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So after heat issues, leaky buckets and a flood, my grow is going just great and below are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. Yes, this is a legal Medical grow. we're allowed to have 12 here. Here are the specifics in case you wanna know:
4'x4'x6'8" grow tent by GrowLab - no complaints except there should be a small hole in the center near the bottom for feed/return lines... 5 buckets - 5 gallon each connected to the res with 3/4" black tubing (amputated the 6th due to leak and just said F it) 24 Gallon Rubbermaid "Action Packer" tote for res - super sturdy and black with heavy locking lid. the whole system is about 33 gallon with 6 buckets (29-30 gal with 5). Plantmax 1000w HPS Bulb - hasn't burnt out yet. Convertable 1000W MH/HPS SG Lite Ballast- runs surprisingly cool. I set a little 3" fan on the wire rack below it pointed up and it runs cool to the touch. Xtrasun6 reflector - nice reflector, good weatherstripping, no air leaks, what more can ya ask for? 6" hurricane and 4" hurricane fan - 6" on the light drawing from the room and exhausting out a storm window under the porch. 4" is attached to a carbon scrubber in tent and also vents out window. The tent stays below 83F during lights on and around 69F with lights off (res stays around 72F). cool air drawn in from the basement via the 2" gap under the rooms door + fan, and then the tent has a few vents on the bottom that I open for passive cool intake Two ecoplus EcoAir8 air pumps - each bucket (and res) gets a a line from each pump in case one fails for a total of 2 per bucket. 396gph water pump (forgot brand name)- feeds a 1/2" line that runs down the center of the buckets, is kinked on the end and zip tied. Then poked three sections of 4 holes between each bucket and attached to those are twelve 1/4" drip lines, two per bucket. the 2 I'm not using are just kinked and zip tied
Nutes: I use a schedule set up by another grower in the area and I use the Botanicare Pro Grow and Soul Synthetics Grow (8-0-0) for veg; and Botanicare Pro Bloom and Hydroplex for flower. . I also use Earth Tonic, Dark Energy, and Botanicare Sweet Raw through the whole grow.
my res temps are about 72 at night and about 74 during lights on. I sometimes see it go to 78 if it's really humid outside (need to dehumidify the whole basement for the summer or it's going to get crazy..) PPM has been about 1200 but that's kind of unreliable since all of those nutes don't register on the meter (organics..). I more or less use it to gauge what the effect of adding water has or if their not eating a lot or if the drink up a whole bunch of water suddenly. It's just a form of reference. pH generally stays around 5.9 to 6.4 and likes to rise (thanks to all the chalk in the city water) but nothing a few teaspoons of pH down can't solve in the middle of the week. I change the system out about once a week by connecting the feed pump to a garden hose and then pumping water out of the system down the drain in the basement floor (be sure to regularly dump an herbicide down the drain every month to kill all of the roots that'll be thriving off the nutes in your sewer line..). followed by a wet/dry shop vac to really get the rest of it all out quick. Then I give everything a quick clean up and refill/ re-nute/re-pH. the whole process takes about 20 minutes if I'm stoned. I also use a green CFL in the room so I can get in there during lights off, SOOO handy...
Anyways any comments, critiques or questions about the grow feel free to ask. I'll update this first post with more pics as they go!
I germinated 10 seeds from some good bud that I got from a local grower, only had like 1 or 2 seeds per zip and they're only 1 generation away from some guy here that does awesome work with genetics. picked the best 6 and then had to dump one after having leak issues with grow site #3. The final 5 seems to be doing great.
Germinated the last week in March sometime, which makes them almost 6 weeks old. In the pictures, they are as follows: (from left to right, top to bottom) OG Kush, Kandy Kush, Kandy Kush; Blue Widow, Blue Widow
the bottom left Blue Widow is stunted and not performing so great..weak. No pre-flowers yet but I've topped and taken one clone each. I'll probably just flower these in a week or so and cull the males and the clones I took from them (hopefully have NONE!!!). Then I'll flower out the rest of the females, take the best producing one and grow that clone into a mother. By the time the remaining females are harvested I should have a nice healthy mom or two and a few more clones about ready to refill the tent. ah aspirations and dreams..This first grow is more of a test run anyways to make sure everything works and to spot any problems before I put some really nice work in there (gonna do one LST, one supercrop, one just lot of topping, maybe one scrog (just one screen for the bucket..), and perhaps some people would like to make suggestions on the type of stuff they'd like to see done! I think it'll be neat to see how the same plants, in the same nutes, under the same light perform side by side with the different tehniques.
[5/4/12] with daylight cfl to correct for color distortion of the HPS:
Started the plants on 12/12 on sunday when I did my weekly system change. Let roots soak in water for about 30 minutes before adding nutrients to help kind of dissolve off some of the salt that may have built up (our water has a pH of 9.0 out of the spout). Used 1/2 and 1/2 strength of bloom and veg nutrients. Added a proper pass-through for my exhaust tubes out the basement window and it's dropped the temp in the room from 75 to 70 and inside the tent it's a steady 76 degrees. The reservoir never gets above 68F now. talk about subtle change making a huge improvement! Anyways here is a picture of the garden in general. Notice the hand-tied net. I've decided to put it up in case they REALLY try to run away from me. They're already training well and side-branching is starting to take off!!
here is the plant that's started to show signs of sex possibly? looking for a few confirmations? male? there are a few of these little "ball on stick" structures on this plant. looks pretty male to me =)
I'm excited because this was the runt plant of the bunch (bottom left in the garden picture) and if this is male it increases the likely hood that the larger, healthier, more vigorous plants will be female. you statistic buffs know what I'm talking about.
can i get a definite diagnosis before i chop it down? Please and Thank you!
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5/14 Flower Week 2 Day 1 Not a whole lot going on. 3 out of the five (top right two, bottom right one) are showing female flowers (or preflowers really. super tiny, but you can see two white hairs). the other two look like they MIGHT be female but it'll be another couple days before I can tell. Here's a picture:
----------------------------------------------------------------------- 5/21 Flower Week 3 Day 1 Well I'm in the third week of bloom and all plants are showing sex of female! Got my Blue Widow and my OG Kush clones in a soiless mix in little 1 gal cloth pots, I forget the name. But I just water them with a bit of Mother Plant A + B premixed and pH'd in a gallon jug. I just give them a couple gulps around the base of the stem every other day or so. Hopefully by the time the other girls are down flowering these two mothers will be big enough to clone so I can keep my crop rotating with little to no downtime. Other than that there's not much happening. It's nice when I walk into my grow and do nothing put dip a pH pen and a ppm pen, maybe look in at the girls; it's like "I have nothing to do...." Just did a weekly reservoir change earlier this evening. If anyone would like my nutrient plan just message me. got a shot of my OG Kush's (mother of the clone that I'm growing into an actual mother..) stalk, I topped it after the 5th node and all the lower branches since then have been exploding, hence the large knots at the nodes. I think training them down under the screen helped with that also; but I've let them grow up through the screen per advice of some experienced growers. Since then it looks like the plant is growing up as it should, it just happens to be passing through a screen. oh well. anyways here's the pictures!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6/10 Flower Week 6 Day 1 -So It's been awhile since I've updated, my life's been pretty busy. The garden is doing fine however, all plants are budding, some nicer than others but all well in their own ways! Nothing out of the ordinary other than I've had to really train some of these larger shoots down away from the glass of my light. The glass isn't hot really (just warm) but I've noticed some signs of heat stress on the buds themselves after letting them run away for two days this weekend. the canopy is about 11" from the glass on average. I've added small 3" fan that blows across the top of the canopy, and I have a 5" fan on the floor blowing up diagonally through the canopy. I pruned the bottom 30% of growth of all sucker leaves and stunted shoots that will either never make it up to the light or will be too small to support any real bud growth. I'm pretty excited to see how much they swell up in the next 3-4 weeks. My nutrient solution has been dropping it's pH a full number every 20 hours, to which I add about 25mL of pH UP (KOH). This perks it up to about 6.2 and then i'll do it again the next day. PPM also kept slowly rising. So I took the hint and eased up on a few of the nutes that I use that are prone to causing the pH to plummet (mainly the Hydroplex..). Anyways, tonight I drained the system and filled it back up with water (tap, pH 9.0, 300ppm) and let it run for about a half hour. before I drained it i took readings and the pH was down to 6.5 @ 750ppm. Drained this out as well and then filled again with fresh water, added reduced nutrient from last week, pH'd it, and now hopefully it'll navigate more smoothly.
Anyways enough jabber, here's pictures!
---------------------------------------------------------- 6/20 Flower Week 7 day 4 (day 46)
After adopting a puppy I can't say I've had much time to tend to my garden. Luckily everything is relatively self-sustaining and automated so there wasn't much need for maintenance. after dropping the nutrient levels a bit the pH drops much more slowly, more like 0.5 over 24 hours. I dump 30mL of ph UP (KOH) every 2 days or so and the pH hovers between 5.4 and 6.2. I was considering starting a flush this week however not all of my plants are at the same stage of maturity. so I've decided that I will still flush, but I'll wait as long as I can making sure the early finishers get at least 2 or 3 days of clean water + Sweet Raw. my OG Kush's have proven to be the biggest/fastest growers. Unfortunately the biggest fattest one's (back left) clone died awhile back. Luckily I still have a similar plant (front middle) of comparable size that I think will fatten it's buds up in a few days (it's been about 5 days behind the other every step of the way) with a growing clone which I will grow up into a mother. I have her training right now in a 3 gal soilless mix, and am training her around in a circle. I'm waiting for her to grow a bit bigger because I want to to be able to take all 6 clones within the same week. I also have a clone of the smallest/slowest maturing plant out of the bunch (front left/blue widow). I'm not sure why, something tells me this plant could do VERY well but the one I'm flowering now just grew out of the rockwool kind of weird and had root development problems. Then again that's probably bollocks . Anyways the back middle and back right (kandy kush's) are doing average. the back middle has fatter/more populated flowering nodes while the one to the right is JUST behind it, which it has been by about 5 days just like the two OG's. All of my pistils on all 5 girls are still snow white, and the trich's are clear to clear/milky in color. Don't think I've actually spotted and amber yet. Anyways, can't think of much else to post, just a few pictures of course! ^This limb has been broken down over and over. and it's got one of the fattest cola's on it. HST during flowering works. Just bend it until you feel it give just barely. It may split a small bit. ^this other OG, buds a little skinnier but I feel they'll fatten up soon ^bigger of the Kandy Kush's. Super frosty already ^the smallest (blue widow). Not due to lack of light obviously, just a short plant. we'll see what It can do next time around maybe.
** I realize there is some noticeable heat stress on the top few cola's leaves (foldling/curling). However I cannot really train/bend these down any more. There are plenty more bud sites just as big in the canopy (hard to get pictures of) that are doing very well, I don't mind a few sin tipped plants =P**
------------------------------------------------------------ 6/28 Flower Week 8 day 5 (day 54) We're getting so close! A few of the bigger colas on top have gained some weight, and a lot of my popcorn near the bottom on most plants have at least swelled into nice little bowl pluggers! Also some plants have reddish pistils while others have just started to turn. only a few amber trichromes out of the whole lot, though I'd say about 85% of them are cloudy. I'll probably harvest soon, perhaps this weekend. I started a flush at the beginning of the week, only running Sweet Raw for flavor and some hydroplex. And some tonic. I've taken a clip off of the bottom of each plant and set them out to dry. no real reason, just because. anyways here are the pictures.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6/30 Flowering Week 8 Day 7 (day 56) I've decided to chop today. Buds are plumped up, leaves have started to dwindle, amber trichs are popping up, and i've got a few buds with some seed in them =(. Oh well, chopped just before lights on at 9pm. Started with the front center plant (OG kush) then the front left (small blue widow), then the back right (kandy kush) then the back left (OG kush) and then the back center (kandy kush). while some did better than others I'm pleased so far with the turnout. All branches with sizable buds on them are hanging. The decent nugs that were too big for trim but too small to be hung went onto plastic dehydrator trays, and the frosts leaf/tiny buds went into the trim bag. Going to have lots of hash. I've got new clones (7 from the best yielding plant in this crop and 7 fom the smallest yielding plant, which hopefully will be really potent) taking root this week. Though I have thought about just nabbing a few clones of some cool genetics from a few friends. perhaps I'll really master this set of genetics first! haha anyways here's pictures. plants were chopped and photographed in the same order as listed above.
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