Learning the Ropes - First Grow.

Started 12/12 on Wednesday (Sept 29th), took some photos this morning. Still can't really tell sex for certain on any of them.

All of em


Closer on the big one.

Took some closeups today, pretty sure at this point I have 3 female and 1 male. But I'm not 100%. They are all showing maturity with their alternating nodes.

These two I am unsure, can see what may or may not be pistils forming.




This one I am almost certian is a female, pretty much looks like buds starting



And I'm again pretty sure this is the male.



If anybody can tell me whether I am way off or not that would help a bunch.

Well, 2 definite females, the buds and pistils are unmistakable at this point. The one plant is male, and unfortunately the clones I took a month or so ago are also from a male plant (I was flowering just one to sex). The last plant I am still not sure about, no real signs yet, although the absense male looking flowers in favor of a more bud (oppose to ball) is promising. Not too shabby for 7 days into flower.

heh, so I may have been a littler over eager in sexing, turns out one of the ones I thought was a female, was not. So as of now I have 1 female, and 1 'I don't know, but think might be a girl'.

My girl.




Pistils!


The IDK. I only think it's a female because the flower areas don't look anything like the males did + they showed very quickly, this one is taking a while.

Final count is two females. One is clearly better genetics than the other, this will be the one I take cuttings from for sure.

Here's some pics of the buds starting to form. This will be day 10 since I started 12/12 on the 30th.




Today I have also taken cuttings of the larger plant. Two of the smaller branches that didn't look like they were gonna get too big. I'm trying out rooting in wet floral foam this time around, so we'll have to see if it works as well as the peat. I've set up a little clone box to keep them in for the time being under 1 23W 6500k, thinking I will just turn it on when I wake up, turn it off when I go to sleep and wait it out.

Looks like everything is into full bloom, pistils shooting out all over the place, a nice aroma starting to build, and it looks like the nodes should be nice and tight.

This is what I see when I open my closet now, day 14 since 12/12.

Well, things were getting a little bushy in the closet, didn't look like a ton of light penetration through to the center of the plants, so I spent a while today bending as many of the fan leaves out of the way as I could. It looks to have opened things up nicely. Also, my fingers are pleasantly sticky from the whole thing.

I've been trying to find some good documented CFL grows with about 200W to see how I am measuring up for being 2 weeks into 12/12, not sure if things should be looking denser at this point, or if everything will fill out more over the next 4-6 weeks.

Things are moving a long nicely. I've rigged myself a tiny little clone/veg box, and my clones seem to have taken some roots in the floral foam I used, still not sure how I like it compared to the peat pellets I used previously, but as long as they root I'm happy.

The buds are fattening up nicely as we close into the end of the 3rd week of flowering, really starting to notice the smell coming off my ladies, and the fan leaves are starting to look a little frosty as well.



I'm also starting to see a nice comparison of topping methods. One I topped at the very top of growth, the other I did just above the 3rd node point - this plant is growing some really densely packed branches, where as the regularly topped plant is stretched out a lot more between buds, between this and torturing my first plant to death I have picked up a lot. Yay experimentation.

Well, over the past few days I've been plotting the redesign of my grow area. I am going to make a better clone/veg box - very compact, probably a couple 23W CFL's, maybe T5's. Probably just enough to put the lumens in the box about 4000 (only going to be about 3 square feet. Next I'm going to rig up more of a tent set up in my closet for flowering - keeping with my now 275W of CFL's. It will be 4ft tall and have some room for a drainage basin at the bottom. Also thinking about making some nicer light setups with a better hood (been working with a lot of PVC called semtech and I think it will work brilliantly) and some T5's for side lighting to maximize space for the plants.

Any how... I added some more lights replaced 3 of the 23W with 42W's, putting me around 20,000 lumens (it looks insanely bright in my closet), and have added some more ventilation, and and doing some forced air instead of passive cooling like I was doing.. the result, very happy plants.

Here's the closet.



Plant #1(Angie) - this one I topped normally, notice spacing between the buds.



Plant #2(Peter) - this one I topped at the 3rd true node, notice the much denser buds.


Conclusion - top further down the plant for tighter buds.

Nearing the end of week 4 - day 25.

Ending week 4 things are still looking really good. I thought I may need to add some kind of nutes while watering but as far as I can tell these plants are thriving in the soil - color is a rich green and the buds just keep swelling.

The clones are doing ok, little bit of burn on them, but it looks like they are in growth mode now. Not a huge fan of the floral foam tbh, the peat pellets were much nicer to clone with.

I also got a little handheld microscope today and tore it apart for the lenses so I could build a little scope to check my trichomes. I was looking a jewlers lenses but they cost a fortune, these cost me $5. Tried taking a few pics with it adding some extra optical zoom to my camera - was tough to get crisp shots, but here's the idea, it's much clearer to the eye though.