Marijuana Growing - Journals - Dr.J20

final weight

Dr.J20 — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:48:37 GMT

finished with dry weight = 116.4g, harvested about a week to 10 days early so not as dense and swollen as I would have liked but not bad for a second crop out in a closet with leds and cfls, no ventilation...and the smoke is sweet and delicious

can't wait to get a ballast and some bigger lights OR a bunch of bigass LEDs
grow on and thanks for all the help to those who helped!
take it easy

Earthbox white rhino closet forest!

Dr.J20 — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:02:26 GMT

It's week 3 of flowering and buds are forming nicely. if i had it to do over i'd have done only 2 plants better positioned in the earthbox b/c its pretty clear that one of the girls is dominating the other two. I think with less competition in the earthbox they would be doing better but oh well, you live and learn, i do like how low key these earthboxes are though.
check out the closet forest:

White Rhino Earthbox week 2 flower

Dr.J20 — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 23:02:32 GMT

Looks like i was being a bit of a negative nancy last week; Its week 2 of flower and the girls are looking great. The newest growth on all of em looks healthy and green...as you'll see from this weeks pics (i turned off the LEDs) ...I'm working on balancing my soil pH in the earthbox; after 15 samples from various locations and depths i've got an average soil pH of 7.5 so I'm adding a little pH Down to the reservoir to get 6.5 pH water in the res and i'll be top feeding with water adjusted to 6.5 as well. Since there's been a lot of talk about the loads of nutrients in ffof i'll hold off on nutes til week 3. I am concerned that one of the girls is a little behind from the stress but she's looking fine right now so i'll just treat her the same as the other two 'til she tells me otherwise. Got some pics but they're a little generic, not much to see but i'm happy with their progress, let me know what you think!
be easy,
Dr.J

Pics:

To Cull or not to Cull

Dr.J20 — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:45:06 GMT

I think there is something messed up with one of my girls. I've been watching her new growth and it's all degenerated and dry, yellow in the middles of the fan leaves growing out to green points. This new growth is dry and brittle, sometimes holes seem to form, leaves are twisted and grow out strangely. I'm worried b/c it doesnt seem to fit any deficiency models and it looks similar to a mosaic virus. I've noticed some of the growth on another plant seems to have a few of these characteristics which would lead me to believe its bacterial/viral/fungal something that one plant could catch from another hence my question as to whether to pull this girl and focus on the other two. here's pics:

of course it could be that the lights fell on that one plant the most severely and this is just the result of that stress and it will just take time to grow out but i don't know because new growth still looks like its all messed up...i'll give her til wednesday then make a decision about culling i guess.
be easy
dr. j

Day 2 Flower; Earthbox White Rhino Fem.

Dr.J20 — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:36:23 GMT

Day 2 of flower, 39 overall (i think). My best girl already has pistils popping out. I've switched to predominantly 2700K temp. CFLs: 1 105w, 1 65w, 4 42w. I've also got a 65w 6500K CFL for some spectral balancing but I'm guessing the one and a half hanging UFO LEDs are supplemental in both total light and light spectrum. They're looking pretty good but still the one in the back left looks like she's having some kind of trouble with her new growth. It looks kinda like the mosaic virus but its wearing little holes in the leaves. Not sure whats going on. I don't think it's spreading but the front gal might have caught a touch of whatever this is on one upper fan leaf. Of course this could have been from the light falling on these plants and scorching em for the 5 seconds it was on top of them. not sure. right now i'm working with just plain ole R/O water; gonna hold off on the nutes for the first week then pick up with a reduced strength FF soil schedule. I'm also going to give the girls some microbe brew this evening which reminds me, i need to calibrate my ph meter. I'm in FFOF but my soil readings of late have been towards the 7 mark; it doesn't seem like anything is getting locked out but that may be whats up with my sickly gal. again, not sure. I'll let the microbe brew sit down at 5.8, the lowest end of the pH spectrum for soil (per Cervantes instruction). Pretty healthy looking and good vigorous growth taking place;
Since I've added some light to the mix my temps run high. I've got 'em back down to 77 with the closet door open but they pop up to the high eighties (86-87) when I have to close up the tent at night. This was the first dark period so I just got my first set of data about the dark period stats: 63F lows with 68% humidity. I'm not gonna worry about the humidity because I'm gonna run a heater outside the closet during the dark period to keep the temp between 67-69. That should also help a little with humidity, dropping it hopefully a couple of percentage points. That should establish my environmental norms as a temp range of 67-87 and humidity range of 65%-49% with the average lights on being 78F and 50%.
This earthbox has made life easier on the one hand by making watering kind of a non-issue in terms of whether or not the girls will get watered. They wont be overwatered if I apply nutes lightly by hand watering but it does bring up a whole host of questions:
1) I've read that cannabis likes to let its roots dry out to go through successive wet/dry periods; the earthbox doesn't ever really dry out completely because its a wick system: will this inhibit or weaken growth?
2) In order to prevent over watering I only use <2L H2o on all three plants. Are the girls getting enough nutrients? Its iffy for me to water whole gallons of nute-water into this system because i don't want to over water and drown the roots/cause root rot but I also don't want these gals to be deprived of nutes they would otherwise use.
3) when to start adding nute water and at what strength without knowing how much has been used from the FFOF? I'll go by regular soil guidelines and just start up the feedings schedule in a week or two but pretty much by the end of preflowering I'd like to be on the bloom regimen.

this should be an interesting grow since it's some nontraditional light sources and some not traditional container gardening...we'll see how it goes.

pics:

Earthbox White Rhino into Darkness

Dr.J20 — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:46:24 GMT

Well I'm into the 36hour dark period before switching to 12/12. I'm worried about temps dropping too low in this 36 hour period because i've noticed temps down around 68 during the 6hours the lights were off for veg. my range settled out to be about 68-83 so thats a 15 degree range which ought to be acceptable though not ideal. I panicked this morning when I had to get up to start the dark period at the right hour and just unplugged everything except one little fan to keep circulation going; this was done partially because i had my space heater plugged into a timer with these crazy 15 minute intervals randomly spaced throughout the 36 hour period and partially because the little red lights on my power strips, humidifier, and space heater freaked me out.

So, when the lights come on in t-minus 27 hours I'm going to tape over all those little red lights, plug my space heater directly into an outlet and trust the thermostat on her. I will also keep the humidifier on the same timer as the lights so that it only runs during lights on, along with 2/3 of my fans. One of those fans will stay on constantly to ensure some air circulation.
Sorry, no pics this time, the girls are slumbering (not really, i know, but they're in the dark and i don't want to disturb their hormonal production/risk stressing em).

Hempy to Earthbox--white rhino fem. from nirvana

Dr.J20 — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:01:44 GMT

Ok, its been two weeks since my last entry...sorry about that. but a lot of exciting stuff has happened.
1) my lights fell directly onto my plants during some tent cleaning so i was in there to pick the lights up immediately, they fell again two days later (just into dirt though no plant contact) so i switched to chains instead of ropes to hold em up.
2)a. I transplanted the girls from hempy cups to a home made earthbox--basically i looked at my schedule and realized i wasn't gonna be able to be there to hand water until the roots hit the new res of the bigger final hempy buckets but thats ok, the earth box self waters and i can add nutes to it at the request of my girls.
2)b. The earthbox is full of straight ffof with a stable pH around 6.8 and is being watered with R/O H2O.

I like using soil. It feels more comfortable to me and its definitely nice having a little buffer/trace minerals.
For the transplant I've added half-strength FF bushdoctor microbe brew and will give one more watering with that before the girls go into their 24-36hr Lights out period...oh yeah i forgot to mention, its day 38 from germ, 35 from sprout, 7 from transplant, so I'm going into the flowering stage. That being said I have a few questions:

1)Should i do a 24-36 hour dark period before going to 12/12? I hear yes and I'm inclined to go with an extended dark period (~36hrs)
2)I'm planning on scaling back my flowering nutes to half, 2/3, or 3/4 strength because i transplanted into FFOF which has lots of nutes; however the nutrients available in the soil are better for vegetation, or so i think right now. So i'm going to supplement with a reduced strength (start with half and work up) soil feeding schedule for flowering from FF.
I've got the tiger bloom and the big bloom and i will be continuing with the microbe brew.
3) One of the girls is looking a little strange. I'm not really sure whats going on with one of the girls but her new growth looks strange. There are light green almost yellow centers in her new top leaves, they are dry, almost brittle and some of the fan blades have holes in the center. The centers around these holes are brown. I've got pics of individual leaves but they didn't really come out... Does anyone have any idea about this? I'm not planning on doing anything just yet because I'm wondering if physical stress (lights falling, fan being too close/too constant/too dry) might be the cause. The other two gals seem to be loving their new soil home and don't have any of these problems...check out the pics and let me know if this is something that should delay the initiation of the flowering phase.

Equipment question: I've got a space heater for my little tent because it drops into the high 60s during the 6 hour dark period right now. I plan on putting the space heater in the tent on a timer interval to keep the tent above 69F so it'll run on low for an hour, then off for an hour alternating like that from an hour after lights off till an hour before lights on. sound like it will work?

Be easy,
Dr.J

Help, Deficiency? Burn? WTF?

Dr.J20 — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:18:09 GMT

So the girls had to go with regular ole water for a series of complicated reasons two days ago. I picked up with a regular feeding which seemed fine to me but then today during feeding time I saw some pretty distressing stuff: there are light brown spots all over some of the lower, older fan leaves and a couple of the leaves are twisting and are crisp to the touch. My first instinct says P-deficiency but i'm totally new to hempy and it could be a calcium or magnesium deficiency. Unless its not a deficiency at all which is what i'm asking for..can anyone tell from the description and these pics whats going on? I've been using the ff trio and microbe brew at low doses b/c white rhino, i'm told, doesn't like heavy nutes--today i fed 900ppm when my range is 1100-1220. I flushed after feeding today because i noticed this problem and panicked...probably a rook error there...but what should i do?!?

FF Bushdoctor Microbe Brew into White Rhino Hempys!

Dr.J20 — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:26:48 GMT

I know I said I would try to keep it to weekly entries but seriously, no one cares...hell no one's here! haha you're talking (writing) to yourself! haha

anywho
So i just picked up with week 2 feeding (still 1/3 strength..~400ppm) according to the bushdoctor schedule and added in some fox farm bushdoctor microbe brew to help out my girls. They are all looking pretty good, healthy green growth (see last post, the pics are essentially the same) although I haven't been really watering to 10% run-off per usual hempy instructions. given the overwatering/deficiency problem i ran into a little bit ago, i've been hesitant to hit them with too much of anything. When they get two more full sets of leaves i will be transplanting to their final home so at that point I will resume watering until some runoff comes through the drain hole above the res, but, since i'm going to do 4:1 perlite to vermiculite there shouldn't be much of a problem with the medium holding too much moisture as it is right now. I addressed this elsewhere but i'm thinking my mini-hempys got filled with perlite that hadn't been cleaned effectively so there was just a bunch of perlite dust mixed with ff ocean forest holding the water too much and also probably adding more nutes than i had expected. We're back on track now though and looking good--as far as i can tell, stop on by and tell me otherwise if you know what i can do to improve!

Hope the microbe brew works out!

White Rhino Hempy Recovery?!?

Dr.J20 — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:06:14 GMT

Well its been a week and I've got myself a new TDS meter and a new pH pen to go along with some recovering gals!
I think I hit the nail on the head with some much needed help from some of the great folks on RIU: Overwatering causing nitrogen deficiency so I let em dry out a bit and adjusted my watering technique. I'm now working with 1/3 strength nutes from the FF trio schedule. I'm going to pick up tomorrow with week 3 and go from there.
I've been wondering about switching from RO to tap water that sits out but it looks like my water treatment center uses sodium cholrite or hypochlorite which would leave some unwanted salts...as such I may be looking into cal-mag if i notice any deficiencies. I noticed that the grow big and tiger bloom contain trace minerals, has anyone gotten by in hempy using just the ff nutes without supplementing? In any case these girls are looking great. I feed right as the lights come on and then again, if they're dry, about 6 hours later. I'm planning on transplanting after two more sets of leaves emerge on all the girls, any thoughts on the plans are welcome and encouraged! These pics are day 19 (from sprout, 22 from germ.)...I think they're looking pretty good but the one who was donkey-eared from the N-def/overwatering seems, well, "perky" is this ok?...EDIT: Nevermind, standard perkiness from being thirsty! she just wanted some water!

Attached Thumbnails

Heat problems? Humidity problems? Need some help

Dr.J20 — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:33:10 GMT

So here's whats going on,
Started super-diluted ff trio hydro nutes before having to go out of town last week, fed the girls three times (been watering til a little run-off comes out daily with R/O H2O - ph 6.0). When I went out of town I made a little drip system with R/O H2O in a 3 L so the little gals should have gotten enough water to stay alive with little stress on that account. That all seemed to work out fine but two of the girls aren't doing so hot. One has a floppy donkey ear-like leaf and the other is just generally slower growing and smaller--which could be because when it sprouted a snafu tipped her cup over and she lost some soil on top so that could account for her general slowness/size. My temps went up to 96 over last weekend for about 8 hours--yikes! And my humidity was down around 28% but a warm day and a soaking wet terrycloth bathrobe along with a humidifier has gotten that up to between 45-70%. I'm wondering if there's some deficiency in the donky-ear'd lil gal, or if they're suffering from overwatering because my mix seems to be holding water better than a hempy really ought to. Check out the pics and let me know how you think these girls are doing and what tips you've got for me.
I'm adding a CO2 3L rig out via fermentation to see if that helps with the sustained 82 degree temps..let me know what you think about that too..

Oh yeah, so the environment has been somewhat corrected where I can keep it pretty consistently above 45% and generally 55-70% RH and 70-85F so I'm hoping those ranges aren't too radical if you can imagine the fluctuation occurring at a relatively constant rate over the 24 hour period.

New CFL/LED Hempy Ghetto Tent White Rhino Feminized Noob

Dr.J20 — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:59:16 GMT

Hey everybody, I'm pretty new here still, though i've been cruising the forums picking up gems of knowledge all over the place; thanks for all the help so far!
My first attempt at this gardening thing went awry when some silica gel that had cobalt II in it got into my soil damning my girls of bagseed progeny. That was done in a ffof stocked DIY earthbox (pics forthcoming by request). This time around i'm going hempy with the traditional 3:1 perlite:vermiculite blend. Here's the grow specs:

Closet Tent Grow, 1 Room, 1 straight cycle.
Size: 2'x3'x62"
Lights: CFL: 2x105w(1 6500K, 1 2700K), 2x65w (ibid.), 4x42w 2700K, 2x26w 6500K
LED: 2xUFO TriBand 90w
Ventilation: 1 large vortex fan forcing air from closet floor into tent, 1 4"inline inductor fan (80cfm) exhaust from top of tent, 1 6" clip fan for air movement in tent. (1 additional 10" box fan if needed)
H20: All water is RO; even the water i clean with; and the pH is balanced!
Nutrients: FF Nutrient package (Grow Big, Big Bloom, Tiger Bloom) with microbe brew added

Seeds: Feminised white rhino from nirvana

A certain DocBud on another forum inspired this germinating method where you use a plastic or styrofoam cup and make a mini hempy that substitutes the vermiculite for ffof. The way he did it was to have the bottom layer of his mini hempy be pure perlite, then the next half was a 50:50 perlite:ffof blend, the top quarter to half inch was straight fox farm soil. I did the same thing and got 4/4; of course tragedy struck when I was removing all the lower wattage lights and knocked over one of the non-sprouted mini-hempy cups...so we're down to three now. The side lights had to be adjusted because the environment was reading 98F and 19% humidity---way out of whack...I got things adjusted within 3 days to where the girls were on a 20/4 schedule with the LEDs acting as the sole light source. I got humidity up to 50% and temps right at 78F but then I had to go out of town so i set up a drip system with a clean 2 L bottle and kept the girls alive until I got back... I dropped light to 18/6 before leaving and temps had hit a low at 58 degrees with humidity dropping to 28% (humidifier had to be turned off). The day i got back my landlord announced he was working on the house all day so the girls got 2 extra hours of dark (16/8). So thats a few stresses: some drastic temp. fluctuations, dubious watering, light PAR fluctuation, massive humidity problems...oh and i got antsy and gave 'em a <1/4 dose of nutes with their watering before i left... and i gotta leave em again for another 2 days (hope the 2 L deally works again!).
So, when I transplant they'll go into a large bin with 3:1 Perlite:Vermiculite.

Right now environmental status after pics taken was 83F, 24%
They will be watered before I slumber.

Pics below show growth as of day 10(from germ, day 7 from sprouting) and some miscellaneous pics of the tent/setup--questions about it all are very welcome!

questions from me for right now: will my humidity stress these girls too much and if so would it be unreasonable to add a second humidifier?

what are the dangers/potentials for stress posed by allowing a slow drip of R/O water on the mini-hempy cups while i'm out of town?

Thanks for stopping by!
Be easy,
Dr.J