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 Reviewed by Racerx on 07-31-2006. Racerx's First Closet Seed Grow Mini-Log 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 Rating: 5

[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