First Grow

First off let me thank everyone here for the wealth of information here in the forums. I have read as much information as possible here before I even attempted my first grow. So knock on wood everything is going good but of course I'm only 2 weeks in.

As far as setting up for my grow I kept everything relatively simple. I started my organic soil 6 weeks ago so it had time to cook. The recipe which I got here I did a semi simple mix. I germinated all 15 seeds I got using the water glass method 13 made it. I went with 5 Northern lights feminised all took and the other 10 seeds I got free with my order 8 made it. I decided to grow those as test subjects. All 13 are growing very nice in solo cups using soiless pro mix I just added a little extra chunky perilite to the pro mix. For lighting I have them under 8 t8 bulbs 18/6 schedule.

I will keep you updated on my progress. Thank you again. Here are a couple pics of my 2 week old northern lights.

What are you flowering them under?

I'm vegging them under 8 4' t8 florescent bulbs. When I do flower them I have 1000 watt hps that I will use. I'm currently building my flowering room but honestly I'm not in a hurry because as you can see I'm month's away from needing it. I was thinking about putting them under a 400 watt mh but I was going to wait till they where a little bigger and needed more light penetration. Any advice would be greatly appreciated if you see I'm doing something wrong.

They look good. I definitely see I'll be upgrading to an MH or t8 bulbs for veg. My ladies grew up in veg under CFLs, but the growth under an MH or t8 is noticeably more vigorous. Good luck and happy growing!

They look beautiful so far, no issues that I can see.
I would definitely say look into topping/pinching the plant, especially if you aim to put 2 under a 1000W globes.
You want as much of the plant to be at the same height as possible, so growing it traditional style indoors is basically void these days as you will get minimal bud production zones this way.
I only remind you of these methods now as if you wait until your later in veg you will add a further 21 days or so for the optimal repair time after training the plant.
Think of it this way, it will take maybe 5 hours at worst to train and tie down both of those babies in even the most extreme circumstances...
And you need to do minimal after its done for a bigger reward, where as you could leave it and then struggle with getting the lights to hit all your zones.

If that's how your plants look currently, pinch out that middle growth at the top of the 2nd node and your plant will then sprout 2 colas.
Wait for it to re-grow and then pinch the growths from inside both of those zones to give you 4 mains, then repeat again until you have around 8 mains.
Tie those down to the same height and give your plants even light the whole way around and you will see your plants grow to the perfect shape without having to do fuck all.

Good growing... Have a blast, learn a lot, repeat!

Nice grow...welcome to riu.

Thank you for the advice dopeleader. I will be topping my plants shortly. My plan is to top and train them exactly as you have advised me to do. I am also going to scrog them. I am going to veg them for about 3 months allowing for proper training and growth before flowering. I am guessing the 5 Natural lights strains I have if given time could fill 2 5x5 scrogs with a 1000 watt hps for each scrog. I have 8 other girls doing nicely but I have no idea what they are because they were free with my order of Northern Lights. All I know is they are defiantly sativa dominate and are a lot more touchy than my northern lights which brings me to my update.

I increased my lighting to 20/4 schedule and noticed slight nutrient burn on the tip of one of my northern lights. I only have fed them twice at half strength using distilled water. Next time I will back it off to a quarter strength. My sativa strains looked like they were suffering from heat stress but my veg room stays at a constant 77 degrees at 50% humidity. I do have good air circulation also 2 12 inch osculating fans with a thermostat controlled exhaust fan. I also noticed what looked like calcium deficiency in all of the sativa strains. I mixed 1 teaspoon of dolomite lime to a gallon of water and watered them. I do have cal mag but I used the lime because its fast acting. All of my sativa s are looking better. My guess was it was a ph imbalance in my soiless grow medium for that strain and there deficiency because they look a lot better the new growth looks good.

I mixed my soil today I think it is ready to use so I'm thinking about transplanting my bigger girls into 5 gallon buckets using my soil. Thanks again and I will keep everyone updated.

Here are some pics of my problem children I was telling you about

Kids will be kids. If you hang in there with them, you'll be surprised how strong they can become. Happy growing.

also during veg the humidity doesn't need to be at 50%, infact I found my best growth rates were around 65-75% and even my temps were round 27-30 Celsius.
Obviously don't crank your heat up to those extremes just yet because your plants are small at the minute, but over the next few weeks just try to find out what works best for you.
do you have holes in those cups for drainage?
If so when you can see the roots then transplant it into a bigger pot, youll get a lot more root structure from that.
Also your right about the nutrient burn, becareful not to spill or water directly onto the plants as that's what im guessing caused these burns.
3 Months is probably way too far to veg a sativa dom plant, youll end up with a full room before flower.
With the SCROG method you will not need such a long veg, give it even 8 weeks that will give you a monster plant as it is.
If you plan to veg that long I would recommend a near 10gal pot, might seem like overkill but if you want bigger plants you need bigger roots to support such a notion.

Thank you for the advice once again. Yesterday I topped all the plants that had 4 nodes on them as you suggested. All look good. I do have holes drilled into my cups 4 1/2" holes each. I can't see any roots yet coming out the bottom as of yet. I had plans on ttransplanting them into 5 gallon buckets but work had other plans for my day. I may have to buy a humidifier because I can't get over 50% in my room. I have 2 pans of water in there to raise the humidity to 50% which is pretty constant. All of my indica strains look very good. I can definitely see the difference in the two. I will take your advice and veg for 2 months. I wanted monster plants and I agree with you that I can achieve that in 2 months in SCROG. Thank you again.

If that's all you can manage is 50% humidity that isn't such a bad thing, I have a dehumidifier and extractor/intake fans to keep it at about %40 humidity cause I would sit 80% without them which is far too high during flower.
That's okay that's heaps of drainage with 1/2'' holes, the roots will get to the bottom soon enough and if on the off chance they havnt by 3 weeks then just transplant them regardless because weed roots generally decide to grow outwards before they grow downwards (might be the same with every plant but I don't grow many others).
The main goal while vegging is to create a massive system of roots, combine that with a nice healthy thick stem, and finally with plenty of budsites and you have a plant that can potentially yield you in the pounds market (Although I wouldnt be aiming too high for your first grow, but that doesn't mean you still cannot pull a large amount).

Looks good. Why are you feeding? Your in organic soil. Also they wouldn't need fed for a little while either way.

Right now they are not in my organic soil. I was afraid I would burn them. Right now while they are in solo cups I'm using Pro-Mix-HP Mycorrhizae, with added perilite. I won't feed them anything but distilled water once they are transplanted.

Jack The Skeleton said:

Right now they are not in my organic soil. I was afraid I would burn them. Right now while they are in solo cups I'm using Pro-Mix-HP Mycorrhizae, with added perilite. I won't feed them anything but distilled water once they are transplanted.

Click to expand...

They still don't need fed. Just wait for the up pot.