It Continues!!!

MEGAMIX
Through power outages and over-waters,
Under-nuting, nute burning and temp shifting;
Square feet and Ph and CO2 and PPM and tsp/L/Gal.
Lumens to watts to N-P-K to timers and twine –
Hooks and fans –
Various adapters abound.
​

It is time my phellow phriends, to grow some dank nugs again

The MEGAMIX strains:
- Big Bud
- Northern Lights
- Jack Herer
- Shiva Shanti
- Sweet Tooth #3
- Mazar

The Soil:
- Fox Farm Ocean Forest


The Nutes:
- Fox Farm Grow Big (3-2-6)
- Fox Farm Tiger Bloom (2-8-4)
- Fox Farm Big Bloom (0.01-0.3-0.7)

The Light:
- New T5 Fluorecent. Pioneer VIII

The grow room has been updated and is looking great, pics will follow shortly. The T5 supposedly runs very cool, and I'm still tinkering with the temperature. I have 10 pots to start with, I do not know which seeds are what strain. Assuming some seeds will not survive the planting and assuming some plants are male, I should end up with a few good females of varying strains.

I guess this can be considered DAY 1, as I have planted all ten seeds this morning. They were all freshly germinated. I watered them into the pots with a little room temp H2O mixed with half strength Big Bloom.

A few techniques I want to alter / continue / expand on since my last grow:
1. Flowering earlier! I'm not dealing with 4' plants in my closet!
2. Topping and Tying. I would like to continue experimenting with LST and various pruning methods throughout this grow.
3. Nutrients. At last I have some kick ass nutes to use!
4. Foliar feeding. With the T5 lights I don't have to worry about burning the leaves if I spray on them. I smell some yummy fish emulsion in my plants future!
5. WAIT TILL RIPE! Patience. I ain't clipping buds off a month before harvest time, and I'm waiting till the pot is dried and cured naturally before I smoke - no more microwave dries for moi!

I want everyone to feel comfortable posting in my journal. Questions or comments / observations are welcome. PLEASE STAY ON TOPIC. If the posts start getting wildly and unentertainingly off-point, I'll ask a mod to remove them.

This is gonna be fun, last time was interesting and tediously anxious toward the end. But this grow should be nice and smooth like butter covered in vegemite...

Some pics:

Here is the main setup grow area. 10 pots under the T5 Pioneer VIII. Each pot is getting around 3000+ lumens.


Picked up this nifty little gadget that allows me to set the tension of the nylon rope holding up the light. Then, I can raise and lower the light while the gadget "locks" up or down every inch. Hard to explain - super easy to use!


Last grow I said that half of my seeds were sprouted in my gf's sprouter, this is what it looks like. Water goes in the top and runs through grooves that the seeds sit on - took about 48 hours until 11/11 germed.


A great book, and a great harvest from about a month ago!


My nutes, I love em so much I just had to get a pic!

Well I for one will look forward to the grow. I had heard some of the "bloom " products are good for that first rooting. Apparently you agree?

For some of the first time growers could you explain your ventilation? I see the two fans there.

VictorVIcious said:

Well I for one will look forward to the grow. I had heard some of the "bloom " products are good for that first rooting. Apparently you agree?

Click to expand...

Ed Rosenthal and the folks at Fox Farm got me into the Germ -> Bloom / plant method. Since it has been one day only, I'll have to wait to be convinced.

VictorVIcious said:

For some of the first time growers could you explain your ventilation? I see the two fans there.

Click to expand...

My ventilation...

For those who followed my first grow the heat from my HIDs really created a delicate situation. I was able to keep the temp relatively stable at 76°F (+/- 5°F). I did this by opening my closet door -(with fans blowing heat)> bedroom. Then I opened my bedroom window -(fans blew cool air)> bedroom.

So with the help of 4 fans and an open window I managed to vent.

This presented problems however. The security and convenience of my closet space was compromised, as I had to keep my bedroom closed and locked all the time. As the weather changed from fall to winter, the adjustments became irritating (sometimes more than twice-a-day I'd have to reCrack the window, turn fans higher or lower, etc.).

Fast forward to today. My closet door is shut, and my temp is 78° F. The light has been on for over 6 hours so I think it's safe to say the temp is stabilized. Even though it is a little high, my closet is very dry as the heat ducts are literally the roof in there and it sucks the moisture right out. A homemade C02 apparatus will help offset the additional heat (which should tend to be around 75-76° F).

The two fans at the bottom of the pic are for air circulation, not ventilation. For all the first timers please note that difference. The circulation grows stronger stems, that can be tied and bent without snaping as well as hold up giant buds later on. Ventilation replaces grow room air with hotter or colder air as needed to keep the temp cozy.

8 out of 10 lil dicot cotyledons have emerged, yippie right! I've been keeping them moist and the light on half strength, temp is looking good -

all systems are go.

78 sounds godly, i battle to stay below 85, your old situation sounds much like mine ^_^

Ok, so I just read your entire last grow and that was like the coolest thing i ever read, it should be a movie. Anyways, I just started my grow tonight and i hope for even half of what you got on your first grow, congrats dude, and i wish you the best of luck on this crop, May All Your Males Be Females. I will be watching you through the entire thing i hope, while taking care of mine. and since we planted so close together in time, maybe some of my questions will just be awnsered right here. So I thank you for that also. Have Fun.

-=Scepter=-

Thanks Scepter & Whitebomb!

My current screenplay is about environmental conservation in the early 1900's, but maybe the next next one will be a stoner comedy / drama. Kinda like "Go" but for suburban pharmers.

As of this morning it looks like all 10 seeds will root. One is still slightly barely out of the soil and another is out, but not looking so hot (might be too watered).

I think until they develop their first set of true leaves, one should only use a cup of water maybe twice a day to avoid drowning them. Doesn't really matter though, I got plenty of seeds left!

i have mine in the aerogarden (3 skunk seeds, not really sure which one, just know it is some chronic bomb-bay skunk-alicious). one pod has a sprout with 2 little green leaves and the other 2 have strange white sprout wanna be root type things hopefully soon to grow into a green leafy monster.

anyways best of luck to you both :]

btw i use the same neuts..i wanna get the other 3 and maybe the bush whacker flushing crap too...just to go the whole 9 yards on my first grow :>

So... what happended to this journal, it was going to be the best and i havent seen any new development in the plot for 2 weeks... Ok, well, hope all is well.

SCEPTER

DAY 19

Sorry everyone for not updating regularly. This semester has turned out to be difficult - mostly due to the big jar of Top44 that follows me everywhere

The other reason is that everything grow-wise is going so well

Usually, I would be posting everytime a leaf curled or a slight discoloration was noticed. This time though I am feeling so blasé about the grow that I really won't "get into it" until I begin sexing the plants. Hopefully that will begin soon - Once the biggest plant gets to 12"-15"...

Once the temperature was stabilized at 76° F. Everything just went on auto pilot. I am watering 2 gallons / 10 plants (about a 1/4 Gal per plant - not 2 gallons per plant!) every two days. Keeping the light 3" above the canopy and the fans on - everything just runs itself.


^ This is the tallest, lankiest of the bunch. gf and I are betting male on this one. "He" will determine when the plants go to 12/12, as soon as he is tall enough they will be switched over.


^ Most of the other plants match this profile (although the seeds planted were all different, so they will probably be different strains). Short and squat.


^ Another shot of Mr Plant... Tomato seeds are germinating in the bottom right.



Not sure if I should TOP these squaters, what do you all think? Maybe if I start tying, and topping and bending and pruning the grow will be more interesting and I'll post more

DAY 22

Nute burn!!!

I hate posting without pictures, but I'm too couchlocked to mess with the camera. But I'll post pics in a bit cuz what happened is pretty intense.

So I watered my plants for the first time with twice as much water as I had been using prior. Because they were bigger and thicker and could handle the soak. I used the standard recipe of nutes per/gallon.

A day later a few of the plants (i have ten), were showing slight leave burn / crispy outer edges of sun leaves. But one plant was completely fubar-ed!

This thing looked like it contracted muscular dystrophy overnight. Totally twisted and leaves burned to a crisp! Even the soil around it was yellow and bone dry.

The plant was 20 days old, a short squat indica.

I flushed it with about 3 gallons of pure distilled water, added a layer of fresh topsoil, clipped the dead foliage, and sprayed both sides of the remaining leaves with h2o.

So far, the damage has not progressed and the plant seems to be stable, though horribly disfigured.

DAY 26

Heartbreaking pictures of a nute burned baby clinging on for life.




Here is the wide shot of the whole garden - lots of variety


I believe this is Mazar. It could be a male, but I hope she's not! I'm going to top this one soon and grow it bushy.


Here is a short squatter, I'm considering topping these.


This is the baby of the bunch, growing very small!


I'm considering forcing 12/12 now to sort out the sex, and once the males are removed reverting back to the veg stage. Has anyone done this successfully - without stressing the plants to hell?

If anyone has grown the Megamix before and has tips on how to tell the strains apart, plz let me know!

i hope mine plants will look good as yours.

THX Jimmy!

The plants are experiencing a nice growth spurt. I have been watering with pure h2o this week and will resume nutes if a few days.

The drama this grow will be the surreptitious relocation of the plants during the April week that the landlord will be fixing up my house! So in the next 4 weeks I have to clone and preflower samples from each plant so I can remove any males and cut the number of my plants down, I have ten now.

This means that by the time I flower, my plants will probably be huge and by June-ish I should have a huge yummy mega harvest!

... So, anyone care to babysit my plants for a few days?

hopefully u did choose to throw them into flower..what is it now? day 32/33? its about that time huh? i cant wait to see what you get from this mega mix!

DAY 43/1st DAY FLOWERING

Waited until last night to begin the flowering process. Because the MEGAMIX might be my last grow for awhile, I wanted the plants to be as big as possible

Here is the grow-room. Whoever says the T5 fluorescents can't compete with the HIDs have not visited this garden



Another shot of the big tall female: she's either shiva shanti, big bud, northern lights, sweet tooth #3. I've almost completely ruled out Jack Herer based on pics on the internets and videoman is growing Mazar and it don't look like this. Anyone wanna guess what this big gal is?




They are a little cramped right now, but once the males are rooted out in the next couple weeks, there will be a lot more room. I am toying with the idea of setting the T5 vertical and hooking up the 400w HPS overhead to give a boost to the flowering - it may be overkill though, and would definately mess with the temperature stability I have going.

The big girl was topped, obviously. I haven't messed with any of the other plants yet, I think I will prune but not top them - later on.

Looking good mate. Is there anywhere else you can put males until you can grab some pollen off em? That way you could do a bit of interbreeding with the healthiest specimens

Scepter1987 said:

May All Your Males Be Females. -=Scepter=-

Click to expand...

Thank you Scepter, your vibes paid off.

All 10 plants are female

It's gonna be a good summer