First grow - CFL

Hi, I'm on my first grow and I thought I would share my experience here and ask for some advice if possible.

I've been vegging 3 clones for just under 4 weeks, then switched to 12/12 9 days ago, I'm seeing the first signs of flowering, I think.

My setup has evolved alot through the vegging process, but today I have:

250w 2700k CFL main light
2x85w 6400k CFL side lights

I'm waiting on 2x85w 2700k (they sent the wrong ones, I emailed and they are sending correct ones right out and offered me either a return and refund or to keep what they sent in error for less than half the price, nice work!) which I will switch into where the 6400k lights are currently, but intend to rotate the 6400ks in for a day here and there to mix up the spectrum a bit from time to time in the belief that they will benefit from this.

So far I have had no real problems to talk of, except for one strange thing that I can't find any info about:

On one of my plants, there have been a couple of leaves which look like one whole side of the leaf never grew and it is very yellow along that side. The rest of the leaf and area of the plant looks healthy, but just this one leaf starts this way and never recovers. The first time this occurred I cut off the 2 offending leaves and watched the plants for a few days, saw no problems. Now, about 10 days later...another 2 leaves look the same, this time I have left them in place and am watching what happens.

Would anyone be able to advise me (pic of leaf included)?

Ok, pics:

Anyone able to help me out with a diagnosis on what the leaf problem on the last pic is down to? I would really like to put my mind to rest over this as it's the only problem my babies have experienced.

Spindles i wouldnt worry. Your plants look very healthy. It just looks like a deformity of some sort to me. The picture seems to be at a weird angle though. Hope you dont mind me blowing it up for others.

Ah cool, thanks. Yeah, it was the best angle I could get to show what I was talking about.

I had noticed a few leaves with what looked like it could be powdery mildew (just a few tiny dots) a few days ago and have been working to ensure humidity is kept down and airflow good to avoid this and wasn't sure if it was related to that (I'm certain I am bugfree, so it was the only thing I could think of).

They look really healthy, I gave them a bit of a prune around the base of the stem this morning as well as raising them in their pots with more soil, to give better light as they were potted a little low. They had drunk more in the last 48 hours than ever before (probably due to the increase in airflow/extraction as much as anything I think) so I gave them about 750ml each of plain water. Buds are looking better every day

My new CFL's arrived today (2x85w 2700K) and they are now in the box. I was thinking of maybe putting a couple of 65w 6400k in as well in a couple of days and seeing how they like that. I am a little concerned I might be getting a little carried away with lighting though. Currently the box has 420w total 2700k CFL, I'm not sure if taking that up to 550w is really a good idea so early in the game, but I will definately be boosting light later on (got nearly 1kw of CFLs of various flavours that are currently not in use!).

Buds are starting to take off now, after taking a few days to begin to show they are now looking nice (to my beginner's eyes) and I like the way this is progressing.

hit em with everything you got. they will love it. you might as well do a test run for heat by putting all your lights on before they get big. plants look great though.

Thanks for the kind words, they look even better 3 days after those pics, I'm letting them adapt to the new light for now, I think I will put the 2 65w 6400ks in tomorrow and stick them on a timer so they give 6 hours in the middle of the light period of additional blue boost (eg: 3 hours @ 420w, 6 hours @ 550w, 3 hours @ 420w, bedtime) as I have been thinking that this would be a good way to go.

An interesting thing I have noticed while reviewing footage (I should explain that my cab is concealed and I use a webcam to view, using timelapse to build a daily film of their activity) is that an hour before the lights are due to go out the plants start to prepare to get their heads down for the night, so this backs up my theory that giving them a strong 'afternoon' boost will be good for them and more than that, I believe that they are expecting that.

spindles said:

An interesting thing I have noticed while reviewing footage (I should explain that my cab is concealed and I use a webcam to view, using timelapse to build a daily film of their activity)

Click to expand...

What a nerd spindles. Just joking my man. My advice if you are adding more CLF's is to just add them one at a time and keep track of the temps. Obviously when it hits high temps you have maxed out the box. I really dont know how you keep what you have cool. Crazy stuff.

Cheers, I'm a complete nerd and make no attemt to hide it!

Temps are good, I have passive inlet and extraction which runs on a controller, so I just set the extraction speed to keep it at a fairly constant 26c, as I add bulbs I just up the speed a touch to keep it where I want it.

I have also observed (using timelapse) that 26c is the exact optimum temp for growth rates for my ladies and so I like to keep them exactly there if I can.

I saw a great thread where someone had put mesh over his CFLs to hold plants off and prevent burn, so today I will be making some of those and some frames for the pots to start tying off and controlling them while they flower.

I was gonna do that.....but I got high!

Ah well, the way it goes and back to work today, babies are looking well (pics later).

I don't know if anyone could tell me if there is anything wrong with this, but here goes:

I have people coming in for the next 2 weeks to work in my house. My cab is well concealed, but I have decided that rather than running lights+fans 7am-7pm as I am I would prefer during this period to run 7pm-7am. In order to do this I am giving them 12 hours of light, then 14 hours of dark each day, to shift the timings. Is this likely to cause any problems? So far I am only at the end of the 2nd 'night' and lights are now at 11am-11pm. Would it be better just to give them 1 long dark period til the timing shift?

A little update. Today is 18 days since light period switch and 12 days since flowering started. The odd leaf deformity I had seen before is now clearly showing on the occasional leaf on that branch on that plant only, odd, but I'm no longer concerned, it's just one branch that creates weird leaves.

Here are some pics, showing a view into my box, a bit of barely legal bud porn (sorry for lousy joke), a shot of the bud/branch with deformity and some other shots that I liked

Oh, and they are starting to smell. Genius timing, as I have builders in for 2 weeks

Been a couple of weeks. Builders have been and gone (in my house from 8am til 5pm daily for 2 weeks) and nothing caused any suspicion.

I had a bit of a scare a few days back where I thought I had spidermites, but it was actually a feed issue, rinsing the plants and a flush and they look much healthier again.

Here's a few pics of how they looked just before I flushed them (and yes, I know I need to re-grout the tiles)

Spindles! I thought you had passed away or something. No action in the geek grower thread in a while. good to see youre still around. looking forward to some more time lapse eye candy.

Heh, I let it die a natural death due to lack of outside interest. I've got LOADS of timelapse now, but it's much harder now I'm flowering as they don't behave the same (it's all bud growth which isn't really visible at 1 min timeslices and having to keep air circulating means that the plants wobble too much for it to be worth looking at).

I have some interesting items in my veg box atm, I may well set up a permanent camera and green light when they go into flower and try something ambitious with clever airflow and autofeeding. Moving the plants in any way means you get big ass jumps. What I am planning on monday, however, is to take the entire set of footage from when they first went to 12/12 and speed it up to give better video of bud growth, I just fear it will be too choppy.

My first grow seems to be really successful so far (not counting my chickens!). With the rising outside temps I have mostly been running on 250w only, with maybe 4 hours per day with the lighting pushed all the way up to 420w. I have 7 colas across 2 plants (thanks to the great fimming guide I read here) and they are starting to shape up nicely. Next time they come out to play I'll take some more pics (they have a couple more hours sleep right now).

The geekiness has not stopped, I've basically stripped out, improved and rebuilt my setup once a week since starting out about 10 weeks back. Payday tomorrow and I'll likely invest in a couple of new toys

A few pics, approaching 4 weeks of flowering in a couple of days, now feeding them biobizz bloom.

spindles said:

A few pics, approaching 4 weeks of flowering in a couple of days, now feeding them biobizz bloom.

Click to expand...

looks nice and sugary!

Rejigged my cab again (sunday ritual). Back to 420w lighting, new improved extraction and input fan. Increased feed strength to 2.5ml per litre. They REALLY peng now!

Fan malfunction this morning meant the extraction wasn't working when lights came on for first 90 mins. Air temps just below 30, so no harm done, but smell? Jesus, these REALLY peng now, I gave them a couple of litres of water each to calm them down, but they smell amazing! (Hope the neighbours didn't catch a wiff)

Left my ladies to their own devices for the day, since they didn't appear to be thirsty just yet. Starting to see some really nice developement on some of the budsites, will get pictures tomorrow when they come out for a feed I think.

I only realised yesterday that it's pretty cool that my ladies get 420 watts

I'm still happy with progress, although I have been feeding the biobizz bloom for a week and I can't say I can say I have yet seen any accelleration compared to water/cheap tomato feed, but what do I know?

Some pics from this mornings feed. I get SO paranoid moving them around now as they stink like nobody's business as soon as they get touched/moved in any way. Mmmm....peng!

All the buds look pretty sugary, but Al (the smaller plant) is still a bit skinny next to her big sister.