Microgrow -20inchx20inchx4ft SF600 qb LED -1st grow

I'm documenting my first real grow. My only other experience was growing in a tiny locker in my room as an unruly teen...which yielded a few grams of the loosest bud.

Now i'm an adult, but I live in a tiny apt and want to keep it small still. It started with buying a cheap 19W LED grow light from home depot, eventually upgrading to a SF600 quantum board LED and a 20inchx20inchx4ft grow tent.

My overall goal is to yield 2-3 oz for personal use only.

I have 30+ houseplants at this point so I'm comfortable with gardening in general, so I dove into LST for this first grow. I am doing one Chocolate Mint OG bagseed and one Bermuda Sour (not 100% on this one) bagseed. I spiral LST'd both as soon as I could, and topped CMOG once it had 5-6 nodes. I did the spiral because it seemed easy but the more I read about manifolds the more I want to try them.

I planned to not top the BS, just doing the spiral LST, so I could see the differences between the two, LST vs HST. I did continue to prune throughout veg, but I never touched the original apex on the BS.

All comments very welcome and appreciated. Please let me know if I'm doing something wrong.

So I noticed a huge difference in smell between the two plants since the beginning, and I liked the more indica like characteristics I was seeing in the (supposed) bermuda sour bagseed (a hybrid), so I went ahead and put it in a bigger pot. From the beginning I was hoping I would just have at least one female and I'd likely do just a single plant at a time...but we'll see. I started to get it in my head that the BS was a female because of the potent smell. I continued to grow the CMOG but kept it in a small pot and kinda bonsai'd it with the amount of cutting and topping I did on it.

-Note, I began to see little tiny flies around the soil. I think they might have transferred from some of the old succulents I had sitting around. I began putting out fly paper and some vinegar/soap/sugar mixture which took care of a lot. Later I bought some DE and began dusting that over the top and just trying to leave the soil dryer overall. I also think I got scale bugs as well from other plants around. These I manually removed with a brush by inspecting each leaf, then sprayed it down with some pre diluted neem oil spray. I continued this and then did a spray of a spinosad solution as well, along with more DE. I'm going to continue to watch this. Carbon filter and inline fan arrive soon so I hope that takes care of some of the bug issues. I also haven't been monitoring humidity either so I'm going to look into that.


I've been feeding with pH controlled Micro/Grow/Bloom on most feedings. I did one flush about a week ago as well. It's getting harder and harder to tell when to water based on the soil with the DE everywhere, I'm going to start just looking at the leaves maybe?

BS on top has giant broad fan leaves, intact apex, with poor growth in the middle parts

CMOG on the bottom is much bushier, has been topped numerous times. Some additional branches kind of popped up and I tied some of those down too.

I just started flower yesterday, already can't stand not being able to look at them at all for a block of time, haha. Finishing off the rest of what I have photo wise:

Before a flush

I'll keep you updated on how this responds


And to my surprise the CMOG that had no smell at all to it showed itself as female after 12 days (wtf) of 12/12. My lesson is that smell is in fact not an indicator of sex, haha.

A few updates, starting with the cutting from CMOG (chocolate mint OG) that is doing well, 6 days from the last picture there on the bottom of the last post. I'm going to keep this little guy going until the end, maybe i'll get a gram or two off of it. A hair got in the pic. The bud formation seems extremely slow but it was in a very tiny pot, so I transferred it to a slightly larger one.



The mother of the above is pictured below, transferred to a 6.4L/1.7 gal pot after the cutting confirmed it was female. I'm excited to use the cutting as a way to know what to expect from the mother as the buds mature, also just seeing a regular non-LST'd plant grow.




Sad update is I think my other main plant BS (Bermuda Sour) is a male, my plant that has been in the larger pot since veg and has a stem twice the size of the CMOG mother above. I'm monitoring it closely, preparing for a chop once I for sure don't see any pistils coming out. This will be my first male plant experience. I would love any opinions.



and here's a shot showing just how strong the sun is coming through the window, makes my LED lights look like shade from the pic.

Slightly better picture of the preflowers on BS. Male?

edit: adding link to discussion thread, not sure how this works, all comments welcome here too, first time grower. Thanks!

I took the BS out of the tent, I've had a few people tell me it is a definite male and that was my first thought too. My humidity dropped to a nice 46-48% after I reduced the operation to one plant and the cutting, and it seems like it's getting more of the dominate center light from my QB. I think overall it's good but I wish the stronger BS plant had been the female. I'm concerned yield will be <1oz. Plants are about 13-14inches from light right now, I have some space to move them up 2-3inches maybe in the future but that's it...

update here is the CMOG cutting I thankfully kept (but severely topped as an experiment) and put back into veg light with a single bulb I have lying around. It's growing two main branches after the top, but one severely smaller, trying to encourage a little more symmetry with light placement. I'll try to keep it as small as possible for now and maybe it will be my next grow if the timing works out.

The topping:


1 week later:

The cutting responded well, and so I cut it again, hopefully it evens out a bit. I'm trying to keep this guy small for now to use for the next grow. I love the branching and node spacing so far.


This is the state of the tent, 1/2 plants were male. Now I just have CMOG and the cutting from it that I sexed, in its 3rd week on 12/12, as well as the above pictured cutting that I am keeping on a veg light schedule just with a small led "after hours" on my desk.





It's good to start seeing some results. I hope they grow dense. I moved my light up because it was 11inches from the top cola, now it's at 16 inches with no more room to move it higher, hopefully the stretch doesn't get more extreme. I'm on day 14 of 12/12 for the big girl. My biggest worry right now is getting a bunch of LARF only using a 75watt output LED QB (Spider Farmer SF 600).

Does it look like the sexed cutting will fill out?

This one is just in a tiny 0.5L pot, a fun side experiment but more and more it's making me think of just doing like 8 of these small girls instead next time, rather than wasting so much veg growth that I end up just cutting and throwing out. I'll see what the yield ends up being between the two.

Day 19 flower for the big one and day 30 flower for the small one.

Another week has passed, getting a lot of stretch, wish I had gone to 12/12 earlier. Highest cola is 10inches from the light now (grew 6 inches in a week, fuck). I think my light (75watt draw, spider farmer sf600) is too weak for this, I cut out some of the lower and middle growth, even some budding sites that just had really thin stems. I almost feel like I topped too much, split the growth to too many nodes. We'll see.

Hilariously, I had to stop smoking and developed immediate nausea and vomiting, dealing with that for 3 days now, never had withdrawal symptoms before, really made me re-evaluate my usage that had gotten out of control during quarantine. I started this with the idea to continue using an oz/month and I'm realizing how unhealthy that is for me right now. I can't go back to daily smoking. I decided to do a taper to manage the nausea, only had one puff today so far, with only one more planned before bed. Hopefully I'm not just drawing this out further, but I couldn't even keep water down for a day.

Anyway, the pics:


This is the tiny 0.5L pot, filling out a little? I think I'm in for a bunch of airy bud. I removed lower growth on this one in the hopes that the top fill fatten properly.


Here's the big girl, so much vertical growth and lots of lower leaves not getting much light so I trimmed:


This is what the tiny tent looks like right now




I have 5 cuttings going for the next round of CMOG. I'm keeping them small next round, maybe just 2 weeks of veg. unless I want to get a better light.

I got a strawberry daiquiri bagseed recently so that I might try in the future too

This place feels dead...I'll continue with just some pic dumps from now on. You can find me on GD under "BermudaCower" if you want details and full updates. Cheers

Beauty!! How come you didn't transfer the 1g to a 5 or a 7?

I probably should have, but I thought I would have two plants at a time and two 1.7gal pots would be all I could fit in my tiny 20inch by 20inch tent.

The QB foot print seems small too, the light itself is 11x10inches, I feel like the cutting is getting barely enough light and it's pushed all the way against the big pot.

Next grow I might do 3 one gallon pots, or LST in a way that two 1.7gals fit better

what kind of tent is that, if you don’t mind me asking? Also, beautiful plants!

no prob


It was $70 when I got it, I think they're out of regular stock

I'd recc going higher than 48 if you can afford the space though. Maybe if I move this will become my veg tent.

komkom said:

no prob

https://www.amazon.com/TopoLite-Hydroponic-Indoor-Growing-System/dp/B075VTDSBV/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=topolite+20x20&qid=1596588124&sr=8-1

It was $70 when I got it, I think they're out of regular stock

I'd recc going higher than 48 if you can afford the space though. Maybe if I move this will become my veg tent.

Click to expand...

Thank you!

komkom said:

Slightly better picture of the preflowers on BS. Male?View attachment 4624200

edit: adding link to discussion thread, not sure how this works, all comments welcome here too, first time grower. Thanks!

Microgrow -20inchx20inchx4ft SF600 qb LED -1st grow (discussion thread)

Not sure how this works, but here is my journal I've been updating for the past few weeks. A two plant grow currently but I think I might have a male, my very first one. Open to all advice/criticism! https://www.rollitup.org/t/microgrow-20inchx20inchx4ft-sf600-qb-led-1st-grow.1023306/ Thanks...

www.rollitup.org

Click to expand...

Male for sure.

Good job on your first grow and nice journal as well. Dont harvest too soon. Wait till pistols are mostly orange and starting to recede. Check tricomes with a loupe. Cloudy trics are best. Cheers.

Week 5 of flowering, buds filling out nicely. The cutting two weeks ahead is finally starting to look like more than just white whispy pistils, slightly concerned about the stem supporting the bud weight.

I switched to an 11/13 light schedule this week. Triches on the main plant are really coming in now, not sure how related that is. The pictures taken here only had 1 day of 11/13 when they were snapped, it's gotten frostier since.

Stretch has stopped, two colas are like 2 inches from the light, haha. They look great though, no burn, but maybe the leaves are getting a little yellow at the very top. I tied them to the tent poles so that they would lean slightly. I continue to pick off popcorn buds, took like 5-6 yesterday from the very bottom in hopes that the top ones would fatten up. I have them drying.

I'm going on vacation for 5 days so I'm preparing an auto watering setup with BluMat, kinda nervous about that...I would hate for it to fuck up at this point. It looks like I'm getting some decent bud out of this if all goes well.


The cutting 12 days ahead:

More pics: