My second grow - Northern Lights from nirvana

[greenhead]

Hey all. I already transferred my entire journal from my first grow to this forum a few days ago, and I'm currently in the beginning stages of my second grow, so here's my second grow journal. I'm growing Northern Lights seeds from nirvana. They're currently on day 17 since I first dropped some seeds into a cup of water. I'm using a few CFL's to light them during vegging, then I'll add a 150 watt HPS when it's time to flower. That's the same thing that I did on my first grow, so I'll stick with the same method.

I have four plants currently vegging. I hope to end up with two females, which I think is the right amount for my small grow cabinet. I think that I might even kill off a female if I end up with 3 (or god forbid 4, lol). When I did my first grow I had no idea what sort of yield I should expect, but now that I have a little better idea, I am shooting for somewhere around a quarter pound from the two females that I'll end up keeping. That might be slightly optimistic, but we'll see.

I'm growing in soil that I acquired locally from a hydro store. It has some earthworm castings and a few other ingredients in it that I don't recall. The soil came with a little bit of perlite mixed in, but I added some more in addition to that. I also have some lime dolomite which I haven't mixed in yet. I'll add that when I transplant to bigger containers.

For feeding, I'm using the same stuff that I have leftover from my first grow. In veg, I'll probably just feed a couple of times with miracle grow all purpose plant food and a little bit of big bloom. For flowering I'm going to feed big bloom and tiger bloom.

DAY 1 - Northern Lights (nirvana)

Four seeds floating around in a cup of water

DAY 5

DAY 9

 

[greenhead]

Here's a few pictures of what the setup currently looks like. I also made a ghetto reflector (for the CFLS) for this grow, which I didn't have on my first grow. I lined the bottom of it with aluminum tape, which should be better than aluminum foil at least, since the tape doesn't really have any creases in it.

The only issue that concerns me right now with the grow is the heat. I don't have an AC in the same room where the grow cabinet is located and the temps are higher than I'd like them to be. They're in the nineties when lights are on and they drop to mid eighties when lights are off (nighttime) usually. There's not much that I can do about that really I think, without spending a bit of cash, so as long as the plants stay healthy, I'll be happy. Temps should be dropping off here in a month or so I hope, just in time for flowering. The ambient temperature is just too hot in the room, so without bringing the ambient temperature down, the cabinet will remain hot. I have 2 ventilation intake holes in the cabinet and a computer fan for exhuast. I don't have any carbon filter, and hopefully I won't need one for this grow either. Northern Lights is supposed to be a not so smelly strain, we'll see.

DAY 11

DAY 15

 

[Neptune]

lol, sweet reflector dude!!

 

[greenhead]

lol, sweet reflector dude!!

Thanks ! The price can't be beat at least.

 

[greenhead]

DAY 19

The ambient temp has dropped ten or so degrees in the past couple of days, that's good.

 

[superjoint]

Niceeeee Manggggg

 

[green_grow]

i saw your pic of your first harvest over at the 150hps club ... awesome !
you are doing something right, thats for sure . keep up the good work !

 

[guest5703]

ooo fun stuff second grow? nice, what you gonna put those lovely ladies under?

 

[Escobar]

nice plants, keep updateing

 

[greenhead]

Niceeeee Manggggg

Thanks !

i saw your pic of your first harvest over at the 150hps club ... awesome !
you are doing something right, thats for sure . keep up the good work !

Thanks ! Yeah, the first harvest turned out nice, it exceeded all of my expectations. I'm trying not to feel too confident however. This is only my second time and there's still probably a million and one issues that I might encounter on this grow that are totally new to me, but I'm obviously hoping for a smooth, trouble free grow. Good luck with your grows also !

ooo fun stuff second grow? nice, what you gonna put those lovely ladies under?!

Do you mean as far as lights ? When I flower, I'm just adding a 150 watt HPS. I don't think I can go much larger than that in my current cabinet.

nice plants, keep updateing

Thanks !

 

[Black Ra1n]

greenhead, nice strain, I'll be watching for sure. Seedlings look good and healthy, nice structure too. Good luck with your grow, love the 150 grows.

B/R

 

[Dr Dog]

I am still laughing at the reflector that is sweet man
Good luck with this grow, I will be sticking around to watch these girls progress

 

[greenhead]

greenhead, nice strain, I'll be watching for sure. Seedlings look good and healthy, nice structure too. Good luck with your grow, love the 150 grows.

B/R

Thanks ! Yeah, one of the main reasons I chose Northern Lights was because I read that it's a fairly easy to strain to grow, and it doesn't grow too tall, and it doesn't smell that much, and that it could take some abuse. So I figured that it sounded like a good newbie strain that would yield some decent smoke.

Good luck with your grows also !

I am still laughing at the reflector that is sweet man
Good luck with this grow, I will be sticking around to watch these girls progress

Thanks ! And good luck with your grows.

 

[greenhead]

DAY 24

I topped all four of the plants a few days ago. The heat in the cabinet is still hot (about 95 w/ lights on), but it's the middle of the summer, so the only one to blame for that is myself. The plants are probably growing a little bit slower because of the heat factor, but I'm not going to complain, because the plants seem healthy. They're not really tall at all, but that's a good thing, at least as far as I'm concerned.

And here's something funny. One of my compact flourescents broke today, it was my fault because I was careless. I broke three of them on my first grow, so I'm doing ok so far with only 1 broken bulb. Well, anyhow, I went to a local hardware store and picked up a new one and this is what the package looked like. Notice the sticker in the upper right hand corner.

I knew something was hiding behind that sticker, so I pulled it off.

I know that that number doesn't mean anything at all, but I found it funny anyhow. Also one other thing that was weird with Maxlite bulbs: I purchased a 30 watt daylight Maxlite CFL which was rated at 1900 lumens. They also had a 25 watt daylight CFL (also from maxlite), that was rated at 2000 lumens. That makes no sense at all, their ratings are obviously totally messed up and they've been changing/updating their packages.

 

[Dr Dog]

Heat does not seem to be affecting your plants, they are looking very very healthy, nice looking grow so far.

Those bastards, changing the rating! maybe they had NASA do the calculations

 

[greenhead]

Heat does not seem to be affecting your plants, they are looking very very healthy, nice looking grow so far.

Those bastards, changing the rating! maybe they had NASA do the calculations

Thanks ! Yeah, and as for ratings and companies changing their packaging materials, maybe I should have picked up the 25 watt bulb instead of the 30 watt bulb, then my plants would get more lumens and grow much bigger. That's what it said on the package afterall.

 

[Guest]

got a pack of northern lights in my fridge...do you run your lights at night..

 

[greenhead]

got a pack of northern lights in my fridge...do you run your lights at night..

No, I'm currently on 18/6. I was on 24/0 for the first ten days or so.

I think that if I ran my lights at night, then the temps would be more even between lights on and lights off. Even if I had the lights off in the daytime here, it's just much hotter in the daytime, and it wouldn't help me much I think. And I'm looking for a 10 degree drop or so, between lights on and off, so that's why I decided to stick with lights off at nighttime.

And it's also easier for me to have the plants basically on the same sleeping schedule that I'm on.

Is your Northern Lights from nirvana also, or some other place ?

 

[Guest]

yes nirvana...i have not started them yet...im looking for a studly male for a project i have going...peace

 

[greenhead]

DAY 27

I transplanted the four plants into larger pots a couple of days ago. This is the third transplant so far. They're currently in 1.5 gallon pots. I also started doing some bondage on them.