Indoor 600W HID Soil Medibud From Seed - Winter/Spring 2017 - Grow Journals

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Data
That Guy

Registered: 08/12/08
Posts: 4,035
Loc: Southwestern US

Indoor 600W HID Soil Medibud From Seed - Winter/Spring 2017

1
#823507 - 02/08/17 01:59 PM (7 years, 9 months ago)

Whats up guys and gals.

This is my first grow in quite a while, so I'm trying to keep things simple and sweet.

I chose Medibud becuase I have a high-stress job and have had on and off problems with insomnia for the last 2 decades. I wanted something that is simple, high yielding genetic potential (to hopefully offset the mistakes I know I'm going to make), and can help me relax and drift off to sleep after a long day at work.

I intend to start the seeds in a combo of FF Ocean Forest and generic seed starting soil in solo cups, then transfer them to 10 gallon fabric pots filled with primarily FF Ocean Forest. These will veg and flower in a 4x4x7 foot tent, which I will link to when I have fully set up.

I have high hopes for getting into more experimental grows that provide empirical data to back up my theoretical research (also found on the growery), but I need to get back into the swing of things for now. Medibud was a good choice to eventually support this work, as it is advertised as a particularly high-weight strain, and could provide an extreme gene expression datapoint for determining primary genes involved in overall yield (via qPCR and/or mRNA isolation and sequencing).

Anyway, let's begin...

Week 0:
I lightly scarified my Medibud seeds (4) on some emory paper and soaked in tap water for 8 hours. Once the seeds started to exhibit significantly reduced bouyancy, I transferred them to a damp paper towel in a plate, and covered both with another plate.

36 hours later...

I made my initial seedling pots with some red solo cups drilled through on the bottom and sides to provide both drainage and air exchange. I then fill them with FF Ocean Forest soil until about 3/4 to 4/5 full. I topped this off with some generic seedling starter soil.

I then made a small hole in the top soil surface of each cup, and gently (lifting by the seed coating) placed them into the hole with the root cap facing down, and the tip-top of the seed coating level with the soil. I then used my pen to gently push some soil in around the root and seed from the sides, and gently watered in the soil. To keep the humidity high and prevent drying of the soil, I placed some clear solo cups on top of the red solo cups.

This was yesterday, as of today, the cotyledons are peeking out of the soil, and they have been placed under moderately weak, diffuse LED light. I will slowly up the intensity throughout the week, and will transfer them to the tent for MH exposure next week.

I plan to update this post weekly. :happyweed:

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Week 1:
I moved the seedlings under the 600W MH light, but I'm currently keeping the light high to prevent burning the leaves. Around the middle of the week, I cracked open the clear solo cups covering the seedlings to provide more air exchange. The soil is still moist 1/16" below the top of the soil, so I haven't watered the seedlings since I first popped them in the cups.

One of the seedlings looks a little sad, and I can't really figure out what is up with it, any ideas?

Thats it for now...more to come :happyweed:

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Week 2:
Not much to comment on at this point, so here's a few photos. The 2nd photo is the droopy plant from Week 1. Those leaves are still a little wierd, but she looks a lot happier.

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Week 3/4 Update (late)
Sorry for the delay, its been a busy few weeks. I ran into some trouble with my plants...

They were doing great until last thursday or so. Then they started drooping, and the lowest set of leaves began to turn yellow. It looks like a Nitrogen deficiency, but I was told by several sources that the Fox Farm Ocean Soil mix that I'm using is hot, and doesn't need nutes for about 8 weeks. I decided that it might be a sensitive strain (as hawks already pointed out) and was responding to being slightly rootbound. So I re-potted them into their final 10 gallon fabric pots. As you can see, the roots were through the soil, but not what I would consider root-bound.

The below photo was taken during the normal Friday Week 3 update. The leaves had perked up.

I figured they would need a couple of days to show signs of recovery. Unfortunately, as of today (middle of Week 4), the yellowing continues up from the bottom.

Now, I can't offer much detail to really pin down the problem right now. I plan on getting a soil testing kit tomorrow to see what the soil pH, and NPK ratios are. Other than that, I can tell you that I've been watering with a dilute kelp extract (using RO water) to encourage root development and reduce stress. I also know that my humidity in the tent runs way low (25-35% at all times, temperatures range from 70-80ish degrees F).

If anyone has any ideas, feel free to throw them out there. I've got some FF nutes on hot standby if need be, but I don't want to get too hasty before I know whats going on in the soil.

Updates to follow at Week 4 update :pipesmoke:

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Week 4:
Thanks for the responses, guys. I think there were several different causes for the drooping and yellowing. The small cups of soil that I had them in initially were drying out very very quickly prior to transplanting...so there may have been some under-watering issues arising. Additionally, after testing the soil, the pH is ok at about 6.5-7.0, but the NPK is way off. Soluble N was nearly undetectable, Soluble P was medium-low, and Soluble K was medium.

I'm assuming that there might be some organic sources of the nutrients that aren't currently water soluble, and with proper symbionts may eventually be released for plant use. However, I need the nutrients now. So I took pyschotron's advice and foliar fed this morning (right before the lights came on) with a very dilute solution of FF GrowBig (6-4-4). And plan on watering with Growbig every other watering for a while along with my rooting inoculant to see how the plants react, and will foliar feed every few days, with at least one rinse spray a week to wash off excess salt buildup. They seem to have gotten through the worst of it, and appear to be responding positively to the nutrients.

They have several nodes now, and were starting to put out bottom branches, so I went ahead and topped them prior to taking photos. I also lowered the light a couple of inches, because the internode length seemed to be increasing since I had to raise the light to account for the larger pots. I probably set the light too high again. :dumblol:

Anyway, here's some pics. Until next week :pipesmoke:

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Week 5:

Well, the advice worked out really nicely. The combination of bigger pots, a foliar spray with a little nitrogen, and a healthy root feeding at their last watering has really perked them up!

The are also recovering well from their topping last week. You can really see the side branches starting to develop. They are definitely ready for another watering, and I'm planning on doing another foliar spray tomorrow morning.

I'll probably start spreading out those branches next week, I only want another few inches of height before I start spreading them out into a screen.

:pipesmoke:

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Week 6:
Well, not much to update on. They are getting bigger and bushier.

I decided to do a little training to spread out the foliage to encourage as many branches as possible, and to expose more of the large fan leaves under each branch to more light. Eventually, I'm going to put in a screen and try out my hand at scrogging, but for now I'm going to try and get these branches to grow as long as possible for the next week or two before the screen goes down.

So, should I attempt another topping to further develop the side branches and bush out the plants more? or should the main branches developing right now be enough for the SCROG?

Anyway, I also added an LED light bar that I had laying around. Its a 108W bar light cheapo special. I know its not really good for solo grows, and definitely no good for major lighting...but I figured it would help to brighten up some darker corners of the tent.

Thats all for now :pipesmoke:

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Week 7:
Sorry I'm a bit late, I've been super busy, and have started having some recurring lower back issues, so my work in the tent has been going a little slower. :shrug:

I kinda let the front two plants dry out a little too much at the time of the picture, I've since corrected the problem. I think this is because I've installed some watering rings around the bases of the plants, so that I can water and feed remotely using a 1/2 rubber tubing system. The rings are small, and I don't think they are getting the top outer edges of the cylinders of soil wet. Combined with the facts that the front 2 plants have a significantly larger canopy and are closer to the fan...its making it difficult to come up with an effective watering schedule right now. I'll keep a closer eye on them this week and try to get a hold back on this.

For a closer look, here are some individual pictures.

In order from left to right: Front right plant, front left plant, rear right plant, rear left plant.

It should be mentioned that between Week 5 and Week 6, I switched the front plants and the rear plants...because it appeared that the (then) rear plants were gaining some significant biomass on the front plants. Since these are all grown from seed, this may just be genetic variation or something...but I'll try to cover all of my bases until i bring the scrog screen down. At that point it shouldn't matter.

Also, I love my little loph sitting in the middle of the jungle :dawerp:

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Week 9 (Skipped 8)

Psycho, I took your advice and decided to design my own little drain system.

First, here is a pic from Week 8, just for reference:

Now, I got some 21" drain pans, a few 2x6s, and some large plant caddies to support the weight. The 2x6s were used to shim the drain pans, in order to get a little bit of extra height. the split between the two boards allows for the downspout of the drain to hang below the drain pan.

I then tied 2 pans each into 2 common headers, pointed toward the space left between the 4 drain pan assemblies. This space is where the sump will be.

I used a small plastic mixing bucket for the sump. I installed 2 bulkheads opposite each other near the bottom of the bucket (with some silicone sealant around the gaskets to ensure a long lasting seal). I then installed a hi-lo sensor kit, which uses the water in the bucket to complete an extremely low voltage, low current circuit. You can see that I had to splice in a grounded plug in order to completely ground the full vertical length of the sump bucket (the bare wire provides this ground, which is necessary in order for the low level sensor to work properly). The hi-lo sensor is piggy-backed to a very small submersible pump. This pump turns on when the high-sensor is actuated, and pumps until the low-sensor turns off. This prevents over-cycling of the pump, and ensures that liquid in the sump can be pumped out of the tent into a 5-gallon bucket nearby.

I installed watering rings a few weeks ago in preparation for dropping the SCROG screen. I also recently cleared out the underside of the canopy to increase airflow in preparation for a thick canopy. These rings are tied by 1/2" black tubing to an external header, which allows me to fill an easily accessible reservoir outside of the tent, have a small submersible pump provide pressure/flow to the header, control the ultimate flow of the fluid via a common control valve, and then use the other 4 valves to merely direct the flow of fluid to each watering ring. This reduces the need for a hefty pump, and allows me to ensure that each plant gets its own share of water and nutrients. You can also see the drain line and bucket in these pics.

Finally, I dropped the SCROG frame in place, and sorta kinda worked the tops of the plants through. I used a system of zip ties in order to tension the screen on two sides, and just secured the other two sides, so the screen is pretty rigid. This made installation tricky, and ultimately some of the stems were scraped up a little. I think they'll survive though, its nothing catastrophic.

So there ya go. I think I'm going to give these ladies another 2-3 weeks in veg to fill out the canopy a little, then do a flush and start the transition into flowering

:pipesmoke:

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Week 11:

These girls are filling out nicely now that the screen is down, I've got a small hole in the canopy on the back-right corner, but I should be able to shimmy some branches over there by week 11, and I'm pretty sure there are some smaller bottom branches currently trying to break through the last in or two to the screen.

It's been a steep learning curve figuring out the best way to maneuver those branches around the net without breaking the stems...and I've definitely bent some a little too much...but overall they seem to be doing well. I did find one major split in a trunk, and it looks like I need to get some heavier nitrogen on them, because they are still losing leaves below the canopy. I mixed up a strong (but not overly strong, I didn't want to quite hit the "heavy feeding" levels provided in the nutrient mixing instructions, but its stronger than I've been using) solution this morning and made sure to add some microbes to the mix, and made sure I got at least 10-20% runoff (which is super easy now that I've got a working water/drain system in place).

Quick question though, do I have too many lower branches? I noticed that there are at least 2 small branches per plant, that may not break through the canopy before they are shadowed out by larger branches. Should I chop them so that the plant can focus on the stuff thats already in the canopy, or just leave them be as extra bud sites that will eventually stretch into the canopy when I switch to flowering. I intend to make the switch in approximately 1 to 2 weeks, otherwise my canopy will be overrun. :eek:

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Week 12: End of Veg
So, I have a mostly full canopy, at least 1-3 growth tips per 6" x 6" net opening, with some places being super dense and very difficult to fit any more growth down into the canopy. I'd like to fully fill in that back right corner, but the front left and right are starting to make me worry that I might have too many bud sites once flowering starts. Crowding may be an issue, but I'll deal with that when it happens.

I've cleared out any smaller branches that didn't make it up to the canopy, with the exception of a few that may stretch into some low-density canopy and help to fill everything in evenly. I also cleared out any yellow or brown leaves as best as I could reach, and did a final fold-down to make sure all growth tips are within 1-3 inches of each other, elevation-wise.

I'm currently flushing the soil, since I use a combo of chemical and organic stuff, and have been feeding heavily over the last few weeks. I started with a very slow trickle of 10 gallons of tap water + FF sledgehammer, and allowed that to drain/soak for about 30 minutes. I then followed up with 20 gallons of straight tap water (finishing that step up now), and then after draining stops, I will apply a starting mixture of FF Open Sesame and FF Bushdoctor Kangaroots, which I'm thinking will help add back any microbes that I either disturbed or flushed out (I'm not entirely sure if the sledgehammer detergents will cause the microbes to dislodge from whatever surface they are growing on, but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything).

I understand that this flush may be overkill and unnecessary, but I've always had issues with nutrient lockout on my previous grows, and want to make sure that I keep plenty of runoff flushing out of this grow to keep salt and metabolite buildup out of my flowering period.

I'll be running at least 24 hours of darkness starting this afternoon, and will be 12/12 for the next 10-12 weeks (according to the strain information). Feel free to comment, I'm all ears!

:pipesmoke:

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Week 14 (Flower Week 2):
Hey Guys and Gals, I've been busy lately, and haven't posted in a bit.

I did manage to snag a pic of the canopy from Week 13:

And here is Week 14's pic:

I think the stretching is starting to level out, the hairs are really starting to show on some of the taller growth sites:

The canopy is a little uneven, but I simply don't have any room left to bend back down into the screen (a key mistake, I should have flowered earlier so that I would still have room). However, I don't think this will be much of a problem. It won't be perfect, but it will still produce good bud, and is much better than the canopy I would have had if I had attempted to flower those 4 monsters without screening them down. :cool:

And THC, its exactly that, an automated water/drain system for a soil grow, it allows me to deliver water/nutrients and remove runoff without me having to heave things around, or crawl around under the canopy. So far, it works really well.

About 8 weeks left :pipesmoke:

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Week 15 (Flower Week 3):
Just a picture update for now.

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Week 16 (Flower Week 4):

Does anybody recognize what's going on in that last pic? Those dots are only showing up on one plant, which is getting fed and watered exactly the same as the others. :shrug:

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Data said:
Week 18 (Flower Week 6):

I checked the flowering time last week and it's listed as 7-9 weeks. As such, I performed a flush, and will water with only filtered water for the next two weeks.

:pipesmoke:

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Week 19 (Flower Week 7):

Last week before chopping, the leaves are starting to yellow, just gotta keep an eye on the amber/cloudy trichome ratio.

:pipesmoke:

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Week 20 (Flower Week 8):
I'll be chopping sometime this week. The plants are pretty mature, and I managed to get one to purple pretty heavily just by dropping the temp in the house.

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Harvest:

Final bud harvest. I must admit that i converted most of the smaller or fluffy buds to chopped up trim for bubble hash.

The last picture is the foliage and popcorn buds that I still have to sift through.

I've been sampling the resin off of the clippers blades...and it's nice :pipesmoke:

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Final Numbers and Closing Thoughts:
Well, now that I've had a chance to get everything processed and dried, and gotten over my disappointment with the yield, I think its about time to wrap this grow log up.

So, out of a 4x4 foot tent, with a 600W HID, using a strain that was rated at up to 1200g/ft², I harvested about 9 oz. of bud, and got about 13 grams of bubble hash from the trim. Half of the bubble hash (anything above 73 microns and below 45 microns) was stripped of solids via a cold ISO wash, an hour in the sun to break down the chlorophyll, and reduced to a nice oil that shatters into a billion pieces after sitting in the fridge for a bit.

Looking back on everything, I believe there are multiple avenues to this disappointing harvest.

Not having an open area around the tent. Having the access to all corners of the tent would have allowed me to perform some of the necessary maintenance that needs to happen (all of which will be outlined soon).
Having to rely on spray rings that were not wetting the entire soil volume, because i couldn't reach the soil with a sprayer.
Not trimming back smaller branches, and not thinning out the canopy once I switched to 12/12. Less competing flowering branches and more light penetration would have probably increased the amount of harvestable bud.
Initiating flowering too late. I allowed the SCROG canopy to completely fill the tent, and didn't allow room for training down the stretch growth. This also leads to:
Uneven light distribution across the canopy, and possibly inadequate light in general. I never had issues with temperature, so I should have probably pushed up to a 1000W HID.
Inadequate flowering time. I believe the rating online was 7-9 week flowering time, and I harvested around 8 weeks. Unfortunately, because of the situation with grad school and moving, I was really pushing the envelope at 8 weeks, so this aspect was actually out of my control for this grow. I think the plants could have stood another week or two.
Given the shitty initial harvest, it would have probably been a good idea to trim the plants after harvest and re-vegging and flowering a 2nd time. Again, because of time constraints, I just was not able to do that.

So, that's it :happyweed:

Because of the move, I'll probably not be able to do another grow for the next couple of years. Hopefully by then I'll be able to set up my growspace the right way, and get a pretty good yield next time.

:peace:

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“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” -NDT

Edited by Data (08/01/17 03:34 PM)

Extras: