2nd grow log

Hey. This will be my 2nd grow log here, 4th go around with parenthood :thumbsup:

I'm actually on day 2 with my batch of 6. Adding a 7th on day 3, that one's in incubation right now.

2 kids are already working on their 1st set of nodes. 1 is showing off its cots, 1 has just broken its shell and surfaced. However its a little lime green at the moment, I'm concerned about any stress it might be undergoing, time will tell. The other 2 are still on their way to surface. Number 7 is in isolation working with natural day light, I wanna make sure this one is set and ready before I add to the group.

The group's under 78w CFL:
(1) 42w Warm CFL
(2) 13w Warm CFL
(1) 10w Daylight Spectrum CFL

The 3 weak lights will be replaced with more 42w CFLs, and much more will be added in time. The kids are being supplimented with daylight as well. I'm looking to make sure they healthy and ready for more intense light and transplanting. As well I'm working on my budget, but in time I expect to have a growbin set and secured with an adjustable light rig, filtered ventilation and so forth.

I noticed some initial stretching with the 2 bigger ones. This was prior to using the CFLs, just one day of regular sunlight. Currently the CFLs are half a foot over the group. I'll add some dull aluminum foil to the area to maximize light intensity. This should help some, but I expect the hotspots won't come, if not as harsh, if I keep the distance, hoping the intensity will disipate or distribute a little more evenly. Time will tell!

I don't find it picture worthy yet, but I am cataloging the changes. I'll photograph their status tomorrow, after their first encounter with indoor lighting.

alright..

replaced the 3 weaker bulbs with 20w warm cfls.

original output = 78w
current output = 102w

5 kids out the dirt now, last one hasn't surfaced yet.
The two late bloomers seem to have some stress. Healthy green, but the two leaves at the 1st node are curled into a crescent shape. As well, their sizes are MUCH smaller compared to the other 3. Seeds taken from mids, so I'm expecting a couple "autistic" growths.

#7 hasn't surfaced yet either. I was late in sticking this one in the dirt, the white hairs on the half inch root were already a little visible, so I'm expecting this one to have some trouble readapting.

The seeds were germinated in a brown paper towel, to give a little history behind it.

The other 3 however are responding positively. With the help of the CFLs there was little to no change in the length of the stems on the older 2 that were stretching. Leaves are growing well, all healthy green. The 3rd one REALLY played catch-up, I was impressed at how fast this one grew to the others' sizes in a day. This one also seemed to have leveled off, the 3 seem to be comfortable with their distance. Originally I had the kids covered under plastic wrap to shield off intensity and maintain a moist environment. I didn't want the soil drying out too fast. They've all managed to reach their plastic ceiling, so i had to cut slits into the plastic for them to grow out.

Pictures are provided. Still working on my budget so I can manage a better operation. I'm drawing up schematics for a self sufficient grow bin, allthewhile implimenting ideas i've learned from you guys over the years!

Pics

1 more

6/17
modified a cardboard box to grow in, using roughly 20ft of dull aluminum foil and a surge protector for the 4 lamps.

after 1-2 days, 1st set of node leaves began to fold upwards toward the light and inwards, I'm guessing this is an indication of heat stress. theres (2) 1.5in x3in vents in the bin, im guessing to small..
the oldest one incurred a burn on the tip of its leaf, NOT sure how it got their at all, at first i thought it was leftover residue from the inner shell skin, but a closer look indicated a burn. Plant is still healthy though and is continuing its growth, but I'm being extra careful..

this needs to be addressed immediately.. after giving them a day of regular sunlight, the leaves seemed to have calmed down and continued to work on their second nodes.

and so forth I...

replaced the lamps though with plugin light sockets and a 3way electric plug. Made a mount with (2) 2x4s cut down to fit inside the box and support the lights.. Now the lights are higher from the plants, hopefully this will bring down the heat in the box. Added a bowl of water to help build moisture within the bin and absorb stagnant heat.

In the meantime I was working on a new grow.. 6 plants.. 12 in total..

3 = 6/14/09 = 3 days old
3 = 6/15/09 = 2 days old

(3) x 20w = 60w CFL
(1) x 13w = 13w CFL
TOTAL = 73w CFL

5/6 out of the ground, 1 just breaking the shell. steady progress, but I need a grow bin ASAP

other set of 6 currently on 126w CFL at 16/8..
I know its supposed to be 18/6, preferably 24/24 for the 2-3wk infant stage, but given the heat stress..

it doesn't have to be 18/6....I think so long as it receives 16 hours of light then you should be fine. You seem to right there, so keep at it. :thumbsup:

earlier pix.. original setup with the bin..

havent taken pix of the new wood light rig yet, will soon though..

more pix, new set

So I'm on day 13, and two of them had shriveled up. I'm simply going to pull the plug on those two because at this moment I had 10 more to worry for, which are doing healthy by the way. Four of the original six are working on their third node. The other six are all healthy and working on their second. from here on out I'm going to keep this operation steady. I should be able to cut clones by the second week of July. for cheap reasons I'm keeping the lifetime to 16/8. When I build something more elaborate I will switch to 18/6, however the budget is minimal and I can only do what I can with what I have. Pics to come soon!

question though, what are some hints to light stress when it comes to the roots? containers I have my baby is growing and are almost all clear if not foggy, and I know the roots is supposed to bekept in darkness, so would I be seeing some iindications of strain or stress? I ask because now roots are becoming a little bit visible theyre almost fully developed with the root system. I'm thinking of transplanting come next week.

Quote:

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question though, what are some hints to light stress when it comes to the roots? containers I have my baby is growing and are almost all clear if not foggy, and I know the roots is supposed to bekept in darkness, so would I be seeing some iindications of strain or stress? I ask because now roots are becoming a little bit visible theyre almost fully developed with the root system. I'm thinking of transplanting come next week.

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Seal up those containers with something to cover up the roots, because the lights will kill the roots and stress the plant and you may not end up getting any good or may even not getting any growth. The roots exposed to light will shrivel and turn brown in those containers and possible root rot. In hydro setups if you have lights in your reservoir that your roots are in then it will algae up and cause other problems (root rot). Well anywho, cover them up now before it's too late. Electrical tape, dark construction paper, etc. Basically anything that light can't penetrate through.

was planning on transplanting come 1st week of july.. for a day or two though some of the root was exposed, stupid me decided to grow them in a frosty clear container.. but i covered up the container to give the roots some privacy as soon as i got done talking to Italiano here, but come the next morning checkup i notice the leaves are curling.. also a burn on the tip of the leaf?

sounded to me like it was a nute burn, but i've had this baby in plain soil i got from walmart.. no miraclegrow, no nuffin.. anyone know other reasons why this would happen?

i also gave the kids a extra layer of soil on top for provided support, as it and the others stretched about 3 inches from the cot to the soil, one of the kids began to fall over from lack of support, so i tied it to a stick.. but im not sure why the 2 plants are in shock.

The other 6 are doing great! They're on day 9/10, but i dont want them suffering the same fate. Given just a 4 day difference, I'm going to have to cover up those bottoms to keep those roots in a dark place.

1st set of pics is the original 4.

pic 1 - plant 0 - oldest child, that burn on the tip was from the light falling on it once upon a time.. but seems healthy!
pic 2 - plant A
pic 3 - plant B - beginning to fold upwards toward light?? why? you can see the change in the healthy green too..
pic 4 - plant C - the injured.. why are you curling?!
pic 5 - the current setup for the 4. 126w warm cfl.. inside that plastic container is water to evaporate for a moist environment..

pics of the other 6..

I'm on week 5 now and have differentiated 6 indica and 4 sativa plants. Noticing the cotyledons are withered on most, I started superthrive treatment. I did some investing with a bit of an increased budget, juicing my plants up on a few drops of superthrive, and 188w CFL at 12,200 lumens in a 22gal bin. I put a fan in there too, im still working on the efficiency of the bin, because currently it is still to hot inside. I use two 2x4 wood slabs laid across the rim to help with the venting. I need a better design for air intake and cooling. Depending on the fan arrangement, my bin will range between 80-95º. Without the 2x4's, my bin will exceed 102º.

the lights are (2) warm 42w, (2) warm 26w, (2) cool 26w.

i'm going to do some shopping and change out the bulbs to (6) cool 26w's and (1) warm 42w. But with the 10w increase im not sure if the heat will increase as well.

My kids are working either on the 4th or 5th node. No idea why their growth was stunted earlier, but I left them alone for a week no nutes, just water and light of course. Their growth seems to improve greatly nowadays, except for 1.

I have this one plant which seemed to have stopped growing altogether. Looking the leaves, I can't tell what kind of stress, the leaves look healthy--however the new shoot/node will NOT grow in..?! It's remained the same the entire week and I'm growing concerned. It SHOULd be working on its 4th node, but its "pot" is the smallest of them all..

do plants stop growth activity when they need to be transplanted?

One of the plants the previous week suffered a vicious attack from the light, which fell out of the socket (I found it half hour later). This destroyed the top growth coming in, 1 entire fan leaf, and half the other fan leaf. However this baby is recovered and apparently underwent some kind of FIMMING ordeal, this plant now has TWO heads.

So I went and re-did my research on fimming, and ended up trying to FIM another plant (the proper way). I'll be able to tell in a few days if i did it right or not.

And so now its 5 weeks in, I've seen a few guys on here go into flowering at the stage, but my plants are only working on their 5th nodes. To the experienced growers out there, how many nodes did your plants accumulate at this age, or when you started your flowering stage?

I wanted to cut a fan leaf off, root it and see what happens. I figured if it took root and continued to grow, I could flower it and see if a flower bud or pollen sack would form, but I think its more stupid than clever to try it before research. At such an age I wanna know what sex's these are but I'm a little scared to touch'm just yet. What do YOU guys think?

I made a cheap humidity dome for the 10 kiddos out of seram wrap and a cardboard box. I have a cup of water in there I'm using to help build moisture to absorb the heat and provide a healthy environment for the kids.

12 pics, here are the 1st 5.

2nd pic in the previous post is the retarded one "STIMPY". Thats the one that refuses to grow.

The 1st one is the oldest one, which is why its's in the 1gal container (SOOO EARLY, didn't read on potting before I potted). I kno its good and healthy underground but root to shoot ratio says its gonna be some time for it to grow up.


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These pics

1st pic is the 2-headed one that got burned severely earlier the previous week.

#2 is my proper attempt at fimming. hopefully it'll give me 2 heads.

last one is my light set up, spaced one every other socket. 42w's have a 1inch extention plug to keep them out of the way of the other bulbs

i really gotta get to a store and buy better fans cus this current thing isn't cuttin it.. However I haven't designed it for intake/outtake so thats probably why i have such fluctuation with the temperature inside.

Plants are on Day 34/30. I have 1 LST'd, 2 topped (1 by accident, 1 by itself), 1 left alone, and the rest to the FIM attempt. Still gotta give it time to see where there go with it.

But I managed to upgrade my lights, now running at (6) daylight 26w cfl @ 1600lm ea. That makes 156w @ 9600lm (6500k).

Prior to today they were running at fluctuations between 178-188w warm cfl. Last week I had them running at 144w warm CFL because I couldn't fix the temperature. However intake/exhaust is next on the priority list and hopefully that should resolve things within the box.

I also have 9 more sprouts (7 broke surface, 5 broke the shell) two days in, running on 68w @ 4800lm, 2:3 2700k/6500k. Soil is MG Organic, but i ironically saw someone say don't use MG Organic today. Now I'm starting to concern myself =\.

I was really impressed by all of the effort and planning that you put into your setup but looking at your plants they all seem really small for fifth week. This is my fist grow so I have nothing to compare it with but my own. I planted this girl June 14 so its almost a month old.

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/4356/img0176d.jpg
Took this picture a few minutes ago.

haha i knew i wasnt going insane! I was seein everyone elses projectse and mine always looked so smal, i was like wtf!

My plants though had a couple moments of strain including now (most of them are under some sort of top technique). I had major heat stress issues in the first 3 weeks, so im sure that was a set back. I feel like i might have a pH issue as of current because they stopped growing as fast as they were before.. They got to this size quick in a short burst of time, but all i can do is wait out the stress.. I'm doin research on the issue and the application of nutes, looks like i might have a phosphorus issue but i wanna check the pH first. Gonna get my tester today! I'll post pics today when i can

what kind of setup are you running?

Looks like your stumbling through this a bit like I have been. Problems are fixed as the money comes in to change things. Here are some pics of my first ones at 4 weeks. They were growing in Miracle grow for cactus type plants under 3 100w equivalent daylight 6500k cfl's. They've been under those lights for another 4 weeks since these pics. As of two days ago are now in the box with 2 150w eq soft white 2700k, 1 75w eq soft white, and 1 100w eq daylight 6500k. I will try to get these pics up tomorrow for the comparison.

edit: except the baby one, that one I had just got.

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Everything I post is a lie... Aastrandock

they're beginning to show signs of stress relief.. The 1st twoheader, the injury victim, has more than begun its internode growth. Somethin rather big is startin to form there, i wonder if its preflower or not. The two heads are growing in nicely, next week I'm going to clone one of the heads if it doesnt show sex by then. Its already past 4 weeks so pre-flowers should be forming soon anyway, I'm so impatient lol. I might not clone it just yet. I wanted to clone them all at once instead of one at a time with different ages in between. I'll take pics soon, maybe tomorrow if not tonight.

alright.. around day 48-52 veg for my 10 kids.. what is that, 7weeks from seed? (6) 26w 6500k, (2) 42w 3200k on 18/6. given the stress they suffered the last few weeks there was alot of stunted progress as compared to alot of other growers on this site.. in fear of them losing the good fight, i planted more seeds, total 26. my friend got on the bandwagon and started his own, so im helping him, monitoring his as well as mine.. on my offtime i went out and got some liquid nutes and put strawful measurements in 20oz bottles of dasani water (with balanced pH around 6.8) and i water the 10 between 2 20oz bottles.. the leaves are growing HUGE.. they used to be the size of half my finger, now they're spreading almost the size of my palm.. amazing! i'm watering them once in the day, every other 3 days.. between the 2-3 i finger-check the soil to see how early they may need some juice, if early is necessary

my retarded plant Stimpy, who appeared to have topped itself ended up topping itself again.. I noticed this wierd squibble of plant matter on the top of the new shoot that never comes in, it moves to another node and ends up topping in that area.. so far its now at 4 heads.. SO i took one shoot and cut it for cloning..

as well, i cut a clone from the 2-header that got topped from the light burn.. after they've developed their roots, i'm gonna force flower and sex these 2. I followed the guide in the advanced section, Clone Log - Cloning with Pics using Master Kush mom.. I got a powdered rooting hormone from Walmart, I hope it does the trick. I used the really small plastic cups, I think they're 8oz cups that I cut in 1/3rds.. I filled the bottom up with organic potting soil (MG) nd went to town with the clones. I placed the cuttings in a BIGGER size plastic cup (same style, frosty clear) and filled the bottom with water til the cuttings floated (cutting in a 1/3rd cup floating inside a bigger cup) and sealed it off with plastic wrap. The temperature in my area stays around 80º so they should developed a moist environment quickly, simple personal humidome :)

as for the other 8, one is undergoing some twisting stress.. I was originally performing LST on this one but i couldnt bare seeing it shackled to the rim of its 'pot'.. so i set it free mid-training- only to end up letting it twist into a spiral sideways.. at the same time, the stress has started to create a wierd squibble similar to what i noticed on the retarded Stimpy. 2 others i recently topped.. 2 shoots are growing in fast on one of them..

Internode shoots are starting to appear and/or grow at this time for almost all my 10ers. the rest of them are nearing their 9th nodes.. i'm waiting for the new shoots to come in before i finish topping the rest of the crop.

As for the 16 newbies they're nearing 2-3 weeks growth. Noticing the fruits and wonders of topping I want to try and get in early so I can have early clones to work with. I have a few retarded looking plants, I'm not sure how long they're going to survive. However, my 1 retarded plant ended up dishing out 4 heads and still counting, so perhaps they'll do the same.. Its gonna be awesome finding out which gender these kids are..

can anyone answer this question.. is it a wise move to cut back on a liquid ferts after topping a plant or giving it stress? To what degrees will the liquid ferts become bad for the plant? I'm a little afraid of burning, though at the moment the kids are LOVING IT.. I wanna give'm as much as I can, but I don't know how much is too much =\.. I'm currently just playing it safe.

pics coming soon! i'm moving things around in the house so after i get resettled I'll hook u guys up!

pic #1 - Stimpy (Before) growing 2 heads
pic #2 - Stimpy (after) growing 4 heads, maybe more
pic #3 - recent topping
pic #4 - clone #1 "lightweight" - from the light-burn victim
pic #5 - clone #2 "Stimpy" - from Stimpy

pic 1 - some of the newbies
pic 2 - the spiral twisting LST fail..
pic 3 - a more recent topping
pic 4 - anyone know whats up with this one??
pic 5 - overshot of some of the crop

heeyyy jus dropppin in to let ya kno the progress.. ending week 1 of flower,
by this time 20 soldiers have fallen, leaving me with 28 including clones.. of which, 14 are female.. boys have been eradicated as quickly as discovered, so there are 14 left in question, but i'm glad I have 14.. 3 of them are my friend's, but i did all the work (he only provided the seed).. repotting sounds like a good idea, but i want to wait til the other half is in, which could probably mean the end of this week.. pics to come, but currently only preflowers are in there.. I know some of ya wanna see

ending 2wks flower, and i believe all the boys are eradicated..
right now left with 21 ladies with a dying clone.. my current dilemma now is lighting, cus im only on (3)42's, (4)20's, and (2)26's, which i dont think are powerful enough to deliver to 21 ladies.. my understanding is 1sq ft per lady, with 4k lum minimum.. (21 x 4k = 84k lum / 65 lpW = 1200W necerssary?!) for good yield..? I've been trying really careful with the potting, I am aiming for strong rootballs, so most of them will need to be repotted soon..