dukeofprunes
Member
I'm less than thrilled with my first indoor grow. I have clones that are ready to go soon, so please let me know what I should do to improve on the next grow...some things I know I did wrong, but it's a learning process. Thanks to all of you good folks @ riu for getting me this far! This is not a commercial grow...it's for me and to gift to a few close relatives and friends. I love to smoke weed...and think it should be legal everywhere. I don't need it to lessen pain or for anxiety or anything except the fact that i enjoy getting high in my free time like some people enjoy a few stiff drinks. I don't even own a car and I work in a field that my weed toking could not affect anyone's safety. I dont consider myself a criminal except that to obtain my bud I have to go on the black market. Im sick of these jerky thugs that make me wait and wait and charge too much. enough of my little diatribe, thanks in advance!
Seeds:
Nirvana Northern Lights, Super Skunk and AMS 1st Girl. The Nirvana beans arrived quickly and all germed. Exactly 50% were girls. AMS seeds were from a few years ago, left over from an attempted outdoor grow that didn't get far due to security issues. Out of four, one germinated...and it is a girl
Setup:
5 x 2 closet designed for washer/dryer. The dryer duct works perfectly with an in-line fan to exhaust all the smell to the roof. Light is a 400 watt hps lumatek. walls are painted flat white, white plastic on the floor, thermometer, hydrometer, Milwaukee Instruments ph meter, small oscillating fan, smoke detector, surge protector. Plastic to reflect light on one side and black on the other inside the closet doors to ensure reflection and no light leaks. Clean and safe! I had some small fruit-flyish bugs that lived in the soil and didnt cause problems. I sprayed with a AzaMax and water solution once a week and that seemed to kill most of them. I initially had 17 plants in small pots but eventually had 8 plants in 3gallon pots in the space. I used Happy Frog Organic soil, General Organics Grow and Bloom, unsulphured mollasses.
I vegged for 50 days with 20 hours of light-4 hours dark. Longer than I wanted to veg, but I was having a hard time determining sex; so I waited. And waited. I fimmed a few of them and it worked well. My temps were @ 77 w lights on and 65 when dark with a humidity of 30-40% throughout the grow.
pH was another issue. Fortunately, the tap water here is good and comes in @ 7 ! My runoff pH was between 6.3 and 6.7. Initially, I didn't feed the plants due to the nutrient rich soil and slowly added my nutes...Even at the MOST i feed for a light feeding as per the bottle instructions. 2tsp/gall
I didnt check the pH for about a week since it was always so exact, and was alarmed to find it had shot up to 8.1 ! I freaked, added a drop of lemon juice to the water (1 gal and 2tsp of GenOrg) to lower the pH. I went to the hydro store to buy CalMg thinking i may have a deficiency and to ask how my water's pH could change so much. The lady at the counter asked if I had calibrated my pH meter! DOH! It never occured to me, I bought a calibrating solution and discovered my runoff was 5.5!!! I flushed and gave a light feeding. One week later I switched the lights, switched to the bloom nute, and as it stretched, fan leaves became mottled, then yellow, then necrotic. In retrospect, perhaps I should have kept feeding it the grow nute for the 1st ten days @ 12/12. N deficient? Nute lockout due to ph isues? I have pics attached. My feeding schedule was water w mollasses, wait 4 days, feed w GenOrganics, wait 4 days, water w mollasses and so on...
The plants flowered for 73 days. Longer than I expected, but I monitored them with a 60-100x handheld microscope and waited for mostly cloudy trichomes. Unfortunately, I flushed and stopped feeding the plants after day 49 assuming I was close to harvest. The plants were just beginning to get greener after the pH/N deficient problem and I starved them for nearly a month waiting to harvest!!!!
Out of 8 plants, I only got around 8 oz. (rough estimate) and the buds are not dense at all. really fluffy. Not like the good weed im used to buying! Lotsa crystals, stinky...the scissor hash was AWESOME so I think the bud will be potent enough...though i smoked a joint of tiny budlets that dried quickly and it was fair. I assume the taste and potency will improve with curing. The buds ae just not as solid as they should be! they are really fluffy...almost leafy. I might just make hash and butter w a good amount of it!
Here's some lessons I learned, tell me if Im wrong
Nutrient-rich soil makes it tough to gauge how much to feed the plants. I will go with a soilless mix w lime, worm castings and perlite next time. I will fim more, but veg for less time. I think my plants were getting rootbound @ 40 inches and 123 days w a 3 gall pot. I could stick my finger 2 inches down in the soil and feel a web of roots! I plan of giving my clones 3 weeks of veg and off to flower.
What else did i miss? I want to get a gram per watt...and I got around half that! Also, will a bud booster be a good idea? I also didnt have the lights close enough in the beginning of veg so the internodal spacing is far from ideal. I will keep them 18inches away and monitor it closely
thanks again! I guess it could be worse....having a hash brownie party for 4-20! woo-hoo!
peace
Seeds:
Nirvana Northern Lights, Super Skunk and AMS 1st Girl. The Nirvana beans arrived quickly and all germed. Exactly 50% were girls. AMS seeds were from a few years ago, left over from an attempted outdoor grow that didn't get far due to security issues. Out of four, one germinated...and it is a girl
Setup:
5 x 2 closet designed for washer/dryer. The dryer duct works perfectly with an in-line fan to exhaust all the smell to the roof. Light is a 400 watt hps lumatek. walls are painted flat white, white plastic on the floor, thermometer, hydrometer, Milwaukee Instruments ph meter, small oscillating fan, smoke detector, surge protector. Plastic to reflect light on one side and black on the other inside the closet doors to ensure reflection and no light leaks. Clean and safe! I had some small fruit-flyish bugs that lived in the soil and didnt cause problems. I sprayed with a AzaMax and water solution once a week and that seemed to kill most of them. I initially had 17 plants in small pots but eventually had 8 plants in 3gallon pots in the space. I used Happy Frog Organic soil, General Organics Grow and Bloom, unsulphured mollasses.
I vegged for 50 days with 20 hours of light-4 hours dark. Longer than I wanted to veg, but I was having a hard time determining sex; so I waited. And waited. I fimmed a few of them and it worked well. My temps were @ 77 w lights on and 65 when dark with a humidity of 30-40% throughout the grow.
pH was another issue. Fortunately, the tap water here is good and comes in @ 7 ! My runoff pH was between 6.3 and 6.7. Initially, I didn't feed the plants due to the nutrient rich soil and slowly added my nutes...Even at the MOST i feed for a light feeding as per the bottle instructions. 2tsp/gall
I didnt check the pH for about a week since it was always so exact, and was alarmed to find it had shot up to 8.1 ! I freaked, added a drop of lemon juice to the water (1 gal and 2tsp of GenOrg) to lower the pH. I went to the hydro store to buy CalMg thinking i may have a deficiency and to ask how my water's pH could change so much. The lady at the counter asked if I had calibrated my pH meter! DOH! It never occured to me, I bought a calibrating solution and discovered my runoff was 5.5!!! I flushed and gave a light feeding. One week later I switched the lights, switched to the bloom nute, and as it stretched, fan leaves became mottled, then yellow, then necrotic. In retrospect, perhaps I should have kept feeding it the grow nute for the 1st ten days @ 12/12. N deficient? Nute lockout due to ph isues? I have pics attached. My feeding schedule was water w mollasses, wait 4 days, feed w GenOrganics, wait 4 days, water w mollasses and so on...
The plants flowered for 73 days. Longer than I expected, but I monitored them with a 60-100x handheld microscope and waited for mostly cloudy trichomes. Unfortunately, I flushed and stopped feeding the plants after day 49 assuming I was close to harvest. The plants were just beginning to get greener after the pH/N deficient problem and I starved them for nearly a month waiting to harvest!!!!
Out of 8 plants, I only got around 8 oz. (rough estimate) and the buds are not dense at all. really fluffy. Not like the good weed im used to buying! Lotsa crystals, stinky...the scissor hash was AWESOME so I think the bud will be potent enough...though i smoked a joint of tiny budlets that dried quickly and it was fair. I assume the taste and potency will improve with curing. The buds ae just not as solid as they should be! they are really fluffy...almost leafy. I might just make hash and butter w a good amount of it!
Here's some lessons I learned, tell me if Im wrong
Nutrient-rich soil makes it tough to gauge how much to feed the plants. I will go with a soilless mix w lime, worm castings and perlite next time. I will fim more, but veg for less time. I think my plants were getting rootbound @ 40 inches and 123 days w a 3 gall pot. I could stick my finger 2 inches down in the soil and feel a web of roots! I plan of giving my clones 3 weeks of veg and off to flower.
What else did i miss? I want to get a gram per watt...and I got around half that! Also, will a bud booster be a good idea? I also didnt have the lights close enough in the beginning of veg so the internodal spacing is far from ideal. I will keep them 18inches away and monitor it closely
thanks again! I guess it could be worse....having a hash brownie party for 4-20! woo-hoo!
peace
