JUST STARTED - 3rd grow, greenomatic with cfl, hps advanced nutrients

hi i just wrote a really long first grow entry but i closed the window by mistake and lost everything
i will try and keep this short and sweet for the time being, i wrote so much before i dont think i can do it again right now. im still mad at myself.

anyhow its an autoflowering fem greenomatic. this is my 3rd grow, the first one produced average bud but i didnt have all the supplies and nutes etc bc i live in a developing country and alot of stuff is hard to come by and has to be imported or brought back on trips.

the seedling came out today, i usually leave the seed in water, in the dark, for a day and then plant into a final growing pot/bucket. i find this is best way to germinate.

will be using grow micro bloom with big bud.

have 4 white cfls for veg, 2 x 55w and 2 x45w and an hps for flowering. cant remember if its 400 or 250 watts but i'll get back to you. its been a while since i used it...

right now plants are on 20/4 light schedule.

soil is my best garden soil mixed with a little perlite and old manure. soil here is naturally more alkaline and holds too much water so i find perlite helps alot. i also have been flushing and turning the soil over for the last week before i planted. i also gave it a very light dose of grow micro bloom a week ago so that the soil has some base nutrients already...

here are the pics, i apologize for the quality since i took them with my bb



as you can see, i put my lights pretty close to the seedling. probably shouldnt be touching the soil but so far no problems. seedling just came out today and it seems like a healthy bugger

please feel free to add any criticisms, advice, comments and questions... thanks

will update as soon as there are any noticable changes, Thanks

i dont want to beg, but please leave comments !!

So that is just today. Looks like you have a nice set up for all the CFLs surrounding it. Thing is if its Autoflower aint it best ot leave the lights on it 24hrs from start to finish??

moneyface said:

So that is just today. Looks like you have a nice set up for all the CFLs surrounding it. Thing is if its Autoflower aint it best ot leave the lights on it 24hrs from start to finish??

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to be honest, i've read and gotten a couple different opinions on the light. some people say 24/0 some say 18/6 etc... i think that a plant needs to have a night for it to recover and grow. from what ive seen in my garden, like, for example, my banana tree, it grows the most during the night, sometimes inches.

to me it seem that the natural thing for a plant, even an auto, is to have at least a couple of hrs of darkness. but this is just my opinion. thanks for taking a look. will have another pic up tomorrow hopefully

yeh i agree with you abboudi plants should get atleast a few hours of darkness to rest, im about to start my auto flower and will be on 20/4 for a few weeks and then down to 18/6
ill check back to see how your grow is going

i stand corrected. i have no experience with AF yet, might do it soon though coz of the short turnaround time. especialy coz i hear you can get like 60g per plant and fit a fair few into a budbox

Nice, good luck. I'm on day 54 of my autoflower grow (short riders) check out my journal.

i would ditch the advanced there is way better stuff out there and way cheaper

MrStickyScissors said:

i would ditch the advanced there is way better stuff out there and way cheaper

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there just might be better stuff out there, but i dont have the luxury of having a grow shop around for probably 3000 miles

i picked up 1 liter of grow, 1 liter of micro, 1 liter of bloom and 1 liter of big bud for 51 euros in france. thats pretty reasonable because you only have to use a max of 2ml for each 1 liter of water so that works out to about 500 full strength doses, from each bottle, so i think what i paid is decent because i get 500 waterings for 0.10 cents a pop.

for example, if you only have 1 plant the whole year round and you water it with nutes once a week, you'll only use 52 waterings

and i've also heard that AN nutes are pretty strong so you can even get away with using half the recommended dose. that would give you 1000 waterings from one liter of nutes. i think its a pretty good deal

moneyface said:

i stand corrected. i have no experience with AF yet, might do it soon though coz of the short turnaround time. especialy coz i hear you can get like 60g per plant and fit a fair few into a budbox

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i can live with 60g. in fact, i think i'd be pretty damn pleased with myself if managed 60g. but honestly right now i just want to grow one batch of really amazing looking, smelling tasting weed, that gets you stoned properly. the only other grow that i harvested turned out to be very very average regs but it was very deceptive because it smelled so nice when you opened up a bud. however, it tasted horrible and the high only lasted 20 mins

so here's an update, this is day two of the seedling breaking out. so start date is 28/07/10

i rearranged the lights so that they are more equally spread out around the baby. i put all four on today after only putting on 2 yesterday.

there is a little growth but probably not noticeable to you guys. took some pics with the lights on just to give you guys a look.

i still havent watered the seedling since she popped. i might give it one or two quick sprays of water but thats about it.

since i dont have any root stimulators etc, and since my last batch had a really small rootball because it was overwatered, i'm trying to basically starve this little guy so its forced to send its roots to look for water. the soil is still damp so i think i can wait another day or two to water.

and when i do actually water it, i'm going to try and pour the water around the edge of the bucket as opposed to the base of the plant.

i theorize that if the water is along the sides, the roots will have to grow towards the edge of the bucket to absorb, thereby creating a larger root mass.

dunno if it'll work but i think its worth a shot..

abboudi said:

there just might be better stuff out there, but i dont have the luxury of having a grow shop around for probably 3000 miles

i picked up 1 liter of grow, 1 liter of micro, 1 liter of bloom and 1 liter of big bud for 51 euros in france. thats pretty reasonable because you only have to use a max of 2ml for each 1 liter of water so that works out to about 500 full strength doses, from each bottle, so i think what i paid is decent because i get 500 waterings for 0.10 cents a pop.

for example, if you only have 1 plant the whole year round and you water it with nutes once a week, you'll only use 52 waterings

and i've also heard that AN nutes are pretty strong so you can even get away with using half the recommended dose. that would give you 1000 waterings from one liter of nutes. i think its a pretty good deal

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Yes - you can get away with using much less AN nutes when you use them. And that way, you can stretch out each bottle pretty far.

I think it's worth it to use AN over the others, plus they're easy to get online. There's also a site online that offers discount Advanced Nutrients. Or Ebay is cheap too.

So anyone who immediately writes off AN for being more expensive just hasn't done their homework on how to shop smart. LOL

hi guys, so i was a bit too eager and the day before yesterday, when my pot had completely dried out and it was time for a watering, i decided, at the last minute, to add nutes to the watering..

i added 0.25 ml of grow micro bloom and bigbud to 2 liters of water, which is a very very lite dose considering the bottle says 2ml per liter as the dosage.

so overnight my plant grew substantially and i figured that the nutes were a success.

however this morning, i noticed the plants leaves' tips were browning and the plant wasnt looking so hot. i started flushing with drinking water and there is quite alot of run off.

i turned the cfls off while i was flushing, and now my question is,

should i leave them off for a day so that the plant isnt getting such intense light, or should i put them on after flushing...????

please help, i feel really stupid for giving nutes to my seedling when i knew it was too early

thanks

abboudi said:

hi guys, so i was a bit too eager and the day before yesterday, when my pot had completely dried out and it was time for a watering, i decided, at the last minute, to add nutes to the watering..

i added 0.25 ml of grow micro bloom and bigbud to 2 liters of water, which is a very very lite dose considering the bottle says 2ml per liter as the dosage.

so overnight my plant grew substantially and i figured that the nutes were a success.

however this morning, i noticed the plants leaves' tips were browning and the plant wasnt looking so hot. i started flushing with drinking water and there is quite alot of run off.

i turned the cfls off while i was flushing, and now my question is,

should i leave them off for a day so that the plant isnt getting such intense light, or should i put them on after flushing...????

please help, i feel really stupid for giving nutes to my seedling when i knew it was too early

thanks

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Why did you stop the light cycle? You want to keep that up because if you don't stick with where you were, the plant is really going to get confused. It's going to try to go into flowering if you take away too much light too early.

Stick with the light and dark schedule so that the plant doesn't stress anymore.

Definitely stay away from nutes for a day or so. You need to flush away the excess and let the plants rest for a bit.

I would just say you might need to chalk this up to a learning experience. To me, it sounds like you might not be able to save these. Hopefully you will, try everything you can, but young plants get hurt much more easily than they are first starting out.

hookahma said:

Why did you stop the light cycle? You want to keep that up because if you don't stick with where you were, the plant is really going to get confused. It's going to try to go into flowering if you take away too much light too early.

Stick with the light and dark schedule so that the plant doesn't stress anymore.

Definitely stay away from nutes for a day or so. You need to flush away the excess and let the plants rest for a bit.

I would just say you might need to chalk this up to a learning experience. To me, it sounds like you might not be able to save these. Hopefully you will, try everything you can, but young plants get hurt much more easily than they are first starting out.

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right on buddy, the little guy croaked last night