First Grow, Late in the game for a "Grow Journal", more like a "Flowering Journal" at this point!

William Shatter

Well-Known Member
Alright so where to start.. I said "first grow" in the title, but thats not 100% accurate, I've grown a small handful of times in the past, but never fully completed due to circumstances/ignorance. ANYWAY - Here we are.. Currently I have 2 ladies 11 days into Flower. CFL/Soil microgrow, SOG style, started from feminized PK seeds (cropking).
Started with 5 babies, fried 2 of em, 3 survived, started to run out of room after some LST'ing and gave another one away, left with 2 girls about half way through the stretch. The biggest measures roughly 3 feet and the other is about 2 and a bit.

Grow space - 4 feet wide, 4 feet high, 2 feet deep, box built into the back of storage closet.
Medium - Soil, Coco Fibre (i know, and i dont know why) Vermiculite & Perlite, sprinkles of Kelzime (sp?), Gaia Green 4-4-4 all purpose fert. (I think thats it..)
Lights - Veg - 200 watt sunblaster 5600 k + 12 23 watt (100 watt equivalent) "daylight" cfls 5000k
- Flower - 200 watt sunblaster 2700k + 12 23 watt soft white cfls 2700k
Fans - one fan near bottom of box blowing in fresh air, another fan opposite corner circulating the air, and another fan at top of box blowing hot air out (as best as possible, no actual venting yet)
Ferts/Nutes - Veg - fucked things up at first experimenting with DIY compost teas, dumb shit.. corrected deficiencies with a calmg supplement, then introduced a Botanicare compost tea (2-3-5), as well as seaweed extract and fish fertilizer shortly after. I would flush every couple weeks and occasionally use molasses with the flush.
I would foliar feed every couple days, and feed my nutes/supplements every other day, with fresh water in between.
After a molasses flush about a week prior to flowering, I encountered the root rot problem, which was only prominent in 1 plant, the bigger of the 2. Im not expert, but I've visited that growweedeasy/diagnose your plant page way too many times over the last 5 months or so to not have a fairly good idea about how to pinpoint the problem, that may be ignorant, but my solution worked..
I noticed the "root rot" shortly after the molasses flush.. the fan leaves started twisting and drying right out, at the same time other growth was showing signs of deficiencies that had been recently dealt with. Ph levels of the soil and run off water were all fine. Outside temps had recently dropped though and that must've had an effect on the moisture/mold/fungus or whatever that caused the problem.. long story short I did a H2O2 flush and then re-introduced beneficial bacteria (subculture M and B) and everything cleared up.
Only problems I've had recently (into flowering) is a fungus gnat issue but thats small scale..
- Flower - Botanicare Pure Blend (1-4-5), Alaska Morebloom (0-10-10), Seaweed Extract, sometimes I add a shot of Calmg. Still foliar feeding with a seaweed extract/pure blend/calmg mixture.
Vegetation Period - in hind sight I vegged way too long I think, let them go about 3 months or so, ran into a multitude of problems along the way which may have delayed things, im not making excuses, its technically my first grow..
- I ran into a bad spider mite infestation from some clones I adopted briefly until noticing how badly infected they were. Due to lack of knowledge with pesticides/insecticides I nearly fried them trying to rid the mites, thankfully they pulled thru and kept on.
- Had a few deficiency problems, then due to panic ended up with a few nute burns. Simple fixes..
- 2 or 3 days before flowering I ran into a root rot problem
All issues encounted during veg previously stated..
Other things to note - I've been constantly LST'ing the plants, and roughly a month before flower I did some defoliation which greatly increased bushyness/created some new nodes..
Flowering Period - Well were 11 days in, I feed the Botanicare pure blend with every watering as recommended on the bottle, im planning on waiting until the stretch is over and then doing some defoliation.
As previously stated in the veg part - I let them grow too long before flowering without taking into account my grow space and the growth during stretch. My biggest plant was nearly touching the top of the box, during some re-tying of my nodes?/shoots? stems? (proper word?) I even had to bend over and tie down the very top/main cola to make room. Height isnt an issue with the second girl.
- Im going to grab some SM-90 and Growzyme tomorrow, I heard sm-90 is a good alternative to h202 flushes/will cure many insect problems? (true/false? - wrong info? - confusing products?) and growzyme is supposed to supplement the beneficial bacteria in your grow medium from what i understand?

I'll get to uploading the pics I do have now, & promise more to come as I will document the rest of the journey. Any feedback/comments/harsh criticisms are welcome. Im sure there are many things from lights to method to nutes that I did wrong, I welcome all input, things I did wrong, things I can improve on, things I can work on for next time, & things I can still add/do while in the last stages here. Your thoughts on defoliation? Also, give me your estimated yeild based on the pics provided, lets see who gets closest for shits and giggles..
Im sure my feeding/nute regiment is crazy, I probly should have gone with like a fox farms trio or maybe a GH Flora series? instead of mixing and matching/making up for problems after they have occured, any suggestions on a solid combo, tried tested and true nute/supplement mixtures would be greatly appreciated..

I will also add that I manually water/feed my babes, theres no system hooked up, or rezivour, I either water and then dump all run off and place back in a dry bucket/plant pot holder thing, or take them to the bathtub and flush then let all run off drain directly out... again, i have no clue if this is a good idea, all i know is it is alot more work lol.. If you've read this far, you should probly get a dog, or a girlfriend, lol, but hey, Im not complaining, thanks for your time in advance and I look forward to hearing/meeting everybody! Cheers!! 12231268_1014143825293920_1521392606_n.jpg12226339_1014143745293928_920971598_n.jpg 12226440_1014143795293923_1292304465_n.jpg 12226545_1014143755293927_369835388_n.jpg 12226659_1014143805293922_755946285_n.jpg 12226741_1014143618627274_1135777185_n.jpg 12226744_1014143588627277_769814174_n.jpg 12231268_1014143825293920_1521392606_n.jpg 12231609_1014143711960598_1329541245_n (1).jpg 12231676_1014143775293925_1462276054_n.jpg
 

William Shatter

Well-Known Member
Few new pics, gonna take some more today, fuckin spider mites are back on the lower leaves of my smaller girl, Ive been foliar feeding with seaweed extract and heard that is supposed to prevent them, If they are back and I spray with the seaweed solution will it kill them??

More pics comin
 

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William Shatter

Well-Known Member
I didn't have the patience to wait and see haha. From what I read your supposed to continuously Foliar spraying until the leaves/stems get thick/strong enough that the mites can no longer bite into them then become mal nutritioned and die off. I got this product called mighty wash, or mega wash. It's a pink liquid supposed to be imprinted with "frequencies" or some strange shit. But it definately did the trick
 

William Shatter

Well-Known Member
Apologies for my lack of consistency with this thread.
The girls are just over 6 weeks into flower. The bigger one still showing lots of white hairs. The smaller one almost looks done, that can't be right tho can it? I know trichs are the best way to tell, I don't have a powerful enough microscope at this point tho. Here are some pics.

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Here is the bigger girl in these next pics

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William Shatter

Well-Known Member
Spider mites got the best of my bigger girl and I chopped her early. My other one is going into 48 hrs of darkness now. In day 59 of flower. Choppin her down tomorrow

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First two are the spider mite plant and the last 2 is what's gettin chopped tomorrow
 

William Shatter

Well-Known Member
Alright both ladies have been chopped down. First one was a disaster. Mites and then left the salvaged harvest hanging in my room with lights on. Horrible mistake. Dried out over night lol. I rehydrated it and cured as best as I could. It's got a lil kick to it. The second plant dried slowly in a dark closet with nice air flow. Got the buds in a jar now for the cure.
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