2nd grow attempt

so I tried a grow once before, only with one plant and some cheap lighting equipment. After letting it veg for too long, it turned out male -_-
So now I'm on my second attempt, two random bag seeds again, and 2 jack herers feminized. Didn't get my jacks in for a while and was tired of waiting, so I started the random bag seed 3 weeks earlier than the jacks. SO the jacks are beginning week 3 from sprout and the others are starting week 6 from sprout.

My lighting equipment this time around:
4 ft 4 tube CFL HO T5, each tube 54 watts.
Using all 6500k for veg, and will get the 2700s for flowering, or slightly lower I think my shop offers. For a while to try and jump start the jacks I also had two 5000k 23 watt cfls with clamp reflectors around the jacks

Training I've used so far:
None for the jacks yet, though planning to top soon (1st pic)
My girls with the head start, both plants have been topped twice trying to get that 4 main colas thing, however I probably topped the second time too early. I will wait longer for the second topping of the jacks whenever that time comes around. It also doesn't even seem like I've gotten 4 colas on the topped plants, it seems they've each developed 8 colas? For one of them, I've super cropped. The other I've been tying down as tops got too close to the fixture. I now have 6 of the 8 tops tied down. On the plant that I've super cropped, I actually just tied two of the tops down today in attempt to get more light on the inner center of the plant since it's gotten so bushy due to my early topping. The last two pics I've included are from a week ago before tying down the 4 additional limbs to make 6 tied down, which is shown in the second picture.

Nutes?
Only nutes i have is what was given to me, which is a granular 20-20-20 that I mix with water, and then an organic fish fertilizer that I think is only like 5-1-1. Past week I've been giving Them all a lot of the fish fertilizer as it's organic I'm feeling fearless of burning. Today however I gave a little of the 20-20-20 to the big girls.

The potting mix I have I've been wondering if I didn't do enough research on prior to. I just had bought my mix in bulk, and for ingredients it just lists pasteurized compost, bark, and seaweed. The bark is what I'm worried about, since planting I have found somewhere online mentioning bark as not good for growing marijuana, as it absorbs a lot of the nitrogen supply before the plants can. That's why I was trying to amp up the fish fert hoping to accommodate. I've heard it can be natural for the lowest leaves to yellow as the plant is focusing energy on the rest of the plant, but It kills me to accept that also why I started giving a lot of fish fert. Have a pic included of the yellowing pair of leaves on my LST plant. Should I prune them away or leave them be?
Any comments at all would be greatly appreciated, advice even more as I always love to learn.

P.s. When I get around to topping the jacks, what do y'all think about giving the toppings to a friend to root/clone outdoors? Will it matter that the clones will be receiving drastically less light outdoors than under my fixture?
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You need to read a book called Teaming with Microbes and if you're low on funds just find it by torrent. You don't have to grow organically but you should make a choice and either use chemical salts or organics but not both. That book opened my eyes to growing organically. Reason I know you don't understand this; your 20-20-20 chemical fertilizers tell me so. But anyway, organic soil needs to be built and allowed to compost for a couple months anyway. But honestly if my microbes die I will switch to chem salts immediately, don't get me wrong. I am 100% chemical fertz on 4 of my huge flowering plants in organic soil right now, I am fucking it up because I have years of experience in hydro but I am trying to learn organic soil. But if your organics fail never be afraid to give your plants what they need.

Plant topping looks great. It isn't easy to get 4 main colas in one whack so just finesse until they are how you would like. You can take that leaf in veg it doesn't matter to much as long as you aren't chopping on it regularly and/or never take more than 20% of the plant. Cloning plant tops is great they will root the quickest in my experience. I don't know if your friend has enough light but one way to tell is try to grow there. Your plants look healthy by the way I will try to follow along in your journal.

Alright so the day after my initial post, I topped my jacks. Two days later today, I've transplanted the jacks from the 1 gallon pots to my 5 gallon buckets. I saw somewhere about the proper times to transplant being from 1's to 3's and then 5's but I'm just skipping the 3's. Raised my lights today since the 5 gallons add some height. Tomorrow I will break out my 23watt cfls with clamp reflectors again in case it seems my t5 is too far now from the big girls.

Looking great so far dude, some of those leaves on the bag seed plants are huge, they looking very healthy so far. Good luck with your grow, I will look forward to seeing your results!

Looks good man, do the T5 produce much heat ?

714steadyeddie said:

Looks good man, do the T5 produce much heat ?

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If I put my hand under it I can feel some warmth but nothing much more than that, but I haven't tried any other CFL system or in general even hps or led so I can't really compare

Tokes_for_Blokes said:

If I put my hand under it I can feel some warmth but nothing much more than that, but I haven't tried any other CFL system or in general even hps or led so I can't really compare

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Do you use an inline fan at all?

714steadyeddie said:

Looks good man, do the T5 produce much heat ?

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I am using a 4 ft 6 bulb T5 fixture in my veg room. It produces much more heat than I would have guessed. As the bulbs are 54w each, the fixture is 324w and therefore roughly half the wattage of my 600w HPS. I would estimate the total heat produced is roughly half that from my HPS, so therefore is comparable per w in heat production.

However, this heat emanates from 6 bulbs rather than one, and these bulbs are 4ft long rather than 10 inch. Therefore the source of the heat is much more spread out. I can drop my T5 to within 2 inches of my canopy with no fan or extraction without any scorching issues. The T5 fixture won't scorch your plants but will raise the temp of your room.

On a side note, the T5 produce very close internodal stacking, perfect for cramming more potential bud sites into the same area before you switch to flower. If you want to see how bushy clones get under T5, check out my current grow. Hope this helps.

chronicboomz said:

I am using a 4 ft 6 bulb T5 fixture in my veg room. It produces much more heat than I would have guessed. As the bulbs are 54w each, the fixture is 324w and therefore roughly half the wattage of my 600w HPS. I would estimate the total heat produced is roughly half that from my HPS, so therefore is comparable per w in heat production.

However, this heat emanates from 6 bulbs rather than one, and these bulbs are 4ft long rather than 10 inch. Therefore the source of the heat is much more spread out. I can drop my T5 to within 2 inches of my canopy with no fan or extraction without any scorching issues. The T5 fixture won't scorch your plants but will raise the temp of your room.

On a side note, the T5 produce very close internodal stacking, perfect for cramming more potential bud sites into the same area before you switch to flower. If you want to see how bushy clones get under T5, check out my current grow. Hope this helps.

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Definitely man, I'm thinking about flowering with T5HO 6bulb fixture. Exactly 54 watts each as well. Do the temps reach over the high 80's ?

I think I may need an inline fan to suck the heat out and battle the smell later down the road

714steadyeddie said:

Definitely man, I'm thinking about flowering with T5HO 6bulb fixture. Exactly 54 watts each as well. Do the temps reach over the high 80's ?

I think I may need an inline fan to suck the heat out and battle the smell later down the road

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Don't want to hijack tokes' thread and there are many variables about your setup I don't know such as size of room and ambient temp etc. Pm me if you want more information I will gladly help

chronicboomz said:

Don't want to hijack tokes' thread and there are many variables about your setup I don't know such as size of room and ambient temp etc. Pm me if you want more information I will gladly help

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No worries I actually appreciated the info you shared it gave me a little more knowledge about my own set up that I didn't know! And yea I don't have any fans on it at all so far

An issue I had with my first attempt and an issue I'm having now, are tiny little black things flying around and crawling in the organic mix. From looking around online I think they could be fungus gnats. I've seen they can go away on their own if you just let the top couple inches completely dry out, I've tried that and it hasn't seemed to work. I've seen some yellow sticky cards online that can be purchased, and at my local hydroponics store I've seen an organic solution that starves pests including fungus gnats. From my research on fungus gnats the damage done to roots seems critical enough for a need to do something, so just would like some input how soon do I really need to do something about it having really had this issue the entire grow already? Is it an asap deal or can I put it off till I'm going to get my red spectrum bulbs?

Tokes_for_Blokes said:

An issue I had with my first attempt and an issue I'm having now, are tiny little black things flying around and crawling in the organic mix. From looking around online I think they could be fungus gnats. I've seen they can go away on their own if you just let the top couple inches completely dry out, I've tried that and it hasn't seemed to work. I've seen some yellow sticky cards online that can be purchased, and at my local hydroponics store I've seen an organic solution that starves pests including fungus gnats. From my research on fungus gnats the damage done to roots seems critical enough for a need to do something, so just would like some input how soon do I really need to do something about it having really had this issue the entire grow already? Is it an asap deal or can I put it off till I'm going to get my red spectrum bulbs?

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I grow in hydro, so I'm not really the man to help you here. However, my thinking would be that you are going to have to sort those pests out sooner or later, and sooner is better than later! If your roots get damaged the whole plant will suffer, for sure. Good sized, healthy root mass developed during veg is critical to a good yield come harvest time. I would go down the route of using the organic product from your hydro store. The sticky yellow things may reduce numbers and could be useful in the initial stage of controlling a major infestation, but they are never going to solve the problem entierly.

714steadyeddie said:

Definitely man, I'm thinking about flowering with T5HO 6bulb fixture. Exactly 54 watts each as well. Do the temps reach over the high 80's ?

I think I may need an inline fan to suck the heat out and battle the smell later down the road

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How hot your room gets is dependant on many factors. Firstly, cubed footage of the room. Obviously a bigger space takes more energy to heat up. Running my 4 ft 6 tube T5 in a tent that is 40 cubic feet with no extraction and just a couple of venting flaps open, with ambient room temp at 62, temps tend to reach mid 80's. The addition of a clip on fan pushing air out of one of the vent flaps drops this to high 70's. With an inline fan with dual speed I can get this down to the ambient room temperature.

You mentioned smell control, this is another excellent reason to get an inline fan. Also, air exchange in your room is critical to a good crop, as you need to keep a fresh supply of CO2 for your ladies to grow.

In short, go with the inline fan (carbon filter too). Where your g'room is and if noise is a factor should be considered when choosing a fan as some of them can be very loud.

On a side note, if I were planning on flowering with a T5 fixture, I would definitely run my plants in a scrog setup as this would let me get all my buds close to the light. Very important when using a fixture that lacks the light penetration of a HPS.

Today I cut off the bottoms of the pots holding the random bag seed, and I filled 1 gallon pots with my soil mix and then set the pots right into each other, gorilla taping them together. Did this for fear of developing rootbound issues. Now I'm only hoping that I didn't over stress the plants at all while doing that. In the process, I cut myself pretty bad and was running a lot of blood, weirdly the first thing I thought was to collect my blood, wondering if I could mix it with water for benefit of feeding the plants? I'd heard of some kind of animal blood (don't remember what) being used as a fertilizer so I thought it may work for human blood too. I collected the blood in a gallon jug and have filled it with water. The plants pots being set into other pots hasn't effected my drainage at all, water still drains easily and just takes a little longer to travel the added distance from the ground.

They look nice and healthy. I was gonna suggest setting the smaller pots on a stand of some kind but you kinda did that with the addendum splices. When you see roots growing out the bottoms of those you might look into transplanting them into some of the 5 gal or bigger. The only thing I'd be sure to not overdo that 20/20/20. It won't take much of that to overnute one in a pot.

Good luck

Today finally got something done a little about the fugus gnats. Purchased a hydrogen peroxide 29% solution and watered all the plants with it to kill some of the larvae. I also got some yellow sticky cards to catch some flying around. In the mail on the way I have some beneficial nematodes I've ordered to hopefully take care of the rest of any gnat issues I have.
I've also bought a basic bloom 3-12-6 liquid package that has all other kinds of nutrients included. I got some other add on Myco Tea 0-0-6, and some pre bloom supercharger 0-0.5-1. It's only been two days since I added the 1 gallon pots underneath the random seed, and already the predominately LST'd plant has roots showing out the bottom of the 1 gallons! The super cropped plant I finally tied down 3 more of the stretching limbs, leaving 1 to stretch a little more and opening up the middle finally. Looking at my jacks, I'm thinking I may need to do my second toppings soon, even though the tops haven't really developed many more nodes but its still stretching pretty tall and the lower limbs are progressing so much faster I don't want too long .

Damn fungus gnats are hard to get rid of. Best luck I've had was using a drench made from Azamax. Then another a week later. Home Depot has the nematodes that will search and kill them if you don't want to use chemicals. but they are easy to kill unless you are fully organic. Whatever you gotta get rid of them, they'll infest the roots and lead to all kinds of deficiency symptoms.

Tokes_for_Blokes said:

Today finally got something done a little about the fugus gnats. Purchased a hydrogen peroxide 29% solution and watered all the plants with it to kill some of the larvae. I also got some yellow sticky cards to catch some flying around. In the mail on the way I have some beneficial nematodes I've ordered to hopefully take care of the rest of any gnat issues I have.
I've also bought a basic bloom 3-12-6 liquid package that has all other kinds of nutrients included. I got some other add on Myco Tea 0-0-6, and some pre bloom supercharger 0-0.5-1. It's only been two days since I added the 1 gallon pots underneath the random seed, and already the predominately LST'd plant has roots showing out the bottom of the 1 gallons! The super cropped plant I finally tied down 3 more of the stretching limbs, leaving 1 to stretch a little more and opening up the middle finally. Looking at my jacks, I'm thinking I may need to do my second toppings soon, even though the tops haven't really developed many more nodes but its still stretching pretty tall and the lower limbs are progressing so much faster I don't want too long .
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Looking good mate, and nice work on the gnat killing regime, I'm sure you will have them under the kosh in no time!

If you want the growth of your main tips to slow and the lower branches to catch up, but don't feel your plant is yet ready for the 2nd topping session, super crop your plant just below the node you topped it at. This will slow the lead growing tips and redirect auxins (growth hormone) to lower branches, giving them the boost they need to catch up. Just squeeze the stem between your thumb and forefinger until you feel the inner structure of the stem collapse in on itself, then bend the tip of the plant over at 90 degrees to form an 'elbow' at the point where you damaged the stem. You can also remove the fans at the node you topped at to slow growth of these shoots. Hope this helps.