Mohican's 2012 Indoor Malawi Grow

Reprint of my 2012 indoor adventures with pictures fixed

Here is what I am doing:

Holy Smoke Malawi Gold Regular Seed from Attitude
Modified Lordjin Tote
Flora Nova Bloom (Scottyballs method)
RO Water
Kessil H350 Magenta LED
1 to 4 6500K CFLs as needed during veg.

Blue Labs pH pen
Blue Labs ppm pen
Fans
Timers
power outlets

Welcome and enjoy,
Mo

Feb 4, 2012 - OK - I dropped the Malawi seed in a prepared rockwool cube and placed the cube in a dark warm closet.

For six days I paced and checked the rockwool cube – nothing.

On the seventh day (Feb 10, 2012) I had a beautiful African baby!



Cheers,
Mo

I didn't have the Lordjin Tote system built yet so I built a temporary system out of a net pot and 5 gallon bucket:



It has an air-stone and a small water pump in the bucket and the water shoots across and lands in the shot glass, overflows and pours over the Hydroton. The light is a 5500 K CFL from Home Depot because they do not have 6500K bulbs (what the...). The light is mounted on an old tripod.

I have another air-stone in the tupperware with Hydroton, water, and H2O2 to clean them.

Look Ma - I'm growing medicine!

Cheers,
Mo

SO now that the baby is OK I can get to work on the Lordjin tote. If you are wondering what a Lordjin tote is you can search for Lordjin on RIU and read his Babe and Dank OG ridden journals - great stuff.

Of course I was going to do all of this on the cheep because I know a better way...

So instead of getting a big pump and using PVC and sprinklers, I built a watering system with my tiny pump and a ring of tubing with holes punched in it.

LJT Version 1 watering ring:




The two blue air-stones are from PetSmart. They keep floating!

The LJT assembled:




Notice the pie tin reflector - I polished it up with some mothers metal polish - it was very shiny!

I am growing inside this time because my Mr Goo was covered with little caterpillars:


















Do you see it?

The watering ring plus the big net pot was not getting enough water to the roots so I modified the watering system to pour the water over the top of the Hydroton:




Cheers,
Mo

Still looking OK, but the leaves were not as dark green. I needed better sprinklers, which meant I had to get a new pump, PVC pipe, and sprinklers. I did not use any glue on the pipes, they fit together tightly and I did not want any toxic glues in the water. Drilled and threaded the holes in the PVC for a perfect fit with the 360 degree micro sprinkler heads:




Installed:





I also got some good air stones and a fly strip (which is always getting stuck to something and gets gooey crap on anything it touches).
I put it all back together under two 6500K CFLs (Ace Hardware) with reflectors and the Kessil H350 and let her rip. The lights and sprinklers were all controlled with timers and I was set!

New setup:

I expected to see her go nuts with exploding growth. Instead she seemed to get more and more distressed. The pH was 8! I got some Mad Farmer pH down and started using it instead of vinegar. I also learned that CalMag raises your pH.
There was a thread in RIU where a guy was growing his seedlings in bubbling cups with just water until they were clone sized and then he put them in his tote. So I dug her out of the Hydroton trying not to break any roots (a couple did break that were stuck to the Hydroton) and I removed most of the rockwool and set here in a coil of wire suspended in a bubbling cup to try and revive her. I also turned off the LED.

Bubbling cup:




This seemed like it would work better until I had some nice roots. I also needed to get a new smaller net pot for the tote that would allow more water to reach the roots from below.

Cheers,
Mo

The next day when I went to check on her, the cup was dry! I did not realize that that air stone I had would totally blow away all of the water so quickly.
So I needed to modify the cup setup. No problem, I’ll just gently set the rockwool and baby in the res water, fill the cup, take the baby out of the res water – Oh, look, her stem snapped right off at the base of the rockwool – FUCK!!!!!
So now I am screwed. I angrily ripped open the rockwool and stuck the stem in between the two halves and squeezed it back together. I stuck the murdered baby in a shot glass of res water and stuck her on a window sill to die.





Oh well. I prepared another cube of rockwool, dropped in a Holy Smokes Mulanje seed, stuck it in my new smaller net pot and waited.




Maybe this will be better

love it bro.

So I am waiting patiently for the Holy Smoke Mulanje Sativa seed to pop and something cool is happening.

The thing is, the dead baby started growing again and so I moved it to a bigger cup and added a small aquarium bubbler. It is just a little silicone tube with a line of bubbles coming out - I added a brass nozzle to the end of the tube to weigh it down and keep it at the bottom of the cup. And guess what –- the baby kept growing!

After a week I opened the rockwool cube in the tote and the Mulanje seed had not popped. So I took the dud seed out of the tote and replaced it with the resuscitated Malawi baby (Thursday March 1, 2012). I put the Mulanje seed in a paper towel and it never popped.

I changed out the 360 degree sprinkler heads in the tote with 90 degree heads and I pointed them at the net pot. Then I moved the Malawi baby back to the tote under the 5500K CFL.

After 10 days in the tote the Malawi baby started to show some nice growth:




And look at the roots she was spreading across the Hydroton:







She was happy in the dialed-in tote!

Got a timer for the sprinklers, changed the CFL to a 6500K I found at Ace Hardware, and got some good nutes.

She seems much happier. Maybe the LED is just too strong for seedlings?

Day 33:







Cheers,
Mo

She seems to be on "automatic" now and all I need to do is check the nutes and the pH (which keeps going up). The hydroton seems to be keeping wet and I can see a root coming out of the bottom of the net pot!

Day 37 top view:

pH today is back up to 6.2 so I added a few drops of pH down. I added another 110W 6500 K CFL (making two) and I am trying the H350 Magenta Kessil LED. Calibrated the Blue Lab pH pen because I was getting weird readings. Now it is working correctly!

DAY 38 TOP:




And here is my first try at dry ice hash:




I used a 220 micron bag so I got more green in it than I wanted but it sure tastes like good ole hash from back in the day

Cheers,
Mo

Everything is going nicely. I turned the net pot so the bigger leaves would be under the CFLs. You can see the magenta LED color.

Day 40 TOP:

She (I hope) is growing much faster now. I do not know if it is the two CFLs or the LED or the nutes but I like it!

Day 41 Top:




Day 41 Side:




I am starting to wonder if this is really a Sativa - this is how I expected the leaves to look:




I have asked some of the gurus and they say the young leaves always look different than the mature leaves. Although I did grow some Hawaiian Sativa back in the day and it had skinny leaves right from the start!

Cheers,
Mo

Still growing fine!


Day 42 Top:




Day 42 Side:




Cheers,
Mo

So I ignored her for one day because I thought everything was running so smoothly I could just let her run and check on her less - wrong!

Day44 wilt:




Here are all of the bad things that could have caused it:

Res temps were high
My air pump was very hot so I put a fan blowing directly on the air pump. Now it runs cool and I do not have any high temp issues in my res.

pH was high
The pH can just go way up all of a sudden. One of the threads on here talked about taking the pH to 5.5 and letting it rise up to 6.2 and then lowering it again (usually takes about a week). That way your plant can access the different nutes available at different pH levels.

Clogged sprinkler head
One of my sprinklers had some pvc shavings stuck inside from the assembly. I cleaned it out and it works great now.

She perked back up:

Day 44 top:




Cheers,
Mo