First Grow Journal - DP Blueberry - NFT Hydroponic

thats the bulb I use. The bulb itself gets hot but not like an HID bulb does. too hot to let any part of the plant touch it for sure... You will want to make some type of a reflector for it (I made a nice cone out of mylar) and keep it just a couple inches from the tops of the plants and I move it every couple of hours from plant to plant. I am lucky to live across the street from where I work and can make it home periodically or I dont turn on the UV light that day. Not sure if keeping it that close is bad or not, so far I have seen nothing negative.

cjsesh00 said:

thats the bulb I use. The bulb itself gets hot but not like an HID bulb does. too hot to let any part of the plant touch it for sure... You will want to make some type of a reflector for it (I made a nice cone out of mylar) and keep it just a couple inches from the tops of the plants and I move it every couple of hours from plant to plant. I am lucky to live across the street from where I work and can make it home periodically or I dont turn on the UV light that day. Not sure if keeping it that close is bad or not, so far I have seen nothing negative.

Click to expand...

Cool, I'm thinking of bastardising my existing reflector (a MaxiBrite) as theres plenty of space and adding a light/heat diffuser like I use on my HPS.

Thanks for the info!!!!

sounds like a game plan. Ya know, for the money the CFL version of this reptiSun bulb is hard to manage, reflecting and getting the light where its most effective, but I have not tried the tubes and they are the same price across the boards no matter what size you get-- 18"-48" is 20$ on the net and I paid 45 for this CFL at Petco across the street from my house. I was way too excited and made a foolish decision I think. I would look into the tubes and you could get 2 of the 48" for less than what I paid on this CFL. I am almost positive they would be more useful

ps, be careful if you get one of those reptiSun bulbs. they are deceiving! it seems to be 'sun burning' some of my leaves. it looks like nothing when in the grow room but TRUST me there is lots of UV coming from it, i read something that says they travel pretty densely up to 20" away

Little bit since my last update. Ups and downs since last post.

Four of the plants have grown either to the light and the tops have dried/burnt to a crisp or grown past the lights (plants in the outer NFT gullies) but they are doing well otherwise. Flowering nicely.

Unfortunately I destroyed 4 of the 9 plants today. Two were definatly male possibly hermaphrodites and two of the stunted ones as the were lagging that far behind, one possibly male as well and due to the unbelievable growth of the others getting totally drowned out light wise, etc.

I'm still very happy with the remaining 5 plants though. Plan to buy a Coolshade tomorrow (fan assisted reflector) which hopefully should help with the burning, etc.

As an experiment I removed one of the males from the NFT system a few days ago and planted it in soil. I wasn't sure how it would take to the soil due to the amount of the roots I had to remove to get it out of the NFT gully, but as you can see from the photo despite being 'droppy' for the first day it perked up and seemed to take very well.

Thats it for just now, cheers

ps for the next post I'll get better pics of the flowers/buds, lol

Three photos of upcoming buds and one photo of the lamp burn/dried out top. Hopefully my fan assisted reflector arrives today, cheers.

Unfortunately the one day I never checked my BudBox/grow room the hose from the NFT water pump came away. Leaving the root system without water for approx 20 hours.

By the time I checked on the plants the following day, the root system was dried up and the plants were completely limp except the main stalks. I immediately set the pump back working (since using a hoselock as well). By the following morning things looked better but the plants are a shadow of there former self. Many of the branches "folded' (kinked) with there own weight and whilst obviously this wont "repair" above the fold seems to be doing OK?!?

Its now a few days since and the plants are looking surprisingly well considering, just shows how hardy marijuana plants are! Obviously this will affect final yield but there is still tons of healthy looking budding flowers and one thing is there is more "room" for expansion.

As a side note my Coolshade arrived today which I fixed up. This should help, hopefully stop the burning as well.

Ah well, first grow, lots of lessons learnt for the next grow!!! Considering what I saw when I opened the tent initially on dry-out I'm still hopefully of a good grow this time!!

Cheers

What's hilarious, is that if you check my grow journal, not only are we growing the same type of bud, but we are using the same light if I am correct.

Coolshade is excellent, highly recommended! As well as stopping the burning cause the plants had grown upto the lights, its also helped with reducing and keeping a more even temp in the grow box. A further benifit is I never added the reflector part of the Coolshade (it was very small anyway) as the budbox provides enough reflection on its self and this means whilst not ideal the plants which had grown past the original reflector are now receiving light.

Despite my 'disaster' with the pump, the plants are looking good. Can start to see resin on buds and leaves, tons of buds as well right down the plants, glad I chose Blueberry!!!

cheers

Photo 1 : New CoolShade, can also see some of the burning from the previous reflector - need to trim

Photo 2 : Rejuvenated plants after pump failure, pretty good considering how they looked

cheers