My tent grow weekly First grow

I got hold of these plant on the 25th march (first pic) i had nothing for them, and no knowlage of how to grow cress let alone a plant, so i put them in the window at the back of my house no one can see in and got on the internet and found out a little about what i needed.

found out needed:

light: found cheap light envirolite 125w blue for veg hydro shop what an eyeopener amazing gadgets and systems. tents like the idea of a tent deside to make one. got 2 meters of mylar as well.

soil : local shop compost (later found out about npk, pk and perlite)

went home and built a crude box 30cm X 44cm X 50cm
put pc 12cm case fan in top and covered the sides and top in mylar acting as my reflector put in the envirolite and put my plants in. pic1.

started over the next week to plan and build a small tent on a tight budget

found an old canvas wardrobe took the bottom section away and folded the fabric under it now i had a box with a pole for hanging a light from. the box is 70cm wide X 50cm deep X 80cm tall
cover it with mylar inside but not the door fitted roller blind of mylar.
found 8cm pc cpu fan and fitted it on the right of my box as an exit fan.
made a fan director for 12cm fan and fitted it to the left side.

hung envirolite on the 3rd april and moved them in pic 2.
also tried some foliage feeding don't know the mix of nutes as a friend gave it me. plus a couple of cuttings.

4th april i was watering my plants when the fitting for the light fell down and busted my light. got on the phone managed to scrounge a mh 150w light off a friend and a propagator, some root riot media and about 10 seed. fitted light and lifted the smaller plants up to the level of the biggest.

5th april desided to start this if i get a few people veiwing this then i will do next week here are 2 pics of my tent as it is tonight

over the next week i will try to learn what is npk all about and how do i use it. how do i sex a plant. and which light is better envirolight or mh lighting.

any suggestions or help would be welcomed

well a lot has happend this week
1 didn't learn about neuts just got some cheap and asked if they were ok ( too many people say different mixes and brands i will have to try and work it out for my self. i think i will try ionics soil nutes when i get round to it has anyone used them and are they ok?

2 i have learnt that enviro light are ok but i have disided to use a 125w envirolight (flowering) and my mh 150w after some good advice from USERFRIENDLY i also put my plants under a 12/12 cycle

well this week i snapped one of my plants tring LST (low stress training) and got rid of it to a friend (it was a female) and gave him another of my plants to make room for the remaining 4, 3 of them are female and the 4 i think might be (give it a couple of day and i will know. (i have put some close up pics of female hairs below i would like a male just to see first hand what one looks like but i can't be that lucky)

so i have 4 plants now

2 on the left are under intensive LST and the 2 on the right i have disided to grow at a right angle as my tent is only 1meter high (pic 5 below)

i now water bi-daily but i might re-pot them i didn't want to but the roots are coming out of the pot at the bottom, dont want them to get root bound.

i have put some misc pics at the bottom as well
any surgestions or coments are welcome in fact i would love some input as to any way to improve my grow or tent

sorry for any mistakes as i had to do this in a rush to all HAVE FUN

Hey man, are you still around?

yer i'm still here lost internet for a few days i have had problems with my plants here goes soil ph was 5.0-5.5 in 3 litre pots i tried to ph up the soil this had no effect so without guidance of the net and people like you i had to do some thing.

i got some
all mix and a ph pen (will be good for next grow DWC bubbler)
and washed the roots and got rid of as much soil as i could from the root ball without damage. and re-potted them in 11 litre pots
i watered them wednesday when i re-potted they are in the 5th week of flowering.
ph of soil is now 6.6 which i am happy with.

on saturday i will be giving them a boot up the arse with
60% strength of ionic bloom ( npk 468 )
1.5ml per litre of canna pk 13/14
and some sensi cal mg bloom 1ml per litre

anyway here are some pic from today oh the lights are from left to right
150w hps
125w cfl flowering
150w mh

in pic 6 you can just see some trics forming
pic 7 is the problem i was having it is not getting any worse and there is only 3/4 weeks left so i am not that bothered about it well there you go.

Hey B, I wish I had know you were going to do a journal. Your setup is very decent. Nice green plants. I don't think there is a magnesium deficiency problem there; all I can guess is the ph or maybe some salt buildup.

Those nugs look very sativa. The deal with repotting sativas in flower is that you give them more space for their roots and probably a lot more nitrogen too. They may want to stretch now. Your 3 weeks may have just turned into 6 weeks. I suggest you feed them no nutes at all or maybe 10% PK. Do not give them anything with nitrogen is what i want to stress.

I hope to see more pics soon.

ok thanks i will probably not use the ionic nutes ( npk 4 6 8 ) or the sensi cal mag ( npk 2 0 0 ) and just use the pk 13/14 what do you think?

they don't look stressed out at all, i have spoke to the person i got them off and they are 90% that the seeds came off a hermie northern lights, out of the 6 plants i had the 4 i have are all female and two that when to a mates house were also female i have 10 seeds from the same batch, what are the odds on getting 6 out of 6 female or do hermies put out a better female to male ratio

when i had the ph problem with my soil i got well pissed and i am now looking at doing a bubbler system i will have a better control over things like ph and nutes.

thanks for your interest and input UserFriendly

I think hermy seeds have the same male:female as regular seeds. I also think northern lights is supposed to be a decent yielder. I know they sparkle a lot too. Go ahead and pump them full of PK. Good luck bro.

they will be getting canna pk 13/14 @ 1.25ml per litre see how they like it.
i dried one of the buds i cut 2 days ago it tasted cemicaly (sorry my spelling is crap) but i could taste the smoke under it i think it might be ok for my first grow.

thanks for the comment on the grow setup it is evolving all the time i might end up opening the tent up to the full closet for my next grow, i want more room for setting up fans ect. i will post some more pics at the beginning of the week and let you know if the plants liked the pk

ok so i let my journal slip things have gone wrong very wrong and i have made some major mistakes in my grow

about 2 week or so ago i lost the internet and had to use just the books i had and the info i downloaded i did not know when i would get the internet back

so here are my mistakes

1 i read that my run off should be about a PH of 6 i checked it using chemical strip test and it was about 4 the rust on the leaves was getting bad so i panicked and flushed them the flushing took hours i mean hours i left it late so late that i had the plants up past there bed time 3 hours past got my ph to 5.5 but the other thing i did bad was to put water that had a PH of about 10ish to balance it out

2 on the 7th of may i transplanted them in to bigger pots (11 litres) they were in 6 litre pots with some good soil from my local hydro shop the day after i noticed that the plants were getting to big in hight for my tent so like a Kn*b i topped them well 2 of them now they have odd leaves they look like the leaves you get when re-vegging but they are still producing trics

after all that the plants did not die which is good and the rust stopped spreading and i beleived that i had sorted it out but thing have gone down hill since

2 days ago i when in to find that the rust had started to get worse and not only that i noticed that i had 5 or 6 seed pods on one of my plants i tried to look for any sign of one of my plants being male i could not find one and still can't

today i went in to find about 10 seed pods 6 on one plant and 4 on one of the others also the rust is getting bad i have no pics from today but i will try to post some tomorrow

i now know it's my bad i think i stressed them too much
i wish i had read more to start with but i didn't know there was this much info on the net when i started them i used crap soil which i think is why i am having so much trouble now

i have got a Ph pen now and i will be trying out a hempy grow next i have some seed from a friend some northern lights again.

all i want to do now is to keep these alive for another 3-4 weeks and finish the grow
i gave them pk 13/14 two feeds ago and they have bulked up and just bloom nutes last feed

here are some pics

1 full tent taken on 11/05
2 atop view of on i topped pic taken on 13/05 notice the strange leaves
3 this is a seed pod i think taken on 16/05
4 this is just a pic i like taken on 13/05
5 a pic taken on 16/05
6 here is one of the rust on the leaves this was about a week ago its got worse

i had a couple of flowering clones knocking about so one i have planted in 100% coco and the other i have put in a hempy bucket (plastic bottle) with 100% perlite

pic 7 plant in hempy bottle taken 18/05
pic 8 top view of the plant in coco 18/05
pic 9 tent taken on the 18/05


so i know i cocked up i will be getting a ec/cf meter in the next few weeks i plan on getting a microscope or something tomorrow so i can take a better look at the trics also some digi timers for my fans and light they are only about £14 for 6 the cheap clock type ones i have are not good they are drifting about a minute a day

i have don't think i will be growing in soil again any comment is welcome even if its bad i can take it i deserve it

thank you for reading this if you got this far

You're most likely seeing those pollen sacs because the seeds came from a hermy NL, right? It's really nothing to worry about as far as quality of smoke goes. I try to avoid hermies and feminized seed and I suggest you do the same.

I don't think I'll ever grow in peat moss again either. Coco is where it's at.

Don't feel too bad about stressing your girls on this first run. That's the only way you're going to learn. It's one thing to read on the internet, a very different thing when you're up close and personal. It only gets easier.

i have just put a thread asking when to start flushing them what do you think userfriendly as your advice has been great up to yet

also i have noticed the the 2 plants on the right which are under the mh light have more trics as you said they would ( i nearly changed the mh to hps as you were the only person that said it would make for a more potent smoke) look like you were right
thanks again for you input and support

have you tried hempy buckets?
hail the might USERFRIENDLY

They can fatten up a lot more before you need to flush. I'd say wait two more weeks, then evaluate. The pictures are a litle dark; maybe you can use the flash next time you take pics? or put a light bulb down low?

ok thanks is there any way of telling when to start flushing for optimum potency (so i don't get annoying asking "is this ready to flush")
do you think that rust on the leaves is from my ph cock up?

i will try to post some better pics tomorrow some time with the flash

I guess NL typically flowers for 8 or 9 weeks; the last 2 - 3 weeks would be water only. I know you've had a few setbacks, so wait until you see a few swollen calyxes before you start.

ok its now 5am here so later today (after 2.5 hours sleep my kids get up about 7.30) i will look up calyx and find out what they are.

i feel so thick when it comes to growing but i think i will look at this grow as my test run and a good learning tool

good morning and good night
and thanks again for your time

A calyx is the teardrop-shaped seed pod that the hairs grow out of.

they get bigger even if they have not been pollinated and remain dormant
if pollinated then this is where the seed will be produced
does that sound right to you

i just want to make sure my understanding of the calyx is right

i could not get to the hydro shop to buy a hand held microscope and no were in my town has any thing better than a 20x magnifing glass
so that will have to wait till friday

i am charging my batterys for my cam at the moment but i should have some pics by 8pm G.M.T

i was ment to post these last night but my wife was on the computer till late
and i fell asleep.

so here are some pics taken last night (with flash on)

the last 3 are of the problem i am having i think it is ph damage from the other week

It looks like a phosphorous deficiency cause by low ph. A few of those lower calyxes are looking fat. What week of flowering are they on as of now?

48 days or 1 day off 7 weeks