Trainwreck, first grow, 3x3 scrog 600w

Got my seeds from I-49 a few days ago and I'm very excited to start my first grow after 10 years of being a part of this wonderful community. I soaked my seeds in distilled water for 16 hours and then put them on a wet paper towel and left them in a warm dark room, where they will hopefully start growing a taproot within the next 2 to 7 days. I still have a lot of different items to buy to finish my tent, as you can see right now all i have is the 3-foot by 3-foot tent itself with the ventilated hood and 600 watt hps light. I'll be growing 4 hopefully, with fox farm ocean forest soil under a scrog. I have a lot of extra seeds so I'm not worried about having to restart. My best strategy for taking on projects, is to do it one day at a time to avoid over-thinking and attempting to organize everything perfectly on paper when there will always, inevitably be unanticipated snags down the road. I also have a hydroponics store within a few miles of my place, so not having absolutely everything that I need right now isn't be a big deal. Feel free to post any comments or questions, but please limit them to this grow only, as I have a lot going on and won't necessarily be able to respond daily. More to come after germination...

Just as I suspected, the paper towel method didn't work. I probably kept it too wet or something... Two of the seeds cracked, but the taproot didn't grow or extend beyond maybe 1/16 of an inch from the shell, the other three got moldy after the 5th day. Paper towels aren't found in nature and always sounded like a strange way to germinate seeds, but I wanted to follow the seed company's instructions on my first try. Ok time for try number 2 using the method that makes most sense to me... Peat pellets. This time I'm going to do 2 Trainwreck, and 2 Bruce banner.

Trainwreck is a nice balanced smoke. I love it and found it worked very well in coco.

Trainwreck is a good time tested strain you should be happy I've been lurking around here about as long as you keep us posted on your grow

Out of the dozens of different strains I've smoked over the years Trainwreck has always been my favorite. It makes everything "pop" for me. Colors are much more vivid, and all my senses operate in high definition while I don't get too stuck in my head thinking about weird shit. I chose it specifically because I only smoke when I game, and for that reason it's my favorite.

Didn't get a chance to start germination round 2 yet because after doing a trial run after full installation, my temps were at 95 inside the tent. I bought a used whynter 14,000btu dual exhaust for $300, took the front cover off and cleaned out what must have a full pound of dog hair lol. This thing blows colder air than my freezer though, all that's left is to fashion myself a piece of plywood for the window it's venting out of this weekend and I'm good to go. Rome wasn't built in a day, and while I'm not exactly on a deadline, I would like this first grow to be done in time for new Rick and Morty

Dry run with tent set up is successful, temps stabilized at 74 degrees, and that was after running at 100% capacity for 3hrs during the hottest part of the day. I didn't exactly have a budget per say but after this ac purchase and the seeds it's been about a $900 investment.

Got 2 Trainwreck seeds set up in peat pellets with plastic dome over them, sitting on top of an old powered up xbox360 that's doubling as a heat mat. Hopefully these two do better than the last 5 which all died.

One out of two peat pellets were successfully sprouted. (First pic is my ghetto-ass germination area). I'm already sick of fucking around with seeds, so this scrog is now going to be one single plant, vegged for an extra few weeks or until enough of the screen is filled up.

Seed was planted Saturday night, and already sprouted by Tuesday morning. Wednesday it showed it's first teenie tiny true leaves, and Thursday night I planted it (with the pellet) into the pre watered (3/4 gallon maybe?) Fox farm ocean forest. I bought a 600w mh and switched out the hps because I want to do this right, and hey, what's an extra $20 at this point? The baby plant is 20 inches from the cooled hood, and covered by the bottom part of the Fiji bottle I cut off to geminate it in. This is just to keep humidity up, I'll probably remove it tomorrow, and then the next day lower the light to 18" when I water again for the second time, and then gradually lower it from there each day to wherever it's supposed to be after that (12"-15"??), idk gotta look that up.

It's day 12 since sprout and there have been a few developments. On day 8 I felt the seedling was growing too slow so I dug up the peat pellet, clipped off the netting, broke away the clumps of peat from the tap root (ripping away some smaller roots in the process), and replanted it directly in the FFOF. I fully expected it to survive (it's fine), but just to hedge my bet I planted another seed this time directly in FFOF and left it on the floor of my tent with a heat mat underneath. It sprouted yesterday, but I plan to keep it in it's fiji container, and move it to it's own 5 gallon bucket when it's the same size as the first seedling. Basically it's become a bit of an experiment as to whether or not I over-potted the first plant. If the new plant doesn't catch up to the first one in the 5 gallon, over-potting isn't really a thing. If it does catch up, I will keep my seedlings in smaller containers and move then up sizes incrementally as the get bigger in the future.

Tips of the first plants leaves are light green, probably because FFOF is hot, but maybe also because I had the 600w mh at 15 inches. It's been moved away to 24 inches until seedling stage becomes veg.

Negrodamus said:

One out of two peat pellets were successfully sprouted. (First pic is my ghetto-ass germination area). I'm already sick of fucking around with seeds, so this scrog is now going to be one single plant, vegged for an extra few weeks or until enough of the screen is filled up.

Seed was planted Saturday night, and already sprouted by Tuesday morning. Wednesday it showed it's first teenie tiny true leaves, and Thursday night I planted it (with the pellet) into the pre watered (3/4 gallon maybe?) Fox farm ocean forest. I bought a 600w mh and switched out the hps because I want to do this right, and hey, what's an extra $20 at this point? The baby plant is 20 inches from the cooled hood, and covered by the bottom part of the Fiji bottle I cut off to geminate it in. This is just to keep humidity up, I'll probably remove it tomorrow, and then the next day lower the light to 18" when I water again for the second time, and then gradually lower it from there each day to wherever it's supposed to be after that (12"-15"??), idk gotta look that up.View attachment 4380176 View attachment 4380179 View attachment 4380182

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Never saw an Xbox used for this. Awesome!

Day 18 from seed for the bigger Trainwreck, and day 7 from seed for the smaller one. Bought the fox farm trio this week, along with ph up/down, and an electronic pH meter with calibration/storage solution. Will start using half recommended amount of grow big on day 30.

Looks like they've got a good start , seems slow at first but they'll wake up I've had really good luck with a 600w. hps & a 3x3 area I still run a 3x3 but use a cob led as of late & have yet to get the results my old 600 got but I'm getting close the last 2 rounds are improved here is my 3x3 tent under the led my scrog is buried under the canopy i vegged 55 ays &flipped Aug.13

Day 30 and I have given nutes at half strength and topped it. Installing the screen this weekend. I can literally hear her growing now...

horribleherk said:

Looks like they've got a good start , seems slow at first but they'll wake up I've had really good luck with a 600w. hps & a 3x3 area I still run a 3x3 but use a cob led as of late & have yet to get the results my old 600 got but I'm getting close the last 2 rounds are improved here is my 3x3 tent under the led my scrog is buried under the canopy i vegged 55 ays &flipped Aug.13View attachment 4387883

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I hope mine look like that when I flip, hoping to do so around day 50-55 as well. Why did you switch to led?

Negrodamus said:

I hope mine look like that when I flip, hoping to do so around day 50-55 as well. Why did you switch to led?

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I like many others started growing with hps & will be the first to say it worked good my reason for the switch was the operating cost I now have 2 grows for what it used to cost to run my 600 hps I don't have a lot of led experience

Screen has been built and installed! It's 8 inches above the grow medium. Excited to see how much it fills up before flipping to 12/12 in a few weeks.

Decided to defoliate and flip to 12/12 today as the plant is already preflowering anyway, and the screen is filled up an acceptable amount. Also discontinued use of grow big and started adding calmag/tiger bloom to my water along with the big bloom. Got a slight calmag deficiency . First two pics are pre trim, second two are post trim.

Day 94 from seed, day 45 from switch to 12/12. The calmag deficiency going into flower sorted itself out with a few foliar applications as well as adding 3tsp to my nute mix. I did a second round of defoliation at week 3 of flower and now I'm just picking of dead ones from the canopy about once a week. The leaves started to yellow prematurely about 2 weeks ago but it's not as bad as it could've been. In the fox farm trio of nutes, the pamphlet that comes with it is completely different than the feeding schedule on the bottle. I was using grow big twice a week with every watering as stated in the pamphlet. The back of the bottle says every other watering. So no wonder my soil ph was so fucked and I had calmag issues. At it's worst, I was putting in ph9 and getting ph5.8 as runoff. I top dressed the soil with 2 cups lime and flushed for a week starting tiger bloom, and I'm satisfied with the fix as my nute ph going in is now ph7.2 and coming out at ph 6.6, but I still used shit load of ph down throughout the ordeal. I'm not a big fan of the hole in my canopy, but it's the result of topping once and then training them away from eachother, I'd like to avoid that next grow and obviously get my nute schedule in check. I imagine the next few weeks will be smooth sailing though. Feel free to leave a guestimate of what you think will be total weight after 2 weeks drying and 2 weeks curing. Hoping for at least 4oz, fingers crossed.

Nice set up man. Looks clean. I always wondered why everyone bothers with the wet paper towel. After soaking for 16 hours throw them straight into your medium. I dont even soak seeds and put them into soil and I see them punching through soil after 4-5 days. Just wondering why people do it and what benefits there is other then a day or two tops saved in veg???? Clue me in plz

Clumpyoyster said:

Nice set up man. Looks clean. I always wondered why everyone bothers with the wet paper towel. After soaking for 16 hours throw them straight into your medium. I dont even soak seeds and put them into soil and I see them punching through soil after 4-5 days. Just wondering why people do it and what benefits there is other then a day or two tops saved in veg???? Clue me in plz

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My friend likes to drop them in water till they crack, then put them in the paper towel till the tap root shows because he wants to be 100% sure it's not a bum seed. That doesn't make sense to me personally... I've had 100% success planting the seed straight up in a small container on top of a seed mat, flooding it with water for 2 days, and then just waiting. I guess it's easier for me to provide optimal conditions for that method compared to the paper towel method.

Harvested at day 75 and couldn't be happier. 6 days no water, 3 days no light. Wet trimmed every sugar/fan leaf with a visible stem and hung to dry. I should've dried them in a paper bag because my rh was 30-40% and they were crispy on the outside in 4 days. Luckily I went 6 days no water at the end before harvest so they were already "vine ripened" so to speak. I manicured and jarred with bovedas to get the rh in the jars at the proper range. 48 hours later jars were 60-65% so I'll now be burping them daily for at least 1-2 hrs shooting for 58%rh before putting the lid back on. The buds are now the perfect consistency, but the smoke isn't as refined as I imagine it will be in 2-3 weeks. Wicked great high

Now the moment we've all been waiting for....

41oz wet with stems, trimmed, but unmanicured

12oz manicured and jarred

8.2oz after 48 hours in jars, and me smoking at least 1/2oz over the last 2 weeks because I'm impatient and have enjoyed sampling lol. Hoping to end up with 6oz total fully cured.

Bottom left in last pic made my day! Best kief I've ever had