First serious grow! LEC 315 in a 4x4 tent (Philips elite agro CMH)

borbor said:

I'm sure I'll be bored later tonight and post another round of pics, but I just got a quick question

I've got two thermometers right next to each other, one is the little $10 acurite hygrometer from amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013BKDO8/ref=pe_385040_127541860_TE_dp_1
the other was a little more expensive, from sunleaves, it has a remote probe
http://www.amazon.com/Sunleaves-Digital-Min-Max-Hygro-Thermometer/dp/B004DKL62Y

So I keep the acurite thermometer and the probe for the sunleaves thermometer within inches of each other, usually with the acurite thermometer facing either forward or up (I figure the light may heat the black casing on the back). At this moment the sunleaves thermometer reads 78 degrees, the acurite thermometer reads 84 degrees, and I've seen it vary a lot more than that. Sometimes I'm going off the median, sometimes i'm going off the acurite to be on the safe side, and when I'm looking at low temperatures (how cool it gets during lights off) I go off of the sunleaves.

Which one should I trust? am I doing something wrong with the probe? I'm just letting it dangle off the light. Even when I turn the fans off there's a discrepancy

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Difficult to say which one's right, you can get a lot of variation when you move them around the space. I try to find a spot to hang/place them and keep it there for consistency, usually try to place them close to the tops. One thing you could do is test them both outside the tent in a stable environment (hall, bedroom) and see what they both read, could be just placement. The one with the probe looks like it's a secondary probe, try running it without the probe attached and see what your readings are. For temps if you have a furnace you'll have a controller mounted on a wall that will usually show your temps, place both in that area and see which one is closer.

querkle has fat leaves

Midnight Kush- she's been the biggest since the beginning, came home from work just now and she was waving at me with five fingers!

verbal, but non-photographic update- querkle, brazil amazonia, and BARELY starbud are showing one or two symptoms of PH fluctuation (slight tan spots on two querkle leaves and an early starbud leaf, the one fingered serrated leaves on brazil amazonia are twisting)

I'm not very worried about them, just gonna try my best to fix it. my plan right now is to give them distilled water next watering, then really light nutes in distilled water, then half strength nutes in distilled water and we'll see where that takes me.
I want brazil amazonia to live and be a girl- There really aren't any other sativas in there, nothing even close. Sativas actually get me high, indicas get me medicated. Don't get me wrong-there's a reason I ordered an indica showcase-check what time I've made all the posts in this thread so far. They're not all in the morning, afternoon, evening, or late night. They're all over the place because instead of spending my money on proper sleep medication, I'm spending money on tents, lights, fans, soil, nutes, more lights, and so on, so that hopefully in the future, aside from a few nutes and bulbs, I don't have to do either.

here's starbud, she seems very healthy overall to me, though you can see the ph issue I mentioned in the top middle of the pic on the lower leaf.


seems like the ladies are starting to take off now, the blue kush auto really jumped up from how sad her first set of leaves looked. the initial six (top tao, starbud, querkle, midnight kush, and blue kush) will all be three weeks old tomorrow. I greatly underestimated how long the plants would be seedlings for when I started the garden. I'm scheduled to flip to 12/12 on march 10th, so two weeks from now. I'm going to pay extra cash to extend my veg time, because there's no point in growing two autos and four photos in one tent if you're gonna switch to 12/12 right as the autos start to flower. the second pic is blue kush


The top tao auto has been slow as fuck so far. The ends of her leaves are greener than they are toward the middle, just on the lower leaves though, does it seem like PH or nitrogen or something else?


Brazil Amazonia might give me exactly what I was hoping for out of this plant, I definitely want one good sativa as an alternative to the jars of indica I'll hopefully pull down, and she looks like she'll give me that, the leaves at least are much more narrow than on the other plants, and look more sativa than most of my friend's plants. Looks like this new set might even have 7 or nine fingers already as well, on the third node! Also want to try it just because I doubt I'll have had a very similar strain before. Very glad her new growth isn't all twisty and messed up like her first set of leaves.


Here's midnight kush again, showing off her really thick stem, and lush foliage.

Querkle- Still living up to the "slow vegger" reputation. There's the (suspected) PH issue making its appearance again.

Family photo-sorry, no pics of the seedlings til I have stuff to take pictures of!

I typed a whole long thing about this and other stuff last night, but RIU was offline and it got deleted. I just wanted to throw these pictures up, they're not my garden, I took these photos about five months ago, and I wouldn't even call this grower a friend, in fact I wouldn't exactly call him a human being, but... This is a 5x5 tent with the (now out of business) dna lighting tru sun 900 watt cmh in an og hood. He had his hood air cooled, but sealed off from the rest of the tent, where he was using co2, growing in soil. CMH should probably be getting more attention.

speaking of lights, I was at a grow shop browsing and talking to the guy, he's offering to order in a clw solarstorm 440 for me for $700, way more light than I was looking to add, but it seems like a great light, especially with those uvb bulbs. I might do it, kinda doubt it though.

that grow shop (not wtg, a different one) seems like they're hurting a little for business, but every time I go in there the same guy (the only guy I've ever seen there) always basically tells me I'm stupid and upsells me straight out of my price range. I walk into a store asking for supplemental light and this genius names light after light that use more fucking power than my light and fans combined! Upselling is a great skill, but if somebody walks into your store with five hundred dollars, and you spend the whole time trying to convince them to spend seven hundred dollars, then if you are successful they won't spend any dollars, they'll go home.

put some nice looking plant labels in so I don't even need to label pictures online for right now,
Midnight kush still by far the biggest, starbud looks great though, really healthy. Brazil amazonia's newest set of leaves is growing funny, querkle is slow, and all those seedlings look normal to me.

and here's the two autoflowers,
"micron auto tao" from "top tao seeds"

Dinafem's blue kush auto- been keeping an eye on ace yonder's thread, he has one of these going about a month older than mine.


my scheduled flip to 12/12 is march 10th, which is a little disappointing since judging by ace's thread my blue kush auto will probably be throwing preflowers around then, so flipping to 12/12 would just totally take the purpose out of growing an auto.

when I was planning this out, definitely underestimated how long the "seedling" stage really went on for before they started to take off in veg. Gonna see about pushing the 12/12 flip back 10-20 days, as an added bonus I'd have an area 51 led to put next to them for the whole flowering period, which I think I will need in this tent. I've even been considering another LEC or even an LEC 630 for flower, we'll see. right now I'm mostly thinking area 51 rw-150

hairs on the blue kush auto so tiny I can't get them on camera, but she's a girl
and I'm pretty sure the micron auto tao's balls are dropping. good riddance- the description says it's their version of lowryder, so I really wasn't especially excited... a breeder that nobody knows about comes out with nine strains, pretty much all autos and pretty sketchy looking lineages, My intention if the micron auto tao turned out to be a girl was gonna be to make my first batch of canna-oil (done butter before, but wanna get more creative in the kitchen) and if it had actually turned out to be a girl that smelled and tasted good, I would have just given it all to my mom, who likes to smoke high-quality, low-potency weed sometimes, if it was potent I would have just smoked it.

If it wasn't an auto I would keep him alive to make some crosses down the road, but because he has foul intentions with my daughters I gotta kill him in a day or two, after I'm 100% sure about the presence of deez nutz.

brings me to a question about males-IF I kept a male of a photo strain in veg, would there be any chance of pollination or would I be able to collect any pollen from the preflowers?

Top tao must have heard me talkin' shit...

midnight kush- 26 days from seed, five nodes with 6th showing five inches tall, starting to branch out a bit

starbud- 26 days from seed, four nodes, fifth barely showing, five inches tall, I love how healthy her leaves look

querkle- 26 days from seed, 3 nodes with 4th showing, three inches,

brazil amazonia- 26 days from seed, four nodes with 5th showing, three inches

burmese kush -17 days from seed, this is the one I put in a 2 gallon smart pot instead of a 1 gallon.

afghan kush- 17 days from seed

Fool's gold 17 days from seed

micron auto tao- 26 days from seed, does this look like a girl? to me it looks like a male preflower with a pistil coming out of it, herm? throwing male hermie auto pollen all over my tent would be my worst nightmare.

blue kush auto- 26 days from seed, definitely female

Family photo




one of the burmese kush and one of the afghan kush are both lookin' like a week old still, I'm not gonna keep them but I'm going to a friend's house tomorrow, gonna ask him if he wants em before I put them under a 0/0 light cycle. gave nutes today to all the ladies, though the 17 day old ones are still just on canna start.

anybody got an opinion on the micron auto tao sex?

this thread interested me regarding that http://www.420magazine.com/forums/frequently-asked-questions/189263-reverse-hermie-unidentifiable-pre-flowers-opinion.html

borbor said:

anybody got an opinion on the micron auto tao sex?

this thread interested me regarding that http://www.420magazine.com/forums/frequently-asked-questions/189263-reverse-hermie-unidentifiable-pre-flowers-opinion.html

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It does kind of look like that but a bit blurry. Very early yet to worry about pollination, just keep a close eye on it until you can read the sex for sure. Have never seen a male turn female but I suppose it's possible, either way if it's a hermie it's not worth keeping.

GroErr said:

It does kind of look like that but a bit blurry. Very early yet to worry about pollination, just keep a close eye on it until you can read the sex for sure. Have never seen a male turn female but I suppose it's possible, either way if it's a hermie it's not worth keeping.

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for sure, I feel like it might not be worth keeping either way, been thinking about when to flip to 12/12 and all that stuff, I'm thinking I might go off the original plan to flip 7 days from now, I'm sure I'm gonna be able to pull a few zips down. I've spent three times what my car is worth on this, been thinking maybe I should just hurry up and get myself a harvest before spending more money on making my grow ideal.

all this grow equipment so far has come out of my weed budget, which has been extremely frustrating. gotta tip the scales the other way.

lights just came on.
pics of my hairy balls

just did a lil lst on midnight kush and starbud, hope they're both okay, I've done it before, it's just starbud moved a bit, like it might not have had a strong enough foundation under the dirt but I think she's fine, I was careful.

borbor said:

lights just came on.
pics of my hairy balls

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Yeah they sure look like balls, you'll want to keep a close eye on those, I'd cull them and focus on the rest, you have plenty of backup.

borbor said:

for sure, I feel like it might not be worth keeping either way, been thinking about when to flip to 12/12 and all that stuff, I'm thinking I might go off the original plan to flip 7 days from now, I'm sure I'm gonna be able to pull a few zips down. I've spent three times what my car is worth on this, been thinking maybe I should just hurry up and get myself a harvest before spending more money on making my grow ideal.

all this grow equipment so far has come out of my weed budget, which has been extremely frustrating. gotta tip the scales the other way.

Click to expand...

They're looking a little early for flip but you have a lot of plants for a 4x4 so if they grow well you could be ready in a week to 10 days. You're better to look at the space and figure out how many and what size you'll need to fill it (after stretch) from a yield standpoint, an extra week veg can make a big difference in final yield, flowering time remains constant so it's only an extra week overall. Cheers.

borbor said:

for sure, I feel like it might not be worth keeping either way, been thinking about when to flip to 12/12 and all that stuff, I'm thinking I might go off the original plan to flip 7 days from now, I'm sure I'm gonna be able to pull a few zips down. I've spent three times what my car is worth on this, been thinking maybe I should just hurry up and get myself a harvest before spending more money on making my grow ideal.

all this grow equipment so far has come out of my weed budget, which has been extremely frustrating. gotta tip the scales the other way.

Click to expand...

I had 3 look just like that and pulled em!

GroErr said:

They're looking a little early for flip but you have a lot of plants for a 4x4 so if they grow well you could be ready in a week to 10 days. You're better to look at the space and figure out how many and what size you'll need to fill it (after stretch) from a yield standpoint, an extra week veg can make a big difference in final yield, flowering time remains constant so it's only an extra week overall. Cheers.

Click to expand...

yeah, they're definitely small right now, ideally I'd like to see alternating nodes before flipping them, I guess only time can really tell, I can only plan so much

I wish there was a thread for questions on CMH, I think I might have just had an amazing idea for growers on a budget

I've been thinking a lot lately about the best secondary light to add to the tent for flowering. I know I've said a lot about my plans to get some leds in the future (the current plan, subject to change, is to pre-order two rw-75s tomorrow), but it ain't over til the money's spent, and I just got it. one of my ideas was to get a 250 hps bulb and ballast and a cool tube, would have been easy to rig up a little booster fan and in/out ducting to keep any heat from impacting the grow, but for the bulb/ballast/reflector price I'm looking at the same coverage with LED.

EXCEPT that I just happened to come across this bulb
http://www.greners.com/i/grow-lights/hid-bulbs/wattage/250-watts/Philips_250w_MH_Conversion_Lamp.html

looks pretty sweet! I know conversion bulbs aren't the most efficient, but if you put that inside one of these-
http://growershouse.com/6-cool-tube
with one of these-
http://growershouse.com/phantom-250w-digital-ballast-120-240v

then you have a cmh grow light good for veg and flower for $250 that's 80% the wattage, about 60% the lumens and half the price?