My first grow

Thanks Mared. The flush officially starts tonight or tomorrow or whenever they get watered next. How do you feel about extending the dark period just prior to harvest? I've heard people doing 36+ hours of dark immediately before chopping...maybe it helps "cure it up" a little more to get some extra darkness? Maybe not.

There is so much folklore and hearsay associated with cultivating marijuana...its hard to know what is good info and what is bunk.

So my minor construction project hit a few snags along the way, and turned out to be a lot simpler than my original plan...oh well, it worked! I added a raised platform where I place small to medium sized pots under the 400w hps. I figured the bigger light can support more plants and covers more area than the 150, so lets cram as much as we can in there! I took all except the 4 topped plants (6 total) and added them to the flower room. My plan is now to turn the closet back into a veg closet and let those topped girls bulk up a little before going back to flower. I'm trying to get a nice perpetual system going, where I've got plants at various stages of growth moving between the veg and flower rooms.

Take a look...

Here's a shot looking in. Note the additional plants on the right. Already a couple weeks into flower now.


A nice shot of the shelf. I originally added planks to the sides to prevent them from falling off the sides. They took up too much room and were probably just unnecessary anyway. So I just screwed a couple boards on and viola!



I took a couple in-situ shots of the other girls too...didn't feel like taking them out again to photograph. Here's tall girl.


Here's wide girl. Her top is fucking huge. The new projecting bits are now covered in trichomes. You can't really tell, but I was shocked by how sparkly they were. I'll take a better shot tomorrow and you'll be able to see a little better.


Wide girl hiding in the back. Just huge main cola and lower buds. I'm expecting a big yield from this little plant.


Here are the remaining topped girls in the veg closet. Going back to 18/6 or 20/4 soon.



I fed a few of the shorty's some molasses and big bloom today for the first time with their water. They're probably about ready for it.

Sorry the pics kinda suck today...I'll take them out and get better ones tomorrow

Those pics were great for me. The grow room mods look awesome. If those topped plants in the veg closet are still in 12/12 I would decide whether or not to change back as soon as you can. The longer they go into flower the harder it is to revert back to veg. If you wait too long the budsites will be unable to push out new leaves and the new greenery will instead be forced out the sides of the nodes and grow all curly and funny for a few days. And I say go for it with the 72 hour dark. I thought all that was myth too until I tried the experiment witht the night time harvest.

mared juwan said:

Those pics were great for me. The grow room mods look awesome. If those topped plants in the veg closet are still in 12/12 I would decide whether or not to change back as soon as you can. The longer they go into flower the harder it is to revert back to veg. If you wait too long the budsites will be unable to push out new leaves and the new greenery will instead be forced out the sides of the nodes and grow all curly and funny for a few days. And I say go for it with the 72 hour dark. I thought all that was myth too until I tried the experiment witht the night time harvest.

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Well I left the light on in the veg closet, so they are going back into veg right now. Done and done.

I'll definitely give the extra dark thing a try, but 3 days of darkness?! Whoa. I'm actually going out of town for a couple days over memorial day weekend, which is right around when I plan on harvesting, so maybe I'll switch off the lights off then...

Your new closet looks great Jerry. Congrats man .. your grow is gettign better and better and looks like you are going to have a huge yield !!

So I took some more pics tonight. They're looking and smelling just fantastic. I gave a thorough watering... 2.5 gallons for the three plants of only distilled water, pH @ 6.8. The runoff initially registered around 7.2, but by the end was hitting 8.0 across the board. Not sure how/why it is so high. I've got a soil pH test, but I haven't gotten around to using it yet.

Everything is going well, except humidity is up around 70% at night. I'm trying to find some dehumidifying crystals in town, but I'll probably have to get them online. Any reduction would help. During their daytime the humidity is ~43%.

Killed one gnat today. Now that the young girls have moved into the flower room I'll need to get more sand and cover the soil up to deter the little flying devils.

UVB is running as we speak. There are a LOT of trichomes popping up, especially from the new growth. It never runs more than 4 or 5 hours a day, usually in one or two increments. It's the first exposure for the young girls, so we'll see if it has any negative effets for them. But I think they are responding positively to the light.

That's about it. I took a bunch of pics so I'll let them do the rest of the talking.

Tall girl


More tall girl


Nice little bud there.


Sparkley


Lower buds. I tried to pull them apart a little and get some light down there...pulled one branch a little too hard and had to tie it to the main stem to keep it up. They look great though.


More lower buds. Showing new growth.


Wide girl.


Closer view of the nice looking top.


More of the top.


And another.


Top down shot.


One more close up.


Lower buds on wide girl. Still developing, but they look nice.


Shorty! Thick and beautiful!


Lower buds. BIG lower buds!


Shorty's top/main cola


Closer.


And a little closer still...



So they're doing well. I knocked off a very small lower bud accidentally...so I had to smoke it. Dried it in front of my space heater for about an hour. Smoked pretty harsh and chemically...that's why I'm flushing away!

BTW, how much should I be watering during these last few weeks? I don't want to really "flush" right? Just water as I normally would, but only with water? The runoff was pretty yellow/amber...

I don't know if I'd even want to wait 2 more weeks to harvest.
I don't know if there is an "exact" way to flush Jerry. I stare at my plants for so long near the end, I practically have to tie my hands just to not harvest. So, instead, I do a gradual flush.....and I probably flush more than is recommended too. I lose count on how many gallons per plant I use. I just keep flushing until it comes clear. That's a whole lot of water---more than the 3x size of the pot "they say" to use.
Definitely continue to use the molassas...but I don't know how I feel about your using it on your clones.
As for the tea thing....if I tell you different things I've tried, I promise you that you will not find anything online about it......at least I didn't. I just figured, I like the taste of my tea, so my plants will too. And it DID do justice for the flavor. I had grown the very same strain without to do a comparison. SO MUCH SWEETER AND SMOOTHER "with" the tea.
I get kind of goofy with the stuff Jerry and as I said earlier, I'm not one to measure. I make my tea, have a cup.....and share with my plants--room temperature of course for them. Vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, cardomom, clover, nutmeg---whatever tastes good. It's natural, they're herbs..and using them in the end works wonderfully. No one argue with me here.
HeHe, my way of saying I don't care what "others" say......I love it. I use the herbs, along with the molassas and oh---I've also used maple syrup, yes, maple syrup--organic of course. I have even lightly misted the plant with all of the above ingredients in the VERY END...very important to have fan "dry" them off so as not to create mold. But I DRENCHED them at a gradual pace.
I've read over and over about the 3 day dark period. I don't know how I feel about that either. Mother nature doesn't allow for that, but hey....I had to try it. I don't know that I can attribute anything wondrous it did for my bud, so I'm neutral on that one.
I got so frustrated with the gnats at the end. I did grow them in the last few days with bare roots sitting in a strainer! I just HAD to get rid of that soil, yuck, yuck, YUCK.
--- so now I'll have to nag you to do the same with your clones. A bare root transplant that is.
I can't wait to see you actually harvest. Don't forget to add those pictures!!!

Babs34 said:

HeHe, my way of saying I don't care what "others" say......I love it.

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You truly do things your own way babs...lol...whatever works! I don't think I'll be experimenting with tea anytime soon, but I like the concept. I'm actually quite intrigued by organic growing, and may pursue that route someday down the line...but for now I'm content to refine my newly acquired growing skills and produce the best quality plants I can. Once I garner more experience I'll start branching out to things like coco, organics, maybe a little hydro...I want to try it all! But again, for now I just want to get good at what I'm doing

Very impressive Jerry !
Lol... Shorty looks like one big round bud.
Looks like those plants will be done soon... maybe 2 weeks will be too long ?
Its cool that a small branch accidentally fell, so you could get a taste. Anyway, about the flushing thee has to be as many theories about flushing as growers... I personally im just going with flushing on the last week.

Yeah, I'm not sold on 2 weeks as a magical number for flushing...but I'm not going to hurry it either. I may actually harvest a lower bud from each of them in about a week, just to test how the short flush/early harvest tastes (and to start my comparison of the high produced by cloudy vs. amber trichs).

I may also try the Final Flush stuff I've got...I have it so I might as well use it...I'll read the bottle and decide later.

Everything is going well, except humidity is up around 70% at night. I'm trying to find some dehumidifying crystals in town, but I'll probably have to get them online.
Lowes Home Improvement---"DampRid"----you can find it in the cleaning section isle. Two containers for approximately 5 bucks.
Oh, and no "Magic" to the flush, but give it at least a week and it's really a waste of money to get the clearex in my most humble opinion. But, to each their own.

I also bought a lil device called a damp trap that collects all the moisture from the air and reduces humidity. Should to be able to buy them relatively cheap from most DIY stores.

Those buds are looking really good especially loving the close ups with the crystals on there. Looks like you gonna have some tasty buds soon to smoke.

Evil

Babs34 said:

Everything is going well, except humidity is up around 70% at night. I'm trying to find some dehumidifying crystals in town, but I'll probably have to get them online.
Lowes Home Improvement---"DampRid"----you can find it in the cleaning section isle. Two containers for approximately 5 bucks.
Oh, and no "Magic" to the flush, but give it at least a week and it's really a waste of money to get the clearex in my most humble opinion. But, to each their own.

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I managed to find the DampRid stuff at Lowes yesterday (before I read this post as a matter of fact) on my SECOND trip there. I asked someone the first time and they looked at me like I was a damn fool. I was in there buying sand and in the checkout aisle was a 2-pack for $5...ugh.

I checked online and found that home depot had the same stuff, but in a variety of different sizes and containers (as well as a large container of refill crystals for $4) that lowes did not carry. So now I've got the stuff and plenty of refill! We'll see how it does in my dark cycle today (its been raining for about 18 hours now so there should be plenty of moisture for those things to remove).

Regarding the flush, I was planning on just using water, but my girlfriend bought it for me while at the hydro store about a month and a half ago...she was in the neighborhood and I asked for her to pick up something--while she was there the guy working told her she needed this "final flush" stuff. I laughed and told her water works just fine, but now I've got the stuff so I might as well use it.

Evil Buddies said:

I also bought a lil device called a damp trap that collects all the moisture from the air and reduces humidity. Should to be able to buy them relatively cheap from most DIY stores.

Those buds are looking really good especially loving the close ups with the crystals on there. Looks like you gonna have some tasty buds soon to smoke.

Evil

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Thanks Evil Buddies, as I said above I managed to find one yesterday. I'm not sure how much they will lower the humidity, but one guy said they lower his about 20%, which would probably keep me under 50% total RH, which is what I'm shooting for.

Regarding the pics, I saw those trichs really start sparkling the other day and wanted everyone get a look. They've still got a week or so to get more frosty before they get the chop too...

Yea Jerry keep a very close eye on your biggest buds. That is where your risk of budrot is highest. If you see a single fan leaf that is sticking out of the bud start to shrivel up and die for seemingly no reason it is probably mold. Follow the stem of the leaf to the middle of the bud and inspect for any fuzzy mold. If you see any, chop that bud ASAP. I've had mold problems before and they will ruin your day big time.

Yeah, I figured the biggest buds have the highest potential to get moldy. That's why I'm trying to get the humidity under control now. It's hard to tell if any leaves projecting from the buds are starting to shrivel, as most of them are already shriveled.

While I don't suspect I have an issue right now, do you think I should pull apart the top buds a little bit and check? I don't want to start ripping them apart now, but at the same time I want to make damn sure there is no mold or budrot. I've heard of entire crops going down b/c of buds rotting from the inside out...no fun...

Newbie to the page and to growing, and to me everything is looking great. I'm just finishing my indoor grow area it's kind of small 2ft6ince wide x and like 3ft8inches tall I have 10 cfls of 23watts each (5 cool daylight and 5 warm whites) with 2 T8 18w fluorescents and I put 2 PC fans one for intake the other for exhaust. I'll make a thread soon. How many plants do you have? I'm trying to see how many I can put in there

pabloezekiel said:

Newbie to the page and to growing, and to me everything is looking great. I'm just finishing my indoor grow area it's kind of small 2ft6ince wide x and like 3ft8inches tall I have 10 cfls of 23watts each (5 cool daylight and 5 warm whites) with 2 T8 18w fluorescents and I put 2 PC fans one for intake the other for exhaust. I'll make a thread soon. How many plants do you have? I'm trying to see how many I can put in there

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Thanks for stopping by pablo. Right now I've got 3 girls in 7.5" square pots in my room of 17" wide by 30" deep by ~5 feet tall. I could have fit as many as 8 in the 7.5" square pots, but until now I only had a 150w hps, which would not provide enough coverage for them all.

You're room sounds larger than mine (though you only gave a width and height, so a third dimension would help understand the size you're dealing with) so you should be able to fit at least as many plants as I've got. You're biggest drawback will be having enough light to support the entire space. Fluoros are all well and good, and your combination of spectrums is also a plus, but HID light (MH and HPS) will give you bigger/better yeilds. However, it's not such a bad idea to embark on your journey with only fluoros until you get the hang of things. I guess it depends mostly on your budget. I started with cfl's and fluoros too, so check out the early pages of my thread and you'll get an idea of how things went for me.

Good luck with your first grow

Yeah the depth is like the width it would be W 2'6"-D2'6"-3'8" and yeah budget it's a huge thing for me right now and things down here in Argentina are not as cheap and you can't really get everything for example the Y adapters and things of that sort. But growing it's a must for me because weed down here it's cheap in price and quality for example if I spend 50pesos (around U$S20) I get a brick of 18 to 25g of weed but the quality it's not great. So I hope this works fine for personal use.

I think you'll be able to produce some high quality marijuana using the lights and space described above, but sufficient nutrients and a good grow medium are vital to producing the kind of bud you're looking for. I'm guessing you're using soil?

Jerry Garcia said:

I think you'll be able to produce some high quality marijuana using the lights and space described above, but sufficient nutrients and a good grow medium are vital to producing the kind of bud you're looking for. I'm guessing you're using soil?

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Yes I'm using soil I thought of going Hydro but I think I'll do it next time don't want to spend all the money at once rather improve my set up as I learn...so right now I'm searching for the best nutes that I can find and soil I thought of mixing perlite, compost, and a bag of dirt...