my first cfl grow any help very much appreciated.

Southshalrise said:

Man ur at the same spot I'm at..working on my first grow and it's cfl..it's working out nicely..doing my first harvest with bagseeds bfore I attepmt to do danK shit..my grow is really small..2 plants using LST..hopefully get half an ounce or more..keep up the journal.btw what soil are u using...I'm trying to decide on that

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i am using miracle grow the kind that feeds for 3 months i kinda just got pumped to grow and dove in head first lol. i have grown once before but wasnt online at the time it was years ago and i read a book by jorge cervantes called indoor mari. horticulture and i used small hids for a stealth grow. now that i have read up on the cfls i really find them quite neat lmmfao so i am going to try it first on some bag seed just like you before i attemp the dank shit. i also am going to try the lst attemp on one of the plants

Try using oven protector sheets as hoods, less crinkles, less hotspots. You lucky bastards outside nz, cant find those y splitters anywhere!!! I wouldnt lst for about 3-4 more weeks, the stems are a little tender at this age, and older woodier stems train a lot better. ill post a pic of my lst method

Gay, couldnt find the pic, but heres a link to my old grow
https://www.rollitup.org/cfl-growing/169557-first-cfl-grow-piako-poison-3.html

blazedkiwi said:

Try using oven protector sheets as hoods, less crinkles, less hotspots. You lucky bastards outside nz, cant find those y splitters anywhere!!! I wouldnt lst for about 3-4 more weeks, the stems are a little tender at this age, and older woodier stems train a lot better. ill post a pic of my lst method

Click to expand...

Give those stems a little pinch. Not hard enough to break the stem, just hard enough to bruise it a little bit. It should look floppy and droopy when you're done. After a couple of days, you'll see that stem start to really thicken up a great deal. It's called supercropping. You're bruising the inner herd which stimulates growth and causes the stem to grow more of the tissue that carrys water and nutrients up and down the plant. It also toughens the stem so it can support the weight of heavier buds.

Tie them down after you've bruised them a bit and they'll grow into shape much more quickly. But you must have a surgeon's touch...use great care that you don't break off branches.

If you do break a branch, then say hello to your new clone if you act quickly.

*edit*

And my reading and experience has lead me to believe that the best veg light schedual is 20/4, not 24/0. The plant really benifits from the down time for root growth, but there's a point of diminishing returns where mo' ain't bettah.

thanks guys i am going to try both ideas out i really do appreciate the info when should i squezze the stem though now or when it gets a lil bigger?

ok no one replied so i went ahead and pinched the stem and turned the lights out 4 hours ago i have made a new hood that isnt as ghetto fab as the one before this one actually looks like i gave a shit lol i used a peice of old hvac duct work taht was 6 inchies in diameter and just made some siple slits and added a screw. i will post the pictures in a lil bit when i add it to box.

ok so i hooked up the hood and man does it make a difference i can leave the lid off the container and hardly any light escapes the bin its fucking awesome . ok so here are the pictures of the hood





and here are some pictures of the lil fuckers after some down time i can tell that the down time has surely helped and will be doing this from now on on the schedule that bud weaver suggested. please tell me how to leave rep so i may give credit.

You've got bare wires, aluminum foil and a Cheez-It box?

Looks like a bit of a fire hazard to me. Take care of the wiring issue first... I think the rest looks good enough.

ok i fixed the bare wire issue with some electrical tape. the last picture i posted was because i was still working on the hood when i was fitting it and didnt know if i would have to undo the socket again. thanks for the looking out though.

nitroman said:

ok no one replied so i went ahead and pinched the stem and turned the lights out 4 hours ago i have made a new hood that isnt as ghetto fab as the one before this one actually looks like i gave a shit lol i used a peice of old hvac duct work taht was 6 inchies in diameter and just made some siple slits and added a screw. i will post the pictures in a lil bit when i add it to box.

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If there's a finger's width of stem, pinch it. Main trunk and bud branches both. Do it first thing when the lights go on to give them ample time to recover and regrow.

*edit*
Your soil looks good and wet, like it's freshly watered. Hide your watering can for a couple days. Don't get itchy and water them when the top inch of soil is dry. Leave them be for as long as it takes for them to use up most of they water they have. If you look at the plant and think "gee, I should water those," then wait til tomorrow. Seriously, overwatering is the single biggest mistake newb growers make.

nitroman said:

i am using miracle grow the kind that feeds for 3 months i kinda just got pumped to grow and dove in head first lol. i have grown once before but wasnt online at the time it was years ago and i read a book by jorge cervantes called indoor mari. horticulture and i used small hids for a stealth grow. now that i have read up on the cfls i really find them quite neat lmmfao so i am going to try it first on some bag seed just like you before i attemp the dank shit. i also am going to try the lst attemp on one of the plants

Click to expand...

Also, I've found with MG soil, you should ignore ferts until the last 3-4 weeks of flowering. That's why many folks burn up their plants with MG. There's ferts in the soil, plain water releases them, so make use of it. Too much ferts = dead plant.

thank you very much bud weaver i have seen where alot of people have burned there plants by using nutes with the mg soil as well. so let me ask you this. when i did my first grow a few years ago i used what i called compost tea. basically what it was is my mother had a compost pile that she has had for years and still has it. what i did and am planning on doing is taking a pair of womens panty hose and filling it with the compost and putting it in a 5 gallon bucket of water and letting it sit for a few days till the water gets all the good nutes out of the compost and watering it with that. when i did this before the smoke tasted so nice and i didnt get any of that nute taste that you get from nuggets you would pick up from a buddy if you know what i mean.
i just took a look at the lil girls and man that hood made alot of differance. sprout one's leaves are getting wider and darker and has the 3rd set of leaves coming out nicely maybe 1/4 inch long so far and there was nothing there but a very fine tip last night. sprout 2 has started growing rapidly and the leaves are pointing up kinda like a rose bush that is just opening a flower. it was droppy yesterday but now looks like she is ready to do some serious catching up to sprout one.
also once again thank you bud weaver for all of your info

ok i figured the rep out so + rep bud weaver thank you again bro

Toss an airstone attatched to an aquarium air pump via some of that little clear hose to bubble some Oxygen thru that tea, and it sounds like you have a winner. Just remember the nutes already in the MG soil and don't overfert/overwater!

i will most certainly do that i will pick up an aquarium pump this weekend when i go to the wall mart lol. and as for the watering i will not over water i have only water twice since they have been under the lights once when i transplanted them to help set the soil and the other was night before last also i didnt use much water when i transplanted as the soils was already very moist from being in the bag. prob wont have to water again till around saturday

I don't know if you're using it, but the MG Organic Choice will play a little nicer with that compost tea that plain ol' MG potting soil will. That compost tea actually works with the microorganisms present in most soils...organic soils naturally have more of this microherd.

The Organic Growers Mantra: Feed the soil, not the plant.

That's why mollasass (sp?) is used by a lot of folks...it feeds those microbeasties.

see i was wondering about the moleasses but havent found the thread that truley explains it all. i am just going to grow this for me so i was wanting to make sure it was gonna taste sweet lol

nitroman said:

see i was wondering about the moleasses but havent found the thread that truley explains it all. i am just going to grow this for me so i was wanting to make sure it was gonna taste sweet lol

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It took me a while to find out what the deal with mollassas was also.

Basically it's providing the microorganisms in your soil with an easy to use form of sugar. Sugar = Energy...so you can see why it's a good thing to feed them sugar.

For the longest time I thought all of this stuff we do with ferts and teas and crud was for the plants...it's not!

Feed the soil, not the plant. That sentance there rocked my world.

*edit*

A couple quick, crappy pics of what I got going to show off some of my LST work. I'm going to be posting a grow journal soon with a full compliment of pictures.

yes i definately think i will do some in depth reading in the organics forum as i want the best tasting buds possible

ok here are the plants four days from sprout and number one is looking great number two is catching up nicely also i started 4 others in the chamber that i posted a pic of in the begining of this thread. i will post pictures of them tommorow