Second Grow: 400w HPS Northern Lights/Lemon Diesel

Hello all. Just recently started my second grow 2 days ago. My first grow was a learn/upgrade as you go grow and it turned out decent. I started with 2 fluoro tubes and ended my flowering with a 175w MH and got a little less than an Oz per plant.

This current grow will be done in a closet. The closet setup as follows: ~3ft x ~2.5ft x 8 ft, 400w HPS w/ Hortilux bulb and batwing reflector, 2 6" in line fans at about 150cfm and a vertically standing fan for grow room circulation. My medium is Cocogro that will be mixed with some perlite when put in the final pots. FoxFarm Big Bloom and Grow Big will be used throughout along with the Tiger Bloom and the other 3 nutrients when the time comes. I keep the water's pH right about 6.0 or a little bit less.

Some additions that i will be doing throughout the grow is I will be getting a cool tube that will exhaust the hot air straight into the attic. Hopefully some panda or some mylar( ihave white walls but want something a little bit better.


Now onto the children. I just started germinating the 10 seeds in paper towels saturday. all 6 northern lights seeds cracked and sprouted in less than 24 hours in the coco. Both Lemon Diesel seeds have cracked one is still in paper tower and one is sprouted. I also started a bag seed that i hadfrom some good headies not too long ago that has sprouted. They are under two 32w fluoro tubes and 2 of the i think 26w(whatever the 100w replacement is). One is the 6700k and the other is the warm white color. more cfls will be added weekly until its time to throw them under the HPS.

My goal for this grow is to grow the 6 strongest plants and induce flowering at about 12" tall. I hope to get a yield of at least 6oz. Is this reasonable?

Questions and comments are welcome. I will update frequently with pictures.

the second picture is a hermie that a buddy had that i tested the closet out on. it was super stretched when i got it thats why its sideways. I hate that fucking plant so much.

lol u hate that plant huh, nice grow im doing the same as u, and have 6 plants i wonder if we can get 6oz

yea. the only reason its still going is because the guy wanted me to grow it out for him for the seed under the terms that i get that light. pretty good deal i suppose. i think 6oz should be within reach but i guess we will find out. 6 oz is only ~180g and thats would be less the 1/2g per watt which isnt that good i dont think. i believe the limiting factor in this will be grow space. i wonder if lollipopping the plants and doing a sog with more plants would be more/less efficient thanvegging them for a couple weeks and growing maybe 4-6 plants total. any input

a quick question in case anyone reading this can help me out. When i make my nutrient solution i usually do about 2-3 Teaspoons of GrowBig(6-4-4) during veg. Then when i switch to flower i do a teaspoon of GrowBig and then 2-3 Table spoons of BigBloom(.01-.3-.7). I did the calc for the ppm of the mix i use with flowering and i only got 224.84 ppm for my mix. This confused me because my leaves always look a bit burnt up. Was my calculation wrong? salt build up in the growing medium? or not enough nutrients? this is something i would like to get figured out before i start feeding them.

Update:

I now have 7 strong growing seedlings and another germinated seed that just went into the coco late last night. 8 or my 10 seeds germed successfully( i lost one and one was a dud) and 7 out of 8 of those that germed have sprouted. Below is a picture of the two strongest seedlings at the moment. NL on the left and Lemon Diesel on the right.

I'm growing under 400 as well, but with 12 small plants hopefully. your space is pretty much the same as mine, and I was having serious heat issues without ventilating it out of the room with a 300CFM fan. you should consider using Fox Farm's Ocean Forest, it works well with the nutes you're using. plus it wont dry out as fast as the coco under that 400w. what are you transplanting them into? 2 gallon black grow bags are perfect for your space... good luck on your grow.

submachinegun said:

I'm growing under 400 as well, but with 12 small plants hopefully. your space is pretty much the same as mine, and I was having serious heat issues without ventilating it out of the room with a 300CFM fan. you should consider using Fox Farm's Ocean Forest, it works well with the nutes you're using. plus it wont dry out as fast as the coco under that 400w. what are you transplanting them into? 2 gallon black grow bags are perfect for your space... good luck on your grow.

Click to expand...

yea its gets pretty toasty real quick in the closet so a cool tube is a must. If i were to switch to the soil how often to i need to add nutrients to the water since the soil already has a bunch in it. and i will probably use the grow bags now that you brought that to my attention. it seems like they would be much more suitable for tight spaces.

well with good soil you dont have to add anything for a few weeks anyway... if you only had 6 plants...grow them all up as fast as you can..when there alll big enough to take cuts...take 2 of each and label which plant they came from... then force the clones into flower somwhere else..and you will see which clones are male or female ...from there throw out the males and make room for the females..if you were to put up a screen in that room with 2 to 3 plants and scroged it you could easly get 10 to 12 ozs... good luck..

naturalhigh said:

well with good soil you dont have to add anything for a few weeks anyway... if you only had 6 plants...grow them all up as fast as you can..when there alll big enough to take cuts...take 2 of each and label which plant they came from... then force the clones into flower somwhere else..and you will see which clones are male or female ...from there throw out the males and make room for the females..if you were to put up a screen in that room with 2 to 3 plants and scroged it you could easly get 10 to 12 ozs... good luck..

Click to expand...

thanks for the advice i was thinking about how much of an advantage a scrog would be and if it would help the yield that much then i mught have to do that myself

a scrog is a good way to maximize yield in small spaces, just remember to actually train your plants rather then putting a screen over them and calling it a day. you want the main bud sites to poke out and up, you can remove any growth underneath the screen to have the growth focused up top. Scrogs take a little longer due to the repetitive topping and recovering, but are well worth the effort.

with the Fox Farm Ocean Forest, you get about 16 weeks worth of good rich soil without needing to add anything. It's also PH balanced. They have a feeding schedule on their website listing the nutes you have and how much, etc. I would go by that for sure.... always start out gradually though, plants need time to adjust.

thanks for the advice guys i really appreciate it.

Update: All of the seedlings except 2 look great with uniform growth. One of the seedlings looks like its got some issues going on(see picture down below) and one is just playing catchup i planted it a day or 2 later. been watering as need and yesterday i gave them a super weak nutrient solution( half a capful of grow big in 3 L of water).

Question: If you start from seed, and initiate the flowering cycle before you see the pre-flowers, does that have any effect on yield/growth?

I just cut down the hermie that was taking up the closet space before so its time to throw in the seedlings. I took out the 400w HPS and put in a 175w MH that I had from my last grow. I did this for a couple of reasons 1) the 400w is still more heat than id like for that closet until the cooltube comes in 2) i dont think the seedlings are ready/need the 400w yet 3) i think the 175 w MH is a perfect light for veggin small plants and seedling. here ar ethe picture. i will probly veg for another week or so. pictures are below

The plants are now ~2 weeks from seed. I just started giving them a very light nutrient solution of grow big and big bloom. Here are pics from today.

I'd probably hold off on the Bloom Big until you start seeing some sex, let your plant focus on it's structure for a bit....

update, so after a long time of not posting(busy with school and all that garbage) there are some changes to the grow room. when i replanted my seedling it put them in to larger pots with FoxFarm Ocean Forest soil(good shit, i like it alot so far) and are using GrowBig, Big Bloom and Tiger bloom to fertilize in addition to whats in the soil. I have the plants in the same closet with a 400 W HPS and since the weather got cool and we keep the house nice a cold the temp at night is ~60 and during the day phase ~70-73. 2 females are about harvest time(a buddy gave them to me to finish off). 3/4 other females appear to be sativa dominant with the strongest plant easily growing 1-2 inches in 24hrs at points. wednesday will be 4th week of flower.Will post better pictures later tonight.

Here are some pictures, more to come with the light off.

the plants are now in the 6th week of flower and are looking pretty good. a little too tall and thin for my liking but that will be fixed with a scrog next go round. anyways here are some pics. i had some issues with the plants getting too talland close to the lamp in the closet so they were moved out of the closet.

Update:

All plants were transplanted into 4 gallon pots with Ocean Forest yesterday. I didnt water them bc I planned on flushing them tonight( a regular flush to keep the roots happy and intaking nutes at max capacity). I just finished flushing them with pH balanced water around 6.3 and 2 tsp of Flora Kleen in each gallon. Also picked up some stakes to hold the plants up they are getting pretty top heavy, and some Beastie Bloomz( i didnt want to buy the whole lineup of the 3 FoxFarm micro nutes or whatever they are classified so i decided beastie bloomz seemed the most balanced, anyone have any experience using this and all of the other FoxFarm nutes, if so please share). The budding is really starting to speed up on the 3 taller plants. The shorter plant is sickly right now and I am attempting to nurse it back to health.

Anyways comments and suggestions are welcome.