First Grow in 25 Years!!!!

Well, at last the day has come to finally start my first grow in 25 years!! After months of exhaustive research (eight books, countless videos on Pot TV and Advanced Nutrients website and rediculous amounts of time on ICMag, Cannabis World, OG and other sites), today January 9th 2005 marks the day that my beans from Seedbay go into an overnight soak.

I won three auctions on Seeday in November. The auctions were for Apollo Mist (Resevour Seeds), AK47 x C99 (Joey Weed) and Blue Thunder (Reeferman). Along with these came three freebies from Gypsy: POK Kush x White Giant, POK Kush x Critical Mass and Gypsy's Magical Mystery Mix. Of these six strains I am starting four strains with five seeds of each. The four strains I have decided to go with are the Apollo Mist, AK47 x C99, Blue Thunder and the POK Kush x Critical Mass. As I only have room for eight plants in my flower closet, the others will have to wait for down the road. Oh, by the way, I was lucky enough to win Gypsy's Weekley Seed Lottery back in December but as of today they still haven't gotten here yet but the future looks quite varietal indeed!!




After many conversations with the tech support guy (Mike) at Advanced Nutrients, he told me that he always pre-soaked his beans in an organic black tea overnight in the refrigerator before planting them in his medium. As this may seem a bit unorthodox to some, his 98% success rate has convinced me to try it out. Okay, call me nervous but I just don't want to take any chances with my first grow and this guy definitely knows what he is talking about. Apparently, the acid in the tea softens the shell to allow the seedling to more easily break through. As far as the chilled temps of the refrigerator go, he says that this mimics the conditions of late winter/early spring with cool moist temps before going into the cozy warmth of their first medium.







Seeds in organic black tea PH'd to 6.2


And then covered in plastic



The into the fridge for an overnight soak





I will be planting some into unferted potting soil/perlite mix and some others into jiffy pellets to see which way is most successful. I will put some of each strain into the two different mediums to gauge the difference. My ultimate goal, of course, is to find a couple of good candidates from each strain as potential mothers and then pair those down to get one "kick ass" Mom for each strain.

Once rooted in their respective mediums, I will test a theory put out their by Professor Ziggy of the Federation Seed Co. He claims that if a seedling is started under a 12/12 light regime, he has 80% success rate with female plants as the outcome. He goes on to say that if he wants males (for future pollenations) he starts his seedlings out on an 18/6 light regime and is 80% guaranteed that they will be male. A pretty outrageous claim I agree but, hey, it's worth a try. For those worried about the seedlings going prematurely into bloom on the 12/12, he maintains that seedlings aren't mature enough yet and he doesn't leave them in 12/12 too long. Although he never does state how long to leave these seedlings in 12/12, I have decided that two weeks should be sufficient. At that time, I will do the first transplant from the seedling cups/jiffy pellets into 1.5 gal. pots and put them on 18/6 for an additional two weeks of veg before moving them into my flower closet where I will veg under two 400 MH bulbs for an additional two weeks.

I have switchable ballasts that allow me to switch from MH bulbs to HPS bulbs. So, after the later two weeks veg in the flower closet I will switch to HPS and flower until the show sex. Of course, I will have taken 2 or 3 clones from each plant that will be rooted in my seedling/clone/mother cabinet. Once these Mothers have been sexed, all males will be discarded along with the corresponding clones. The remaining female Mothers will continue to be flowered and will ultimately become my first harvest. The remaining female clones will be rooted and vegged in the seedling/clone/mother cab and the best ones of these will be retained as the ongoing Mother plants.

I sure hope that I get at least one female from each strain to work with. I am doing these four strains against the better judgement/recommendations of some might fine growers on here. Being that this is my first grow in 25 years, many kind people recommended that I just do one, maybe two strains, until I get my skills down as a grower. In my head I know that they are right but, jeez, with all these great genetics I have, I just can't resist the temptation!! Sorry guys, your kind recommendations haven't fallen on deaf ears but, like I said, I just can't resist!!! I just hope that isn't my first mistake already but all these strains are a sativa/indica mix, so I am hoping that to some extent their needs and growth patterns will be relatively similar. We shall see.

Well, I guess that's a pretty long introduction here. Sorry if I rambled on. In the next posts I will start showing pics from the building of my seedling/clone/mother cabinet as well as my flower closet. So, for now, thanks for tuning in and I hope you all will stick with me as I plan to continue this thread through to harvest and beyond to a full smoke report of each strain.

It would be remise of me to not start out by thanking everyone on here who has so kindly and generously reached out to me with their incredible knowledge and well wishes. There are too many to list here but certainly Texas Kid, Herbweedman, Resdog, BOG, GreatLakesTHC and last but certainly not least . . . Gypsy Nirvana and Dutch Grown are at the absolute top of my list!! My heart and my thanks go out to you all for all your help. Stay tuned as another of your pupils has started his journey back to Nirvana!!

Good luck on your journey!

Signin' in for the ride.

I wish you the best of luck.

Rellikbuzz
I too had been away from 420 for many years, and am hoping to start my first grow soon. Reading your post gave me a lot of deja vu in that I've been going through the same learning and figuring issues for a few months.

I'm pulling up a seat; you have a nice selection of genetics, an ambitious plan, and a nice setup!

Yes, wonderful folks hang out here, spend anytime at all and the generosity flows like a river from all directions.

Thanks for a great detailed post, you're giving me ideas -MGJ

Bartender- I am honored that you stopped by my thread. Your presence brings me good karma, bro'. Thanks.

Mr. Greenjeans- Glad you hopped aboard my "Crazy Train"!! If there is something that you can pickup from me during this grow, well . . . I'm honored to have lended a hand. While this may be my first grow in a while, I will be trying some of the more advanced growing techniques that I have read and studied on here and other fine sites. For example, I will be using the FIM technique to top my plants, Low Stressing Training to control heighth and promote side branching and I will be using the pruning technique that PistolWhipt developed on a Cannabis World thread that focuses the plants energy to the grow tips of the plant. This should all prove interesting if not informative for everyone . . . especially MYSELF!!

Thanks for joining me guys. I'll try hard not to disappoint!!

enough talking lets see them pics...lol just kidding rellik. Good luck on the grow. sounds like you are trying a bunch of different things right out of the gate...FIM, LST,light cycles, the fridge, and more. I hope everything works out.

Say buzz, it’s great it see ya back in growing after so many years and looks like you’ve got every thing under control,…….WOW man you must be the luckiest dude ever!! Won three Seeday auctions that amazing!! I do have one question for ya…….

he told me that he always pre-soaked his beans in an organic black tea overnight in the refrigerator before planting them in his medium.

Click to expand...

I have not been able to find as of yet, just what is this organic black tea?

I will test a theory put out their by Professor Ziggy of the Federation Seed Co. He claims that if a seedling is started under a 12/12 light regime, he has 80% success rate with female plants as the outcome. He goes on to say that if he wants males (for future pollenations) he starts his seedlings out on an 18/6 light regime and is 80% guaranteed that they will be male.

Click to expand...

Ok I admit, this has got my attention, I’ll be hanging around to see what happens next?

Sunnyside- Glad to have ya' aboard, matey!! Looking forward to sharing my new grow experience with everyone here.

BigToke- As I found out after a bit of research, Black Tea is basically your standard Breakfast tea found on any grocery store shelf. The organic part of it speaks for itself. I think that is Mike at Advanced Nutes just trying to be wholistic. However, I did find Organic Black Tea at a local grocery store called Whole Foods. It's a grocery store that carries a lot of organic produce, herbs and free-range meats. Most any major city should have these types of groceries. They are characterized as the grocery store that all the "hippies" work at.

As far as the 12/12 lighting schedule influencing sexuality, we will see. But if you consider that nature's cycle of shorter days in Spring and longer days in Summer, then it makes sense that you are only duplicating (albeit for a shorter period of time) those early days of Spring when the growing cycle begins. There seem to be so many things that can stress a plant during veg and flower that can cause hermaphrodism (an influencing of sexuality), then maybe this easing in of daytime can influence it as well. Professor Ziggy is certainly controversial in most circles but no one seems to question his knowledge when it comes to growing and breeding cannabis. His Romulan strain is legendary in some parts of the world. The way I figure it, what could it hurt to try it? After all, it's the females we're after so, don't knock it until you try it. Right?

I want to get a little of the background of my setup out of the way while the beans are soaking overnight. After months of searching for somewhere, other than my own place , to have my first grow. Alas, try as I might the search was futile. So I resigned myself to think in a little bit smaller terms and have the grow here in my condo. I have my bedroom closet and my entry closet which I have adapted for the grow. First, my bedroom closet. It is a typical walk-in closet with rods and shelves on both sides of the closet. Fortunately, I am blessed with 9' ceilings throughout my condo. This gives me all the height I need to grow 3'-4' plants. One side of the bedroom closet has one rod/shelf for longer hanging clothes. From the shelf to the ceiling is 41". Using the existing shelf as a foundation, I screwed a 17" deep shelf on top of the existing one. Then, with 1"x4"s I framed out the sides and the ceiling to allow for a cabinet face to be nailed in place thus creating a cabinet above the hanging rod. The overall dimensions of the interior of the cabinet are 57" wide x 41" high x 17" deep. Here is a shot from outside of the closet in the bedroom.




You can see the cabinet doors sitting on the buckets as I just had painted them. Here is a shot inside the closet looking up at the new cabinet. This is a shot of the face frame without the doors installed.




To support the 4' Tek5 Flourescent light, I used 2x2's anchored to the ceiling with "S" hook screwed into them.




Once the cabinet was painted and completed, it was time to fit it out with the goodies for the grow. The first job was to sterilize the interior of the cabinet. I mixed up a bottle of water/bleach solution and sprayed it on the walls and ceiling inside the cabinet. After that dried, I wash the interior by hand with a Pinesol solution. The following pics are of me spraying the walls of my flower closet but you get the idea.






The next job was to completely line the interior with Black and White Poly.




I used cut up pieces of 80lb card stock (paper) cut into 1" x 1" square as anchors for the staples.




By doing this the staples will not tear through the poly. Here a shot of the finished interior.




Next is was time to hang the light. I chose a 4" Tek5 High Output Flourescent for the job. These babies really put out the light. With four 64 watt flouro (blue spectrum) tubes, this thing is blinding when turned on. After talking with several growers who use them, this seemed like a great option for starting out seedlings/clones as well as maintaining Mothers over a period of time. All the growers that I talked with about these lights actually use them for their entire veg cycle! So, I knew it was more than adequate to do the job for me. Here's a couple of pics of the Tek5.












This light is one "badass" momma! It puts out a lot more heat than your run-of-the-mill flouro. In fact, so much so that after a test run, I have decided to add two muffins fans (one intake and one exhaust) to keep the temps down. On a test run, within 30 minutes the temps hit 95 degrees with the oscillating fan on and the cabinet doors closed!! Waaaayyyy too high. With the muffins fans (1-4" 104cfm drawing air from the bedroom and 1-6" 192cfm exhausting into floor joist space above my closet) it is my hope that I can get these temps into the low 80's.

For power I have run an extension cord into the closet (behind my clothes) and drilled a 2" hole into the bottom of the cabinet. I mounted a surge protector on the side wall of the cab and dropped the power cord for the surge protector down the 2" hole to be connected to the extension cord behind my clothes. I plugged a digital Intermatic timer into the surge protector as well as a 12" oscillating fan. Check out the desktop cord cover to prevent light leaks in the back corner.





I ran foam weatherstripping around the cabinet doors to prevent light leaks and put a lock on the doors which causes the doors to compress the weatherstripping. From the outside it just looks like a nice cabinet installation in the closet.

Well, that's about it for my Seedling/Clone/Mother cabinet. More pics tomorrow when I plant my babies in their new home. While the seedlings are sprouting and vegging, I will be finishing out my flower closet. This is even more interesting as I will be installing 2-400 watt MH/HPS lamps side by side in a 6' wide x 2' deep x 9' high closet. In this closet I will also be installing a Dayton 265 cfm blower for intake air, an elicent or hurricane 640 cfm inline fan for cooling the reflectors AND exhausting the closet. As if that isn't enough, I will be adding a 20lb CO2 tank and regulator, Green Air CT-DH-3 Humidistat, Green Air Cyclestat 4 intermittent timer, two 12" oscillating fans and still have enough room for 8-5 gallon buckets for the plants!! Anybody got a shoespoon and a bucket of Crisco?

nice setup you got there. great stealth job. can't wait to see those fluoro's at work.

Hi Rellik It sure looks like you have all bases covered. Great job, cant wait to see more. Bonzo

Agent 420 and Bonzo- So glad you stopped by my thread. Just getting it all started but should turn out interesting as I am starting some strains that haven't gotten a lot of coverage on IC to date. It's always nice to read about new and different strains isn't it?

This morning I open my refridgerator to find that all the seeds except the AK47 x C99 had sunk to the bottom of their cups. I'm not sure what this means as far as the AK goes. Hopefully this isn't a bad omen for that strain. In this photo you can see the AK's floating on top of the cup on the left while the POK Kush x Critical Mass on the right are all at the bottom.




The seedling cups with the African Violet/Perlite mix and the jiffy pellets soaked overnight in a mix of tap water with 4 drops of Superthrive and 1/4 teaspoon (1.5 ml) of Advanced Nutrients Voodoo Juice and was PH'd to 6.2. I also added a small squirt of liquid dish soap as a wetting agent. I PH'd the solution in the bottom of the tray after the medium had soaked all night and found that it was at 5.8. I guess I'll need to compensate for the lower PH of my medium in the future by bumping up the nutrient mix to 6.8 or so. Here's a pic of the medium after soaking in the tray overnight.




After draining the black tea from the seeds, I gently rinsed them with cool tap water and then planted them in their new homes. I put 3 of the Apollo Mist and AK47 x C99 seeds into the seedling cups and the other two of each strain into jiffy pellets. The POK Kush x Critical Mass and Blue Thunder were just the opposite (2 of each into seedling cups and 3 of each in jiffy pellets). I drained the excess water from the bottom of the tray and misted the inside of the cover before putting them onto the seedling heat mat in my seedling/clone/mother cabinet (which from this point on will be known simply as the Mother Cab - just too damn wordy!! ). Oh yeah, the jiffy pellets were completely soaked with the solution so I gently squeezed out some of the excess moisture. I don't want to water log my babies!!








Here's a pic of the seedling heat mat in my Mother Cab. I did a trial run last night while the medium soaked and put the sensor to my hydrometer under the plastic cover. Temps got up to 87 degrees and humidity was 75%. When I put the seedling tray on the heat mat I turned it on for a couple of hours to get the medium nice and warm and then turned off the heat mat. Don't want to cook the beans, you see!!




Now it's just a waiting game. That may be the hardest part of growing but I guess it teaches us all patience, right? In the meantime, I will continue on working on finishing my flower closet and try to get some pics up on the progress of that. In the meantime, thanks again to all who have stopped by and for all your well wishes and good vibes. I'll tell my babies that you asked about them!! :smile:

A word of caution with the heat mat, it should be on all the time but needs a 1/2" or more distance between it and the trays! Or you'll overheat and short it out, this may not happen right away but it will eventually. There is a holder sold for this or get creative with some coat-hangers.

Hey BadMF- I appreciate the feedback emensely. As I said before, I turned it on to get the medium nice and warm but then tuned it off. I have the heat pad on top of a 1.2" thick piece of styrofoam but nothing inbetween the heat mat and the bottom of the tray. DJ Short's book "Cultivating Exceptional Cannabis said that seeds germ well at around 70 degrees. They go on to say that warmer temps will help germination but can cause increase chance of infections and stem stretching. The ambient temp in my Mother Cab is around 75 degrees without the heat pad. With the pad on temps reach 87 degrees. Do you still think I should keep the pad on? If so, what should I use to elevate the seedling tray up off the heat pad? Thanks for any and all advice, BadMF.

Good to see you going at it,

I tried the 12/12 on the seedlings. Used Jlp's G-13 haze. I got 4 out of 6 to be female, pretty good odds, but am still unsure if the theory holds true.

The way mother nature works on cannabis, it seems, the seedling would think it popped early, like february, if it were male, it would release its pollen too early, and the species would not live. If it were female it would still be producing hairs to be pollenated later on when the rest of the plants sprouted, thus continuing the eveloution.

Just my reasoning, no proof, but there has to be a reason for everything, and this is the best I could think of, anybody know any other reasons it could be?

-mutt

Good to have you here JoeMutt. I hear what you're saying. This 12/12 thing may just be bs but it's sure worth a try and you seemed to get a little better than 50/50 with it, so it bears consideration. :smile:

The only thing I can come up with is that it eases the seedling into the ultimate 18/6 lighting schedule, thereby reducing any possible stress that throwing it directly into 18/6 might cause. And, possibly, a lower stressed plant might err towards femininity when things go nice and smoothly. Who knows the real answer? But Professor Ziggy seemed extremely adimant about the fact that 12/12 produces more females. In fact, I read somewhere on Pot-TV that this has been a long-kept secret of many of the reknowned breeders of the world. Like I said, what could it hurt to try? Besides it saves on the electric bill for the first couple of weeks at least so it's all good to me.

Thanks again for your kind words and hope you'll stick around to see how this "newbie" does with his first grow in 25 years!!

Rellikbuzz
I really like your setup - well thought out, real neat pete....

I started with the flower cab, and haven't worked out the veg / clone area yet - toldja you'd be giving me ideas

You're rolling bucko - 'em into shape!!!!

-MGJ

Your system looks really well thought out, Relik, it shows that you did a lot of research before putting it all together...I'm curious to see what a fellow newb can pull out of that space, armed with the knowledge gleaned from everyone else :friends: ...good luck
kingslayer

Greenjeans- We'll certainly try to them into shape, bro, but being that I'm pretty new with the ol' grow , it might take a bit to perfect the right snap!!

Kingslayer- Thanks for checking in!! If it weren't for the top flight growers of ICMag, I might now even be growing now at all. It's been through their expert grows and advice, as well as the inspiration that they've pass on to me, that has given me the confidence to have a go at growing at all. I'll forever be in their debt. They all have my sincerest gratitude and respect.

I totally hear you, man...this place has actually inspired us to get serious about our grows...I have learned much from all the sites out there, but IC seems to have the kind of people that are willing to help, especially to those who havent got 3000 posts or whatever...
Your closet is very similar to the setup I am aiming for when I move... hope it works out for ya, I'll subscribe to this thread...
theKingslayer

well, im waiting to see pics on this grow!!! i am intrested in the results of the 12/12 to see your results, and the tea thats new too...thanks ...