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elusiveshame
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True. GNick has a point. I get you're trying to optimize your grow but make your adjustment and sit back and let them do their thing. Don't agonize over every detail. Just chronicle it for your next grow so that you can be pro active in your set up and minimize any issues that may pop up the next time.beyond your plant issues you have to find something else to do, your stressing them out everyday, touchy feely.. this/that..
True. GNick has a point. I get you're trying to optimize your grow but make your adjustment and sit back and let them do their thing. Don't agonize over every detail. Just chronicle it for your next grow so that you can be pro active in your set up and minimize any issues that may pop up the next time.
" I'm not going in there and petting them, whispering "soon"....there lays the problem......If you don't talk to them nicely and tell them they're pretty girls daily they'll give you headaches when they get in their teens.......just saying treat them like kids, give them good food in a healthy environment with plenty of exercise and encouragement and they'll reward you with your dedication to them with beautiful flowers at graduation......lol........ My girls like soft music to sleep by, I'm thinking of giving them a Himalayan salt lamp with accompaning woo woo musicI'm not agonizing or anything lol. I'm just asking questions to get clarification on things some people are saying. If you're referring to my "patience is killing me" comment, but I was being funny.
"Your lights are too bright"... okay, why? What are you seeing? I've looked up pics to see examples of light damage, and I'm not seeing that on my plants. If I'm missing something, help me out, that's all I'm asking.
I reduced the lights by recommendation, then the humidity crept up pretty high and the temperature dropped, so I put it back to where it was before. Using a light meter shows the range that's suggested in those charts. As for accuracy of the meter, I'm not sure.
The topping is something I was debating on doing or not since I did it to the other 2 early on. I also wanted to see if there were any major differences in the timing of doing that, which I learned there is, especially when it comes to starting to LST.
I've been making whatever adjustments I need and then leave them alone. I pop in the tent a few times to take some pics, but other than that, the last 2 mornings I've done some LST (on like, maybe 5 branches in total between 3 plants each day). I'm not going in there and petting them, whispering "soon" or anything. Any close up pics I've take is from viewable angles that don't have me reaching in there/moving things around.
The light to humidity ratio is perplexing to me I don’t understand how just a little more light can lower the humidity like thst?
" I'm not going in there and petting them, whispering "soon"....there lays the problem......If you don't talk to them nicely and tell them they're pretty girls daily they'll give you headaches when they get in their teens.......just saying treat them like kids, give them good food in a healthy environment with plenty of exercise and encouragement and they'll reward you with your dedication to them with beautiful flowers at graduation......lol........ My girls like soft music to sleep by, I'm thinking of giving them a Himalayan salt lamp with accompaning woo woo music
Could be yeah, I was looking at the whole. The leaves look to be shrinking back from the light instead of growing towards the light.Yea that is a contradictory statement. There is a balance for everything in life.
@FuriousStyles You don't think it could possibly just be genetics causing that look of the leaves?
This just my opinion I would wait to trim fan leaves, you want to remove leaves that are growing in towards the main stem. If you feel the fan leave is blocking new growth then remove only the part of the fan leave that's blocking new growth not the whole leaf. Yes by week 4 or 5 at the latest male plants make them self know by the little balls that sprout and turn to flowers. Female will have 2 little hair looking things that show up where the fan leaves connect to the main stem. Most growers go about 3 to 4 months in veg. state before flipping to flower. However depending on your tent size and how big your plants are you may have to switch to flower sooner. Pollinating is tricky keep the MALE plant OUT of your TENT or it will pollinate all you flower. If you plan to pollinate a single bud you must collect the pollen in a baggie of possible then you'll need a little brush to pollinate the single bud. I would pollinate the bud then use a spray bottle to spray the rest of the plant with water as that kills the pollen and will keep it from spreading to the rest of the bud in your tent. Pollinating is tricky in a tent but you seem to eager to learn so give it a try. I would recommend you try to get seeds you know the genetic from before pollinating just so you know what your growing and can ask or look up wha others have done just for some reference. Autos stay 18/6 for the whole grow that's what I use it gives you the rest grams per watt ratio so your waiting money on electricity. If you want to try and grow autos with photosynthetic plants you have to start them together the auto will be done around the time the photosynthetic plants are ready to flip to 12/12 so you can harvest you autos then 3 to 4 later you'll have photosynthetic plants ready to harvest. Here's the problem with limited space is the light intensity differs from seeding to veg to flower so its hard to start a new grow with plants in the flower stage. If you pollinate a auto or needs to be another auto. Photosynthetic male x female auto still will be a photosynthetic plant.Hey everyone!
So my dealer gave me a handful of seeds and I planted them in the first week of September in a "community" pot (8" diameter). There were 9 seeds and I got 5 good plants growing out of them (2 of them were incredibly tiny, and 1 of them just didn't want to survive), which is still more than I have room for in my tent. I don't know the strains (likely bag seeds my dealer acquired), but they seem to have indica leaves. Once they developed their first true leaves, I put them into their own small clay pots, and now that they've grown larger than those pots, I moved them into 5 gallon fabric pots as their final spot.
Since I have a handful of plants to experiment with, I wanted to top 2 plants, possibly LST one of them, LST a non-topped plant, and then let 1 grow naturally (I don't have room for all 5 in my tent, so one of them is being given to a friend).
Earlier this week, I decided to top 2 of the plants. Both were roughly the same size, each having their first true leaves, a set of 3 leaves, a set of 5 leaves, and a set of 7 leaves. The first plant I topped, and I know I missed. I cut too low. The second plant seems to have been done properly as it's growing 2 new stalks from the cut.
The first plant is bushing out fine, but the too low of a cut has a single growth of a new main stem coming out, and it's already being shaded by the growth by the cut. The plant looks healthy, but I suspect a very low yield from it now. No biggie - you can't always with learn without making mistakes.
The second plant is doing very well.
I was debating on doing some LST today, but I think I'm going to avoid it this grow. I have a trellis net that I'm going to use, so there's at least something to help spread the canopy. If it's highly recommended I do LST, please let me know.
So, my babies are now a month old from planting, and I'm trying to be prepared for the next stage of the grow. This brings me to my questions:
1.) When should I start trimming the plants? Now? Should only the bottom fan leaves be removed? The 4 nodes are just coming in now, so I'm not sure if it's too soon to start trimming, or if I should wait another week or 2.
2.) When should I be able to tell the gender? The true leaves popped out about 3 weeks ago. I'm assuming fairly soon, yeah?
3.) How to flip into flower mode? Right now I'm running 18/6 with the lights and I know I have to change to a 12/12 cycle. Do I just do this when I think the plants are at a proper height (I know to expect 2x the height growth during flower), or will the plants tell me when?
4.) Can you pollinate a single flower on a plant?
4a.) Can you pollinate an auto flower?
In regards to question 4 - I'd like to eventually be 100% self sufficient in harvesting not only flower, but seeds as well. I know with my current plants, it's likely that I'm not going to get some top quality stuff, but I figure it's a learning process, so why not start with what I have? Can I harvest the pollen sacks from a male plant, then pollinate a single bud to get seeds? I don't want to pollinate an entire plant, so I'm looking for best options. I don't have the room, or setup for clones (kids in the house, so I have very limited space on where I can grow, and we're heading into the super cold season now, so outside grow isn't happening for a few months). Would it be better to just get some of the weed spray off amazon (marketed for weed, but it's just a mix of colloidal silver in a spray bottle) and spray a branch of a feminized plant instead of mucking around with an unknown strain male?
5.) I've ready auto's should be on a 18/6 or 20/4 or 24/0 light schedule. Is this from veg state onward, or can the germination/sapling stage use 12/12 just fine? I ask because I'd like to ideally start cycling plants in and out of the tent as one group is finishing up, and I have photoperiods in there now, but when I get ready to harvest them (likely mid January I think), I'd like to have some auto's already hitting the veg phase ready to go.
Thanks!
Could be yeah, I was looking at the whole. The leaves look to be shrinking back from the light instead of growing towards the light.
Had the same issue myself starting out, I was like Im gonna run my lights full blast wahoooo. My plants told me...uh...no.
Here's yesterdays update pic:
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Nothing much to really say, so we'll see how they're doing tomorrow :)
I always get a giggle every time I see a temp/hygro parked right on the wet medium. Wondering just what useful info that provides? Can you elaborate on the reasoning for that? Get a quality temp/hygro ready at canopy height and base your decisions on that, not trying to decipher all the other sensors etc. are reading and try to make heads or tails of it.
Don't know about running any lights full blast unless you know your lights but I'll just leave that one alone....a phone app meter puts me nice n close to where I want to be as well as the visual cues.
Your plants look fine, you really need to get this grow under your belt so you know how your system is going to work for you and dial in accordingly over time, key words "over time" Ma Nature changes everyday, you will learn what those effects are and how they affect your plant and grow. That's my best advice.
I have a thermometer on the soil strictly for temperature purposes. The hygrometer part of it just happens to be a feature on a fairly cheap ($9) device, and I know it won’t be accurate as it’s sitting on a moist surface. I like to see the temp gradient is all, nothing more. Normally it’s not on the soil, but the edge of the pots. I just forgot to move it back before I took that picture.
I have a hygrometer and temp sensor near the top, and another a little more than halfway down the tent that I use to monitor the humidity.
As for the lights - they weren’t on full blast :p (just 80% haha). When I set up the tent, the lights didn’t come with any manual so I just kind of guessed. It seemed to work. A few folks here mentioned light issues, and someone did PM me some info on what to look for and idk how I missed some tips yellowing (only on one plant so far), which is why I started looking at the environment outside of the tent last night.
Also got a good tip on a dehumidifier for the tent. I’m not convinced I need one just yet (though I do have a small unit I can toss in there if I need to), since the humidity in my basement shouldn’t ever be more than 50% between my pellet stove and big dehumidifier that runs year round (well, more or less). As long as it’s actually running
The other thing that threw me off with the lights is there’s 5 light settings, but vivosun says 4. After some googling, I found the values for the 5 setting version of the light (vs2000 led w/ Samsung diodes). So the lights lowest setting is 40% power, then 50, 60, 80, then 100%.
Currently, as of last night, it was set to 50%. Everything is looks good this morning when I checked, so I’m not too concerned with the humidity as I was the other night. I did snag a phone all for luminosity strength, and 80% on the lights read low, but if they’re going to thrive on less light, and lower my bill in the process, then who am I to argue?
And while it might sound a little silly about the humidity, I really don’t want to risk any environment getting contaminated with mold as I have a young child with asthma (who’s been admitted to the hospital 3 times this year due to it) and a pet with asthma, so I need to make sure I’m not creating an additional health risk for my family. My basement is wide open with floor registers and I get a very nice breeze through the house this time of year with the pellet stove fan, floor fans, and ceiling fan to circulate and heat my house comfortably, so any airborne spores could be spread easily through the house. Again, it might be a little over the top, but I’d rather minimize any risk when possible.
In my humble opinion you are losing a lot of grow space by not filling your pots, it looks like 2 or 3 inches from the top, thats valuable real-estate for roots to grow...Try filling about half full then bounce the container on the floor a few times to settle it, then fill it about 1 inch from the top, bounce again, then fill it back to 1 inch from the rim...Well, since nobody seems to want to answer my questions, I guess I'll just use this thread as a grow journal and if folks want to chime in, feel free :P
This is my setup: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093BL79VG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details (with the addition of fans and a humidifier + hygrometer triggered outlet)
I initially had the light setting set to the first setting (20% power), but ended up upping to 60-80% currently.
I planted a handful of seeds back on September 10th. First pic:
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Photo taken on 9/17/2022. The seeds are in the top grey pots. 5 seeds planted in each (one of them was a dud from the start as I'm 99% sure it was popped/flattened, but said "screw it"). Soil is whatever potting soil my local shop had (I forget the name, but it seems similar to fox farm/miracle grow/etc from what I can tell). Bottom cloth pot has radishes, other cloth pot has carrots, and the 2 in bowls are apple trees.
On the 19th, I transplanted the 5 best seedlings to their own individual smaller pots (photo taken on 9/24/2022):
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I noticed some stretching, so I placed an art stool in the tent to lift up some of the plants.
They started growing fairly quick at this point, so I transplanted the best 3 into 5 gallon cloth bags and kept 2 in the clay planters. I did this late on the 29th of September. Here's a picture from the 30th:
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I probably should've waited to transplant them, but hey, first timer here. Also, I noticed some lights leaking out of the windows, hence the mess of duct tape (it's since been removed and I've taped out the outside of the tent, as well as have curtains to drape over it when the time comes to flip to flower). Radishes are 4 days from harvest here, which will give me another cloth pot to use. I also repurposed one of the grey potters for lettuce, because why not?
Picture from October 1st (just 1 day later):
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Nothing changed here. Just keeping on keeping on.
Progress pic from 10/4:
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I topped the 2 right plants. The top right plant I topped too low (first time grower, thus first time topping). As soon as I made the snip, I knew I went too low. It's started to recover, but I'll touch on that a little later. The bottom right plant I snipped at a good spot. The others have been left alone. Nothing else was done, though I did harvest the radishes later on in the day (and boy were they delicious). I did notice the yellowing on the fan leaf of the top right plant. This leaf kind of confused me - it was showing 6 fingers. Turns out, the 7th finger was just incredibly tiny and also yellow. I was a little concerned about this, so I started keeping a close eye on it.
Progress Pic on 10/5:
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Some growth, nothing crazy. 4th plant moved to a cloth pot and watered. The yellow leaf has grown, but still yellowing. Otherwise nothing else was done.
Progress pics from 10/6:
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That pesky yellow finger is still yellowing, but still growing. The really tiny yellow finger starts to make an obvious appearance. We'll call this plant "Nemo" from now on. I started using nutrients today: Fox Farm Big Bloom and Grow Big, at 1/3rd recommended dosage. I'm not sure what the nutrient contents are in the soil at this point, so I don't want to overload it with things. I'm already insecure about my watering schedule (feels like I watered too much in the beginning, but now I'm going every 3-4 days, depending on weight of the pot + finger knuckle deep test). This picture was taken right after watering. I probably could've watered them more since cloth pots seem to run off quicker, especially if you water one side more than the other, but I'm afraid of over-watering still.
The top left plant didn't get any nutrients as I had just transplanted it and watered it the day before.
I was also kind of skeptical with using nutrients. I understood that soil would need to replenish nutrients, but I figured that would be done with compost and fertilizers rather than these liquid solutions. I also removed the 5th plant from the tent and is now resting on my kitchen table. A friend is supposed to take it off my hands, so I'm hoping that it survives long enough.
Here's 3 more pictures from 10/6:
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I saw a noticeable difference throughout the day (unsure if the pictures really capture that).
The 2 topped plants:
- The one I topped too low (top right) started regrowing a single stem, but very small and very slow.
- The one I topped at a good spot (bottom right) has now sprouted 2 new stems
Progress pic from 10/9 (2 of them):
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I had to move the bottom left plant away from the fan as one of the fan leaves was starting to go into the fan. Since the lettuce is a slow grower / doing "okay", I swapped positions with it. Unfortunately, due to the negative pressure the air system creates, the fan leaves get bent by the tent walls.
Plants are doing well. I watered (without nutrients) as the pots felt very light and very dry to the touch.
Progress pics from 10/10/2022 (3 of them, morning, noon, and night):
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Lots of growth over the last few days, and the plants appear to be looking healthy.
The topped plants:
- The top right (topped too short) has a tiny stem growing from the cut. It's completely shadowed by the leaves growing from the node there. This one has really bushed out. The yellowing still has only affected only those 2 bottom fingers, so I'm not too worried about it at the moment.
- The bottom right (topped in a good spot) has 2 solid stems growing from the cut now, and looks great.
Next watering is going to either be Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the soil dryness. This feeding will also be with nutrients. I'm debating between using the same amount as last time (1/3rd of the dose), or upping it to 2/3rds. The top left plant will be getting nutrients for the first time this week.
I'm also going to start doing some pruning before watering. There's a handful of leaves that are going toward the main stalks that I want to cut away, plus I'm going to start trimming off the bottom single and 3 finger leaves.
I also ordered some garden wire and folder clips to start doing low stress training. I figure the topped plants have had enough time to recover by now, so LST won't stress them out too much, and I've come to the realization that if I want to keep the growth in check, I'll have to LST, even with the plan of going screen of green.
Currently the plants are ranging between 7.75" in height to 8.25" in height. When they hit another 4-5 inches, I'll set up the net and start fishing the bud sites through it, and when they hit a height of 16-18", I'm going to flip to flowering. My intention is to flip by November 1st, but we'll see what the plants dictate around that time.
Other potential concerns:
Since it's nearing winter time here, the humidity is going to drop + I use a pellet stove, so my humidity can drop to 20% in the basement (where my tent is), and even though I have a humidifier going into the tent - I hope that's enough to help. I have another small humidifier down here as well (my office is actually down here, which is why I have so many pictures), but it's 1000+sq wide open space, so it's tough to raise the humidity of the whole basement.
I'm also considering taking the lettuce out, but I'll give it a few more weeks, or until it's shadowed by the weed.
No genders have shown yet - I'm hoping this week, maybe next week for that answer. I think I see some signs of a female or 2, but I'm not 100% sure.
Since these are bag seeds, do I get to name the strains? :P
Anyway, let me know what ya'll think, and if you have any tips/suggestions/notice things that I should be doing, please feel free to tell me!
Good tip, I tend to water or feed after a transplant to help seat the girls in their new home. When I do that my pre dampened soil shrinks back into the pot so I top it off with more soil water/ feed it some more until the plant and the pot are full and watered/fed. I'll keep adding more soil if I see holes on the top from watering/feeding until I have a nice flat surface about 1" from the lip of the pots.In my humble opinion you are losing a lot of grow space by not filling your pots, it looks like 2 or 3 inches from the top, thats valuable real-estate for roots to grow...Try filling about half full then bounce the container on the floor a few times to settle it, then fill it about 1 inch from the top, bounce again, then fill it back to 1 inch from the rim...
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