Grow Journal: Hindu Kush - CFL

Thanks Doc !

Ok so its time for a post here cause I'm getting a lil bit concerned...I just went to take a look at my lil plants and move the pots around in my box as I've been doing a lot of reading today and wanted to make some adjustments, ya know always gotta be tweaking something to leave the plants themselves alone, lol.. Anyway I think this might be temp related so I have a thermo in and outside of my box.. the temp inside is about 85 right now where as out of the box its about 88 in my room. Anyway when I originally opened the box and took off the cups both TH and HK were flatter and not so much in the raise the roof position, lol.. as I went to get my camera for a few night shots they both started to raise up, it was kinda odd.. so i have quite a few pics.. I rearranged the box for the night, I took both plastic cups off incase it was creating a nice humid little steamer basket. I positioned HK on 4 slimmer dvd cases directly under a cfl but in between 2.. you'll see in the pics she also happens to be placed directly in the path of one of my intake pc fans to get some "fresh air" and possibly stem strength they wouldn't receive while under the cups. I put TH on only 2 dvd cases as shes taller and would already be in the air flow. I placed her closer to the fan to get a "larger gust" as her stem is flimsier. Anyway I have good pics of both of them doin the weird shit, hopefully someone has an answer, or my new placement and no cups will help ... I wanna try to sort it out before I put CO2 in tonight, but at the same time don' wanna abandon that experiment...Here come some pics...

First up Are both Ladies "Raising the Roof" their leaves are turned up almost bending upwards and they have a slight curl starting, could it just be from the intentional over watering I gave them yesterday ??

TH

This one is whats buggin me out as shes been fine till like 5 minutes ago... and no I haven't added a thing today..

HK

Another of HK , followed by 2 macros..





And Box Shots as I've just set it up for at least the rest of the night, By the way there is a 120mm PC fan directly to the right of the plant on the right, lol...


You can see my RH% is only 38% which is why the plastic cups were such a help, I'm just worried they might hve been steaming my plants, lol..last pic is a bit back again the fan directly to the right..


There we go, thats it for now till I get some answers that I like, lol.. or see in an hr when I check if taking the cups off is helping.. we'll see..

-Tdot

For those of you who keep up with my thread and have small grows of your own, I found a link tonight thats got me pretty excited...

DIY Chiller/Humidifier for Small Grows

This DIY is amazing, I'm 100% going to be making one of these on possibly a bit smaller container next pay check as it could help lower my temps by almost 10 degrees in comparison to the 4 degrees it got the author.. he was using a 400W and a hydro hut.. I have CFL's and a tiny box.. not to mention it'll up my RH% to almost a perfect level.. its win-win.. check it out guys.. seriously I think we might have a winner of an idea here...

-Tdot

That looks badass... I can't wait to see how that gets incorporated into your grow. Im not brave enough to try to do things like that...

thats cool link you posted, im wondering though, does he say his humidity went up and his temp went down right???

I do believe he did... That's the hope.. all the cool moist air, cause humidity to go up and temp to go down !

-Tdot

Make's sense you would think..

yeah it does, it just sucks i cant use it. seee my temp stay around 85-89 deggrees but my humidity shoots higher than my temps during day adn around the same during night. so if this makes it go higher wouldnt that be bad? my temp is currently 87 f and my indoor humindity is at 89. sometimes it goes at high as 99 humidity. it can be a fucken sauna up in their. i need to bring my ihumidity down.

Yeah man, that chiller won't help you it'd make shit worse.. What you need is a Dehumidifier to remove some of the water... Get a small cheap unit and put it as close as you can to your room If not inside and you should notice a change almost within 30 min.

-Tdot

8/24 Morning Update,

Good Morning Everyone !

So I've got some good news and some bad news this morning... I'll start with the bad news , I'm fairly certain now that something is "burning" my little babies.. whether its something in the soil or the bulbs being too close (highly doubt) Anyway I have some pics of what I'm talking about. Its not terrible at all and will be easily recovered from just a unnecessary problem at this point and the reason for my previous slow growth... on to the good news ! I'm not entirely sure its because I took the cups off last night however here is my theory... The cups I'm using are not 100% perfectly clear.. I have and had a feeling since i started using them that they were distorting the light in some way which was causing partially my slower growth. Anyway after removing the cups last night I feel as though they grew the most they have in a single night last night. Also the stem on TH which I put close to the fan is still kinda thin but I was checking it out this morning and its actually quite solid I'd say it very much resembles a Tooth pick at this point. that's about all I have for now.. still searching for Superthrive as I'm hoping that might help my problem a bit.. but I have a few days at least before next watering so I have time.. anyway on to the pictures for this morning...

HK
Top Down

Side

Close Up of a Problem Leaf

Usual Sharpie Shot



TH
Top Down

Side

Close Up of a Problem Leaf

Usual Sharpie Shots
Length

Height

And last but not least a shot of how i left my box after taking the pics, I lowered each plant by 1 dvd case just in case, oh and by the way the rear fixture isn't powered on. Thats how i managed to lower my temps. When I make that Chiller/Humidifier I will be turning those bulbs back on, as for now its not even really necessary for the little plants they get enough light from 2 bulbs each oh and the one at the "top" is a 2700K more red it turns on any min now I have it just to give the box a tiny bit more ranged spectrum as its more "natural", lol



So thats it for my morning update, I'm going to go an entire 24hrs more without the cups and see how they do. In the mean time I'm going to hit up a grocery store after work today and look for larger 100% clear plastic ups OR I might use an empty 1.5L water bottle.. I'm not sure...we shall see.. I'm open for any suggestions or help as to what to do about my leaf problem.. I just "flushed" them last watering as it was just a clear ol plain distilled water.. mind u its only ever been that so I dunno.. Let me know what you guys think !!

Thanks, and
Have a GREAT day !!
-Tdot

looks like it may be nute burn

Thats what I was possibly thinking, however I haven't given them anything other thsan distilled water with a few drops of lemon juice to adjust pH... I can only assume that something in the "natural nute" in my soil has to be the culprit..Its quality soil so its not like i'm going to go spend money on something different to transplant them into a new soil... I"m thinking if thats the only problem I saw a bag of Promix at Lowes yesterday for like 5 bucks.. The store i got my seeds from originally suggest the soil i'm using if I couldn't find Promix.. I haven't seen anywhere around that has Fox Farm, but I'm ont spending that kinda money on soil now anyway...

So lets assume its my soil.. what can I do ?? Short of just "flushing with plain water at each watering ? (which is what I do anyway).. or what, I'm a bit lost.. I mean right now its not too bad so my hope is that the little girls pull through this "heavier environment" till threy are a bit older and then whats hurting them now will make them stronger in the future... I guess all I can really do is sit and wait.. oh and hope that maybe SUperThrive helps.. lol.. when I find some that is...

-Tdot

in order to do a proper flush, IMHO thats what you need, its not the same as watering your plant, you need to FLUSH the soil, so you need to water with 2-3 times the volume of water to soil, you should have alot of runoff from each pot, I would check the ph of the runoff as well, I would just run a gallon of distilled (sodum free) water between the 3 pots you have

i would just keep an eye on it and wait. same thing happend to one of my plants, and eventually it grew past it and was ok. thats why now i like to keep my soil very aerated with perlite so if i do see burns i can connect a couple drip lines and let them run for an hour or two and let it completly flush the soil. 5 gallons of water in a 1 gallon pot will flush everything out i think.

Excellent,thank you both. The 2 of you have just provided me with enough information to do a "correct" flushing. When I last watered I figured I flushed the soil as I did a heavier watering that ever before with a small amount of run off.. I left it for about 5 min and had to empty out the saucer below about 4 - 5 times as it filled with runoff water.. What I didn't do was check the pH. So this time i'll water it even heavier and check the runoff pH. This however isn't going to be for atleast a few more days as the previous watering wasn't even 3 or 4 days yet.. so it'll be a few.. but I'm thinking thats about the only thing that could help at this point.. Oh and since I just got home from work..I'm about to go look at the ladies and see if having no cups on them and the lowering (by a dvd case) helped with any of the problems.....

[small pause as I go and look at plants....]

I think I'm going to leave the cups off for a few more days and see how it goes.. The humidity is up to an ok 42% and the temps are at 85 which is the max.. once I get that little chiller going I should be at a nice 78-80 and Rh of hopefully around 50 - 55%. Time will tell as I need a paycheck before I can go buy anything... I've got to check my journal here to see when I last watered but not much going to happen till next watering/flush.

-Tdot

8/24 Evening Update..

Nothing new to really report tonight, I'm likeing the non-cup I think the cups really helped when they were tiny sprouts and then onto the first set of leaves, but since I took them off last night they seem to have flourished in the past 24 hrs, maybe they liked the extra fresh air and now having a fan blow on them. Only TH is really showing the slightest of yellowing on the tips and then the one dead tip on each plant is kinda odd. But otherwise we have new growth working on 3rd set of leaves and the stems both grew a bit inbetween what will be nodes. Its interesting to watch I keep seeing lil "hairs" that turn out to be new leaves later in the day or stem, its crazy.. lol well I'm crazy looking for females WAY too early.. lol.. haha oh Tdot.. anyway... Have a good night guys, update tomorrow morning as per usual !!

-Tdot

WOW... I leave for a weekend and check out all that I have missed lol

The girls are doing fine FT... I don't see anything to be too worried about...
Both continue to show new growth and that is all that matters at this point...

I like that you are experimenting with the cups on/ cups off idea.... but try it with one of your plants with the cup on... and one with the cups off... this will give you a better indication of whether or not the cups are working... it's what I did... and if I hadn't I wouldn't have notice the growth rate.. since like you said... they will be growing regardless. I saw a noticeable difference in just 3 days... so i kept them with the cups on till they out grew the cups.

give it a try and see what happens.

As for what is happening with the leaves... just keep an eye on it, but don't do anything to drastic... no feeding, no over watering... just let them grow.

Your doing an excellent job my friend... and I like that you want to experiment, and by all means, do experiment.. but not on both at the same time... do something with one, but not the other... so you know if it's working, even if it's a lil. bit.

If the problem gets worse, then we can start planning for something more drastic.. but they are looking ok for now...

Oh and before I forget... I'll try to make you a time laps in the next few days.. I just got home and got a lot of catching up to do in the shop..... and the grow cab lol

_________________
The BEST DIY EZ walmart carbon filter for MICRO grows Zen style
Micro ebb/flow (NOW DWC), all CFL ScrOG, perpetual Stealth locker

Welcome back bud, been waiting for your input before making any "drastic" movements heh.. I like the idea with one cup on one off.. good call.. The hard part with my 2 plants is they are both very different strains. HK is pure indica and showing it.. where as TH has nice thin leaves and is already twice the height but same leaf sets on both.. So tomorrow I'm going to go to a grocery store and get new larger and hopefully clearer cups as the ones I have now my plants are hitting the sides as is...I wanted to grab cups anyway as I am planning to grow a few mini veggie plants to start in my box as well....I won't over water them at all.. I'm waiting for the soil to dry out and then I'll give them a good watering/flush.. I'm going to stick with the heavy water dry out type watering instead of the ok watering every 3 days.. i just think its easier to not overwater this way. I might even experiment with that.. one plant 3 days sked one heavy water.. but I'll have to get my journal a little better filled in and a calendar set if I want to do that.. I'm plannign to anyway for when its nute time, so might as well start a little early.

Thanks for the time lapse shot man, that'll be awesome, I did my best to provide pictures everyday from atleast the same angle. If nothing else my sharpie shots would make great time lapses. Then I'll go ahead and use one for my Avatar if I can !!

Thanks Wolf !

-Tdot

**Edit** I forgot to mention, Wolfman, did you get a chance to check out the link I posted about the chiller/humidifer.. I think its a great lil idea that I'm going to try and make a reality I do wonder if you could use it yourself as you like a good DIY project !!

8/25 Morning Update

Good morning, although I struggle to mean good.. My Maryjane plants are fine thats not the reason for my anger, however I'm going to use this lil forum to get out my anger before i go on with my update as well as on with my day so as to not pass on my bad mood. I awoke this morning and checked on some new seeds I have been germinating (cucumber, tomato, and peas to start indoor for my new outdoor garden) I saw a few of the cucumber seeds had like 1 - 1.5" long tails so its time to plant. I head outside to fill a new potter (gatorade bottle) with my lovely BM1 soil...As I get to the end of my deck and look around the corner of my house I notice the top of my garden looks like there is ash on there.. WTF ?? So i get closer and low and behold some mother fucker (pardon my language) light my garden (with all plants) and my beautiful wood border on fire and burnt it all to a crisp.. Needless to say I'm pissed off beyond all belief and even more so as I have NO idea who it could have been, I'm a relative loner (as growing often requires) So I have no enemies who would want to mess with me. The only other natural reason could have been (and EXTREMELY unlikely at that) A lightning strike that hit the metal fence around the garden catching 3/4 the top soil and border on fire.. sounds rather unlikely doesn't it ??? Anyway heres a shot of my garden when I first finished it...




And this is how it looks this morning...



All the Black on the top soil is charred it goes about 3 - 4 inches deep, the soil is virtually useless now.. I managed to salvage about 2 - 3 potters worth of it that I had randomly filled up the other day.. Anyway I have more pics if anyone wants to see the extent of the damage. Needless to say I'm royally pissed and will not be calling the police since I don't need them dealing with my indoor garden at the same time. lol..

Ok well I feel mildly better to have gotten that off my chest onto the update your actually reading the thread for...

Alrighty, well this morning has atleast some good news !! "mission control" "HK is taking off, I repeat, HK is taking off".. lol.. Can ya guess ? lol HK looks to be flourishing without the cup on. I think the cups were making little steamers as they might just have been too small for the plants for the past 3 - 5 days. Anywho following my current mentors (wolfman) advice I left the cup on TH to see if there would be a noticeable difference. I'm not 100% sure I see a noticeable difference but I"m starting to see/think that the plant with a cup is having a problem with the leaf tips as they're touching the side of the cups..Either way time will tell. I FINALLY FOUND A PLACE WITH SUPERTHRIVE !!! and its close enough to my work that I can get it on a lunch break ! So pay day is Thursday which is when I'll go grab it and should also be very close it not a day past watering day !!! Nothing really new to talk about with TH just growing tall and steady but nto as leafy as HK is.. I know this is also going to sound crazy but TH already has a faint stink to her. I'm sure its her as I don't smoke in my room nor keep my stash, so it has to be coming from el boxo.. maybe its time for Wolfmans DIY carbon filter.. if it gets worse for sure.. Anyway enough of my bladding this morning on to pictures.. I believe I took 6 in total...Here they are with a small comment as per usual.

HK
Top Down

Side Shot (showing how "dense" shes getting with little stem growth and more leaf growth; she has a ever so slight lean [Which indicated to me time to rotate pot and let other side get as much light)

[See the tinyyyyy little new growth on the stems, almost looks like a hair.. I know I know wayyyyyyyy too early just day dreaming]
And my usual Sharpie Length Shot, you can see how much its starting to fill out.


TH
Top Down (nice light green Sativa leaves you can see how thin the leaves are compared to HK)

Sharpie - Length

Sharpie - Height (moved back for the first time so you can see the "full" size)


On a final note, I have a silly yet serious observation/question to ask.. Does anyone know the NPK of Cat Fur ?? I know sounds crazy, but the reason I'm asking is because I have 3 of the furry little bastards running around my place. Their litter box also happens to be rather close to my Grow box. So even though I clean daily, its inevitable that fur is going to get into my box as well as into the planter/soil.. Could this be having an effect on my plants ? I'm not talking like fur balls here but the odd strand or 5 per plant.. nothing much as i said I clean daily.. Just throwing it out there ?? What do you guys think ??

Have a great day,
-Tdot

you have to be careful with pets in the grow area, pets can carry bugs, that would be my concearn with the hair...............its amazing how far along they have come, keep it up........

Thanks bud, yeah the cats can't physically get into the grow area per say as the box has latches to keep them out. The stray furs get in via the intake fans I believe. They are all indoor cats and I actually bathe them, so the likelihood of bugs is pretty low. I'm just more concerned with the chemical composition of the fur adding to the soil.. I can't find anything about the chemical comp of fur online which amazes me, you'd think someone would have it somewhere on the net.. lol. I'll continue to search though !
Thanks for the compliments ! They have come quite a way !!
-Tdot