First Grow OG Kush Clone T5 Grow

This is my first grow and I have enjoyed seeing others grow journals so after a few days of starting my first grow i decided to start my own. I will take some pics up my set-up and let everyone follow me on my first grow.

Supplies:
Grow Space-4'x2' 8sq ft
Light- Hydro Farm 8 tube/4ft T5 56wx4 6500k
56wx4 2700k
20,000 Lumens 6500k Vegetation
20,000 Lumens 2700k Flowering
Vegetation Lighting 24/7 Cycle
Flowering 12/12

Soil-Fox Farms Ocean Forest
Nutrients-(Fox Farm) Big Bloom, Grow Big, Tiger Bloom, (Botanica) Hydroplex Bloom Maximixer, Molasses.

Water-Tap (PHup-PHdown Testing Kit)

Plants-4 OG Kush Clones (Los Angeles Medical Dispensary)
*I don't have exact genetics

4-3gal pots

This is my first grow and I started on Tuesday, Nov 11, 2009
Re-Cap

I was able to purchase 4 OG Kush Clones from a Medical Marijuana Dispensary.
They were in small rockwool cubes.
I put the cubes in the soil (One Per Pot) and watered with Ph'd water.
The pots were about 10" from the light. (I wanted to be careful with my first grow).
The plants were ready for a drink by Thursday.
Fed with 1 Tablespoon of Big Bloom mixed with a little more than a half gallon of water.
(I actually didn't use all of the water. About 20 oz per plants seems to be good right now)

I put the plants on boxes to get them closer to the light (within 4" initially before new growth)

Now that we are all caught up here are the pics:

Sweet man were all along for the ride! Post pics when you can!

Any tips and advice would be appreciated. I have not really seen a full grow journal using my particular type of lighting. I know people use what I am using for veg but I'm going to use the system all the way through. I know people use the method I am going to use but I have not seen one. So for the people like me here we go. I wont post everyday just when something happens or to show new growth every few days.

Update: Yesterday, Sunday Nov 15 (Morning)

Watered the girls with ph'd water and added another box to get the girls closer to the light.

I started 10" away, got closer to 4" 2 days later and now I have the plants within 1-2" depending on the size of the plants. The closer to the light the better the plants have done.

I'm not sure what the results would be if I started the plants that close to the light from day one. Not sure if they would burn or what but the closer to the light they are the better the plants perform no questions asked.

The plants seems to have grown almost 1" in 12 hours since the plants were adjusted.

Will post up a few pics in a sec.

OK so after doing some reading I decided to activate my 2700k lights along with the 6500k. I have read that a 75%/25% or so ratio with 6500k/2700k is good for the plants so that is why i turned them on.

I actually have a 50/50 split but the way the lights are activated I think I will be ok. the set up is RRBBBBRR with the plants directly under the 6500k lights and the 2700k lights on the outside. I am hoping the growth and yield will be better considering I now have 54w bulbs and 40,000 lumens in 8sq feet. When I switch to flowering I will switch the bulbs to the opposite of what I have now.

I was planning on flowering my plants after 3 weeks but at the rate they are growing they will be waaaay to big. I guess the thing for me is that I used clones and so I dont have all the sprout time and root developing time which I have read can take a few days to a few weeks depending on the strain. I have read that OG has a longer rooting time which means that from the time the original grower cloned the plants till the time I got the plants could be easily over 3 weeks.

It looks like I will be putting the girls into flower in a week or so maybe sooner. I have read on this site that a plants size will double or triple during flowering and that whether you flower a plant at 5" or 10" the plant will in general come out the same size. I know the yield will not be the same but strictly talking about plant size.

The girls are growing fast and right now are a good strong 7" each.

I am going to start flowering them when they get to 12" which should happen within the week and hopefully they will not get too big. I wanted to take some cuttings but am not sure I will be able to. Let's see how everything goes this week.

Any tips or advice would be appreciated.

very nice grow... are those floros v.h.o.?

They are T5 CFL Tubes. Not sure what v.h. o. means (very high output?)

Same as any other clf except that this should take care of all my lighting without needing side lighting. I hope I'm right but the plant will tell me what it needs I'm sure.

T5s are really cfls. They are much better. They produce more lumens per watt and more intensity. They are nearly the equivalent of hid lights because they can be gotton much closer to foliage. I can tell you first hand that you can flower like an sob with them. However, you will probably still need some sidelight and I use cfls for that. I veg with mostly blue but 50/50 will work. Not sure I can add much more since I grow in hydro. I have OG Kush from seed right now in 4th week of flower under 200w of T5 and 200 more of cfls on the sides.

Thanks for the advice cfl side lighting on the way. I want this to turn out really good. I will add them when the plants get bigger a week or two into flowering.

Today Tuesday Nov. 17, 2009 is officially 1 week since I first adopted the girls.

The girls were ready for their feeding so I gave them a nice drink . I gave them a virgin Fox Farms Cocktail. 1 part Big Bloom, 1 part Grow Big and 10,000 parts H2O, checked the ph and everything is on track.

I will post pics a few hours from now. I want the girls to get a chance to soak up all the goodness I just gave them. This is my favorite part, watching the results a few hours after giving the girls a drink watching them seemingly grow a half inch or more. I'll post the pics of the invigorated ladies in a while.

OK I was going to post pics but I will wait. I think with all the extra lights turned on I needed to raise my lights so that is what i did. My plant is doing well and has new growth down almost the entire stems. The nodes are growing between nodes between nodes and I love it.

I think I may have had the slightest of nute burn but not sure. Don't know if it was heat or nutes but the damage was very light and you would not notice it at all. Tips of some older smaller leaves were light green but now they are normal and sexy leaves. I can't even really find it now and the leaves are kicking. Question: Can I have too many nodes too close together?

Last Note: I had a couple spiders a brown one and a white one. At first I was like heck no how did this happen and got scared to say the least, but after doing some research I found out that they are actually a good thing because they eat the bad insects like spider mites.

Nov. 19, 2009 Update: Watered the girls with fresh ph'd water. After more research I realized that my damage was nute burn and not heat. The leaves closest to the light were not the damaged ones. I had a lil leaf curling on the small leaves and 1 or 2 small copper spots. The copper spots are not really of concern to me just the curling because it looks bad. As I said earlier the damage was minimal but I'm trying to be detailed for the next time I do this.

The next time I water I am going to use only fresh water and use nutes the watering after that. Maybe the start of week 3.

I thought about flowering after week two but these babies are rolling and I figure it will do me a ton of good to wait an extra week before flowering and I might wait 4 weeks depending on how big they get or if they start the preflower. I should also be able to get some good clones. I know people talk about topping after 4 or 5 nodes but for me I have new growth all along the stem.

The T5 CFL lighting is allowed to be sooooo close that the plants do not have to stretch even one bit. I have nodes growing on the top of the plant and along the stem at the same time. I have a fan in the room and a good amount of ventalation and 432 watts running 24/0 and it even amazes me how cool they and the room stays. T5 CFL's all the way. I know people want pics so I will try to post pics of the growth and the nodes later on. It's really cool.

Anyone know a decent free photo editing program so that I can zoom in which is what I heard you need to get the close up pics and I want to get pics of the nodes to show how close they are growing. Faster the response, faster the pics and I'm know people love marijuana pics.

Here are some new pics. Taking pics are hard!!! I used some macro mode to try and take pics of the nodes and my camera has a lil editing program I used. I took 23 pics but most were blurry so I took 6 to show off.

I also have super macro mode but taking pics was pissing me off trying to get light correct and what not. I will give the girls a drink in a lil bit and keep this thing going. Here are the pics. Enjoy!!!

right on those look good. so you have how many tubes overall? is it 16? like 8 x 2700k and 8 x 5500k ...
or just 8 at a time ?? lol \
anyways i'll whatch this one, i have a 4x2foot tube setup for seedlings /clones that doesnt get used...

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I always thought it was better to flower with a hps than t 5's. Is that correct?

I actually have 8 4' Tubes total...........4 56w 6500k and 4 56w 2700k. I actually have all the tubes activated creating a nice mixed spectrum. When I say activated I mean that I have the option of turning on the middle 4 tubes, the outer 4 tubes or both.

The thing is during my veg I have the 6500k tubes in the middle and the 2700k on the out side. I will call 6500k blue and 2700k red. the set up of the lights is rrbbbbrr- the plants are directly under the blue lights while in vegging. When I flower I am going to switch the light set up to bbrrrrbb with the plants directly under the red lights. I will see how much light penetration I have on the lower leaves and if not to my liking I will add 2700k tubes to get side lighting.

If you read around you will see that many people use T5 lighting for both sprouting seeds and vegging even if they use something else like and HID for flowering.

I have pics of the setup in the original post and I believe you can see the tubes I am using and the exact lighting system.

vipdahustla said:

I actually have 8 4' Tubes total...........4 56w 6500k and 4 56w 2700k. I actually have all the tubes activated creating a nice mixed spectrum. When I say activated I mean that I have the option of turning on the middle 4 tubes, the outer 4 tubes or both.

The thing is during my veg I have the 6500k tubes in the middle and the 2700k on the out side. I will call 6500k blue and 2700k red. the set up of the lights is rrbbbbrr- the plants are directly under the blue lights while in vegging. When I flower I am going to switch the light set up to bbrrrrbb with the plants directly under the red lights. I will see how much light penetration I have on the lower leaves and if not to my liking I will add 2700k tubes to get side lighting.

If you read around you will see that many people use T5 lighting for both sprouting seeds and vegging even if they use something else like and HID for flowering.

I have pics of the setup in the original post and I believe you can see the tubes I am using and the exact lighting system.

Click to expand...

wow dude you got it dialed, so when you flower are you gonna go |BBRRRRBB| ?? or even swap out the 4 blue ones for red....
im really interested in seeing this one thru to the end
good good luck and keep us posted hombre!

You got it!!!!

I think that my plant may actually be really close to pre-flower. I need to get a 25x magnifying glass and try to check. Sometimes it's hard to tell how big or small things are looking at pictures that are magnified.

Question: When a plant shows pre-flower do you immediately switch to flowering or is it better to wait?

Also: Will vegging longer make your flowering process faster or will the total process time be the same or even longer.

Will there be a difference in potency either way?

If I let my plants stay short and develop tons of nodes and continue to grow slowly (in height), can i potentially create tons of potential bud sites or will the plant just stop creating new nodes and I just have a bushy plant? Like 4 Bushy Mother Plants to flower.

Wow those are some nice tight nodes. I love the way t5's do that.. To answer your question about burning seedling w/ a t5 to close yes it can happen. I put my 1 week old seedling within 2 inches of my t5 HO setup and it roasted em to death lol. Usuaully when you start from seed you want to wait atleast 4 weeks to let the plant fully mature before you put into flower. W/ clones however a few days after they root they are ready for flowedr. But to get full potential out of your plants def let em go atleast 4 weeks. Theres a vid on utube from a guy who uses only t5 in flower also he has like 10 sets all over the room and they grew some huge nugs. You wouldn't even be able to tell they were grown uinder t5's.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6NGvDLtPCw&feature=related heres the link . Your doing a awesome job first time to man!

Thanks a lot!!! I have been researching this on sites like this and visiting stores for almost a year before I started and I keep trying to learn more every time I can it's getting addicting. I'm already thinking about my next project and what new equipment and lighting I am going to need to buy. I'm starting to like growing the plant as much as enjoying the plant.

Thanks for the vid!!!

The guy has the exact same lighting system that I have except that he has 4 of them running. I also noticed that even though he was flowering he had some blue lights in there. People were talking about stretching with the T5 and that he should have used an HPS when the real issue was the distance of the lights from the plants that caused the stretching I think from what I've learned.

Man I really hope I come out with some nugs like those. I will feel like the President of: The Only Professional Marijuana Junkie Cultivators of California and Amsterdam also know as TOPMJCCA

Not a problem man. To answer a couple of your other Q's too;

1.)No, You do not have to swithct to flower immidiatlet after the plants "pre-flower". You can veg them as long as you like.

2.) No matter how long you veg plant flower time will be between 8-10 weeks varying on strain. most sativa take 10 most indica closer to 8 (generally).

3.)There won't be a difference in potency with how long you veg for, It will just affect yeild.

4.) Also if you keep letting your plants veg they will continue to grow new nodes and more potential bud areas. However, the t5 lighting will only penetrate the plant so deep. It may not be able to get to the lower half of your plant and this will create little popcorn buds. So with a t5 flower set-up I would suggets topping and flowering sooner than later ya kow? But I have never flowered with a t5 so I have no personal experience with this just seems to make sense..

5.)You also don't "need" "warmer" or a "red" spectrum in flower. I've known lots of people to flower with MH and some actually claim it makes the buds more dense.

Keep them pics coming brotha!!looking great