My First Grow Journal - AK48 Feminized

Hi everyone! I've been looking through these forums for a very long time and have finally decided to jump into growing. It seems a grow journal is the way to go to receive help as well as having the opportunity to look back at what I did to fix mistakes and see what I did wrong.

I will be growing AK48 feminized seeds that I received from Nirvana seeds (got them 8 days after my order). I have 2 seeds in my closet between 6 moist thick paper towels that I just popped in there. Tomorrow I will be setting up my grow tent.

My setup is:
2'x2'x5.3' GL60 Growlab tent
Two 5 gallon smart pots
Sun System HPS 150 grow light
Fox Farm Ocean Forest Soil
Fox Farm Big Bloom & Tiger Bloom fertilizers
General Hydroponics PH Control Kit
Hydrofarm 7 day digital timer
Hurricane Fan 171 CFM 4" inline fan
iPower 4" carbon filter
Active Air Duct Fan Speed Adjuster

Since I am growing only 2 plants I'm not exactly sure what to expect for the smell so grabbed the carbon filter to be sure. Should I grab some odor absorbing gel as well? To keep water off of the tent floor should I just throw a tarp down or just wipe it up on an as-needed basis?

Thank you all so much. I'm very excited about this grow!

Welcome from a fellow noob! I'm using FF nutes and can confirm you don't want to feed at all for first two weeks minimum. Big Bloom only at 1/4 teaspoon per gallon to start. No Tiger Bloom for almost 30 days , do you have Grow Big? use that before Tiger Bloom , consult FF feeding schedule for soil.

So 5 gallon pots for grow, what will you use for germ and first few weeks ? I did solo cups than 1 gallon fabric, straight into 5 gallon with seedlings is a lot of watering w/more nutes than needed for small pot. On drainage , I found the fabric doesn't drain much after initial drain so there shouldn't be puddling. Recommend a wire rack, grab a three tier wire shelf from lowes, home depot, wal mart for 20 bucks and just use the racks , good to not have wet bottoms sitting on ground .

I read AK is some stinky shit , you may need gel or something during flower as you open/access tent. I'm only 30 days into a closet grow and wow beautiful strong smell when I cut my fan and open door to take plants out for watering. More help if I can just wanted to say hello. Above all watch the nutes, see my journal titled Sativa Challenge,

I actually don't plan on putting any nutes in for the first 3 weeks since I hear the ocean Forest is fine for about that long. I'm going to follow what my friend did which is put the germinated seed directly into my 5 gallon pot and spiral watering so that the roots grow wide and deep from there. There's always next grow if I want to try it differently

I smoke a lot in my apartment and I know the landlord who lives above me knows. The neighbors also all smoke weed out in the alley so nobody thinks a thing of it or cares. I'll probably grab some gel just to be sure. No need to draw any extra attention.

Cool deal, yeah I contemplated germ in final pot, I didn't like transplanting twice due to growth slowing, may germ in one gallon fabric next run. Lots of info and people here. My other fav site is growweedeasy.com, amazing site for beginner.

It took quite a few hours but I got my tent set up. Right next to my cute lil ratties (who love the smell of weed).

Seeds are still germinating. They were a little lighter in color than I had hoped when I got them but you never know until you try haha

Subbed for the shop i enjoy AK48 i ordered some myself but all failed in the germinating stage sucked

Highly recommend taking a look at one of our members who grew it he killed it and it might help you with your grow

https://www.rollitup.org/t/ak48-coco-grow-1st-try-at-scrog.778302/

All the best

Thank you for sharing that! I read through it a few times over the past couple days.

Today I had two beautiful baby sprouts push through the soil. The seeds are still attached but I'll give them a few days to get settled in more before I mess with them. I had no idea how to care for them as seedlings and I buried them too deep (a little more than an inch) . I also watered a bit too much at first when I realized I planted them in damn near dry soil the same day.

I feel very fortunate that they are already putting up with my inexperienced nonsense and still pushing through. Will update with pics once there is a bit more to see.

Great stuff coco that's what puts a lot of new growers off they just give them to much love and kill them remember its just a weed all they need water and food and light and you can't go wrong

Germinated and seeds planted on July 4th. The past week they have been growing insanely quick. I'm very excited for them to enter the vegetative stage so that I can start training them!

My space is 2'x2'x5' high. I'm stuck between thinking about topping them at the 3rd node once they have 5 or 6 nodes and from there throwing a screen down for scrog or just start with some LST in the directions I want the two plants to grow and topping the upwards reaching growth.

I'm really unsure of what to do at this point. I was thinking for a 2x2 space the scrog might work better with just a single plant. Any advice?

Two days ago I was attempting to top one of my plants. I think I cut the new growth a little too low if that's possible because I'm not seeing any new growth yet. Maybe it's just the stunted growth. But hey I'm learning!

Today I decided to pinch/fim the other plant which is slightly slower in growth. I chose to pinch it because I am aware that it does not slow growth as much as removing plant matter.

subbed cant wait to see how it turns out!
good luck

How far along where they when you cut them? Most likely fine I had kind of the same issue with mine in the beginning but they turned right around

Almost 3 weeks old from seed. They were working on the 5th node so I just trimmed it. Really fat main stem for the size thanks to the light being really close and keeping it from stretching.

Ye you'll be fine she will come around

Starting some LST on the plant that was growing taller. At this point I really have no idea what I'm doing other than trying to keep the canopy even.

There really is no better way to learn than doing. All of the reading I'm doing is hardly preparing me for the way these ladies are growing haha

This is true good luck

HEY THERE FOLKS!

So I left for a weekend trip yesterday and came back to some big beefy plants. Gave them a small feeding of fox farm big bloom and some molasses and I was absolutely amazed with how well they took it. They grew 2 inches while I slept! When I was watering last night I measured the ph in the run off and it was rather low looking to be around 5.5-6. I threw about a quarter gallon of plain water around 7ph to counteract this. They are very dark green and 4 weeks since I planted the germinated seeds

Plant #1: 11" with 7 even tops
Plant #2: 13" with 8 even tops

I decided to throw them into flower starting this evening. Looking to harvest the first or second week of October at this point and after doing research on my strain I believe this to be very feasible. As a first time grower I was originally hoping to get a .5gpw from my 150w HPS. Knowing that AK48 is a big yielder and looking at the current health of my plants I'm going to raise my expectation to .65gpw.

I'm not sure how it will flower under my current setup but after doing some research I think for my next grow I'm going to be purchasing the P300 LED grow light from Platinum. Can anyone tell me if this will work or should I avoid LED lights for now with my current tent being only 5 feet tall? I know that bleaching can occur within 6-8 inches under some LED lights.

News from last week:
Plant #2 had split around a week or two ago during some lst. I taped it and now its a very thick stem and entirely healed. Plant #1 I had failed to FIM it correctly and some of the leaves grew in looking like they were eaten. I inspected for pests and found nothing. The new growth has no holes or half "eaten" leaves so I've written it off as a mutation.

CATERPILLARS:

Since this morning half of a fan leaf was devoured. I searched that plant high and low and couldn't find a thing. Do they live in the soil?

I couldn't find a BT killer at Home Depot so I bought some neem oil and made a little neem oil, dish soap, and water conconcotion. As soon as the lights went out I sprayed the plants down pretty heavily and shook the plants to reduce the excess and wiped down the walls of the tent. I want to see dead critters not dead plants!

girls are looking very healthy great job

Inspected the leaves an hour before "daylight" to see if I could see the caterpillars. COULDN'T SEE A THING. I'm aggravated but did not see any new damage. Just those two fan leaves from some munchies. I've read very conflicting opinions on neem oil. Is it just hippy organic nonsense or does it work?

Dirty Nerd: Should I just go out and hunt for some BT product?