Looking for Veterans to review my 1st AG Grow Plan

After doing extensive reading on rollitup, I have started my first Aerogarden Grow. This is my first grow ever, actually... and I want to run my initial plan by you vets to see if I have my head right and that I actually understood the lessons you guys are teaching. I'm a bit wordy, so pre-apology for a potential wall-o'-text.

Got some generic bag seeds and an AeroGarden v6.

Basic Timeline:
1) Germinate - Done
2) Transplant and start Herbs water/light cycle - Done
3) Day 0-7 - Water only (FoxFarm Hydro-Nutes en route)
4) Day 7-? - Follow FoxFarm Nute cycle, stepping up concentration each week (25%, 50%, 100%)
5) Flower @ 5-6 Nodes and plant is 6-12 inches... approx 2-4 weeks from seed
6) Light cycle to 12/12 for how long? Until the end of the grow?
7) At the 8 - 9 week mark determine if it's time to harvest
2 week pure water flush prior to harvest

Where I'm at:
6 Seed Pods went in AG Friday morning and I have three 1/3 inch sprouts and 3 empties (for now). I am leaving them all until flowering/sexing so that I can pull out any males. I plan on keeping 2 females and dumping the rest. Tomorrow I'm putting in the bubbler, moving a fan in to the closet, and I'm starting the active pH maintenance (5.6 - 6.0). FF nutes should get here this week or early next... will start them ASAP. If they aren't here by day 7 of the grow I'll just drop in 1/4 AG tab to hold them over.

What confuses me:
Topping - Is this primarily for height control? I plan on raising my light hood 3-5 feet if needed, so do I have to worry about topping? I want to have minimal physical contact with the plants to avoid stress, so I don't want to trim, cut or manipulate if at all possible.

Harvesting (a bit premature, I know) - So after the flush, I hang the plant upside down for 24 hours... this is where I'm lost. I don't know what to do next. Prior to this I've only seen the end result in a small plastic bag. What do I save, how do I maximize results, etc... I've read up on curing in open mouthed mason jars (6 hours open, 18 hours closed, move around daily... 4 weeks min). If there's a good step-by-step photo essay or something you can link me to... I'd appreciate it.

I know 'the more light, the better', but I also want to set this up with minimal extra parts... I want to add one extra light for the growth cycle (warm/red CFL), but really that's it for now. A mylar blanket around most of the set-up and I should be gtg.

The last thing I need is a magnifying glass of some sort, and I have no clue where to get one. Hobby store, maybe? My next research binge is the anatomy of the plant so that I can follow the grow and see what all the fuss is about.

Any additional tips or suggested reading is appreciated. I have the grow faq bookmarked and plan on re-reading all of Tek's Aerogrow threads since they tend to become hubs of info. I'll keep poking around the other forums and post follow-up questions in this thread. Thanks for any help you can give!

~ A

1) I was able to find the Harvesting section of the boards, which had some pics of a guy cleaning his results, however I wasn't fully clear on what all needs to be saved. Fan leaves should be saved or no? He mentioned making hash, but that's not really something I know how to do (and I've never had hash, so I don't fully know if this is good or bad).

2) With just the one extra light on the side, should I set up my room so that I can alternate sides? Meaning Mon it's on the right side of the A.G. for 12 hours, Tue it's on the right side, and then just keep swapping it daily when I check for growth or problems.

~ A

Day 7 might be early to start nutes. Go to 12/12 when they show sex. You won't be harvesting at 8-9 weeks and you have plenty of time to learn about that. Which AG do you have? More light is a good idea right from the start. Are you controlling pH? temp? humidity?

I am harvesting a plant from and AG tomorrow. It will be almost 13 weeks from seed and it was supposed to be a 10 week strain. The AG is hard to work with because of the small res. Don't get on the pH rollercoaster is the best advice. Take the issues as they come.

Topping-Used to control height, but primarily to redistribute the growth hormone at the top of the plant to produce multiple colas. This is a form of HST or High Stress Training. You might want to try some LST or Low Stress Training like bending instead as it can redistribute the growth hormone and control height without having to slice the top off of your prescious female. Just search LST for good posts on proper bending.

Harvesting- Hang upside down in dark area until outside of bud is becoming dry but the inside still retains all moisture. At this point place all buds in airtight container to cure.

Curing is slow drying and VERY IMPORTANT if you want primo bud. Bud not cured properly will be harsh and not pleasant to smoke, and taste nasty.

Curing - Seal in airtight container and keep closed. three times a day, open the jar and stir the buds closing immediatelly afterwords. this allows the buds to dry slowly and evenly. You should cure for at least two weeks, or longer. Bud that is dryed and cured properly will way 1/4 of harvest weight. Mark and weigh 1 bud at harvest and when that bud's weight is 1/4 of that weight, your ready to smoke.

Magnification-Radio Shack has a 3-lens magnifyer for nine bucks which will get you close enough to inspect tricombs by combining the lenses. or a jewlers lense will work. To get closer for cheap Radioshack has a 60x-100x lighted pocket microscope for 13 bucks. This is a little harder to use directly on the plant, but after a little practice, you'll see a world invisible to the naked eye.

additional notes- Use distilled or reverse osmosis water on your flush, as these contain the least impurities.

Before you get close to harvest, do some research on tricombs if you haven't allready, as this is the key to harvesting at the right time. This also comes down to preferance as there really is a peak harvest window, roughly 1-2 weeks depending on strain. Weed harvested in the beginging of the window will have more of a THC heavy ceriberal heady stone, while waiting till the end of the window the THC breaks down into other canibinoids creating more of a body "couchlock" stone.

Great questions, great preperation. Remember, it is a weed, so your gonna be suprised at how resitiant this plant is. Now go get high

Illegal Smile said:

Which AG do you have? More light is a good idea right from the start. Are you controlling pH? temp? humidity?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply! I have the black AG v6... space saver model. I went to Petco to check out PH controlling options.... they had tester strips that go to 6.0 and up, but none lower. I'd read that ideally it should be at 5.6-5.9, so I'm gonna make a trip to Wal-Mart tomorrow to see if they have more options in the gardening department. I also looked at some lighting solutions for lizards, but there were a TON of bulbs... and rather than spend 50 bucks on the wrong thing, I figured I'd spend the night reading up on CFLs.

camroneck:
Thanks for the heads-up on Radio Shack. I'll hit them up tomorrow.

I was looking in to the tricomb stages, so hopefully with some practice I'll get the timing right. Great info in your reply.

~ A

Update: Day 27

Lighting is currently still at 18/6. Of the 6 pods I dropped in, three of them produced plants. 2 of them had the tiny jagged leaves I wanted and the third looked like a mutant. Leaves were all fat and bent, stalk was all gnarled and it smelled a lot like some herb or spice. Turns out it was the basil pod from the original AG kit. I pulled it.

1st plant is a monster... it has four leaves that just exploded big immediately... I don't know if that's good or bad. I did attempt to top/fim and it appears that it took. However I'm not sure if I did it on the right node. Underneath it there is a ton of other leaf growth now. I don't know if I accidentally made it bushy by topping too high. If you guys could give me your opinion, the pics are below. On the one hand it's fast growth is reassuring... on the other, I'm terrified that it's a male.

2nd plant has been a runt from the start... I think this one I chose the right node to trim at, however it's just not growing at all. Just maintaining. I moved it to the back tonight... gonna focus my efforts on the bigger one for now. Roots on both are mostly white, maybe a hint of yellowing, but nothing alarming.

PH is consistent. I'm using strips to measure until I get it to 6.0-ish... then I hit the res with 2 more drops of PH Down just in case. I check daily and slowly lower over 4-6 hours if needed.

Water temp was really warm for the first two weeks. I covered the top w/ white paper and now it seems pretty cool.

I'm using the FoxFarm nutes and am at 3/4 the recommended dosage on the FF Nute Chart linked in the AGv2 Grow Guide. Tomorrow night I'm going to dump the res, wash it out and finish off this half gallon of solution... the rest I'm going to top off with the 100% mix from here on out.

I finally picked up a temp/humidity gauge today... temp in the closet is 84 degrees and humidity was at about 42%. I nabbed my roomies frog humidifier and dropped it in the closet. The humidity gauge didn't register any change for the first five hours of the night, so I moved it closer (into my 'watching chair'). Now it's at 55%, but I don't think I can maintain it consistently. I work from home so while it's 'awake' I can top off the humidifier, but once I go to sleep or during the 12 hours of night in flowering I don't know if I can maintain that level. Is it okay for the plants day to be around 50-60% humidity and it's night to be 10-15% lower?

Lighting is default AG lights and two 23 Watt 6500 CFLs, which brings me to yet another question. I know 'more light = better buds' during flowering... should I have thrown the same amount of extra light on them during veg? My plan is to pick up another 4-6 23 watt 2700 CFLs for flowering in a bit (I'm shooting for 9-11 inches tall before switching to 12/12). Should I bite the bullet and add the extra fixtures/lights right now?

And lastly, I added a homemade CO2 bottle using yeast and sugar. It stinks, but I can't spend ALL night talking to them. Just a few minutes every couple hours.

Any input, questions, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, I also have a question about the coloring... I've noticed that most of the leaves are a deep green, but some appear to almost be 'dusted' with a slightly darker area of greenish/purple. I thought it might be heat burn, but it's also on lower leaves and those not close to the CFLs. Since the plant appears to be flourishing despite this, I wonder if that's just this plant's natural coloring? I'm not familiar enough with strains and how they can look.

~ A