My Very First Grow

Ok Ill make this as streamlined as possible. First Time Grower, Long time smoker giving cultivation a shot. This is a dry -run to address any future problems with my setup ahead of time, and also to get familiar with mary jane the plant, instead of mary jane the brown nasty i hafta occasionally purchase from some very shady folks indeed, in hopes to get familiar with mary jane the green sticky i grew. Trying to eliminate the middleman, thats all. Any how this is bagseed from a descent bag i got from an out-of-town friend. Im doing this just to learn all the ins and outs before I commit to a larger setup. Thanks to everyone on this site for information and a few good chuckles. I joined in december, and i have been on here almost every day since
april when i started growing. Feel free to send any questions my way.

4/20
succesfully germinated 12 seeds (random mix bagseed out of 36 to begin with) in soil Jiffy Starter Kit.

4/30
plants growing under five 17 watt fluorescent under counter lights in a stealthish grow cabinet/bureau. feeding water only at this point.

5/15
still growing. started Miracle-Gro® Organic Choice® All Purpose Plant Food Concentratein small portions 5 - 0 - 0 @ 10 drops per gallon. its made from fermented beet sugar molasses and ive heard good things about molasses.
Transplanted into 1 qt peat pots. Soil was unmeasured mixture of (But in this order of percentage)Miracle Grow Organic Potting Soil Mix, Mushroom Soil (Sterilized) Chicken Manure (Sterilized), Blood Meal, Pearlite, Vermiculite, Sterilized Garden Compost, and a little lime to keep ph in line. which is right around 6/7
installed an 3 cfm exhaust fans in my bureau. 2 coming in and 1 going out. plus i have an airconditioner in the room for ambient temperature control. keeps it nice and cool. got some reflective mylar and a car window relfector cooling thingy.

5/25
getting big fast! removed 2 not - so - genetically - viable - looking plants to make room for the others. (I have no idea how i judged the genetics of the plants... .o0BLASTEDOo.)
20 drops fert per gallon every other feeding 5 Drops houseplant food per gallon

5/30
picked 3 at random to keep inside and transplanted them to 2 gallon pots...one was showing preflowers of the female variety.
killed male prelflower plant by garbage disposal for evidence removal...and for fun. the remaining six were transported to an undisclosed outdoor location. even I dont know where they are, but ive been assured they will be taken care of...hopefully females.
we shall see in the fall.
30 drops fert per gallon every other feeding plus 10 drops miracle grow houseplant food
8 - 7 - 6 just to get some of the other nutes in there.

6/6
started 12/12 cycle on 3 best looking plants. One is definitely female, i bent her over a little to hopefully keep her short...., but im not sure about the other 2. Well see in about a week hopefully. changed up the lights abit.
still running 4 of the fluoro tubes as side lighting, have 2 25W CFL as side lights plus 6
25W CFL as my sun for a grand total of 260somethin watts!! hope i get nice product with this amount of lights. using miracle grow rose flowering 18-24-16


6/12
damn! the two .oO??Oo. plants were both boys. Down the garbage disposal with ya....smells nice though. ok Im left with one girl to focus all my energy on and hopefully turn this around. started using 1 TBSP Grandmas Unsulphered Molasses per gallon and miracle grow rose flowering 18-24-16 in 1/4 tsp per gallon.


6/16
Ok Corinne (thats what i named her) is doing great. Lots of hairs, lots of light and watered every 3 days. Im gonna hafta move her down a level soon, she is about 1 1/2 ft tall...I have 48 total inches from the bottom including 2-3 inches for the lights....hope thats enough. Going out of town for the weekend so im pulling the lights up 5 inches from the top so the leaves dont burn.

6/20
Damn, burnt a few leaves while camping out in the woods. Its cool though the cola is still good and ive got room to spare
fed with the same solution as above but double strength. she seems to be quite happy.

7/4
Corrine is very happy and budding like mad. moved her down to the floor of the cabinet. about 2 feet tall at this point and growing still. tied her down gently for a fed days to angle her sideways a little. I upgraded bulbs again last week. now im running 6 42 watt cfl, and 3 25 w cfl as side lights, 3 17 tubes and a 20 watt cfl circular light around the stem wich i have propped up on the bucket and it keeps around an inch and a half from the stem. helping the bottom out alot. too many budsites to count but definintely doing its thing. got a microscope (30x) to check out the trichomes. hoping things will plump up a bit more before she finishes flowering. still using the same molasses and miracle grow rose flowering, but in double the dose in a gallon, and alternating watering every other day with straight water.
　
　
　Gonna keep this journal going since I just now typed all of this up from notes on my blackberry. (whew!) I have a few more weeks and a new camera to break in so expect many more pics and update as developments occur. Feel free to send any questions or advice my way. Keep up the good fight and Thanks for checkin it out. PEACE

Looks like a decent setup! It looks like you are using foil as your reflective material...
This is a poor choice, as it is prone to heat spots, and has a relatively low reflectivity, particularly when heavily creased or wrinkled.
Change to mylar if you can, or some flat white paint.
Both are capable of reflecting more light that foil.

Good luck growing

Yeah its actually an emergency fire blanket (which i think is mylar). It just got crumbled up a bit. Used it camping and didnt really fold it up. Thanks for the advice and the encouragement dyzel!!

ok heres an update
Its been five weeks since I began 12/12 Light schedule. Something weird is happening and if anyone has any suggestions as to what i may have done wrong or could have done better please feel free to comment. It seems that the top 1/4 of the plant has stopped growing in any way. The cola is lame in comparison to some of the side buds. I dont even want to post a pic of it, thats how sad it looks. PH was a little on the acidic side so i did a flush and will do another tomorrow. Could that have affected the plant in this way? Genetics maybe? Possibly a stress issue? I was getting some unexpected high temps (80= degrees by the lights) but i just moved a fan closer and it seems to have nulled the heat.
Otherwise the plant seems healthy: Dark green fan leaves, lots of evenly distributed bud formations and many many hairs. Hopefully the buds will plump up a bit in the next few weeks. heres a pic if anyone can tell me how long i have till harvest id be thankful:
Peace?

oops heres the pic
side bud: one of the bigger ones

my assed-out cola: what did i do wrong?

update: just identified some trichs on a few bud leaves with my handy dandy 30x mini microscope. There is still some hope yet!

looking good bro subscribed

another update: So I was pretty worried before about my upper buds not filling out the way i had hoped, but now as i check out the entire plant im getting excited. Im not saying its a good thing yet, but the lower and side buds are filling out nicely, and there are too many to count. I suppose something caused my flowering to lag behind a bit, so im gonna shoot for 9/10 weeks total instead of 8 weeks. This way i can give her some nutes for the next few days and a little more molasses. Ill start flushing on july 25 and stop watering all together on august 8. After that ill pay close attention to my lady and when things are looking good, im planning on giving her 3 days of darkness to help use up whatever carbs/nutes are still around. Wish me luck friends, Hopefully ill get a nicer yield than im expecting. more pics this weekend

Is MG Rose plant food good for flowering marijauna? I've used MG bloom booster before(15-30-15), but never the rose nutes(18-24-16).

just use the bloom booster thats wut i use and i like it for very cheap nutes it works never used the rose nutes also theres nothing wrong with you cola that i can see give it another week