FarmerNinja
Active Member
HI ALL! So I have a lil extra time on my hands and I figured I would start to compile all the notes and pictures Ive taken along the way to help inspire and maybe answer a few questions anyone might have. Feel free to make any comments about what you like or don't like about the steps I've taken so I can further refine the art! all criticism should be helpful though! don't bother telling me Im doing something wrong if you're not going to let everyone know how your way is done!
For those of you who just want the quick facts and dont want to sift through all the details here you go. The rest of you skip these facts and read on.
Two 4x4x 6 grow tents one for vegging and one for flowering.
Im using 23w CFL and 15w tube fluoro for clones.
A 400w MH for vegging
400w HPS with a 250MH and 23w CFL for flowering
Vegged for 8 weeks flowering for 3.5 so far
4 fan carbon filter combo for flowering with 4 squirrel intake and oscillating fan on the ceiling. All fans have speedster speed control dials.
4 squirrel fan for vegging exhaust and a 6 can filter for drying time. Clip fan blowing inside
Fox Farm Ocean Forest Soil with Fox Farm Nutrients Trio (big bloom, tiger bloom , grow big)
Growing 2 bubba kush, 2 purple kush, 1 green kush, 2 gran daddy purp, 1 chem dawg
I am currently 3.5 weeks into flowering cycle so this is my progress up tll now. Stay tuned after for updates on flower maturing/harvest. Its a pretty extensive journal kudos to anyone who takes time to read it all! Feel free to skip through it as you please. Ill be editing it and adding more info as I remember things and as time goes on. Also feel free to ask me any questions id be happy go into detail any of the steps Ive taken.
This is my first indoor legal medical grow so I hope this will help anyone else who is thinking about starting to grow on a small scale. All my activities are LEGAL I refuse to break the law as I've learned my lesson in the past from my mistakes and others. So hopefully no one takes this information and tries to use it for evil! Just to put it into perspective the guy I got all my discount gear from a guy who got busted because he got too greedy. Almost 300 plants indoors in a two bedroom. Some things just make sense not to do. the worst part of it is that he never would have gotten busted if he hadn't gotten really drunk and ended up back at his place for the cops to show up and give him a DWI and then give them a reason to bust him for all his plants. I always heard of busts out there but never knew anyone but now i know its a very real thing. So don't get greedy and learn from this guy!
But on a more happier note just keep things legal and you have nothing to worry about! ok lets go on with my progress!
Jan 8, 2010 medical certified
Jan 9. bought two clones from a local dispensary. One Purple Kush and one Chem dawg. Their clones are usually $15 each but for some reason the Chem dawg was on sale for $13. the guy at the counter said it was because it had grown too much? I wasn't really sure what he meant so i just shrugged it off and took the deal. I would think that an older clone would be better because less time for it to grow? right? I duno not sure why it was on sale but turns out that this became my favorite plant.
Jan 10. threw a couple small 13w CFLs next to the clones and they seem to be doing ok while i tried to find a decent priced light on craigs list.
Jan 11. bought a bubba kush clone and a grand daddy purp clone for $15 each
Jan 13. bought 4 more clones purple kush, bubba kush, green kush and grand daddy purp.
so at this point i have
2x bubba kush
2x purple kush
1x chem dawg
1x green kush
2x grand daddy purp
8 total
All clones start on a 24 hour light cycle then once transplanted change to 18/6
Jan 16. started to notice roots on the first chem dawg I bought. from now on im going to refer to each plant in order in which i bought them. so in this case i transplanted CD1 and PK1 in Fox Farm Ocean forest. i added a bit of vermiculite thinking it was perilite. I think i added too much because drainage was poor. I used 1.5gallon brown plastic pots. In the future Ill use smaller pots because they are easier to control and develop better root systems for transplanting.
Jan 17. gave the new transplanted clones a little bit of vitamin B solution to ease transplant shock. little did I know that I was using way too much and that it was lowering the ph of the water I was giving them by 3-4 points
Jan 18. Transplanted the rest of the clones and bought a 400w HPS light off craigs list for $120.00 had only been used for one cycle (at least that's what they said) but seems to be working fine so far.
This is when I started to have some troubles. I started in a closet which was about 4'x2'x10' with a curtain over the door. It started to get real hot in the closet and the only thermometer i had was this cheap little digital thermometer and it began reading into the 90s! (Fahrenheit) I hadn't realized at this point how important airflow was. I just had one clip on fan blowing down at them and the bottom of the curtain open about a foot and a half to let air passively in. well one night I added an extra curtain because the light started to really bother me while I was sleeping. Man was this was a mistake. it had only been like 6-8 hours but when I opened that curtain in the morning my heart sank. the plants were drying up!! Also the soil was still wet but the plants were drying so I figured it might have something to do with the soil so I transplanted them will no vermiculite and just used the fox farm ocean forest. I thought then it might have something to do with the tap water i have been using so I stopped using that and started buying distilled water.
Jan 20. started the plants on an 18/6 cycle. I start to check them a lot because I am nervous that they received too much shock the first picture is of Chem Dawg when I started to notice it wilting and couldnt figure out why cause at this point I added a fan on the bottom blowing fresh air in and clipped a 6 fan on the side of the door with the curtain supporting it with two nails for exhaust. The rest of the pictures are purple, bubba and gdp. One of the GDPs I had written off as dead so I stopped watering it and put it aside away from the light. The picture of the one that is tiny and completely dry is this one. Well one time I was watering the rest of the plants and I had a lil extra water so I poured it into the dead plants pot. Well low and behold the next day it starts to show new growth! I thought it was dead! Plants are crazy and dont ever give up on your babies!!
Jan 24. I received my ph testing kit in the mail. The first one I bought was a lusterleaf 4 in 1 tester. It had 3 long prongs coming out of the bottom for sticking into the soil for readings. I could read moisture, fertility, light, and PH. So I tested the ph of my water and it seemed to be fine. I tested the soil for moisture and it seemed to be fine. I struggled with moving my light up and down trying to figure out the optimal height. I figured out that 18-24 is good for small plants. In my closet there is one of those poles going across for hanging cloths and such and this became a perfect anchor for my light. I was able to twists the pole within its sockets so I devised a way to lower and raise the light. I took 2 shoe laces and wrapped them perfectly around the pole so that they were completely flat on each wrap overlapping each wrap. This is so it wouldnt get tangled and I figured it would also make it lower and raise easier. So now by wrapping the entire laces around and then tying them to the light, by twisting the pole towards myself the light would lower. When I twist it away from myself the light would raise. The only trick is getting both sides the exact same length so that both side would lower and raise evenly with a twist of the pole. I hope my explanation of it is good because I took them down and hadnt taken any photos. This kind of only applies to my situation but if anyone else has these cheap poles in their closet maybe they can utilize the same strategy. It definitely beats paying $15 for yoyos or using heavy chains. I plan on making a rack like this in the future because its the easiest way Ive seen to lower and raise lights besides electronically.
Jan 28. Roots are starting to show in chem dawgs new pot. Man this thing grows fast! So I then replanted it in a new 3gallon pot.
Feb 3. I took measurements of how tall each plant was
CD 110 with 11 nodes and 4.5 fan leaves. Started to make me nervous because it was only producing 3 leaves on each branch. I thought maybe I had shocked it too much that it mutated or something
PK1 12 with 9 nodes 5 fan leaves
PK2 5.5 with 5 nodes 2 fan leaves
GK 6.5 with 5 nodes 2.3 fan leaves
BK1 7.5 with 8 nodes 3.3 fan leaves
BK2 6.5 with 4.5 main nodes 2.2 fan leaves
GDP1 ITS ALIVE! Presumed dead but sprang back to life. 4.5 with 4 nodes 1.3 fan leaves
GDP2 8 with 9 nodes 2.7 fan leaves
All plants received heat stress. The older plants more than the newer ones. They were also being poisoned by my vitamin B solution making the PH waay too acidic. So I stopped using this stuff altogether until I got a ph up and down kit. This seemed to be the cause of the sickness that my plants had. I made a post on this forum trying to figure out what was wrong because I thought I had all the factors taken care of with airflow, temp, humidity, light and such.
At this point I was making plans for getting a grow tent setup in my room so that I could get my closet space back. I started sketching designs for where to place fans and filters and different designs because the layout of my room isnt very convenient for a 4x4x7 tent.
I started to speculate how long it was going to take me to get a finished product and also how long it would take me to produce each perpetual crop. I figured aproxx 2-3 weeks as clones then 6 weeks under veg then 6 weeks under flowering then drying for 2-3 weeks. So I figured it would take me around 4 months to get the first crop and then I could perpetuate a crop every 6-8 weeks after that. So I began plans for a flowering room also. I used my closet for the time being but it wasnt very convenient.
Feb 4, received hygrometer I ordered in the mail along with a few other things I cant think of off the top of my head. Below I have a list of everything Ive purchased and roughly what it cost me. The humidity in the closet is 49% average at this point. Temps range between 85 degrees F in the day and around 68 F at night. Ive always been nervous that this is a bad swing in temperature and also nervous about mold but the plants seem to be doing ok. Chem Dawg starts to take off like crazy and I struggle with stacking the rest of the plants on different kinds of boxes so that they can be level with chem dawgs canopy and receive the same amount of light
Feb 8. 4x4x7 tent that I ordered from ebay arrived. This thing was nicer than I thought it was going to be. Dont have anywhere to put it yet so it sits in my living room empty for about a week. I dont want to move my plants into their yet anyway until I get another 400w light to put in the tent to make it a flowering room. So I convinced my buddy id hook him up with a cut of the crop if he ordered a 400w light to flower with. So he ordered a 400w switchable hps/mh system from hydrofarm. Well it turns out we kind of got screwed over because the one in the picture had the reflector and ballast separated so that you can have the ballast sitting outside the grow room. But for some godforsaken reason they sent us one with the ballast built into the reflector making my closet extremely hot! So we bit the bullet and switched the 400w MH with the 400w HPS in the vegging room so that I could use the hps for flowering.
Feb 9. CD and PK1 are one month old. By this time I start to see big pre-flowers starting to form and I start thinking to myself ut oh did I stress them enough to turn them into hermaphrodites? So I post some pics ( the next set of pics you see below) I can just remember being a kid planting a few seeds I found in a bag and then nurturing plants just to see them be males and produce these kind of sacs that almost resemble the female pre-flowers when they first form. To my relief they are just female pre-flowers and nothing to worry about.
Feb 13. received the Fox Farm trio I ordered in the mail. Grow Big, Big Bloom, and Tiger Bloom. Started feeding according to the ff schedule. The rest of the clones are 1 month old
Feb 15. Cut 7 clones. Ive had 100% success so far (knock on wood) using the method I used for cloning. 3 CD, 2 PK, 2 BK. I wanted to cut 12 dont ask me why I didnt cut more, Im not sure. I guess I wanted to break the clones up into 6 clones that are 3 weeks old and 6 clones that I just rockwooled so that I would harvest 6 plants one week and then 3 weeks later harvest the other 6 plants. Well I hadnt thought this through and in the course of the next week or two cut 6 more clones. Chem dawg was fast growing and I read that it has a high yield so I decided to make half of my next crop chem dawg and a few other kush for good measure. Well I gave 2 chem dawg plants away cuz I figured I could control 10 plants easier in my limited space. And I trashed one of the bubba kush plants because I didnt think I was going to be able to fit it in. looking back I wish I had cut 2 bubba kush and 1 purple kush instead of the 2 pk and 1 bk. And next time I am going to cut them all at once so that I dont have an uneven canopy. Ive discovered that its not easy with one light unless you have a table or something sturdy to stack them on. I dont recommend using boxes like I did but it was cheap and I had to do something with all the boxes Ive been getting from the gear Ive been ordering. And I hate breaking down boxes!
So now I have 1 bubba kush, 2 purple kush, 1 green kush and 6 chem dawgs. I have them in a humidity dome on top of two trays, one with holes in it sitting on top of one without holes for easy drainage and watering. Then I have the trays sitting on a seedling heat mat. On top is a 15 watt tube aquarium flouro and a 23 watt cfl in a small desk lamp cylindrical reflector pointing down at the dome. This seemed to work perfectly although in the future I will experiment with more powerful CFLs to reduce rooting time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Feb 22. replanted original plants into 5 gallon pots. Waiting for other light to arrive in the mail so that I can start the flowering cycle. Looking back I should have started the cycle a week or two earlier. The main reason I did this is because Chem dawg was so huge. Like 2-3 times bigger than the rest of the plants. So I figured I was going to only start flowering chem dawg and let the rest veg out more. Well I flowered chem dawg a week in advance when the light arrived and waited on the rest to see if I was going to get any more growth. It didnt so I ended up flowering the rest as well. But this comes later
Feb 23. bought a cheap $5 humidifier from the thrift store. This thing is from like 1970. started using it but found out that humidifiers make the place STINK way more. I Had some neighbors complaining of the smell. Oops
stopped using humidifier.
CD 36 with 19 nodes and 5.1 fan leaves. Started showing 5-7 finger fan leaves you can see in the pictures that chem dawg grew insanely faster than the rest of the plants. Its already starting to show roots inside the 5 gallon pot.
CD grew 1 2 in 20 days. Considering the early heat stroke.
PK1 16 with 14 nodes 5 3/8 fan leaves. These leaves smell more than any of the other plants. Very bushy and many yield sites.
PK2 13 2/8 with 5 nodes 5 1/8 fan leaves
GK 16.5 with 14 nodes 4 1/8 fan leaves. GK looks more like CD than the rest of the plants. Probably because I think its a hybrid cross with indica/sativa. I believe that chem dawg is a sativa but im not sure. Could be a hybrid. Supposedly this is a cross between green crack and some kind of kush. Maybe purple kush?
BK1 17 with 13 nodes 5 fan leaves. Grows very sparse. Not many bud locations but the ones they are are huge branches that look like they could produce some decent size buds. Ive heard that these plants are low yielding but it happens to be one of my favorite smokes so I had to grow it.
BK2 15 with 12 nodes 4.5 fan leaves
GDP1 10.5 with 13 nodes 3 3/8 fan leaves VERY resilient plant. I had thought this thing was dead. I put it aside and stopped watering it for a week and just let it sit there but a stroke of luck I decided to poor water on it for some reason and low and behold it resurrected itself. Shows that you should never give up hope. life was lying there waiting for the right conditions and all it needed was a little water.
GDP2 14 with 15 nodes 2 3/8 fan leaves
March 2. new CD clone planted new BK clone planted
March 3. Clones clipped 1 green kush and 5 chem dawg. You can see in the picture the new clones ive clipped. I used rockwool cubes soaked them in 5ph water for 24 hours and then used clonex root gel for the stems. I slice the bottom of the stem in half and then I scrape the sides with the razor to activate some of the rooting hormones. I give them a tiny squeeze to get a bit of excess water out of the cubes, then I put them in a humidity dome with a seedling heat mat underneath. 15 watt tub aquarium fluoro and started with a 13w cfl but then found a 23w cfl bulb in my closet ceiling so im using that. Seems to be working great. I wonder if more light would speed up the process. Im going to try a 43w daylight bulbs in the next one I think
March 4. Momma CD is HUGE! Definitely going to keep this strain around. Smoked some from a dispensary and it was delicious! Planted 2 new clones in small 1.5 gallon pots. 1 CD and 1 BK
CD has been vegging for 8 ½ weeks. Note that CD was older than the other plants by about a week.
March 6. CD and PK1 are 8 weeks old. PK had a disaster today. I had a fan clipped to my door blowing exhaust out. Well the plastic around the metal clip on the fan broke but the fan was still held onto the door by the curtain and the spring inside the clip. So I walk in to find my beautiful purple kush plant on its side spilled out all over the inside of my closet. The side it fell on broke a giant branch off the middle. So I stuffed it back in and threw some more soil in there and hoped for the best. She fully recovered! With a missing limb of course! Still not sure how it fell over in the first place though. It made sense that the clip on the fan would have broke and the fan would have fallen and hit the pot and maybe knocked it over but the weird part was that the fan was still held up pretty good on the door by the remainder of the clip and the curtain I had nailed around it. Still beats me to this day
March 7. Getting very crowded in the closet. Running out of space. Temp reached 68 degrees F at night. I bought a timex indoor outdoor hygrometer to monitor temps and humidity. I try to balance it the best I can by moving the fans in various places and adjusting the light and airflow into the room.
March 8. 400w metal halide came in the mail. Threw it into the new tent I got and monitored temps/humidity for a day. Seemed ok!
March 9. Started flowering Chem Dawg. Woot! Let it begin! Switched the hps I was using for vegging with the new mh I got and put the hps in the flowering room. Boy was CD happy she had that 400w hps all to herself for a week!
March 12. Clones showing signs of roots. Chem Dawg is seriously a WEED! Gk is growing spindly with smaller branches and bud sites but she is a hybrid so I guess that is expected.
March 15. CD flowering for a week now. Starting to show signs of flowering. Theres a few pics down there of her beginning to switch cycles. Later I read about giving them 24-26 hour of darkness before 12/12 to give them the unmistakable sign to start flowering. This would have been great to know ahead of time because my temps get kind of high during the day now so it would have been a great opportunity to switch the 12 hours of on time to during night when its much colder. Oh well ill do this next crop.
I also had a couple extra 4 gallon pots so I decided to try an experiment and filled them with dirt and put Purple kush 1 and Bubba kush 1 stacked on top of these 4 gal pots just to see if using bigger containers would change the yield or bud size. I also forgot to mention that I cut the fox farm ocean forest with steer manure about ¼ steer manure ¾ ffof. Seems to be working fine so far even though I took a disregaurd for reading now much N and different substances it has in it. I read somewhere that it is fairly neutral with a little bit of N. well see how it works/tastes too!.
March 16. CD showing good signs of budding. Wrapped the whole plant with twine spiraled down from top to bottom to keep it tighter and reduce the footprint of the canopy. Seemed to work well keeping the branches up toward the lights. After I finished cloning I took the 23w CFL and stuck it on top of her main cola because I have the other lights just below her main cola.
CD 55
PK1 24.5
PK2 21
GK 27
BK1 25
BK2 24
GDP1 21
GDP2 19
Decided not to clone GDP. These plant were stressed the most I think and has been growing slower than the rest of the plants. Smoked some of this from a dispensary and it was decent. Ive seen real high grade $60 per 1/8 gdp and real low grade $30 per 1/8 stuff.
Bubba kush looks like it would be a real good candidate for lollipopping. Shoots grow out from bottom and seem to reach the top cola quickly. If this excess energy were to be reverted to the tops the buds would swell massively! At two weeks of flowering I cut the lower 4-6 branches off each plant because it wasnt going to get any light and to focus more of the energy into the top branches.
Maximum and minimum Humidity/temp levels in flowering tent are 86 degrees F with 25% humidity during the day and 61 degrees F with 72% humidity at night. This is nooo good. But Ive heard from local growers that this is no big deal. Of course I like to try to get optimal conditions. Since moving the grow tent near the windows it has gotten better.
March 20. I start thinking about harvesting/drying and how much its going to wreak in my apartment. Ive already received complaints from smoke smell. I dont think the plants smell yet really. In my flower tent Ive got a 4 inline fan with a carbon filter on the end of it I purchased from HTG supply. Ive got it in the upper corner of the tent held up by bungie cord and straps which seem to work very well. You can do anything with enough bungie cords! You can probably see it in the picture. Ive also took the small 6 clip on fan, that I had that has completely broken from multiple descents, apart installed it in one of the 6 ceiling vents and leave it on high. I originally had a vent blowing in from the window with another fan and used insulated ducting to duct fresh air into the top and had the new ceiling fan I installed disperse the air. It was blowing too hard on one spot so I built a small v shaped cardboard flange to tie up under it to disperse the air. Ive got a squirrel cage fan sucking in air from the window in a bottom 4 intake vent. Ive got controller for both exhaust and intake. Both are speedsters.
I started sketching designs for a drybox using a small cabinet I found on the sidewalk. Then I start to realize that it probably will cost the same amount to build one than to just buy another tent. My mind is made up when that guy who got arrested that I mentioned earlier, starting selling all his gear off to pay for his lawyer. This guy had gear for days. You can imagine the type of shit he had growing over 300 plants hydro. So i offered him $60 for his 4x4 tent and $50 for 2 cage fans $30 for a carbon filter for the drytent.
I also scored a 250watt mh lumatek full setup for around $140 and stuck that inside the flowering tent as well. Even thinking about buying another one and offering a little less.
March 24. Left the 23w CFL on the main cola of chem dawg on all night by accident. I had gotten lazy and hadnt put it on the timer yet because my power strip was all the way in the back of my grow tent so it was hard to reach and I already had used about 6 extension cords in various places for lights and fans. Posted on forum people seemed to do this all the time I guess it should be fine. Ive heard that some strains have the tendency to hermie if stressed too much or if you grow from seed. Luckily these are good genetics and clones from mature females.
March 25. GK showing first signs of buds. Rest of plants have been flowering for 1 week. CD buds are becoming predominant after 2 weeks. Heavy pistils with thick calyxes and thick fuzzy stomata.
March 29. DRYTENT underway! New 4x4x 5.5 tent purchased with tons of other various equipment. Clones are healthy looking very nice. Ive got them inside the drytent until harvest them I will move them into flower tent and use this as the dry tent. Ive got a 4 squirrel cage fan as an exhaust in the ceiling and a small clip on fan inside blowing air around. Also a small box fan Ive built with ducting blowing a bit of fresh air into the tent but not much. It gets really hot in there at night too. Ive seen it hit 95 degrees not much dmg to plants with exception to the purple kush plants wilted a tiny bit. Note that the soil is wet. I tried to use bending training on one of the purple kush and I think either it was too young or it just doesnt like this kind of treatment. Wasnt growing much and looked stunted. I wanted to try to grow the plant horizontally but it didnt take kindly to it. So I took the weight off and am letting it grow freely. I topped two of the biggest chem dawg plants to both even the canopy and to try a type of FIM topping technique. Seemed to have worked now the two lower branches from where I topped are prominent. I Might do this to a couple more depending on what the cola looks like on the first chem dawg that is flowering.
March 31. Dumped a packet of activated yeast into a bottle of hot sugar water and poked a few holes in the cap and stuck it in the tent to see what happens. I Noticed the temperature climbing. Ive read before that when using co2 its ok to have higher temps so I wasnt alarmed. Im only wondering if I should have poked just 1 hole instead of 4 in the cap to let the co2 out slower. The clone/dry tent gets pretty hot at night around 90 degrees F and it has been really cold outside too. Might have to switch it around and have the squirrel fan as an intake from the fresh air of the window and have the other fans as exhaust.
So this is what Ive done so far up until now. My plants have been flowering for 3.5 weeks and buds are looking good. Check out some pics below of the progress. Any input is appreciated!! Ill be adding more info soon for sure! And more pics of each week of budding up until harvest/drying! Hope anyone can learn from my mistakes and successes!
Not bad for someone who smokes everyday right?
For those of you who just want the quick facts and dont want to sift through all the details here you go. The rest of you skip these facts and read on.
Two 4x4x 6 grow tents one for vegging and one for flowering.
Im using 23w CFL and 15w tube fluoro for clones.
A 400w MH for vegging
400w HPS with a 250MH and 23w CFL for flowering
Vegged for 8 weeks flowering for 3.5 so far
4 fan carbon filter combo for flowering with 4 squirrel intake and oscillating fan on the ceiling. All fans have speedster speed control dials.
4 squirrel fan for vegging exhaust and a 6 can filter for drying time. Clip fan blowing inside
Fox Farm Ocean Forest Soil with Fox Farm Nutrients Trio (big bloom, tiger bloom , grow big)
Growing 2 bubba kush, 2 purple kush, 1 green kush, 2 gran daddy purp, 1 chem dawg
I am currently 3.5 weeks into flowering cycle so this is my progress up tll now. Stay tuned after for updates on flower maturing/harvest. Its a pretty extensive journal kudos to anyone who takes time to read it all! Feel free to skip through it as you please. Ill be editing it and adding more info as I remember things and as time goes on. Also feel free to ask me any questions id be happy go into detail any of the steps Ive taken.
This is my first indoor legal medical grow so I hope this will help anyone else who is thinking about starting to grow on a small scale. All my activities are LEGAL I refuse to break the law as I've learned my lesson in the past from my mistakes and others. So hopefully no one takes this information and tries to use it for evil! Just to put it into perspective the guy I got all my discount gear from a guy who got busted because he got too greedy. Almost 300 plants indoors in a two bedroom. Some things just make sense not to do. the worst part of it is that he never would have gotten busted if he hadn't gotten really drunk and ended up back at his place for the cops to show up and give him a DWI and then give them a reason to bust him for all his plants. I always heard of busts out there but never knew anyone but now i know its a very real thing. So don't get greedy and learn from this guy!
But on a more happier note just keep things legal and you have nothing to worry about! ok lets go on with my progress!
Jan 8, 2010 medical certified
Jan 9. bought two clones from a local dispensary. One Purple Kush and one Chem dawg. Their clones are usually $15 each but for some reason the Chem dawg was on sale for $13. the guy at the counter said it was because it had grown too much? I wasn't really sure what he meant so i just shrugged it off and took the deal. I would think that an older clone would be better because less time for it to grow? right? I duno not sure why it was on sale but turns out that this became my favorite plant.
Jan 10. threw a couple small 13w CFLs next to the clones and they seem to be doing ok while i tried to find a decent priced light on craigs list.
Jan 11. bought a bubba kush clone and a grand daddy purp clone for $15 each
Jan 13. bought 4 more clones purple kush, bubba kush, green kush and grand daddy purp.
so at this point i have
2x bubba kush
2x purple kush
1x chem dawg
1x green kush
2x grand daddy purp
8 total
All clones start on a 24 hour light cycle then once transplanted change to 18/6
Jan 16. started to notice roots on the first chem dawg I bought. from now on im going to refer to each plant in order in which i bought them. so in this case i transplanted CD1 and PK1 in Fox Farm Ocean forest. i added a bit of vermiculite thinking it was perilite. I think i added too much because drainage was poor. I used 1.5gallon brown plastic pots. In the future Ill use smaller pots because they are easier to control and develop better root systems for transplanting.
Jan 17. gave the new transplanted clones a little bit of vitamin B solution to ease transplant shock. little did I know that I was using way too much and that it was lowering the ph of the water I was giving them by 3-4 points
Jan 18. Transplanted the rest of the clones and bought a 400w HPS light off craigs list for $120.00 had only been used for one cycle (at least that's what they said) but seems to be working fine so far.
This is when I started to have some troubles. I started in a closet which was about 4'x2'x10' with a curtain over the door. It started to get real hot in the closet and the only thermometer i had was this cheap little digital thermometer and it began reading into the 90s! (Fahrenheit) I hadn't realized at this point how important airflow was. I just had one clip on fan blowing down at them and the bottom of the curtain open about a foot and a half to let air passively in. well one night I added an extra curtain because the light started to really bother me while I was sleeping. Man was this was a mistake. it had only been like 6-8 hours but when I opened that curtain in the morning my heart sank. the plants were drying up!! Also the soil was still wet but the plants were drying so I figured it might have something to do with the soil so I transplanted them will no vermiculite and just used the fox farm ocean forest. I thought then it might have something to do with the tap water i have been using so I stopped using that and started buying distilled water.
Jan 20. started the plants on an 18/6 cycle. I start to check them a lot because I am nervous that they received too much shock the first picture is of Chem Dawg when I started to notice it wilting and couldnt figure out why cause at this point I added a fan on the bottom blowing fresh air in and clipped a 6 fan on the side of the door with the curtain supporting it with two nails for exhaust. The rest of the pictures are purple, bubba and gdp. One of the GDPs I had written off as dead so I stopped watering it and put it aside away from the light. The picture of the one that is tiny and completely dry is this one. Well one time I was watering the rest of the plants and I had a lil extra water so I poured it into the dead plants pot. Well low and behold the next day it starts to show new growth! I thought it was dead! Plants are crazy and dont ever give up on your babies!!
Jan 24. I received my ph testing kit in the mail. The first one I bought was a lusterleaf 4 in 1 tester. It had 3 long prongs coming out of the bottom for sticking into the soil for readings. I could read moisture, fertility, light, and PH. So I tested the ph of my water and it seemed to be fine. I tested the soil for moisture and it seemed to be fine. I struggled with moving my light up and down trying to figure out the optimal height. I figured out that 18-24 is good for small plants. In my closet there is one of those poles going across for hanging cloths and such and this became a perfect anchor for my light. I was able to twists the pole within its sockets so I devised a way to lower and raise the light. I took 2 shoe laces and wrapped them perfectly around the pole so that they were completely flat on each wrap overlapping each wrap. This is so it wouldnt get tangled and I figured it would also make it lower and raise easier. So now by wrapping the entire laces around and then tying them to the light, by twisting the pole towards myself the light would lower. When I twist it away from myself the light would raise. The only trick is getting both sides the exact same length so that both side would lower and raise evenly with a twist of the pole. I hope my explanation of it is good because I took them down and hadnt taken any photos. This kind of only applies to my situation but if anyone else has these cheap poles in their closet maybe they can utilize the same strategy. It definitely beats paying $15 for yoyos or using heavy chains. I plan on making a rack like this in the future because its the easiest way Ive seen to lower and raise lights besides electronically.
Jan 28. Roots are starting to show in chem dawgs new pot. Man this thing grows fast! So I then replanted it in a new 3gallon pot.
Feb 3. I took measurements of how tall each plant was
CD 110 with 11 nodes and 4.5 fan leaves. Started to make me nervous because it was only producing 3 leaves on each branch. I thought maybe I had shocked it too much that it mutated or something
PK1 12 with 9 nodes 5 fan leaves
PK2 5.5 with 5 nodes 2 fan leaves
GK 6.5 with 5 nodes 2.3 fan leaves
BK1 7.5 with 8 nodes 3.3 fan leaves
BK2 6.5 with 4.5 main nodes 2.2 fan leaves
GDP1 ITS ALIVE! Presumed dead but sprang back to life. 4.5 with 4 nodes 1.3 fan leaves
GDP2 8 with 9 nodes 2.7 fan leaves
All plants received heat stress. The older plants more than the newer ones. They were also being poisoned by my vitamin B solution making the PH waay too acidic. So I stopped using this stuff altogether until I got a ph up and down kit. This seemed to be the cause of the sickness that my plants had. I made a post on this forum trying to figure out what was wrong because I thought I had all the factors taken care of with airflow, temp, humidity, light and such.
At this point I was making plans for getting a grow tent setup in my room so that I could get my closet space back. I started sketching designs for where to place fans and filters and different designs because the layout of my room isnt very convenient for a 4x4x7 tent.
I started to speculate how long it was going to take me to get a finished product and also how long it would take me to produce each perpetual crop. I figured aproxx 2-3 weeks as clones then 6 weeks under veg then 6 weeks under flowering then drying for 2-3 weeks. So I figured it would take me around 4 months to get the first crop and then I could perpetuate a crop every 6-8 weeks after that. So I began plans for a flowering room also. I used my closet for the time being but it wasnt very convenient.
Feb 4, received hygrometer I ordered in the mail along with a few other things I cant think of off the top of my head. Below I have a list of everything Ive purchased and roughly what it cost me. The humidity in the closet is 49% average at this point. Temps range between 85 degrees F in the day and around 68 F at night. Ive always been nervous that this is a bad swing in temperature and also nervous about mold but the plants seem to be doing ok. Chem Dawg starts to take off like crazy and I struggle with stacking the rest of the plants on different kinds of boxes so that they can be level with chem dawgs canopy and receive the same amount of light
Feb 8. 4x4x7 tent that I ordered from ebay arrived. This thing was nicer than I thought it was going to be. Dont have anywhere to put it yet so it sits in my living room empty for about a week. I dont want to move my plants into their yet anyway until I get another 400w light to put in the tent to make it a flowering room. So I convinced my buddy id hook him up with a cut of the crop if he ordered a 400w light to flower with. So he ordered a 400w switchable hps/mh system from hydrofarm. Well it turns out we kind of got screwed over because the one in the picture had the reflector and ballast separated so that you can have the ballast sitting outside the grow room. But for some godforsaken reason they sent us one with the ballast built into the reflector making my closet extremely hot! So we bit the bullet and switched the 400w MH with the 400w HPS in the vegging room so that I could use the hps for flowering.
Feb 9. CD and PK1 are one month old. By this time I start to see big pre-flowers starting to form and I start thinking to myself ut oh did I stress them enough to turn them into hermaphrodites? So I post some pics ( the next set of pics you see below) I can just remember being a kid planting a few seeds I found in a bag and then nurturing plants just to see them be males and produce these kind of sacs that almost resemble the female pre-flowers when they first form. To my relief they are just female pre-flowers and nothing to worry about.
Feb 13. received the Fox Farm trio I ordered in the mail. Grow Big, Big Bloom, and Tiger Bloom. Started feeding according to the ff schedule. The rest of the clones are 1 month old
Feb 15. Cut 7 clones. Ive had 100% success so far (knock on wood) using the method I used for cloning. 3 CD, 2 PK, 2 BK. I wanted to cut 12 dont ask me why I didnt cut more, Im not sure. I guess I wanted to break the clones up into 6 clones that are 3 weeks old and 6 clones that I just rockwooled so that I would harvest 6 plants one week and then 3 weeks later harvest the other 6 plants. Well I hadnt thought this through and in the course of the next week or two cut 6 more clones. Chem dawg was fast growing and I read that it has a high yield so I decided to make half of my next crop chem dawg and a few other kush for good measure. Well I gave 2 chem dawg plants away cuz I figured I could control 10 plants easier in my limited space. And I trashed one of the bubba kush plants because I didnt think I was going to be able to fit it in. looking back I wish I had cut 2 bubba kush and 1 purple kush instead of the 2 pk and 1 bk. And next time I am going to cut them all at once so that I dont have an uneven canopy. Ive discovered that its not easy with one light unless you have a table or something sturdy to stack them on. I dont recommend using boxes like I did but it was cheap and I had to do something with all the boxes Ive been getting from the gear Ive been ordering. And I hate breaking down boxes!
So now I have 1 bubba kush, 2 purple kush, 1 green kush and 6 chem dawgs. I have them in a humidity dome on top of two trays, one with holes in it sitting on top of one without holes for easy drainage and watering. Then I have the trays sitting on a seedling heat mat. On top is a 15 watt tube aquarium flouro and a 23 watt cfl in a small desk lamp cylindrical reflector pointing down at the dome. This seemed to work perfectly although in the future I will experiment with more powerful CFLs to reduce rooting time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Feb 22. replanted original plants into 5 gallon pots. Waiting for other light to arrive in the mail so that I can start the flowering cycle. Looking back I should have started the cycle a week or two earlier. The main reason I did this is because Chem dawg was so huge. Like 2-3 times bigger than the rest of the plants. So I figured I was going to only start flowering chem dawg and let the rest veg out more. Well I flowered chem dawg a week in advance when the light arrived and waited on the rest to see if I was going to get any more growth. It didnt so I ended up flowering the rest as well. But this comes later
Feb 23. bought a cheap $5 humidifier from the thrift store. This thing is from like 1970. started using it but found out that humidifiers make the place STINK way more. I Had some neighbors complaining of the smell. Oops
stopped using humidifier.CD 36 with 19 nodes and 5.1 fan leaves. Started showing 5-7 finger fan leaves you can see in the pictures that chem dawg grew insanely faster than the rest of the plants. Its already starting to show roots inside the 5 gallon pot.
CD grew 1 2 in 20 days. Considering the early heat stroke.
PK1 16 with 14 nodes 5 3/8 fan leaves. These leaves smell more than any of the other plants. Very bushy and many yield sites.
PK2 13 2/8 with 5 nodes 5 1/8 fan leaves
GK 16.5 with 14 nodes 4 1/8 fan leaves. GK looks more like CD than the rest of the plants. Probably because I think its a hybrid cross with indica/sativa. I believe that chem dawg is a sativa but im not sure. Could be a hybrid. Supposedly this is a cross between green crack and some kind of kush. Maybe purple kush?
BK1 17 with 13 nodes 5 fan leaves. Grows very sparse. Not many bud locations but the ones they are are huge branches that look like they could produce some decent size buds. Ive heard that these plants are low yielding but it happens to be one of my favorite smokes so I had to grow it.
BK2 15 with 12 nodes 4.5 fan leaves
GDP1 10.5 with 13 nodes 3 3/8 fan leaves VERY resilient plant. I had thought this thing was dead. I put it aside and stopped watering it for a week and just let it sit there but a stroke of luck I decided to poor water on it for some reason and low and behold it resurrected itself. Shows that you should never give up hope. life was lying there waiting for the right conditions and all it needed was a little water.
GDP2 14 with 15 nodes 2 3/8 fan leaves
March 2. new CD clone planted new BK clone planted
March 3. Clones clipped 1 green kush and 5 chem dawg. You can see in the picture the new clones ive clipped. I used rockwool cubes soaked them in 5ph water for 24 hours and then used clonex root gel for the stems. I slice the bottom of the stem in half and then I scrape the sides with the razor to activate some of the rooting hormones. I give them a tiny squeeze to get a bit of excess water out of the cubes, then I put them in a humidity dome with a seedling heat mat underneath. 15 watt tub aquarium fluoro and started with a 13w cfl but then found a 23w cfl bulb in my closet ceiling so im using that. Seems to be working great. I wonder if more light would speed up the process. Im going to try a 43w daylight bulbs in the next one I think
March 4. Momma CD is HUGE! Definitely going to keep this strain around. Smoked some from a dispensary and it was delicious! Planted 2 new clones in small 1.5 gallon pots. 1 CD and 1 BK
CD has been vegging for 8 ½ weeks. Note that CD was older than the other plants by about a week.
March 6. CD and PK1 are 8 weeks old. PK had a disaster today. I had a fan clipped to my door blowing exhaust out. Well the plastic around the metal clip on the fan broke but the fan was still held onto the door by the curtain and the spring inside the clip. So I walk in to find my beautiful purple kush plant on its side spilled out all over the inside of my closet. The side it fell on broke a giant branch off the middle. So I stuffed it back in and threw some more soil in there and hoped for the best. She fully recovered! With a missing limb of course! Still not sure how it fell over in the first place though. It made sense that the clip on the fan would have broke and the fan would have fallen and hit the pot and maybe knocked it over but the weird part was that the fan was still held up pretty good on the door by the remainder of the clip and the curtain I had nailed around it. Still beats me to this day
March 7. Getting very crowded in the closet. Running out of space. Temp reached 68 degrees F at night. I bought a timex indoor outdoor hygrometer to monitor temps and humidity. I try to balance it the best I can by moving the fans in various places and adjusting the light and airflow into the room.
March 8. 400w metal halide came in the mail. Threw it into the new tent I got and monitored temps/humidity for a day. Seemed ok!
March 9. Started flowering Chem Dawg. Woot! Let it begin! Switched the hps I was using for vegging with the new mh I got and put the hps in the flowering room. Boy was CD happy she had that 400w hps all to herself for a week!
March 12. Clones showing signs of roots. Chem Dawg is seriously a WEED! Gk is growing spindly with smaller branches and bud sites but she is a hybrid so I guess that is expected.
March 15. CD flowering for a week now. Starting to show signs of flowering. Theres a few pics down there of her beginning to switch cycles. Later I read about giving them 24-26 hour of darkness before 12/12 to give them the unmistakable sign to start flowering. This would have been great to know ahead of time because my temps get kind of high during the day now so it would have been a great opportunity to switch the 12 hours of on time to during night when its much colder. Oh well ill do this next crop.
I also had a couple extra 4 gallon pots so I decided to try an experiment and filled them with dirt and put Purple kush 1 and Bubba kush 1 stacked on top of these 4 gal pots just to see if using bigger containers would change the yield or bud size. I also forgot to mention that I cut the fox farm ocean forest with steer manure about ¼ steer manure ¾ ffof. Seems to be working fine so far even though I took a disregaurd for reading now much N and different substances it has in it. I read somewhere that it is fairly neutral with a little bit of N. well see how it works/tastes too!.
March 16. CD showing good signs of budding. Wrapped the whole plant with twine spiraled down from top to bottom to keep it tighter and reduce the footprint of the canopy. Seemed to work well keeping the branches up toward the lights. After I finished cloning I took the 23w CFL and stuck it on top of her main cola because I have the other lights just below her main cola.
CD 55
PK1 24.5
PK2 21
GK 27
BK1 25
BK2 24
GDP1 21
GDP2 19
Decided not to clone GDP. These plant were stressed the most I think and has been growing slower than the rest of the plants. Smoked some of this from a dispensary and it was decent. Ive seen real high grade $60 per 1/8 gdp and real low grade $30 per 1/8 stuff.
Bubba kush looks like it would be a real good candidate for lollipopping. Shoots grow out from bottom and seem to reach the top cola quickly. If this excess energy were to be reverted to the tops the buds would swell massively! At two weeks of flowering I cut the lower 4-6 branches off each plant because it wasnt going to get any light and to focus more of the energy into the top branches.
Maximum and minimum Humidity/temp levels in flowering tent are 86 degrees F with 25% humidity during the day and 61 degrees F with 72% humidity at night. This is nooo good. But Ive heard from local growers that this is no big deal. Of course I like to try to get optimal conditions. Since moving the grow tent near the windows it has gotten better.
March 20. I start thinking about harvesting/drying and how much its going to wreak in my apartment. Ive already received complaints from smoke smell. I dont think the plants smell yet really. In my flower tent Ive got a 4 inline fan with a carbon filter on the end of it I purchased from HTG supply. Ive got it in the upper corner of the tent held up by bungie cord and straps which seem to work very well. You can do anything with enough bungie cords! You can probably see it in the picture. Ive also took the small 6 clip on fan, that I had that has completely broken from multiple descents, apart installed it in one of the 6 ceiling vents and leave it on high. I originally had a vent blowing in from the window with another fan and used insulated ducting to duct fresh air into the top and had the new ceiling fan I installed disperse the air. It was blowing too hard on one spot so I built a small v shaped cardboard flange to tie up under it to disperse the air. Ive got a squirrel cage fan sucking in air from the window in a bottom 4 intake vent. Ive got controller for both exhaust and intake. Both are speedsters.
I started sketching designs for a drybox using a small cabinet I found on the sidewalk. Then I start to realize that it probably will cost the same amount to build one than to just buy another tent. My mind is made up when that guy who got arrested that I mentioned earlier, starting selling all his gear off to pay for his lawyer. This guy had gear for days. You can imagine the type of shit he had growing over 300 plants hydro. So i offered him $60 for his 4x4 tent and $50 for 2 cage fans $30 for a carbon filter for the drytent.
I also scored a 250watt mh lumatek full setup for around $140 and stuck that inside the flowering tent as well. Even thinking about buying another one and offering a little less.
March 24. Left the 23w CFL on the main cola of chem dawg on all night by accident. I had gotten lazy and hadnt put it on the timer yet because my power strip was all the way in the back of my grow tent so it was hard to reach and I already had used about 6 extension cords in various places for lights and fans. Posted on forum people seemed to do this all the time I guess it should be fine. Ive heard that some strains have the tendency to hermie if stressed too much or if you grow from seed. Luckily these are good genetics and clones from mature females.
March 25. GK showing first signs of buds. Rest of plants have been flowering for 1 week. CD buds are becoming predominant after 2 weeks. Heavy pistils with thick calyxes and thick fuzzy stomata.
March 29. DRYTENT underway! New 4x4x 5.5 tent purchased with tons of other various equipment. Clones are healthy looking very nice. Ive got them inside the drytent until harvest them I will move them into flower tent and use this as the dry tent. Ive got a 4 squirrel cage fan as an exhaust in the ceiling and a small clip on fan inside blowing air around. Also a small box fan Ive built with ducting blowing a bit of fresh air into the tent but not much. It gets really hot in there at night too. Ive seen it hit 95 degrees not much dmg to plants with exception to the purple kush plants wilted a tiny bit. Note that the soil is wet. I tried to use bending training on one of the purple kush and I think either it was too young or it just doesnt like this kind of treatment. Wasnt growing much and looked stunted. I wanted to try to grow the plant horizontally but it didnt take kindly to it. So I took the weight off and am letting it grow freely. I topped two of the biggest chem dawg plants to both even the canopy and to try a type of FIM topping technique. Seemed to have worked now the two lower branches from where I topped are prominent. I Might do this to a couple more depending on what the cola looks like on the first chem dawg that is flowering.
March 31. Dumped a packet of activated yeast into a bottle of hot sugar water and poked a few holes in the cap and stuck it in the tent to see what happens. I Noticed the temperature climbing. Ive read before that when using co2 its ok to have higher temps so I wasnt alarmed. Im only wondering if I should have poked just 1 hole instead of 4 in the cap to let the co2 out slower. The clone/dry tent gets pretty hot at night around 90 degrees F and it has been really cold outside too. Might have to switch it around and have the squirrel fan as an intake from the fresh air of the window and have the other fans as exhaust.
So this is what Ive done so far up until now. My plants have been flowering for 3.5 weeks and buds are looking good. Check out some pics below of the progress. Any input is appreciated!! Ill be adding more info soon for sure! And more pics of each week of budding up until harvest/drying! Hope anyone can learn from my mistakes and successes!
Not bad for someone who smokes everyday right?
Plants look fabulous!
