13/11 from Seed

[colorfullyben]

Strain: Unknown bag-seeds with average high
Grow room: A small cellar with two shelves
Lights: 150W MH, 150W HPS
Ventilation: Two little (25W each) exhaust fans and two 20W ventilators run during light hours.
Medium: General purpose potting soil, perlite

***​

Hello, this will be my second grow (first one still goes on: Stressful! First Grow...)

The upper shelf is for the 'youngsters' and is lit by a 150W MH. The lower shelf is for 'adults' and is lit by a 150W HPS. 13/11 cycle will be used for the entire room. Seedlings will grow under CFLs (18/6) for about 1-2 weeks. The seedlings will be transplanted from plastic cups to 1 liter pots (0.3 gallons) and will be put on the youngsters' shelf. When the sexes are determined (expect this to happen early because of the light cycle) the females will be transplanted into 9 liter (3 gallons) pots.

New seedlings will be coming and so will be a perpetual harvest. Expected harvest time is less than three months.

I'll use very low dosages of a general purpose vegetating nutrient solution for the 'youngsters' and a general purpose flowering nutrient solution for the 'adults.'

The room temperature will be 26-28C during light hours and 23-25C during dark hours. The relative humidity of the grow room is 45-50% during the light and 50-55% during dark.

The plants will be listening to Bob Marley, Beethoven, Wagner, Central Asian bardic music and so on

Any advice or comment is appreciated. Here is the grow room:

 

[colorfullyben]

Some Voodoo!

Some Voodoo!

I recently read a thread somewhere about ethylene, feminizing seeds. I decided to give it a try.

Kept the seeds in a air-sealed jar with a banana peel. Replaced the banana peel and aerated the seeds every two-three days. Did this for about two weeks. The decomposing banana peel is said to release ethylene which is said to feminize the seeds.

 

[colorfullyben]

10/28-30/08
Pre-germination with paper towel and distilled water.


10/30/08
Planting in the plastic cups.




10/31/08 - Day 1
First sprouts under 18/6 with 65W CFL.




11/1/08 - Day 2
Most of them have sprouted...

 

[colorfullyben]

Day 5

Day 5

11/4/08 - Day 5
Out of 24 seeds, two didn't sprout and two fell down:




Rest look ok, if not a bit too stretched...

 

[Dr Dog]

you are quite good at taking pictures, some of those are super sharp looking, and I like your little greenhouse

How do you know how exact your room temps will be? I normally play that as a waiting game, and deal with what happens, getting a room hot is never a problem, cooling it down becomes tougher.

I will be following your grow, i want to see what turns out here, and if you could get that light closer

 

[colorfullyben]

you are quite good at taking pictures, some of those are super sharp looking, and I like your little greenhouse

How do you know how exact your room temps will be? I normally play that as a waiting game, and deal with what happens, getting a room hot is never a problem, cooling it down becomes tougher.

I will be following your grow, i want to see what turns out here, and if you could get that light closer

Thanks Dr. The reason the pictures are good but the plants are not, could unfortunately be because of that i'm more interested in how things look than how they are. Only if that is to mean anything at all, since how something looks is directly related to how it actually is

There is a another grow (5 plants) going on in the grow room with the same light and fan cycle and the temperature of the room is around 25-29C (drops 2-3C during dark). So i just thought it wouldn't change much when these seedlings are put into the room in 0.3-gallon pots. Yes the temperature was indeed a problem in the room. I reversed the intake fan in order it to work as an exhaust, now two exhaust fans run continuously during light hours.

Thanks for your concern.

 

[JWP]

Bro they are falling over and dying for two reasons

1. Damping off ... check out this thread here ... one way to fix: jiffy peat pellets. germ in them and then move them into your regular medium.

2. Light... u need more man! at least 2 x 18w fluro's ... clf's work... but...

Edit: More will fall over... im %100 sure of that! .. How many more have fallen over?
Bro straws. Cut them down the side and put them arround the stem to support. Or take the plants out of the cups and take 1inch off the bottom of ur medium then put em back in and back fill higher up the stem as far as you can

Dont wory mate... i wasted a LOT of expensive beans before i realised, rather found out that it was damping off.
Now i germ exclusivly in jiffy peat pellets. Never lost a plant to damiping off since i converted



I checked out your other grow. Your plants look good once they get going. Your setup looks good. Clean and tidy. You will be a pro grower in no time flat!

 

[Dr Dog]

Bro they are falling over and dying for two reasons

1. Damping off ... check out this thread here ... one way to fix: jiffy peat pellets. germ in them and then move them into your regular medium.

2. Light... u need more man! at least 2 x 18w fluro's ... clf's work... but...

Edit: More will fall over... im %100 sure of that! .. How many more have fallen over?
Bro straws. Cut them down the side and put them arround the stem to support. Or take the plants out of the cups and take 1inch off the bottom of ur medium then put em back in and back fill higher up the stem as far as you can

Dont wory mate... i wasted a LOT of expensive beans before i realised, rather found out that it was damping off.
Now i germ exclusivly in jiffy peat pellets. Never lost a plant to damiping off since i converted



I checked out your other grow. Your plants look good once they get going. Your setup looks good. Clean and tidy. You will be a pro grower in no time flat!

good eye, did not even notice that picture, and some sound advice you should follow here. I like teh straw idea, I will have to try that next time. I use coated paperclips personally

 

[colorfullyben]

Dr. Dog and JWP, thanks.

11/5/08 - Day 6

I eliminated! the three tallest sprouts. Put some more soil to the cups (tightened the loose soil to gain some space). Added two more CFLS (65W, 25W, 14W). They look better:




11/6/08 - Day 7




11/7/08 - Day 8

 

[colorfullyben]

11/8/08 - Day 9

The seedlings are put into the grow room, under a 150W MH with 13/11 light cycle:

 

[colorfullyben]

11/10/08 - Day 11

Here they are after two days of 150W MH with 13/11 cycle. Under 120W of CFL, the seedlings had about 750 lumens. Now under a 150W MH they have about 1500 lumens and not to mention the difference in the spectrum quality.

I decided not to use CFLs at all from now on. See how their progress is better than it was when they were under CFLs:

 

[Dr Dog]

looking pretty good

You should start to see them take off a bit now, now that they have their roots spreading

 

[our kid]

those babies look to be growing well keep up the good work cheers our kid

 

[colorfullyben]

Dr Dog and our kid, thanks.

11/11/08 - Day 12

 

[FiveLeggedGoat]

Nice goin' ben.

I like your posting style man, nice and clean.

Can't wait to see these babies all grown up.

K+ for sharing!

 

[colorfullyben]

FiveLeggedGoat, thanks a lot.

11/15/08 - Day 16

Today the seedlings were transplanted from plastic cups to 1-liter pots. They will be transplanted into 3-gallon pots when their sexes are determined.

Some seedlings had missing leaf sets (p1), some were sick (p2,3), some were looking like males. They've gone. Also the sick seedlings' roots have molds... I guess some of this is due to the ethylene treatment (banana peel thing!) applied to the seeds at the beginning (some seeds already had mold on them when i forgot to aerate the jar for a couple of days).




Out of 24 tissue-soaked seeds; two didn't sprout, two fell down, one couldn't form true leaves (though, it was quite determined to go on with the cotyledons it had), three had genetic disorders, four were taller than the others, and two were not necessarily better than the rest! So 10 spirits were "naturally" selected.

 

[colorfullyben]

11/18/08 - Day 19

The MH bulb i have is 3000K and the HPS is around 2200. Interestingly, my MH bulb (Philips MasterColor CDM-TD) is considerably stronger than the HPS, it also has a balanced color spectrum (way better than a regular HPS has). So i thought i could switch the bulbs of the shelves. Now the strong and well-balanced MH shines over the flowering plants and HPS is on the seedlings.

Unfortunately, although it's been only three days under the HPS, stretching is clearly visible, huge internodes. I think i should get another one of these CDM-TD bulbs for the vegetative shelf. HPS is no good for vegetative growth especially when 13/11 schedule is used...

Other than that, the babies look ok. They've formed their first five-bladed leaves and most of them have three, four nodes. The shortest one is about 6cm, the tallest one is no less than 11cm, most is around 7cm.

 

[colorfullyben]

11/21/08 - Day 22

Eliminated four more "male-looking" seedlings for the new coming seeds which are busy cracking in water right now. Now there are four seedlings from two different strains with similar highs.

 

[colorfullyben]

11/23/08 - Day 24

Today i noticed a hermaphrodite (or maybe a rather strange male?) and removed it.

 

[spaceghost22]

I'm very interested to see how this all pans out. This should be a good case study in flowering from seed. Good work Ben, keep doing it.