Sharing is Caring...first time grow: LED, soil, feminized Northern Lights

Greetings RIU! First time grower here, starting this journal as a way to give back to the community as well as keep my wits about me. My equipment and plan of action (https://www.rollitup.org/t/first-time-grower-feedback-on-setup-and-plan-welcome.985679/) were all based on info found on the forums here and other internet research. The goal is to grow quality medicine for my family and friends without being a slave to tending the garden. Input/feedback welcomed.

Here’s where we’re at so far…

Day 1

-Seeds arrived as described by Nirvana and ahead of schedule (13 days from shipping date to socal).

-Popped 5 feminized Northern Lights seeds into a cup of brita filtered water.

-Prepped solo cups, added light warrior, and watered till slight runoff to get the soil most overnight.

- Put everything in the tent overnight (on a 14 inch saucer with a heating pad under it)



Day 2

-Checked on the seeds in a cup of water after 13 hours…1 had sunk to the bottom. The other 4 looked kinda bloated bobbing at the top so I touched them with my finger and they fell to the bottom.

- Decided it was time to put in soil so I prepped holes down to my first knuckle, put ¼ tsp of mykos in the bottom of the hole, carefully poured the seeds on a paper towel and even more carefully used tweasers to place them in the hole, gently covered with soil, and finally used a plastic sandwich bag and water bottle to create a mini dome over the solo cups in an attempt to hold in moisture.

-Once the seeds were in soil, I put them under the ES300 dimmed to the lowest setting at 48in…



I wasn’t interested in going CFL for germination but I am interested in giving my plants the correct amount of lux per their developmental stage so I downloaded a free lux meter on my smartphone (Lux Light Meter Pro – free version) and have been playing around with the readings but the units don’t seem to match what’s recommended on the forums here. The reading on the lux app come out in the 100’s instead of 1,000’s, is this just a conversion issue? If anyone has used the smartphone lux meters with success I’d be curious to hear how.Cheers.

Good stuff doogledore!! Wise move starting a grow journal for your 1st grow! You should have a few experienced eyes watching over you throughout your grow. Just curious as to why you put the seeds in water and didnt wait to see a tap root? Was it just to give it a kick start to germing in soil?

Exactly Hydro4life, just a little kick start in water. Didn't want to take the chance of damaging a showing taproot on the transfer to the solo cup so figured once they were waterlogged they were ready for soil.

Testing out the difference between water bottle dome and plastic bag to see if it makes a difference.

Ahhh. I gotcha. Nice.

Happy Friday, wanted to introduce ya'll to some new lady friends of mine

This is day 3 from soil...first plant broke the surface last night and I can confirm that all 5 have germinated! Man these last 3 days have been an exercise in patience and self control!

I've been keeping the soil moist with a spray bottle of ph'd brita water (I'm averaging 80F/38% RH in my tent) and have my es300 hung at 50inch above the medium.

After playing around with the intensity of my LED these past 3 days (to see how running it at 100%, 50%, and fully dimmed affects my environment) I've realized I have no idea how much light my seedlings actually need. I started to get worried that maybe I'm hurting them because the cotyledon on the first one that sprouted seems to be running away from the light. Is this a correct assessment or am I just being an anxious newbie?

I have them sitting on the window sill just like the pic getting light and heat from the real sun. I can increase the humidity in this room (spare bathroom) to over 50%. Feedback much appreciated!

No need to worry, your light is not hurting them, especially at that height. 50" is too high and don't worry about dimming. Run the light 100% and give them ~24" above to start. Once they really take hold, after the second node starts, lower the light to about 18" above. Just finishing up my first run with the ES300 and plants have been loving life with temps in the low to mid 80s, with RH in the mid to upper 40s.

TheTrailGuy said:

No need to worry, your light is not hurting them, especially at that height. 50" is too high and don't worry about dimming. Run the light 100% and give them ~24" above to start. Once they really take hold, after the second node starts, lower the light to about 18" above. Just finishing up my first run with the ES300 and plants have been loving life with temps in the low to mid 80s, with RH in the mid to upper 40s.

Click to expand...

Thank you sir, much appreciated! The hanging guidelines for the es300 made me too cautious. Feels great to crank it up!

doogledore said:

Happy Friday, wanted to introduce ya'll to some new lady friends of mine

This is day 3 from soil...first plant broke the surface last night and I can confirm that all 5 have germinated! Man these last 3 days have been an exercise in patience and self control!

I've been keeping the soil moist with a spray bottle of ph'd brita water (I'm averaging 80F/38% RH in my tent) and have my es300 hung at 50inch above the medium.

After playing around with the intensity of my LED these past 3 days (to see how running it at 100%, 50%, and fully dimmed affects my environment) I've realized I have no idea how much light my seedlings actually need. I started to get worried that maybe I'm hurting them because the cotyledon on the first one that sprouted seems to be running away from the light. Is this a correct assessment or am I just being an anxious newbie?

I have them sitting on the window sill just like the pic getting light and heat from the real sun. I can increase the humidity in this room (spare bathroom) to over 50%. Feedback much appreciated!

Click to expand...

100% germination! Maybe that little kick start in water did the trick!? Woke them up nicely!

doogledore said:

Thank you sir, much appreciated! The hanging guidelines for the es300 made me too cautious. Feels great to crank it up!

Click to expand...

The manuafacturer's website states can be 12-18" without issue, though I would be hesitant with that with seedlings. Because of varying stretch with my last round, I have some buds as close as 12" without issue. I'll be growing right along side you with a similar set-up if I can be of assistance. I have the same light, in a 2x4 tent, in 3gal smart pots with FFOF (no additives) and Fox Farm nutes. If interested, I have 2 grow journals in the forum going right now with this set-up, one just finishing, and the other I just put the seeds in to germinate last night.

Awesome! Ill be following along closely.

Im doing 5gal fabric, same soil, and biobizz starter pack nutrients.

Appreciate the feedback, enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Morning! Here's an update, 7 days from soaked seeds in soil...

I've been keeping the top of the medium moist with a very diluted combo of bioheaven and rootjuice in my 32oz spray bottle with brita water (these two enhancers also act as a perfect ph down for me). I was definitely heavy handed with the spray bottle for the first couple days over the weekend but I've since settled down.

A very useful tip I got on the forums here was to measure (scale from the kitchen) the dry weight of a solo cup with my medium and then compare that to actual weight of my cups with seedlings. For me, a dry cup of light warrior weighed in at 75g and a freshly watered cup of my seedlings was approximately 260g. Once I realized I was over-watering, I let my cups get to the sub 120g range before I did my first and only non-spray bottle watering thus far.

I've been doing light spritzing of the top of the medium to keep the soil moist and am trying to keep my humidity above 40% (no problems keeping temps around 80-85F).

I was running my led at 36" full power but NL#5 in the middle, she also sprouted first, starting reaching much faster for the light than her sisters. I was able to lower NL#5 bc my pot elevator has a hole in the middle and I decided to lower my led to "24 to discourage others from doing the same. They seem happy to me!

Cheers

Looking good. I'm subbed for the ride.

Looking very good, good luck on the grow I’ll be following along.

Thanks for looking out! Sometimes the combo of too much growing info + smoking + imagination can be a bad thing for me haha. I have to keep asking myself, what would nature do...

Here's an example of this: I've been running my lights 24/0 for this first week and am happy with the air circulation I'm getting at the bottom of the tent and around the plants. Before I had the fan on the floor, all the standing water was kinda unnerving and I noticed a couple smaller flying bugs in the tent so I added a couple drops of essential oils (thyme, rosemary, peppermint, eucalyptus) to each of my plant saucers holding water. This, combined with better air movement seems to have done the trick, haven't seen any flying bugs in the tent since.

I'm happy to run 24/0 (extra cost doesn't matter for this grow) and my plan for veg is to top down to the third node and do some LST when appropriate. With this in mind, my long winded question is does my plant need a break from the light to optimize its growth/potential?

I'm just starting to understand the concept of limiting factors so my rational for going 24/0 and trying to maintain the perfect environment was for photosynthesis to never stop and send the message to the plant to grow, grow, grow.

doogledore said:

Thanks for looking out! Sometimes the combo of too much growing info + smoking + imagination can be a bad thing for me haha. I have to keep asking myself, what would nature do...

Here's an example of this: I've been running my lights 24/0 for this first week and am happy with the air circulation I'm getting at the bottom of the tent and around the plants. Before I had the fan on the floor, all the standing water was kinda unnerving and I noticed a couple smaller flying bugs in the tent so I added a couple drops of essential oils (thyme, rosemary, peppermint, eucalyptus) to each of my plant saucers holding water. This, combined with better air movement seems to have done the trick, haven't seen any flying bugs in the tent since.

I'm happy to run 24/0 (extra cost doesn't matter for this grow) and my plan for veg is to top down to the third node and do some LST when appropriate. With this in mind, my long winded question is does my plant need a break from the light to optimize its growth/potential?

I'm just starting to understand the concept of limiting factors so my rational for going 24/0 and trying to maintain the perfect environment was for photosynthesis to never stop and send the message to the plant to grow, grow, grow.

Click to expand...

during the night time is when your roots develop the most, the saying healthy/bigroots = healthy/big fruits always come to my mind when i think of this.
i'd go with 18/6, personally when starting off some seeds i like to go on a 12/12 schedule at first, to give the roots a really nice start, like a step stool, for me when i do this, a nice explosion of healthy vegatative growth occurs when i switch to 18/6 a week or two from planting.

Cool min0r, I like that saying, thanks for sharing.

I'm debating whether to go 18/6 for week 2 or just dimming to my lowest setting for 6 hours instead. Time to go use that search button

Hey ya’ll, happy Thursday. It’s been a lil over 3 weeks since my last update, life is happening fast right now…

It’s day 30 from seed in soil. Been a fun learning experience these past weeks tending to the garden and learning through trial (and error ). Here’s a brief recap and timeline:

3/19 – Plan was to transplant from solo cups to 5gal fabric pot on this day. Overwatered the seedlings in preparation for transplant which resulted in the leaves curling down and under as well as brown spots appearing. Also got the classic root rot smell.

3/23 – Transplant day (18 days in soil) from solo cups to 5 gal fabric pot. Pre-soaked the 5gal soil prior to transplant and used the solo cup method to create a hole in the soil. Added mykos to the hole as well as the root ball during transplant.

3/26 – Watered (24oz per plant) first time since transplant. Also used a spray bottle to moisten the surface of the soil.

3/28 – Plant responded positively to the first watering and new pot (the new growth looked healthy) so I removed all of the unhealthy growth and topped to the 4th node.

3/31 – Began some plant training with metal stakes. Trying a minimal effort approach I saw on GWE where you bend the main stem over 90 degrees.

4/4 - Today, 30 days from seeds in soil!

4/3

3/28

My first grow was NL as well. Very forgiving plant. You're going to like the results.

good luck.