her under more of a flowering spectrum asap, especially while she's got some time under 18/6 left. I almost wish I could keep vegging until she's done but I know she's not the main event!


I'm really excited to see what starbud does during the stretch after I do the 12/12 flip. I wanna see 4-8 little towers emerge from that pile of fan leaves. one branch was tied away from the main stem, then tied back toward the main stem farther up, so it might have a "C" shape in it near the bottom. two other branches I tied together so they'd both hit the top closer to the middle, but at the top of the canopy I tied them away from each other, so they'll both look like "7"s, and the main stem emerges from the soil, goes to a 45 degree angle for 8 inches up, then straightens at the top. I'm pretty much trying to say I feel like I'm crafting a cool plant that'll look awesome and probably produce pretty well by the end of it.

here's a group shot, and some more pics of my personal favorite, and an image showing what I did to which branches on the beautiful starbud.

edit: oh yeah, fun fact- those two branches on starbud that are both bent like "7"s are also both tied together, and that tie is tied to the main stem!

by the way, in the above group shot, querkle is hiding behind starbud.
Man I'm in love with that starbud plant, all the leaves look awesome too. a lot of them are huge, and with 11 fingers!


right now in the back row there's a 5 gallon, a 7 gallon, and a one gallon, in that order.
in the front there's a 5 gallon, a two gallon, and a 7 gallon, with two one gallons crammed in front of the two gallon.
There's plenty more space in the tent, but the light isn't as great. I would have transplanted today but realized I would have had to put someone in a darker corner. Got my supplies though, so I'm at the ready. I have a three gallon smart pot, two five gallon smart pots, saucers to go beneath them, and a little over 15 gallons of soil. Won't transplant querkle until I know the sex. I'll probably put the afghan kush in the three gallon, supposed to be a small plant anyway, and if smaller pots reduce yield, I know where to get plenty of afghan kush, I don't need to grow it to get it.
If querkle's a girl it's definitely getting a 5 gallon or more.
of course, some time into flowering the autoflower will come down, I'm guessing late april. That'll free up space then, but doesn't do much right now.


A couple questions-
with the LEC and the two RW 75s in my 4x4 do you guys think it's not pushing it too far to try to flower 8 plants, two in 7 gallons, 5 in five gallons and one in a three gallon?
I sometimes hear "they can as much as triple in height in flower," I know a key phrase here is "as much as" but do you think I'm gonna be pushing the height? it's a gorilla tent, so it's 6'7", I was gonna get the height extension kit but I didn't wanna put it on until this cycle was done just for convenience. If I gotta do it though, better while they're vegging. Think I can get by without it this round?

finally, the dumbest question in the world, if I started flowering this saturday (day 46 from seed), does anybody have a ballpark guess? I know there's no way to tell until you're putting the dry buds on a scale, but just wondering what an experienced grower might say would be a feasible expectation.
I'm really hoping to hit 10 or more ounces. does it seem like something that could be done pretty easily with my set-up at this point, or am I more set up to pull down like a qp? Like I said, not looking for exact numbers, just not trying to set myself up for disappointment too. If I need to veg more I'd rather somebody let me know that instead of giving me the holier-than-thou "pointless to ask, about a £" standard, canned RIU automated telephone system response.




EDIT:I just realized that this may have been lost in the massive update- does that look like a ball on querkle?

EDIT EDIT: Another question- what do you guys think of my paperclip LST method? somebody complimented it on RIU in my CFL grow years ago, so I've assumed so far that it's a legit method. Based on one other noob complimenting me, stupid I know.
What I liked about it then was that I could clip the paperclips on to the side of the plastic pots I was using, which was convenient. What I like about it now is that...you know how paperclips have a loop around a smaller loop? without even unhooking the plant or anything, you can just slide one clip down onto the smaller loop on the adjacent clip, shortening the length by only about 1 mm.of course, you can only do that to as many paperclips as you have in the chain, but if you want to pull something down even further, you can also just remove a paperclip

anybody see anything wrong with paperclips? I don't see why anybody would, but that's why I'm asking

Wow, quite an update. That querkle is a bit blurry but nothing to worry about right now so just keep an eye on it over the next week, see if you can get some clearer close-up pics in a few days. I think I see a potential pistil there but it's just a sliver and blurry.

As far as space, you're Ok right now. That one at the back-left, you may want to tie that one down a bit, it looks like it could go very tall if you don't. If that's the maximum height you have it looks like you want to flip soon, hard to tell from a pic but you'll need 18-20" away from the light or risk some bleaching/burn. So you can either flip soon or extend the tent. If you have some room to move the light up you can extend the veg a bit.

Interesting paper clip idea, never used them but should work fine, anything that can hold the branches down will work. Some bamboo sticks or the like would work and give you some support later for heavier branches.

Paper clips are a great idea!

GroErr said:

Wow, quite an update. That querkle is a bit blurry but nothing to worry about right now so just keep an eye on it over the next week, see if you can get some clearer close-up pics in a few days. I think I see a potential pistil there but it's just a sliver and blurry.

As far as space, you're Ok right now. That one at the back-left, you may want to tie that one down a bit, it looks like it could go very tall if you don't. If that's the maximum height you have it looks like you want to flip soon, hard to tell from a pic but you'll need 18-20" away from the light or risk some bleaching/burn. So you can either flip soon or extend the tent. If you have some room to move the light up you can extend the veg a bit.

Interesting paper clip idea, never used them but should work fine, anything that can hold the branches down will work. Some bamboo sticks or the like would work and give you some support later for heavier branches.

Click to expand...

cool thanks, I have about another 16 inches or so I can raise the light. the top of the one in the back left is about 20" from the bulb. It's the autoflower, so I've been thinking this is probably about as tall as she'll get, could I be wrong? I feel like I've noticed less vertical growth and more bud formation lately.

definitely gotta find a better camera than my phone, I think there's one sitting around the house, I'll grab a photo once the lights come on

borbor said:

cool thanks, I have about another 16 inches or so I can raise the light. the top of the one in the back left is about 20" from the bulb. It's the autoflower, so I've been thinking this is probably about as tall as she'll get, could I be wrong? I feel like I've noticed less vertical growth and more bud formation lately.

definitely gotta find a better camera than my phone, I think there's one sitting around the house, I'll grab a photo once the lights come on

Click to expand...

Ok, you'll want to eventually run them as high as you can but that should give you some breathing room with having the extra 16" available, thought it looked close to the 20" mark in the pic. You should consider flipping soon, those will fill the tent quick once they stretch and although you have a little bit of space you don't want to cut it too close as some of those could double in height. Better go buy a box of paper clips

rearranged the tent again, I want this to pretty much be the permanent setup, I'll keep them in the same spots when I transplant the last ones up
back row- Midnight kush, Brazil amazonia, querkle&burmese kush
front row- blue kush auto,afghan kush&fool's gold, starbud.

I transplanted the afghan kush into a three gallon. I'm waiting til I'm sure about the sex of querkle to know if I'll put both fool's gold and burmese kush in five gallons, or if I'll put querkle in a five gallon and those two in three gallons.

I just measured the distance I can still raise my light, it's only 14" so I'm gonna go ahead and order the height extension kit.
just after taking the photo, I raised the light a couple of inches
oops, just noticed midnight kush is completely obscured haha

Time to get a bigger tent!

tried to get a good shot of the suspect querkle with a real camera. I suppose it's time for a new camera. You'd think after all my time on this planet I would have learned to tell the difference between boys and girls without raising my hand and asking the prof for help.
also, looks like it'd be just irresponsible to not transplant fool's gold right here and right now. I didn't expect to see that when I lifted the pot!

back row- midnight kush, querkle, brazil amazonia, fool's gold
front row- Blue kush auto, afghan kush & burmese kush (in front of each other), starbud

the height extension kit shipped today, no idea on the rw-75s. I'm guessing monday or tuesday I can flip to 12/12.

Last night I did a little more lst on starbud. The two first branches are exhibiting this whorled phyllotaxy (3 leaves per node), and one of those is the branch I bent like an "L", I haven't read much about this trait (mutation?) but I think I remember reading a couple of years ago that it can yield a little more. anybody ever have a plant like that? I've known about it for quite a while, I've just kept forgetting to mention it in these posts but it might even be obvious in some of the older starbud pics.
Last night I tied the main stem again, so now it's kinda hook shaped, and tied down a branch poking above the canopy
I feel like I'm just about done sculpting starbud.


just watered ALL the ladies! I never get to do that! seems like some are always thirstier than others! Hydro sounds easier for this reason, and also, it's quite a pain in the ass to get all the way back to midnight kush

borbor said:

tried to get a good shot of the suspect querkle with a real camera. I suppose it's time for a new camera. You'd think after all my time on this planet I would have learned to tell the difference between boys and girls without raising my hand and asking the prof for help.
also, looks like it'd be just irresponsible to not transplant fool's gold right here and right now. I didn't expect to see that when I lifted the pot!

Click to expand...

I would have liked the post but looks like you have a male there Give it a couple of days to make sure but I'd leave it in that pot.

just the wrong timing
who knows, maybe in a year or two with a couple more tents I'll find myself popping a 20 pack of querkle in hopes of finding a good male, I know for sure next round I wanna do some tga. maybe querkle, or something else, but I've always admired sub's strains.

edit:
okay I'm SERIOUSLY done moving them around now,
very back row-querkle, burmese kush
middle row: midnight kush, brazil amazonia, fool's gold
front row: blue kush auto, starbud, afghan kush

saw a change on a51's website about rw-150's being temporarily in stock, I wonder if that means anything about the 75s