2nd Grow: Aurora Indica, 400W HPS

Alright, so I just cut down the last of my first harvest, and didn't want to waste any time in starting a new grow. As I was trimming my last plant, I immediately threw 8 Nirvana Aurora Indica seeds into some moist paper towels to germ. All I did was fold a paper towel over twice, throw it on a plate, fold the paper towel over my seeds, and put another (identical) plate on top. It gives them a nice, moist little package.





And this is me pHing some water for the germination. Since going through some serious pH catastrophes in my first grow, I have been quick to grab my pH pen at every opportunity.



I did all of this Wednesday night [2/6/08]. This morning [2/8/08], the plate looked like this:



I now have tap roots showing on 4 of my 8 seeds. I would have let them go a little bit longer, and tried to plant them all together; but I have read some terrible things about germ rates with Nirvana seeds. So, I got things started. I am going to start these in disposable cups. I will transplant to proper pots at a later date. So, first, I filled 8 cups with a mixture of Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil and about 30% perlite by volume.





(Oh, and the cat litter has nothing to do with the grow)


I think the cups will work well, but I needed to give them a little bit of drainage for run off water. I did it like this, with a pair of wire cutters.



I clipped each cup four times, so they looked like this. If I find that it is not sufficient, I can easily cut more.



Now, with all of that taken care of, it was time for me to put the seeds in the soil. I poked a little hole in the soil of my four cups, and put in the four seeds that cracked. I used tweezers for precision, and put the seeds in with the taproot facing down.






I then gently covered them with soil while still holding on to the seed with tweezers. When the seed was covered and well situated, I gently pulled the tweezers out from the soil. Then, it was time to sweep them out to the grow room. I immediately ran upstairs to prep their first watering. Once again, I pHed my water (see, it's important!!)



I made sure to make sure to pH the water, soak my hand thoroughly in the water, and pH it again. The reason for this is that I like to water seedlings by sprinkling them with my hand, as it gives me a chance to lightly soak the soil without disturbing the seed. Many people have other methods, but I like this one. I decided to use very lightly acidic water, but will knock the pH down a couple of tenths of a point when they grow larger. I use rice wine vinegar, but will get some proper pH down soon.


After that, I gave them a good sprinkling and threw them to the wolves. They will veg under a 400W High Pressure Sodium lamp. It is air-cooled (cooltube) with a 250cfm in-line duct fan. The exhaust goes out the door and the intake is passive. I hope they sprout soon!





(The fan in the room is not yet on. I will use it later)

And that is it so far! I hope to see some sprouts by tomorrow, and have the remaining 4 seeds germ ASAP. I am still debating on many aspects of the grow, but am very excited for what's to come. Those 2 days that I didn't have any plants growing were hell! Thanks for stopping by, and check back soon. I absolutely welcome comments or any questions you may have.

S-Town

cool, yeah i hate the anticipation between grows

Good luck, I have three of these going right now myself

I will be watching here bro.

Very organized, I love this!!!

nice man i will be watching as well. i too have three aurora indicas, and 3 lowryder 2s jist started about a week ago, thread on the way. lol. good luck man, looks like itll b good.

Thanks for checking me out, guys. I decided on Aurora Indica because it seemed to be the only F1 hybrid Nirvana sells. I read a lot about how people are frustrated with Nirvana because they end up with 10 plants with 4 different phenotypes. They were cheap, and I have read great reports about them. I am hoping for the best here.

Also, last night I had 3 more seeds show taproots. I planted them in the same fashion, and all 7 are sitting under the lights. I haven't had a sprout yet; but I am anticipating a little action this evening. The 8th seed is being a little bit stubborn; but it looks like it is starting to crack. I will post picture updates when I have something cool to show.

S-Town

i'll be pulling up a chair on this one too I have them but I haven't sprouted them yet. I'm working on nevilles haze hybrid and nl#5 at the moment

i'm pulling up a chair for this one. Thinking about getting some A.I. on my next order.

So, I now have 4 sprouts! I thought I would do a little update to show off my newborns. The attached photos are of the sprouts that are worth looking at. I have three sprouts that have popped up and are showing off their glorious cotyledons. One of the original four is still being coy, and is still tucked over on its side. The pictures are of the three that have sprouted. This is about 3 1/2 days from germ.




I have only watered them once, with 6.5 pH water. I split about a quart over 8 cups. I will not give them any nutes until they have 5-pointed leaves; and I will carefully introduce them. My temperature in the room is going to probably ride a constant ~78F. Oh, and I will be using a 24/0 light schedule all the way through veg. Hopefully, my remaining four will sprout by tomorrow; and I will have a room full of beautiful plants! Thanks for coming in.

S-Town

hey man i would advise against a 24/0 veg cycle, it is usually beneficial to give some down time for the roots to grow, and i heard that 24/0 gives a higher percentage of males. just saying

raeman1990 said:

hey man i would advise against a 24/0 veg cycle, it is usually beneficial to give some down time for the roots to grow, and i heard that 24/0 gives a higher percentage of males. just saying

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This is a very controversial subject. In the past, many respected breeders and cannabis horticulturists have even completely changed their stories when it comes to this. Many now stand by 24/0. I believe I read somewhere that Jorge Cervantes was one of them.

Regardless, I need to keep the veg as short as possible (I plan on moving when I lease ends this summer, and I am afraid my landlord will start showing my apartment too soon; and flower time is not negotiable); and besides, I don't have room for 8 fully grown females. I want to get 4-5 small, bushy plants and take them all the way. My room is incredibly small.

Thank you for the advice anyway, but I think I will stay with 24/0. There is a slim chance that I might cut it back to 12/12 in increments, but I haven't decided yet. I want to wait until the plants get big enough to start talking to me.

S-Town

sleepytown said:

This is a very controversial subject. In the past, many respected breeders and cannabis horticulturists have even completely changed their stories when it comes to this. Many now stand by 24/0. I believe I read somewhere that Jorge Cervantes was one of them.

Regardless, I need to keep the veg as short as possible (I plan on moving when I lease ends this summer, and I am afraid my landlord will start showing my apartment too soon; and flower time is not negotiable); and besides, I don't have room for 8 fully grown females. I want to get 4-5 small, bushy plants and take them all the way. My room is incredibly small.

Thank you for the advice anyway, but I think I will stay with 24/0. There is a slim chance that I might cut it back to 12/12 in increments, but I haven't decided yet. I want to wait until the plants get big enough to start talking to me.

S-Town

Click to expand...

24 hours a day uses more electricity and negligible gains.... Plus, how many places in the world where marijuana grows do they get 24 hours of daylight?

I don't know about you, but outdoors plants get darkness, so I'll stick to mother natures plan.

Alright, I haven't updated in a while, so I am going to give you three days of seedlings back to back! I know this seedling stuff is boring, but I want to document this grow as well as possible. I am a new grower; so I would like to have a detailed record of my mistakes as well as my successes. So, here we go.

These pictures were taken about 12 hours after the last set, on the morning (2 am) of Monday, Feb 11th. At this point, I have 8 sprouts, reflecting a 100% germ rate. Please pardon the quality of the photos. I am still figuring out how to make the camera focus on seedlings. Also, this is all under HPS light.

Here are the ones in the back; they sit atop a green plate. They are about one day older than the other sprouts, having been my first to germ.



Now, here are the ones in the front, who sit atop a tan plate. They are freshly sprouted.



One of the ones in the front is just barely above soil. I took a close-up pic of it because you can't really make it out in the other pic. Besides, under HPS light, the little seedlings blend in with the perlite.



And also, I took the liberty of taking a picture of one in the back. This is the only problem I have encountered so far. It has a small dot of discoloration on one of its cotyledons. I have heard many people say that Fox Farm Ocean Forest is too hot a soil for seedlings; so I am assuming that this is the problem. I have been keeping a close eye on it.

My temp is staying between 78-82 at this time. I water them with pH 6.5 water every time they need it; which is a little bit less than once a day. My soil mix is heavy in perlite; so they seem to dry up quickly.

Another update coming right up.

S-Town

P.S. (EDIT) I forgot to embed the picture of the discoloration on the one cotyledon, so it is at the bottom.

I went and took a few more photos the about 18 hours later. This was last night, 2/12/2008. The sprouts are still rocking it. They are looking pretty nice, but I can't wait for them to start really growing. They are on day 2/3 from sprout.

The front 4:



The back 4:



My first (and biggest) sprout:



And another close-up of the sickly young lass:




Oh, the tedium of seedlings after coming fresh from a room full of buds! I am starting to get very excited, though. There was a certain point in my first grow when it hit me that my girls were going to grow up and make beautiful buds. I am not quite there yet in this grow.

S-Town

And now, we come to today. I did a little bit of maintenance today. I started the seedlings (at first planting) at a cautious 30" from the light. It gave them a little bit of room to stretch, and get started without more light than they can handle. Many people start seedlings with softer lights, such as fluorescent shop lights (t12s). Unfortunately, I only have a 400W HPS for the whole grow, so I have to make it work.

As you can see, I started the seeds in cups that were only half-full of soil. Now that they have had a bit of a stretch, I was ready to fill them up the rest of the way. I mixed together a small batch of Fox Farm Ocean Forest and perlite, and then filled the cups up to the cotyledons. The buried part of the stem will turn into roots. I did not take pictures to document this, as it was a fairly straightforward "mix and fill".

Here are the ones in the back (oldest):



Here are the ones in the front (young'ns):



Here is another close-up of my sick lady:



And here is the distance I have put the light for the time being. I may adjust as needed:



Oh, and just for fun, and because it was on my camera; here is the cannabutter I made last night/today:




So, things are going slowly and steadily. The plant with the cotyledon discoloration seems to be doing fine, so I am not terribly worried about it. Its true leaves are big enough to where I am sure it will be able to flourish with the rest of them. It is worth noting that I now have the fan on. I put it on last night to get a cool breeze in there, as well as to promote thick, healthy stalks. As always, I am watering with plain, pH 6.5 water. My light cycle is 24/0 (please don't give me anymore shit for this; it is what I have decided to do for the time being); and my temps hover around 80F. I am more than happy to answer any questions; and comments are always appreciated! Thanks for checking out my little update.

S-Town

Hows he progress. Got anymore pics?

Well, I would say I long overdue for an update. The reason for my long absence on this journal was due to the fact that I wasn't sure where this grow was going to go. First of all, a couple of days after my last update, my cat was able to squeeze herself into my intake hole. It was while I was at work; and she decided to eat 5 of my 8 plants. After that, I decided to germ a Feminized Great White Shark seed that I had from my last grow. Also, I have been helping a friend out with his Sour Diesel Aerogarden grow, and I took three beautiful cuttings from his plant. I was only able to get one of them to survive. Also, I just cut up my two biggest AIs last night and threw the cuttings in rockwool. These were the ones that had been untouched by the cat. The cat severely topped one other plant (left it a stem with two of the tiniest leaves you have ever seen) and ate enough to stun the other. Here are pics of some of two AIs that I am cloning. They are exhibiting what i think is Mg deficiency, but I cut them up anyway. I used Rootech cloning gel on these, and threw them into ph 5.5 soaked Rockwool cubes with a little bit of Superthrive. They are in a cheap plastic cloning dome with a shallow reservoir on a raised rockwool-insert tray sitting on a heating mat. I have this dome as far away from the light as is possible in my little room. I think it is still a little bit too close. The temp in the dome is consistently around 80F. Humidity stays between 80-85%. I think I can get them to root.






Here is what my GWS looks like. She is about 3 weeks old.



And here is the Diesel cutting that survived my cloning experiments. She has just sprouted her first new set of leaves as a new woman. You can see that she has taken quite a beating through the rooting process, but I think she will be very healthy from now on.



Here is one of the AIs. This one was partially eaten by my cat. She lost a lot of leaves in the process, but the top was left intact.



And this is the two-headed mutant. My cat took a big bite off of this one. All that was left was a tiny little stem and two leaves at the lowest node. The cat ate the stems and leaves of that node. This was the growth at the main stalk of the plant on the bottom node. The leaves were about the size of match heads. Something told me that she would pull through.




So, there is a little update. I will try to keep it pretty up to date. For the record, I have been watering when needed, about every other day. They have been receiving Fox Farm Big Bloom every other watering for the last couple weeks. The only thing that has touched them that is inorganic thus far is Superthrive in the clones. I am going to grow them all organically all the way through. Thanks for checking in, and I will update much more frequently.

S-Town

Oh, yeah. Also, I bought a new lamp. My old one blew a couple weeks ago, and I grabbed a new one at the hydro store. He talked me into a 400W digital ballast with SunSystem reflector. It was fucking expensive, but the SunSystem works 10X better than my cooltube (store bought, not DIY). My temps have dropped almost 10 degrees. I also recently switched to 18/6 to be gentler on my clones. Alright, that's it.

S-Town

Alright, I have decided to do a little update today. Things are coming along pretty well. The only drastic thing that I have done is transplant my cuttings. With my first set of clones (The ones I took from a friend's diesel plant) the only one that was successful was the one that I took out of rockwool prematurely and put into soil. Because of this, I decided to take all of my cuttings out and put them in jiffy pots filled with soil.



This may have been a bad idea, however, because the cuttings were starting to show roots. I actually think I would have been successful with rockwool this time. here is a little shot of roots forming at about 2 days.



I transplanted them all about 3 days ago. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pics today. I have 13 clones from two plants. I am fairly certain that the small one (of which I have 6 clones) is female. The other one is up in the air. I cloned them mostly for practice, but also because I am trying to maximize my tiny space.

Otherwise, Things are going well. i have four plants besides the clones. i started LST on two of them today.

This is my mutant AI. I tied the two tops down flat to the sides of the pot. It should start bushing out in the next couple weeks.



And this is my other AI, freshly tied down.



Here is the Great White Shark she looks pretty healthy and nice. She is definitely the lowest maintenance plant of the bunch. It shows what better genetics can do:



And here is the diesel clone. She had a rough rooting and two of her sisters died. She is definitely healthy now.



And, just for fun, I happened to pick up an 1/8th of diesel recently. This was gotten from the grower who gave my buddy the diesel seed that sprouted my clone. I may have a different phenotype, but it certainly gives me something to look forward to. This is a great smoke! A really good all-day head smoke. It smells like sour patch kids.



So there you have it. I am going to flush the salts out of all the plants tonight. I have noticed a little bit of spotting on some of them, and I think it is because of excess salts. My pH is under control (6.5 runoff when 6.5 added), and that is the only thing I can think of. Once the clones are rooted, I am going to put everything into an organic soil mix. I will try to post pics of my clones tonight. The ones that I believe to be female are looking kind of rough. Oh, and for the record, the diesel is female (I know because my friend has the mother in full bloom) and the GWS was from feminized seed. The others are iffy, but I believe that at least half of my clones are female, and I have a good feeling about the mutant twin. The others are a little stretchier, but that may just be phenotype. Oh, and by the way, I will never buy Nirvana seeds again. Thanks for watching!

S-Town

Oh, and I think I forgot one thing in my long absence before a couple days ago. All plants were transplanted into ~1/2 gal pots into Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil with 25% perlite, 1/2 tbs bloodmeal/gallon, and 1 tbs/gallon bone meal, and 1 tbs/gallon high phosphorous bat guano. My next transplant will be into a similar mix, but with a bit of high nitrogen guano instead of blood meal and an addition of lime, epsom salts, and possibly kelp meal. I am keeping these ladies au naturel.

S-Town