newbie first grow! bagseed, long read!

hey all

I am a new grower, and I have been reading this site flat out, I'm impressed! I have read and learnt as much as I can in the last month or so before I started this grow. Between icmag forums, online movies/clips, I have learnt heaps! I also would like to give credit to "Cannabis Grower's Bible" by "Greg Green", this book is great.

This is my first grow, and its with bagseed as a trial run. after this and I learn how to grow a plant from start to finish, I will grow a good strain like bubblegum, skunk or chronic.

A bit of info of what I currenty have done:

April 18th: started to germinate 3 *8 year old* seeds. used the paper towel method in a air tight container sitting on my router
April 19th: checked up, nice and humid in container, smelling very "vegy"
April 20th: checked up, 3 cracked seeds (100% success on 8 year old seeds ) and 3 very nice looking tap roots
April 21st: put 3 cracked seeds into a propogation mix (with no added nutes) sitting in 4" round containers, under humidity domes with small CFL light on the top
April 22nd: checked up, nice humidity feeling (dont have a meter yet, its on its way as I ordered it from ebay in the last couple of days)
April 23rd (day 1 veg): seedlings have sprouted
April 24th (day 2 veg): kept humidity dome on to keep it nice and humid
April 25th (day 3 veg): bought a T8 fluro setup

From this point to May 1st, is just basically raising the small seedlings getting them looking good.

May 1st (day 9 veg): 1 of the 3 plants is not looking healthy, looking really unhealthy and started the thread in the "Cannabis Infirmary" forum, link here.
May 2nd (day 10 veg): plants 1 & 2 are doing fine, plant 3 (the runt) still looking unhealthy
May 3rd (day 11 veg): decided to rip plant 3 and germinate 2 more seeds (from another bag, so different strains). So when these 2 germinate, I will have 4 seedlings/plants to veg up to hopefully mothers! From these 4, select the best 2 (1 from each strain I hope). Also watered my 2 remaining tonight.

I will start with the worst news, here is the plant I had to rip tonight as it just wasnt cutting it:



Now, for the good... here is a pic of my favourite plant (out of the 2) as of day 11 veg (a few hours ago):



Now, your probably wondering what I am raising these plants in. At the moment the T8 is just lighting up a small little box where the plants are sitting within an inch to the lights.

While my babies are establishing roots, I have started to design my cabinet (link here) which is about to begin getting constructed. I am planning the cabinet down all details, and I will build it as planned... a wise man once told me "if you failed to plan, then you have planned to fail". Hence the reason for the in depth works on my cabinet plan. Feel free to stop in and provide some feedback on what you think! The more feedback I get, the better I think my grows will be.

Plan for my girls is to be in an organic mix, been reading through the organic forums quite a bit and about to work on getting an organic mix ready (as I will repot in 2 weeks).

I will try to give regular updates on this thread (should it hopefully get some good feedback from you good growers/readers)..

Anyway, I'm stonned, and I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Go dude, I'm pulling up a chair. Hope the ladies grow big and strong for you

Jerry

hey jerry

thanks for stopping in champ.

nice to see someone really preparing, reading and doing the work it takes to succeed =) This will be interesting and hopefully all will go well

How big do you plan to veg them?

Take care!
/t

hi tayla, thanks for stopping in!

I will veg them to approx 12" or there abouts.. flower room is roughly 40" tall, so by the time take out the space for the pots, the veg up to the scrog screen, and headroom, its gonna be tight!

Hey! Another n00b! Welcome to ICmag and come join the n00b crew! I was in the same boat as you when I came to this site. I probably read this site for well over a year before I committed to growing anything. I'm still on my first full grow! You can check it out in my signature.

There is almost an infinite amount of information you can learn about the subject here which can be quite daunting, but every little bit more you read will help immensely.

One thing I did only first attempted grow was I watered my plants way too much which in turn heavily stunted the growth of the plants. Try only to water when the soil is pretty dry. Its better to underwater than to over water.

If you're still looking for advice or ideas for your cab you should check out Red_Greenery's thread in the Micro section.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=51189

Lastly if you do order seeds I think we would all heavily suggest SeedBay and/or Seed Boutique for quality, speed, stealth, and freebies

Good luck on your grow and I will be checking in often!

you might want to consider starting a few more seeds --- to ensure you get a female. it sucks to go through all the preperations to find out you only have males. just a thought. good luck with your grow.

Budless: thanks for stopping in, will definately check out your grow tomorrow (its about bed time here for me) thanks for the kind words and advice.

kennycar: I have got a couple more germing right now.. I think I will get lucky with 4 plants I hope?

dont throw out your runts! i have a runt in my hydro setup that i decided to let live its life and it turned out to be female and the smell of its nuggs are more pungent than some of my larger plants with nuggs as big as the runt itself.

hi rkrone: thanks for stopping in! I had to get rid of the runt.. its getting replaced now anyway (hopefully with 2 healthy females)!

Update:

May 4th (day 12 veg): plants are looking good, no water or anything given as they got watered last night and pots still feel and look wet.

my seeds that I started to germinate in paper towel to replace the runt have now all cracked and are showing little white, will wait for the taproot to show before I put them in the seedling raising mix.

Picture from today:

Scrog sounds great I've had some really nice results using that method =)

Good luck!
/t

Keep it rocking dude

Jerry

May 5th (day 13 veg): plants are looking very good! no water given, as pots are still a little wet, will most likely get a water tomorrow.

threw 2 of my new seeds that have were germinated and cracked (paper towel method) into 2 pots that have seedling raising mix 65% and perlite 35%. This will give me 4 pots total and two very different strains of bagseed, so hoping to get at least 1 mother from each strain

May 6th (day 14 veg): water still not needed, plants look heatlhy. am starting to see a few roots at the bottom drain holes of the pots, 1 of the girls has 2 or 3 showing, and the other has abot 4 or 5.. the roots look extremely healthy. when will it be time to transplant?

My light schedule is 6am on, 12:00am off. in the mornings, I notice them looking a little tired, however towards the end of the day (9pm), they look tall and stout! These things are amazing to watch grow, I cannot express how good it feels with words.

Picture below:

May 7th (day 15 veg): soil was dry and nedeed watering, looked at the bottom of the pots and saw some nice root mass. decided to give them an upsize to a 1.5 galon pot, were started in 4" round pots. I plan to give them one more transplant to a 3 galon pot before flowering.

repoted them in an organic mix that has natural ferts like blood, bone etc. mixed to a ratio of roughly 70% organic mix and added 30% perlite. will see how they like this mix.

gave them a good watering in their new homes, will see how they now react and should hopefully have a pic up tomorrow.

BAD news on my germinating seeds. they germed well in the paper towel, but it seems they didnt have enough go in them to become seedlings and crack the top of the soil. I propogated them the same way I did the others and they were fine. Come to think about it, when I transplanted them from paper towel into soil, they were very wet. I think I may have stunted them in the paper towel? Anyway, I have left them in the soil, I'm pretty sure they are dead, so I have started another couple of the *original* strain (which is currently growing). If I get these originals going, then I guess the other new strain I tried to introduce were junk!

just took some pics before lights out, they are looking a little tired after the transplant.

hopefully they bounce back and tomorrow morning they look a little better.

next watering, I'm going to give them 1/4 stength organic liquid nutes for a little taste.

May 8th (day 16 veg): went out and checked on the girls in the morning, didnt look much better than the two top pics. got home from work and they are still wilting a little and tired. Anyone know how long they will potentially stay like this?

On the other side of the spectrum, what I did was put 4 new seeds (2 from this current grow bag - same as already seen above) and 2 from the other bag (that previously died) in water for 6 hours, put them in the papertowel and in an air tight container and they ALL cracked within hours. I have now put these in 75% organic mix, 25% perlite. They have been watered and have been misted and humidity domes installed. Am hoping to have 4 more new seedlings.

Out of these 4 seeds I have planted, I want 2 more good plants (to have 4 total) to hopefully bring up and hope to find *at least* 2 good healthy ladies, from there the perpetual grow shall begin.

May 9th (day 17 veg): WOW, plants are looking great.

after the transplant to bigger pots, and a 1/2 strength nute feed, they are looking a lot happier. here are a few pics from 5 minutes ago, approx 30 minutes till lights out.







Heres what I have been feeding them at 1/4 strength, can anyone tell me if this mix will be alright as a suplement during veg growth?



I also got my digital thermometer, current temp was a little cold approx 22 degrees celcius (approx 72 degrees fahrenheit). humidity was at approx 55%. These temps will be bettered when the cabinet is built.

Any comments? I would appreciate feedback as a first timer!

it should be fine if it was a fresh bottle, and it has trace elements soooo, yeah, maybe just keeo an eye out for defs

May 10th (day 18 veg): these are starting to take shape. I think they would be heaps better if the cabinet I built was complete so they could have a nice cosy home, but they are doing well considering.

pics of today:





temps are: 70 degress and 50% humidity