So much for starting small... InducedSerenity's ongoing 2kw First Grow!

Hello all! I'm already a couple of months into my first grow and thought I'd share my progress and open myself up to suggestions and criticism. Caution: contents are longwinded and may be subject to change

Legal medical grow in full compliance with CA Prop 215.


The Setup

Both boxes are constructed with full screwed/tacked/caulked wooden frame and panda-wrapped plywood panels. Fully lightproof and filters on 4” pvc intakes, DIY carbon filters in each.

Veg Box: ~3x3x5 with a 2’, 8-bulb T5 (will likely add another 2’, 4-6 bulb T5 soon - my 4' 8-bulb doesn't fit in here.) S&P TD150 handles exhaust duties, and 2 4" S-shaped PVC intakes with filters supply that air.



Flower Box: 9’ x 4.5’ x 7’ tall, split virtually into two 4.5 x 4.5 grow areas.
2x 1000w Hortilux Eye bulb powered by Hydrofarm magnetic ballast, in air-cooled Sun System 2 hoods, and 2 oscillating air king wal-mount fans.

Currently only using one side of the flower box, waiting for vegging clones.


My ventilation system is a little interesting.. in the attic are 2 10” fans each connected to two DIY fan mufflers, which are AWESOME. You can hear my little $12 8lpm air pumps more than you can hear my 10” Elicents thanks to these things. The ducting is connected to a Y which goes elsewhere in the house.

Currently in flower, Day 24:

4x Hogsbreath (3 normal and one ridiculously small, stunted runt which is basically a lollypop). They are in an 18-gal DIY DWC, with RO water and FloraNova Bloom at approx 2.4 EC. Veg was FloraNova Grow at 1.8 EC.

Veg time was a full two months, as I was finishing up my room and kind of scared to flip . I defoliated through veg, which definitely slowed the growth but the internode length and branchiness of these plants are impressive. I had some PM issues which were resolved with Eagle 20, and sprayed with Floramite during veg as a preventative.




Defoliation:

Day 20, before shot:


That bucket was completely filled..


A few hours and a sore back later:




upskirt shot:




Currently in Veg – Switching to Coco

4 Pure Power Plant in Canna Coco – Currently in coco airpots, but will be moved to 2-3 gal Smart Pots. Feeding - currently handwatered daily or every 36 hours, with very slightly diluted 6/9 Flora Micro / Flora bloom, occasionally adding a ml or two of calmag.

I had some issues with brown algae each of the 3 times I mixed up my DWC reservoirs, and was careful to only use UV-sterilized RO water with my FloraNova series nutes, and decent lightproofing.. I used EWC tea to some success but am tired of battling this problem – I probably could have just switched to pure chem nutes but I’d like to avoid the daily pH / EC adjustments and addbacks necessary for this system. So much for the gallon of FNG and FNB… Might use them in coco but we’ll see.

Enter coco coir and Tropf Blumat Auto Watering. I am really excited about this system and the ability to leave my house for more than 24 hours! I'm not a big fan of all of the time I spend checking and doing daily addbacks in my DWC system right now.

The Babies:















I haven’t received my Blumat kit yet but plan on putting the pots into a 3x3 tray when I flower, plumbed to a 20-gal res and a 20-gal capacity runoff bin, just in case something fails.

Upcoming Changes

I’ve limited myself to 12 plants so far, but have just realized that the county I’m in allows for 24 plants per patient, and there are currently two of us. I’m not planning on getting near that limit, but I’m thinking of growing out the 4 PPP clones in 2-3 gal Smart Pots, and then vegging 6-9 new clones in coco.

Seeking Advice:

I’m looking for input on the best method to use with 6-9 plants in coco vegging in a ~3x3 area and flowering in a ~4x5 area. Currently thinking of vegging them with a bit of defoliation but no scrog screen (space issues) then tossing them under a screen in the flowering room. What do you guys think? I have a month of veg time available as I'm trying to maximize efficiency here.

Thanks to any of you who have read all the way down to this I've kept a detailed journal on paper and would be happy to provide nute or pH /PPM details if anyone is curious.

I absolutely welcome any questions or suggestions! Please feel free to ask anything as I've left a lot out in an attempt to make this readable.

Cheers,
iS

nice report chair pulled up

Day 27 Flower, Day 18 Veg

Day 27 Flower, Day 18 Veg

hey firefox, thanks for dropping by!

Normal update -

3.5 girls in 18-gallon DWC are drinking about 2-3 gallons a day at this point. As it's been extremely hot, I made a ton of ice out of RO water, and have been icing my nute addbacks to chill the water temp - it dropped from 79 to 72 tonight, and I will keep that going.

They must be getting pretty warm because my EC keeps rising, it was at 2.5 and pH dropped to 5.59 - added back 2.5 gals RO with 10 total mL Calmag+ "just in case." pH 5.71 when done.






Veg:
They exploded this weekend! I was away from my house for two days and the pots were very light when I came back yesterday, and they grew 3 inches in as many days. They sucked up almost 3/4 gal of 6/9 ratio FM/FB.

Watered today with Bayer Complete insect control at 10ml/gal as a preventative measure. Will be spraying with Eagle 20 and floramite SC in a couple of days, and getting some mosquito dunks to sprinkle on top of the coco.




Let me know if the images are too big.. and thanks for looking in!

really nice plants. im running the same medium, and i love canna nutrients. and im diggin the screen of green.

Day 20 veg, Day 29 Flower

Day 20 veg, Day 29 Flower

Good thing I iced my res yesterday - the temp swung from 68F to 79F from 10pm yesterday to 9pm tonight - I think I'll start adding iced RO in the morning too. Outside temps have been 90+, room temps 77-80 "night"-day. Crazy how fast the res reaches ambient temp, or maybe my method of measuring is too lazy.

Added plain RO, pH at 5.68, lowered EC to 2.1.






Check out the growth on this same flower from the picture above in just 2 days:



Day 20 Veg
Most of the Hogsbreath clones (from day 2x flower) are still living, I think 10/12. One is showing tiny roots. Not sure what I'm going to do with these, if anything.

Realization:
Realized it's about day 29 flower and one side of my flower box is still empty! If I don't fill it now, my once-a-month harvest plans are dead. I think I might be filling this side with some surprise appearances on Friday .

I will continue to veg the beautiful PPP girls, and hopefully I can increase their number to 9 from the current 4. Planning on flipping them whenever the Hogsbreath finish, in about a month.

I defoliated the front right one on top, and the front left one had all 5-bladed fans removed. Let's see what happens! These were the two tallest teens:



AFTER:







Question for scroggers:

How much under screen growth should I remove? If some buds can just barely break the screen's surface right now, I'm keeping them. But what about the lower buds that may or may not reach the screen? I feel bad at the prospect of cutting off a great many potential little buds.

Keep in mind these plants are used to defoliation and I may do it again on day 45 or so.





Thanks! They're all getting beautiful and I'm really starting to feel more experienced and confident in my abilities

iS

InducedSerenity said:

Question for scroggers:

How much under screen growth should I remove? If some buds can just barely break the screen's surface right now, I'm keeping them. But what about the lower buds that may or may not reach the screen? I feel bad at the prospect of cutting off a great many potential little buds.

Keep in mind these plants are used to defoliation and I may do it again on day 45 or so.
iS

Click to expand...

Would love input on this.. I get the feeling they'll be just fine, but am wondering if I'll necessarily get that much more production up top if I get aggressive with the popcorn below the screen?

welcome my surprise special guests!

welcome my surprise special guests!

Hello all

I am behind schedule on filling the other side of my flower box, so several days ago I picked up 6 OG Master Kush teens. I really should learn my lesson and veg my own plants, and not buy teens from this guy because his growing skills are crap. I sprayed them with Bayer Advanced / Floramite SC / Eagle 20 the day I got them as I saw a bit of PM and some thrip damage.. don't buy plants at 530 AM when you cant inspect things.

Only 2 of them look decent, the others are kind of retarded, but that's my fault for accepting them. We'll throw them in with the PPP girls and see what happens!

I gently rinsed the nearly all of the soil from the roots in a bucket of pH'd water with half strength nutes and a bit of hygrozyme and a few drops of Hormex. They went into fresh Canna coco in 2 gal Geo-Pots, with some mycorrhizae and ZHO inoculants. I started slowly and twirled the roots around in a circle in the pot, covering them with coco as I went so that they were not piled up.

Watered with a bunch of runoff with 2/3 strength 6/9 FM/FG with 2ml/gal Calmag, 10ml/gal Bayer Complete, and 5 drops/gal hormex. They experienced absolutely no transplant shock! Maybe because they were miserable in bad, poorly watered soil with a few gnats, and I put them into a little pot of heaven.

They sat on my kitchen floor for several days next to a vertical 8xT5 while I built my tray. Here's a shot of my DIY tray w/ 6 OGMK and 4 PPP, with 2 hogsbreath and 2 PPP babies in the back:



Just the (sad) OGMKs and babies. Just LST'd 3 of the particularly sad-looking ones, and bent one a little too far. They will be under the T5s for a couple more days and then thrown under the 1k, probably 6 and 3, keeping 1 PPP mother:



Flower pics from 2 days ago (day 34):






I had them at 2.2 EC and they didn't really like it, spiking the EC up to 2.8. I've since dropped it down to 1.7 (850 ppm @ .5) which is quite low but I won't argue with them. I add about 2 gallons of RO water and ice daily. Res is kept with refrigerated RO + RO ice addbacks between 66-74 daily, with box temps at around 75-82. EWC tea is also used, at about 2qt every 2-3 days. Can't wait to go all coco with Blumat drippers!

Off to bed at last.. feel free to chime in with any questions or comments!



iS

absolutey fantastic grow mate.. I love that you took the bull by the horns and took the initiative to get stuck right in...the only way to learn is to try.

a lot of old timers round these parts always tell new growers to "start with bag seed in soil until you know what you're doing" and "keep it simple, stupid"... yeah thanks old timers, but some of us aren't stupid and don't need to concern ourselves with your inability to absorb new data


hehee in fact everytime I see one of those posts I'm now going to direct them here

Nice set-up. One word of advice on the brown slim, it is probably caused by the ewc tea. I've use FNB with no problems at all even in high temps but never with organic supplements. Look at my grow journal my roots even at mid 70's they are healthy and white/tan. I'm currrently switched to the GH 2 part lucas. Also in another thread they talk about the root tips producing their own "slim" that is natural/health part of root growth. My plants would develop the same slim after transplant but then it goes away after a couple of days.
Try just running FNB and only use NON-organic supplements. I know other people use organics in their dwc and have greats results.

hell actually it looks like your all good keep up the good work.

JamieShoes said:

absolutey fantastic grow mate.. I love that you took the bull by the horns and took the initiative to get stuck right in...the only way to learn is to try.

a lot of old timers round these parts always tell new growers to "start with bag seed in soil until you know what you're doing" and "keep it simple, stupid"... yeah thanks old timers, but some of us aren't stupid and don't need to concern ourselves with your inability to absorb new data


hehee in fact everytime I see one of those posts I'm now going to direct them here

Click to expand...

Thanks Jamie, your words are beyond kind! I don't like to mess around with half-assing things just because I haven't done them before. To be fair, I did spend a year reading and several months building before my grow, though -- but I've learned more in the past few months of "doing" than I ever did by reading.

SKUNK420 said:

Nice set-up. One word of advice on the brown slim, it is probably caused by the ewc tea. I've use FNB with no problems at all even in high temps but never with organic supplements. Look at my grow journal my roots even at mid 70's they are healthy and white/tan. I'm currrently switched to the GH 2 part lucas. Also in another thread they talk about the root tips producing their own "slim" that is natural/health part of root growth. My plants would develop the same slim after transplant but then it goes away after a couple of days.
Try just running FNB and only use NON-organic supplements. I know other people use organics in their dwc and have greats results.

hell actually it looks like your all good keep up the good work.

Click to expand...

Hi, Skunk! Thanks for coming by. To be honest, I'm a bit confused about the brown slime. It occurred each of the 3-4 times I filled a new res, and it happened within just a couple of days. It happened regardless of whether I had EWC in the mix or not, but properly produced EWC and a lot of roots in the res seem to be the best solution for it.

I can't claim that my tubs were completely lightproof, but FNG certainly made them smelly, especially if temps got a little higher. When I added too much molasses to EWC tea and it didn't all get consumed by the beneficials, the brown algae exploded in that tub.

To be honest, I switched to coco because of the wonderful simplicity of it. Until I set up my Blumats, all I have to do is mix up a batch of 6/9 FM/FB nutes and pour them into the pots, regardless of strain. Once the blumats are up and running, I only have to do that once a week with a res outside of my boxes. What could be easier? I'm tired of worrying about light leaks, algae, big pH or EC drifts, daily top-ups, or temperature management. I am truly looking forward to being able to leave my house for a day or two!

nice scrog man, specially for the first grow, impressive!
the brown slime is what made me turn from hydro, im a coco guy to , but i was experimenting with hydro and it did the same to me, but ive found that if there are none organic nutrients\additives the slime doesnt show that much, and some peroxide added to the res helps alot.
good luck

Thanks Brought! Yeah, unfortunately I bought a gallon of FNG/FNB! I'm still using the bloom to finish up my DWC, and we'll see after that. I may give it another try in an external res for coco that I can be sure is lightproof, but I'll definitely bubble it for several days before I hook up any driplines to it.

I think from here on out I'll just use chem nutes with no organic matter in my reservoirs. Kind of a pity, but I have to go with what works.

iS

What up dude. Looks pretty good so far. I probably wouldnt "defoliate" that much before flower, or at least do it in increments, a little trim today, then wait a couple days and trim more to stress the plant less. Also, even though the buds look good and are filling out, I wonder if you should have left a bit more fan leaves on. They do help the plant ya know, I agree they take up nutrients and sometimes are not needed so that's why I usually trim up the ladies a bit from the bottom but not all the way up to the top. To each his own, although two years ago or so I was doing the same thing you did by trimming every fan leaf and many people on IC swore against it. I haven't trimmed that gnarly for a long time and still get great results, you might think about trimming less thats all


Under growth, I usually give my plants two weeks in flower then any under growth that looks weak gets cut off. Small bud/hair formations that arent getting much light get cut for sure. Any way branches/weak looking branches with small buds cut off.

Was also wondering about EC, I have little knowledge on it but isn't 2.2 pretty high? I thought for flower an EC of like 1.6 was the highest you wanted to go? Your definitely not burning them though thats for sure, so I'm confused! Keep up the good work, PEACE

What's up bro? ..just followed you over here from SDF.

Nice thread thus far. I'm subbing up and will be here all the way out.

Funny how that defol thread is spreading like mad huh?

...and i agree with Cali. Things are looking rocking but 2.2 is strong nutes ESP after a defol. Nice job maxing those ladies out without going over board. Strong light i guess. them are some sluts!

Keep up the good work

caligreen, Natagonnaworrie, thanks for dropping by with kind words and advice! Hope you guys stick around!

I agree for sure about the EC. If you're a PPM guy, 2.2 = 1100 PPM at .5 conversion - I've dropped them down to 1.8 (900) and plan on going down to 1.6 or 1.7 this weekend because they're not dropping it on their own. I'm also confused at the fact that very few leaves look burnt, but I think it's because I'm adding 1.5 gal of pure RO daily - obviously I should have pumped out some solution and replaced with RO a couple of weeks ago. Live and learn.

As this is my first grow, it's obviously my first experience with defoliation.. I think I'll leave a couple more leaves next time, but I'm setting myself up for an experiment. I have 4 PPP girls in veg right now that I just defoliated in a range from 1 (all large leaves removed) to 4 (no defol) to see how they respond. I'll continue the range throughout flower. I'm kind of a "why" person so I like the experimentation even though I probably could just grow the damn things . I think I learn better this way.

I definitely should have removed more undergrowth.. even though I'm at day 37 today I think I'll remove a bit more popcorn this weekend.

Pics in next post.

iS

Day 27 PPP Veg shots

Day 27 PPP Veg shots

Ok, I defoliated PPP 1 for the second time today, and partially defoliated 2 and 3 to lesser degrees. 4 was left alone and is still beautiful . Removed some unhealthy leaves from the OGMK girls and handwatered with 6/9 + 1 calmag. Going to wait to install Blumats till I get the hose I need and put them into flower.

How soon would you guys recommend flipping these? Thinking of putting all 10 in, or 9 and keep a PPP as a mother if my clones don't root soon. They'll go into a ~4.5x4.5 side to my flower box with a 1k. Plants will go in a 3x3 tray and I'll probably put in a scrog net but not sure?

I'm thinking of flipping quite soon so I can get a monthly harvest schedule going.

Ok, here are a couple of pics:

Overview - 4 ppp, 6 ogmk, 2 hogsbreath 2 ppp babies in cups:



PPP 1 and 2 (I think I swapped 2 and 3's tags):



PPP 3 and 4:



PPP 1 vs 4 (just about the same height!):

wow! amazing job!

What are you planning on flowering those new babies under? They look good to go but not sure if your trying to blow it up or not...? Probably pull like 1-2oz off those though.

Anyways like I said the trim job doesn't look like it hurt em so who really knows....And my meter was recently set to .7 conversion rate by a friend who suggested that's how I should read my PPM's....But I've been goin by the EC regularly and it seems to work well at 1.2, now in second week flower at 1.3EC...Anyways, good to hear back, take care. PEACE

that's pretty bad ass

-dodo