First Grow - Closet - Amnesia Fast - HPS - Coco

Yooo! Currently 10 days after germination on my first grow. I've converted a closet which is roughly 3ft wide by 2ft deep and 8ft high. I have space for 3x 5gal fabric pots in there and a 250-660w dimmable ballast with wing reflector and dual spectrum HPS that apparently retains the same light spectrum at lower power.

Due to my own rookieness, only 1 out of 3 seedlings are alive but I'm determined to make up for this by growing the lone survivor well! Here it is in a yogurt cup:

Day 10


Sorry about the HPS colour. I can assure you the seedling is a nice shade of green.

As you can probably see, it did stretch... but it has stabilized now and I back-filled the pot, though its probably still a bit too lanky. I have a 12" fan blowing air into the corner of the closet which causes the seedling to wobble and hopefully strengthen.

Do you think I'm making good progress for day 10? I've got the light at 250w about 25" away due to heat issues. I just uncovered the thermometer for the picture, so that should be the real air temp (the outer room is quite warm). I have yet to get extraction set-up, just relying on passive airflow out the back of closet that I have yet to make light-tight (closet sits about 2-3cm off wall with no backboard) planning on sealing it up and installing a 4" ram outtake with carbon filter next month.

Currently feeding 0.5ml/L of Canna Coco A+B, dropping about 70ml feed on plant before 10-20% run-off. Tap water ph is 8.4 so I put a few drops of malt vinegar (is this ok?!?!) into feed to bring that down to around 6.3ph with ppm of 350.

I know this isn't ideal but I'm planning on transplanting from the small yogurt cup directly to 5gal pot. Any idea when I should do this?

I'm going away on the 28th of October, so this gives me 13 more weeks to grow, harvest, dry and cure. I've roughly planned for 5 week veg, 7 week flower and 2 weeks dry/cure, does this sound reasonable, especially in 5 gal pot? Since its sativa dominant maybe I should do less veg and more flower? I hope the 'Fast' version of this strain lives up to its name.

I'm also considering dialing my light up to a higher wattage, I just feel a lot of it is wasted at the moment with 1 small seedling, when would be the best time to do this and will it effectively increase the rate of growth during veg and flower?

Sorry for all the random questions!

Any comments, suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Small beginnings just now but I am so very proud of my lanky seedling and look forward to keeping the forum updated and contributing with lessons learned once I'm no longer a noob. Cheers

Don't all rush to answer my questions gois! huaehuhaeuh, anyway I have a little update and some better pics!

Here she is on day 11


Last night I flushed out my 5gal pot of coco with around 30L of tapwater (hardwater so there should be plenty cal/mag). I then mixed in about 20% perlite and charged up the medium by heavily saturating with 10L of feed consisting of 15ml canna A+B and around 54ml of vinegar (lol maybe i should get a better ph- solution). This feed came in at 5.9pH and 600ppm.

Today, at the start of day 12, before the lights come on. I decided to just go ahead and transplant from the yogurt cup into the 5gal and let me tell you... it looks ridiculous.

Here is the rootball, which i wouldn't really call a ball... is this decent or slow progress for day 12?


When I flipped her the right way up to plant.. as careful as I was... it seemed like half of the coco broke off and just dropped into the hole, so in a panic I quickly dropped the rest of it in and patted her down. Hopefully I've not caused any damage.

Here she is in her new home lol


Is this ridiculous or is it ridiculous? Especially given that I now want to begin flowering in only 2.5 weeks to allow for an 8 week flowering time before I go away. She better root and grow fast damnit, with no amendments, microbials, rhizotonics or anything!

Another angle


Hopefully she settles in nicely and starts growing again soon! If and when she does, I may dial the ballast up to 400w.

I leave you with this...

Day 12


Isn't she pretty?

Beautiful. You got this.

My fav coco link.
Cocoforcannabis.com

TintEastwood said:

Beautiful. You got this.

My fav coco link.
Cocoforcannabis.com

Click to expand...

Thanks mate! I hope so. I just want a good smoke for my 30th coming up in October haha, can't believe it's taken all this time for me to finally grow my own! That there is a great resource, I've learned lots from it already and I'm sure I'll be referring back to it as well

For me. Seedling stage is the most boring, yet critical.
I often need to just LITFA.
(Leave it the f alone - lol)
Patience

Coco example.

8 week bloom from amnesia? You definately sure about that mate. They're normally haze genetics which tend to take a bit longer. My last amnesia took 14 weeks of 12/12. Didn't even throw pistils for 3 weeks, just stretch like a mofo.
So far so good though. Happy n healthy

TintEastwood said:

For me. Seedling stage is the most boring, yet critical.
I often need to just LITFA.
(Leave it the f alone - lol)
Patience

Coco example.

Seven Sisters

Veg.

www.rollitup.org

Click to expand...

Ooft mate that's some operation you've got going there! Very impressive I'm going to give your diary a follow and hopefully some of your expertise rubs off on me (LITFA sounds good!!!).

EvilScotsm@n said:

8 week bloom from amnesia? You definately sure about that mate. They're normally haze genetics which tend to take a bit longer. My last amnesia took 14 weeks of 12/12. Didn't even throw pistils for 3 weeks, just stretch like a mofo.
So far so good though. Happy n healthy

Click to expand...

Great point mate. I'm definitely not sure about anything at the moment haha. It is a 'fast' version and the breeder states it can flower in 50-55 days but I realize that's probably an understatement. The 4 week veg and 8 week flower will take me up to the 10th of October, I'm firing up to oor motherland on the 28th , so can extend flowering into the drying/curing time if need be thanks for the heads-up and glad to hear you say its happy and healthy as I got nothing else to go on really with it being a first grow!

Here's a diary of someone growing it in 12 weeks that I was using as a kind of reference, looks like he only did a 6 wk flower tho, with not the best results: Amnesia Fast Growdiary

she's fkin going for it bois, no messing about!!!! what's transplant shock or stunted growth?! never heard of it

25 hours later (day 13)


Yellow tint is from the HPS. She has just began today's light cycle (18/6).

Also, I decided to have a look around and...



I found some bag-seed! The 2 viable looking seeds sank within a couple hours. My young one may be joined by some mysterious companions soon

Never seen any proof to the sinking seeds thing and I've only ever had 2 from around 150 seeds not pop so don't chuck the floater mate.
A finger nail deep, pointy side up, works every time.

She's spot on for size too btw. See, easy isn't it lol.

Always nice to see a new HPS grower here. Looks good. If you can, try and keep it @ 250w until you can get your exhaust installed. Even then, 400/600w will get pretty hot in a 6 sq.ft area.

Following along.
I don't use coco, but I do run a "tiny" bit of hps myself.

Best of luck! Intrested to see how it turns out.

EvilScotsm@n said:

Never seen any proof to the sinking seeds thing and I've only ever had 2 from around 150 seeds not pop so don't chuck the floater mate.
A finger nail deep, pointy side up, works every time.

Click to expand...

Just planted all 3 only 1 has visibly cracked so far. 148/150 g-rate?! that's legendary man. i'm 1/3 so far lmao. to be fair i stupidly chucked the amnesia seeds into glass containers with moist coco and they did germinate but I think they died of damping off. the one that survived is definitely a trooper, battling on through my silly mistakes of not having drainage.

.Smoke said:

Always nice to see a new HPS grower here. Looks good. If you can, try and keep it @ 250w until you can get your exhaust installed. Even then, 400/600w will get pretty hot in a 6 sq.ft area.

Following along.
I don't use coco, but I do run a "tiny" bit of hps myself.

Best of luck! Intrested to see how it turns out.

Click to expand...

Hey dude thanks a lot for your input glad to be here! you're right mate, temps soared today and hit 32c (89.6f) in the grow space. I'm in an extension with a flat roof and jeeeeeez, got windows and back door wide open now with fan going full throttle only just bringing it under control. Can't imagine what it would have been like if I'd cranked the light up any higher!!!!! normally sitting around 26c-28c range with light on. Cant wait to get exhaust in and wardrobe sealed! Loving the HPS otherwise, helps that we've got solar panels on the roof pulling in about 800w last i checked

Day 14

So today she was looking quite sad. It has been 3 days since I flushed and saturated the medium in preparation for the transplant, and in this time i only fed 500ml to help her settle into the new pot after the transplant. This is how she was looking this morning:



30 minutes before light-on I proceeded to feed 4 liters of water at 6.0ph and 650ppm til about 10-20% run-off with 250ppm. (1L at a time until it was soaked up), and by the time lights came on.... she was looking even more sad! D:



I was starting to worry and question my life choices up until this very moment, but within a couple hours she perked up



She's had a rough couple days as far as heat is concerned. We've had a bit of a scorcher and temps in the grow have maxed out at 33c both days, fortunately it tapered off faster today and was back down to 28c by 6pm and the forecast is looking cooler.

I'm starting to see a difference in growth in only 12 hours now Which brings me to a big update... I DECIDED TO FIM IT!

Maybe too early? Who knows? As with most information pertaining to the cultivation of cannabis, its conflicting and quite unclear. All I do know is...

I took this:


Targeted this:


And it ended up like this:


I figured if I nipped dat tip early it wouldn't be such a shock to the plant. Please let me know if I've made a terrible mistake haha, otherwise lets see what happens.

Hello !
Usually i wait for the plant to be a bit bigger for any manipulation, since they don't have that much of strength to deal with everything at this point.
Maybe you delayed a bit her growth, but nothing really bad.
Also, about feeding : even with low nutrient soil, i give them pure water until the first pot change. They don't need it before that point IMO.

Day 18

It's been 4 days since I tried to FIM. The plant has responded well IMO, continuing to fill out the pot and become more sturdy. As expected it seems to be growing more outwards, surprisingly to me it has sprouted new leaves on the lower nodes, is this to be expected at this stage even if I didn't FIM?

As for the area that I snipped... well, what do you guys think? Any idea what this is going to turn into?



It looks like 2 new deformed 5-tipped (?) leaves to me, no idea if they will become new dominant tops. FIM success or failure? If you click on pics you can get a better view then you can double click or use the magnifying glass at top right to zoom into them.

Also, I've noticed a slight discoloration in the main fan leaves, any idea what that is? Hopefully not the beginning of a problem. Looking for some veterans to chime in here pretty please as I'm just winging it haha. Cheers

Ahh yes, also...



Two of the bag-seeds have sprouted! the left is an interesting colour and the right is leggy, i left them in darkness for a bit too long but they are in the growspace now

Hey ! The main vertical stem is still there ! you have to remove it completely, in order to let the secondary stems grow properly.

What you call "leaves on the lower nodes" are the secondary stems you want to see grow.

Also, you really need to maintain a regular time of lightning, 18h on/6h off. Just buy an electric programmer to be sure it's perfectly regular.

An irregular time of light means a lot of stress for your plants, which could lead to serious issues on a middle/long term.

DurumGallico said:

Hey ! The main vertical stem is still there ! you have to remove it completely, in order to let the secondary stems grow properly.

What you call "leaves on the lower nodes" are the secondary stems you want to see grow.

Also, you really need to maintain a regular time of lightning, 18h on/6h off. Just buy an electric programmer to be sure it's perfectly regular.

An irregular time of light means a lot of stress for your plants, which could lead to serious issues on a middle/long term.

Click to expand...

Hey dude thanks for the reply! I was hoping that the stem would split off into more stems haha, it has a very peculiar growth tip right now which looks like even more deformed leaves coming in, going to give it a few more days to see what it turns into, if the results arent good I'm planning to give it another trim and just let the lower nodes take over! thanks for explanation.

What makes you think the lighting schedule is irregular? I do have it on a timer, the light kicks in at 6:00 and goes dark 24:00 every day

After doing some research, I'm starting to think the discoloration between leaf veins could be early symptoms of an iron or magnesium deficiency, I've just applied a foliar misting at lights-off with a weakened nutrient solution (canna a+b its all i got), hoping that helps. If it gets any worse I guess i'll make a thread in the Plant Problems subforum and maybe cry a little i dunno yet

Just finished day 24!

Currently going through a brutal heatwave, I've regrettably had to increase the light distance even further. I also left them unattended for 48 hours and wouldn't be surprised if the grow-space was pushing 35c these past couple days. Despite this I'm happy with the progress shes making and the two mystery seedlings are coming along nicely



6 more days until i flip to 12/12

The run-off ec has spiked from a steady 0.5-0.7 to 1.4ec+ during the last feed and its starting to look somewhat darker so I'm thinking about dialing back the nutrients a bit from 1.2ec+. I did however start foliar feeding between the last 2 feeds with a weakened solution of 0.7ec+ if I had to guess this could have contributed to less nutrient uptake from the medium

Well boys, its been 17 days since my last update. I ended up vegging the main plant for an additional week to bring its total veg time up to 5 weeks (35 days). The other two were 3 weeks old before I flipped the lot to 12/12, this is the start of the seventh day of flowering.

Day 42


I tied the middle one down right after the last update and then went on to stupidly remove too much growth from the top nodes. I had to wait an extra week for the back-end to grow out of node 3. I then fimmed the two main tops from that node 1 week before flipping and then tied them down afterwards.

HOWEVER I HAVE JUST NOTICED THAT THE PLANT ON THE LEFT IS DOING SOMETHING NEW AND IM FKIN FREAKING OUT HERE

IS THIS A MALE?



HAAAAAAAAAALP