Smartboyalex's Grow Journal

Hi everyone! I am a complete newbie to this site and to marijuana cultivation in general. I am very excited to start my first grow and extremely nervous at the same time. All questions and discussion on this grow can be directed here: https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal-discussion/332379-smartboyalexs-grow-journal-discussion-page.html



Here is the background on this project, I wanted to start my first grow with a hydroponic setup but after much evaluation of my finances and a lot of thinking I decided to start with soil for many reasons, the first being the cost of a hydroponic set-up, although I have already gathered a lot of the materials I still haven't purchased the most expensive items on the list (gauges, pump, timers, etc.) and financially won't be able to afford it for a while, the second reason would be the margin of error that each method has, while hydroponic is a much better method of growing the risk of doing something wrong and messing it all up is much greater than with soil, soil is much more forgivable than hydroponic and the grow time is slower allowing you to fine tune and repair any problems that arise.

I am starting my first grow from seeds that I pulled out of a bag of "mids", I am not exactly sure what strain it is and I won't be able to make an educated guess as to the type of plant (sativa, indica, etc.) it is until I reach the end of the vegetative state and I can see the characteristics of the plant. I am starting with nine seeds.

For this grow I will be using mostly FF products starting with Light Warrior and moving to FFOF and I will be using the Liquid Trio for my Nutes.

My seeding setup is a Jiffy heat mat and a 18" x 4" plastic "greenhouse" with two six spot trays in it. For my lighting in the first stages I will be using 4 - 4' Sylvania F40/DX/CVP 6500K 40W Flouros with 54.5 lumens/watt which isn't too great but should work pretty well.


Here's a pic of the setup as of right now (05-19) with the lights on:


Here it is with some white cardboard around it to help reflect and contain the light (sorry about the horizontal lines, the lights make my phone do that when I get too close):



So now that you know my initial set-up lets get things going here:



May 16th 2010:

I filled all 12 spots in my seedling trays with FF "Light Warrior" and watered them well, I planted all nine seeds leaving the last 3 spots with just soil (not sure why I did this I just couldn't leave them empty and maybe it will help keep humidity up in the "greenhouse") I left the light off and place the "greenhouse" directly on the heat mat.



May 19th 2010:

First signs of sprouting, 4 out of the five have stems (bent over) poking through. No signs of any thing from the other 5. I am now going to leave the lights on 24/0 until I figure out when I should change to 18/6. I am hoping there is not too much heat from the heat mat AND the lights, but from what I read I should be okay. I also need to find out when to or if I need to add "Big Bloom" like what is suggested in the FF feeding schedule.

Here is a pic of one of the sprouts, I am using the camera on my phone so sorry about the quality, the sprout is right in the middle just to the right of the large piece of perlite thats on the left edge of the picture:

May 20-21st 2010

Yesterday (March 20th) another seedling sprouted making six in all. I put a fan on them on low to move air and have been putting it on high for a couple hours in the evening to strengthen the stems.



Today another seedling is poking through making 7 total so far. All but 2, including the new sprout, of the little guys have sprouted leaves, the one that fully sprouted but has no leaves yet isn't looking as healthy as the others but I am hoping it pulls through since I only have 7 plants right now with a 50% chance of males. The stems on all but the two are starting to turn purple, I hope this is just genetic and not a deficiency.



I have been watering a lot but since I have high heat and a fan and a light, the soil is pretty dry by the time I get home from work so I am going to start watering more.

May 22-23

Yesterday (May 22nd) the last two sprouts started poking through. Sadly I was poking through the dirt to see what was going on and ended up breaking one of the seedlings, you live, you learn right? So we have 8 seedlings sprouted.

I went to Wally World and picked up a combo digital Temp-Humid. gauge for 7$ and picked up a Brinks Timer for 8$ which is half of the price for the one at Lowe's it's pretty nice too, it has 15 min intervals and can do several different on/off periods throughout a 24hr period and it's easy to use and has a switch to bypass the timer. The guage is a good buy also, It is switchable from C-F and has a min/max feature that tells you min/max readings of both temp. and humidity that its gotten until you reset it and it was cheap and is compact.

From my investigating I have decided to go with a 18/6 light cycle from here out (until fruiting of course). This will give it sufficient night time to harden up and to help with root development.

I have also put a ultrasonic humidifier in the air stream from the fan, the blower on the humidifier is broken but putting it in front of the fan seems to draw the vapor from the humidifier pretty well.


1: Full Garden; 2: The seedling I broke, how sad.; 3: A new and final sprout; 4: Temp/Humid Gauge




Today, from what I've seen and read my little girls are doing very well, the stems are pretty hefty and aren't too tall. The min/max temps were 74F/80F for last night and this morning. The humidity is staying at around 36% I would like to get it up but it is hard with a busted humidifier, being up in the mountains with 10% humidity doesn't help too much either. I would like to get my temps down at night but I already have the lights and my heat pad set on the timer with the fan still going at night times. I will need to figure something to try and get my night temps to drop another 5*f if possible.


1: Side view of seedlings; 2: Top view of seedlings; 3: A view of the biggest seedling showing a good stem similar to the rest.