CFL growlog, round 2 of 1st grow

I started growing these a few weeks ago, i'm not really sure exactly when...but it hasn't been too long. i was growing all three in one small pot, it was all i had, and today i decided i better transplant them. they were growing in MG continuous feed up until today. I think i may have made a mistake by transplanting them into straight Scott's Premium Topsoil. am i ok on that? also, i made this grow...box...room today. I'm planning on making a divider in the middle and maybe get a SOG kind of thing going. the fan is pretty big, it was the only one i had though. too big? Thanks, ill try and keep this one updated. im still calling it my first grow since my last plant had to be "let down" before i left for Christmas break. let me know what you think!

Here are some pictures of what i hope is at least 1 female. is there something more that i should be doing to them? im still going 24/0 with 4 bulbs, 120W i believe. they are planted in scotts premium topsoil in an 18 gallon rubbermaid and they get watered with those MG Singles packs, i haven't read about anyone else using those, but my plants arent dead yet lol. i havent found a place where i can get good ferts and soils, all my stuff is from home depot.

#1: all three plants together
#2: the runt
#3: the biggest one
#4: the middle height plant
#5: the nasty pot they were growing in before

i'm pretty sure there's some stuff wrong. but i only've ever done hydro so i shouldn't be too pretentious here.

the soil isn't perfect, for sure. i know roots like oxygen, and i'm not sure how good the drainage is in that top soil. perhaps adding some perlite/vermiculite?

i'm sure a lot of people might chime in and lecture you on not having 3 plants in the same planter.

also, you don't want to be feeding every watering. salts and whatnot will build up. try a water, water, feed, repeat cycle.

i hope some soil pros jump in and give advice. other than that, good luck and welcome to the CFL grow club.

stay safe
-GG84

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, i figured i'd get some heat for the three plants in there, once they're done im going to find some square pots or something that will fit nicely in there. I've been doing feed-water-feed-water, with a drop of superthrive to every gallon, I'll try going two waters to a feeding though. should i not put the superthrive in every watering also? I thought about picking up some pearlite today, and after seeing the topsoil out of the bag, i think youre right, drainage looks minimal. how would i go about putting that in now that i've already transplanted? any pointers on the grow box would be great too, keeping in mind its not done yet and i ran out of tape lol. space blankets are awful to work with also.

i think that if any of these three are female, they will just become mother plants. i've been hoping to learn hydro methods, i made a DWC out of a large rubbermaid. i havent used it at all yet, i dont know if my pump is strong enough. i think i have too many holes in it as well. its an 18 gallon rubbermaid with 8 spots for net pots situated as 3-2-3. i dont have any net pots, and i made the holes with a soldering iron, i would guess 2-3" net pots would fit. the pump i have is from walmart, a Whisper 30-60 and 2 18" bubble rocks. would this be sufficient for flowering, or am i better off to go with 4 buckets and maybe 5" net pots? i have a 4-5 foot vertical growing space.

It looks like you may need some perlite in your soil (i may just not be able to see it in the pics) I like about 30% perlite for good drainage.

If you are in need of some good nutes/soil look for a local nursery...they should be starting to open up for the season in the northern states soon and should be open year round in the south. Or you can go to fox farms website and do the little search for who sells FF in your area :)

Yeah you should get those into separate containers ASAP... If you have problems with one, it could screw with the other ones. Especially if you are going to make these mothers, you will need 5 gallon pots for each.

Get some individual pots, and transplant so that you can put in a decent amount of the new soil/perlite mix. The roots will get tangled very quickly and you could stress them even more if you try to get them apart.

Sorry, I'm just a soil guy, nothing to add about the hydro stuff:jointsmile:

thanks for the input. i picked up some more cfl's today, making a new light to compliment the one already there. got supplies for a separator in the middle, and some stuff for cloning. yes, you are right about no perlite in the soil. i looked at 3 different places today, all three of which only had MG perlite...yay for no one having good stuff. but i guess that can be expected. im sure i can find a place around me that sells better soil and nutes, i just haven't looked on the internet or anything. that makes me sound incredibly lazy lol. yeah i only have the one pot right now, so i think ill move the small one into it and transplant the other two into new ones when i get them.

also, i have a quick question about topping that i havent read in any posts on the subject. does it matter how far down i cut? i was just wondering because i wanted to use the cutting as a clone, and i'd like it to have a decent amount of height to it right off, or at least enough of it under the soil for a good root system.

I put the big one into the old pot (after cleaning it out) and spaced the two smaller ones more evenly in the rubbermaid. i added perlite to both containers, mixed it in good, and watered them with only 1-2 drops of superthrive in the water. i hope that wasnt a bad choice. as you can see theyre a little droopy, but i now have 8 100W CFL's going on in there, 6 6500k and 2 2600k. hoping theyll come around soon, anyone who reads this please answer the topping question in my last post lol.

#1: The new lighting situation
#2: two smaller plants
#3: the bigger plant

i take that back, i have 10 CFL's in the box at the moment. im thinking cardboard was not the best building medium...i'm drawing up a design for a box made of plywood, hopefully i can build it nicely, though it will be much smaller than this, i may go to 12/12 from when clones root, if i ever get to that point lol.

I cut a clone about 5 minutes ago, dipped it in Schultz Take Root and put it in a seed starting jiffy mix watered with a bit of Superthrive. I've read many posts on taking clones, but reading still isn't doing. So i just did, and i have no idea if i messed up or not. on the bright side, cutting this clone should not make my plant die regardless of how well i did, so i guess i'll just sit back and watch 'er grow! (hopefully) another plus, i seem to have great luck with transplants, every time i've done it they seem to bounce right back within a few hours. pretty nice.

i dig the lighting rig, man. almost exactly the same as mine, but i have 2 three bulb fixtures with y splitters, for 12 total bulbs. very nicely done.
best of luck with the clone. maybe in the future you could get the little peat pellets for cloning. my friend has had great success with them. a few more tips, try cutting the fan leaves down to 1/2" each, and consider using a humidity dome. mist frequently and be patient for them roots to show!

stay safe
-GG84

hey thanks, yeah i was gone over the weekend and got back, i did two clones and they both look healthy still, i thought i'd try peat pellets next. but i went to check on them, and the light fixture fell down, surrounding my smallest plant with like 4 cfls lol. needless to say it's done-ski now, shriveled up. only the bulbs fell though, since i was lazy and instead of screwing them to the board i duct taped them. fixin it now, ill post pics later. thanks for the cloning tips too.

heres the pics, the first one is the middle sized plant, second is the bigger plant after i took the clones and tied it, third is the roasted plant, and last is the clones. i do keep the clones in a humidity dome, i just took them out for the pictures.

I always get sad when I see a dead cannabis plant.

me too...makes me very sad...that lowers my chances of females lol

hey, these are the plans for the box i want to build. any advice on it is welcome.

The first part just kind of shows the dimensions, with the flowering portion on bottom and cloning portion on top.

The second part is the light setup down below. I'm planning on SOG with 12/12 from when the clones take root, so one side has lower bulbs to be closer to new plants while the back and other side are all higher so there plants stretch up to them. the hope is that they end up with 1 cola.

The third part is the cloning setup, the shelf is there for the cuttings with extra room underneath for supplies, and extra room to the right side for a mom or two. there will be lights for the mom, i just forgot to draw them.

So, if anyone has any input, it would be great asap. Where do you thing the best place for the input and output air would be? should i make a hole between the two chambers or put separate fans in them? i thought about putting the bulbs below cased in a long plastic thing, blowing air through that to take the heat away. any help on anything would be great.

I just took a new cutting off of the other plant, i'm hoping for roots, and sometime next week i'll be putting them under 12/12 and see what i have. Any info on previous posts would be appreciated, and ill be adding pics later tonight.

The first and second pictures are new growth on the plant that i took 2 cuttings from.

the next picture is the medium height plant (or smaller since my other died tragically) after i took a cutting earlier today.

the last two pics are the rooting (hopefully) clones, the two that are more fanned out are from plant one and the other is from plant 2.

Wow, i need to figure out how to get more people to look at this thread lol.

If anyone was curious, I'm fairly certain that these plants came from strawberry kush bagseed. i remember that the bud smelled fruity and was a purply-red color i think.

Heres some new pics of plant 1, inside, new growth and stuff. I think she's* lookin good, what do you think? I'm also going to transplant #2 into a smaller pot, that rubbermaid is just so inconvenient.

* denotes the hope that i may, in fact, be growing a female plant

Well, no one really seems in a helpful mood here lol. I'm gonna move my box plans over to the correct place though, hopefully somebody will see it there.

Plant #2 is looking pretty good, i just put her* into a new pot instead of that overly-large rubbermaid. after new growth starts on side stems, is it ok to trim off some of the lower fan leaves growing from the main stem? these are both going to be mothers* by the way.


* denotes the hope that i may, in fact, be growing female plants

Picture of Plant 2 and Plant 1, both in their respective pots, doing well.

If anybody looks at this thread, please leave me some input.

Well, i guess im just gonna update this thread about my grow box plans, no sense in having two threads that no one reads lol. got most of the supplies today, a couple 4x8 sheets of plywood cut up into my pieces, only 10 bucks a piece. some hinges, foam weather stripping...i need to find me some good screws, i thought i might have some around the apartment but i havent looked yet. pics when i start building.

don't feel sad that you don't get many replies. with the slew of CFL logs going lately, you should have no shortage of wisdom from others mistakes. new growbox, eh? fun stuff!

wow, thanks for coming lol. yeah, mostly i needed input on the box, a couple of questions too, but i don't mind learning from mistakes. thats how the pioneers did it, right? as long as everything is going fine, i suppose ill be alright.

i'll do up an idea in MSPaint here quick and post my idea for your grow box in a bit. canncom still loves you.

Sounds good, im gonna post my current plans soon.

im a newbie so i cant give you any advice, but i was wondering are you running 100 watt cfls or 100 watt equivalent cfls?

i was about to switch over to cfls and run that fixture that has two 65 watt cfl bulbs equivalent to 600 watts total output

100 watt equivalent. so around 1000 watts goin on in there with all ten bulbs

Hey I think I replied to your question about the growbox in another thread and just saw the pics you had in this one... It may not be bad right now, but there will be a smell coming from those plants. Have you thought about ventilation and odor control for your growboxes? Luckily you have many options like DIY for cheap or plug and play for $$$.

Plants looked good to me:thumbsup:

Yeah, i've thought about that. i was thinking maybe if i could dissipate the heat the the plans for the lighting i have (picture attached) then i could leave it closed all the time, running some co2 to the plants through a hose contraption.

so my paint program was devilishly hidden deep in my cpu. so, if you're building something from scratch, here's a quick idea.

thanks for that. i was thinking more of a SOG, with 12/12 from the time when the clones take root

kinda like this?

This is my friends hydro setup. He vegged for a week or two, then flowered. I think this is Power Plant from clones (40 clones). He didn't get much out of this, 400grams.

I looked at your drawing again, and I'm thinking about your height issues, but LST or SCROG is great for that... I got a SCROG going right now in my second grow, and it helps a lot to keep my plants in control in my small space.

Another tip, keep those cfl's adjustable. They should always be just an inch or two from the plants. With that setup, the plants will stretch to the light and you will run out of room with skinny plants filling up the area.

I don't know about the sealed room thing... I think the plants will be starving for fresh air (even with the CO2), but I could be wrong. Instead of worrying about heat issues and CO2, its easier to get an exhaust fan+intake hole and get even more cfl's in there. More light will produce bigger buds, aim for at 3000 lumes per sq. ft., preferably over 5000. I'm running at close to 15K Lumens/sq.ft. atm.

yeah i dont know if the closed room would be any good for me, but this is what i was going for, and if it didnt work i could always adjust.

DrBudSOG

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigtopsfinn

kinda like this?

This is my friends hydro setup. He vegged for a week or two, then flowered. I think this is Power Plant from clones (40 clones). He didn't get much out of this, 400grams.

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baring in mind 400g's is 14 or so ounces!