First photo grow, Barneys Farm Acapulco Gold

Ok, here's my first photo grow and, well, she's growing but only outwards and not really upwards.

She's around a month old, and is spreading outwards at around 2cm, 3/4", per day, but I'm lucky to see a quarter of that in vertical growth per day (roughly 5mm, under a 1/4"). Is that normal because my last attempts were growing autos, first one on the window sill and second under a small homemade blurple panel (not going into what happened with the first one, suffice to say there were issues due to me having to spend 9 days in hospital, second one is coming but I reckon could be better, we'll see), and they grew upwards a hell of a lot faster than this one is.

Background:

4.5l pot which came with a compost/perlite mix. Reputable brand here.

No nutes used yet, should be enough in the mix for another couple of weeks.

Water is tap water which is left to rest first, then watering is done from the bottom so the roots have to "work" and go deep - imo that means bigger, stronger, roots

Light for that one is a single 14.2w de-globed 6500K LED replacement light bulb hanging around a foot above the plant.

18/6 light cycle

Temperatures? No idea but certainly the warmest part of the house with a small electric fan heater in the utility room with it's own thermostat.

PH is around 6-6.5

As I say, it's the vertical growth, or lack of it, that's concerning me. Should I lift the light up or just leave things as they are?

This is all new to me, only my third weed plant. I've done the usual growing tomatoes, etc, on the window before for the hell of it but growing weed is new to me so any advice will be welcome. And please don't say "Buy this light, use this feeding, etc" as, first, I'm in Belgium so many things are not available and, second, I'm on a tight budget thanks to not being able to work any more so spunking out on HID lights and the associated power use is not an option (going to be making a new LED panel soon out of 5m SMD5050 blurple strip and 5m SMD5730 3000K strip, a panel that will be just under the size of a sheet of A3 paper).


Edit: Added "side view" pic

You might have and indica dominant strain. You shouldn't be concerned about it's height, in flowering it's going to double especially if it is pure sativa. They can really get big and scary lol. Looks good to me though.

bigboyfly713 said:

You might have and indica dominant strain. You shouldn't be concerned about it's height, in flowering it's going to double especially if it is isn't pure sativa. They can really get big and scary lol. Looks good to me though.

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Cheers for that. As I say, it's a well known breeder so I would say the genetics are going to be decent and should be more Sativa than Indica, think it's 70/30%.

Height won't be an issue, especially since it can be topped without any problems since it's not an auto. Going to give it another month or so then switch to a 12/12 schedule and then we'll see what happens.

Fubard said:

Cheers for that. As I say, it's a well known breeder so I would say the genetics are going to be decent and should be more Sativa than Indica, think it's 70/30%.

Height won't be an issue, especially since it can be topped without any problems since it's not an auto. Going to give it another month or so then switch to a 12/12 schedule and then we'll see what happens.

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Yeah Barneys has decent genetics I've never had serious issues with their seeds. Acapulco Gold is supposed to be a straight sativa from Mexico, classic. But you clearly have an indica dominant plant there (short fat leaves).
If your growing inside then height is always an issue. Unless you have a 9-10' ceiling lol.
Other than that man she looks good and healthy, get some nutes to give her unless your compost is really good quality stuff, then you may want to grab some earth worm castings and start prepping with some flowing organic stuff if thats where your going. You should be able to find that stuff at any plant growing store or farm store. Just throw it on the top of the soil and water it in.
Depending on how much bud you want should dictate how long to keep her in veg.

Nugs1 said:

Yeah Barneys has decent genetics I've never had serious issues with their seeds. Acapulco Gold is supposed to be a straight sativa from Mexico, classic. But you clearly have an indica dominant plant there (short fat leaves).
If your growing inside then height is always an issue. Unless you have a 9-10' ceiling lol.
Other than that man she looks good and healthy, get some nutes to give her unless your compost is really good quality stuff, then you may want to grab some earth worm castings and start prepping with some flowing organic stuff if thats where your going. You should be able to find that stuff at any plant growing store or farm store. Just throw it on the top of the soil and water it in.
Depending on how much bud you want should dictate how long to keep her in veg.

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The plant sits in my utility room, so it has the best part of 10' there. As I say, topping is an option too when the bugger grows enough so I can see the uppermost node to cut because that's kinda hidden in the middle somewhere.

The compost is decent, have grown tomatoes and so forth in the same stuff before and I have food for flowering plants here anyway as SWMBO likes to have green things growing on the kitchen window (having cats, one of whom has a thing for any plant and had to be stopped from tasting a leaf on a cactus as well as stripping a small olive tree bare, means plants in most of the house is not an option). As I say, I always water plants from below so anything has to go into the saucer and won't get watered in. It's something I've always done no matter whether it is flowers or tomatoes/peppers/whatever and it's always worked for me as you can see how much the plant is drinking PDQ and the roots tend to work a bit better as they have to dig down from the start.

But I see what you mean about the sativa/indica part, a quick run around on Google shows people who have planted two seeds at the same time and had one clearly more Indica-dominant, so that would explain a lot too.

As far as time goes, I'm thinking a month simply because I should have all the bits to make up my new LED strip panel by then so should be able to throw quite a bit of light at her with the blurple and 3000K strips all fired up. Of course, the more bud the better, but we have to be realistic as I don't exactly want to be waiting 6 months for some homegrown smoke.

Fubard said:

The plant sits in my utility room, so it has the best part of 10' there. As I say, topping is an option too when the bugger grows enough so I can see the uppermost node to cut because that's kinda hidden in the middle somewhere.

The compost is decent, have grown tomatoes and so forth in the same stuff before and I have food for flowering plants here anyway as SWMBO likes to have green things growing on the kitchen window (having cats, one of whom has a thing for any plant and had to be stopped from tasting a leaf on a cactus as well as stripping a small olive tree bare, means plants in most of the house is not an option). As I say, I always water plants from below so anything has to go into the saucer and won't get watered in. It's something I've always done no matter whether it is flowers or tomatoes/peppers/whatever and it's always worked for me as you can see how much the plant is drinking PDQ and the roots tend to work a bit better as they have to dig down from the start.

But I see what you mean about the sativa/indica part, a quick run around on Google shows people who have planted two seeds at the same time and had one clearly more Indica-dominant, so that would explain a lot too.

As far as time goes, I'm thinking a month simply because I should have all the bits to make up my new LED strip panel by then so should be able to throw quite a bit of light at her with the blurple and 3000K strips all fired up. Of course, the more bud the better, but we have to be realistic as I don't exactly want to be waiting 6 months for some homegrown smoke.

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I hear ya. Well everything is sounding good. You can only top for a certain amount of time then you’ll just be cutting the top cola down.
But I think you have a good plan good luck for some Good smoke!

Nugs1 said:

I hear ya. Well everything is sounding good. You can only top for a certain amount of time then you’ll just be cutting the top cola down.
But I think you have a good plan good luck for some Good smoke!

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You think I have a good plan? Trust me, I'm just winging this one because I hardly have a clue about what I'm doing!

I'm mainly just letting nature take the path she wishes and hoping for the best, but what gets me is that I see grow pics elsewhere and others with much more "professional" setups don't seem to have the same level of growth I have in the same time so that one led lamp must be doing one hell of a job or I got really lucky with that seed.

Hope the other 3 AG seeds I have, and a Caliorange, and some Orange Kush bag seeds, go as much as this one is.

And once I get the new LED panel made, that should be a hell of an amount of light to pour onto her when I flip to flower

I don't know what to tell you about the LED's its been a long time since I've read into any of that.
The best piece of advice I can give you is don't compare your grow to those professional grow or most home grows. Its all different. Some ppl have been doing this on a higher level for a long time inside and outside growing.
These things are "easy" to grow, it doesn't take much to keep it alive but it takes a lot to make it meet its full potential and that takes time and experience. I hit 4lbs this year on my late outdoor grow. I was happy but I could have done so much better.
Give her food but not too much
Give her water but not too much
Give her light but not too much

Look for signs of a deficiency if you see something hit us up hopefully someone can help.

Well, as far as water goes that's the beauty of watering from below as the plant only takes what it needs and the dirt is never soaked beyond what is needed.

I learned quickly enough with the auto that's going into flower now that too much light is not good, the lamp was too close early on and it showed, which is why the bulb above this one was set a foot away from the start and not as close as I had it on the auto.

Feeding? At this time it gets none but the plan is to drop less than recommended in once a week when I switch to flower, it can always be increased as necessary.

I'm under no illusions here, I know I ain't likely to get a huge harvest since it's still early days in my experience curve so I'll likely need a couple of more grows to get things right. As you say, growing is easy but growing good is not so easy and that's one reason for only staggering a plant at a time instead of making a multi plant setup with tents and everything at high cost which would not give me the results I would want for the outlay. You only learn by making mistakes, and I'd rather do that with a low cost setup than a high cost one. And of course I'm going to compare things, you can find all sorts of info thanks to what others post in assorted forums and seeing their pics at different stages in growth, gives you an idea of how things are going, whether something needs changed, etc.

As far as the led stuff goes, I found this PAR calculator online, http://dev.edman007.com/~edman007/pub/par-dli-cal.html , which I assume is accurate for converting the necessary so can be rather useful as we know "lumens" isn't the ideal way to measure the necessary. That helps give an indication so the height of the lamp can be set better according to need and so forth. Using a mix of blurple and white, in my theory, should mean a hell of a lot of light in the "ideal" spectrum plus some more outside the "ideal" and, of course, 150w of led should be kicking out a lot more light than a 150w HID lamp with less heat, etc, issues. And since we're looking at 10 metres of led strip arranged on a metal panel smaller than a sheet of A3 paper, that's going to be quite a concentration of light and that thing will likely have to be at least 2 feet away at a guess.

So we're looking at a lot of learning as I experiment with theories, as well as learn the art of growing. And I don't mind because I can't work any more so need a project to keep my mind occupied, and I'm having fun exploring my "unconventional" ideas.

Been a while, but time for an update.

Until now, she's still been under that same single replacement bulb and hasn't been too shabby. But today I set up the new LED panel I made (see https://www.rollitup.org/t/doing-it-on-the-cheap.956815/ ) and I think it's safe to say there's a slight difference in light levels. I don't think I need to tell you which pic is which, and, according to the lux meter on my phone I'm getting over 6000 lux at the top of the pot and in excess of 25,000 lux at the top of the plant with the panel at around 8-10" above the plant. Radiated heat from the panel is truly negligible as that nice ex-PC side panel is around 1 square foot of heatsink.

So I THINK that will be enough, we'll find out, roughly, at around the end of next month as she's been on 12/12 for just over a week now. For the record, she's 16" wide and 14" high. I just wish I had the panel made earlier because she's gone a bit too "upwards" for my own liking but that's not an issue as she can be staked if necessary. Oh, she has not been topped either, I'm not complicating things until I get a vaguely decent system running.

Now it's time to plod along, feeding, watering and caring for her until roughly the end of next month and we'll see the results.

Oh, plant health looks fandabidozy, leaves are a lovely green with no spots, stripes or anything "abnormal". She's drinking like a Scotsman at a free bar, the saucer under the pot is close to being emptied every day, and right now she's only getting half a litre, just under a pint, every 2 days, with a splash of nutrients every second day. Seems to be going ok so far anyway in my eyes

Well, seeing pistils appearing now, looks like a nice flower is starting to form on the top and elsewhere. She's an inch or two higher than the last pics, I reckon she could be better but that's my fault thanks to light, light, light, or, rather, lack of.

Things will improve next time round

A better pic from above, she's roughly 17" tall and the same wide, 17 days after switching to 12/12 with a week or so of that being under the single 6500K replacement bulb mentioned earlier. No idea if that is good, bad or average but what I do know is that it's going better than my last efforts, but, frankly, that wouldn't be hard!

Had the morning check soon after "lights on", flowers visibly bigger than yesterday, have started trying to "re-position" fan leaves to allow more light into some lower flowers, don't ask how many flowers there are because I keep losing count at 20 and the missus gets upset at me repeatedly dropping my shorts.

I don't think she's too bad for 3 weeks into flower under a light that cost less than $50

I'm not bothering with pictures as we all know what healthy plants look like, and mine is definitely such a creature. More flowers appearing, the ones there still growing, all is trotting along nicely.



No, this post is about the LED panel as I got my lux meter today and, well, even though I haven't checked the calibration yet (will figure that out using a known light source at a specific distance) I think I can assume that the lux meter app on my phone is about as accurate as Joe Biden's calculator.



The phone says 24k lux, which you would think is reasonable for a home made light. The new meter, claimed to be calibrated at 2856K with less than +/-6% accuracy, unfortunately gives me a different figure.



45000 lux at the top of the plant with the panel 5" from the top of the plant.

A slight difference.


Using the PAR/PPF/DLI calculator I found online, http://dev.edman007.com/~edman007/pub/par-dli-cal.html , then provided I have filled it in properly that's giving me 155W/m² flux density, PPFD 615.7 μmol/s*m^2, and a DLI on a 12/12 schedule of 26.598 mol/day using only the 3000K colour and not including any figures for the "blurple" wavelengths as they are swamped by the white completely. If I go for autos on the next grow, then that's a DLI of almost 40 mol/day on an 18/6 schedule


I bring the panel less than an inch closer, I clear 50k lux with ease.


Not bad for a home made light that cost less than $50 pulling circa 170 watts from the driver.


I'm chuffed as a muppet with that, je suis heureux comme un cochon dans la merde. Just think what the next panel, which will be a similar size and design using 9.8m of 3000K SMD5730 Superbright LED strip instead of the 3000K and SMD5050 blurple will do.



Get in there!!



PS. No issues with the distance as I look at the plant, there is not the slightest hint of "bleaching" or anything, she's seriously loving it. Of course, this is being monitored VERY closely, for obvious reasons.

I know I said I wasn't going to bother about pics, but I changed my mind.

Doesn't she look happy!

Anyone want to guess at what will come off of her, bearing in mind there's still, according to Barney's, maybe 5 or 6 weeks to go....

For info purposes, I got the multimeter out and the panel is pulling 0.6A from the wall, or 136 watts on the Belgian 230vac mains system. That translates to 1.656kWh per day on a 12/12.

Less than I thought, I suspect the nasty blurple strip isn't pulling what it should, means that the output is more efficient than I thought.

Couple of new pics, no major change, just flowers getting bigger

I'm happy.

Looking good....

Good idea for someone doing a stealth box or closet grow, ain't it, since that panel being 5" away from the plant does not seem to do any harm whatsoever. Not going to use it on a seedling, I have replacement bulbs for that, why waste electricity...

When I make the next panel, which will happen in the next month or so depending on when I order up parts (looking to see if we need anything else so we order up in one hit), 100% the 3000K SMD 5730 and no blurple, I'll give y'all lux readings as, provided you don't mind how rough it looks, you could knock up a decent board as big as you want for inside a tent with a very low potential for heat issues like with HID's, and without the concentrated light for cobs which can be too much for plants if too close from what I've read.

I do have to admit I did not expect this one to work as well as it seems to be, as I say the proof will be in around 5 or 6 weeks when she should be clear for harvest

Sounds like that would work great for some side lighting at the moment I am trying to find something cheap to use for side lighting..On another note I am trying to do away with all the lard on this grow as I am topping and removing all the bottom growth to make a manifold so we will c