Stressful! First Grow

Strain: Unknown bagseeds with average high.
Grow Room: A small cellar with two shelves.
Lighting: CFL's for the first month, a 150W MH and a 150W HPS from there on. 24/0 cycle until pre-flowers appear (4 weeks), 18/6 for 2 weeks and 13/11 since then.
Ventilation: Two small in and out fans, two little ventilators.
Medium: 2 gallon containers with general potting soil plus perlite.
Nutrition: General purpose vegetating (7-6-6) fertilizer (with secondary and trace elements) for vegetating, general purpose flowering (4-6-6) fertilizer + guano solution for flowering (gradually increasing low dosages, not more than once a week).

Several 65W CFLs are used for the first month with 24/0 schedule. The plants started flowering when they were 30 days old from sprout. I don't know if the strain was of an auto-flowering one. Maybe this early sexing was due to constant 24 hours of high wattage CFLs which were kept very close to the plant tops.

At this point i decided that the CFLs were no good They were more than 300W at total and produced a lot of heat. I got myself two 150W HIDs (1 MH, 1 HPS).

Currently the plants are 7 weeks old. The strain seems to be indica dominant. I'd started to keep the journal on the 2nd week of grow. I called this first grow "stressful" because as you'll notice, i've done almost everything that shouldn't be done, played around them too much. Any advice/comment is appreciated.

Here it goes...


9/21/08 - Day 14

These plants germinated in plastic cups. Some 16 of them sprouted in a single little plastic cup and lived there for two weeks under a 12W CFL. Then they were taken out of the cup and the messed up roots were separated (basically ripped apart and the better looking ones were transplanted into two-gallon containers. Here they are two weeks old, just after they were transplanted. This is their first day in the grow room.

They're under CFLs for 24/0. The temperature is too high, goes between 28-30C/82-86F. Humidity is 50-60%. In/out fans work several times a day, they don't seem to do much though.

Here they are 14 days old:




9/29/08 - Day 22

Here they're 3 weeks old and i guess they're in vegetative stage. The temperature is still a problem. Some plants show signs of nutrition deficiency (yellow fainted areas on the leaves)?

I was using a moisture meter at this time, and according to it, the soil was moist but as you can see the soil is not moist at all and the plants have wilted.



10/6/08 - Day 29

Well, they're 4 weeks old now and seem to be doing good despite of the high temperature and dehydration, they weren't watered for 17 days, god.

These pictures are taken 8 hours after watering. All of the plants were extremely droopy before the watering. They recover fast!

Some of the plants had yellow fainted patterns, some had purple stem and branches, some had yellow new growth... So i decided to add some nutrients to the water. A general purpose (7-6-6) fertilizer with secondary and trace elements is used with 1/2 dosage.

Pics would be nice, but, it sounds like you're doing well despite the stress you've placed on yourself. Playing around with your plants to dial in your grow (especially if grown from bagseed) is a great way to learn before putting a bunch of money into quality genetics. Good luck!

Namaste, mess

btw: Some have a bit of trouble with getting pics up. If you have similar troubles...this may help:

"How to Post Images on ICMag,"
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=6958

Welcome to the fine art of Growing !!! Have a good one

Thanks for all the good wishes!

By the way, Mess, you're right, i can't add pictures to the thread I read the post in your link and uploaded pictures to the gallery, then when i try to submit a thread with picture codes inserted, a warning comes up: "Your Post contains one or more URLs, please remove them before submitting your message again." Well, thanks a lot for your kind foresight though.

Anybody have an idea about this "one or more URLs" issue, so we can get this thing started.

You now have 2 post try posting pics again do not give up lots of good people here to see you through

Yes lets see some pics! And welcome to the world or growin! BTW it only gets worse, Gowing is like haveing kids. You Spend spend spend in the hopes that oneday they will turn out decent! Good luck with the grow~!

I think after 3 posts you can upload pictures into your gallery and then add them to your posts. First grow is always a learning stage. I tend to elarn something every time I have a new one but you'll get better and better with time. Just keep reading and learning all you can. Good luck here and can't wait to see some pics!!

Don't worry bout yield on the first one ,and do whatever it takes to keep temps at 75-85 all the way to the end.Good luck and keep us posted

VEGETATIVE GROWTH

VEGETATIVE GROWTH

messn'n'gommin', ManitobaGrower, maryj, Lagertester, Jansjukebox, Snagglepusa, thanks for your concern.

10/8/08 - Day 31

A rather strange thing happened when the plants a month old: these plants have pre-flowers all around. The males had grown almost mature pollen sacs! The lighting schedule was 24/0. So these plants are either of an auto-flowering strain or they flowered early due to stress?


These are some of the females:




Look at the males, well:




This one, had a flower-like structure on the top and a developing pollen sac on of the lower nodes (it looked like a pollen sac by then, at least). So i assumed this one was a hermaphrodite and took it out of the room. But, it was one of the most beautiful plants of all so i couldn't dump it. Put it on the window sill for a week. (Within that week, i changed the lights, got an MH and a HPS, both 150W and all of the plants in the grow room got burnt! But this one was saved, enjoying indirect sunlight from the northeast and the assumed pollen sac turned out to be a chubby calyx




10/8/08 - Dealing with the males...

The males enjoyed a couple of days of sunshine on the window sill before the execution.




The roots seem healthy but they're all around the two-gallon pot. Now the plants are about a month older than these in the pictures. Do you think a transplanting is necessary?




10/11/08 - Day 34

The CFLs are replaced because as their number increased they became less efficient and made a mess in the room. So i got two 150W HIDs (MH/HPS). The lights were put more than 30 cm above the plant tops. The light cycle is also switched to 18/6 (I don't know why i hadn't switched to 12/12 since the plants have already sexed and flowered...)

Well, there was the temperature problem of course. Since the incoming and outgoing air temperature was the same, the intake fan was not helping at all in terms of heat reduction. So i reversed the intake fan and finally, the two fans together were able to decrease the temperature by couple of degrees Celsius.


Here is the new setting:




10/13/08 - Day 36

It's been only two days since the HIDs came. The bulbs were kept at least 35 cm away from the plant tops and still, look at this mess:




This one (Avarel) which was the tallest (about 15 cm taller than all the others) and thus the closest to the bulbs didn't have any burns, interesting!




I put the bulbs farther away at about a meter above the plants and directed the ventilators toward the space between the light and the plants. I figured that if a glass cover was put in front of the bulbs, the amount heat directly released toward the plants could be reduced. Luckily, it was possible to easily attach a glass cover to the light fixtures. I don't know if the glass interferes with the light efficiency or quality though.

That was due to them drying out your plants look good

When i go from cups to 2 gallon bags it usually takes two weeks until they need water

hey colorfullyben the gangs looking good , they will soon burst out when they get new lights and hours reduced
keep doin what ur doin and all will be good ,there in good hands eh

grabbing my seat

Hey man your first grow is a lot healthier than mine was, keep it up! Looks like you're overcoming your problems nicely

Pre-Flowering/Flowering

Pre-Flowering/Flowering

m@rg and BackToTheLab, thanks.

10/18/08 - Day 41

Out of five females; one is almost dead, two are badly burnt, one is moderately burnt, one has no damage. The one which i labeled as hermaphrodite turned out to be a healthy female and since it was on a window sill, it wasn't affected by the fire, i brought her back to the room


I cut the burnt tops and pruned the dead leaves:




Avarel seems to be forcing the limits of the room so decided to top it. I cut about 15 cm of the top and then cut the cut part into four little clones Here are the clones just after the cut (well as of today, the clones are about 5-10 cm long with flowers on them).





10/22/08 - Day 45

At this point i realized that some plants are well into flowering without my control:



Since half of the plants are badly pruned and are not ready for flowering, the need for separate spaces for vegetating and flowering plants arose. Well, after a little research on the net, i decided to switch to constant 13/11 light cycle for the entire grow. Young plants could be placed under the MH and the older ones under the HPS. No extra timers, fans, separators, etc. needed this way.

I plan to grow seedlings somewhere else under CFLs for two weeks (18/6) and then they'll be thrown under HIDs with constant 13/11 flowering light cycle. 13 hours of photosynthesis, according to what i read, could be enough for average yield. Also, I read that Indicas could flower with relatively less dark hours. So i thought "13/11 from seed" method could save time and hassle.


10/27/08 - Day 51

It's been five days under 13/11. They've been enjoying more hours of darkness. I also put a cd player in the room which played mainly Bob Marley and Wagner throughout the week I also prepared a simple fermentation system for each shelf. Music, more carbon-dioxide and some rest seem to help, they're recovering:

FLOWERING

FLOWERING

10/31/08 - Day 55 -- Flowering, 1st Week

It's been 9 days with 13/11 cycle and these plants look not very bad i guess. Even the worst burnt plant has recovered and does good.




11/4/08 - Day 59 -- Flowering, 2nd Week

Nothing much to say, here they are:



11/7/08 - Day 62

Nice recovery those plants are showing all kinds of good.

So what do you think? Why did these plants flower while under 24/0? Why don't they smell? What's wrong with these plants?

By the way, as far as i can see, there are only hairs and leaves. Where exactly are the flowers? Well, which part of the flower contains more THC?

Colorfullyben:
First off, welcome to IC, and your new incredible hobby. I'm no expert man, but the best advice i could give you at this point is to keep doin' whatever your doin, take a deep breath, kick back, and let those ladies do there thing. I didnt even come close to as good as your doing, my first go at it. As far as smell, IMO its way to early in flower to be pickin' up any strong aroma's. If i read this correctly, there at around 11 days flower. At this point, those ladies are still making the switch from growing foilage, to flowering. The buds are where most of the thc is, but it will be a little while before you start noticing them multiplying rapidly. Like you said, right now all you'll notice is hair and leaves. The flowers form when the calyx,( the sheath that wraps around the base of the individual hairs, begin to thicken and swell), or you'll even notice them forming just from the hairs and calyx clustering together to form buds/flowers. For me it usually takes about 2-3wks before things get moving, and you notice obvious daily growth. Honestly, i dont think anythings "wrong" w/ your plants at all for your first grow. I think they will do just fine. You just gotta have a little patience, and give them due time to work there magik. Like i said i'm no expert, and far from a know it all, but i remember how frustrating things can be in the beginning and how helpful it was(and still is!) to get advice from the many talented growers around here. So if this helps at all, i'm glad to do it. If you wanna see some plants that had things wrong w/ them, just check out the beginning of my thread in indoor soil, that ought to make you feel better. LOL. Just make sure they get regular feedings, but don't overdo it(less is more) and dont under/over water and i think youll be surprised w/ the results. Hopefully the bagseed you used does well under your conditions/indoor enviro.

Oh, by the way. Playin' Bob for any living thing never hurts. I do that to and i suspect were not alone on that practice.

THCforus,

Thanks, it helped a lot.

No problem man, best of luck and i'm lookin' forward to seeing how they turn out.