First time grower. 400W CMH, Nirvana ICE in soil.

[Anh Bi]

Hello everyone.

It's my first grow, and I thought I should keep a journal to document all the mistake I am going to make LOL.

My set up is pretty simple:

5x5 area
400W CMH
Nirvana's ICE
Odor Neutralizing Agent (ONA) for odor control
Everything in soil.

I currently cant put an exhaust or intake fan in my room and am having some heat issues.

This is my current soil mix:

2.5 cu.ft. of Foxfarm Happy Frog potting soil
1 cu.ft. of Foxfarm planting mix
1/2 cu.ft of Foxfarm light warrior
3 bricks of coco
1.5 cup of blood meal
1 cup of bone meal
1 cup of Happy Frog bulb food
2 cups of fine dolomite lime
1 cup of Kelp food
1 cup of Jersey greensand

seedlings started in a different soil mix:
1.5 cu.ft. of Foxfarm light warrior
1/2 cu.ft. of Foxfarm happy frog potting soil
1 brick of coco
8 quart of perlite
1/2 cup of blood meal
1/2 cup of dolomite lime

I am just using plain tap water so far that I have left bubbling to remove any chlorine. I am not quite sure how I should adjust the pH. It came out of tap around 8, should I shoot for a pH between 6.5 and 7 for soil application?

 

[Anh Bi]

Oh yeah, here comes the pictures:

Day 1:
I soaked the seeds in a cup of water for 12 hours, then dropped them in a tupperware with some tissue paper, sprayed some water and dropped them on a seedling mat for heat. 12 hours later, they almost all germinated (80%), an additional 12 hours gave me a 100% germination rate.

I picked them one by one and dropped them in soil. Sprayed some water to make sure the top stays wet, cranked up the humidifier and let the pots sit on top of my seedling heat mat.

Day 3:
Here they are! Some of them are finally starting to pop out of the soil! Yeah!

Day 5:

All of them pop out of the soil! I've noticed that three of them were really behind tho compare to the others.

 

[Anh Bi]

Day 13:

All of them seem to be doing okay except 3 of them despite my temperature problem. For about 2 hours every day, the temperature climbs up towards the 90F before the light shuts down. They are currently under a 16/8 photo period.

Here we go:

Now, here are the 3 plants that I have previously mentioned. They either have a very slow growth or very strangely shaped leaves. I am not quite sure what's wrong with them. They have the same environment and soil as the rest, which seem to be doing fine.

This last one has a very very slow growth. Anyone got an idea?

 

[SweetNightmare]

soil and coco? they like different ph... dunno how well that's gunna end up working out

 

[burninheavy420]

lookin good..got some goin right now and they're juz a lil bit bigger than what u got goin there. Can't wait for the finished product!

 

[Anh Bi]

Soil and coco! Yeah!

I just want to grow the plants from soil with plain watering as I don't want to screw up the nutrient delivery for a first timer. So I went with something really similar to the moonshineman mix, but I eventually realized that coco coir is a much better substitute to perlite and is also much cheaper, so I just cut the rich soil mix with it.

Here is an update at day 19.
So far, I've been just watering them with plain water once every day. The plants look healthy, but it's starting to get crowded in there. I am hoping to see some early preflower signs so I can weed out the males to make more room for the girls.

I am planning to transplant them around day 28 or 30 as the roots have started to creep out from the bottom holes of the pot already!

Family picture! Everyone grew quite a bit compare to 6 days earlier!

Some closeups:

Under the skirt of some of the ladies. I like how tight the internodes are:

CMH bulb in action!

Thanks for looking!

 

[dj.scotfree]

Well done! Short internodes is key...looking great

 

[midwestganja]

Looks awesome I will be sure to pay attention to this thread

Good job !

 

[Anh Bi]

Update on day 22:

I made a couple mistakes. First I left the plants unattended for a few days without planning ahead. It started to get quite crowded with 20 plants in 2x2 area. The leaves were all overlapping on each other and they started to stretch quite a bit.

I decided to spray the plants a little bit more, but ended re-potting all of them overnight. It was stressful both for the plants and me! The roots were quite fragile, and got torn quite a bit during the process. And it kinda shows when looking at the leaves later on.

The light bulb was only 7-9 inches from the plants, and none of them were burned!

Pot bound after three weeks of growth from seed. The roots look pretty healthy.

All twenty of them re-potted. They also had a space upgrade from a 2x2 area to a 5x4.5.

 

[mexilandrace]

Don't worry about ripping some roots when you transplant, the plants respond pretty favorably to it actually, once they recover I mean.

 

[dj.scotfree]

Yea, I agree! When you transplant you should kinda loosen up some of the roots so that they take to the new soil/ container more easily.

 

[Pittsburgh Kush]

Nice grow, loosening up the roots during transplant, can actually help growth, after the initial shock. Keep up the good work.

 

[Anh Bi]

Update on day 28 (from seed):

I am running out of room. I was hoping to see some sign of preflower before I switch to 12/12 so I end up cloning females only. Unfortunately the growth has caught on with the space I had available. I am gonna have to flower them within a few days now once I get the clones going.

I've ended up over watering them over the past few days... some plants look extremely droopy. Others have shown really impressive growth with some roots creeping out from the bottom of the pots within 4 days after the transplant.

Here are some pics:

 

[Anh Bi]

A few more close ups.

Are those preflowers?

 

[freeradical]

Awesome growth! Last pic looks like a male.

 

[Anh Bi]

Update on day 19 of blooming


Hello IC mag.

I didn't get a chance to update my journal in a while.
I have started to flower them almost 3 weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn't get too lucky with my male/female ratio. Out of twenty seeds, I ended up with 14 males and 6 females. I don't know what went wrong there.

Sorry for all those pictures. This is such a beautiful plant that I am just in awe of its beauty. Time to worship it!

Here are the pictures!

 

[Anh Bi]

I forgot to add that during blooming, the plants emit a nice citrus/mango sent. It definitively doesn't smell like weed.

Help! Something is eating my brains out.