First time'er showing off new grow

Laughing Grass said:

Happy New Year!

Thanks @psychedelicscorpion I was looking at @firsttimeARE's tutorial for doing a scrog in dwc (https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-scrog-diy.909759/), but I don't think it would fit in my 3x3 tent.

I'm thinking I'm going to bail on dwc and go with coco coir for my next grow. In my research for getting the largest yield, I never really considered the negatives of dwc, namely the daily heavy lifting. I figure I'm moving north of 400lbs of water around every time I do a res change. That includes moving out of the tent, dumping and slugging to the laundry room, refilling and then moving back into the tent. It's taking me about 2 hours to do a res change with a toke break half way through. I also cannot really access the plants in the back of the tent now so I have to move the front two out and back in daily which wouldn't be bad if they a bit lighter and you didn't have to pick them up with your fingertips. Maybe some DIY handles would make it easier.

I snapped some pics over the weekend after four days flower. They're a bit bigger than this now and I can see pistils on all but one of the plants. I discovered I do have a humidity issue, but it only seems to be happening when the lights are off. The tent was getting to about 85% rh. When I checked the plants in the morning over the holidays I noticed that the leaves were very wet wherever they overlapped each other. I put a small dehumidifier in the tent which seems to have brought that problem under control. A hole has formed where I split the stem a couple weeks back. You can see in the last photo. I was thinking of giving it a gold hoop earring. Plants need bling too.

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Just get a big reservoir to house the plants 30-40gallon+ make some cut outs drop your plants in with some neoprene discs around them and air bubblers with 1-2" air gap from water to the lid. And add some rocks/beneficial bacteria, you won't be needing to move water for a long time! You gotta get your water right that's the key, you don't want to be doing daily res changes that is nuts! I don't change my res for months. Cheers

Laughing Grass said:

Happy New Year!

Thanks @psychedelicscorpion I was looking at @firsttimeARE's tutorial for doing a scrog in dwc (https://www.rollitup.org/t/dwc-scrog-diy.909759/), but I don't think it would fit in my 3x3 tent.

I'm thinking I'm going to bail on dwc and go with coco coir for my next grow. In my research for getting the largest yield, I never really considered the negatives of dwc, namely the daily heavy lifting. I figure I'm moving north of 400lbs of water around every time I do a res change. That includes moving out of the tent, dumping and slugging to the laundry room, refilling and then moving back into the tent. It's taking me about 2 hours to do a res change with a toke break half way through.
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oh my!
You just need to find ways to automate things. Im broken so lifting is out of the question for me.
I just did a res change of my 90 gallon system and the most difficult part was mixing my nutrients. My pump did all the heavy lifting.
I pump 80% of the system volume out of my main res, out of the basement window and out into the yard or drain.
I shop vac my control res clean.
this leaves less than an inch of water in each site.
Then I rinse the pump off and drop it in my RO holding tank and fill the system back up with it.
It reduces ppm/ec by 90% which is good enough for me and took less than an hour which was almost all just waiting for pumps.

Imo find a way to hook your buckets together so you can drain and fill them with a single pump and it will completely change your experience.

@bfatal I'm not changing my reservoir daily silly. That's like part time laborer job. No thanks! I've been swapping it out every seven days. I went two weeks for the first change since there were only tiny roots showing in the first week.

@fragileassassin the shop-vac is an awesome idea. I wish a saw your post this weekend. I have a 60L vac on wheels that would make life a lot easier. I'm going to use it for the next change.

For those of you that go months without changing, how do you know what the plant has consumed and what you need to add? I know how many PPM have been consumed, but whether they're consuming N, P, Ca or Mg is a complete mystery to me. I'm not really sure how I would go about maintaining the balance necessary.

Here's a few pics from day 10 flower. The two in the back are starting to stretch. The two in the front continue to grow really tight nodes and stretching very little. In fact they growing at the same rate that they grew during veg. The other thing I've noticed in the stems on big fan leafs are significantly shorter than the other two and a lot fatter. There is no light leaking into the tent and I've moved them to different corners of the tent thinking it may be my light, but that's not the case. They are healthy and consuming nutrients and water, just not as much as the larger two and will likely be overgrow by the two largest ones in the coming days. I had the shorter ones sitting on ceramic tiles to keep them level, but noticed my reservoir temps were getting above 70 degrees so they were put back on the concrete floor. I'm not really happy with Royal Queen Seeds right now. Next grow will be Barney's Farm LSD and hopefully I'll see more consistent results.

Pretty much any seed company is gonna have some variation to the phenotypes expressed in a pack of seeds. If you really want uniformity then clones is the way to go.

Personally I would likely call this day 1 of flower if I was gonna count, since the plant has just now started producing flowers. This helps ensure you have an accurate time frame on the plants growth.

You mentioned how tight of a fit it's getting to be with all 4 plants. I couldn't tell if you had any fans under the canopy, but that would be a good idea. Keeping the air moving below the canopy will help keep things healthy.

Unfortunately we can only have four plants per household so I can't really do mothers and clones. We're supposed to be able to buy seeds and clones legally in Canada, but there are no suppliers for either yet unless you have a medical card which is kind of a bummer.

When breeders say x number of days in this case it's 50-60 days, is that from the time that you switch to 12/12 or when you start seeing flowers?

I don't have anything under the canopy except a small dehumidifier. I could probably get a friend to wire up some small computer fans, but I don't think I could fit those 8" fans like you see in the first photo above. The passive intake lower right has a 4" pipe and the airflow is pretty strong when the tent is closed. Do you think that's enough?

Laughing Grass said:

Unfortunately we can only have four plants per household so I can't really do mothers and clones. We're supposed to be able to buy seeds and clones legally in Canada, but there are no suppliers for either yet unless you have a medical card which is kind of a bummer.

When breeders say x number of days in this case it's 50-60 days, is that from the time that you switch to 12/12 or when you start seeing flowers?

I don't have anything under the canopy except a small dehumidifier. I could probably get a friend to wire up some small computer fans, but I don't think I could fit those 8" fans like you see in the first photo above. The passive intake lower right has a 4" pipe and the airflow is pretty strong when the tent is closed. Do you think that's enough?

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I totally understand only being able to have 4 plants. I don't currently pay attention to plant numbers, but eventually I'll have to if I ever make it to a legal state.

As far as what breeders say..... Half of it is marketing and the other half is BS, lol.any breeders make lots of claims about flowering time. Most of the time they are talking about actual flower time for the plant not 12/12 time.

Some breeders will specify 12/12 time, but personally that doesn't impress me. You can run a seedling on 12/12 lighting. It won't instantly start to flower. The plant must grow and reach genetic maturity first.

When it comes to air flow. Most of the time more is better. Obviously you don't want you plants getting blown all over, they can get wind stress. However you do want to make sure there aren't and moist stagnant air pockets that can lead to PM or mold.

Normally I wouldn't care, I don't think anything would really happen if I had a few extra plants not in flower and the chances of the police coming to my home is almost zilch. But I promised my partner we would stick within the current law. She's worried about getting in trouble and me having access to large quantities of weed lol.

So I guess having this wrapped up by the end of February isn't going to happen.

The high humidity during lights out has been solved by the dehumidifier. The tent staying between 45% and 55% around the clock now and I can see the lower leaves moving . I'll keep an eye on it and add in some smaller fans if it becomes necessary further into flowering.

Thanks for the feedback

Sounds like a great plan! Controlling the humidity well like you are in the first place helps a lot too.

Nice. Put a oscillating fan on the floor pointing slightly upwards if you don't have one already. Don't be afraid to take fans to keep it nice and open.
Are you planning on putting a net up?

Laughing Grass said:

Unfortunately we can only have four plants per household so I can't really do mothers and clones. We're supposed to be able to buy seeds and clones legally in Canada, but there are no suppliers for either yet unless you have a medical card which is kind of a bummer.

When breeders say x number of days in this case it's 50-60 days, is that from the time that you switch to 12/12 or when you start seeing flowers?

I don't have anything under the canopy except a small dehumidifier. I could probably get a friend to wire up some small computer fans, but I don't think I could fit those 8" fans like you see in the first photo above. The passive intake lower right has a 4" pipe and the airflow is pretty strong when the tent is closed. Do you think that's enough?

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ocs now has seeds i realized this last week. but they sold out fast. still you have to buy LP seeds or clones, genetics that you probably dont want. its pretty sad the system they have put in place. Why the hell cant we grow what we want, anything other then LP seeds or clones is ILLICIT and punishable by 14 years in jail. they argue "legalization" is to protect the kids and to stop organized crime. what public safety issue is there if i want to grow seeds from jamaica or afghanistan or some other country? the is NONE. its all about the $$$. the government has become organized crime. Buy what we say or we throw you in a cage for 14years.....its quite fucking sad. hopefully his changes in the next couple years, as there is no way to grow perpetually legally or have variety. only the genetics they say you can have....

do they throw people in jail becuase they bought tomato seeds from somewhere else? or that they grew san marzano over beefstake....its a joke

2supra4u said:

ocs now has seeds i realized this last week. but they sold out fast. still you have to buy LP seeds or clones, genetics that you probably dont want. its pretty sad the system they have put in place. Why the hell cant we grow what we want, anything other then LP seeds or clones is ILLICIT and punishable by 14 years in jail. they argue "legalization" is to protect the kids and to stop organized crime. what public safety issue is there if i want to grow seeds from jamaica or afghanistan or some other country? the is NONE. its all about the $$$. the government has become organized crime. Buy what we say or we throw you in a cage for 14years.....its quite fucking sad. hopefully his changes in the next couple years, as there is no way to grow perpetually legally or have variety. only the genetics they say you can have....

do they throw people in jail becuase they bought tomato seeds from somewhere else? or that they grew san marzano over beefstake....its a joke

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I recently read something about how government marijuana is being genetically altered to have their desired affect on people, to make it more like alcohol in that it just dazes you out.

5BY5LEC said:

Nice. Put a oscillating fan on the floor pointing slightly upwards if you don't have one already. Don't be afraid to take fans to keep it nice and open.
Are you planning on putting a net up?

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My tent came with a trellis, but I’m unsure how I would use it since I need to move the font plants out of the tent daily in order to access the ones in the back. I’m kind of wishing I bought a larger tent and light.

I had some muscle over to help with the reservoir change this week. DWC is much more fun when you’re watching someone else do all the heavy lifting. He seems convinced that we can run hoses through the rafters between the storage and laundry room without much effort. We’re going to try some time this week.

The plants kind of overwhelmed the tent this week. I’ve been tucking the leaves out of the way, but it has been a losing battle and very little light was making it through the top of the canopy. I wasn’t keen on the idea but he persuaded me to let him prune them a “bit”, but I think he was too aggressive and took off a lot of material including branches. You can see the difference between the before and after. It’s definitely less congested now. Looking at the photos, do you think too much was taken off?

The two smaller plants haven’t really stretched at all and continued to grow at their veg rate. The larger two stretched a good amount and are about 8 inches taller than the little ones. They seem happy, healthy and have never showed any indication of stress. Their root mass is smaller than the larger plants and the are consuming significantly less nutrients and water. 1 to 2 cups per day while the other two are drinking close to 2 litres. PPM is going up as they drink while the big ones constantly have a drop. Is it worth my time and effort keep these in the tent?

I'm sure that trim job will be fine, and will probably even help in the end. Your gonna get better airflow and the little bud sites and branches near the bottom won't ever get light or turn into anything. So taking them off is very common.

Since you've already grown them this far I wouldn't trash the smaller plants unless your really really unhappy with them. I don't remember without looking back are these clones or seedlings? Seedlings can easily have different phenotypes and the smaller ones could be something really special.

On the flip side, if you took the smaller ones out you could tie down branches on the bigger ones and spread out the canopy easily for better penetration.

As far as hoses go for moving water. Personally I don't love the idea of running them over head. You might even run into trouble getting a pump to move the water that far straight up, maybe not though if you got a strong enough pump.

Could you have a hose and pump you keep in a closet and just take out and unroll for the res change? Unrolling a hose should still be way less work then lugging buckets.

It’s from seed. You were telling me about phenotype variations a post or two up.

It’s just odd to me and I’ve never seen photos of anything like this. If it wasn’t for the hairs and bud sites you wouldn’t know it’s in flower. The stem on leaves at the top are still perfectly symmetrical while the larger two have a few cm difference in height at the stem. I’m going to let them continue until it becomes obvious that they’re not producing. I just can’t help thinking it’s something I’ve done.

I have a 667 gph pump that I was planning on using. I was going to run a hose down the hall if I had to do it myself this weekend. That will be my plan b if we can’t make something more permanent.

Its crazy how much different some phenotypes can be. Serious breeders spend years growing out seeds to find that one special phenotype that has 1/1000 characteristics. I did some strain testing for a company a few years back. When I ran batches of 10 seeds sometimes there was 4-5 noticeably different phenotypes. I've still got one special one I found back then.

I made a cross of my own about the same time. When I grew those out, I found 2 distinctly different phenotypes both of which were really nice for different reasons. I grew them both until recently I lost a mother plant of one pheno. I'm gonna pop some more of the seeds and see what I can find in the next batch.

Looking good in there for a first time

Yeah if you are moving them in and out a net wont work.
That trim job is going to help you out with RH, room to work...ect.
Make sure anyone coming around your plants including you is clean. No shoes, wear fresh clothes, clean stuff you bring in ect.

Thundercat said:

Its crazy how much different some phenotypes can be. Serious breeders spend years growing out seeds to find that one special phenotype that has 1/1000 characteristics. I did some strain testing for a company a few years back. When I ran batches of 10 seeds sometimes there was 4-5 noticeably different phenotypes. I've still got one special one I found back then.

I made a cross of my own about the same time. When I grew those out, I found 2 distinctly different phenotypes both of which were really nice for different reasons. I grew them both until recently I lost a mother plant of one pheno. I'm gonna pop some more of the seeds and see what I can find in the next batch.

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I wish we could do something like that here. The four plant rule seems a bit arbitrary and at the very least shouldn't include cuttings or seedings. I'd even be okay having a mother plant and three in flower. Seeds are starting to looking like a random crap shoot and it would suck even more if we didn't have access to feminized seeds. Do you have to take them all the way through flower to know what the different phenotypes produce or does experience allow you to identify them as young plants. The reason I ask is the the plants that are the smallest were the largest while veging... until I accidentally damaged the stem, then it slowed right down.

Thanks @firsttimeARE

5BY5LEC said:

Yeah if you are moving them in and out a net wont work.
That trim job is going to help you out with RH, room to work...ect.
Make sure anyone coming around your plants including you is clean. No shoes, wear fresh clothes, clean stuff you bring in ect.

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I'm glad the consensus is that too much wasn't taken off. Seemed like a lot to me. I was nervous taking off a fan leaf here and there. The area is as clean as can be for a storage room in the basement. It could probably use a vacuuming. We keep tools, sporting equipment, etc in this room so it's never going to be lab clean and I don't really want this in our living area. The garbage bag in a couple of the photos was all the plant material that was chopped and it was removed from the room shortly after we finished. The room doesn't have a heat vent so it's usually cold and I've stepped on a staple in there in the past. I always wear shoes when I'm in there. Other than further damaging an old carpet, how can that be any harm if I'm not stepping in the tent? I'm not being augmentative, I don't understand the concern.

The concern would be bringing in pests or mold spores or something like that.

I've never been able to run a lab clean grow. I prefer to grow in basements currently and every house I've rented has been old so the basements are never clean and perfect.

I'm very thankful to say I've never had pests in my grow and I'm planning on keeping it that way. Just keeping things reasonably clean is a great start to success.

Thundercat said:

The concern would be bringing in pests or mold spores or something like that.

I've never been able to run a lab clean grow. I prefer to grow in basements currently and every house I've rented has been old so the basements are never clean and perfect.

I'm very thankful to say I've never had pests in my grow and I'm planning on keeping it that way. Just keeping things reasonably clean is a great start to success.

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Clean. Keeping air moving and so forth.

Always go into the grow room clean and limit who goes in there will always limit pests. Start clean. End clean.