My CFL Grow.

how have the ladies been lately?

Not well.

I'm having deficiencies (bought some EarthJuice Microblast), a possible pH lockout due to mixing my nutes at 3x strength, and now they're getting waterlogged. The leaves look terrible on all three. The SB is 14" now and the WW is just over 12", but I don't want to flower them with how weak they seem to be. Right now I've got two fans on them, the heat in the mid 80s, and them sitting on newspaper with paper towels shoved into the drain holes trying to dry them out. I'm also going to drill a few more 1/2" drainage holes after my wife gets home from work. I've got three per bucket right now and I figure double that plus one right in the center should hopefully help. At this point I'm just hoping I don't lose them. I'm also foliar feeding them every four days since they aren't getting anything from their roots.

I just set up a 1g dwc cloner and will be taking some clippings either later today or tomorrow morning, along with just cleaning them up around the soil line. Then I'll set up a small tub next week after they (hopefully) root. I've got 1/4ml each of the Thrive Alive B1 and Microblast in the water, to help them root and with any deficiencies they might be having. The B1 calls for a few ml per quart and the microblast a few per gallon, so it's a super weak mixture. It's bubbling away right now in the tent so the water gets up to room temp. Oh, speaking of which, the water is Brita filtered and adjusted to a pH of ~6.

I've also got some schwag seeds germinating right now, for the 12/12 party cup grow. I'm germinating 12 in hopes of getting 2-4 good females. Looking at keeping them under 2' by harvest.

Alrighty, got a few clones from each of the ladies. Four each from the WW and BD and two from the SB. Hopefully a few of them root. I also did some general cleaning up on the WW and BD because they were bushy girls. I left a few good clone choices just in case.

Maybe this growing method is better with wicks running all the way to the top, but I hate it. They're all waterlogged about 3-4" below the surface and dry as a bone above that, which means that all of the roots in that top zone are dry while the rest are drowning. I'm going to try drilling a few more drainage holes per bucket but, if these clones root I think I am going to go ahead and do that other transplant to dwc. I'll be using it for the clones anyway.

shit man, i hope you get that figured out and have some better luck. careful with the foliar feeding as it is easy to burn the shit outta the plant, although it is probably necessary with such a messed up median. good luck!

I added five more holes, one more on the bottom in the middle and four around the side about 1.5" up. The SB has finally started taking off and the WW is showing some new, albeit yellowish, growth. The BD is just sad and dying a little more each day. My friend gave me another WW clone because he felt bad for me. I haven't measured her but she's about 6-8" and a frail young thing. I've got her hardening off to the room right now.

The clones are looking pretty good. Only one is showing the beginnings of roots, but it's only been a few days so I'm not stressing it. These will go into one of the two dwc tubs I'm making.

I got the first of my two new dwc tubs mostly setup tonight. I was stoned and did an eight site top instead of the six site I wanted. I got two 16qt Sterilite containers and two lids for each, so I'm going to do two lids each of six and eight sites and use them for vegging. I don't have a hole saw so I used a rotary with a drill bit to get the biggest part of the holes opened up and then a sanding bit to finish it. Pain in the ass. I'm getting a hole saw tomorrow. All I have left to do with this one is wash it out and cover it up since it's clear. Then it'll be the big day for the four ladies. I'm going to run them for a day with plain water and h202 for the roots, then add B1 and 1/4 strength nutes.

This is my veg "room" and perpetual harvest idea. I can fit both of the small tubs into one 18g Sterilite tote. So I'll just use its lid for the lighting, make some ventilation mods, and have a nifty place to clone/veg for 1-3 weeks. Flowering will be 8-10 sites in a 10g roughneck tote for the first four weeks and then into a 14g for the last four weeks. I'm thinking about making one or two bucket systems for strains that might need another week or two. The goal is a monthly harvest once everything's up and running.

I also planted 12 schwag bag seeds on Sunday night (22nd) that I'd had germinating in a paper towel in a zipper bag. Well, ten were from there and the other two were fresh from the tray. By lights out on Monday I had five standing up and eight today with another just starting to poke up. I have them in small peat pot with MG seed starting mix (5-1-5). I'm watering with straight 7pH filtered water. The first five are already showing their first true set of leaves. Little cuties. The tallest is already about 2". I need to get the lights closer to them I think. I'm hoping I get 2-3 good females to flower quickly, around 4-5". These will stay in the MG seed starting mix until harvest. I think that will compliment the 5-9-4 of my nutes. I'm not sure if I'm still going to do the party cup idea. I might use gallon milk jugs instead so I can water once a day instead of a few times.

Speaking of lights. I think I've figured it out. We use a 14.5g Sterilite tote for our cat box, we have two actually, and don't use the lid. I'm putting emergency blanket on with double sided tape as the reflective surface and a socket on each end, lengthwise. In each socket will be an extender and two plug ins for a total of six sockets without Ys. That'll be perfect to put 150-200w worth of 26w bulbs over each tub. I got some 16g wire and two 6' $.88 16g extension cords from WalMart, one extension cord per fixture. The wire connections will be soldered and heat shrank. I'm going to cover the back of the sockets with electrical tape too, just to prevent any little mishaps.

I'll try to post some pics up tomorrow.

Ok, here are some pics of where things are at today. Freaking medium is STILL saturated and starting to get really musty smelling. I need to get my dwc finished, but I was at least able to get my light done.

Up first are the ladies. We have WW, SB, BD, and WW2...which got chomped by one of my cats. The WW and SB are looking pretty bushy now. All but the BD have been super cropped.

Then we have some seedling pics from my schwag bag seed. The first is from the 23rd and the rest from today. The close up is one that I really hope is female. And how about that tall one? MG seed starting mix (5-1-5) with 7pH water. I have to water them every day or they dry out. That one is laying down because I didn't water them for two days and I don't have any toothpicks. I got the soil wet and built a mound around it to help it hold itself up.

Then, a pic of my first clones. They're starting to get some white spikies on the stems. I should hopefully be able to transplant them in about a week. From left to right they're three SB, four WW, and four BD. I'll pic the strongest two SB and the strongest three of the other two.

To finish, two pics of my light idea. I lowered the panel a few inches after I took the pictures.

All this time nobody mentioned that you were using way too much perlite. Perlite is only good for aeration, not for water retention and should only be 1/4 of your substrate composition. If you have perlite, there is no need to combine it with vermiculite because they are virtually the same thing. It is possible that a good amount of water do not get through to your plant root because they get drained right away leaving you with nothing but salt build up. You are better off using coco peat as mediums as they have excellent water retention plus good aeration.

Do not let light through your DWC's water reservoir because they promote algae growth and your roots will rot.

This is the best time to use HID lights, or else you will get really really tiny buds.

Good luck with your grow and I wish you all the best.

Thanks for the reply.

This actually called for 3-1 per/verm mixture instead of the 2-1 that I used. The vermiculite is supposed to hold the water while the perlite provides the aeration. I think the plants would have drown even sooner if I'd switched the mixture around. I've used the coco bricks for snake substrate and don't like dealing with it. The little pots I have the seedlings in is enough for me.

I decided that if I'm going to buy an hps it's going to be 400w to cover the whole tent, but it won't be until early next year that I'll have the money. So, I'm sticking with the cfls until then.

I'll be covering my dwc tubs with left over visqueen from building my tent, white side out to reflect heat, at first and then a few coats of white plasticoat later on.

Oh wow. I was pulling some dead leaves off of my new WW, from where the cat chomped it, and I found something very interesting. I just watered it yesterday and these hairs were found near the bottom just now. It's been under 16/8 light since I got it.

I was going to put this lady into the dwc with the other three, but I've decided to leave it in soil and put in on 12/12 since it's already flowering. Looks like I'll have some buds by Feb..

Update.

I ordered a TetraTec DW96 deep water air pump good for up to 300g and down to 8'. At 12" it will operate seven stones, or so the company lit says. That should be here today and I can finally get these girls into the tub. I'm nervous about it but I figure I can't screw them up any worse than I already have...the only plant that looks halfway decent is, surprisingly, the SB. The new little WW seems to be flowering nicely. I gave her some Thrive Alive and EarthJuice Microblast two days ago and a light mixture of Oneness (5-9-4) for the first time today. She's in a 16oz. cup with Ocean Forest soil, so she dries out fairly fast. You can see my 4g dwc tub awaiting transplant.

Only two of the clones are rooting, both are WW. I had to toss an SB and two BD clones. I'm going to take a few more clones before I do the dwc transplant, just to be on the safe side. Obviously my technique is flawed. Didn't bother taking any pics of them.

Some of the seedlings are doing really well. One hasn't developed its first set of leaves, yellowed, and fell over (didn't bother watering it today) and the two seeds that went straight into the soil are duds. I'm hoping the one in the close up ends up being female because it's the strongest one. I'm going to pull a few of the pots in a few days and get down to 6-8 instead of 12. I was also thinking about keeping the strongest male, in a completely different area, to get some pollen to play around with.

Oh, I also just ordered all five free strains from Attitude. A few of them should work perfectly to fill out the rest of my strains (I want to run 5-6 with varying effects) and the rest will wait for spring to go outside.

Another update.

I just finished putting the WW and BD into the dwc. What a complete pain in the ass that was. The BD's roots were pathetic, but the WW had apparently grown roots to the sides and down to the bottom, judging by the marks when I dumped its bucket out. It's a good thing I did this because the bag of used medium smells musty as hell. I hadn't watered the WW in little over two weeks, since I flushed it, and the medium still felt like wet beach sand a few inches down, as did the medium for the BD.

I added 1ml of the Thrive Alive B1 per quart (just under four gallons) and filled the tub up so the bottom 1/2" of the net pots are in the water. I had to cut off a lot of the roots to get them into the pots. I suspect that they'll hurry up and die now, but if they're still kicking in a week I'll give them a 1/4 strength nute solution with some fresh water.

MrBlanco said:

I was going to put this lady into the dwc with the other three, but I've decided to leave it in soil and put in on 12/12 since it's already flowering. Looks like I'll have some buds by Feb..

Click to expand...

nice grow., love all these cfl growers on here

Thanks.

So far so good. Only a few of the bottom leaves on each plant are droopy. I thought they'd be in a lot worse shape from the severe stress. Keeping my fingers crossed that they don't die.

Ah. There's the transplant shock. On the bright side, I think the tub is working well. Almost all of the underside of the lid is wet.

I just had a thought and thought I'd share.

GH Seeds recommends putting WW into eight or fewer hours of light for weeks 8-10 to stop new bud growth and focus production of crystals. I think I'm going to try that with this little WW that's flowering since the rest will be in a dwc tub with other strains. Hopefully I get at least a 1/4oz. from it.

Not looking well for the transplanted ladies. I'm hoping they perk up but they look pretty wilted. I t'd off two of the outputs from my 4-way gang valve to give them more bubbles and I stuck a spray bottle nozzle into the water to spray some of the water into the top of the medium/root area. I only did that twice today because I didn't want to drown them.

Santa Berry is looking well but has spider mites. Keeping the temps down and the wind up hasn't helped too much so it's some neem tomorrow morning. I also watered her for the first time in 2-3 weeks. Three quarts and no run off. She doesn't like a lot of water so I didn't want to go too far. The first quart was just water (pH'd to ~6) with 1ml of EJ MicroBlast. The second two had a 1/3 mixture of nutes (5-9-4). She looks a little droopy now but not too bad. She's getting tall and bushy, I need to flower her in the very near future before she gets out of control. Oh, I'm going to keep her in the bucket so she doesn't suffer the same fate as the other two.

The little WW is getting a nice amount of trichs on her white hairs. I gave her some nutes today, too. About a 1/2 mixture. Water pH was 7 and run off pH was about 6.5. Should I adjust the pH of the water up a bit on the next watering? I don't really want to buy any lime since I'm not going to continue growing in soil, indoors anyway, beyond this.

An update.

The big WW and the BD died. I still can't seem to to get the knack of dwc cloning. But, the SB is about 20" tall and looking decent. I trimmed off most of the lower growth because it wasn't getting enough light.

Here are some pictures of my midget flowering WW and my schwag seedlings. I guess I messed up the feeding on this WW or something because it hasn't grown much in any sense since flower and it's been about five weeks. I double potted it into a 1g planter with MG seed starting mix with a handful of hydroton, a little over two weeks ago. I'm using Botanicare Hydroplex for my bloom nutes mixed at 1ml per qt.. That gives me 5-13-13 (5-1-5 + 0-12-. I've got 4x26w 2700k bulbs on her.

I also stuck the seedlings' jiffy pots into 18oz. party cups about 12 days ago, also in the MG seed starting mix. I watered them in with Thrive Alive and their root balls are already huge. The tallest plant was 8.5" yesterday and it was barely 3" above the soil when I planted it. The one that I damaged a little after pre-germing has turned out to be a bushy indica about an inch shorter. I have 4x26w 2700k bulbs over these, too, and am using no nutes yet other than MicroBlast and the Thrive Alive.

Now, I'm just a newbie and all but I'm going to go out on a limb and say two things. First, 2700k does a fine job vegging. Second, MG seed starting mix is the shit. I underwatered a few times which caused some wilting and burn but that's totally my fault and not the soil's. All but one of these seedlings are strong and healthy.

I put the whole room on 12/12 today.

The SB is about 22" tall with almost a 1" trunk. I've been feeding somewhat conservatively and it's paid off with this girl.

The biggest of the five seedlings measured out to 13" this morning and its trunk is a little over .25". I had to start then on Oneness after only two weeks in the cups because they'd already sucked the soil of its nutes. I've also been using some grape Sweet for them on the last few waterings. They're already getting a little bit of a skunky smell, too. Looks like two sativa dominants, two indica dominants, and one that's a pretty even mix. I'm hoping I get at least two girls out of the five. I was thinking about saving a male for pollen but I've got better strains from Attitude I can do that with, which I'll probably start in Feb..

I estimate that the WW is just under six weeks. She's pretty frosty, a lot of the hairs are starting to turn orange, and she's packing on the bud weight. I might get a quarter out of her. I've been giving her Hydroplex at a medium mix and will give her one more strong feeding tomorrow before moving to just unsulphured blackstrap molassas and water. My next update will be when she's harvested.

One of my friends also just gave me two mangos that he was having problems with. One's 24" and the other is about 18". I added another 135w for them. Not quite enough but they were getting choked out by bigger plants before so it's more than they were getting. I should hopefully be harvested by March.

I'm abandoing the cloner idea. Zero percent success out of around 20 clones. All it really seems to do is increase the humidity. I'm going to move to rockwool or something.

I harvested my WW this morning at about 9.5 weeks. Here's what I got from her. I'm hoping for around a 1/4oz dry. High hopes, eh?

Also, my two schwag plants are doing alright. The indica has purple pistils and her leaves are starting to purple. One way or another I'm going to keep that strain.