First LED Grow With AK-48 & Master Kush

Sunday Portrait Day!

Our little sweeties are growing strong and healthy. Hermione (our AK-48 ) is getting ready to be transplanted into her new and bigger smart-pot crib, we will be topping her after the third node to start the 4-way LST.

Ponyo (our Master Kush) is working hard on catching up to big sister. If you look closer, her leaves are a tiny bit wrinkly on the edges - we think it was due to having the light too close to them (first at 12" and then at 16") few days ago, but last night we risen it up to 18".

So here they are!

Big sister Hermione (AK-48 ):





Baby sister Ponyo (Master Kush):





As always, feel free to share your thoughts below! Thanks for visiting our grow journal, guys.


Peace, Love & Good Vibes,
Frida & Vincent

Our AK-48 and Master Kush plants are continuing to do very well. Therefore, today is topping day! We are following Uncle Ben's topping technique so we're topping right above the second node on each plant. Here are some before and after shots.

AK-48 Before Topping:





AK-48 After Topping:

Master Kush Before Topping:

Master Kush After Topping:

Comparing leaves just for fun. AK-48 on the left and Master Kush on the right:

Both plants topped and ready to grow some fat new colas. Added a second LED light two days ago so each plant has a dedicated light source.

Took the AK-48 cutting and cloned it into a new starter pot just to see what happens. Never cloned before so this is a bit of an experiment for learning purposes.

Thanks for reading, peace.

These photos were taken last weekend on April 3rd, and show the plants one week after we topped them at the 2nd node - they recovered extremely well after the topping!

Since then, we have done the following things:

• LST using rubber-coated flex plant wire.

• Stopped watering them with Liquid Seaweed.

• Started using Fox Farm’s Liquid Plant Food Big Bloom and Grow Big (half of the recommended portion as we didn’t want to shock them with the new change).


And remember… These photos below are from a week ago in their 1 gallon smart pots.


AK-48 (4 weeks old):







Master Kush (3 weeks old):






We’ve made new changes again, but we will discus them soon and with photos too on our next post!


Wishing everyone a safe and happy weekend!

- Frida & Vincent

Great looking photo's and plants

First off "newbs" Welcome to RIU! I love everything about this journal. You decided to grow your own and researched it and went for it. First time grow but the research was spot on. All the equipment looks great. Plants are looking great. The journal detail is fantastic please keep that up. Im bad myself about being a lazy journaler so i love your enthusiasm. You have another new grower joining you on their first grow.(not me, someone in the thread earlier, i just reread and it sounded like i was saying i was on my first grow) anways exciting stuff.

This is the place to be. Any questions you have there are always people willing to help so just ask. Happy growing im looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

DankTankerous said:

Great looking photo's and plants

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Mean Gene said:

First off "newbs" Welcome to RIU! I love everything about this journal. You decided to grow your own and researched it and went for it. First time grow but the research was spot on. All the equipment looks great. Plants are looking great. The journal detail is fantastic please keep that up. Im bad myself about being a lazy journaler so i love your enthusiasm. You have another new grower joining you on their first grow.(not me, someone in the thread earlier, i just reread and it sounded like i was saying i was on my first grow) anways exciting stuff.

This is the place to be. Any questions you have there are always people willing to help so just ask. Happy growing im looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Click to expand...

Hey Gene!

Thank you for taking the time to write this positive feedback, happy to hear you're enjoying our journal! We'll do our best to keep it updated, so hopefully it becomes useful just as other journals have been for us. The more you take photos, the more you'll want to post them, so start snapping! Haha, yeah read the line the same way! Anyway, thanks again for stopping by. Have a good one!

Very nice, I see all is going well. Yet again i got nothing to say other than well done and wish you all the best.

cheech86 said:

Very nice, I see all is going well. Yet again i got nothing to say other than well done and wish you all the best.

Click to expand...

Likewise, comrade!

Awesome journaling!
You're off to a great start!

I am also on my first grow, harvesting soon, so take my advice for what it is.

1) Are you still using the wet towel method to raise RH? If so, I suggest letting it dry out frequently. Also, change towel once a week for a clean one. You don't want fungas gnats!

I used something similar, I hung the wet towel and let the bottom sit in water, creating a wick. Twice a day I would flip the towel, as it dried. Worked great until I got lazy, not changing towel for 2 weeks.(fungus gnats)

2) Again, I am relatively new.
The girls look a bit dark, like too much nitrogen. Also, the tips of newer growth on the sativa appear to have a slight nute burn, confirming, imo, a nitrogen toxicity.

Hopefully someone can tell me I'm wrong.

Peace

Here's another update since the topping and LST of both plants.

Remember how we mentioned that we switched from watering with Maxicrop's Liquid Seaweed to watering them with Fox Farm's Big Bloom and Grow Big? Well, a couple of days later, Hermione our AK-48 showed a yellow spot on one of her leaves despite of only feeding them with half of the recommended portion by Fox Farm. So for that reason, we decided to play it safe and took a break from using the new products, and only watered them with just spring water for a week and a half afterwards. Since doing that, not a single additional yellow spot nor any sign of damage has appeared on the AK-48, and surprisingly Ponyo the Master Kush didn't have any issues with the new nutes whatsoever despite of being younger in age. Phew!

Other than that, everything is going super great! Average temp of 75ºF and RH of 50% using our wet towel method.


Below a recap of the new changes:

• Transplanting both plants into their final 5 gallon pots (AK-48 at 5 weeks and Master Kush at 4 weeks old).

• SCROG.

• Removing Fox Farm's Grow Big from the feeding schedule, but keeping Fox Farm's Big Bloom since it's 100% organic.


Because we noticed the plants were loving their watering with Liquid Seaweed, we will go back to it again while continuing to use Big Bloom not combined but in separate waterings each. That's all we're doing from now on as we want them to grow in an organic environment away from any type of chemicals. Quality, over quantity.

Alright, picture time!

AK-48 at 5.5 weeks (left) and Master Kush at 4.5 weeks (right):






Being big music lovers ourselves too, here's our track of the day!

yeatster said:

Awesome journaling!
You're off to a great start!

I am also on my first grow, harvesting soon, so take my advice for what it is.

1) Are you still using the wet towel method to raise RH? If so, I suggest letting it dry out frequently. Also, change towel once a week for a clean one. You don't want fungas gnats!

I used something similar, I hung the wet towel and let the bottom sit in water, creating a wick. Twice a day I would flip the towel, as it dried. Worked great until I got lazy, not changing towel for 2 weeks.(fungus gnats)

2) Again, I am relatively new.
The girls look a bit dark, like too much nitrogen. Also, the tips of newer growth on the sativa appear to have a slight nute burn, confirming, imo, a nitrogen toxicity.

Hopefully someone can tell me I'm wrong.

Peace

Click to expand...

Hi Yeatster, welcome to our journal and thanks for the advice and feedback - we appreciate it!

To answer your questions, 1. Yeah, we're still using the wet towel method. We allow the towels to dry completely and wash them every day. We are aware of gnats and fungi being a problem associated with humidity and poor hygiene, so definitely on it on a daily basis.

2. The plants' colors are darker on the photos than IRL as the lighting it's not overexposed - we were only using a little bit of natural lighting coming from the windows when they were in the smaller smart pots. The first photo on the last post was taken moments before the LEDs were back on with the lights off in the room where we have the tent. We also noticed the tips being lighter than the rest of the leaves just like you point out. However, as we were inspecting them closely and thoroughly few weeks ago, we we put our fingers under the tips and they're actually the same healthy green color as the leaves. What's causing the appearance of "nute burn" is that the tips are simply much thinner than the rest of the leaves making them attract more light on those areas and making them seem burned, but luckily they are not.

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. Kudos to your attention to detail!

You definitely want to keep the seaweed as that helps resin and terpines production. You can still use the big grow nutes but it won't really help out with bud production. I would suggest just finding some local organic liquid fertilizers, if you're wanting to save some money. Or you could just water it for the rest of the grow, totally up to you, but I think buying some organic bloom liquid fertlizer is way worth the price and the outcome.

DankTankerous said:

You definitely want to keep the seaweed as that helps resin and terpines production. You can still use the big grow nutes but it won't really help out with bud production. I would suggest just finding some local organic liquid fertilizers, if you're wanting to save some money. Or you could just water it for the rest of the grow, totally up to you, but I think buying some organic bloom liquid fertlizer is way worth the price and the outcome.

Click to expand...

Oops, we meant we're keeping Fox Farm's Big Bloom which is the 100% organic product and removing Big Grow (just corrected that on our update post, btw), this should help with the bud growth during flowering! So we're pretty much doing what you're suggesting -- just got the product names mixed up, lol!

Hey guys, Frida here today!

Well, it's been a while... Life and work has been keeping us busy lately, but our grow has been doing well since our last post entry. Anyway, here's a big update about what has been going on lately inside our tent!

We are now in flowering(!), we switched on week 7. On this week, we removed the wet towel to decrease humidity levels. Temperatures between 72ºF-80ºF with an average of RH of 55%.

Below, photos taken on April 19th of the AK-48 (left) and Master Kush (right) one week into it.




The next photo shows the girls at week 8.5 for AK-48 (left) and week 7.5 for Master Kush (right), taken on April 29th. As you can see, they're a little bit bigger.



Then, 2 weeks into flowering and we decided to lollipop them. We of course did our research, and found that half of the growers were saying to do it in the last 2 weeks of veg, and the other half were saying to do it 2 weeks into flowering instead. We didn't have any issues, the plants didn't show any stress whatsoever and continued to grow, despite of lollipopping all at once, instead of doing it gradually. The average temperature was between 68ºF-75ºF, but ironically the humidity was higher than ever - sometimes reaching up to 71%, and this was after we removed the wet towel and container with water that we had been using during veg. We immediately ordered a small dehumidifier (Eva-Dry Edv-1100 Electric Petite) that fit perfectly inside the tent under the SCROG frame, but interestingly it was making the humidity worse, at one point it took it up to 80% RH!!! Therefore we stopped using it, and soon the humidity dropped to 61%, still pretty high for flowering but definitely better than having the dehumidifier on.

Also, we added a third light last week because apparently two lights weren't enough for these girls. In addition, we purchased the big mama of dehumidifiers; Frigidaire FAD704DWD Energy Star 70 Pint. It arrived yesterday and we put it right outside the tent. One hour after we turned it on, it decreased the RH to 42%... BIG SUCCESS!!! Now we have a steady temperature of 72ºF with 42% RH inside of the tent.

For watering, we've been giving each plant 1.5 gallon of water. Since we're using 5 gal. smart pots, we learned that the best way to water them is to start slowly by only watering 20% of the whole amount and wait between 15-20 minutes, then proceed with the rest of the water. We water as soon as the soil feels dry about 2" deep, usually every 2 or 3 days - using this Smith Sprayer which has been great because it's hard to water with the SCROG frame hanging so low, and this makes it really easy - and we love it!

Alright, so now you know what has been going on, now it's time to see how the plants look as of this morning in our 4x4 tent! The photos were taken 5 minutes before the lights turned on.

AK-48 (left) and Master Kush (right) at 3 weeks into flowering and lollipopped.







Once again, thanks for checking out our journal, and any feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

Good vibes to each and everyone!

-Frida

PS. Vincent says hi!

Forgot to mention an important part of the process; the height of the lights during flowering at the moment. We now have them about 4" from the top of the colas at a 12/12 cycle.

4:20 Track: Kidnap Kid feat. Leo Stannard - Moments

Well on your way to producing a nice batch of bud by looks of it, screens filled out nicely buddy.

Good job

Jumping on board for this grow! Gotta say you guys did you homework and it shows! Can't wait to see how your grow turns out as its looking awesome so far... Kudos!

Nice grow. Very interested since I'm also doing my first LED gow in a small space. Less space than you have im guessing, haven't done any measuring. I'm also using the same kind of lights pretty much. Kinda disappointed that you had to get a third light. I have 300 watt vipar from Amazon. Doing good so far, I planned on buying another one but didn't plan on needing 3. Imma have to figure something out.

Anyway.....good growing I'm rooting for you!

awsome journal man!

This is purely my oppinion, but the plants look a bit over fed to me...perhaps a bit too much N.

Also when you topped, try top with no more than one node above it, otherwise you have wasted time growing all the other plant material (the less you top off, the better...you should try top off the minimum amount possible, you have topped enough to make a clone

Peace dude and good luck!