First grow!

Hi everyone!

Before beginning the journal itself, I think it's appropriate to take a little trip to the past.

I've never smoked, grown or even seen a cannabis plant in person, but I've always been fascinated with the herb. The event that really set all of this in motion was my trip to Spain, where I stumbled upon a grow shop. Having never seen one before I thought it only sold the equipment for cannabis cultivation. Anything more and it would be illegal, right?
As I soon found out after venturing in, there were indeed real seeds for sale. This lead to me buying $70 worth of seeds. I was not in any way familiar with growing but I was determined to learn. The seeds never crossed the border. My determination, however, did.

That was last year. After much planning I ordered the seeds I had deemed the best for my circumstances on the 22nd. Attitude were having a 420 promotion at the time so I went a little crazy and bought 'a bit' more seeds than I was planning to use.

At this point I had decided on growing two plants outdoors in a carefully selected location. I'm 17 and going to be living in my parents' house in the summer. Indoors is not really an option. Even though I've had the whole growing process planned up until the curing is done I'm still often on the verge of insanity. I know even in these circumstances I shouldn't worry so much about every little detail but I can't help it. Fortunately I have a great friend helping me with the grow.

We will be growing an Afghan Kush Ryder and an Automatic Northern Lights from Sensi Seeds. I know some may not agree with me on growing autos but I feel they're the only plants quick enough for our short summer.

In a few days I'll start the actual growing process by germinating the seeds. Will post an update then.

17? Nice i am only 20 and i thought i was starting young lol goodluck and a good rule is never tell anyone you are growing you must keep it to yourself, i would advise you to use smartpots and some good soil with 30% perlite

Here is the germination update as promised!

I germinated the seeds using a kit that I purchased in Spain for 1€. My understanding is that the yellow stuff is some kind of a mix of special bacteria and/or fungi. I haven't heard of anyone using stuff like this so I had grown a little skeptical. Of course I gave it a shot despite all that.



For warmth I used an old wireless router which, according to the grow shop guy was ideal for the job. And he was right.



The Northern Lights Automatic had germinated in a whopping 21 hours! I went ahead and planted it. The AKR germed about 4 hours after the NL. I didn't feel the need to wait for the taproot to grow any longer so I planted it. The NL had a longer root at the time of planting but I believe they will both turn out just fine.





The entire grow will be happening in 11l pots filled with BioBizz LightMix. Because the temperature outside is still very low with serious fluctuations at night the plants have to be kept inside for a couple of weeks. Therefore the majority of their vegetative stage will take place indoors by the window. They will get plenty of natural light but I'm still a little worried about stretching. That's why I've obtained a big-ass oscillating fan which I think I'll start using as soon as the plants have sprouted. Hopefully it'll help minimize stretching as well as make the stems nice and strong.

As for nutrients I think I will let the plants go for at least a week without feeding them. We'll be using GHE's Flora 3-part series throughout the entire grow.

The plants have been labeled with two synonyms for pomegranate (according to Wikipedia). This is mainly because it's possible for someone to find these in my room in which case I can try to convince them to believe I'm not growing weed. It's a little pathetic, I know, but in my mind it's still a bit better than labeling them "NL" and "AKR" (shown in the picture respectively). But if all goes well it won't matter.

Time for an update!

I had really begun to get nervous after planting the seeds. Reason being that I had planted the seeds an inch deep and poured water on them once in soil. I thought I had drowned them. I even took a pair of tweezers and gently removed some soil from on top of the seeds, accidentally exposing one of the seeds. I buried the seed as gently as I could (so gently I think I left a little pocket of air down there) and promised myself I'd wait a full week until I would do anything like that again. I threw some plastic wrap on the pots and that's when shit started to happen.

Today I woke up to find that the Northern Lights had emerged, and judging by the surface of the soil I'm expecting the Afghan Kush Ryder to sprout any second now. I'm relieved as fuck.



Now I'm facing my biggest problem so far. I have to leave my plants alone for 5 days. I don't know if the soil will stay moist long enough by itself for that long once the plant has sprouted. I've heard about growers using some sort of gravel on top of the soil and I might be trying that out. I wish I had a hydroponics system...