There is a crack in everything...

Wow. I put on a good buzz and dug this up and read it, and I'm really glad that I did. It was a good refresher on my last winter grow out in the garage and what I learned from it. A few big changes have been made since then, but the most relevant are that I had a 20amp line going there, I now also have a dedicated 15amp circuit. And I finished off the insulation in the attic and put attic vents in. Last winter I had my 3x3 in the garage and the 2x4 in the house, but this winter they are both in the garage.

I forgot how I had issues with the cold weather last winter, I'm hoping that the ceiling insulation helps. I do not intend to use HID lighting this year, with the added electrical capacity I'll use some combination of the heat from the dehumidifier and perhaps a small space heater. I think I'd rather heat the room than the tents, and try to bring the room closer to being actually "climate controlled".

I mentioned near the beginning of the thread that I unknowingly had a Sweet Island Skunk male plant, and before I caught it some of its' flowers popped next to a couple of clones -- a Wild Thai and a NYC Diesel. I ended out with only a couple of seeds from each, and three of each popped in my current start. This is my first indoor run that is entirely from seeds. 18 seeds popped, I'm shooting for a final count of 4 in the 3x3, and 4 or possibly 6 smaller ones in the 2x4 (after the boys and the runts are culled).

Anyway, that's where things stand at the moment, not much to see yet. I started the seeds on 09/12, so they're just babes.

The seeds that popped are:
(5) Mystery
(3) Thai Skunk
(3) Diesel Skunk
(2) Forgetful Cindy
(2) Dream Catcher
(2) Lucy Myst
(1) Lucy Banner

Six weeks +/- and I'll know who the boys are, and then I'll take it from there... this summer I had some bad luck in my outdoor and 6 of my 9 plants were boys! Hopefully I'll return to my regular ratio of 2/3's girls and 1/3 boys.

It's going to be nice having all your winter grow in the garage

That's how the light gets in.

morgwar said:

That's how the light gets in.

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Exactly.

I've lost count of how many indoor grows I've done, but I still feel like I'm at the steep part of the learning curve. My first year or two I was totally focused on growing as much as possible from the spaces I had, and that led me in certain directions as far as grow techniques go, for instance using SIPs and SCROGs. Then I started to grow from non-feminized seeds as well as clones, and that totally changed everything in terms of my 'grow style' -- having to remove boys from the group does not work well with either SIPs or SCROGs. So I've gone back to fabric pots and plants just sitting in the open.

When I popped these seeds my plan was to get two more small tents for breeding, so I popped a lot of seeds. As is happening way too often, my plans changed and now I'm faced with deciding how much to either crowd them or kill them. I'll know more when the boys show. I'm not sure if its because nothing ever turns out as I plan or not, but I'm finding that I'm not bothering to come up with a plan anymore, I'll just take this as it comes, and decide what to do next as I go.

In the pics you can see the 3x3 is "warmer", it has a 50/50 mix of 4k/3.5k cobs and will keep those start to finish. The 2x4 looks much "bluer", and that's because it has a 4k/5k mix, and will switch to a 3k/4k mix for flower. Two different experiments done along the way while building lights.

There is a possibility I will still chuck some pollen on this run, but it will be hit or miss. My detached one car garage is divided into two spaces, one is my grow space and shop, the other is storage. The storage part is not as well insulated and stays much cooler, but I'm thinking about setting up a small table in there and keeping a couple of the boys alive under an HPS light. If they can survive the cold nights, the light should keep them warm enough during the days, and if they flower I can (attempt to) selectively pollinate branches in the tents. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Here they are, packed in like sardines. I just did the final up-potting this morning, so these are their final homes.

This is a really odd bunch of plants, here's the list again with some details:

(5) Mystery (our favorite strain, but from an unknown origin a friend gave me, one of which hermied giving me about 20 feminized seeds)
(3) Thai Skunk (accidental cross from last winter: Wild Thai x Sweet Island Skunk)
(3) Diesel Skunk (another accidental cross from last winter: NYC Diesel x Sweet Island Skunk)
(2) Forgetful Cindy (OGS seeds: Cindy 99 x Amnesia Hashplant)
(2) Dream Catcher (OGS seeds: Blue Dream x Stardawg)
(2) Lucy Myst (from my first pollinating, summer of 2016 -- LSD x Mystery)
(1) Lucy Banner (also from summer of 2016 -- LSD x Bruce Banner #3)

The 2x4 could go another week, but the 3x3 is ready to flip. Since I want to know my total male count between the two tents in order to make the most informed final decisions I need to flip them at the same time so I can see what I have. So, this morning I flipped them to 12/12. In the 3x3 the lights remain the same -- (2) 3500 + (2) 4000 -- that's their light start to finish. In the 2x4 I swapped out 100w of 5000k for 200w of 3000k, the 4000's stayed. The 3x3 is running at about 35w/sf, the 2x4 will flower at a bit over 50w/sf. Later in the grow I might add my lizard lights to the 3x3.

As I mentioned my grow started one way (intended to breed) and that plan changed leaving me with the choice to kill a bunch, or do more of a SOG grow, and through my inability to choose who dies I defaulted on the SOG. In a previous grow I had a runt that popped about two weeks after the others, she ended out living her whole life in a 4" pot and delivered a small but sparkly harvest. Unless they are very sickly (or boys) I just can't bring myself to kill them.

Ten of them are in relatively big pots for a SOG (manufacturer says "5 gallon" but the size is closer to other 3 gallons I have), it could get crowded, or it could just be a waste of soil, but that doesn't concern me. I'd like to pull 8-10 oz's from each tent, hopefully the SOGs can produce that. That's as much about the strains as anything else, and most of them are unknowns.



All these plants were started at the same time, and yet the ones in the 3x3 (second pic) are much bigger. There are two primary differences between the groups, I'm not sure if its just one variable impacting them or both. All the seeds were popped in Rapid Rooters, and as soon as they were about 3/4" tall (before the tap root exited the cube) they were moved to pots -- the ones in the 2x4 were moved to 4" pots, and the ones in the 3x3 were put directly into 1 gallon pots. The ones in 4" pots were up-potted into their final pots earlier since they were in such small soil environments. The ones in 1 gallon were much bigger by the time they were transplanted into their final pots. If that's the primary factor in their current size difference, it implies that more soil and less shock during the important early stages of growth has lasting impacts.

The second difference is lighting, the bigger plants in the 3x3 are under a warmer spectrum, 3500/4000k mix. It may have made them stretch and spread out a bit more, but overall seems to have made them grow faster. The ones in the 2x4 under 5000/4000k lights are very compact, with very small inter-nodal spacing. If the ones in the 2x4 take off now that they are under a warmer spectrum, that would indicate that lighting spectrum plays a huge roll in plant growth rate. Of course, it could be the combination of both influences, and for those with a lot of experience, I might be stating the obvious.

Looking really good

Tim Fox said:

Looking really good

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Thanks Tim. Lot's of experiments going on as usual, so I'm just taking it one day at a time. Thought I saw my first boy this morning, so I quickly threw together a table and hung the 600w HPS in the other room. Took a second look and I'm not sure, but I'll leave the light on as a "proof of concept" about how the storage area is impacted temp and RH-wise with the light going in there. So far so good.

I flipped to 12/12 5 days ago, and found the first two boys this morning; one Diesel Skunk (NYC Diesel x Island Sweet Skunk) and one Forgetful Cindy (Cindy 99 x Amnesia Hashplant). I'm kind of psyched to have those two boys, both are ones I'd like to breed -- especially the DS because I'd like to back cross it with one of the DS girls. But I'm doing a bunch of things for the first time, so there's no telling how it will work out. One trial run is putting the boys in a storage area adjacent to the tent room. Not sure if that will work or not... on many levels.

Since the two boys I removed were in the larger pots, I shuffled things around in the tents and its already feeling a little less cramped.



This detached garage is a challenging environment to work in. I have no AC, and from October to late May (sometimes early June), the air outside is way too damp to use to cool the space. I can add heat as winter sets in, but I have very limited options for cooling. It's about 8am, and the tents are already at 79º and the heat will build all day. This is going to be a hot one. I ran the dehumidifier last night, I'll probably have to skip it for a night or two, that's about all I can do to reduce the heat build up and its at the risk of increased humidity. I guess nothing's perfect.

the extra space already looks better,, if you get a few more boys you will have good room,, so far so good

Tim Fox said:

the extra space already looks better,, if you get a few more boys you will have good room,, so far so good

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Thanks. For me this is usually the easy part -- young plants in fresh soil seem not to present too many problems. Keeping them happy for the next 8+ weeks is the tricky part. That's when I'll miss SIPs, that whole paradigm seemed to make the duration of the grow much easier.

I remembered I have small free standing racks, so I was able to raise up the smaller ones in the 3x3 and even out the canopy. The difference in size between the largest and the smallest is significant. I chose ones to move into the 2x4 (both boys that were pulled out happen to be in there) from the 3x3 that were the same size as the ones already in the 2x4, so that space seems to be maintaining an even height. I'm happy with it all now. Even if there aren't any more boys, with lots of trimming I think I could manage to finish with these groups.

The window of time during which they show sex can be weeks, and there are a couple are runts that are slow to mature and could take longer so I'll have to keep an eye on them for a while (learned that lesson last winter and pulled the small ones to the front this time). Other than that, for now its wait, watch, and water. Nothing else to do, since I fed them well when I up-potted them.

So far I've found 3 boys and 1 hermie. That's made some more space in the girls tents. I think I'll just keep two boys, and try and focus my breeding. I'm finding some climate balance in the detached garage, at least for the current outside temps and humidity -- run the dehumidifier at night and the AC during the day (yes, I broke down and bought a portable AC). Another few weeks and the AC will probably not be needed, and another month after that and I'll probably be adding a portable heater. So it goes.

Last winter's run was my first 12/12 from seed. I'm not a purist about this, my only reason for going this route was to pack as many plants into my tent as I could while testing seeds. This winter I ended out doing another semi-SOG grow to do a test of a new bunch of seeds, but I also wanted to boost my output a little this time around to restock the meds. That first time I did a 12/12 from seed none of them showed sex until about 5 weeks (I guess that's normal?). So, this time I went 18/6 for the first 4.5 weeks, and then flipped to 12/12. 90% showed sex within the first week after flipping, so I overall I think I timed that well. Also, instead of growing in (mostly) 2 gallon this time many are bumped up to 3 gallon pots.

I'm curious how much bigger they'll get having had that extra light while they "vegged" for those first weeks while they were too immature to flower, and how much the extra soil will add to their finished size. These are completely different strains under different lighting than last time, and it looks like I won't make the same mistakes I made last time... but I have yet to see what new ones I make. So, comparisons will be anecdotal but I'll have something to ponder when the dust settles.

I had both tents open while watering so I took this pic -

looking so very good

Tim Fox said:

looking so very good

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Thanks Tim.

I'm definitely still learning.

This morning I realized that one of the Thai Skunks I put outside because I thought it was a hermie, was actually a very healthy boy that could have been used to breed. I mis-identified its new leaf growth clusters as early female flowers. I turned them right-side-up after dumping them out of their pots, so if the weather holds up I might still be able to collect some pollen from it.

Looking forward to watching the pollination stage with great interest

Tim Fox said:

Looking forward to watching the pollination stage with great interest

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Me too! There are a lot of things I have not figured out, but I'm working on it. Hopefully I can figure out a way to keep 2 or 3 (currently 3, but I might cull one) boys pollen from co-mingling, as they are currently all sitting in one room together and I have no formal way to separate them. Worst case scenario I'll get rid of two and just use one to keep it pure, but hopefully I can keep at least two.

Everything is filling out nicely. I hope my boys and girls line up maturity-wise and are all ready at the same time and I can collect the pollen and walk it straight over. If not it will be most likely because my boys pop before my girls are ready. If that's the case I'm going to have to do some more reading, even though I'd probably only be storing the pollen for a week or two at most, from what little I know there are still ways that can go wrong, so I'll try avoid the pitfalls. I gather its mostly about moisture, so we'll see if that can be avoided.

random lessons learned so far this run:

* don't mix pots of different sizes, they dry up at different rates and that complicates watering

* if you are going to keep a 55 gallon drum full for watering, use quality hoses/fittings/nozzles, its not the place to try and save money

* only grow one male per cycle, it simplifies pollination and identifying the inevitable unintentional pollination

* whatever youtube video I saw where a guy covered the pollinated branches with plastic bags, was an idiot. use paper bags.

* rebuild my lights so that all spectrums are mixed, allowing me to move plants around the tents as needed without changing their primary kelvin profile


The current plan is that next run I'm going to have one tent with just two big plants in it, and I'm going to max them out for production. The other tent will be for breeding, experiments, and testing phenos. It's not much to work with, but it's what I've got. I have one strain I'd like to get a male from as the focus of next rounds breeding... but that's a long way off.

I'm going to let the detached garage go dark after this run, I'm not going to use it mid-December though mid-March, and then I'll fire it back up for a spring run. It makes sense on many levels, including: giving time for all of the copious amounts of free floating pollen in the storage area to die; it will give us a chance to dry/cure/smoke the results of this run so we know if we want to build on it or move on; and obviously not heating a moderately insulated detached out building in the dead of winter will save hundreds of dollars. It's all wins.

random pics on this random day...