Hey invision,

Thanks for checking out my/our log! They are looking good so far, and today I think I can see some trichs on Betty! I'll have to get my ass down to the mall and grab a microscope soon to be sure. Eventually what I want is a flowering cab like yours with one nicely trained plant and a small HID light. I have a veg cab w/ CFLs in the works and right now I'm experimenting with some clones in soil in it. Cuttings, soil, water, and a ziplock bag over the top under 2 daylight CFLs on 18/6. I hope they take root! I digress...

if you check out these photos you'll see that for some reason I can't attach files to this thread. I can when I reply to other threads. I changed my default reply to advanced already, and I'm not using quick reply.

What I see for other threads: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/3...074effef_o.png
When I reply to this thread: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/3...e26c8c88_o.png

For some reason I just don't have the permission to attach files to this thread. I'll have to find the board admin and see what's up since it's not because I'm a new member like I thought.


:thumbsup: Ok back to the plants. When we started them they were on 18/6, and then for the last week or two of veg we put them on 24 hours of light. I was just reading this -> http://www.norml.org.nz/article304.html and it talks about the light and dark processes involved in breaking down CO2 and H2O to form glucose (and water). So can the 24 hour cycle actually harm your plants, rather than help them grow more? I was under the impression that CO2 was used when the light was on to produce plant and flowers, but now I am unsure.

When we look at this process a little closer, it actually involves two different chemical reactions. The first is called photolysis. In photolysis, water is broken down into oxygen (O), and hydrogen (H). Both light and chlorophyll are necessary for photolysis. This is called the light response. The second chemical reaction is called the dark response. As the term suggests, no light is necessary for the dark response. With dark response, carbon dioxide is converted into glucose, with the help of the hydrogen produced during the light response. The distinction between the light- and dark reaction is of interest to the home grower in order to gain insight into the manner in which the plants must be illuminated (and sometimes kept in darkness). The plants grow optimally only when a good balance is found between the light and dark reactions.
So these dark reactions that consume CO2 do not require light, but what I want to know is if the presence of light prevents the dark process from occuring. Anyone? After reading that I would stick to 18/6 in the future.



I'm looking at the photos now and recalling what we've done to these girls so far. We germinated a lot of seeds and planted about 20 that popped. We had 15+ in little square pots (they're not pots, I don't know what they're called) and then 4 in teacups, 3 of which sprouted. The ones in the teacups weren't planted very deep unlike the others and they really took off in comparison.


The teacups were pretty shallow, and they didn't have much soil so we re-potted those into some bigger coffee cans fairly quickly. I know rust is bad, but that's what we had so we used them and they didn't end up rusting like I thought they would. Despite their size the coffee can plants seemed to enjoy the new spcae and took off even more. Now we have 5 plants left and 3 of those are the ones you see in the pic there in the coffee cans, so the extra room may have made a difference. The light was probably a good 2 feet above them at this point.

I'd say about a week after that I started putting up aluminum foil. The day after I finished covering the closet I read how the foil doesn't help, and may burn the plants so I tore it down. I guess that's how it goes, right?


This is where we start doing more for the plants and reading more about caring for them, learning how they grow and use light, water, CO2 and that sort of thing. The best ones were transplanted into cheap 2 gal pots and put down in trays on the floor of the closet, which is lined with garbage bags. We have had a big fan in there most of the time to circulate air, and as often as I can I leave the window open for fresh outside air to get in. This is in my bedroom though so leaving it open at night isn't much of an option when it's 5-6 C (40 F).


Till now we had heard about topping and super-cropping, but that was about all. When I saw justaseed's SCRoG on here I just about shit myself! I was really eager to try out some LST and started training plants that we thought looked more female. The way these things can bend is just incredible, and the speed that they will turn up to face the light is pretty amazing too. Betty was quite big at this point and we didn't want to do anything that might hurt her, so she is our one naturally-shaped plant left. I ended up cracking the stem of one of them, but it recovered well and is bushier than the others because the top growth was stunted till it healed.

That's all I can think of to say about the pics that have been posted so far. There are 70-something of them on flickr, so the few I posted here are just for context and if you want to see more they are all there. I'm going to have some more coffee and look for pistils. :rastasmoke: