Need a bit of advice

[Claude Hopper]

I'm with Sgt. Stedenko, start them in a starting mix for a 4-7 days before moving into the pre fertilized Miracle Grow. I use a jiffy pellet to start and then pop them into tall 52 OZ cups that have drainage slots cut in the bottoms.

I just tried the MG a couple of months back and I really like the growth I've gotten.

I check my plants daily but only water when the soil feels dry. Over watering kills.

 

[someotherguy]

As you are just starting out on this journey to become a cultivator you might want to consider coco as a medium rather than soil.

I personaly have been growing for only about 4 and a half years so i'm no expert and most of my experience has been with soil but I have run DWC's a few times, enough to know that the growth rate in hydro is definately faster.

Anyway, a few months ago I decided to try coco, hempy-bucket style and I am very impressed with the results, and not just in the growth rate but also in it's ease of use.

The thing with coco is that it is totally inert so you will need to do a little research to learn the basics, i'd try to explain and save you the trouble but there is a world of difference between knowing how to do a thing and knowing how to teach it.

Anyway, below is a link to the coco forum and be sure to check out the hempy-bucket threads. ...btw, hempy-buckets are a passive form of hydroponics that is almost idiot proof, ...hence my success? lol.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/forumdisplay.php?f=65577

Good luck and I can tell you this, I wish I had investigated coco hempy-buckets a long time ago.

Peace, SOG

 

[Deuce5]

Thanks for all the feed back, what I ended up doing is moving the plants back to the smaller cups (22oz tumblers). I mixed the soil with some perlite and drilled some holes in the cups for drainage. I raised the lights a bit to get some of the heat off them. Now I'm going to give nature a chance to do its thing. One thing I noticed was that the root system on the yellow plants were long and stringy and the healthy looking plants were short and thicker.

I'm going to check out the coco method

 

[B. Self Reliant]

I started doing a pc grow 2 weeks ago. I had 2 pcs (17"Hx15"Dx26"W). My temps were high and I wanted to grow bigger plants so I found a old wardrobe (42"H x 17"D x 21W). I love the new size. However I need to locate much quieter fans, I have 4 PC fans they are much louder then before, any recommendations? Also I'm using 5 CFLs (6500k 26w) as they were perfect for the PCs but now with the plants in the wardrobe I'm worried there is not enough light. Should I move to a HPS setup? If so what size HPS would be best for my setup?
Once I get the new fans in I will take some pics

Why not go LED? Spaces like yours are where LED's really shine. In my own cabinet-like space, a single 2' T5 tube (basically a 24w cfl stretched out straight) heats up my space more than my 126 watt LED fixture. Screw in all 4 bulbs to the fixture and although I still can only light about 2' sq, I have huge heat problems, certainly more than I would want to cool with PC fans. That same LED fixture measures 13"x19", so it's pretty much a perfect fit for your space.

You may even be able to turn some of your current fans off if you go to LED. I've ran HPS in small spaces but it's not easy. It's very dependent on the temp of the room the cab is in and you generally need a lot of air flow to keep it cool inside the cab. That's a problem when you can't have a real fan like a vortex fan working for you 24/7.

I understand your need for quiet fans. I expect my current vertical HPS run to yield about 20 oz's when dialed in. The same space run as a SCROG with LED's would probably produce about 15 ounces. The reason this is probably the last round I'll use HPS despite the higher yield is the noise from the fan. The HPS grow needs a 6" vortex to maintain reasonable temps, but the same space grown with LED's only needs a 4" vortex to maintain the same temps. I have a life outside of growing & I would rather have a quiet grow that yields 15 zips than a grow that is constantly worrying me but yields 20 zips. My point is that you can't add heat to a small space without lots of ventilation. Lower the impact of the heat source or increase ventilation.

Also, most small scale growers don't think about the possibility of expanding, yet most micro growers I've met have either expanded or given up gardening altogether. There's just too many fixed costs to want to grow on such a small scale for along period of time. I don't want to sound discouraging, but it's the truth. If you expand and you have a cabinet with a pile of computer fans on it you can't do much with it. On the other hand, invest your cash in a quality LED fixture, and if you do decide to expand you have a legit fixture that will grow a very real amount of bud when given the space to do so.

Just my two cents having done it before. Remove the heat source from the cab and a very small fan is all that's needed for ventilation. That should be about as quiet as it gets. Good luck!

 

[someotherguy]

Just in case you don't already know this, the easiest way to ' drill' holes in those cups or any plastic containers is with a soldering iron.

...and don't be intimated by coco or hempy-buckets as I was, it is proving itself to be the easiest method yet, you just have to be sure not to let them dry out .

Peace, SOG

 

[Deuce5]

Reliant, I hear what u are saying, I invested an enough time and effort to at least finish this one out and see what happens. I think the cabinet I have now is going to be big enough for my needs....I hope.

Sog, I took SGT advise and looked coco and ended up in hempy-buckets and I really like hemp buckets. It seems really easy to do. I need to read up on the who nuts thing because that is throwing me for a loop. I think I'm going to try doing the hempy-bucket after this grow. We will see..... I have 3 good looking plants now if they all turn out females (of the six I figure half will be male) and give me a little something something I will be happy

 

[Deuce5]

It looks like the plants are doing better. They all pretty much look like the one below 2 still have yellow Cotyledons and three have green ones and the last one the leaves are dieing, though I'm not ready to give up on that one yet.

I guess my next question is when do I give them nuts and change to 12/12 lighting. What are the nuts are recommended? they are only 11 days old, but I' trying to get ahead of the game.

In researching I found that when they hit 12" I should switch over to 12/12, which would leave me with about 2.5 feet for flowering.

The nuts researching is getting me more and more confused and easy recommendations?

 

[Bud-Monster]

good rescue. plants look much better!

When to switch to 12/12 is your choice, I think 12 inches is probably a good enough place to start. After your first go you can reflect and may wish to veg more next time and do some training to fill your space or grow more girls and veg less and flip sooner.

Ferts - get some Maxicrop Seaweed (brown bottle) and some general organic tomatoe/plant food. Thats a good a start as any.
Dont fert for 3 weeks, then start light, whatever your fertiliser bottle says, give it a 1/4 or 1/5 and gradually increase.

I use maxicrop with every watering at 1ml per litre, hard to over do it with that stuff, then on alternate waterings I add in some fert, only a few drops like 2 drops per litre. If you start with something simple like that you can adjust as you go.

If you underfert you can always add more. If you overfert, you will stunt your plants and hurt your harvest weight.

Best of luck with your grow!

 

[Deuce5]

Sorry I have been busy and not able to update this thread, the plants are looking good they are 22 days old counting germination. Man this process seems long, I need some females out of these six. Here the latest update, my watering is under control we had a 17 hour power outage so hopefully that didn't effect the plants. However I do have a question, when do I start nuts, I have been doing filtered water that has sat out 24-48 hours so far? Also when do I transfer to a bigger container? Below are some updated pics...same plant different angles a good recommendation of the other 5.

 

[Deuce5]

I know it has been a long time, but I moved the plants to 12/12 after 38 days of vegging. I believe 2 plants are showing sex. I think they are females, can someone confirm?

 

[Diesel_N_Blood]

Proud father to two fine young ladies.

Can we get a pic of the whole plant

P.S. what camera you using to get these pics. Makes me jealous.......

 

[someotherguy]

Yeah man, they both look female.

Peace, SOG

...btw, heres a shot of a young female exhibiting her first pair of pistils.

...and a shot of a male flashing his first balls.

...and a shot of an AK47 stud in full bloom I used to make a few crosses with.

 

[Deuce5]

The top two are the females, the three on the bottom are unknown. I shot the close up pics with a canon 50D and 100mm macro lens


Females


Unknown

 

[Diesel_N_Blood]

thanks for the answer.....I gonna have to step up my photography game...

 

[Deuce5]

So I check the sorority house and one male plant was found and I had a hermi. I threw both of them away. So now I have 2 females and 1 unknown, I'm hopping to know in the next day or so. I moved the remaining 3 into 10" containers. Below is the results of the 6 seedlings from bag seed.

1 Dead
1 Male
1 Hermi
2 Females
1 Unknown

I also have Bubblegummer, Grapefruit, and El Alquimista (Free) coming in, I plan on doing a hempy bucket and work on cloning for my next grow. I will try to get a picture of my grow area and plants today

 

[Deuce5]

Here is the pic of the cab. Also there is a pic of buckets (5L) I want to use in the hempy grow. Do you think there is enough room for 2 buckets or should I just do one bucket.

After this grow I'm going to make some upgrades to the cab. On the right side of the cab there is another portion of the cab that is blocked off and can't be seen in the pics. The dimensions of the section are 32"(H) x 10"(W) x 12"(D). I want to use it for cloning, any thoughts?

 

[Deuce5]

I have some questions guys, I went to the hydroponics store today and saw some hps lighting. Currently I'm running 6 x 26w CFL which gives me 156w total. So I have around 62w per sqft. What exactly is the benefit from going to a 150W HPS or maybe 1 150w CFL? Any thoughts on the system below and could I use it to veg and flower? This is planning for my next coco hempy grow.

I found it cheaper at other sites
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-System®-Grow-Light-Fixture/dp/B001JL0BWG

 

[Diesel_N_Blood]

Lumens would be the biggest difference. The typical luminous efficacy of CFLs is 60 to 72 lumens per watt, so (26x65)x6=10,140 lumens. Now with a 150w hps is 16,000 lumen. So you're gaining 5,860 lumen. Plus, it's the perfered flowering spectrum. Instead of buying that lamp. You should look into 150w security lamp and remote ballasting it. These lamps are $50. With more lumen. You're going to see more dense buds and fast/stronger growth. Fluor. can grow great buds, but it's easier with a hid. Another advantage to going to a single lamps is more than likely less heat. You only have one lamp producing heat not multiple lamps and heat sources.

Good luck.

 

[Deuce5]

diesel, something like this, with a different bulb? http://www.browns24-7.com/productinfo.php?i=B000UOHAZE Also can I still use the cfl 6500 for the veg stage?

So i ran into something rather interesting when I checked the plants this morning after 10 days of flowering one plant is doing lovely, I can see the bud locations starting to take form. However on one, I still have no indication of sex, the plant has got a little bushier (very little). On the last one the pistils are only on the main stalk, the branches are really short with no pistils (pic below). Both plants that have issues have shown very little vertical growth. Any thoughts? I'm tempted to throw out the other 2 and let the good one get all the light/room it needs.



Plant with just pistils on the stock but none on the short branches

 

[Diesel_N_Blood]

More like these.

$70
$60

also you local building superstore should have them.

I'd keep all plants to make sure. At least untill you have to make room.