My First Grow

I wanted to post a an online guide to what i did from start to finnish in detail to help help make growing as painless as possible. this is my first grow and i did have a few problems an found it frustrating as hell to find threads offering soloutions to things such as zinc deficiency's that says "use chelated zinc as a foliar spray" and in no way offering something useful as to where to get things like that. so from here on out when i mention what i use to correct my problems ill tell you what i used, where i got it, and how much i used. i took weekly photo's and will post them as soon as i figure out how to do it so.

I started with african violet miracle grow potting mix, already ph balanced right out of the bag 6.0 to 6.8, and used a mixture of 60%/40% perlite.

This is 4 days old, watering once a day 8 o.z. of water.

The next several photos are a week apart, no problems so far.

Week 2

Week 3, aside from a cat chewing the shit out of the leaves, all is still well.

Zinc deficiency, there is only traces of the yellow ribbing in the top leaves in this photo, a day earlier it was much more pronounced and the leaves were cupping. i was using tap water on them and didnt realize that the ph had jumped to over 8.6, and the alkaline was over 240 ppm. i switched to distilled water and now my readings average 6.5 to 7.0. i corrected the problem 8-30-09 and the next day half the green came back. as of 9-2-09, 90% of the green returned.

Week 4 (7") and not a trace of any ribbing, i only got about an inch of growth that whole week but i expected that.

Week 5 she jumped up to (14") and its all good. i started too late in the year and by this time the weather was getting too cool, so i had to bring them indoors. now this almost fucked me up! outdoors i was giving it a pint a day no problems, stabilizing the temp. indoors wasnt too bad but the humidity was a bitch, even at a half pint a day due to higher humidity i was still overwatering. after adding a small heater, and a few exhaust fans im averaging an 88 temp with 45 to 50% humidity and im using an HPS 150 light.

Week 6 (17") Ive read that the ideal height for an HPS fixture is just high enough so that you dont feel alot of heat on the back of your hand. which i would do and my top leaves would still droop abit, so i would feel for ANY heat then go up 6 to 8 inches higher and the leaves perk right up, dark green and reaching for the light.

Week 7(21") I have bud sites just exploding off of the plant now. last week was about 18, now there are over 60 and climbing. what im gonna do now is start using molasses with each watering 1 tsp. of Grandma's UNSULPHURED molasses per gallon of distilled water. you'll find it by the pancake syrup in any Wal-mart 12 oz. jar for $2.50. i deluted some in a smaller dish of water then added it back to the gallon and shook it up abit. wait 24 hours before using it.

Next photo coming 10-2-09

Well.....i posted photos and captions, and clicked post guess its still pending approval?

Week 8 (23") buds are twice the size as last week, using molasses and a top dressing of 1 o.z. of bone meal. im using schultz. the directions call for 1/3 cup, about 2 ounces so i only used half. i talked to customer service about nute burn on potted plants, they said i should be fine as long as the bone meal isnt touching the plant, so i dressed the top soil about 2 inches out from the trunk. its been a week and no signs of damage.

Well look's like customer service is full of it, the bone meal cooked the leaves a bit, so DONT USE ANY! unless you grow out door's. she's now 25 inches tall, and the buds increased in size by approx 15% and their growing lots of tiny leaves. the molasses is still working nicely, ill post photo's of this same top every friday until harvest.

nice grow man. +rep