CFL Bagseed, Take 2

[melodious fellow]

The 2 month old plant is officially dead :(

But with death, there is new beginning...... my seedlings have sprouted!

4 or 5 little sprouts popped up today... unfortunately I only have room in my set-up for 1 single 10 inch diameter pot. Perhaps I will try to transplant or kill the 2 or 3 weakest and then leave the 2 healthiest-looking plants growing together in the pot.

The seedlings are in the 60% - 40% peat moss and perlite mix with two 40 watt CFL's and one 23 watt CFL, for a total of 100 watts and 7150 lumens, under a 20 hours on, 4 hours off light cycle.

I am wondering if I should remove the 23 watt CLF, thus reducing the wattage and lumens to 80 watts and 5400 lumens. I ask this because I have read that in flowering, there should be at least twice as much light as the plants received in veg. In my small set up, I think I will only be able to fit enough CFL's to provide around 11,000 or 12,000 lumens maximum. So would it be better to veg under the current 7,150 lumens and then flower with 11 or 12 thousand, or veg under 5400 lumens, so when I switch to 11 or 12 thousand it will be double what they received in veg?

Also, how long can the peat moss/ perlite mix sustain the seedlings before I need to begin fertilizing? I am guessing I shall start feeding after 2 weeks? Then start flower stage after 5 weeks?

Still not much of a vent system: I had a small fan running at the bottom of my grow bucket, with the top of the bucket open for air to vent out I guess... unfortunately the fan runs on batteries.... after visiting every store in town, I could not find ANY small fans...

[melodious fellow]

O, by the way,

The original grow was being logged in a thread in indoor growing entitled "closet set-up possible without box- please evaluate"

That was until the 2 or 3 month old purple something plant I had brought in from outside died.

So this shall be the new thread for my new seedlings.

Hopefully all you great growers can help me not kill my grow this time!

[melodious fellow]

These pics are from day 2. Hopefully everything looks peachy.

Except there are waaaay tooooo maaaannnny seeeeeeeedlings in one of the pots. The seeds were month old and had just been sitting around out in the light and air, and thus I planted 10 or so in one pot, thinking 2 would sprout. Well.....

Running two 40 watt CFL's and one 26 watt CFL for a total of 7150 lumens for the veg state, upping it to 16,000 lumens for flower.

Trying hard to get a pic up... damn server

[melodious fellow]

Here they are! Damn, I shore wish someone would reply :(

[melodious fellow]

Whoops, earlier I said the soil was 60%, 40% peat moss and perlite, but it is actually peat moss and Vermiculite

And it might be 50 50, not shore how accurate my mixing was... :)

[Zcomp]

separate those seedlings. Once there roots become entangled, You'll damage part of the roots when you transplant.
Also, is that a dead stump I see? You should remove those dead roots before some kind of rootrot kicks in.

[melodious fellow]

Hey Stinky, can you or one of the other mods move this to basic growing, as it is indoors, but is very ghetto *caughs* I mean "basic." lol.

Also, I think basic growing gets more traffic than indoor, yes? My replies have been swell :)

[melodious fellow]

The stump was the first plant, started outdoors 2 months ago, a purple something strain, that died from nute burn when brought indoors.

How should I transplant the seedlings the best way possible?

Also, as you can see I prolly do not have room for any more pots, other than maybe a small 2-3 inch diameter, but I wouldn't have the space to transplant later anyway...

So should I put a few in the other pot already in the grow bucket, since it has only one seedling so far:

Then raise 4 or 5 seedlings per pot for a few weeks, then decide which to keep, and leave 2 plants per pot?

[HateHeaven]

Your plants are around the same age as mine, I'll be checking on this :jointsmile:

[Zcomp]

Sorry mellow, I don't think that will work very well for ya. dead roots left in the pot will rot. I would personally use half of a dixie cup for each maybe(not sure your exact constraints). Then you can toss some later. Think about the trouble you'd have untangling roots. Better to have them rootbound than rootrotted.
2"-3" pots would be perfect for now. I've used 6" pots till the end(now I use 8" due to actual size discrepancies.)
But I do start them in 2" water bottle bottoms, transplant to 4" then 8".

[melodious fellow]

Thanks for the pointers Z!

Heaven, drop me a link to yo grow thread, definitely would love some company during this, especially if we are close in grow time!

I was hoping the older plant would come back, but if it doesn't by end of this week, it will be removed.

My larger pot had 10 or so little sprouts, while the other pot had one. Now, each pot has about 5-6 little seedlings.

I really don't have room at all for any more pots.

Should I just decide who to keep now before more roots grow and get tangled, or can I do this as sort of a ghetto SOG and grow 2 or 3 plants per pot and keep them all small, LST, and flower early?

peace

[Zcomp]

Yeah dude, good thinking. You can totally prune and LST your way to victory. If you could find room later, maybe add a screen.
Males will be your bane. I think you could cover them in a plastic bag though until the grow was over.
If heaven has a log, You can search it out on there profile. Check out some of mine, I've done ScroG, LST. Sativa dom and Indica dom. All soil.

[Roughrider]

Looks good, man! I'll be watching this too. I completely agree about getting separate pots and using new soil...you can fit plenty of 16 oz. part cups in an area of less than 1 sq. ft., and that will do for at least the first few weeks. I only transplant once, so I start in 5.5" pots....you an get four of those in an are aof less than 1 sq. ft.

7000 lumens is enough for one good sized plant. 12,000 lumens is putting you near the two plant area, or a really good SCROG or SOG grow over about a 2 sq. ft. area. Don't worry too much about having â??moreâ?� light between veg and flower. Your plants naturally get and use more light as they get bigger...they have more area for light energy to strike as they grow and the number/size of leaves increases. I don't know how wide/deep/tall your grow are is, so it's hard to tell when to switch to 12/12 and flower. You can expect a plant to double or more in height when you go to flower.

[melodious fellow]

Will def. check out your logs, Z! I appreciate the help, as there have been quite a few discourages during the times I have tried to grow...

Thanks for stopping by Roughrider. I am growing in a large 22 gallon bucket that is an estimated 2.5 feet tall or so, minus 6-8 inches in height for the pots, leaves me with around 2 vertical feet of grow space. The diameter at the bottom of the bucket is prolly 16 inches or so, while the top is prolly 24 or 30 inches in diameter.

About to go check on my babies in a few, will update later.

Roughrider, I started them in somewhat larger pots, hoping that I wouldn't have to transplant at all this grow. Next grow, however, I am going to learn from this and start in small jiffy pots and transplant those directly into the soil of larger pots later.

Z, would it be better to cover the males in plastic bags, or should I just remove them since I am short on space anyway...

brb

[Zcomp]

only 1 problem removing them. Once you cut the stem, the roots will start to die/rot. Thats why I mentioned the bags, You could keep them alive without seeding your crop.
If you try to pull the males out, you'll still lose some roots and possibly damage nearby roots.
I say, once you find the males, your gonna have 10-12*1' plants. Most every plant I've grown doesn't show sex until about 1'.
Just make sure there is a "next grow", Everyone deserves to smoke there own pride.

[melodious fellow]

Today's update:

Currently light-bulb-vaping some seedless trying to remind myself why I am going through all this work! I will feel very accomplished if there is actually a harvest this time..

grow 1: Large outdoor, busted/stolen

grow 2: Single outdoor, 12 inch plant vanished

grow 3: Outdoor, died when brought inside.

grow 4 (current): There doesn't seem to be much changing in the last few days. The larger, white pot is the control group and the smaller, reddish pot is the experimental.

Wow it has been 40 minutes since I started this post. haha. weeeed.

Well I can't remember what else I am subpost to post about.

O yea. The EP (exprmt. pot) is the one I transplanted a few of the extra seedlings from the CP into. It seems only 2 (of 4 or 5) are surviving. The EP doesn't have any healthy seedlings at all, just 2 runts. The CP has 7 ot so seedlings, 3 of which are vigorous, however, one is stretching a bit.

I wanted to transplant into smaller jiffy pots today as Roughrider suggested, but I realized then they would be much lower than the other pots and the lighting would either be too far away from the jiffy pots or not close enough to the larger pots unless I transplanted ALL of them into jiffy pots, which would be nuts.

Um. .. drums by grateful dead... yeah! O yea, I removed the large fan in the pic bc it did not seem to be putting out much air. Surprisingly, the micro version of that fan, made by the same company (O2 Cool) puts out much more air than its larger, 5x the price brother. Weird...

And the other day, I bought a Ph meter and a moisture meter from Ace Hardware and the moisture meter is straight (but now I am learning to eye it) but the more expensive Ph meter is pretty lame. It doesn't seem accurate at all, and before every use, one must shine it with this oil pad, carefully avoiding the probe tip, blah blah, stick in soil, rotate multiple times for max exposure, wait 60 seconds, if Ph between 3-5, repeat after wiping clean and re-oilig. If between 7-9, repeat without cleaning... blah blah. Isn't that ridiculous? O yea, and they said no returns once it has been used in the soil. I was like WTF? How was I supposed to know it was broken if I did not use it?

O Yea, and it won't read Ph of liquids.

I have more to write, but afraid I shall lose my connection soon, so posting now.

Peace

[Zcomp]

I use a regular aquarium freshwater PH kit. When I water, I just check the runoff.
As far as soil moisture, All you gotta do is lift the pot dry then lift it wet. Notice the diff in weight. Then theres the "stick your pinky an inch or two into the soil" to check for moisture. Also your plants will start to droop if they are too dry or too wet.

[melodious fellow]

She survived my Noob abuse and never hermed. That abuse included heat(100F-125F in my attic), irregular light cycles(moving it from location to location), light leaks(before I light sealed), Nute abuse, PH below 5, Premature Nug Theft, and just about any abuse a Noob does when setting up to grow.
.

Damn dude. Look at all those trichs on your plants. You are ridiculously talented for someone who referred to their growing skills as noob abuse.

I used to germinate mutated genetic pink lady apples from their seeds inside the parent apples, then transplant them to pots and grow these amazing apples, but I can't seem to even keep a cannabis plant alive...

I sir, am the noob. Not thee. haha.

Peace

[melodious fellow]

only 1 problem removing them. Once you cut the stem, the roots will start to die/rot. Thats why I mentioned the bags, You could keep them alive without seeding your crop.
If you try to pull the males out, you'll still lose some roots and possibly damage nearby roots.
I say, once you find the males, your gonna have 10-12*1' plants. Most every plant I've grown doesn't show sex until about 1'.
Just make sure there is a "next grow", Everyone deserves to smoke there own pride.

Hmm. I don't plan on trying to grow more than 4 plants, m a y b e five. Because I only have two 8-10inch pots and a maximum of 16,000 lumens available.

How do I go about with this bag method? I don't want to start a fire, CFLs do get a bit hot, and won't the plant suffocate? Can you teach me this bag method?

You worrying me a bit with that last line bro...
"make sure there is a next grow because I deserve to smoke some of my own..." You are not thinking this grow will fail are ya? Maybe I am just too high :)

Peace

[melodious fellow]

Having a coral (saltwater) tank, I wondered, too. Since I didn't know what interactions a marine additive would have on terrestrial micronutes, soils and ferts, I figured I'd better stick with traditional methods. (too broke to be overly-creative, lol)
When I lived in Vegas, the municipal water smelled strongly of chlorine. Filling a 5 gallon bucket with the water, and letting it set uncovered for a day, the chlorine smell disappeared. (isn't chlorine in muni. water supply a gas?)
HTH
Also, adjusting local water to use on plants, both outdoors and houseplants, is common. Shouldn't raise suspicions at all.

I re-checked the bottle. It removes chlorine, chloramines, and ammonia. It says safe to all aquatic life at even higher dosages than recommended. I think I shall use it on my experimental pot.

[melodious fellow]

I am debating dissolving a Tums tablet (1,000 mg Ca) into half a gallon of tap water and using that to try and raise the Ph in my CP (cntrl pot) because the other day when I measured it with that new and unreliable meter I bitched about earlier, the Ph was only like 6.0 or 6.1 and I think it should be around 6.7-6.8

Is this a bad idea due to the sugar, slight bit of food coloring and flavoring that a Tums tablet would contain. They are safe on humans, and I am dissolving in half a gallon of water... ???

Baking soda contains salts and that is no good, encourages males. But so does too acidic soil, so I need to fix this quick, and I can't find Ph up anywhere but the internet, and no credit cards during this adventure for security.

So yea, the Tums?

Peace

[Zcomp]

The bag method won't come in for about a month or 2. But yes, it will suffocate the plant. It will suffocate slowly so you'll be buying extra time as opposed to cutting them and starting the dying process right then.
I am concerned for the success of this grow. The roots are as important as the canopy. So if your doing the "out of sight out of mind" thing, You might get burnt. You might want to think about picking 5-6 of your best looking and transplanting them to smaller pots.
I'm only concerned over the things that can ruin a whole crop. rootrot & budrot.
I've explained enough about the rootrot.
budrot occurs when a bud doesn't get enough airflow. If it starts, your in big trouble from what I hear. And your starting to look like your aiming for jungle. 1 plant ready to flower is about 1' wide * 1' tall. Then flowering you can expect 2'*2' sometimes 3'*3'.
Get a 12" ruler and start predictions, You'll see my worries.
Another thing is, when 2 leaves touch for too long, they create an incubator of heat and moisture between the 2 leaves that usually leads to a mold or fungus. I've dealt with this on several occasions. The cure is simple if caught early, Just cut off the infected leaves.
But if left unnoticed, it could get bad quick.

[Zcomp]

PH up is in the pool section @ walmart. Sodium carbonate.
E-mail me,[email protected]

[melodious fellow]

Z, you will be glad to hear that I removed the dead plant from the CP. It is in a glass of water by a window. There are barely any roots on it, very wound up, but still not many.

Also, I get what you are saying about having too many plants. I am going to cut it down so that I have 1 plant in the EP and 2 plants in the CP, as the CP is a bit bigger

Then I will LST each plant down in a corner of the bucket, evenly spaced and not touching each other.

[melodious fellow]

It can be done! This guy is my hero:

http://boards.cannabis.com/grow-log/145025-zeb-s-pure-cfl-grow-log.html

His pics are amazing. I still went way more overboard and spent waaaay more money than he did, more stress over this and work... and my yield still won't be nearly what his was, if I can even keep mine alive.

[melodious fellow]

Dark shwagg or light?

The seeds from my current grow were from all kinds of schwag and low mids, dark, light, sometimes brown... ha, this is a funny story:

I used to always get pretty seedy bud from my ghetto, low mids, schwag.. I try to avoid smoking this, but I never find seeds in my dank, and was not using a credit card to order seeds so I had to use these old seeds for my grow.

When I used to smoke that stuff I would toss the seeds in this shot glass on my desk. The little white ones too, small ones, un-speckled ones...

They have just been sitting there for months... exposed to air, candle wax, sunlight, CO from me smoking, etc.

Not to mention, some date back to 4 months ago...

SO that is why I planted 10 seeds in the CP, thinking 2 would spout.

And all ten of my stale schwag seeds sprouted, thus causing me all of these transplanting problems! Arrrgh!

[Zcomp]

the incredible, edible cannabis seed never ceases to amaze.

[HateHeaven]

You going to LST or SCROG?
Btw, heres my grow. http://boards.cannabis.com/indoor-growing/144364-new-cfl-growing.html

[melodious fellow]

Hey Hate! Yea bro, I have been reading your thread... looking good, I'll comment later

[melodious fellow]

O yea, Hate, I am going to attempt to LST. My seedlings don't seem to be doing shit though...

[melodious fellow]

I am getting more and more frustrated with this grow.

In hindsight, I would have done a VERY simple hempy-bucket grow with just a few CFL's against a wall in a closet surrounded by mylar.

Anyway, here is a pic from yesterday... I swear I only planted 10 seeds total...

As of today, natural selection seems to be taking care of things:
The fan fell and crushed one seedlings.
A large CFL came too close and burned, probably killing 2 more seedlings.

So in a few more days, I should be down to just 2 plants in the larger pot, my control pot.

I think I am turning pot 2, the experimental pot into a hempy bucket and sticking it in the corner of a closet with mylar around. Very simple!

And here is the pathetic pic... after an entire week, they are still this small:

[Zcomp]

CFL's can be as close as 3". Just thinking, Your used to faster growth so maybe you should get some foliar feed going on. Foliar feeding is how I maxed out my first grow. I used a very weak solution about once a day. Be always diligent though for nute burn signs. Starting with burnt tips, progressing to the sides of each finger, finishing with total destruction. care is needed for this. two bottles, one with plain water the other with the nute solution.
After the foliar feeding dries, it leaves a residue of any un-absorbed nutes, it should the be sprayed with plain water as a sort of leaf rinse.
It looks from the pic like maybe your suffering from some nute burn now? Are you using hot soil(high nutrient content)?