Racerx's First Closet Seed Grow Mini-Log

[Racerx]

Well another day without work and I am bored as hell. So I thought Id write up a mini-log like so many people are doing these days. I love reading them and its an easy way to look back and see progress; since I look at them everyday they look the same to me. I dont have as many plants/information as some of you, but what the hell!

I am not 100% new to growing, but this was the first time I have never used seeds. I have always used clones. This was also the first time I have done a little closet grow. Before I had 2 rooms (1 veg, 1 flower). I had a much better control over the environment and pampered them. I also had very good help from someone with experience. This time around, I wanted to experiement with seeds, do the whole "sexing" thing, and generally see how the plants managed without stellar care.

I planted a total of about 30 seeds from a friend who left his crop unattended to long and didnt catch a male in time. Out of the 30, about 25 grew. Out of those, I slowly began to weed out the slower growing or unhealthy plants. Unfortunetly I think this may limit some of the females but... I planted multiple plants per pots because I wanted to maximize the number of females, however after doing some research I found this is not neccessarily a good idea so I slowly weeded them down again to a final 12 plants. The grow area is a small closet without much ventillation. Essentially I use a large fan to control the tempature of my room, which in turn controls the tempature inside the grow room, which has 2 ventillation holes and one fan moving air around in side and on the plants. I am using a 250 watt HPS I had around because I dont want to deal with any more heat.

Fairly generic soil mix, nothing special, a fairly equal across the board low NPK. No perlite, I didnt have time in the beginning and Ive been lazy to mix it in, but its fairly airey to begin with. I used no nutrients and no pH balance in the first 4 weeks of growth. We also had a 2.5 week 105 degree heatwave come through here and my entire area sold out of fans, so they were subject to strong heat for quite awhile.

In general I was not satisfied with the growth rate, however there were many factors that could be limiting it. And like I said, I gave them no special soil, no nutrients, nothing, just filtered water. At about 4 weeks I moved to a 12/12 flowering schedule because I am moving out of this apartment in 2 months and I both wanted to hurry along the sex and limit their final size.

Well I finally was able to get into my storage unit so I started to give them some GH Flora Nova I had around, pHed the water and found it has been on about 8 for the first half of growing. The last week they have recieved pH'ed water and nutes. Ive started at a fairly weak approx ppm and moved up to around 800 right now. Still no burn so I guess I can keep going, but I am finally moving to flowering nutes now that they are showing sex.

After 11 days of flowering, my first male showed up yesterday (July 30th). It was the fastest growing plant and had reached over 15". Today, July 31, my first female showed. She is a stumpy little fucker, but no matter. I have my eye on another one that I think is female. The rest, except for a smaller one, look like they will be male (from general guessing of course).

The overall goal of this experiment, was to see how the plants faired with little pampering, without great soil, without a lot of light and ventilation, and to see how sexing works and how long it can take. If I end up with 2 small females and get 7 grams or something in yield...Ill be perfectly happy. My new place I am moving into has the grow room already being setup. You can check out my thread in "Grow Room" about it.

That said, here are pictures from the beginning to now.

[Racerx]

A week later and a couple weeks later

[Racerx]

This is when I began to weed out multiple plants from single pots. I also started keeping my own grow log. A few of the plants grew an average of 1.5cm a night. Sometimes 2.5cm.

The single plant was the fastest growing. It was the first to show sex: Male.

[Racerx]

2nd female detection today!!!! The other plant that I said I figured would be female...well I was right for the 2nd time. The only other one I think might be female is a little small right now so we'll see. Got one 90% sure male, another 2 60% sure. The waiting has sucked, but every other time I go into the closet, new shit is popping out. Kinda fun in a weird way. Pics to follow.

[Racerx]

Got a question. What is this thing in the first few pictures. I havent seen a bud develop like this and there are no pistils or anything showing and I see things that look more like pollen balls, so I think its a male, but I havent seen many male plants in my lifetime. The other pic makes me smile!!!

[iwantFUEGO]

wow bro... your gonna have a shitload of some fine crop my friend. Keep it up.

[yabatab]

See boredom isn't that bad just look what happened. You found
a grate way to occupy your time and what a nice hobby to take
up some of that time. Looks good Rx.
:thumbsup:

[Racerx]

Thanks for the friendly words guys.

Updated. Found another 2 males. Got 2 more looking like male, but now a new one is looking female. Well see. Not much development in the 2 females. Only white hairs on the top 2 nodes so no pics. Im guessing it will be 3-4 females in the end. Small plants but I have limited time/space. Should be fun.

[Racerx]

w0000t! All plants have been sexed! I came out with 4 females. Every few hours there are new white hairs busting out like mad! The healthiest female of all was a transplant from a multi-plant pot and looked like it was going to die for weeks. Then it just got this super great green color (lighter then the rest) and has literally just taken off. It went from showing only 2 pistils on the entire plant, to more then any of the other plants...in 1 night. It also has already reached the average height of the others and I think today its going to pass it.

Im sharing the pot with an experimental clone I did. I wanted to see if I could grow a clone in water, with no nutrients. Freakin worked!!!! Took a miniscule leaf and its grown nice big roots.

I also killed off all the males (except for one for a houseplant). It was good to do because I got to see the roots. They filled out very nicely, very white, looked great. Makes me think my baby girls will atleast double in size.

[yabatab]

Keeping that male around in the same house could cause pollination
of your babies cut his balls off....LOL

[Racerx]

Keeping that male around in the same house could cause pollination
of your babies cut his balls off....LOL


:thumbsup: Yep, he got castrated long ago. Ill keep an eye on him. Its a good looking plant and I have a very private household so I am going to keep him around, see how he fairs in half light. The air moving through the house also moves away from my babies.

Unfortunetly I just found out I have to move a whole month earlier then planned. Yet I dont have my new house until October. So for a month I have to rent a friend's studio. Atleast I got a place to stay and its fine to continue this little project there (and get started on a big set of clones), but it means halfway through the freaking flowering I will have to drive 45 minutes away on a windey highway with them n the back of my car. Sigh. I am not looking forward to that, especially if they really start to take off and get bigger.

[yabatab]

LOL..... man...Check all brake lights, turn signals, head lights and
make sure your registration is up to date before embarking on
that journey.

You can move in with me come on over...LoL

our kids can play together

[Racerx]

Pictures tonight.

Man what a week. I had an emergency trip out of town for 4 days. No water or anything and I didnt have time to water them at all so 2 of the plants went 6 days without water. One of my best females just about died. I am hoping I can bring her back. All fan leaves are dead or dried up but the top beginning of the cola and new growth looks fine. Fingers crossed. 2 small little clones I had taken died, but 1 clone is left and it thrived really really well. Its newer soil so it kept its moisture better. The other 6 day dry female is in critical condition as well.

Now, the other 2 females that almost grew into the light...whew! They look great. Lots of white hairs busting out everywhere and theyve just started producing noticeable crystals. So if the other 2 survive, Ill have 5 females that are coming along. I do not expect much from the damaged females, but the other 2 bigger guys are looking great. Definitely grew 3-4" in the time I was gone.

[Racerx]

All plants are looking good but one, which is getting really really bad downward cupping. Looks like rootbound to me, but its getting close to 3 weeks into flowering and Im not using a pot thats incredibly easy to cut through.

Anyways, here are some pics. Growing an average of about 1.5-2 cm a day.

I declined to top these because I tried it on a few in the beginning and they didnt respond well, really fell behind and werent catching up.

[Racerx]

Well... my 5 babies are going to have 2 new sisters tomorrow evening. Through circumstance, I have found myself with a Trainwreck clone and a G13 cross (not sure of the cross). They are about a foot and a little less, already LST and looking pretty good. Due to space and current light schedule, I am going to grab a few clones and then immediatly into the 12/12. I dont have the space to do a veg cycle with another light and the other light I have is far to big for the closet.

But on a final good note, the 2 clones come with a little 2 site DWC hydro setup. So Ill finally be able to mess with hydro again on a small scale. It will be very interesting to see the soil vs. hydro grow side by side.

[Racerx]

Well, I had a fun hour long drive with not one, but 2 DWC hydroponic setups in the trunk of a VW wagon. No police interactions, safe drive. I had a garbage bag over the bigger of the 2 DWC and the Trainwreck got a little smooshed, but she should be fine. They have a pretty good sized root system. Im going to switch out the resovoir and try to get a TDS meter tomorrow.

Water temp is at about 77F (about 24C) which seems a little high but manageable. We'll see how it does after being in my warm closet all day.

I also got one more addition to the family. An Afghani Kush clone that got a little overferted in the beginning but has some good roots developing. It is on its own mini DWC. I am going to mother the Kush, and remove a few clones from the G13 cross and the Trainwreck to mother as well (because Im going to flower them both right now). Were up to 5 females in dirt and 3 females in hydro.

Ive run into a slight problem in that I have a 250 HPS, and were definitly pushing the limits of its capabilities. Except my other lights are 1000s. They are not an option where I am. So I need to get something in between for now. Thinking of getting an air-cooled 400. 600 is to much for my space.

First pic is the Trainwreck. Second pic is the G13.

[Racerx]

Update (mainly to me I guess :( )

So everything is going well. I got some algae on the big DWC setup but a cleaning and some H2O2 seems to be taking care of that. Im wondering, should I kill the roots that still have some algae left on them? There are tons of new roots popping out. The smaller DWC with the Afghani Kush clone is doing awesome. Its got roots about 6" long already. I wonder how big it can get in the little 2 gallon jug.

The soil ladies are doing swell. I was gone for a couple days and we had some pretty good heat so 1 of them was a little wilted. Looks fine. Buds are getting larger everyday, and now the larger 2 plants are starting real crystal production. Exciting but Ive been paying less attention to them because of the hydro. The biggest news though, is that one of the females, the smallest and most stunted out of all the plants was really looking sad. I knew 99% it was root bound but I hate messing with them in flowering. So I finally busted out the saw and cut the bottom off the put, and laid it into a big new one with fresh dirt. She was having a lot of droopage and downward curling in. 2 days later, she has perked up better then I have seen in weeks! The buds looks far healthier and its grown more then it has in a long time.

I also was able to add 3 new clones to join the Afghani Kush in another closet. I took a clone off my unknown bagseed that is currently in soil, about 3 weeks ago. It was stubborn, a sloppy hollow cut that at last resort I threw in an Oasis cube with some gel. Well after my couple days away, there are some great looking roots poking out finally! This unknown strain will be preserved (an obvious Sativa). The other 2 clones are a G13 and Trainwreck clone, in a cheapo-aero cloner (bubbler pump with an airstone). The TW is looking great, the G13 was a smaller softer cutting so its wilting a little. Well see how if it survives. The branch needed to go anyways. Think I still have enough time to take another one.

The clones are under 3 CFLs equalling about 70 watts. They seem to like it, no stretching (very close to the plants). I however picked up a nice Sun Systems T5 HO dual flourescent light that will take over main duty (cfls around it). But I also got a 200 watt HPS light to help supplement the Hydro plants which are a little low on light.

Here is a link to my hydro post, there are a few pics in there and more details about the algae. http://boards.cannabis.com/showthread.php?t=77405

[yabatab]

Looks nice those new additions to the family look healthy
too. I see you are using CFLs on one of your clones im
going CFL all the way on my little 2 plant grow im doing,
first indoor grow I have done in a while and I am actually
pleased with those lights more so than I thought I would be.

Looks good :thumbsup:

[yabatab]

And I forgot to say im glad your travels went good and no problems.

I can only imagine the trip. LOL I would have been constantly
looking in the rearview mirror.

[Racerx]

Looks nice those new additions to the family look healthy
too. I see you are using CFLs on one of your clones im
going CFL all the way on my little 2 plant grow im doing,
first indoor grow I have done in a while and I am actually
pleased with those lights more so than I thought I would be.

Looks good :thumbsup:


The CFLs were free and I needed to isolate the clones from the flowering room. They seem to be promoting root growth pretty well. The unknown clone got transplanted today into a pint pot. Get some more roots developed and then into a 1 gallon. The Trainwreck clone is doing great, the G13s dont seem to be taking very well. They are very soft. I had to clip them to just the stem and the top growth, whereas the Trainwreck is supporting a few full leaves.

BIG NEWS! But once again, there is big news. Aside from picking up another 1000 watt (got 3, need one more), got a 400 watt HPS to add to the current flowering room. This should REALLY help out the hydro setup, however, they will not be alone...because I am taking home 4 new DWC plants (each in a 5 gallon individual DWC hydro setup). This will leave me with 6 plants in hydro, 5 plants in soil, and the 4 clones in the closet. I also picked up a Sun Systems T5 HO dual flourescent which will take main duties on the clones/veg when I get the space figured out.

The new DWC hydros will get some clones taken as well, and then flowered like the others. Itll be pretty cool, as Ill have a mini 3-wave harvest a few weeks apart each. 3 harvests in one month. Not bad.

Some more pictures. The flowering room has been upgraded with some long needed mylar and a more powerful fan. Hydro setup has been kept about 68-70 F, they are loving it, new roots just pouring out. The Trainwreck is growing quite a bit. The DWC hydro is on their 5th day of flowering.

[slowthestone]

lol....nice grow going there RcrX...

Seeing these last few pics is giving me a hankering for some jiffy-pop!