Our First Grow

On november 18th DrJohnStivers, ScottieBennis ​ and I started our first grow. Our original intention was to find a mother plant and use that for a perpetual grow. We planted 6 seeds and only 2 pulled through. We grew the plants until they showed pre flowers and unfortunately one was a male and we had to cut him down, leaving only 1 potential mother (Big Mama). At this point we decided we would flower Big Mama (first taking 3 clones) and some of the other girls we have so that we still will get a harvest but we don't lose Big Mama's genetics if we like the finished product. While those are going through flowering though, we have got our hands on some Blue Dream seeds and intend to make one our mother for the perpetual grow.

So real quick, here is a brief overview of our set up:

LIGHTS

Vegetation box
-12x23 watt/ 1600 lumen CFLs (4x 5500K)

Flowering box
- 6x23 watt/1600 lumen CFLs ( 2x 5500K)
- 4x42 watt/2800 lumen CFLs (All 2700k)
Total 306 watts/ 20,800 lumens
-We have intentions of buying a 400w HPS setup within the next week that would be exclusive for flowering and then supplement with the CFLs we already have.

SOIL
- We are using Fox Farms Ocean Forest, with some perlite. Typically using 3:1 ratio

NUTES
-Fox Farms Line ( Grow Big, Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom)


So now to get you up to speed on where we are now with our plants:


BIG MAMA
-Planted/Age: Nov. 18th/7 weeks 2 days
-Strain: Unknown strain but due to her source we know she is a medical strain.
-Techniques Used: LST


BIG MAMA'S BABIES (3 Clones)
-Planted/Age: Dec. 14th/3 weeks 4 days
-Strain: Same as Big Mama
-Techniques Used: None Currently


BAGSEED T
-Planted/Age: Dec. 16th/3 weeks 2 day
-Strain: Unknown, came with the same batch as Big Mama but may not be the same strain.
-Techniques Used: Just topped the plant just above the second nodes in correspondence to Uncle Ben's topping method, hoping to see 4 colas develop.


BAGSEED M
-Planted/Age: Dec. 18th/3 weeks
-Strain: Same as BAGSEED T
-Techniques Used: Mainlining


UNNAMED SEEDLING
-Planted/Age: Jan. 3rd/3 days old (from when it came out of the ground)
-Strain: Blue Dream
-Techniques Used: None


NATALIE PORTMAN
-Planted/Age: Jan. 7th/0 days
-Strain: Blue Dream
-Techniques Used: None

BAGSEED T'S CLONE
-Planted/Age: Jan. 7th/1 day (since it was cut)
-Strain: Same as BAGSEED T
-Techniques Used: None

BAGSEED M'S CLONE
-Planted/Age: Jan. 7th 2013/1 day (since it was cut)
-Strain: Same as BAGSEED M
-Techniques Used: None

I do believe that about does it. If you feel like I left anything out feel free to ask or let me know. We are looking forward to any and all feedback that we can get. We have a few plants under our belt as far as growing from seedling/clone to a mature age, but Big Mama is our first experience with flowering and she has just begun. We started flowering her Jan. 6th. After reading extensively through forums on RIU, I have a tiny hope that maybe someone could identify Big Mama when she start's flowering. I hope to be able to post new pictures every few days. I didn't take pictures of a few because there is literally nothing to show yet. But as they start to grow they will be added in. Thanks again in advance!

im in for the journey bro subbed

Please rotate pics... my neck can't bend that far

My apologies buddy haha. I went through the traumatizing experience of posting for the first time on here, it caused me much frustration. When I inserted the pictures they were all upright but then you had to click a link and it took you to another window. I wanted the slideshow thing, but when I changed to that it rotated all those pictures. I was done messing with it and I gave up. However from now on I will make sure they are upright and in better lighting. Thanks for looking at the thread guys!

BIG MAMA
Big Mama has really perked up since her last pruning, our biggest trouble with this girl is that her growth is explosive and overwhelming at times. Even more so since we are just now getting into flowering and really don't want to have to trim her up at all during. But I can't help but smile when I see this pretty lady


BIG MAMA'S BABIES
These pretty ladies are really starting to take off now. Something we've talked about is keeping them in these smaller pots to try to restrict their size. But that doesn't seem to be working very well so far lol. Anybody have any info on this or tried it? Basically we are working toward a very fluid and frequent grow with smaller sizes for convenience and space limitations. We aren't ready to move them yet because the flowering box doesn't have enough space, but these girls are at our ideal age for moving. We'd like to move plants every three weeks (currently)


BAGSEED T
I topped this little person 2 days ago and since then you can already see the two branches on top really taking off. This was my experimental topping plant, trying to get some experience with it before Natalie Portman comes of age.


BAGSEED M
My buddy topped this one 2 days ago as well and is planning on mainlining. It hasn't quite bounced back but I believe it'll take off shortly!


UNNAMED SEEDLING
This is my buddy ScottieBennis's HSO Blue Dream plant, hopefully our potential mother in the future.


NATALIE PORTMAN
Welcome to the world my sexy lady! Checked on her last night and she was almost breaking surface, checked again this morning and there she blows!


Veg Box

I was going to take a picture of the flower box, but the flower box is about to change anyway. And the flower box is ugly. But that's the inside of our veggie box, there is a door with hinges on the front that we can latch closed. I'll be sure to keep updating pictures, thanks for looking!

big mama is gonna give some nice flowers!!
NATALIE PORTMAN IS SOO HOT BRO
anyhow how u acquired the 400 watt yet it will make a huge difference
plus i wouldnt trim any leaves after two three weeks unless u have to with ungrowth dieing off and what not... i myself had to lolipop during week three but it was a forced situation i dont normally do that. one thing to remember its the fan leaves that soak up the sun and feed the buds, the buds dont absorb the sun so keep all top fan leaves

We haven't gotten the HPS yet, but we plan on doing it this weekend (probably saturday) and that'll be just under a week into her being switched to 12/12. Thank you very much for the advice. We definitely don't want to do anything to damper her ability to produce bud. We tend to be pretty cautious when it comes to our babies haha. I wish we wouldn't have to cut off anything at all on her anymore, but I know that we'll have to do it.
View attachment 2957116
The one on the right was 2 days ago when we trimmed her up real good and the one on the left is today just a couple of hours ago. She's very persistent haha

super healthy im shocked that cfls grew that lol looks like she is gonna be a monster in the end

We made a few changes today for our little ladies. Out of the three clones that we snipped from Big mama a few weeks back, two of them were growing very identically, so we decided to experiment with a defoliation technique we have been reading about. As controversial as it may be of a technique, we wanted to find out first hand the difference in yield.

Link to defoliation page if interested: Defoliation technique

So now we have Mary-Kate (The defoliated clone) and her twin Ashley(Not pictured)


Secondly, after a few days of growth we noticed that Bagseed T(Topped) was a better candidate for mainlining so we got that started today. We will have more define names at a later date.
So here is a picture after she was tied down.

cant wait too see this lol. so many arguemnts here they come.

It's been a few days now and things are afoot!


BIG MAMA
-Planted/Age: Nov. 18th/8 weeks
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: LST
-Big Mama is really stretching now and pistils are coming out pretty much all over. The 4th picture of Big Mama is the best picture I could get of her pistils right now. The 3rd picture is one of her shoots that has just gone haywire. I was curious if anyone has seen this before, I don't really think it is a bad thing but I am curious just what exactly is going on. Also the bushy clone we took from her is exhibiting the same behavior, so I took pictures of that as well.


MARY KATE
-Planted/Age: Dec. 14th/4 weeks 2 days
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: Defoliation
-Nothing too new to add to this one. She has new growth since the defoliation. You can see her compared to her twin Ashely (below). We are hoping to get a side by side comparison in flowering. Same genetics, same age and very similar looking. The only difference will be that Mary Kate got defoliated, it'll be very interesting to see. Sometimes I feel like we are weed scientists haha.


ASHLEY
-Planted/Age: Dec. 14th/4 weeks 2 days
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: None


BIG MAMA'S BUSHY BABY
-Planted/Age: Dec. 14th/4 weeks 2 days
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: None
-This is the one that looks all crazy to me, I have been unsuccessful in finding any info and haven't seen anyone else's girls doing the same thing.


BAGSEED T
-Planted/Age: Dec. 16th/4 weeks
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: Mainlining
-This plant was just going to be topped but ended up being the better candidate for the mainlining. It is growing very rapidly.


BAGSEED M
-Planted/Age: Dec. 18th/3 weeks 5 days
-Strain: Unknown
-Techniques Used: Trying to mainline
-This one was supposed to be the mainline but didn't take off like the other. Instead it has a bushy tendency. But we are still going to attempt mainlining.


FRANCESKA JAIMES (previously unnamed seedling)
-Planted/Age: Jan. 3rd/1 week 1 day
-Strain: Blue Dream
-Techniques Used: None
-Growing fast and looking beautiful!


NATALIE PORTMAN
-Planted/Age: Jan. 7th/ 4 days
-Strain: Blue Dream
-Techniques Used: None

Looks good man, just me but I would trim the bottom/middle up a lil like the suckers. Other buds can use that energy

Are you talking about on Big Mama Cincy? We keep trimming her up but she keeps coming back even crazier. But the further we get into flowering the less we want to take off of her so that we don't stunt bud production.

Yea I hear ya, that's just something I do. But only when I use cfls. Do you have any idea of what those bag seeds are?

So it has been a while now since I put pictures up, I think change will be more apparent now in some of the pictures.


BIG MAMA
Big Mama has been on a 12/12 cycle for exactly 2 weeks today. She is the only plant under the HPS light in flowering right now. I'm including a picture of the HPS setup. We aren't sure if we should move the light closer to her or not. We raised her on CFLs and you have to keep them in real close. We did our reading on HPS before we bought one. We found numbers basically ranging from 1.5 -3 feet away from the top of your plant. We have been playing it safe and keeping it on the fringe of 3 feet. We are kind of worried about light penetration at the distance though. So any thoughts or advice would be nice!


MARY KATE
Mary Kate is our defoliation test plant. It is kind of interesting to see the difference between her and her twin sister (Ashely.) After she got defoliated it seems it stunted her growth height-wise for a bit, but she really started focusing on her lower shoots. Her lower shoots are longer than Ashely's however Ashely is a good inch or two taller so far.


ASHLEY
This is our comparison point for Mary Kate. We transplanted all the clones like 4 or 5 days ago and since then they have really taken off.


BIG MAMA'S BUSHY BABY
I don't know what's going on with this girl. We can only guess that she is come kind of genetic mutation. Her stem is really fat and flat. And she produces excessive fan leaves. It is hard to tell in pictures but her stem twice as wide as either of her two sister's stems.


BAGSEED T
This plant is working out perfectly so far. It was topped, mainlined and then topped on each of the 2 shoots again for a total of 4 tops now.


BAGSEED M
This one was initially topped and is now being worked on as an experimental cross LST plant.


FRANCESKA JAIMES
Pretty little girl blue dream starting to take off.


NATALIE PORTMAN
My sexy little lady.

And CincyChron, I have no idea what the bag seeds are. However my buddy might, I'll ask him and we'll get back to you on it.

I would move that light down at least half that distance, that is a cool hood right? I always used my hps vertical so no hood just a fan on it and the light moves around in the " wind" so I gets better light in my opinion. Hope I explained that good lol way easier to show than type it out. But like I said I would lower that thing. I need to get my light I think in gonna go with a 400 I found a nice one at the local shop.

And big momma baby is nuts! That stem tho! Lol

We'll it is sleepy time for big mama right now or I'd take some pics, but actually a lot has happened since the post this morning haha. Big mama is now on a table just over two feet tall, the light was raised (but is still much closer to her than it was), Mary-Kate and Ashley are starting flowering today with big mama, the bushy clone got topped and the top is going to be a clone. Oh and big mama now has a custom built trellis/support system to really open her up and give her support while she buds. Mary Kate and Ashley had to go to flowering because they would be too tall for the veg box within a couple days. It is only a week ahead of our ideal schedule. And we didn't want to put the third clone into flowering just yet, but again the height was an issue. So we cut that bitch in half. The current plan is to LST her and keep her small/bushy, then flower her clone in the next rotation. I think that sums it up haha. But thank you for the advice sir. We knew in our gut it needed to be closer but we also tend to take a cautious route when trying new things. Also, have you ever seen anything like that bushy bug mama clone? It's nuts right? Lol

Here are a couple pictures of what Big Mama and the Flowering area look like now.