Is it Time for Show & Tell?

[tobedetermined]

Let’s start at the beginning. This was 10 days ago:

Left to right:

Skittlez Auto (Fast Buds)
Sugar Black Rose X ? Auto (ReikoX)
Ice Cool Auto (Sweet Seeds)
Sweet Tooth Auto (Canuk)​

I have been bopping around at icmag for a while now, enjoying the hospitality and comradery and flashing the occasional grow picture in appropriate threads. But, I have not done a grow diary yet. So, to right that wrong, here it is.

I am a novice grower. I had been a weed consumer for 47 years before I finally planted my own seeds. Life got in the way - wives and houses and jobs and kids et al – so I never grew. I didn’t have the time or the place and . . . well . . . it was illegal and since I had already had a possession bust as a teen, even a little grow bust would have been really bad news. Finally, a few years back, I decided to jump in and do it. It was summer and business (i.e. travel for me) was slow so I read the forums, planned and bought supplies.

And wouldn’t you know it? One of those celestial hammers came down. In a fit of karma adjustment or some cruel joke of the Gods . . . I had just finishing buying all of my grow supplies for my first grow - and applying for a medical MJ script - when my body decided to crumble and I couldn’t walk worth a shit for 8 months. Spinal stenosis, baby! I shit you not, but I mailed my med app one week before I realized that I had a really serious physical problem. Like I said, it was obviously Karma or the Gods. So I said a little incantation in front of the spooky Egyptian figure that I have (that may actually be real btw) and I got busy chasing a solution for my spinal issues and growing herb for recreation AND medicine.

So here I am, a few years later, with a number of good grows under my belt. It is legal to grow here now but I have kept my MMJ grow license just in case. I retired honourably just before Covid exploded - near the top of my game in prestige, but certainly not income. I guess I should have become a lawyer like my mother always told me, but I can definitely tell you that what I did was a hell of a lot more fun.

 

[tobedetermined]

As you can see, I grow in cloth pots in a tent. I tried an undercurrent DWC for my first grow and a half until my system sprung a leak while I was away on business in Vegas for a week. My wife bailed out the tent and when I returned, I amazingly salvaged the grow by ripping the two plants out of their fetid watery home and sticking them in coco. They thrived surprisingly. I have been coco/perlite ever since. I learned my lesson. Simple is better for me. For this grow, I am using 5 gallon pots with 25% perlite.

LED lights, of course. An older burple from Mars Hydro – a 400w Epistar Pro II, which was one of their better ones. Sooner or later I will replace this but it has been good to me. To this I have added 4 x Solstik 80w LED strips which I mounted in pairs on an aluminum channel in a way that lets me tilt each strip individually. I use them as side ‘wing’ lights in flower.

Circling back to the seed selection . . . they are all autoflower sample seeds with one exception. More than a year ago, ReikoX generously offered some freebie seeds that he had made. He called them his F.A.M. mix (Feminized Auto Mix) and he sent 2 seeds each from 4 crosses. “The pollen came from a Sugar Black Rose by Delicious Seeds. Two each of Alaskan Purple by Seedsman, Dark Devil F2 (by OG’s Mr.Sparkle), Ghost Toof by Mephisto, and Red Poison by Sweet Seeds were pollinated.” So I have a mystery seed . . .

And once again, a big thank you goes to ReikoX for his generosity. And I apologize for sitting on them so long but my tent had a queue.

 

[ReikoX]

Glad you are finally getting around to them. In for the show.

 

[tobedetermined]

I planted them in the pots and they all had broken ground 8 days ago. I hand water daily with filtered tap water and started feeding them on a small dose of cal/mag and humic acid on Day 3 and added a quarter hit of Canna Coco A+B the following day. This produced an ec of 0.3. I will gradually increase this to 1.0 – 1.5. Currently on Day 9 the ec is 0.6.

ReikoX 's mystery seed was the first seed to pop, the first to sprout and it is double the size of any of the other seedlings. It certainly is winning the Vigor award hands down.

 

[tobedetermined]

Glad you are finally getting around to them. In for the show.

Glad to have you aboard. I am sure that you are as curious as I am to watch the cross.

 

[Sampas92]

 

[MallardDuck]

 

[tobedetermined]

Welcome guys. Have a smoke because this is just the boring seedling stage.

At Day 11, they are all root building and showing leaves – or the nubs of them. Both of the plants on the right - Sweet Tooth & the ReikoX Mystery - seem to have a bit of LED sensitivity with some leaf twist. The lights are well up at 30” but I will monitor.

 

[tobedetermined]

The forum's image software doesn't like square images, so here they unsquared.

 

[tobedetermined]

Day 19. Hmm. I am not proud of them. I believe I set them back a bit - which is never a good thing with autos. They seemed to stall. I suspect the light was too bright or not enough food or too much cal/mag vs food. Take your pick, but lockout was the result. Anyways they appear back on track now.

I know, not a very exciting update . . . but to a grower that is usually a good thing.

 

[tobedetermined]

Day 29. They are all very happy now.

I have inched the ec up to 1.3 and I restarted a half dose of the humic acid 2 days ago – which they really seemed to like with a nice growth spurt evident each morning. They are all large leaf except for the Sweet Tooth in the upper right which has narrower leaves and a looser, more open structure. I will start some lower leaf defol in a day or two.

 

[VerdantGreen]

plants look great, very healthy.

 

[Wes2722]

Awesome subbed!

 

[dank.frank]

Really nice to see the mix of spectrum between these two lights...I've been considering something very similar with 1kw of LED.

I have 2 Mars Hydro SP3000 300w - but these are 5 spectrum bars, from their initial release, not 3 spectrum bars like they are now. These particular SP3000 have UV and IR.

I have 2 HydroGrowLED XB200 200w - but these are some wild quantum board style lights that have zero white diodes. All colored diodes at a given layout and percentage - that it produces a mostly white light, with a slight pinkish hue. Most would still consider this a blurple light, but the spectrum doesn't quite translate the same.

I'm considering running SP3000 ------ XB200 ------ SP3000 - which is why your current lighting set up is interesting to me. Good luck!



dank.Frank

 

[tobedetermined]

It seems to work well. This will be my 5[SUP]th[/SUP] grow with this setup. I start with the bluish veg cycle on the Mars and gradually add the white wings in veg - starting at low voltage/current. Then I flame it all when I get to flower. Mid flower I drop the wing lights & tilt them so they fire sideways to get in under the canopy while the main light just chugs away above.

Thanks all . . .

A nice cold bubble hash day here in Toronto. I am going to bubble the last 60 grams of some excellent 2 year old Hawaii Maui Waui (Nirvana). I will be growing this one again!

 

[bibi40]

Happy to foud your thread mate !
Will be interresting for sure .

 

[tobedetermined]

Just a quick update. The plants have doubled in the last week.

I have been steady with their food @ ec 1.3 with some cal/mag & some humic acid. The two on the right are hitting 14” with some preflower action happening on all. Lighting is 19/5 throughout.

 

[f-e]

19/5? I guess that's behind their structure. They don't really look like LED plants. They look good. Right temp and RH. Nothing to change at all. I dob my hat to you sir

 

[tobedetermined]

f-e Thanks for the kind words. Sorry for my tardy reply. I was down for the count after back surgery. And because of covid escalation here, it became day surgery (it's normally at least one night stay) so I arrived home in pretty rough shape. But . . . I did resist taking any of my Percocet script so all is well!

 

[Guest]

cheers mate lookin good over there.