4th day of flowering; Jock Horror, fem Snow White, fem AK47 autoflower; 1st CFL grow

jjrd117 · #1 04-29-2009, 01:09 PM

Hey all,

So I'm now on my 4th day of flowering and figured it was about time to post my grow to share some of my experiences thus far. I spent a good couple months reading a ton on this site and learned A LOT before I decided to take the plunge. I also got the "Bible", along with another growing guide, and read through those a couple times, too, before I got started. So I thought it was only fair that I post some back. Not to mention that this is a great outlet for that urge to talk about one's grow!

Anyway, I'm a veteran smoker and was recently turned on to some medical-grade bud. The stuff was top-notch, but was rather pricey, so I decided it was about time I gave growing a try. I'm now on my 4th day of flowering, and this is my very first grow.

Now for the backstory....

bakedat420 · #2 04-29-2009, 01:14 PM

they look awesome man how long did you veg for?how many cfls/watts/lumens you got in there?

jjrd117 · #3 04-29-2009, 02:07 PM

The backstory, bringing everyone up to speed....

Okay, as I mentioned above, I spent a lot of time reading various posts on this site and decided to grow for myself. (I should also point out that while I'm a veteran toker, my grow is also for med reasons.) So I picked up 5 feminized Snow White and 10 Jock Horror seeds from Nirvana. I ordered online with a CC, had them ship it their regular shipping to my regular address, and received them in a little over a week with no problems (props to them!!). Snow White's are supposed to be ready for harvest in about 7/8 weeks, with the Jock's taking from 9/11. I wanted something a little quicker to tide me over in the meantime so I also ordered up 3 Grass-o-matic feminized AK47 autoflowering from Atitude. They were out of stock of those at the time of my order, but I ended getting those with no problems within about 2 weeks, sent regular shipping (and props the them, as well!!).

Anyway, one of the things I regularly noticed on this site from pics of CFL grows was that not many people were using any sort of reflectors with their lights. Seemed like a lot of light was getting wasted. So I manufactured a hood/reflector for my setup while I was waiting on the seeds. (Also, another thing that I noticed on this site is that aside from some of the basics, there are a thousand different ways to do things. So what I've done, and what I'm documenting, is what works best for me.)

To build the reflector, I used 2 pieces of aluminum furnace ducting, 36" x 10", picked up from Home Depot. I made a little snip in the corners and used a 1" x 3" board to help bend the edges out a little. I then sank 3 sheet metal screws through the ducting into a 1" x 4" board, which serves as the back mounting support.

I then wired up the 4 light sockets using plastic sockets and 16-gauge weather resistant wiring to run between each. I made sure to use insulators on the backing of each socket, along with an abundance of electrical tape to help keep everything insulated against moisture. I then wired a 16-gauge tool power cord, which plugs into the power strip I use, and mounted the sockets onto a 1" x 6" x 31" board. Then, I used sheet metal screws to mount the inner board straight through to the board on the back of the reflector. The inner dimesions of the reflector measures 16", and the beauty of this setup is that different sized mounting boards (like up to 12"-16" wide) for the sockets could be used with a variety of light orientations, if you wanted. Next, I twisted in some hooks in the board on the back of the hood and hung from a swing set chain around a screw-mounted shower rod. All told, I think I spent about $20-$25 for all the materials on the hood (including the light sockets) and it only weighs about 5-6 lbs. Also, those are 27w cfls in that one pic.

The shower rod is mounted at about 50" in height, and the rest of my grow area measures 43" wide and 37" deep (expandable up to 60" deep if I wanted).

jjrd117 · #4 04-29-2009, 02:12 PM

hey bakedat420,
thanks for the quick reply and nice comment. i vegged them for about 32 days, 330 total cfl watts, 21750 total lumens. i've been documenting the whole thing, and just need to get it up here now....

jjrd117 · #5 04-29-2009, 02:34 PM

Okay, not really sure how to keep a thread going (when it's your thread), but I guess the "reply to..." seems to be working....

Anyway, on with the backstory....

So when I got my seeds from Nirvana, I germed 4 Jock Horrors and 2 fem Snow White's using the paper towel method. I had just gone through trying to germinate some old (10+ years) seeds I had saved, including some original Matanuska Thunderfuck from the late '80s, but ended up tossing 'em out after trying to germ them for 2 weeks with no success.

But within 12 hours, one of the Jocks had already split and was showing a nice 1-2cm tap root. Within 24-36hrs, they had all split with good tap roots and I put them all in Rapid Rooters and got them under some light.

After about 4 days, I started noticing tap roots coming out of the sides and bottom of the Rooters, so it was time to transplant. They went into 3" square containers and I used Roots Organic coco fiber soilless mix (coc fiber, perlite, pumice, worm castings, bat guano, kelp meal, green sand, soluble kelp, leonardite.) I also started them on a partial nute solution, Soul Synthetics Grow (3-1.25-1.25; ingredients: bat guano extract, alfalfa extract, kelp, yucca extract, molasses, potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate, calcium nitrate, and magnesium nitrate) and parked them under some lights, 30w 6400K, 30w 5500K, 2 40w 5000K, with a 42w 2700K and 40W 2700K on the ends.

In pic "sdlngs1", the 2 Snow Whites are bottom left while the Jock Horrors are top right.

jjrd117 · #6 04-29-2009, 02:54 PM

So everything continued to go well, and here they are approx. 13 days from popping their little cotelydons. During this time, I also germed 1 of the fem AK47 autoflowering, hoping to get a little something before the rest was done, but it was pretty slow to germ. I guess I got spoiled with the others...! (top right in that overhead picture is the AK47)

At this time, I noticed quite a bit of roots coming out the holes in the bottom of the 3" containers, and thought it would be a good time to transplant into the 10" pots I had that's going to take them through to harvest. For these pots, which are also net bottom for drainage purposes, I used a 50:50 mix of the Roots Organic coco soilless and Grower's Best Media (Canadian sphagnum peat base, ph balanced). I also have them on full growing nutes.

In hindsight, I wish I would have waited a little longer before transplanting into the larger pots, or started them in something like a 6 inch pot. By putting them in the large pots while they were still so small, I lost a lot of the ability to have the cfls as close I could get them. Oh well, live and learn.

I also upped the amount of light to total 330 cfl watts and about 21,750 total lumens. The total blue (5000-6400K) to red (2700K) spectrums is about 16500:5250. This is also the total light they'll get until I switch to flowering.

jjrd117 · #7 04-29-2009, 03:12 PM

(not exactly sure how that hood pic ended up in that last post.... anyway)

Here they are during 14-18 days from seed, during week 2 of veg. Being able to park those cfls right on top of these babies has definitely been nice for preventing stretch.

jjrd117 · #8 04-29-2009, 03:28 PM

Here they are 21 days from showing cotelydon and the beginning of the 3rd week of vegging. The tallest one's are 3" high, have reached the 4th and/or 5th node... so it's time for some lst!

jjrd117 · #9 04-29-2009, 03:32 PM

A few days later....

jjrd117 · #10 04-29-2009, 03:44 PM

25 days old and continuing with the lst. Getting some serious bush action going on! At about the same time I started with the lst, I also fimmed 3 of the Jock Horrors and the weaker Snow White, just to see what would happen. Even though I cut off 80-85% of the tops, I don't think I did it right cause nothing really happened (other than obvious slowed growth).

Oh, by the way, one big thing I forgot to mention is that I've had these on a 20/4 light schedule from the very beginning. That's what was recommened for the AK47 autoflower and I wanted to keep them all on the same schedule. I later read that the 20/4 can also provide some of the best results/yield. Of course, I'm sure that's open to debate....

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