First time and excited

lookin good so far. I had an extremely bad stretching problem when i started...and i didnt get a fan on them until the 2nd and a half week...and they're doin great now.

and i'm really liking the idea in the tub...you dont see much of that anymore with common growers..props to you man

Ok, bought a few more lights today. So Now I have the T-5 54 watt 48", two 26 watt white CFLs, and two 42 watt soft watts CFLs. as you can see in one of the photos, my temp is at 75 degrees, and my humidity is at 25%. This should work well for a while. I am still wanting more light I think. I have 4 plants groing now, and one tomatoe plant. hehehe.. Good Bud always makes me want to snack on something.

The 42 watt CFLs I bought are soft White and 2,600 lumies. This OK for the Veggie State.. TOKE I think used these.

Dang forgot the Photos.. hahaha Here they are.

I bought the two small CFLs just yesterday, and I can already see that they stopped stretching and the leaves are gotten way bigger already.. These little guys just amaze me.

Also, what is a decent amount of harvest for the average plant? I know it is different for different type of plants. I am hopeing for at least a 1/2 OZ each MIN in BUDS. My Next Harvest will be moved from my extra Bathroom to my extra bed room. Also I will buy my seeds. I want to grow stuff that will stick to the wall.

Later,

ok, changed my set up a little. dropped another 26 watt CFl in there. this set up will be adjusted more this weekend. I really hope this set up with make these little guys grow.

Nice Set-Up Brother im in a similar situation as you are so reading your journal is a great help i wish you the best of luck...keep us updated

Just read everything, so far so good, great job on getting better lights, keep them as close as possible, i saw your seedlings stretching a bit with those old lights. with that many cfl's/t5's your going to have to do alot of light adjusting. but it will be worth it in the long run.

I have two 1"X2" pieces of wood, that I have hung those red strings on. These will be used to raise and lower the lights.

Since I put these lights in, my first two plants have stopped growing up, and are growing more and bigger leafs. My second two plants are not stretching like the first two.

Oh, and you will see I also have a little tomatoe plant to the far left. It is only about 10" tall and already has two flowers on it.

Also I used soil that has Nutrients already in it for 3 months. I am wondering if this might have been a bad idea?

Slow release ferts arent reccomended, they will do fine for veg, dont nute until you flower, wth flower nutes, just be careful with them, if you burn your plants with nutes it will start at the very tips of the leafs, if it doesnt progress past the tips your fine, just be careful next time, and only nute every other watering. looks like you have more lights then plants, so i would keep light abnove each plant, and the rest strategically placed to give good sidelight.

I agree with russ0r, but I also wanted to tell you I find your grow very interesting, be patient and good luck with it.

Ok, I Understand one of the reasons for useing the smaller pots now. Someone earlier had said to use smaller pots. I found one thing is, it makes it easier to make sure your plants are watered correctly, if they are in small pots.

Ok, I replanted my plants into these small biodegradeable pots this morning. Have any of you ever used them? I think these will work a lot better for the first part of my veggie cycle.. Lot easier to make sure I am watering them correctly. I did not disturb the roots very much at all when I replanted them. I just dug around the peat puck that was in the old soil. The roots were sticking out of the pucks some. I also go soil that is for indoor growing of vegatable. It has natural fertilizers in it, but not the time released nutrients. I hope this soil will work better. This way I am hopeing when I do start feeding my plants I do not burn them.. Any ideas on this?

Ok, The leaves on two of my plamts are rolling under. they are still fresh and green though. I did just transplant them 2 days ago into smaller pots. I was thinking I was over watering them in the bigger pots. Could it be that I was over feeding them? I have only fed them once, and that was after I put them in the smaller pots. These pots are about 3" Dia. I am thinking with these smaller pots, I will have to water them every other day because they dry out so fast. Here is a picture of each plant. One of them looks kind of deformed, it was like this from when it first broke free from the seed. I saw a friends plant once, that was like this at first, at it did pretty well. The big ones had already started rolling under before I transplanted them. I am thinking maybe this is just what sometimes happens with the first leaves.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what is going on? The talliest one actually is doing a lot better then when it was stretching,, it has 4 new leaves starting to come out.

I do know when I fed them that once I got some of the water on the leafs. Maybe I did not feed them enough.

the #1, and #2 pictures of of the last two plants I planted, and the 3rd and 4th pictures are of the first two plants I planted..

I am thinking I might be watering my plants to much. I did not think so at first, but this is the only thing I can think of at this point. right now, the soil is dry all the way to the bottom on the outside,, not sure about on the inside. I sprayed some water to get the top moist, but am going to wait until tomorrow morning to water and see what happens. They do seem to be doing a lot better though. I can only hope I can still save them. I will be sad if they die. Not so much for the lost Buds, but because I hate to let anything die while in my care.

If anyone has suggestions, please I would appreciate them.

Sure am glad I did not buy my seeds for this first grow. I think my plants still might be saveable, but I am going out tomorrow and buying new soil for the third time. The first time the soil said it had 3 months worth of nutrients in the soil. I thought about this and did not like this,, so I replanted with new soil. The soil says natural fertilizers. I have looked more closely at the soil and to me it looks to me that it has the same Nutrients.. (fertilizer) as the first soil. Tomorrow I am going out to see if I can find just plain old steral soil, get some sand and some perlite and make my own soil with no fertilazer, nutrients or anything. I have read and read and read some more. My leaves are curling under like a rams horn. From what I can figure out, my plants are being over fertilized with (N).. which even though I flush them, it does not help enough because this soil is time released.

My Grandad used to always tell me a smart man learns from his mistakes. I should be a dam GENIUS about now.

Ok, I got fed up with the trouble I was haveing. So I went out and bought a Hydro system. I took my plants out of the soil. When I did this I found out what was causeing my trouble. As I had said earlier I used the Peat Pucks to start my plants in, and I just placed these in my soil. Well when I took them out of the soil, it was bone dry, but in the center of the soil was this wet peat puck and all my roots were inside of it. My roots were starveing for air, At least I think. I will never again use thos PUCKS. At least if I do, I will remove the plants from them before planting in soil.

Moveing them from the soil to the Hydro system might over stress my plants to where they die, but I would rather they die now, then later when I have spent months working on them. I am going to order some nice seeds also, now just incase they do die. And if not, I will have them for my next grow.

I started these plants off in the hydro system with a 1/2 oz of power plant food, and 3 teaspoon of pure blend metabolic grow formula to 6 gallons of water. My water is at about 6.0 PH. My time is set to feed my plants every 4 hours. And they are on just long enough to fill the top tank. which is 3 minutes.

When I removed my plants and roots from the soil, I was happy with how much roots they have. The smaller of the plants have more roots then the tall ones. The tall ones had stretched because of my poor lights. The smaller ones are 3 days younger then the tall ones.

I do hope at least a couple of these plants make it, but if not, It was good to have learned with them.

Here are a few pictures of what my system looks like now.

Thanks again for eveyones patients and help with my stupid questions and such.

Hell ya. Hydro is the way to go. Your feed schedule sounds about right. For now, anyways. When its time to flower you'll want to drop 'em back to approx 3 times a day for a slighty longer interval. ph sound good, maybe a tad high. Try and shoot for 5.8 to 5.9, but 6.0 is no big deal.

Just watch the little suckers. Do the look vigorous? Healthy? Are they showing improved growth day by day? Leaves curling under or pulling up to the lights? Good color? Look at them and they will tell ya what the need.

After you get these fine details adjusted, you will have yourself a well oiled machine.

Good luck,
sp

Thanks for the advice Soda Pop. This Buds for you.... Wish it was the smoking kind.

Just put a duel Air pump with stones in my res. I hope it also helps some.

man thats a cool setup.

Thanks Jimmy.

I am so amazed by how much better my plants are doing. They did not even wilt of anything when I washed all the soil from roots and replanted them. I really thought they would not handle it. They are already showing more growth then before and are getting healthier. And much less worries. It does kind of worry me if I have a system failure while I am at work. I wonder how long my plants can go with out haveing water fed to them every 4 hours. I would think if the plants went 10 hours with no water, that they should recover. Will take more pictures later today.

Later everyone, out.