4th day of flowering; Jock Horror, fem Snow White, fem AK47 autoflower; 1st CFL grow

Hey all,

So I'm now on my 4th day of flowering and figured it was about time to post my grow to share some of my experiences thus far. I spent a good couple months reading a ton on this site and learned A LOT before I decided to take the plunge. I also got the "Bible", along with another growing guide, and read through those a couple times, too, before I got started. So I thought it was only fair that I post some back. Not to mention that this is a great outlet for that urge to talk about one's grow!

Anyway, I'm a veteran smoker and was recently turned on to some medical-grade bud. The stuff was top-notch, but was rather pricey, so I decided it was about time I gave growing a try. I'm now on my 4th day of flowering, and this is my very first grow.

Now for the backstory....

they look awesome man how long did you veg for?how many cfls/watts/lumens you got in there?

The backstory, bringing everyone up to speed....

Okay, as I mentioned above, I spent a lot of time reading various posts on this site and decided to grow for myself. (I should also point out that while I'm a veteran toker, my grow is also for med reasons.) So I picked up 5 feminized Snow White and 10 Jock Horror seeds from Nirvana. I ordered online with a CC, had them ship it their regular shipping to my regular address, and received them in a little over a week with no problems (props to them!!). Snow White's are supposed to be ready for harvest in about 7/8 weeks, with the Jock's taking from 9/11. I wanted something a little quicker to tide me over in the meantime so I also ordered up 3 Grass-o-matic feminized AK47 autoflowering from Atitude. They were out of stock of those at the time of my order, but I ended getting those with no problems within about 2 weeks, sent regular shipping (and props the them, as well!!).

Anyway, one of the things I regularly noticed on this site from pics of CFL grows was that not many people were using any sort of reflectors with their lights. Seemed like a lot of light was getting wasted. So I manufactured a hood/reflector for my setup while I was waiting on the seeds. (Also, another thing that I noticed on this site is that aside from some of the basics, there are a thousand different ways to do things. So what I've done, and what I'm documenting, is what works best for me.)

To build the reflector, I used 2 pieces of aluminum furnace ducting, 36" x 10", picked up from Home Depot. I made a little snip in the corners and used a 1" x 3" board to help bend the edges out a little. I then sank 3 sheet metal screws through the ducting into a 1" x 4" board, which serves as the back mounting support.

I then wired up the 4 light sockets using plastic sockets and 16-gauge weather resistant wiring to run between each. I made sure to use insulators on the backing of each socket, along with an abundance of electrical tape to help keep everything insulated against moisture. I then wired a 16-gauge tool power cord, which plugs into the power strip I use, and mounted the sockets onto a 1" x 6" x 31" board. Then, I used sheet metal screws to mount the inner board straight through to the board on the back of the reflector. The inner dimesions of the reflector measures 16", and the beauty of this setup is that different sized mounting boards (like up to 12"-16" wide) for the sockets could be used with a variety of light orientations, if you wanted. Next, I twisted in some hooks in the board on the back of the hood and hung from a swing set chain around a screw-mounted shower rod. All told, I think I spent about $20-$25 for all the materials on the hood (including the light sockets) and it only weighs about 5-6 lbs. Also, those are 27w cfls in that one pic.

The shower rod is mounted at about 50" in height, and the rest of my grow area measures 43" wide and 37" deep (expandable up to 60" deep if I wanted).

hey bakedat420,
thanks for the quick reply and nice comment. i vegged them for about 32 days, 330 total cfl watts, 21750 total lumens. i've been documenting the whole thing, and just need to get it up here now....

Okay, not really sure how to keep a thread going (when it's your thread), but I guess the "reply to..." seems to be working....

Anyway, on with the backstory....

So when I got my seeds from Nirvana, I germed 4 Jock Horrors and 2 fem Snow White's using the paper towel method. I had just gone through trying to germinate some old (10+ years) seeds I had saved, including some original Matanuska Thunderfuck from the late '80s, but ended up tossing 'em out after trying to germ them for 2 weeks with no success.

But within 12 hours, one of the Jocks had already split and was showing a nice 1-2cm tap root. Within 24-36hrs, they had all split with good tap roots and I put them all in Rapid Rooters and got them under some light.

After about 4 days, I started noticing tap roots coming out of the sides and bottom of the Rooters, so it was time to transplant. They went into 3" square containers and I used Roots Organic coco fiber soilless mix (coc fiber, perlite, pumice, worm castings, bat guano, kelp meal, green sand, soluble kelp, leonardite.) I also started them on a partial nute solution, Soul Synthetics Grow (3-1.25-1.25; ingredients: bat guano extract, alfalfa extract, kelp, yucca extract, molasses, potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate, calcium nitrate, and magnesium nitrate) and parked them under some lights, 30w 6400K, 30w 5500K, 2 40w 5000K, with a 42w 2700K and 40W 2700K on the ends.

In pic "sdlngs1", the 2 Snow Whites are bottom left while the Jock Horrors are top right.

So everything continued to go well, and here they are approx. 13 days from popping their little cotelydons. During this time, I also germed 1 of the fem AK47 autoflowering, hoping to get a little something before the rest was done, but it was pretty slow to germ. I guess I got spoiled with the others...! (top right in that overhead picture is the AK47)

At this time, I noticed quite a bit of roots coming out the holes in the bottom of the 3" containers, and thought it would be a good time to transplant into the 10" pots I had that's going to take them through to harvest. For these pots, which are also net bottom for drainage purposes, I used a 50:50 mix of the Roots Organic coco soilless and Grower's Best Media (Canadian sphagnum peat base, ph balanced). I also have them on full growing nutes.

In hindsight, I wish I would have waited a little longer before transplanting into the larger pots, or started them in something like a 6 inch pot. By putting them in the large pots while they were still so small, I lost a lot of the ability to have the cfls as close I could get them. Oh well, live and learn.

I also upped the amount of light to total 330 cfl watts and about 21,750 total lumens. The total blue (5000-6400K) to red (2700K) spectrums is about 16500:5250. This is also the total light they'll get until I switch to flowering.

(not exactly sure how that hood pic ended up in that last post.... anyway)

Here they are during 14-18 days from seed, during week 2 of veg. Being able to park those cfls right on top of these babies has definitely been nice for preventing stretch.

Here they are 21 days from showing cotelydon and the beginning of the 3rd week of vegging. The tallest one's are 3" high, have reached the 4th and/or 5th node... so it's time for some lst!

A few days later....

25 days old and continuing with the lst. Getting some serious bush action going on! At about the same time I started with the lst, I also fimmed 3 of the Jock Horrors and the weaker Snow White, just to see what would happen. Even though I cut off 80-85% of the tops, I don't think I did it right cause nothing really happened (other than obvious slowed growth).

Oh, by the way, one big thing I forgot to mention is that I've had these on a 20/4 light schedule from the very beginning. That's what was recommened for the AK47 autoflower and I wanted to keep them all on the same schedule. I later read that the 20/4 can also provide some of the best results/yield. Of course, I'm sure that's open to debate....

So here they are at 31 days old and I'm getting ready to switch to flowering lights and schedule. On day 29, I switched the light schedule to 18/6, and also took out all the wires I was using for lst to give them a bit of a break. When the lights went out at the end of this day, I pulled the plug and let them sit in complete darkness for what worked out to be about 34 hours. I had read that this can speed up the sexing, as well as harvest, by a little bit so I'd thought I'd give it a try. (I'm going to have a house full of company for a few days right around harvest time. The AK47 and Snow Whites shouldn't be a problem, but I'll either need to take an earlier harvest (by like a week) on the Jocks, or strectch see it can stectch them by a week or two. I also wasn't expecting to have the success I've had with everything and wouldn't mind finding a couple males to help thin the crop a little.)

Here they are right before the extended dark cycle.

... and when the lights come back on. This day, after the dark period, they ended up getting about 8 or 9 hours of light before going to the steady 12/12 schedule. It just kinda worked out that way with how I wanted the 12/12 schedule.

I also started them on bloom nutes at this time (Soul Synthetics Bloom, 1.5-4.5-3, ingredients: bat guano extract, alfalfa extract, kelp, yucca extract, molasses, potassium nitrate, potassium phosphate, calcium nitrate and magnesium nitrate). Initially, I've started with a 2:1 of the bloom to grow nutes, but will switch to straight bloom at the end of this week. I've been really pleased with the results from the nutes... I've found you can even double the recommended application rate without getting any nute burn.

Here they are on flowering day 2. I forgot to mention that I also switched the lights I was usinga couple days ago. So now I have 4 mack-daddy 68w 2700K (Home Depot, approx. $15 a piece), 4 42w 2700K and 2 40w 5000K. That gives me 520 total cfl watts and approx. 32,500 total lumens (or approx. 4643 lumens per plant). Once I'm able to determine the sexes on those Jocks, I'm going to get a couple more of the full spectrum (5000K) for some more side lighting. I really wouldn't mind finding at least 1 male, as I'm about at the minimum of recommended lumens per plant for flowering.

Speaking of which, I saw some of my first pistils today on one of the Jocks!

And on to day 3 of flowering, and they're all looking good! They measure from 4" to 6" in height, and my strongest Snow White and Jock show 10-12 tips.

I also decided on day 3 that I want to get back to a little more lst on all of them to help even them out in height, and also fill them out a little more. So more lst and I took them down to about 3 1/2". I think I'll continue with the lst only through the end of the week, or until I start to see some actual flowers, whichever happens first. I've run out of room in the pots! Not to mention, it requires a lot of handling and that's not anything I want to do once they start producing the good stuff.

Also, I had read that you can fim through the 1st week of flowering... anyone have any thoughts/experience with that? I thought that since it didn't seem to work out before, I might try it again on just one of two of the numerous tops I now have.

And that completes the backstory... feel free to ask any questions about it.

damn man you went from like sprout to flower in like a day thats crazy man..haha you musta spent the whole day here on RIU writing all that...your plants look awesome keep up the great work!

bakedat420 said:

damn man you went from like sprout to flower in like a day thats crazy man..haha you musta spent the whole day here on RIU writing all that...your plants look awesome keep up the great work!

Click to expand...

yeah, man, big mistake on my part! i won't be doing that again...!

Day 5 of flowering.... all the plants are still under lst (without doing any new lst anywhere on 'em), and I think I'll let it go a few more days and just set them all free as I don't want to induce any more stress now that they're in the flowering stage.

BUT, I did fim a couple of the Jocks. I had read a post about being able to do so during the first week of flower, and this has all been a bit of a grand experiment in ways so I thought I'd give it another try (my earlier fim attempts didn't produce any results). One of the Jocks had 13+ tops, and the other had around 10, so I just did it on one top on each plant. We'll see what happens!

No new info on sexes of the Jocks, but my feminized AK47 autoflower is showing some nice white hairs now. She's about 3 1/2 weeks old. I've also been training her for the last couple weeks and have about 6 tops now. I'm curious to see how that'll all work out, considering the genetics and all.

I'll post some more pics weekend....

On day 8 of flowering now, things still seem to be going well. In fact, it kinda looks like I got my own little sea of green going on (maybe a lake of green). It's a farkin' beautiful thing, man!

The canopy is now up to about 9" - 10", and I pulled all the wires out I was using for lst. No more lst (at least I think at this point) as I just want them to do their thing now.

I positively identified a male Jock Horror today... he's in a separate room now and is destined for hash or hash oil (maybe honey oil). Kind of a shit thing to say, but I'm kinda relieved to find the male, too, as I was one plant over my med legal limit. I think 2 out of the 3 Jocks that are left are females, and believe I'll be able to tell for sure in a another couple days.

I've been having a real bitch of a time with humidity for about the last week-and-a-half or so. Temps have been fine, ranging from 74-78 F during the day with the occasional spike up to 80 or 81. During the night, it drops by about 10-12 degrees. Humidity, however, has been off the charts, averaging around 75-85 percent. A couple times at night, it's even hit 91 percent! I figure it's mostly been due to all that transpiration going on. When I vent the room (open the door), it'll drop to 55-60 percent. I did notice today that once I took that male out, humidity levels did come down some, and I also reconfigured the fans I have in there, which also helped bring it down to around 60-65 percent.

I haven't been too psyched on the prospect of cutting holes in any walls, but I decided that I'm going to build a carbon scrubber tomorrow to help with ventilation, humidity, as well as get some odor control going.

Would love to hear some feedback if anyone has some... how my plants looking?

hey there,

haven't posted in a while, so i thought i'd get some new pics up. i've definitely been having my share of issues too!

- Built a carbon scrubber, based off this thread https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/7074-easy-build-diy-carbon-filter.html, to help with humidity. Made a few modifications based on local availability of some products and it really helped with the humidity problems i was having. it seems to help with the odors too. i'll get a little whiff of that smell-i-love-so-well once in a while when i have the door cracked for ventilation, but otherwise don't notice many/any mj odors. (i'm also using a couple ona gel-type products.)

- One of my feminized Snow White's went a little hermie on me... or at least was beginning to show tendicies towards that so i chopped it. it was the total runt of the crop but i had kept it around cause i figured i'd get a little something off it anyway as it was supposed to be feminized. i had also LST and FIM'd it, so i'm sure all that extra stress didn't help. i also read a couple threads about how feminzed seeds can tend to have a high hermie rate... sometimes up to 50%! anyway, i made some butane hash oil out of it, which ultimately wasn't worth the effort.

- Developed some magnesium deficiencies, along with perhaps some Ca and K problems as well. Petioles were turning very red and while new growth had slowed, I was getting some serious stretch. I had been using just tap water (always pH tested that consistently resulted in the 6.2-6.4 range) so i think i got some salt buildup and nute lockout. i gave the girls a good flush a little over a week ago and have since only been using distilled water. (pH of the runoff measured 6.2-ish just before the flush.) i also picked up some new nutes that are a little higher in the ratios, Pura Vida Organic Bloom (2-6-6). Now i use a little mixture of the Soul Synthetics and Pura Vida because they each have different trace elements available (2 parts PV: 1 part SS). You can still see the nutrient problems (namely the red petioles and on some leaves), but the girls seem to be doing better. (btw, 3 out of the 4 Jock Horrors turned out to be female....)

i'm sure i'll start posting more pics now that i have some of that sweet diggity-dank going....

looking good mate, keep it up