thelittletruck's first grow - 3 WW IN SOIL w/ CFLS

hi littletruck, your babies are looking good, just give the wounded one abit of time it might still pull through ( i hope ). im growing widow too and mine are on day 14 and 23. my biggest one has had a rough time of it when it was only a few days old but its pulled through and is fine now. good luck with your grow.

hustla

Aight, DAY 11 of VEG.

Today, I gave each 2 cups of water. Watering was done evenly over the surface of the soil.

NOTE: My bucket of water started growing shit in it since the last watering, and I ran out of pH test capsules. So I did the best I could to approx the pH. I have been using rice vinegar from my cupboard to pH my water (1 capful / gallon = approx pH 6)

Question: My biggest plant is doing great. Is it a problem that it is leaning? I'm going to try positioning the lights so as to eventually get it to stand straight.

The re-potted plant looks the same in terms of growth. But, it is now a lighter green than it was before! Good news? I'm hopeful .

Plants look great.

Plant 1: 4.5 inches wide. 2.5 inches tall.
Plant 2: 3 inches wide. 1.5 inches tall.
Plant 3: 2.5 inches wide. 1 inch tall

Pics are plants 1,2,3 respectively. And a group photo at the end.

Growing is damn fun.

damn dude, those are lookin sick. Hope my plants look that good one day.

looking pretty good, try to get those cfls even closer or add more light, it will help foliar growth size a lot and the foliar growth speed will increase even more since your doing 24/0

Baby your wounded and be rewarded. I had a seedling laying completely flat with a thin exposed spot at the base of the stem and I thought it was a gonner for sure, I decided to prop it up anyways and now it's doing better than most of my others. Good luck Ill stop back by.

DAY 12 of VEG

So today I checked my plants and they were all curling a bit. I look around on the forums and apparently this is from HEAT STRESS. SHIT. Overnight the temps increase because I have to close the closet. I'm in the process of figuring out how to decrease temps. Any suggestions would be appreciated. I would love to add more lights, but I first need to figure a way to decrease the heat load. I misted the plants after I took pics.

Also, my biggest plant seems droopy even though it was watered yesterday. ??? Could this STILL be overwatering?

Plants are taking off. Re-potted one looks like it might be finishing its recovery, but I'm not sure.

Plant 1 is giving off a very very faint smell. Somewhere in between citrus and skunk. I only noticed because I took the pots out of the closet and examined each plant and yes... smelled them. HAHA.

Anyway, I'll report back when I've figured out what to do w/ the heat and lights.

PEACE.

yup, plant #1 is showing early signs of heat stress, u may want to move the CFL back about an inch or 2.

add a fan to blow air across the light bulbs, and have a fan to suck air out of ur grow room.

with the widow, u may want to invest in a carbon scrubber

CFLs work better when they work as one big light source, as opposed to a bunch of smaller light sources scattered the way u have them. if u can, build a reflector for all of the bulbs and then add what U need for lower penetration later.

aluminum foil is a no-no. just use the walls u have if u cant find anything else. light reflects off of white quite well.

Here are some pics of my current light setup.
And, I took out the foil after the i took the pics.

So you would suggest having more CFLs higher up w/ a large reflector for the entire hood?

BTW i made my own carbon scrubber . We'll see how it works when the time comes.

THX for info m8.

OK, so today is DAY 13 of VEG.

No water today. Just misting the leaves.
The plants seem kind of droopy (see pics). Any idea what this could be? I don't think they're overwatered and I don't think they're underwatered (according to moisture meter). Could this have anything to do with heat? Today when i checked the closet temp in the morning it was around 84 F. So.... i don't know. I'm going to refrigerate a big jug of water and then stick that in my closet at night to hopefully lower temps a bit.

During the day, I have an oscillating fan running over the tops of the plants (making sure each wiggles a bit as the fan blows over it) and a vortex fan circulating air in the closet.

I believe they're looking good. Except for plant 2, the re-potted sprout. It still hasn't really shown any new growth. My thoughts are taking a turn for the worse w/ this one. But i guess that's just what happens sometimes.

I need to get a new pH testing kit because my old one was scrap and i ran out of the goddamn capsules. They say 40 tests but they really mean 10 ph tests, 10 nitrogen tests, 10 potassium, and 10 phosphorous. The bastards.

Comments appreciated! I'm really at a loss for determining their happiness.

Also, I was planning on setting to 12/12 fairly soon (within a week). I assume this will take care of my nighttime heat problem. And i don't want them to get very big since i'm using CFLs.

Pics:
Plants 1,1,2,3,1 (under lights).

Today they are 2 weeks old.

So this morning I did a lot of work on the closet.

First, I took out plant 2 and put it aside under its own 23 watt daylight bulb. It will not be ready for flowering so I might as well separate it now to make things easier with the other two.

So now I have plants 1 and 3 under the hood. I reconfigured the bulb setup w/ two 40 watt on top and four 23 watt (2 daylight 2 full spectrum) bulbs on the sides. (SEE PIC).

While I was doing all this, I noticed a bug on the wall and took a pic. Is this a spider mite? Later I also noticed an ant crawling along the perimeter of one of the pots. This is the first time I have noticed bugs in this apartment so hopefully its just a random occurence.

Also, yesterday while my plant 1 was droopy, I had the sudden urge to water it and I did (2 cups). And it perked up! It was nice and happy all yesterday, but this morning it looks the same as it did before. Kind of twisting and curling and droopy. Could this be caused by heat stress at night? Or could the droopiness be related to a bad root system?

I raised the bulbs somewhat so that there is adequate air flow over between the tops of the plants and the bulbs. Hopefully this will help temps. It's getting hot outside now so keeping it cool inside is getting difficult. For example, right now I believe the closet is running at 78 F.

I plan on switching to 12/12 in a few days.

Comments, opinions, criticism, please .

Peace.

PICS:
Plants 1,1,1,2,3,3
Spider Mite?
New Configuration

i see those spider things all the damn time, i don't think they're spider mites...just those jumping spiders, ive seen them in the bathroom mostly

Haha yeah, i just looked em up on wikipedia. It's not a spider mite. Spider mites are tiny - around 1mm.

THey DO JUMP. I caught it after i took the picture, and it jumped everywhere inside the cup i had it in. Then when i was done, it somehow had escaped... lol. Sneaky bastards.

Today is day 15 of VEG.

Still 24/0
No Watering.

Plants look good! Plants 1 and 3 seem in good health and look beautiful as ever. Even plant 2 seems to be starting to grow again. Imagine that.

Today the temps were at 80F when I woke up which is my best so far. I've been sticking cold shit from the fridge like beer bottles / big jugs of pasta sauce in my closet when i go to sleep, and leaving the window open at night until i go to sleep to let in as much cold air as i can.

Notice on plant 2, the strange leaf pattern. Guess something went wrong w/ the programming somewhere, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

Gotta run, school. PEACE

Pics:
Plants 1,1,3,3,setup for plants 1 and 3
Plant 2, 2 w/ strange leaves on top, setup for plant 2

Today is day 16.

I am planning on switching to 12/12 tommorrow. Which means I will have to completely block the light coming from plant 2. Somehow I'll do it.

Still no water today. Plant 3 is doing great and hasn't been watered in 5 days. I am also waiting to dry out Plant 1. Man, I watered that one way too much. But I think i'm getting the hang of it.

Anyway, growth is good. Temps max at about 80 at night and float around 75 during the day. I keep an oscillating fan on them during the day, and their stems are buffing up.

They are now faintly scenting the room. I can't notice it after sleeping in it all night, but it's noticeable when you come in the room from outside. Smells nice, but I'm going to have to start runnin my carbon scrubber pretty soon.

Look at the pics for plant 2. That shit is weird. Haha.

PICS:
Plants 1,1,3,3,2,2

Today is Day 17. It is the day the plants will be introduced to 12/12 light. Finally I will be able to go to sleep in darkness!

Plant 3 was watered 2 servings of 2 cups of water evenly over the surface. Its leaves were drying out and becoming brittle. The leaves on the other plants are still soft and velvety.

I learned today that plant 3 also has a fucked up stem -> just like plant 2 that I re-potted a week ago, except that it has grown thick enough to hold the bend anyway. I hope this doesn't become a problem in the future.

My current light setup over plants 1 and 3 is: 4 40 watt 3000k CFLs and 4 23 watt 6000k CFLs.

I placed a bowl w/ water in it near the plants to increase humidity. I have no idea what the humidity is in the closet and I have no idea how much having this bowl of water will change it. I doubt anything significant will happen, but it seems like it could be a good idea.

Other than that, that jumping spider i photographed a few days earlier has made its home in my plants. It comes out frequently and jumps around for my entertainment. We're pretty much pals by now. I saw him jumping across my pots trailing thread behind him. I just hope he doesn't make a web somewhere in my damn closet.

My camera ran out of batteries halfway through my photo shoot so, only a few pics.

Pics: plants 1,3, group photo (1 on right, 3 on left)

FUCK. I got back from school today and it was hot and humid as fuck in my room, and plant 1 was really really droopy. Leaves were touching the ground and the entire plant just looked so beat.

The other plants looked alright, so the problem has to be with plant 1. I watered it 4 cups of water. I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do, but I have a feeling it might be root bound. If this water does not set it straight, I am going to dig it up and re-pot it. If anyone has advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Sorry I do not have pics. It looked fine this morning, but now the leaves cannot even support their own weight and they just droop down.

Day 1 of Flower

So today, plant 1 is back at its usual place. Droopy, but not ridiculously droopy. I am baffled... But whatev, I'll figure it out in the end.

Added more lights and the days are getting hotter, so it's harder to keep it below 80. It now often hovers at 80 F.

So, just to recap, yesterday I watered both plants 1 and 3, 4 cups of water.

My roommate fell asleep before I got into my room last night so I didn't wanna open the closet and wake him, so i will turn off the lights for the first time tonight.

I am going to dry these fools out now. For real.

Again, check out plant 2. Weird.

Oh, notice on plant 1, there are some cuts in the leaves. Do you believe it's that little spider guy? I have no clue, but I don't really mind long as it's not bad.

PICS:
Plants 1,1,3,(both plants 1 and 3),2,2

I'm pretty sure at this point that my problem is with ambient temps rather than watering.
Today, they became pretty droopy again . And my temps rose to around 85 steady.

Unfortunately, they are in the room that receives direct sunlight. So, even though the window is closed, it heats up.

Does anyone have any ideas on keepin an entire room cooler?

DAY 1 of Flower

Today, i greeted my babies with light after their first 12 hours of darkness.
No water today.

I am almost positive at this point that all my droop-related issues have been due solely to high ambient temps in my closet.

They look beautiful. SExy. YES. And happy.

PICS:
plants 1,2,3, group of 1 and 3

Peace

DAY 2 of Flower

No Water.
Put some ice and a jug of cold water in the closet to keep cool.

Plant 1 is still droopy. I'm going to make sure they're nice and dry before I water them again though -> hopefully fixing any temporary watering issues.

I stuck plant 2 in w/ the others. I'm going to flower it even though it's little.

PICS:
Plants 1,1,2,2,3,3,all plants