Quasi Ghetto Grow

Forgot to mention, the "babies" (teens? tweens?) are starting to stink pretty bad.

Actually, they have been, but I thought it was some dank kind I had in my desk drawer, but that stuff is long gone.

No, I came home today and even though I close the door to this room and even though they're in a grow closet with a thick blanket over them...

Whoo, stinky!

Actually, I think it smells wonderful, that dank funk.

Luckily I live alone, and I don't expect this smell to get outside, so for now I'm going to wait before trying to get some anti-smell stuff going on.

It's a skunky-funky-minty-green sorta smell, ya know?

I got home at 5:30pm (lights go out at 7pm) and the temperature in the closet was 101 F.

The first picture shows after I had the door open a few minutes, it went down to 94. Or maybe the fan cooled it.

Anyways, you can see it's quite dry but at least it's not very dry.

And of course, I'm predicting I will never have to worry about mold, in this state. In the summer, anyway.

2nd pic shows a nute deficiency, I forget which one, but I took the picture to zoom in on something I have a question about, which I will put in the next post, I hope it comes out. Looks like pistils and has, for a few weeks but before they always turned into leaves. Or is it pistils? Anyways, those 'hair' things that may indicate a female.

I added nutes again today, just 5 drops of 10-15-10 to a little over a quart of water, distributed to all the plants roughly equally.

Originally, I was sweating nutes as my last attempt was on much smaller plants and seemed detrimental but it seems now that these beings need/want nutes, so I'm puttin out!

This is not much water considering these conditions and their size, so I may find myself watering them again tomorrow morning-- certainly tomorrow night, which means daily waterings. On Saturday evening I will take them out and give a good deep watering.

This is not a good shot, but these things are all over this plant and smaller and less frequent on the others. Is it the beginning of leaves, or is it an indication I have a female plant on my hands, here?

Researching Monkee's excellent grow journal, I see now that for females I am looking for hairs, not spikes, which is all I have at this time.

all is looking well and those girls *hopefully girls* are getting big. if you can fill those plants up with bud you will have nice yeild. you were right about the nutes, i would bump it up too..

Yeah, looks like those guys either have a pH imbalance or they just want some nutes - pale leaves want nitrogen, purple stems can sometimes be craving phosphorus. Buy a pH meter - it's seriously the best investment you can make. I had problems with mine which weren't really getting any better no matter what I did - testing my water showed me that it wasn't nearly as alkaline/hard as the water company reports suggested and my soil runoff was at pH 5.5 - which is way too acidic. If your pH is off, your plant won't recover no matter what you feed it as whatever it wants is usually locked out.



handy guide =D

Thanks Masta K and Jay0, I was wondering why the dang stems were purple and couldn't find the graphic that I once had showing various kinds of deficiencies. Will add more nutes tomorrow.

And about the water, you are probably right JZero, I am just using tap water that's been sitting for about a day. Even my non-smoking friend, looking in the Buds 4 Less book told me I should check pH, but did I listen? Noo.....

Also finally got two new 6500k's going in tomorrow to replace the small 5500k's which seem to promote very very small leaves at the base of the stem...

I was looking at the big one today and now I'm wondering if it is a dang boy. I'm entering that phase where eyes play tricks... between what I want to see and what I actually see.

Been so busy looking at pics of females that I forgot to check for maleness... looks like might be a little ball there, a lil nutsack... I wouldn't mind so much if the big one is a boy, that thing is gonna get too damn big for the closet, even with ME growing it...

But then I looked at the others and thought, oh shit.

What if they're ALL boys???!!! Waaaahhhhh!

Then I realized a dumb thing... I kept thinking this 8-12 weeks business was the time for a whole plant silly me, not really thinking.

So now I know that they've been in 12/12 for only 5 days, and... there's at least a month and a half to go, at least! So we're talking August harvest, ouch! Need to get me some clones off whichever one is a girl.

If there is a boy or boys, when I take that one out I will at least be able to immediately start growing another few from seed...

I'm also worried about light leakage, realizing there was some light possibly from the side that I didn't predict... ouch.

There is only one good pic here, the last one, and the next post I will blow that up in the Gimp and try to show you what I hope (uh hope uh hope uh hope) is the indication of a big girl! Amazon!

Anyways, kinda excited because I was worried about this tall one being a boy, or them all being boys but then I looked at more 'sex pics' and decided to haul 'her' out and have a go.

This is the plant originally named "Mr. Stretchy"-- here's to hoping for a new lame name, like "Ms. Tall" or some shit, sing a song:

Ms Tall
I didn't know you was all
That
Now you be showin me yo real flava
and...
You might even be ma saviour
And then I can savor
You

Uh...

I think beer is not good for writing songs, yes?

Anyways,

pic1:
I have no idea. I swear it looked good in the camera

pic2:
You might see something here. Looks like I plugged the plant into the wall!

pic3:
Shows 'pistils' somewhere... I will enlarge parts of this in the GIMP to show you what I mean. And someone can probably tell me exactly what sort of nute deficiency is being displayed here... the curled leaves are light burn.

Oops! Forgot to take a pic of the pretty tops. I'll save that for tomorrow morning when it's cooler. My God this day is kicking my ASS, so hot. Cabinet got up to 100 degrees again, if I put those brighter lights in there I gotta find a way to cool the cab, though the plants don't seem to be suffering from heat (just a dumb grower who can't nute or pH his water right, ha ha!)

pic1:
Center top, see that lil hair thing?
You can also see one center near the bottom, in front of the stem.

pic2:
Middle left and right, slightly north, also slightly south-left of center

Guys? Gals? Whaddya think?

??????

Okay, decided to take the babes out of the box and get some new pics, wanted to get a top pic of Ms Tall, that's

pic1:
Ms Tall from above

pic2:
Ms Tall (left) and... that other one

You can see from this pic the effects of lack of light, on both, but particularly on the plant to the right. There's a lot of stem there. I also took this pic to show what appear to be hairs(?) on the right baby, in my next post I will have some zooms of this. No, they are not that tall yet! This shot makes them look humongous, but they're sitting on top of the cabinet. The one on the left is about... 3.5 feet? The other one is less than 3 feet. I oughta measure them but that would mean opening the cab by moving the blanket, and I don't want to do that just yet, gotta remember to water these girls before 7pm tonight (they were still moist when I took this, about 11 am) or maybe I'll laze out and hit 'em tomorrow, nutes coming up.

pic3:
This illustrates even better the effect of weak lights. Obviously, I had the lights near the top of the plant. There were lights lower, but they were the 5500k's, a cheap brand that said it was 'daylight'.

You can also see clearly that for whatever reason, the plant on the right is greener. I'm assuming it got more nutes or maybe because it's small the nutes were better placed. I had a bad experience with nutes early on, but from here I shall be adding them regularly. Mental note: buy molasses! I don't know how many times I have written this on post-it notes and still: no molasses.

Sadly, when I had some kind which a friend brought me out of nowhere, I ignored my plants, and this is what you see. Now all I have is beer, and you can bet I'll be paying real attention to these babies now, as they're my lifeline and the key to my anticipated future mental health.

(aside: You guys ever drink Belhaven Scottish Ale? Sipping it now, my God what a glorious brew, it's like I'm drinking the moors of dear old Scotland. But I digress)

When I took these out, I was thinking, unlike the past weeks, when I wasn't paying much attention because I was getting high (what does this bode for future plants, considering I intend to grow and be high, constantly? Hmmm....), I was thinking: Oh Shit. The tops are getting top-heavy. So I rearranged the lights, putting my new 6500k's (thank God-- the old 5500's are now powering the bathroom, ha!).

I thought to myself, how much would it suck if I allowed all this new growth to take place up top, and then the whole damn thing fell over or broke because I wasn't paying attention and the bottom got weak.

I rearranged the fan to blow better on all these babies, and I'm happy with the setup for now.

pic4:
This is the new light setup, I think, if I remember correctly (which I don't... rather drunk now), that damn plant... well, not damn, it's a sweet plant, it's the baby, now. But I didn't want to move it because with all the wires and such, you can't tell from this pic, but it's situated pretty good and doesn't want to move. My setup is pretty ghetto, everything feels like an old car with really bad shocks, like that car in the movie "Uncle Buck". And I was gonna take out this plant but it just didn't want to move, I can tell it's become acclimated to the things around it, and I try to avoid moving things because they're all just sitting on these metal shelf-holders that don't seat well in the rails.

get an hps system off ebay or something. ur trees arent getting enough lght and thats why there stretching so much and not growing that bushy. but other than that they look pretty healthy.

pic1:
Babies in their cradle. I had to move the light on the left up, because that damn tall plant keeps growing like crazy. Notice I have re-positioned the lower lights to shine on it's lower extremities, and it's not in this pic, but I also re-positioned the fan to blow better all around. You can see from this picture my concern that my biggest plant would become top-heavy. I'm expecting that because I veg'd these babies so long, this biggest plant, now in 12/12, is going to probably hit the top of the cab before the end of this grow.

These plants have been surprisingly resilient and strong considering the ghetto-ness of my growing ways. The seeds are simply called "Super Bud," and I ordered them from High Grade Seeds.

pic2:
Cabinet temps are pretty sweet today, but that's probably because I'm home with the a/c on. Normally at work, the a/c isn't on and when I get home at 5:30 the cab temp is generally right at 100.

Next post: hirsute!

These are pics from the smaller plant in the other pics, these look like basic spike things, not so much hairs, but I don't know. The plant has been in 12/12 for 6 days now but I veg'd it for a long time:

pic1:
Probably just new growth?

pic2:
That doesn't look like balls, right?

pic3:
They don't look like the hairs I've seen on others... but then again, when you're this ghetto... who knows what you'll get

Thanks DonkeyBalls, I am not getting an HPS, this is a flouro grow. The temps are already peaking at 100, and I don't buy stuff off eBay or online or whatever because I am growing with all flouros which I can purchase with cash anywhere. Early posts indicate there were major fuckups in my decision of lights, including flouros that weren't even 6500k. I think we all know that HPS is a good light choice, one I will not be exploring for this grow. This is a flouro grow, and it sucks so bad because I fucked up early on, but I'm sticking with it, so that I and others can learn to start out right, not like I did with ghetto fucking lights that weren't even the right spectrum. Considering everything I've put these babies through they're doing okay, but you're right, the stretching is ridiculous, but not because of floro's-- rather because of my stupidity... but that's how we learn, eh?

I need help with this. This crazy plant, I opened the cab today to check the sex and saw the balls at the top that you can discern in pic1.

Yet as you see in pic 2, those appear to be clearly hairs.

This doesn't even look like a traditional hermie, from what I can tell. How am I having hairs on one part of the stalk and balls on another?

Or... or is that... is that the beginning of... BUDS at the top?



pic3 attempts to show both.

Considering getting a new camera for obvious reasons.

I posted a 'help' post in the newbie section but by then it was pretty obvious I had two boys and one girl. I set the boys in the room away from the closet, I know I gotta get rid of 'em but can't do it just yet, I wish I could go put them in the field but that's just asking for trouble as they would probably grow and get seen... and they'd be pointless there, anyway.

The good news is, I now have adequate lighting for my female, and I got molasses!

The leaves on her are drooping, though. I suspect I may have overwatered. She was the smallest of the three, and I gave her the same as the others. But she has by far the healthiest color and leaves, so that's good but I gotta watch that droop.

Can't wait till harvest (August, ugh!) and gotta take a clone now, and I might as well start growing some more... I have space in the cab to put a shelf towards the top and I can fit lights up there too, so I can have babies and mama at the same time, sweeet!

well atleast you have some smoke coming! males have their purpose if you can to get that deep into growing, but if not, when i found a male i threw him in some bushes outside my apt where he stayed for a good 5 months before being found by the gardeners, but no worries! Anyway this fall will be full of rewards, are you going to clone your lady? I plan on veggin mine until sept 1 (looong time i know) but then when that date rolls around she is going outside under the ultimate lamp. Good luck with everything

good2bkind i looked at the pics but i couldnt see well enough to tell you whether they were male or female. looks like you figured it out on your own so you are learning every step of the way. props to you.

brendon420 said:

well atleast you have some smoke coming! males have their purpose if you can to get that deep into growing, but if not, when i found a male i threw him in some bushes outside my apt where he stayed for a good 5 months before being found by the gardeners, but no worries! Anyway this fall will be full of rewards, are you going to clone your lady? I plan on veggin mine until sept 1 (looong time i know) but then when that date rolls around she is going outside under the ultimate lamp. Good luck with everything

Click to expand...

Yep, I gotta clone the lady, gonna maybe try on Sunday after I've given her some molasses (already gave to some stressed house plants two days ago they already have new growth and are turning a nicer shade of green) and after I've read up on cloning... also gotta for sure by some superthrive, ain't takin no chances.

I am curious about your long vegging (like, why), I did it out of necessity-- but the cool thing is, I'm pretty sure they're sturdier than if I hadn't, and since it's all floros, with this plant I might have a better chance at bigger or easier to grow buds, or at least a bigger plant may have a better chance of being hardy under my ghetto grow style.

Thanks again for checking in!

mastakoosh said:

good2bkind i looked at the pics but i couldnt see well enough to tell you whether they were male or female. looks like you figured it out on your own so you are learning every step of the way. props to you.

Click to expand...

Thanks Kush, yeah those pics were hard to tell, my other pics were more obvious. That pic you have of the stretching plants is a trip, and good for noobs. Shows exactly what happened my "very first" grow (so technically this isn't my first) with a bag seed under a tungsten bulb, ouch!@