Tropical Stealth; the grow journal from 13N.

Welcome all to my grow journal. Please subscribe as my postings will be only weekly. Also I'd appreciate any input you may have. Peace to my fellow tokers.

As you may have heard and seen, I lost my mother to weed bandits about a week ago.

The grieving process has truly been intense, I've only been able to cope by tokin and lazing around the house with a miller light in my hand.

But I've found the answer to solve my heartbreak......... love the daughter plant who survived.

This is the daughter at 3 weeks. She's a Netherlands NLNo5 strain, growing in the tropics in the closet with 300 watts of 2700K and 150 watts of 5000K CFL. I'm using MG Organic soil/perlite and feeding with R.O. water, MG food, superthrive, CaMg, and a dash of sea kelp tea. I keep the nutes to between 400 and 600 depending on the dryness of the soil at feeding. I plan on keeping here at 24hrs until she's got about 8 branches. I'll be bushing this one out on LST and plan on going to bloom within a week or so. I'll take a single clone and begin to develop a perpetual following the spirit of our PC Case Guru V12XJS.

By the way I found out on this forum that she has middle finger syndrome as a result of cloning her from bloom instead of veg. Middle Finger Syndrome = a leaf with one finger. She's supposed to grow out of it over a week or so.

View attachment 890795This is her dearly departed mother.

This is a pic of my grow closet. It's pretty much going to run like a PC stealth LST without the PC. Mostly because here in the tropics it is really hard to keep the temps down, just like we experience with a PC grow. I'm going to go to 12/12 as soon as I can get a timer. I like watching them bloom. Veg bores the hell out of me. I'm going to have a few cuttings from her for a perpetual set up before I go 12/12.

Sorry to hear about your loss No5. Sounds like the tropics is the same as here, just hotter.
And you were only a few weeks from a real bumber payday
Best of luck with the new grow.

Ok here's my update.

As a result of a constantly intruding perpetrator. I've lost another plant. This is a photo of her on the evening of her kidnapping.

I've started a new batch of NL seeds. I'm going to go 12-12 from seed and do an LST grow. I'll be sticking to the same principles as before, basically a stealth, perpetual, LST on CFL's. I'm also shifting slightly to the organic side. I'll be starting a small red wiggler worm compost set up. And I'm ammending my water with a very dillute concentration of urine. I'm also adding some additional P-K as Urine is about 12-1-3 NPK. She will get the 12 nitrogen all the way to harvest and I'll be boosting her P-K slowly as I get to harvest. I'm hoping for at least one girl here but two or more is fine with me. The soil is MG organic, so far I've been real satisfied with it. My larger pots will be amended with half worm castings and about 10 percent pearlite.

I'm going to manage the root balls very closely. I'll allow each plant to get a significant root ball before going to the next pot up. I'm hoping this will give the plant a nice healthy full set of roots. These first planters are 70ml tubes with some drain holes in the bottom. I'm going vertical on these planters to get a nice long tap root.
Here is some photos of the babies.

Good luck with the new, new babies No5.
Sounds like indoors is your only hope.

Yup. The problem with indoors here is the inside of the house can get to like 110 during the day. We can't run the AC all the time it causes our power bil to go to like $600 bucks a month. So, I'm still growing outside, but in a more secure location. I'm also walking around my house at night with night vision and a samurai sword for good measure.

Ouch that's a nightmare in several ways.
If you push ambient air through 2 metres of black tubing before it hits your grow it will be much less than 110F and fed directly to the light it would be a great cooler. The tubing could be coiled so it doesn't have to take up much space. Don't try it with a 12v fan though.

My temps are ranging between 88 and 100 (which is pretty radical for MJ, fing hot IMO). I can tell the plants are suffering because the growth is very slow. I'm still at 24/0 because I haven't got the timer yet. The plants are growing though, so I'm a happy farmer. I'm guessing when I go to 12/12 it's going to be a little easier for them due to the reduced temps at darkness. I'm running a fan and I've got the closet doors cracked for fresh air. It's an outside closet. Please understand this is a small time stealth grow in the tropics, so I have to take what I can get.

These are photos at 14 days. You can tell the growth is stunted due to the heat. I'm looking forward to going 12/12 soon to give the plants a little less heat when the lights are off.

This baby must have gotten burned slightly. You can see some dead areas on the first set of leaves (non-cotyledon). The second set of leaves are just fine. The thing I'm learning right now is the smaller the pot the more micro the habitat and the less stability is given to the roots. I'm guessing this plant hit a bad spot in the soil and got a little freaked out, consequently the leaf burn.

I'm growing in confined pots and many size increments to get maximum root ball development. The next size pots will be 16oz water bottles.

Any comments on the heat or the fact that this is about 14 days of growth? I'm pretty sure I'm stressing these babies out.

If you get some water on the leaves in those temps it will cause burning. They are a little slow but nothing to worry about, they are still growing and that's what it's all about. Hats off for even trying to grow indoor where you are!

That's good info about the water at hi temps. I sprayed them the other day with some dillute neem oil to fend off some early leaf miners and the next morning they had some burning on a few small areas. BTW I'm growing inside an outdoor closet so I don't get the 120 temps inside the house but it still ranges between 90 and 100F outside in that closet. The humidity is about 60 to 80 so I can put a fan directly on them and they dont dry out. AC fan set on low seems to have kept the temps between 88 and 94F over this last week. I also opened up the reflector a little to get more air circulation around the plants (see posts of my closet above to see the reflector). I got the leafminers because I think a fly found its way into the closet due the the light shining out the door.

I'm going to go 12/12 within the next few days (finally got the money for a timer) and I think these babies will get some cooler times with the lights off half the day.

Photos from today, 21 days from seed. I trimmed the cotyledons and I had to trim a few leaves that got munched by miners. I've got the neem routine now (once a week) so I'm not to worried about any more miners. I hate trimming leaves but the miners got to go.

I went 12/12 yesterday. I got a 20buck digital timer at homodepo. I had a little bit of confusion about the settings (ON, OFF, AUTO ON, AUTO OFF), but I figured out its the AUTO ON setting that I wanted to use. I set the timer for 12/12 MONDAY THRU SUNDAY to match the same light cycle as the day. So at night the plants sleep. I've got it this way so that there will be less stray light going into my outdoor closet DURING THE SLEEP TIME. HOPEFULLY NOW MY TEMPS WILL BE MORE REASONABLE.

Sounds like you worked out the timer ok, AUTO ON.

I nearly got shot in Dominica once for trying to score. That's about the same latitude as you. I'd be trying to grow if I was there

v12xjs said:

Sounds like you worked out the timer ok, AUTO ON.

I nearly got shot in Dominica once for trying to score. That's about the same latitude as you. I'd be trying to grow if I was there

Click to expand...

I nearly got shot once for having an argument with the guy across the street.

We've got DEA where I'm at. They do fly overs and monitor power usage. The shit you get on the streets here is chopped up leaf and full of chemicals. You are lucky if you can get a joint for as low as $40. I've heard joints selling for as much as $200 bucks to the tourists. This is the worst place in the world to try and smoke and take it easy. It's hot, the authorities are evil mofo's and the shit's expensive as spare parts for a Lamborghini.

A major grower on island got his neck sliced for his load of 400 plants. It's all fucked up. I grow a few plants and try to keep it as stealth as possible. I was pretty fucking worried when my last batch got stollen. Now I've got motion sensor flood lights outside and a motion sensor alarm in my grow closet. I keep a full tang stainless steel samurai sword next to my bed. I will cut the next mofo who comes snooping.

That's a rough neighbourhood and some sharp prices.
Sounds like a sweet sword though.

I suspect I'd try to keep things away from the house if it was such a risk.
Ever thought about getting a gps and a trials bike?
I saw an interesting grow done in the treetops using dustbins once. Nobody looks for a grow up there.
Good luck.