Snowryder closet grow, first time, suggestions?

Finally, after $500 and a month of prep, I planted the seeds last night (Feminised Short Stuff Snowryder from Attitude). I'll be posting updates of my progress. Details + pics below, any suggestions appreciated.

The closet:

Ikea closet measuring (on the inside): 1'2"x4'x1'11" (WxHxD), but the rails take up a bit of space too so the baskets are only 1'1" by 1'5". Covered with diamond mylar. top basket modded to hold lights. The plants have space to grow up to 2' high with a couple of inches of clearance from the lights.

Climate:

I'm using five 120mm 40 cfm fans (2 blowing in, 2 out, 1 moving air from the canopy upwards), and three 92mm 30 cfm fans (1 blowing in, 2 out), powered by an AC to 12V molex adapter from ebay (for like $3). I put a little wedge (the thing covered in duct tape) in the space above the inlet fans to make sure the air moves over the canopy and not just up, although i don't know if this will have any effect. I uses a pantihose to stop stuff coming in the inlet and decrease light leakage, but after testing removed it because it was turning my closet into an oven (temps = T >100F). I'm planning on getting mosquito netting instead with the hope that it will keep out any unwanted guests (bugs), i also hope it wont restrict airflow too much.

No filtration on the exhaust, i heard the strain is not too smelly, with two plants it should be ok, although odour is a factor i cannot ignore. I do have some DNA Rocklock and Sharksbreath seeds that I'll try on a later grow, any experience with the odour of these?.

Lights:

The plan is to use eight 25W CFLs @1600lumens. Six 6500k and two 2700K cfls for veg, then two 6500k and six 2700k for flowering, although for now i have removed one 2700k to keep the temps optimal. Any ideas if I should keep keep the lower light to keep temps optimal, or just add the light even if the temps can go up to mid 80's? Do the temps increase with vegitation?

I'll be growing at a 19/5 light cycle all the way, since these are autoflowering. Currently at 24/0 to keep steady temps until the seedlings brake the surface.

Temps/humidity:

Currently (7 lights and outside temp: 73.9F 51%rh) the closet is 77.7F with 55% RH. Although the RH can get to the mid 40's, but i guess that should still be ok. I wonder how growing plants will affect the temps tho, humidity will probably increase with leaves.

The wireless temp/rh probe is at ground 0 behind some mylar to shield from radiant heat.

Pots/Earth/Nutes:

Two 9L (2.4 US gal) pots, had to modify them a bit to fit the grow space.

I'm using Canna Terra Pro + soil, which I think will have enough nutes for veg, for flowering I got some BioBizz Bio-Bloom (NPK 2-6-3.5, any idea if this is good for the strain?).

I'll be growing two plants at a time, i'm guessing more plants wouldn't yield alot more smoke since I've only got 'bout 6000 lumens per plant with two plants.

One seed started making it to the surface today.

The other was still intact after 5 days in the soil, scraped the shell a bit with a sharp blade, the seed made a slight pop sound , i put it back in the soil. Checked the seed now (~9h later) and I think I saw a tap root that looked like it was a good 1/4 inch long. Will have to wait n see if my observation was correct, since I don't want to disturb the seed more than necessary.

I moved the lights a few notches closer too, about a foot from the plants. currently 6 bulbs since i removed one more due to it being a really warm week. i dont want my temps going over 85F.

Both are growing nicely, their second set of leaves is showing.

I saw a little gnat in the cab, think I got it, hopefully it didn't have time to cause any future problems.

The smaller plant still had a seed helmet on yesterday, so I took it off. Could have waited a bit longer since the cotyledons were not fully developed (look good now tho), but I'm an impatient SOB. Next time I'll plant the seeds a bit deeper and hopefully they'll loose their shells before they brake the ground, either that or get a humidome, since otherwise I'm guessing the shell can be a problem.

While watering a bit, I realised that the bottom of the stem had grown in a curve, guessing the seedling was too lazy to straighten out and just grew upwards. (its the plant that surfaced first)

Tried to fix it by supporting the curve and putting a cardboard tube around it to make it grow towards the light and straighten/stretch out, but it just bent further up the stem. So i removed the remedy.

Hopefully this bend won't affect nutrient flow, but I will probably have to support the plant with some bamboo.


In other news, the plants go over to 19/5 light cycle in less than an hour.

Last couple of days I was moving into a different room, the closet was a bit of a logistical challenge (read: nightmare)

The weather is also hot, so closet temps have been bordering 85F, hopefully it wont get hotter than that.

The leaves on one of the plants are curled in what I'm guessing is a reaction to too much N in the soil, one downside to using fortified soil from start. Watered generously, hopefully that will solve the excess in nutes.

Also, the flies I think I mentioned earlier, there were more of them. Even though I was killing the little buggers consistently. So I got some sand and covered the soil with about an inch of it. Hopefully that is the last I will see of them. Although getting the sand was a pain, local hardware and plant shops only had big bags (like 20kg), luckily the local pet store had sand sold by the kilo, so I got 6kg which I could carry without having to arrange for transport, or having to carry 20kg sand for a mile. I think the plants will like the layer of sand too, since it reflects more light back towards the leaves than the soil.

If all goes well, the next week will be less eventful, apart from the ladies growing.

....Hmm, I'm using 'hopefully' wasy too much in my posts.....

Last nine days my ladies have grown like crazy. They also seem to love the stronger breeze of the fan i repositioned to blow across the canopy instead of just moving the air up towards the exhaust. The temps have been high at the beginning of the week, reaching the high 80's, but the plants didn't seem to mind, even though I had to remove more light to keep the temps from exploding into the 90's. I also switched to the 2700k light, so they currently have 4 * 25 watts, but I did move the lights are a lot lower to compensate (less than 4" from tops), so more lumens.

Today they also received their first proper watering since the sand was added, although they did look a bit thirsty a couple of days ago so they received a little water in the bottom then too (the top two inches of soil still had moisture, the sand seems to be good at keeping the soil moist). I'll introduce them to the nutes next week, when the time for their next watering comes.

Just looking at them gives me munchies, hmmmm, time for pancakes.

Took a closer look today, the ladies have shown their first pistils. Let the budding begin.

I was starting to see a bit many of them unwelcome soil-dwelling guests again. This time they were munching and breeding at the bottom of the pots. Killed off a good dozen by hand, and added sand to the trays, then moved the pots arround so they set well in the sand. I'm guessing the sand will work as well at the bottom as the top.

On a side note, the roots seem to have developed well despite the munching gnats.

Well it looks like i might have a hermie, the pic is from the previous light period, but its the best pic i could take with my phone, they look even more ballsy now. I guess I'll just start cutting balls soon, unless I'm mistaken and see pistils within the next couple of days.

Also, seems quite clear that i have two different phenos, I can't see any other reason for one of my plants being half the height to the other. (the tall one is the one with the balls)

Apart from that the time is coming to seriously lower the humidity somehow, not good to have up to 70% rh during flowering, gonna have to visit the hardware store soon.

dang dude that sucks if those are balls, im growing for the first time also growing snowryder femenised from attitude check out my grow log, good luck man keep posting i subscribed

peace

@daisydobey:
Yeah, the balls suck, but the phenotype variation is even more irritating. I can only bend my light fixtures so much before the height of the hermie makes the bushy one receive less light. The 6500k light above the lanky bastard isn't doing anything to reduce internode spacing either. With any luck I won't have this variation in height when the time comes to plant the next two SR seeds.


Good luck with your grow too, will be interesting to see how this strain does under HPS, that extra penetration will come in hand if you get similar phenos (sans the balls).

Well, week 4 is coming to an end. I had some worries with the plants having a big difference in height, some solutions are so obvious that you don't see them until they fall on you, that was the case with those old yellow pages which i now used to raise the pot a couple of inches, problem solved.

The gnats problem has returned though, they seem to have been tunnelling through the thin layer of sand in the trays, so I added more sand.

The buds are also starting to take shape, and the plants are invading each others space, but i wonder how tall they will be, the lanky one is already at 11" with about 6 weeks left, this strain is meant to be ~12-14", guess the spec might be wrong in this case.

Well, not too much happening. Less than 5 weeks left. Had to tie down the tall plant, after running out of yellow pages, that worked nicely. SEven the bushy pheno is over the 15" mark set by shortstuff, i advise people not to count on snowryder to stay short by it self, maybe growing under only MH would help.

Other than that, I have had an empty closet that is slightly bigger standing by a couple of weeks now, ordered 250w grolux hps kit with cooltube and a 200 cfm fan on ebay for €180 (with shipping), will be able to start on my next grow in a month or so. that way i'll grow the sharkbreath as a mother plant in the current closet for my 3rd grow (will probably get a dual spectrum bulb or MH by then, since I'll have about 20" vertically, depends on how lanky the plants will get with the grolux). area will be 30"x14" so plenty foot-candles. Was close to getting 150W, but cost would be the same for less lumens. Will have to wait for the stuff to arrive, but it will be a challenge to position the larger fan and scrubber that is needed for 250W in the relatively small closet.

dang those grew really tall

Cool man, looking good - keep it up

Buds are small, but some of the lower (and easier to photo) bud sites looked nice, so heres a couple of pics, plus one of the lot.

Also, lanky one at 20", short one at 18".

Added a bit of some random high N nutes on monday, leaves looked like they needed it, also increased watering frequency to 2 times every 5 days.

Took a small bud from the lanky one and dried it i a envelope placed on a 25W incandescent (couldn't wait, carved a pipe last night outa some plank). Dried weight didn't even register on my decigram scale, but it was enough to give me a nice mellow (haven't smoked in ages). Another week or two, then i chop the it. The short one will probably take longer, since it doesn't seem like i will get any tight buds from it (you cant see it on the photo much, but its like all tiny popcorns and air, lots of popcorn buds=bad bag appeal), I'll use it for making me some green dragon and cannabuttttter, mmmm. Also, did i mention the height measurements in the previous post are excluding the height lost by the LSTing, would be like over 2' otherwise.

Edit: the pipe = https://www.rollitup.org/medicating/354243-carve-pipe.html

been some time since the last update, not harvesting is getting harder by the day, and its gonna take some more time than anticipated, buds just keep growing. I'm seeing some amber trichomes, but no where near done. Sampled a lower bud a couple of days ago (like 0.5g dried), real nice and tasty, got me and a couple more in a nice mood.

glad i found this thread. i am germing snowryder right now. i will be growing in a pc case and may stick with daylight bulb for height purposes. kinda weird yours stretched so much. i have some advanced nutrients bushmaster though in case she gets to wild on me lol.

let me know if you need any help.

peace

I'll start with the bad news, The plant that had nice n tight buds, there was a bit of budmold on the main kola, lost a couple of Gs. The badder news is that just when i was prepping my second grow, with HPS and cooltube goodness, the people i live with decided i shouldn't grow weed, while its a bummer, and I am not in a position to convince them otherwise or grow despite their disapproval, my main concern is that I'll loose some seeds to time.

Now for the good news, first of, unless my situation changes, I'm scouting for some serious guerrilla growing for next year, cant grow indoors, then i'll grow a shit load outdoors. Will be hard at this 59 deg latitude, but theres some good strains for this.

Second good news is the harvest, i'm really satisfied with the yield, i cut the larger half of the plant with loose buds, it was 20g dried but with quite a bit of stems, another estimated 10g currently drying. Still it made excellent green dragon, i think i made a post somewhere on the forums about it while quite stoned. The other plant yielded nicely too, all the nicely manicured buds that are hanging are from it. I'll post final weight and smoke report later when the time comes.

A nice thing i might add is the now re-purposed closet, since as previously mentioned i cannot grow indoors any more, at least i have a killer dryer for weed.

Enjoy the pics...