Seedlings are sprouting in coco - what now? First grow!

[gaiusmarius]

it seems you have got a good eye for the male female thing. if i wanted to make seeds, i would wait to remove the males till they have made the top into colas of male flowers, when you notice the flowers are fully formed but not open yet, you can remove it and it should open the flowers what ever you do, lol. in my experience male flowers grow and open even in 18/6 once they get mature (big). but so far i assume there are only a few pre-flowers visible, right? so there is no rush to get them out, just keep an eye on them.

 

[Guest]

gm, thanks for the help. I've already pulled the male and put him in the garage next to the window in the door. I know it's not optimum conditions for him to mature but I figure he'll probably get there eventually. Besides that, I needed the room in the grow space, hehe. Plus, I didn't know till you got back with me that it could take a while for him to get through adolescence, lol. Oh well he can fend for himself and if I keep him watered and he doesn't make it, then at least he didn't spread the seed of Satan all over what few little girls I've got. You know us dads, hehe.

Gonna keep tabs on the other two suspicious plants to see if they're going to stay in the grow space or choose to join the bachelor's party going on in the garage. Thanks for sticking with me on this. Haven't been able to post as regularly as I had been. Lots going on here dude, hope all's well with you and what you've got going on. 420 or bust eh? right around the corner.

 

[gaiusmarius]

i'm glad things are going well man. being busy is no bad thing right? specially when it going well...

yeah the dad will be ok in the garage, you are only gonna need the pollen in another 1 to 2 weeks, if you are gonna pollenate a few bottom branch buds? you still have one male in the cab, so it will be ready with pollen a bit faster then the one in the garage. you might want to use some pollen from each male on a few lower buds? unless you leave the breeding experiments for another round and stick to the basic sinsemilla bud production, lol.

what ever it be may it go well, update when you can, it's cool.

things are going good with me, my ww and sd are on day 9 of 12/12, this is one harvest i'm really looking forward to as my ww stash is low and my sd is down to my last colas, lol. but at least i have the recently cut victory to enjoy. yeah i'm really looking forward to 420, i think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

 

[Guest]

Here's an update. I pulled one of the AAs and one of the WWs and put in another part of the house, both were males. Have one AA and two WWs left in the grow space. One of the WWs still hasn't shown sex yet and it's been 16 days. It's the runt of the litter that's holding out. Here are some pictures and tell me what you think if you can tell anything by the pictures. Did the best I could with the camera, but still hard to tell. I was sure the POS had balls on it but they were just really tightly packed little buds. Not a true sign of balls yet, so who knows.

The WWs have some reddish purple in some of their fan leaf stems and I just want to know if this is normal. Been that way for a good two to three weeks and doesn't seem to matter what I feed them or how much, the purple stays. Leaves show no sign of burn of stress of any type though.






And the others.











The Aurora Indica - the camera adjusts for the lights in the grow area by darkening the pictures so plant isn't really as dark as it appears.



Cut the food back to 1.35 ec cause they are looking too well fed for my liking. Plus I think if I stress them a little bit with low ec, they might put more energy into forming flowers. I've been adding PK 13-14 for the last two feedings (feeding once a day) and had cut back a little on the A&B. Started adding Rhizo and Cannazyme along with the PK and I'll stop the PK in about another 3 days and hold off on that till a couple of weeks prior to harvest. Gonna keep the nutrients low for the next several weeks and just watch what the leaves do. I'll dose em every once in a while if they look like they're begging, hehehe. New growth is popping out pretty regularly and the plants really appreciate the extra room now that the guys are out.

Measurements on height are: 2 WWs 28 inches and 35.5 inches. The AA is 32.5 and bushier than the others.

Peace out

 

[gaiusmarius]

hey mojo,

it seems to me like you have quite a hungry pheno of white widow. when i look at the plants, the aurora looks perfect, the WW just slightly under fed. you might well have a pheno that allows you to feed her just like the aurora.

those red stems are no problem, but they are the first sign of a hungry plant, same with those light colored leaves, they are a bit too light on the WW, also the leaves are looking a bit weak, with the tips looking light and the edges curled.

until the plants have the distinct flowers on the tips, you should keep giving what they can take. as soon as the tops are no longer leafy, but consist of white balls of pistil hair, then is the time to add the pk. normally that happens after 2 weeks, but slower strains can take a bit longer, while faster ones can show the buds faster.

anyway, i'm sure they will be fine, although i would give the WW's a good dose of A+B at the next opportunity. you want the top leaves to be a bit lighter then the lower, but you don't want too much light green on the older fan leaves as that means they are hungry.

if you want to cut back the WW food, then i would wait till the flowers are clearly established, when you see those bushels of white pistil hairs, then is the time that i would go down with the nutes with my WW. but with your pheno from seed you will still have to give them 1.4 to 1.6 else they will not perform to their fullest. while you can easily give them 1.8 in the days leading up to the balls of pistil hairs showing up.

i hope that makes some kind of sense,

above you see what i mean, the leaves are to crinkled and hanging down, when they should only hang like that during lights off. you might have backed off at the wrong moment here.

when i look at this aurora i see a perfectly fed plant. only the top leaves are a bit light green the rest of the plant has a lush healthy green. no more then that mind you, lol.

good growings

 

[Guest]

I hear ya, dude, lol. But I want to be absolutely sure so I'm going to post some pictures I took just about half an hour ago. Reason I want to have you recheck is because all the plants have the same color leaves to me and the "runt" (WW) has always had the crinkled leaves that are showing on the new growth of the larger female Widow. The runt however has some leaf tip burn and that is one of the reasons I cut the nutes back. I can't tell you why the leaves seem to be drooping on the larger female or why the leaves are crinkled looking. The fan leaves on all the plants are DARK green though with new growth showing up as a light green and I just want to be absolutely sure you still want me to pull the trigger and up the nutes. Fed last night at ec of 1.35 with a base ec of 0.22 for the tap/ro water mix. The ec was 1.65 till I added ro water to bring it down to 1.35.

This is a picture of the two females together. I'm sure you can tell them apart but for those who view this and are noobes like me, I'm going to label them. Leaf colors look the same to me and I didn't see the lighter leaf tips on the WW you said you saw. You might have mistaken the WW runt for the larger female and you're right, the smaller one has lighter tips due to burn. I'll include pictures of it also.

Aurora Indica (AA) on left - White Widow (WW) on right.



WW by herself



Top growth of WW and the new leaves do look a little crinkled - but still a DARK green



Leaves of the larger female WW







The smaller (runt) WW - and I still can't tell for sure if it's male or female, DAMNIT!





Tip burn on the runt



Dude, holler back and tell me if you still think I should up the A&B and I'll do it for tonight's feeding.

peace, dude - take care

 

[gaiusmarius]

hm it's not easy with the hps lighting i must say. obviously you have the real inside view. so if you say they are all looking equally green, then you better follow your instinct. i worry that you downed the ec too much, but when i read your reasons it seems like you are right. in the end it's true that you are better off with less nutrients in coco rather then more.

specially as your plants are from seed and have grown into real trees, they will for sure take more nutrients then my fussy ww pheno.

how much water per plant per day does it take? remember that just because the return ec is maybe up, doesn't mean that you can just starve them for a few days to make up for it. that's too stressy for the flowering phase. you have to flush with plain ph adjusted tap water till the return is down. then straight after the flush give them a jug of normal nutrients at the normal strength, else their rhythm will be broken.

anyway it seems like you are getting real good at reading your plants. if you could take some pics with the hps off, it would give a clearer picture of the colors and turning the lights off for 10 minutes does no harm, or take them with the flash just after the hps goes off.

anyway not to worry, the ww is a sat and the aurora is an indi, so the differences are to be expected. as long as they have that healthy green color, they will do great.

 

[Guest]

Here they are in room light with a flash. Don't pay any attention to the mess on the floor, lol. First is WW, then AI, then the two together. The WW's new growth is even a darker green than was visible under the HPS. I'm no expert but don't they need to lighten up a bit?

 

[gaiusmarius]

dude i'm really glad you got back to me with your doubts, as you are quite right. those plants look the picture of health. you seem to have a very green thumb, coco in the blood so to speak, lol.

anyway, keep on doing what you have been and you will soon be looking at your plants full of buds.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the compliment, Gdude. Let's just say I'm a good listener, hehe. Tonight I fed with 50/50 ro/tap - mixed up 5 gallons worth and after I pHed it to 5.8, the ec was 0.56 without nutrients (was 0.36 before the addition of pH down). In the 5 gal. jug I put 10ml of Rhizo, 30mL each of Cannazyme, PK 13/14, Coco A, and Coco B. Brought the ec to 1.85. That's 1.3 ec of nutes on top of the base. Little higher than I wanted it to be but after I fed, I refilled the container with straight ro and brought the ec back down to 1.4 so that's about an ec of 1.0 of nutes. Gonna finish out the week with that then take the PK out of the mix and up the A&B to make up the difference.

Man, I don't know what would happen to plants if I fed at the rate Canna recommends. I know they're trying to sell product but it seems like if everybody fed at the level they recommend, everybody would be pissed off as they stood by their sizzling plants, lol. Mine would sure as hell be burned up.

Pulled the little guy out of the closet today - it's a boy. That leaves me with a 60:40 male to female ratio. Not too bad I guess. With 5 plants it couldn't be even, huh? Good news is, looks like I've got two great looking females and two really good males just in case I want to pollinate a couple of flowers on each female. The weird male I've been calling the runt, I wouldn't wish on anyone so it's getting chopped.

Ordered the materials to make a drip system yesterday and should have it by next Thursday. Still need to come up with ideas for a pump and reservoir so I may PM you to see what you recommend. Got the stuff from www.dripdepot.com.

Had to do something cause hand watering every day into 3gal pots SUCKS! ;-)

peace on - take care.

 

[gaiusmarius]

your tap water ec must be quite high, if 50/50 ro/tap equals 0.36, thats higher then my pure tap water ec. not that it's too high to use or anything, i'm just surprised that it's not lower with ro mixed in. if you had an ro filter you might consider using 65% ro or even 70% RO, as it will mean using less ph minus as well as a lower starting ec. anyway not to worry, as the phosphoric acid for ph down, also adds P to the tank so is not lost in that way.

i know it's shocking to think that we use no more then 2 thirds of what canna recommends and thats with nute hungry strains. i also used to think that folks must end up with problems using the full dose. but that's only the case with nute shy strains. a robust strain like PP or NLX, ICE etc, will do great even with the full dose, as long as you start out that way. that means your newly planted clones get ec 1.5 and very quickly work up to 2.7 most strains will adapt and prosper, as long as you start early enough. i just don't bother, as it seems a waste of nutes and my WW will never take it anyway, lol.

good for you on the drip setup. it will make your life so much easier. just set that timer to run and you can forget about it till your tank needs a refill. i can even leave my tank for 6 days of full water use, early on when they are small the tank can last even longer.

make sure you give each plant at least 2 drippers, better 4 with the size of your plants. you could safely go to 2 waterings a day if you wanted to. do you have a run off solution? will ya run to waste? might be better for this run.

anyway keep up the great grow show man, things are starting to warm up now, we should be seeing some bud porn shortly, i think?

peace and good growings

 

[Caligrown]

Hey Mojo, GM, Folks...

I noticed the leaf tips curling down in this photo. Looks to me like just the right amount of Nitrogen. They are maxed out on the N and ready to go into the flowering phase.

GM would you agree? They should begin eating more in the next few weeks and the reserves of nutes in the foliage will be metabolized?


-Cali

 

[Guest]

Yeah CG, I've kinda been concerned about the level of N too. I've cut back to half what I was giving - 6mL per gallon instead of 12 - and the leaves still look dark. Only the White Widow is looking dark. The Aurora Indica seems to take whatever I dish out in stride. I've been watching for any signs of burn but none have shown up. I'm feeding PK 13/14 at the same 6mL per gallon and have been for a week. Three more days of it and I'm dropping that from their diet till a couple of weeks before harvest.

The ec of my water (50% tap and 50% water from my dehumidifier tank) is about 0.2. When I get through getting the pH lowered to 5.6-5.8 and adding the nutes, the ec is at 1.65. My pH down adds a considerable amount the ec reading. By the time I subtract beginning ec from total ec I'm giving 1.45 ec of nutes, not even taking into consideration the adding of the pH down. So I guess I'm really giving about 1.25 ec of actual nutes. So go figure on the excess N appearance.

 

[gaiusmarius]

Follow your instinct man, if the ww is too dark, then sure give her less, i don't know about half, but less. my WW for example like a 2 week diet after day 14 of 12/12. that is to say her buds like it lol. but if the Aurora is taking the nutes, then you should give her what she can take, NL is known to eat well and Aurora is just another name for northern lights.

how far into 12/12, are you? did you ever check your return ec?

 

[Guest]

Wassup Gdude. What I failed to say in the post to CG was that I'd already cut back to 9mL per gallon and the WW didn't seem to lighten up. I knew that you'd had your most success by keeping their tummies growling a little so I've been trying to cut back to the point they turn a lighter green. Hasn't happened yet so I've gone to 6mL. If they show signs of lightening up, I'll see where it stops unless they begin to look stressed then of course I'll ease back up till they stabilize. As long as they're not showing any burn, my thoughts are no harm except to yield and that's the reason I want them to get a little hungrier. I needs ma yield up there dude since I only ended up with two plants, hehe.

Shots today

The white hairs are there on the Indica



The indica and it's top cola






The Widow and it's top cola








I have no way of knowing if this is good or just mediocre bud development for plants just over 3 weeks into flowering. Gdude I think you and I put our plants into 12/12 about the same day. As long as I get enough smoke to last till the next harvest I'll be a happy camper.

 

[gaiusmarius]

hey man, they are looking not bad at all for 3 weeks, specially the aurora. now that i see the ww i think you are right, back off the nutes and watch her buds, my ones actually need total ec of 1.1 for 14 days to get the colas kick started. but that is such a rare phenomena that i didn't think your ww would be the same. but she should have more buds by now, so if she is also dark green a little diet might well get her started producing more pistil hairs.

the aurora is nicely on schedule. and the WW is not far behind, with the size of those plants you should end up with a good yield.

i would stop the PK at this point, being after the 3rd week. remember the coco is made to be run mainly with the A+B nutes. you don't need to add pk on a regular basis. it's much safer to stick with the A+B, those two are the gasoline of the coco. by adding them you insure that the plant has everything it needs. the things not directly in the ingredients are produced by the coco in other ways, either released due to it's nature, or converted by the beneficials.

i hear you about it lasting till the next harvest. that's why it helps to use every bit. make hash or oil with the trim. also make sure you get the new plants ready and vegging while these are in the last 2 weeks. so you can harvest and straight away put new plants after a quick and thorough clean that is.

 

[Guest]

OK, here's an update. Got all the makings for my drip system.

I ended up going with the cement bucket idea Dalton suggested in a thread I started asking for help. Looked at doing the under bed storage thing that Indica Sativa suggested and couldn't come up with a way to make that work the way I wanted it to. Not enough capacity using only one and no way to tie two of them together and have them not leak.

Got the 2x3 cement mixing bucket and propped the two under bed Rubbermaid trays up on their outside ends and rested them on top of the reservoir in the middle. Got a problem even with the res height of 8 inches with the my White Widow not having enough clearance between the top of the plant and the light. Damned plant's about 4 1/2 feet tall and using the Hydrofarm yoyo light lifts I've been using, I can only get about 4" between the glass on the bottom of the 400w light and the top of the cola. Gonna have to tie the top of the plant down like gaius suggested in reply to me. Also gonna have to get rid of the yoyos and use a pulley system to raise and lower the lights as the yoyos waste about 10 inches above them in the way they hang. Right now I'm just pushing it over so the top isn't directly under the light. Planning on watering 4 times a day, only during daylight of course, as soon as I get all the plumbing run and hooked up.

Speaking of lights, had a digital ballast go bad on me. Bought the light (Project X, 400W switchable) and ballast about 3 months ago and had to drive to the shop where I bought it about 2 hours away. So during that time, basically for about 8 hours, both plants were under the 600w and man could I tell a difference in the loss of light. Guess to the plants they thought it was just a cloudy day, hehe.

Also got a Sentinel digital cycle timer to handle the routine. Gonna drop a small Maxi Jet circulating pump into the res too that will come on for about 30 seconds in between waterings to circulate the water/nutrients after the run off has drained back into the res. It'll also come in handy for when I add nutes and water to the res.

I hope I don't continue to have this height issue in future grows. How does everyone else keep the plants from getting so tall. Mine were only vegged for a couple of weeks and were about 14" tall when I put them into 12/12. I have one plant under 400w and the other under 600w and have alternated them back and forth. Always kept the distance from the tops of the plants and the bottom of the lights at less than a foot so they wouldn't have to stretch to get to the light. They already stretch enough on their own, lol.

Thanks again for the help guys.

 

[gaiusmarius]

hey there mojo

good news about the drip set up, it will make life easier for you.

the only solution to hight issues is to know your strain and veg it the right amount of time lol. anyway get them yoyos out and hang the lamps directly to the hooks on the ceiling. because now they are finished stretching. the other thing is pulling the top cola sideways and down. although this interferes with the top colas growth pattern. if hanging the light higher does the trick, that would be better. or even tyeing it to the side can help if that gives you the distance you need.

next time you will know to veg for even less time with that strain. of course, working with clones also makes the hight thing less of an issue as there is no questions of maturity before flowering.

the thing with the 400 lamp is no big deal for the plants. as you say, just slightly less sunny then usual for the plants.

man my SDv3's have also stretched like no bodies business. some of them must have stretched 5 times their own hight in the first 3 weeks of 12/12. most of them are double as high as the rest of the table which is full of WW. it's amazing how much energy these SDv3's have in them. they were some of the smallest clones of this batch to begin with. i was thinking if i was to do a table full of SDv3, i'd be able to get away with only 1 or 2 days of veg phase after planting on the slabs.

anyway, i'm rambling, peace and good growings

 

[Guest]

Cool, dude. Yoyos out and lights to the ceiling. Nice!

You're right about knowing the strains. The WW is a stretcher. Got buds all over her now, they just have to fatten up. The AA's shorter and bushier but she's got buds all over her too. What are the pros and cons in re-vegging each of them after harvest and using them for moms???

After this harvest, I'm going to do the vegging and flowering out in the main room that feeds air to the grow closet. The door of that room to the rest of the house is sealed when closed and the room is 12x14 and cooled by an 11,000btu window unit. Right now, I've got the vent to the a/c open so it will exhaust small amounts of the room's air to the outside while bringing in outside air. When I close that vent, it just recirculates the room air. So I'll be able to use co2 for future grows if I want to. I'm moving my office stuff out and into another room so I won't have to breathe the higher levels of CO2.

BEGINNING OF RANT ----
PLEASE!!! Anyone reading this that wants to post a message to me telling me that it's not harmful to breathe CO2 at 1500-2000ppm, save your time and energy. I'm in the health field and I know human physiology inside out and backwards and forwards. Short explanation ----- The body's designed to vent off CO2 to keep our body's Ph between 7.35 and 7.45. It can only do that if the concentration of CO2 is lower in air we take into our lungs than it is in our blood. And that stops happening at CO2 levels far below 1,000ppm. I'm by no means a know-it-all and I'm not trying to come off as one, but I do know arterial blood gasses like I know my own mother, hehe.
----END OF RANT

When I get moved out, I'll also be able to use the closet for clones and the rest of the room for veg and flower. Kinda like the two plants I have now and that's why I'd like to re-veg them if that's workable and cut my cloning teeth on them. I'll probably get some better plants in the future as I've got quite an assortment of seeds, but for right now, I can practice cloning with the two I've got.

Peace all

 

[Caligrown]

Excellent news about the co2 for the future. You got growing skills...you might as well get the most out of your efforts. Can we get a look at the new setup???

Peace Brother -Cali