My first grow

Sleepless

Active Member
Hey Jerry, do you have a microscope type thing to check out your trichromes? it looks like it's getting to be about that time : )
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
Fantastic !

It really has em looking forward to mine ...

Great Thread .defffinately subscibed .TONS of usefull info here ..
Just wonder when did u start knipping fan leaves off? only when yellow ?

Iam still leanring ...but people do advice to cut leaves off ...when yellow or touching soil (avoid mold ?)

King of Leon ...WOOHOOO Great gig seen em 3 times now ..(Iam in europe)
You ll have a great time !!!!!
Thanks Flower Pot! I only plucked the leaves that were totally yellow and spotted. If you go back a couple pages to my previous update, you can see which ones I removed. I probably could have left a few on there (they were yellow but didn't come off without a little tug, where others I barely touched and they fell right off), but I got tired of looking at it and now it freed up some light for those lower buds. I don't recommend snipping any unless they are really dead though. I also find my lowest level of leaves tend to get pretty yellow, probably because when I feed, the nutrients tend to run over some of the smaller leaves (accidentally), so I think it's like foliar feeding with way too high of a concentration, so they die. Maybe I just made that up, but it makes sense in my world.

And I'm pumped for the show tonight! Glad you're into them. This will be my second go around so I'm looking forward to it!
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
Hmmmm.... maybe Babs and I are dealing with different bugs. My gnats and plants have peacefully coexisted for over a year. At one point I had a swarm flying around the top of my flower room but still the plants looked fine. The only reason I get rid of them is so they don't fly into my eyes and mouth when I'm in there. Spider mites will phuck up your plants bad I know but the gnats seem to be just chillin to me. Also you won't be able to see anything in the potato slices. That's where they lay their tiny eggs. The actual bugs you can see won't get trapped by the potato.

Jerry, I like the idea of moving to coco. I've never grown soil but I don't see how it could be any easier than coco. Coco is like a sponge and will let you change its properties very quickly. So if your plants don't like something all you have to do is flush and you are back to square one. I don't imagine that the deficiency issue you have with the one plant would have lasted this long in coco. Plus coco will give you hydro size growth while keeping the flavor of soil-grown.
Huh. Maybe they are different bugs. Or maybe they are different species of gnat, each affecting the plant differently? Either way, I don't want them around period. I hate finding bugs in my house...We'll see how the sand is working when I get back later tonight.

I like the coco concept for just that reason--no nutes or additives so you really have control over whats going in and out. You say it gives plant size like hydro...does that mean hydro plants are supposed to get bigger? I never knew what the appeal was to use hydro or aero or whatevero...seems like more crap to buy and more possibility of things going wrong to me, but TONS of people on here seem to like it. I'd much rather use coco myself.

Hey JG!
Looking good my friend! Awesome buds…how much longer ya think?
Thanks skeeter. I'm 40 days into flower, so I'm thinking at least another 3 weeks. But it's all dependent on when the trichomes say it's time.

Hey Jerry, do you have a microscope type thing to check out your trichromes? it looks like it's getting to be about that time : )
I've got an old(er) 30x radioshack scope that happened to be at my parents house when I was out visiting them last. I'm sure they weren't using for anything and probably didn't even know they had it, so it came home with me! I've used it a couple times to check out various buds I've acquired to smoke, and it is good fun!

I'm not sure exactly how I'm supposed to check the trichs on the plant though...am I supposed to just hold the scope up and hope I can focus and hold my hand steady? Because that seems like a bad idea. I can probably rest it on the bud without doing too much harm to it, but I certainly don't want to remove any leaves or buds just to check the trichs.

Also, I plan on harvesting a few buds with only cloudy trichs and then waiting for the remaining buds to get ~50% amber. I want to compare the "energetic high" to the "couchlock stone" that one is supposed to experience.

Thanks for stopping by everyone! More news at it happens:leaf:
 

mared juwan

Well-Known Member
Yea Jerry, coco is a soiless medium, so essentially it is hydro. Hydro plants will flower faster and typically yield more but the downside is they don't retain as much flavor when smoked as soil grown buds. Soiless mediums like coco are kind of a hybrid between the two as I understand it. My buds are plenty tasty :-)
 

ck2009

Member
first of all i have to say sorry to the host of this thred i've looked all on how to start my own thred with no luck ............. this is my first grow im running a 400W blue spetrume light which is 6700k and i also have a red bulb which is 2700k there both 400w im running this light in a attic grow room which i have made my self it is roughly W3m x D1m x H1.5m im currently running the blue light bulb this is over 8 cutting which i ahve brought from a mate defo female clones the room is covered in maylor and im running 2 6" fans and a 12" fan also 4" tt100 extractor fan which is on 24/7 im growing in boibuss which is an organic grow media . im finding it really hard to cool the room down to atleast 85 degreas mines up near the 100s (96 - 99) ive tried filling a bucket full of ice cubes and butting this near the fans so the cold air can be moved about the room but this only brought it down to 92 degreas which is ovisly far to high any ideas on how i could cool my grow room without spending more lots more money on intake fans as i've already spent nearly £300 which all seems worthless if i cant get the heat down lol any help will be welcomed many thanks.
 

skeeterleg

New Member
Im down with the trich experiment. I would love to hear your determination…thanks for you help...Good job JG!!!
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
first of all i have to say sorry to the host of this thred i've looked all on how to start my own thred with no luck ............. this is my first grow im running a 400W blue spetrume light which is 6700k and i also have a red bulb which is 2700k there both 400w im running this light in a attic grow room which i have made my self it is roughly W3m x D1m x H1.5m im currently running the blue light bulb this is over 8 cutting which i ahve brought from a mate defo female clones the room is covered in maylor and im running 2 6" fans and a 12" fan also 4" tt100 extractor fan which is on 24/7 im growing in boibuss which is an organic grow media . im finding it really hard to cool the room down to atleast 85 degreas mines up near the 100s (96 - 99) ive tried filling a bucket full of ice cubes and butting this near the fans so the cold air can be moved about the room but this only brought it down to 92 degreas which is ovisly far to high any ideas on how i could cool my grow room without spending more lots more money on intake fans as i've already spent nearly £300 which all seems worthless if i cant get the heat down lol any help will be welcomed many thanks.
It seems like you've got it pretty much down except for the heat. Well, growing in an attic in the summer is just asking for trouble (are you in the northern hemisphere...I'm assuming the UK because you listed your money in pounds). I would return or sell back as much fan-related stuff as you can and just get an air conditioner. If you don't have a window, you could get a portable a/c unit (I'll take pics of mine later) but it still needs to vent outside through a duct/tube.

I'm not sure what light cycle you're running, but only run the lights for 18 on 6 off and try to keep the "off" time to the hottest part of the day.

But in an attic in the summer I think you'll need air conditioning. Sorry.

Good luck with your grow:leaf:
 

Marcus66

Active Member
I'm really not trying to start any stuff by saying this, but I have a younger brother who is graduating this year, and his writing looks just like yours. Writing with periods really will really help with the flow of your writing. Sorry, Ck2009, I don't have any help to give on the fans. Good luck all.
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
well and truly hijacked lol
Indeed. It's all good though. Just means people are reading my journal, which is pretty awesome.:peace:

Just got back from the show...it fucking rocked (excuse my language, but it did!)

Gonna pull out the girls for a little inspection and photo op shortly...:leaf:
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
Much to discuss this morning, so lets get right to it!

First, bugs. I took the plants out last night for some inspection and photographs, and much to my surprise did not see a single gnat. It must be the sand. Maybe I caught them early enough? Don't know, but it's a nice start. Also, have not seen a single ant since I used the cinnamon. They must REALLY hate that stuff! I worry that they still could be tunneling around in my soil like they do, but its been a couple days since the cinnamon application so maybe it deterred them enough to just move out! So, the preliminary assessment is positive, but I'm not so brash as to think they could/will not return. I'll continue looking into deterrents, as it there is a long summer about to set in.

Next, A/C. I figured out why it kept tripping...in an attempt to preserve the stealthness of my operation, I blocked the exhaust vent with a piece of cardboard. Not right up against the vent, but between it and the window so you wouldn't be able to see this glowing tube sticking out of an otherwise black window at night. Even though air could still escape, it obstructed the flow too much for the a/c, causing it to shut off before it damaged itself. So I moved the cardboard, and what do you know, it worked like a freaking champ. But now there is a glowing tube...so I took some black t-shirts and wrapped them around the exhaust tube (if you can get a non-translucent tube, like maybe some normal aluminum ducting, that would work too, but this is what the thing came with). This prevents the tube from glowing, so now it just looks like a tube sticking out of a window. I'm going to get a black curtain or something (maybe speaker cover cloth, but I haven't tried to find any yet) that allows air to pass but through which you cannot see. Moral of the story--the condensers in these things put off a tremendous amount of heat, and need appropriate ventilation.

Not sure if I mentioned this, but I called Eye to ask about the difference between the hortilux and sunlux conversion bulbs. She said the sunlux tended to be used more for commercial lighting and not growing, while the hortilux is marketed for indoor garding. I explained that I could find no difference in the technical spec sheets, but she didn't know anything about the bulbs themselves. I went line by line through those damn sheets and could not find a difference, so I'm pretty sure they are exactly the same. Maybe I'll call the Sunlux people and see what they have to say about it. It should be on its way though...

Plants. They look good. Nothing really new developing. Starting to see lots of orange hairs. But don't take my word for it...see for yourselves.

Let's start with Tall girl. She's coming right along. Top bud starting to bulk out a little. Getting a little heavy for my reinforced skewer-stakes, so I may have to reinforce them yet again. Or just get a metal stake or something.


Top cola and first couple nodes. Smelling good these days too.


Here's a slightly closer shot.


A couple of tall girls side buds...i've had 3 cfls ~1inch from these for about a week, and they are really benefitting from it. Keep in mind they are 2' from the HPS at the bottom, so without these cfls they would probably look more like wide girls bottom buds (as you can see in the next few pics).


Next, wide girl. She's gonna turn into one gigantic bud I think...nice...


View of the top


The lower budsites are smaller on this girl than tall girl, probably because those massive fan leaves were obstructing them until their recent demise. Hope they get a little bigger before its all said and done.


I haven't take a good "in situ" shot with all the lights I'm currently running, so here it is. You can't see the HPS but its just barely out of the pic. Shorty gets some extra cfl love because she is so far away from the HPS. I do prop her up on a box to make her at least a little closer.


Can't leave out the...teenagers? Man have these things started to get HUGE since I switched them 12/12. They vegged about 1 week before I switched them, and that was 4 or so days ago. Already I'm starting to see genitalia on one of them, but its too soon to tell male or female. Seing as its only been 4 days, and males tend to show first...


And here's R2D2's long lost cousin R420...only blows in one direction, but man does it blow. Its enough to stabilize the entire bathroom, including the veg closet which is no where near the path of the cool air. It's only 7,000 btu, so I think that means it uses less energy than a 9,000 or 12,000 model, right? Either way it is plenty for my needs and then some.



So there you have it. Things change a little every day, sometimes for the good, sometimes just to keep me on my toes. Things are looking up right now though! Each day is one day closer to VINDICATION FOR ALL MY HARD WORK! And it really has been hard work. It's funny, I started with a $10 reflector and blue coated halogen "grow" bulb...now its become a 24/7 full time operation.

If you're gonna do something, might as well do it up right!:leaf:
 

Sleepless

Active Member
Could you tell me a little more about your ventilation setup? I'm planning mine and finding cheap ventilation is wicked hard, so any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Right now I have an opportunity for a 205 CFM axial fan for $30 including shipping. Are there any cheaper/more-powerful-but-still-cheap out there?
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
My ventilation is pretty non-existent, sorry to say. Just my R420 robot air conditioner and 2 12" oscillating fans. Now that I've got the a/c I probably don't need any additional vents. I'm pumping plenty of cold air in there!
 

skeeterleg

New Member
Looks AWESOME JG! :hump:

In the beginning you said it was some good bag seed. Have you figures out what they might be?

Did you trim them to get one main cola like that or is it the strain?

Great job bro…:clap:

:weed:
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
Looks AWESOME JG! :hump:

In the beginning you said it was some good bag seed. Have you figures out what they might be?

Did you trim them to get one main cola like that or is it the strain?

Great job bro…:clap:

:weed:
Thanks Skeeter. Still no clue on the strains...we had a brief discussion about that a couple pages back--Wide girl is most likely indica dominant based on her wide leaves...Tall girl has slightly narrower leaves, so she's probably a good mix...and Shorty...well, I'm starting to think shorty is Sativa dominant for sure given her narrow leaves...but when she was a seedling (and before I totally fucked her by overnuting/overwatering) her leaves were pretty wide. I don't know shit about telling one strain from another, but hopefully its just one more thing I'm going to learn along the way!

As far as trimming the main cola...I think you're referring to wide girl. No, I the only trimming I did was to remove the dying fan leaves. Otherwise, I just let them do their thing. You can go back a couple pages and see what she looked like before the fan leaves started dying off. She looks great now though!

I woke up too late today to get some pics up...sorry ya'll. It'll have to wait until 8pm I guess...stay tuned...:leaf:
 
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