My first grow

growforgood904 said:

hey Jerry and Titan . i am starting my first as well. 2 seeds of blue cheese from buddha seeds. and cannadential from dna (reg) and 2 of k-train from green house. i will keep you updated and look forward to seeing what u guyshave!! stay blessed!!

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Sounds like some nice strains for a first grow! Do you're homework and learn from my (and others) success and failures! There are a million opinions out there, so find and compare sources you like (RIU, a book, etc) and do it right. Don't hesitate to ask questions either--I may not know much, but I learn more every day and am glad to help where I can!

Good luck and keep us posted...

Morning update: Lights were left on till 6am, and 24-hour darkness has now begun. After much consideration I decided to just go ahead and do it. Next time I'll try going straight into 12/12 and compare results, but for my first grow I want to see if a 24-hour dark period before flower will have any impact.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It's a good day to be GREEN!

I'm sure it will work fine for you Jerry. I'm interested to see whether it speeds things up at all. I'm sure it won't cause any problems. While I try to keep my lighting regular and constant I have made mistakes and had equipment failures before. Plenty of times I have given plants light or darkness at the wrong time and nothing has happened. Once I had a timer fail and lights stayed on for over 72 hours straight in week 3 of flower. I was really worried but still ended up with fat herm-free buds so it was all good. So long as these things don't happen all the time the plants will be fine.

mared juwan said:

I'm sure it will work fine for you Jerry. I'm interested to see whether it speeds things up at all. I'm sure it won't cause any problems. While I try to keep my lighting regular and constant I have made mistakes and had equipment failures before. Plenty of times I have given plants light or darkness at the wrong time and nothing has happened. Once I had a timer fail and lights stayed on for over 72 hours straight in week 3 of flower. I was really worried but still ended up with fat herm-free buds so it was all good. So long as these things don't happen all the time the plants will be fine.

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Thanks mared, those are encouraging words!

The temp is hovering around 63 degrees with the lights off today (it's 47 outside right now). I'm thinking this may be a little too cool for an extended night period, so I may bring the temp up a little just to be safe.

my seedlings cracked.. well some of them!.. here are some photos . yes Jerry they are good strains. got gutsy and odered online! . uhhmm how do you upload pix?

i figured it out!!! hope these are good!!!

growforgood904 said:

i figured it out!!! hope these are good!!!

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They look good. Must be nice to have feminized too...

Your setup looks good. From what I can see you have 4 t5's for veg and a cooltube hps (maybe mh...i'm going with hps). I have those same square pots in the cabinet--nice and deep, should be real good for the girls.

You should start a journal. It's a good way to get input and feedback and share your adventure with the community!

Soil looks like it has a lot of perlite--good drainage. Is it foxfarm?

Also, are you going to put some mylar or something on your walls?

Looking good so far! Good luck!

yes it is a t5 with flouros.. and i bought the cool tube.. with both MH and HPS .. the guy said i wld benefit from the use of both lights.. no its ot foxfarm . its promix.. i do paln on getting plastic covering.. its not mylar but very similar ...

when should i switch lights? i am on 24hrs now now. just planted seedlings today?

oh and how do i start journal?

i started one Jerry. hope you check it out .... growforgood grow journal.. it is called!!

Wow... lots to catch up on since yesterday.

Blazer, very nice plant you got there. Very stocky. Mine looked similar but i topped it. Ill be interested to compare to yours and see the difference in the buds.

Growforgood, great you stated your journal, I´ll go and check it out. And yeah... its a big bonus to have feminized seeds, I think I´ll go for feminized seeds as well on my second grow.

Now we have to wait and see how many females Jerry gets. I read somewhere that a lot of times bagseed plants tend to have high female ratios cause a lot of times its some damn hermy that went undetected that pollinated the females... so the seeds tend to be "feminized". This is not always the case of course but hope it happens to Jerry. Would be nice to have all females (or most)

Jerry, I agree with you that the 150W Hps should be enough, No need to go for 400W. You have so many CFL to compliment the Hps that your plants should be very happy in the light department.
I read that depending on strain, for veg, plants need between 1500-3000 lumens per square foot, and for flowering they need between 3000-5000 per square foot. You have close to 50 000 ... so thats plenty for the number of plants you have

now my room isnt hat big so i dont have intake air . just exaust with 6in inline fan.. i am going to have the fan blow through the cool tube and out he room.. does this sound like a good idea?

growforgood904 said:

now my room isnt hat big so i dont have intake air . just exaust with 6in inline fan.. i am going to have the fan blow through the cool tube and out he room.. does this sound like a good idea?

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You'll just have to try it out and see. Having proper exhaust is key, and though I don't have a cool tube I can see the advantage they have. If it starts getting too hot, you may need to add some intake.

It's all part of the game! Have fun with it!

Tatan said:

Wow... lots to catch up on since yesterday.

Now we have to wait and see how many females Jerry gets. I read somewhere that a lot of times bagseed plants tend to have high female ratios cause a lot of times its some damn hermy that went undetected that pollinated the females... so the seeds tend to be "feminized". This is not always the case of course but hope it happens to Jerry. Would be nice to have all females (or most)

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I hope you're right about the feminized bit. It's a logical argument, and now we'll have our own little experiment. I'm betting 50/50, but I'm just a pessimist!

Jerry Garcia said:

I hope you're right about the feminized bit. It's a logical argument, and now we'll have our own little experiment. I'm betting 50/50, but I'm just a pessimist!

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Well... Ive gotten 3 females out of 5 plants so far. But yeah 50/50 is not bad... Ive read many grows where people get like 1 o 2 females out of 6-8 plants... It happens sometimes.

This will be fun, we will find out in a couple of days.

Im betting you get 60% female

My 24-hour darkness time has come and gone, and the girls are now on 12/12 starting at 6am. Unfortunately, last night was St. Patrick's day, so I neglected my gardening duties a wee bit and forgot to change out the 6500k cfls for the 2700k version. Oops. It will happen tonight though for sure. And once I get those all situated I will focus on making room for the hps.

I'm a little concerned about the hps though, as it was heating up the little space quite rapidly when I used it before (though my ventilation has improved drastically since then). But, I think its necessary (I mean, I have it, and I spent the money on it, so I might as well use it right?) and it will give me better buds.

No news on the sexing front, though there are what appears to be the beginnings of preflowers showing on a couple plants. It was hard to get a good picture of what I'm seeing...


I strained my eyes for about an hour earlier today trying to will the plant to shoot out little white hairs...It's still too early to really tell



You can almost see the little bumps trying to stick out...



Here's the big one...


Here's a shot of 4 of them...second one from the right is much shorter than the rest


Here's the four plants in the two round pots...


And finally, here are the other 3...my former big girl is struggling on the right...more leaves have begun turning brown, though I haven't administered any more nutrients.


So, there we have it. No real new info to report. I will be monitoring the sex thing closely and updating as I find more. I'll also include an updated shot of my grow space once the hps is up and running.

Yeah.. it will be a couple of days. Also I think that the males are supposed to show sex first. So if you see a couple of males dont get discouraged thinking that they are all turning out to be male.

Your plants are looking really robust, except for the burnt one, I think you are going to have a really sweet harvest.
And yeah you should definitely use the HPS, the more light the better.

OK, here's my two cents. See the 4th picture in your last post, labeled "the big one", see how every leaf is almost exactly parallel to the ground. Then the next pic all leaves are pointing towards the ground. For what it's worth, every single one of the leaves in my growroom is like your first pic all of the time. They lay completely flat and parallel to the light with the flattest and largest surface area exposed to the light. This is the best angle for optimum light absorption. So my point is that your frequency of watering is still off. They should never droop that much. Like I said before I'm almost positive that the one you cut the leaves off is not suffering from too much nute but rather too much water. So maybe keep watering all the other plants like normal but choose one to water less just to see what happens. That soil will weigh literally nothing when dry so let that sucker dry out and get some air to its roots. Oxygen is extremely important to healthy plants and big buds. OK, two cents over.

I definitely vote for HPS. As much light as possible. As long as temps remain below 85 it's good. I can't make out anything as far as sex in the pics. It might take up to a week to really be sure on all of them so be patient.