Daylight and Fluoros

[daylighting]

Absolutely...I was trying to set it up with as little light as possible to keep the dark cycle dark. The trash bag thing.....bad idea. Hope my babies are ok!

The two older ones perked back up, but don't appear to have grown much (if at all) overnight. Hopefully they recover today and are doing well again tomorrow. This has been a stressful grow for them and I'm hoping they don't herm; indoor growing is a completely different ballgame from outdoor for sure. Here they are in their new home...

Got my BTI in yesterday and will use it with the next watering. The trap has caught two gnats, but I still see one or two buzzing around.

 

[wildgrow]

You really don't have to worry about absolute darkness while theyre still vegging. Its not a problem imo until you flip to 12/12.

 

[daylighting]

Well darn, they didn't even need to be in bags then. I'm going to give them another week, then start increasing the hours of light they're getting gradually, until they hit 20 on, 4 off. The tent is doing a beautiful job of containing the light.

 

[wildgrow]

Ive always got a clone/seedling closet going. I switch it back and forth between 18 hours if I only have rooted clones to 24 hours if I have fresh cuts and/or newly popped seeds.

 

[daylighting]

Interesting, and no herm issues?

There are tiny pinpricks of light along the seams in a few places that I may tape up, but since I run my lights during the day, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. It's much darker in the tent, even with the door open, than it was when the plants were outside it.

EDIT: Lights are now on 20/4. That should speed things up some! Stitch (the breeder) says they will flower and finish on 24/0 and he is very particular about ensuring his autoflowering plants really do autoflower, but 20/4 will give them some rest time and a lot of autoflower growers have had great success with 20/4.

20/4 will also allow me to veg my next strain before this one is done if I need to (Paradise Ice Cream).

Hung up the scrubber; now all I need is to cut the wire in the ducting and get another adapter so I can run the scrubber independently.

I'm quite happy with the tent for the price. All-steel push fit corners (no plastic connectors) and a total of four intake/outtake holes, along with a flap on the back for passive intake.

 

[wildgrow]

I had a herm in my last grow, but I flower in a completely different space on the other side of the house. And that plant was a really weird growing pheno, unlike any of the others reported for that strain.

 

[daylighting]

I found some hermies in my first indoor grow back in '99, and there were light leaks galore. That being said, some didn't herm at all. That experience has stuck with me though. Here's hoping they keep on ticking and the 20/4 gets them growing a little quicker!

I just noticed the largest one is putting out secondary growth right over the first serrated leaves...very strange! I don't think I've ever seen plants this small put out internodal leaves so early on.

 

[DemonPigeon]

I found some hermies in my first indoor grow back in '99, and there were light leaks galore. That being said, some didn't herm at all. That experience has stuck with me though. Here's hoping they keep on ticking and the 20/4 gets them growing a little quicker!

I just noticed the largest one is putting out secondary growth right over the first serrated leaves...very strange! I don't think I've ever seen plants this small put out internodal leaves so early on.

Welcome to indica branching patterns

on the light thing:

I've actually tried some of mine on 24 hours light for most of vegging and had no negative impacts.

but then I love to see how plants do in tough conditions, you know the kind of wattage I use
I grew some Panama Reds in coco with no nutrients at all! No herm or anything but very minimal yield (as you'd expect) it really shows how most of the carbon used in plants is taken from the air.

Most Seedbanks breed and grow in almost ridiculously perfect conditions, some strains can become so aclimitised to this (since there is no selection pressure for stress resistant plants and less resilient plants' genetics may be passed on) that they herm or yield badly in harsh environments.
How much stress testing is done on plants varies between breeders and even between their different lines, some are very good some however are a lot more hit and miss

Some plants are hardier than others and all have different optimum conditions, but, in the last 14 years things have come a long way. I have had very few hermies (in gender stable strains) even in my toughest tests certainly light leaks, extensive pot-binding, and irregular lighting hours aren't as dangerous as people think.

The biggest cause of herm is genetic disposition a very stable strain is hard to break even in the worse situations, one that fails the severe test badly will often throw a couple of bananas in good conditions too, though you might not always notice if you weren't expecting to find them.

 

[daylighting]

Good stuff DP, I feel better about the black trash bag incident now. I have to say you Europeans (the English included) have it good. Buying quality genetics over the counter is so much fun! The Ice Cream I'll be running next was bought at a store in Europe after perusing their catalog and discussing strains. Too funny! The guy at the store highly recommended the Ice Cream.

At the same time I'm considering popping a Thai/Lao sativa from Thai sticks that made it to the UK a few years ago. I found the seeds in my dresser and wondered where on earth they'd come from. Then I remembered someone here sent them to me to run outdoors...which I never got around to.

The Jets looked fine today, although they're probably wondering why the sun didn't set tonight! Let's see if they move along at all by the morning.

BTW, Panama Reds? That sounds like fun!

 

[daylighting]

Just picked up a cheap 4" axial fan for intake...it's an ultra-quiet 15W job that should allow for negative pressure with the scrubber. I have lots of 4" duct left so that's perfect. The 400W may still be too much, but I may pick up an air-cooled hood/cooltube for the next round if need be.

Day 19 and my largest plant is...a male! I don't mind at all, I would like to make some seeds for future runs once I'm better at this indoor malarky. They're all growing again. I won't attempt autos on 12/12 again I don't think!

Sowed another seed on the other side of the pot with the male in it. As soon as he busts his nut, he's gone. It's quite a nice, dense little plant for only 4-5" high. Ah well!

Here he is after a little spraydown. I sprayed the soil under the pebbles on the other side to sow the other seed, and then sprayed down the pebbles and the little guy while I was at it. Once it drys out some, it'll go back under the single CFL I've left for it.

 

[DemonPigeon]

Panama Red being the Red Pistilled sativa strains exported from Panama (and Columbia under the name "Punto Rojo" meaning "Red Point" in spanish)

Mine are actually from ACE Seeds, they're a mix of modern Green Panama and two Red Pistilled strains exported from panama and columbia in the 70's.

They don't guarantee them to express the red/pink pistils in all plants but I've been trying to select for red over the normal orangey coloured pistils.

Interestingly my current generation of panama seeds were actually harvested prematurely from those nutrient-less super-stessed plants and growing them out has shown some very strange things.
Here's one BullDogUK found.

A single seed produced two stems, one of which strangely had three distinct Cotelydon leaves but (even stranger) only two "true" leaves above them.

Another I recently popped for a guerilla grow has also produced rather strange leaves too, long thin cotelydons and it's true leaves also look unusual they don't appear to have tips.
Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to do much with them for a while.

I'd be interested to see if any of these strange morphologies stayed in the next generation if these plants were grown in good conditions.
If they do then boom, new stealth trait

but even if they don't I feel confident they will produce plants that can handle harsh circumstances

 

[daylighting]

Ah ok, I thought you were working with the legendary old school Panama Red. Ace Seeds is doing some pretty cool stuff with sativas! The tipless gene would indeed be great for stealth.

That's a very weird little seedling...you really do like putting your plants through hell don't you. I often end up doing that, but it's not intentional. lol

EDIT: Just found 'Panama' on Cannabiogen's site, but not ACEs. Are you sure it didn't come from ACE originally?

 

[DemonPigeon]

I'd like to get a more landrace version but it's still derived from Panama and it's red
It'll have to do for now I don't really know anyone who could provide me landrace genetics like that. :-S

My other Weird Seedling:

I'm trying to show the weird super-long cotelydons (the ones pointing to the sides), the next set of true leaves (not visible on this image) look rather more well formed than the tipless ones do , they might actually be reverting to proper leaves but I'd be interested to see if they look especially elongate like the cotyledons did. They are sativa but not the longest leaflets I've ever seen.

The way to learn what plants can tolerate and what they can't is to subject them to carefully controlled stresses

But I don't always stress them
Though I do keep the lighting wattages low

Theyre definately ACE Seeds (though my current seeds aren't the ones I bought, obviously lol They'd not particularly want people saying they sell mutants ) but Cannabiogen ones are meant to be the same.

 

[daylighting]

That is indeed a freakishly long coty!

My third Jet-47 seedling has whorled phyllotaxy and appears to be putting out two serrated leaves right on top of each other on one side and one on the other after I switched the lights from 12/12 to 20/4. Hopefully it evens out/grows well! My second one is growing very slowly and if it doesn't pick up, I might have to stick another seed in its pot to make up for it.

 

[DemonPigeon]

I love a Whorly Plant

The top view of them is so pretty, they look like stars usually anyway, I imagine some end up looking like a mess it depends on how many branches they have, how consistent the are etc. etc. but yeah I love them

 

[daylighting]

This one looks pretty freakish already...it'll be interesting to see how it turns out! I remember you mentioning whorlies in PM and I could tell you liked them. lol

Got a few things to do before I go check on them today, but I hope they're doing ok!

 

[daylighting]

Got my HPS, new bulb and 4" fan today. Hooked everything up. I was sent a 400W Philips bulb instead of the 250W I wanted, but I'm going to go ahead and use it; maybe I'm meant to run 400W!

The fan is whisper quiet and does exactly what I hoped it would; keeps temperatures bearable in the tent with it zipped up, even with the 400 burning. Then again, I have the air conditioning on. I'm going to switch it off in a few to see how much of a difference it makes.

The cord on the fan is very short, so I can't move the power strip up and down as much as I'd like to. Because of the way I was planning on running the lights (horizontally), that should be just fine. The CFLs are now horizontal and I raised the pots with some old boxes to get them closer. The 400 is obviously much, much brighter and with the LEDs, things should get moving. It's definitely going to help the soil dry out a little quicker with all that heat!

The second plant hasn't shown sex yet and is growing faster again. I managed to drop a few things on it while adjusting the CFLs (oops), but it's absolutely fine. I've removed the pot with the male temporarily as the soil will dry out too fast and I have a germinating seed in there. Once it's above ground and ready to photosynthesize, it'll go under the HPS.

It's hot and humid here, and with the HPS on without air conditioning, a little too warm. I tried the ballast at 50% earlier and it works fine. The ballast gets much hotter than I thought it would, but nowhere near as hot as my old magnetic ballast did.

I think I'll run the 400W on and off since I don't want to run it without air conditioning, and the plants are a little too small to use all that wattage at this time. Hopefully my second plant is a female, or it will definitely get the axe, even though I like the way it smells.

 

[daylighting]

The fourth seed hadn't popped, so I dug around for it and noticed the shell was still hard. Squeezed it open (I've had a lot of practice with the old seeds I tried to germ when I started this thread). Put it back in the pot and sprayed, and then poured on a little water. The water caused the soil to shift slightly. Dug back around about an hour later and I found the seed was already putting out a taproot. I'll leave it alone now.

Since my plants are still little, I'm cycling the HPS on and off. This keeps temps down, saves power, and also gives the plants time to rest before they get hit with the 507W burning over them right now. Apparently using the ballast to dial down the bulb causes a spectral change, so this is one way to use the big bulb without wasting power and running up the bill, and I don't need to get another bulb.

EDIT: my second plant is definitely catching up fast and loving the HPS. The male looks a little sad to be missing out on all the fun. I hope plant #2 is a female since she smells amazing. I'm pretty confident she's a she as she hasn't shown sex just yet, even though she was lagging, and then shocked in the bag. In a few days she may take pole position from the male.

I may start an Ice Cream in the meantime. Since they're feminized, I can take some clones and get them vegging. I might as well flower five or six clones if I'm going to be using a big light. That's if and only I get some solid work done this weekend. If I do, I'll hit the garden center and pick up a few things I've been meaning to get out there for.

I really want to run a halide instead of HPS. I recently discovered the halide spectrum suits plants much better than HPS, even though most people use HPS and HPS gives out more lumens/W. Maybe I'll pick up a 250 or 400W halide bulb locally, again, depending on how hard I work. I should be able to get a good quality bulb without having to order it in.

 

[DemonPigeon]

I do like how thorough your diary is

Keep us up to date, I'm looking forward to seeing the ice cream

 

[shokdee]

I should be able to get a good quality bulb without having to order it in.

From a Chinese streetlight? What color temperature you thinking of, and what about the LEDs?