BasementIlladelph's CFL....First Grow

Hey Rollitup.....

First Grow here and ive read for awhile and im finally giving it a shot....

So since it was my first grow i didnt go crazy on my setup nor the nutes and i DO understand that nutes are very important and i plant to switch to a complete FoxFarm grow next time around....

Heres a Pic of the materials im using


-Miracle Grow potting mixx
-Grandmas unsulfered mollasses
-Shultz African Violet plus fertilizer drops
(which is 8-14-9) and i plan on using this during flowering
- regularrr spray bottle

Now for the initial setup


I DO NOT intend to keep it like this.....the one bulb suspended is the 23w 5000k bulb just so they get some blue spectrum in while vegging and i will remove when i switch to flowerrrr

Current setup inludes
-2 43watt 2700k bulbs (with ghetto reflectors)
-1 23 watt 5000k bulb
-3 cup sized pots to get the babies rooted and started up
-1 large blue bucket which i fit in the bottom so i could have more room to veg

The best growing plants after a couple of weeks will be put into the larger blue bucket


other pic day 5 from Germinationnn


i noticed that only 2 out of the 3 sprouts were actually growing so i thought i lost a plant......BUT then on day 7 it popped out and its now about as big as the others



last one is Just me havin fun with my Macbook cam hehehe


So i am currently at day 8 of the grow and its coming along nicely

my hours are 18/6
ive been giving mollasses water every other day....distilled waterrr

the plants look awesome.....i just snapped some more update pics that i will have up later tonight

Ive been watering seltzer water and mollasses mixed and it seems to be working great.....i have a do it yourself at home seltzer maker at home and it works great...

i put the seltzer into the Blue bucket so all of the plants get water from underneath and i rigged a hole in the bottom of the blue bucket so they dont drown on me


Any and all comments are appreciated....i mean this is my first grow so bash me if you must and ill learn ya know?

hey, I've got a set up similar to urs right now, I've got 2 42 watt CFL's and I'm using the miracle grow potting soil too. Do you know what strain you're growing? Be careful with the miracle grow soil, i've heard from some ppl it raises the ph higher than 7, but i've been ok with it, one rule of thumb i use is if growth slows I flush the soil with ph balanced water to get rid of salts and fertilizers (miracle grow probebly adds some of their own) and then the next day i give it a normal nutrient treatment, also if that doesn't solve things or that's not possible then just transplant it into another container with fresh soil. The soil can get compacted over time because of watering and this can lead to the roots getting much less oxygen after you water and suffocates them, (It slows growth a lot then the plant dies) and it's hard to aerate the soil when theres a plant growing in it already so I just transplant it. I tried adding molasses like you in a grow i did last year and i didn't have much success (it sure makes the air smell sweet though), but i was using a drip hydro system and I think it started to grow mold in the sugar water, i doubt you'd have that prob though, just don't over do it.
I don't think it matters much now, just cuz the plants are so small, but you can have those two 42 watts a lot closer to the plants. I have mine about 2.5 inches away and they get a lot more light the closer they are. If they're too far away they'll stretch but too close and the top of the plant will burn when it can't get enough water to the leaves to cool them down through evaporation. This also depends on the strain you're growing and how warm the room normally is, my ambient temp is 70*F. But the plants will grow faster when they're closer to the light, if u just wanna stop the stretching, then 4 or 5 inches from the bulbs should be enough. I wouldn't recommend u have them as close as mine though cuz u have one more bulb than I do and thats more heat. When they get bigger you'll have to take into account how much they'll grow before you adjust the distance again.
It's so agonizing to watch them grow so slowly in the first stage of vegetative growth, once they get in the 2nd or 3rd set of leaves they'll grow faster.

hhahaha thanks alot man yeah its tough on a budget
but what ive been doing to combat the compact soil is to just water it sparingly with seltzer ( i know its not the best) but it seems to bubbling up and making the soil pretty airy

my system is to put the seltzer in the bottom bucket and let it soak up into the roots a bit ( while also flushing the bottom portion of the soil that is wet, which the roots arent at just yet) but they seem to be looking fantastic

for the Ph i havent gotten a Ph reader or a thermometer just yet but i WILL but ive been using distilled water so theres no more ph being added


No strain just bagseed sorry to say BUT I just snapped some pictures today with a better camera and one out of the three seems to have a particularly purple root stem(i will post them later because i dont have the USB cable to attach dammit)

lookin pretty good

Those little babies are looking good.U should get u some perlite to mix when u r ready to transplant so you can get better drainage in your soil..

wyteberrywidow said:

Those little babies are looking good.U should get u some perlite to mix when u r ready to transplant so you can get better drainage in your soil..

Click to expand...

hell yeah man, i was planning on that to also combat the high nute levels from the miracle grow soil

Ugh today was hell........

last night i noticed that one of my plants was getting really yellowish and drooping alot so i decided i was going to pull it out of the operation leaving me with only 2 plants left


TODAY....

i get up and all 3 of my plants are curling and burning at the tips....the leaves are crispy and are cracking

so i did the research and i pulled them all out to check them closer...

all of them were rooted too the bottom of the cups already.... damn

so i thought o0o0o they are rootbound..
i quickly replanted the 2 best plants into a bigger trash can i had laying around and separated them with a piece of plastic(so they dont fight for root space)

and the roots were so developed beyond what i thought 3 weeks would hold...


i checked on here to see what else it could be and i also thought that Nute burn could be the problem because miracle grow soil is notorious for such things...

so i Flushed the bucket of soil with 2 gallons of water and let it drain....

they are now back in the grow space chilling out .....i hooked up a new Co2 generator (Sugar & yeast) and they seem to be settling....but time will tell


i HAVE pictures from before this incident and i tried to load them up but no go....

so tomorrow i will try from a different computer and hopefully i will get some shots of them sick.....but getting better
i hope i didnt fuck them up

next day is just worse.........both plants are shriveled up and brown pretty much all over......


i re flushed the soil and now am down to one really sick looking indica.......

pictures? sounds like you burnt the piss outta your plants

ill get them up ASAP

yeah i really dont like MG soil now.......they burnt really quickly

it just went downhill wayyy to fast

FoxFarm you have a new buyer.....


as for the last remaining plant.....god speed little buddy

i

I started mine with the MG potting soil and then i ran out when i needed to transplant so i went to walmart and found one that was for moisture control, it basically said it could hold 30% more water without suffocating the roots. I got some of that and it's really great looking soil, (its the kind of soil that u can tell is fertile just by looking at it), it looks like it came from manure or REAL dirt, not much sphagham peat moss, or any wood chips of fillers like that, just good soil. You might have a strain that's sensitive to nutes, I know i've abused the shit outa mine and they're still going so maybe my strain is more suited for slightly careless growers like myself. If you were using the molasses already it might have been the cause, i'm sure u were careful with the dosing but that stuff isn't used by the plants much, idk when they can use it best, my plants have gotten lot bigger since i last looked at ur grow and i think i'm gonna try high fructose corn syrup, just gotta do some research first. But i just mention the molasses cuz its not always just the sugar, they can put preservatives, salts, or artificial flavorings in it that might not be good for plants. But i would think that stuff would be washed out if u flushed the soil. But to anyone thinking about organic MG soil i've seen ppl start a grow with that and it takes like a month to achieve the growth they could otherwise get in 2 weeks. It's probebly because the nutes are so weak and it looks like mulch, not dirt.

true that.....thanks for actually responding........ hahaha now that im at 29 days with all the burn and stuff it looks like the plant is only at 2 weeks......but ya know its a learning process

i stopped using the molasses for a bit just to see if that was the cause of all this....

The soil is flushed and its now getting a nice green layer on it hehehe

I have a C02 generator going (sugar,yeast) seems to get the plant greener...if that makes any sense

I pruned all the burnt leaves and let new ones pop up

and now all the bottom fan leaves have 5 sections per leaf....



so now i guess it has a bit of an advantage with a thickened root and such......and bigger fan leaves

HOPEFULLY.......

i will get the new pics up today of the plant i nursed back to health maybe itll stay this stong

the one plant now is doing great with 4 nodes and its nice and bushy like an indica should be.......

just topped the plant and its looking good.....!!!!

i cant believe it...

so nice and healthy now

BasementIlladelph said:

just topped the plant and its looking good.....!!!!

i cant believe it...

so nice and healthy now

Click to expand...

how tall was it when u topped it?