Heyas...

It is now nearly the fourth week-ish into my hobby project, though these pictures are from about ten days ago as the little girls are starting to respond nicely. I /gotta/ get caught up on my logging...

Had a bad reaction when I saw something moving on my soil for the first time. Upon closer inspection, I found a few BUGS on my Number 4 plant, and a couple on Number 7. AAAARGH! WHERE DID YOU LITTLE F*#KERS COME FROM ?!?!? I have been really careful about not entering my grow area until I've had a shower and am either in fresh, clean clothes, or no clothes at all.

After a bit of research, I figured out that I had bloody thrips, with what looked like one fruitfly. My next stop was down to the fine people at Grown Hydro, with Jeremy recommending a solution called Vectobac. This is supposed to be a targeted bacterium thingy that not only hurts the wiggling ones, but also is the only thing that kills the eggs in the soil. It does take a bit of time to get 'em all (or nearly all--kinda hard to fully eradicate 'em), but, in the immortal woids o' Bugs Bunny, "Of course you realize, /this/ means /war/..."

With my budget running low, 35 bux for a bottle of this is a bit pricey, but if I don't do something, these little vermin might kill off alla my lovely ladies. So, Vectobac it is! Mixed a full-strength batch and gave the girls a full soak watering, to completely saturate the soil with the li'l microbies. Good thing I went and got the stuph, because by the time I got back home, I noticed bugz in Numbers 5 and 6, tho no sign of em in 1-3 and 8.

bugs. Bugs. BUGS.

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Vectobac to the rescue

I took the precaution of soaking /all/ of the plants with this, as an inoculant, and it seemed to help. The bottle cautions about overuse (/and/ has to be kept in the fridge after opening!), so I have to be careful about the dosage, but I am now using it in every watering, or every second watering at minimum, if the bugz' numbers seem to be down.

I also placed duct tape across the tops of the affected plants' pots, the better to corral the little devils. At first I thought that this wasn't working, because every now and then, some persistent little prick would find a way to crawl up from underneath, despite the stickiness. Later, I found that for every one bug that might'a made it thru, there were like dozens that were stuck to the undersides. Muah hah hah.


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Overview; quarantine on the left, some terracing and LST on the right

Good ole duct tape came to the rescue again, when I n0obishly learned (from many sources, tho stra8 was kind enow to posteth ) that roots don't like light, so I used a liberal amount to create darkness up to the soil line. It is kinda nice using translucent pots, though, because you can /see/ the root development, or lack thereof. Root development in Numba1 was already looking good by this time, with Numba2 close behind.

The plants were feeling much better with the addition of the extra cooling fans. Total fans in the cabinet at this point: 6" 12v intake, 108cfm; 6" 12v first-stage output (top of room), 120cfm; 6" 120v exhaust (bottom of vent in second room), 135cfm; and a single 4" 12v 20cfm on the light fixture, moving air across my MH bulb. Average 'day' temp inside was now 77 to 83ish, with 'night' temp down to 68-72.

I also re-set my photoperiod (still 18/6 of course) so the lights went on at 8pm, and off at 2pm in the afternoon. Moving to these hours also helped a lot because my lights were now off at the hottest part of my day. I am hoping to avoid buying an air-conditioner, but we'll see how hot this summer gets.

I also began Light Stress Training on some of the plants (just Numba1 and 2) at this time, including the now-hopefully-mature-enough Seedlings 9, 10 and 11. Seedling 12 was still taking a hella long time to catch up, and so got a lotta babying and eventually went back into SeedCloneLing land for a bit, to huddle under a huge reflector all by itself. 9, 10 and 11 still needed their domes intermittently, but were doing ok, and though I worried about starting LST on 'em, they responded quite nicely.


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It was just /begging/ to be tied down... /really/

Nice thing about 'em being this size is that not only was it easy to start training them, I could easily put 'em on their sides and rotate them around many times per day, to get light into as many budding sites as possible. I found that I would rotate them so that they were 'looking down' and as sideways to the MH as possible, only to find that about 3-4 hours later, they were finding 'up' again, and moving towards it at a ferocious speed. My how the little ladies (I hope!) love to dance... The larger plants could still be tilted to either angle them straight to the light, or away, to get light in more 'sideways'.


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Not sure if I should do this... WHOOPS, did I do that?.. Am I stoned..?


Number 7 was still holding in there, but just didn't seem to get going like the others. Some yellowing, but it responded well to being misted quite frequently.


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Aww, poor li'l thang...

Watering shedule at this point is every two days, with DNF Gro every other watering, at 2.5ml per litre (about 10ml/ga) concentration. Ph is consistently 5.5-6.1 ish, with (I believe) the average just around 5.8-5.9.

Any comments would be much appreciated. Any /compliments/, well...
(flattery will getcha everywhere)


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Clockwise, from front left: Number 6, Number 4, Number 7, Number 5, Numba1 (semi-hidden), Number Nine?.. up top on Numba2, which is perched up on Number 3, foreground, and Number 8 (hidden), with Number 10 foreground middle, tilted left and towards the camera (similar but not as extreme question mark shape as N9, pointing 'down'), and Number 11* background middle, pot centred under bulb, plant bent over to rim at sharp 90 degree angle... what the **** was I thinking? I musta been st0n3d...



(c)C :chainsaw:

* "...but this one goes to /eleven/...