newbie with bagseed in DWC closet grow

MRpoodle

Member
Hey all...

Starting this journal a bit late but what the hell.....

Decided back in August 2010 to try and create a stealth grow space in my house using 30 seeds brought to me from Turkey about 4 years ago.

Germ'd the seeds in paper towel, carefully (with tweezers) transplanted the 27 sprouted seeds into growing medium on 9/14/10.

My grow space was built by removing some built-in shelving and creating a grow space measuring 4'Hx3'wx20"D and a flowering space measuring 6'h x 4'w x 20"d.

yeah... totally small spaces but they seem to be working. each space is lined with white plastic liner and the entrance to each space is covered by a sheet of black/white reversable plastic liner with a zipper running up the middle.
(make sure when you use these zipper deals to have enough left over to cover the length of the zipper to block light from coming out.)

2 weeks later, transplanted to 5-1/2" grow pots with hydroton pellets in a small dwc setup under 24" x4 tube florescent fixture.

1 female @ 18" height went to bud room on 11/8/10 after taking 3 clones.
2 more went to bud room @ 15" on 11/15/10.

So, from my bag of 30 seeds, 3 females in bud room now under 1-400w HPS light; 3 clones rooting nicely after 2 weeks; everything else out of the 27 germ'd seeds turned out to be a boy and they were tossed.

Using Fox Farms Big Grow and now Big Bloom.

General Hydro dual diaphragm pump
3 psi, 320 gph (20 l/min)

including some pix....
Here's the grow side with a couple of the slower growing plants still in there.
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Nice healthy growing:
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Here's a nice shot of female pre-sex showing @ 6 weeks grow.
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Here's a shot of male pre-sex @ 6 weeks.
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Here's the bud room with my big female @ 8 weeks after transplanting seedling. plant is 18" tall.
(the two small plants on the right were boys and were pulled after 7 days)

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Here's my girl 5 days later with lots of nice bud sites!!!

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more to come.......
 

grumpyjox

Member
hey man, looks awesome, shame about all the males, lol at least next time you know the clones are females :)

cant wait to see how nice it buds
 

MRpoodle

Member
i believe today is day 60.
took these photos of our 1 big girl in the bud room yesterday.

Pure Pot Porn....

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MRpoodle

Member
well, let's see.

It's day 23 of budding for our big girl, Mary Alice. She's covered in lots of lovely buds... younger buds have creamy white pistils. the maturer buds' pistils are turning a nice cherry red.
she's about 36" and holding. Her biggest fan leaves have turned yellow and are slowly dropping off. Not sure what's up but roots are healthy, buds are growing big.

It's day 19 budding for our smaller girls, Mary Beth and Mary Catherine.
They went into the bud room @ 15" and they're now 30" and 26". Can't recall which is taller... oh, well. They were from seed and no clones were taken so no need to tell which is which.
they're both doing ok but i just noticed rust spots on the leaves and burned tips of lower leaves. I'm thinking mag deficiency. will get that straighened out. otherwise. they're all looking good.
pix to follow soon.
 

MRpoodle

Member
day 26 of flowering. Nothing to do but sit and wait for the pistils to dry out and trichromes to swell.

Added General Organics Cal/mag (w/molasses) to reservoir to counter-act burned, upturned leaf edges and browning spots.

not sure if it's a deficiency or lock out due to ph upswings but i'm checking and correcting ph every day now.
no worries. :)
 

MRpoodle

Member
These 3 clones were taken about 30 days ago from my big girl plant "mary alice" in the photos above.
I had house company and had to keep them in a less than ideal atmosphere with low humidity and fluctuating temps. so, it's taken them a while to recover but they're definitely on the mend.
Just changed nutes and water in their resevoir. Roots are nice a white and growing fast. the top 4-5" of growth is just from the last 7 days.

looks like we'll have 3 nice new plants to move to the flower room in a couple of weeks.
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MRpoodle

Member
Nothing much new to report.... everything looks good.
It's been a hell of a time trying to figure this all out on my own but it's been a great experience and I'm sure it would have been even more difficult if I didn't have a resource like rollitup.org

I wish i could sit all day long and stare at my girls... they're so beautiful and i love the peaceful feeling which comes over me when i'm around them. :)

Peace all.....
 

MRpoodle

Member
totally sucks... i cannot keep a constant ph in either my 2.5 gallon res in the veg. space nor the two 5 gallon reservoirs in my bud space.
I get it all settled @ 5.5 after changing the water/nutes and two days later it's up to 7.4. Last night i added a lot of ph down (more than reason told me to) and i was still getting high readings. Like the ph down was having absolutely no effect.
I recalibrated my Ph tester just last week but i'm not sure whether that would matter...
not sure what to think.

i thought i'd read that too much O2 would raise the ph so this last nute change i pulled 1/2 the number of air stones out... but now i'm wondering if O2 makes the water more acidic (LOWERS ph) and i should be adding more air stones?

wondering also if i should replace the probe on my ph meter?

I should add that the plants all look good.. are growing nicely without any recent signs of nute deficiencies. they're drinking water and look healthy.

any thoughts? should i just chill and not worry until i see signs of possible deficiency/slowed growth?
 

MRpoodle

Member
Well, the signs of deficiency were immediately evident....

In an attempt to correct a cal. deficiency, i went out and bought some Cal-mag and proceeded to change out all three of my reservoirs with foxfarm and cal-mag.
Turns out, i mixed my two concentrates together without first diluting them.
DO NOT EVER DO THIS!!!!
You will generate a chemical reaction which will make nutrients unavailable to your plants and you F-up your PH.
After a day i noticed a my ph drifting up higher than i'd ever seen... over 8.0.
The nutrients were precipitating, forming solids, and I could tell right away the reservoir water did not look healthy.
After a futile attempt to correct the ph with PH up/down, i gave in to the fact that i was going to lose all my plants and clones if i didn't take the drastic action of changing out my reservoirs and rinsing the roots off immediately.

I think I've saved the plants but at the expense of wasting all the nutrients i'd used just a few days ago and the extra time/effort of doing the Nute. change.

And... the REAL KICKER.... I read a thread on this forum within days of making this mistake and that thread explicitly said not to add un-diluted nutes together. But me did i follow that good advice? No. Not me. I'm an experiential learner... :)
:joint:
 

MRpoodle

Member
New top growth on a clone:
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a bud off our big girl:
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another:
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a bud off our smaller plant (distinctly different strain):
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a bud off our 3rd plant which is similar to the second one:
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Finally have my ph staying consistent and everything is looking good.
Then the power went out and we had 5 hours without air pumps or lights or vents or fans and just as i was setting up the generator the power came back.
I think all the plants did fine. the temps were very mild so we didn't go below 64F.

Peace all....
 
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