Noob grow: 3.5'x3.5'x5' cave - SCROG or LST? - Ganesh from Mandala seeds - in Autopots

Heiya'll

My first grow - looking to hear from the wise and experienced out there to get the most out of a small grow space and avoid novice mistakes. Especially keen to hear from anyone who has grown this strain (Ganesh) or used the Autopot system and can advise on grow style.

Rant follows (details of grow come afterwards, please scroll by /
I love Maryjane, especially when she gives me that clear head, calm expanded conscious psychonautic trip high that sweeps you away with the meaning of the music and the glory of nature into new mental dimensions. Don't like indica couch locks and hate smoking the reggie round here. Started gardening last season and found I've got a green thumb with the the outdoor veggie patch so trying my hand with the holy herb. And I think it is god given and I wish I could grow outdoors or in a semi -satisfactory space but I'm settling for a stealth grow under the house as my jurisdiction has decriminalised but not legalised small grows. I am growing for medicinal purposes only so quality bud is the goal not speed or huge yield. Already paid out for my gear after devouring information from this and other online sites and reading Integral Hydroponics by G.Low (great book for people trying to understand the basics BTW) cover to cover. Im broke now and can't afford to fix any problems that come up with money - so Keeping it Simple and Stupid and looking for Macgyver style remedies and solutions...
/Rant

So here are the details:

Strain - Ganesh by Mandala seeds. Hybrid with 9 week flowering time, sativa dominant high but supposed to grow like an indica and only stay 60cm tall if vegged for 3 weeks (according to the seedbank). Has big phat indica sun leaves. Sounds too good to be true! 10pack non-feminized seeds on order.

Planned Grow style
- 2 plants in a Autopot hydropak system (2x 10" pot system that works like a flood and drain table but dishes out feed by gravity (no pumps) and a 'smart float valve' that lets the pots dry out for bit before flooding up to 3cm into the tray the pots sit in).
-aggressive training with LST or a SCROG net to keep the plants trained low and wide
- growing in 50:50 perlite/vermiculite

Grow cave
- under the house with brick pier foundations. plywood and panda film used to cordon off an area 3.5ft square and 5ft high. Usable space of 1m below lights to top of pots.
- humidity around 70%+ without ventilation and had mould scares under there in the past

Light - 400w MH for veg/ 400w HPS for flower on a dimmable lumatek ballast in closed aircooled hood

Odor/Ventilation
- Carbon filter ===> hood ===========>Canfan 6" 460m3h exhaust fan into the surrounding space under house
-6" intake fan pulling fresh outside air thru 3 meters of ducting into bottom of grow space
-oscillating desk fan

Nutes - rootstart for seedlings once they pop, then Autopot A&B nutrients (came with my hydro system)

So thats it for now, pictures will follow when everything is set up and the journey starts if my babies get thru customs ok... hopefully by this time next week.

Picture of the cave... (I'm worried about hotspots, do you see any?)

Prepped media with pH'd weak nutrient solution.

I don't have a EC meter, so I thought I'd post my guesstimation calculations here in case it might help any one else...
-Mandala seeds reccomend an EC of 0.6 and pH 5.5-6.0 for starting the seeds in hydroponic media.

-My municipal water supply is EC 0.1-0.2 (results from their water quality website for 2014)

-My nute solution when mixed to the manufacturers spec (5mL part A/5mL part B) is supposed to have an EC of 2.2

So I divided by 5 to get EC 0.4 with 1mL part A/1ml part B + EC 0.2 in my water > EC 0.6?

Mixed it up, let it sit for a while to dissipate chlorine, then pH'd it with phosphoric acid to 5.5-6.0 (I think I'm color blind, but the pH liquid tester wasn't green or red, so I guess its yellow = which is the right range)
Then I flushed my pots of perlite/vermiculite with this (6L solution through 4L of media)

And now I wait for the mailman...

(I planted 4 seeds today in perlite/vermiculite. Temps at 26C/RH at 59%/16" under a 400W metal halide light)

As the waning moon set under the protection of scorpius and Jupiter shone brilliantly one week posterior to its opposition the universe had aligned itself and it was right for the guru to seek the blessing of Ganesh the many thousand armed elephant headed god of ganja to germinate!!!



Channel me some holy vibes and let the seeds of bliss blossom!

Nice airing!

ty marta, nice to see I'm not just talking to myself here!

I've been checking on'em every hour - nothing yet.
Time to get some sleep -
and its 3am and I must be looooneleeeeeeey!

Still nothing poking out

In the meantime, I have learnt a few things,
-asking questions on the internet can get you flamed
-but you will often learn very important lessons in the process
-i need to get a dehumidifier.

Germination
t+108hrs



Serendipitously, today is a Hindu holy day on which a metric fcukton of transcelestial energy is channeled into our world.

Mahasivrathri
'The festival is principally celebrated by offerings of marijuana in all its forms (bhang, charas, marijuana) to Shiva/Rudra the Lord of Ganja. All-day fasting and an all-night-vigil are held and all through the day, devotees chant 'Bom Shiiiiiva! and "Om Namah Shivaya", the sacred mantra of Shiva. Penances are performed in order to gain boons in the practice of Yoga and meditation, in order to reach life's highest good steadily and swiftly. On this day, the planetary positions act as potent catalysts to help a person raise his or her spiritual energy more easily. The benefits of powerful ancient Sanskrit mantras such as Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra increase greatly on this night. - Wikipedia



Lets get this show on the road!

New moon: day 4. Microenvironment has been really well controlled temps 24-27.5C under the lights, RH50-60%



Buried the stems and watered through till runoff today.
-GI & II received basic nutes at ?0.6EC and pH 6.5 with hydrogen peroxide (0.7mL of 50%/5L)
-GIII & IV got General Hydroponics Rapid Start at 0.375mL/L (moderate strength) in bubbled/oxygenated water. Its got a 1-0.5-1 NPK ratio (derived from Ammonium Nitrate, Iron DTPA, Monopotassium Phosphate, and Potassium Nitrate) with molybdenum, some plant extracts (willow root, barley and alfalfa) and 'amino acids'.

I bought this Rapidstart when I was really excited and setting my grow up, hope I didn't just waste my dollars. I thought I'd use it in a controlled trial and compare it head to head against minimal intervention growing. I already ran a test on a chilli (scotch bonnet) clone cutting and got impressive roots. I will also give III&IV seasol (liquid seaweed concentrate) in about a weeks time - to balance out the rooting hormones from the Rapidstart.

GIII is in a shorter pot to the others, and I was shocked to see how much it had stretched toward the light compared to the other three. I didn't think that would make such a big difference, but I've buried the stems and boosted III up now so all the 'canopies' are now level

I am investigating organics, and considering running III&IV in an organic soilless mix after transplant, but leaving I&II in plain perlite/vermiculite as a comparison. Thats if all of them make it, and turn out titties.

We can't get any of the fancy grow soils like fox farm or ocean wateva down under, so I hope this mishmash will work:
30% Scotts seedling mix (has gentle slow release fertiliser and water wetting agents) -
15% peat moss -
15% sphagnum fibre -
30% compost (homemade; based on alfalfa (we call it lucerne hay) and kitchen scraps, boosted with cow and rooster manure, blood and bone meal) -
remainder perlite/vermiculite mix -
dolomite lime to pH
(I really want to get a worm farm going to add worm castings, but looks like that might be a project for later on)

This will go into 3Gal/15L fabric grow bags.

I built up the compost heap yesterday, hope it fires up and cooks off in time.

Well the going is slow, but its going good so far!

1 week, i guess they are still seedlings? Funny tear on first leaf on G-II, not too concerned as they all look green and happy

10 days old, fed EC1.0 from top and bottom. They look thoroughly drenched and soggy...
Lights dropped to 13"/33cm running 20/4
Dehumidifier is a pretty powerful heater, at least 1C warmer when its running - not a bad thing!


Worm farm started:
-20cm of bedding: shredded cardboard soaked overnight with a spadeful of homemade compost, mixed with peat and a tablespoon of dolomite lime
-food layer: aged cow manure, sugar cane straw and a bucket of store bought organic compost added. Kitchen scraps to go in after a week
-250g/1000 red wrigglers tossed in.

Compost heap - heating up. Volcanic rock dust added, supposed to boost the microbes and load up on trace elements and plant available silica

They're perky as fillies' titties! So happy for now...

You can't see them, but the first true nodes are sprouting auxiliary meristem tips!

fed EC1.0, pH 6.0 from top and bottom

nice babies mate.

I'll be watching them grow keenly

@sss - thanx bro, tonight we feast for tomorrow we transplant, Autopots roll out!

Day 16 nocte - 8hrs post transplant


So they're in their final pots! They kicked up a faint stink - spicy, herbal, a little minty, unmistakably weedy Moody little biatches.

I might have jumped the gun and transplanted a bit early, the roots had hit the drainage holes in their 1 litre starter pots, a few roots were circling and tangling up, but the rootballs were loose and fell apart during transfer.

Details posted below (mainly for my own future reference)
Presoaked the media in the pots until a little runoff - about 250mL/L of pot size
G1 & G2: in 5.6L autopots - straight up nutes in bubbled water with H2O2 (50% x 1.2mL/5L) pH'd to 6.0 (1.5L each)
G3 & G4: in 15L grow bags - eco-neem drench (10mL in 5L, half into each) + rapidstart (0.5mL in 1L each) + sprinkled 1 teaspoon of volcanic rock dust and mixed it in to the top layers

Planted and watered in with 500mL nute solution each. Mixed it up at about EC1.0 with +10% Nitrogen/Ca and -10% P/K/trace and added a homeopathic amount of 1-9-1 guano fertiliser (0.5ml/L)

Back under the 400W Metal Halide running on Super Lumen setting about 1hr1/2 before lights out. Light at 12-14"/32-36cm (can't quite level out the canopies)

Stressful to say the least, wish I had some herbal relaxation, will be checking on them far too often till I work out how to water such small plants in such large containers properly!

5th leaf tips are out, their finally putting on some stem height and girth. Up close they smell lovely already

Day 19 - started smacking them up a bit (LST) but they're only 2.5" tall so not really able to tie them yet


KISS eh?
G1 and G2 which have had nothing but basic nutes at EC 0.6-1.0 and are going good, still a bit small for 19 days but bushy, leaves upright and bright green. I feel I might be starving them a little and that's holding them back a bit. Since they're in big pots now I'm going to have to wait a few days to dry out before I can up their feed regime.

G3 and G4 which i've prodded with GH Rapidstart and neem and volcanic rock dust are just lagging behind. They sprouted 12hrs later but they're more than that far behind. Damn those snake oil salesmen and their godamn PGR/amino acid horseshit!

So fukit. Since I'm already down the yellow brick road with these two, I thought I'd trial another contentious intervention: FOLIAR SPRAYING
-seasol (Bull Kelp [Durvillaea potatorum] and Knotted Kelp [Ascophyllum nodosum] extracts) at 80% recommended foliar strength
-powerfeed (fish emulsion based fertiliser 12 : 1.4 : 7 N/P/K) at 60% recommended foliar spray strength

"For best results applications can be alternated between foliar and water applied. For example, Seasol at 50 ml per 100 litres of water can be used in the hydroponic solution, followed by foliar applications at 1:500. Doses should be 10-14 days apart."

I'll give G4 a taste of it a few hours before lights on today and see if we can amp up the growth. Or toast it for good.

3 weeks from seed
-copper wire bondage commenced on G1 and G2
-more rough handling of G3 and G4 - they are bent over without any ties
-overwatering situation has stressed out G2 (visible damage on older leaf tips) the others have slowed down too.
-foliar spraying of G3 and G4 has had no obvious negative effect, maybe helping green them up and broaden the leaves? So G1 and G2 got the same treatment


So I plan on 2 or 3 weeks of veg then flip.

Day 22, things are looking better. 6.5 days since they got transplanted/drowned and growth is finally starting to pick up