My First Grow Journal (joeblo)

on april 24th i planted in 1 inch rock wool squares my seeds..

the seeds were already germinated i germinated them by putting them in a rubbermaid dish in a paper towel and keeping them moiste w/regular tap water.. i know everyone says to do this in a dark warm place but i actually just set them out in the open on my counter, not very dark not very warm. and i prolly didn't yeild as many seeds as i could have but i had about 6 that opened up little tails out of the seeds...

i put them in the rockwool squares tails down and then into a black tray so they are individual also i had a dome over this tray w/ 1 small t5 light that was locally recomended...

this is what confuses me a little bit becuase everyone says to keep the light close to the plants but this dome forced the light to be about 1 foot away. so i really don't see how to avoid stretching w/this method...

my next grow i will not be using the dome... even tho my local hydroponics insists to use it... (if someone can answer that question for me i would love to hear it) maybe putting that dome on it just until they poke out of the rockwool or soil or whatever....

anyway back to the journal

on the 27th of june they popped up out of the rockwool cubes

on may 3rd i put them into larger rockwool i believe about 4 inches of cube this was already stretched a little bit... these are still under the same small t5 light... but w/the larger rock wool and help w/some boardgame boxes i moved the plants to 1 inch away from the light

pix

a lot of people began tellin me that i should replant the babies to soil and burry up to the nodes to help the already stretched problem. so on may 9th i put them into miracle gro organic vegtible soil.. this was a bad choice in quality of soil but i went a head and did it... i went ahead w/a gallon or so pots and planted them up to the nodes... this is the same day i jumped up w/light to a 95 watt cfl in the blue spectrum. along w/a hood, and a small osculating fan.



i also put a timer on so they are getting 18/6 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkeness... instead of 24 hours a day light on

the same time i put them under the new lights in their new home in the new crappy soil i started giving them some nutrients.... this was also recomended from my local hydroponics shop



the plants loved the light and the fan





on the 24 or 25th of may i noticed some brown spots as well as my plants were starting to curl and dry up a little bit... as well as turn more of a yellow color after asking many people and hearing different suggestions i decided i was wattering too much even tho i was watering every other day the soil was looking dry everyday..i believe this was just on the top after i switched soil wich i will get to... but also the rock wool i'm guessing was sucking all the moisture out of the soil... my next grow i will be skipping the rock wool... or at least the large cubes of rockwool.

pix of dried leaves etc..





so on the 25th i stopped the nutes completly and started just using water.. i also switched to every third day watering...

after i posted these pix some people started telling me it's the soil... so on the 30th of may i went and got some ocean soil??? i will post some pix and info on the soil tomarrow i don't remember exactly what kind of soil it was.. but i also changed the light as well to a 125 watt.. i replanted them and switched lights...

as well as put my t5 light on the wall basically to the side of the plants to get some width and help the growth on the sides because of the loss of some lower leaves due to dryness or burns...

i will post pix of how and what i'm talkin about soon...

i hope this new soil, larger watt light, and the extra small t5 light will help them thrive like no tomarrow... we will find out.

i've got some new pix this was on may 31st... i took these pix to show some of the damage i've got on the plants... i don't know if it's from over watering under watering to much light burns from light.. nute burns... or what but here's some good pictures of my ok plants...

the smallest




2nd



biggest






please.... what do ya'll think??

here's a pic of the t5 light i just added.... this was after the shown pix...

i repoted these plants because of the crappy soil i had and because i thought they had nute burns the day before these pix...

i guess because of the nutes... and the miracle grow soil i think that was the problem they were just overwhelmed w/stuff goin in there roots maybe?

they are looking a little more healthy now here on the 5th of june... 6 weeks exactly

heres some pictures of the biggest from today





now this one is really out growing the others and i'm pulling the light up as the big one needs to keep it a few inches off the top... but now i'm thinking about cloning or chopping... most of the leaves are on the top could use some suggestions on wether or not to top or clone or leave alone?

yesterday i did a little pruning and tried to even up the plant..

i had some larger fan leaves on the top that kinda looked outta place and some of the lower smallerones weren't getting the light it needed.. (well that's what it looked like to me)

so i took a few larger of the single leave branches off to make the light able to go a little further down... and to let the new leaves catch up... basically i thinned out the plant now that hopefully we're just a couple weeks away from flowering it will be a little more even and full of new branches and hopefully a little thicker..

i'll prbably be adding my 95 watt cfl to the picture along w/the 125 to really push them now i finally got the watering schedule down every 3 or 3.5 days is good unless just way to dry for some reason most the time 3 days tho haven't been misting at all but i will be picking that up now too... w/the next watering.

i'm watering w/nutes every 2nd and sometimes even 3rd watering so that way they get more fresh water than nute water... seems to me when i use nuts constantly it hurts the plant more than benifits... but usuing water that's been set out for a while (to get rid of the chlorine) most of the time works better...

i also took one clone and stuck it in a non transperent cup last night

basically using the instructions in the 101 questions already asked in the newbie section.... just water cup and a little light... i took a good looking branch from the lower end of my biggest plant and stuck it in a cup w/ suran wrap to hold it up... the up was bigger than the clone... i put it above my grow area so it will get slight light but not too much and it'll be on the same lighting schedule as before...18/6 just not under the light.... above the hood and off to the side... so it's not concentrated

i'll post pics of that when i get it and keep ya'll posted... hopefully the plant i got the clone from ends up a female! as i don't know yet!

wish me luck

comments always welcomed

Soil grow's need alot less watering than dro or ebb and flow..Looks like your watering way to much..top 2 inches of your soil should be dry before you water,,,make sure the roots arent poking through drain holes and sitting in water in the catch tray..My plants need maybe once a week, three times every to weeks..

Run your lights 24/7 til your clones have rooted..Can you?..do you have a separate room for vegging...you need this,,cfl..or flous

no it's not that big of a grow... just a few small plants...

and yeah i'm watering when the soil is dry and it's usually every third day... i don't have a seperate room to do that w/... unfortunatly but this was just a trial on the clone and really the whole grow in general...

thanks for the comments!

so no i'm on week 8 1/2 and starting to plan a flowering closet free standing i will be adding lights and vents to this project as well as a home made oderizor by curtousy of video man and byfreebe i think

i will get ya'll some more info stats and pics as that comes along

just to do a small update as well all 3 plants are healthy and the new clone which is two weeks and in a rock wool w/soil is holding it's color and standing up tall.. no new growth but looking very happy we'll see how she does when the roots take better foot!

wish me luck!

PEACE

good luck..from that burn it looks like you'll need it to bounce back. I hope the plants look better than they did in the previous pics.

You started feeding them nutes way too soon and are watering way too often. when they're that young you should aim for one watering per week, and not begin feeding until the cotyl's turn yellow which happens around 2-3 weeks of vegging and they will take off without the limp leafs/tops, drooping and burning from soil, nutes, water or whatever.

Keep the lights within 4"-6"

avoid direct lighting on the clones to stimulate root growth instead of green growth uptop.

Try to add at least 1-2 more CFL's to the veg

What are the plans for flowering? Nutes? whats the NPK of the nutes you have there? are U pH'ing your water? do you own a moisture meter? what are temps like? humidity?

and lastly lets see some pix

spittin was right, you started way too early with the nutes. give yourself and the plants some time to take the nutrients from the soil. How did you decide how much to give them, given that the nutes were for hydro? Is it possible that there was an overabundance of something because it was too concentrated?
What will your flowering situation be? I would be worried about keeping my plants under the CFL's or flouros for flowering when they're already that tall. Your plants are going to double in size, but hey, that might be worth it, because you'll need a taller plant to get a decent sativa (i think that's what you're growing) yield. My plants, that I started a week before you, are starting their fifth week of flowering. Even though a lot of people say to veg six weeks or so before flowering, it can be done earlier if height is a problem. And if you don't have a light that will penetrate the beanstalk, then you might want to consider flowering earlier next time. It's worth a try...