Help-a-newb! CFL/Rubbermaid/Soil [First Grow Ever]

[clay]

hey guys, I got a quick question.

These plants have been flowering now about two weeks...

is it possible I would be seeing pinkish or orange-ish hairs on them at this age? Specifically the one that appears to be more sativa-ish.
Illl try to get some close-ups with a good camera to show you what i mean... could that happen this early?

 

[komeropoika]

mmm.. looking nice. Good luck for your grow, hope you'll get some fine bud

Don't know about the color of the hairs but everything is possible

 

[clay]

Picture update time!

11/26 (not quite 2 wks since pistils showed)

 

[clay]

11/29

 

[clay]

11/30
These are the buds that are turning colors. These are on the plants that appear to be more of a sativa..long thin leaves.

Is this normal for 2-ish weeks into flower?

 

[HerbGlaze]

Yeah some plants in veg stage show signs of color, thats normal.

And if you want them to turn to darker more extreme colors try to cool down your temps in the last week
or so in flower.

Your plants look healthy and cant wait to see the harvest, great grow so far mate!

 

[clay]

Komeropoika - thanks for the kind words

HerbGlaze - appreciate your input. Glad to hear I'm on the right track. I can't wait for harvest myself I wish I could get my temps down. I have this in an outdoor closet, so it always stays a little above ambient temperature, but I'm in south Florida. So its like low-mid 80s in the box with 6 CFLs (3@23w-6100k, 3@42w-2700k)


My current thoughts/questions about this grow are:

- As you can see by some of the pics above, I'm getting some yellowed leaves, but I don't think it's nitrogen-deficiency related.. I think its from being pinned against the side wall of the pot, or the box, or something, so they aren't getting light... So should I prune these leaves?

- While i'm on the topic of pruning, (and don't worry, I'm not looking to get crazy on my plants, just getting this out there).... I read somewhere about someone pruning the bottom "sucker buds" ... what do you guys think about this practice? Worthwhile?

- Finally, I've been LST'ing, but should I ever remove the LST? Or just leave everything in place and let it finish ?

 

[Sexologist420]

Sup dood, thats badass you got some pink bagseeds!!! My girls started getting orange hairs a few weeks into flower. Skunky girl that is. I left the twist ties(what I used for LST) on...if you take em off the plant would straighten its self out I would think. Keep em fly.

Pce

 

[clay]

hey Sexo, Im pretty excited about the pink also..certainly wasnt expected.. and its on my favorite plant too. I suppose I should come up with a naming convention.. i hate saying "the sativa-y looking one" and "the one in the back right" .. heh.

Lets see..there are 4 of them... I would call them Howard, Fred, Robin, and Artie... but the guy names are probably bad luck.. I'll see what I can come up with.


So what i'm really wondering is: is there an age when crystals/sugar start to appear? I know the old anti-CFL growers used to say that using CFLs would cause buds with no crystal, but obviously thats not the case.. I just looked thru AmBr0sia's thread, and he's got crystals on his girls already, but I think they might be a bit older than mine, plus he's under 2x150w..

any help?

 

[clay]

ok.. regarding my "lack of crystal" question...

so, I think my temperatures are high.. way too high. I want to say that at the bud level its in the mid to upper 80s.. this is because my box is in an 'outdoor' closet, and i'm in Florida, so our temps outside are in the mid to upper 70s right now. And while the box has a fan for heat exhaust, the closet itself doesnt get very good ventilation, so I think I'm just recycling warm air.

Just from looking at the girls, it seems like growth has slowed in the last several days.. so i'm not sure what to try.. i was thinking either:

- moving the box to an closet inside (although right now I have no carbon filter, but moving it indoors would probably require putting one on)

- should i remove some lights? (currently I have a 3socket vanity with Ys in each socket.. i have three 42w 2700k bulbs, two 26w 6500k bulbs, one 26w 2700k bulb). Is this too much?

- what about freezing a gallon of water, then sitting it in front of the intake holes to maybe pull some cooler air inside?


And then one other issue is that...since I have 4 pots inside an 18gal Rubbermaid, room is tight... so some of the leaves have pushed themselves up agains the side, and the part of the leaves that are pinned start yellowing/browning... (i suppose this could also be heat related). So should I prune this leaves ? (the whole leaf or just the brown part? so far I've just been taking off the brown..) The other option would be to take one whole pot out and ditch my crappiest plant... but that just feels wrong to abandon one of my girls...but that would give the three good plants some room to move around.
Anyway, I could always take the one I'm removing and just find a nice guerilla spot to plant it outside

 

[clay]

12/04 Pic update (about 18 days of flower) the weather has been cooling off some, so think that has helped to create this....frost!



I like this one cause of how uniformly the buds are coming out:




Everyone together, lots of little buds!




The three best colas:

 

[clay]

12/07 pics (3wks of flower)

The gang:



Snowing in florida:



So here's a question... how you guys feel about these 'ancillary buds' down at the base of the plant? i've heard of ppl who say to prune them so the the bigger buds get more energy focused on them.. thoughts??




And finally.. I'm here to say that LST is crazy technique..for example, the two plants I'm about to present were seeds from the same batch of herb. So, while they could be different "phenos" of the same plant, they appeared to be about the same (size and shape of leaf, plus they're in the same soil, same pot size, etc). Then along comes LST.. I tried to train them both in about the same fashion... pulling the stem down along the edge of the pot as they grew. I also continued to apply additional LST even so far into these first few weeks of flower. I'm kinda trying to apply a spiraling effect keeping them somewhat towards the middle of the pot if possible (not possible on them all).
SOOOO anyway, my point is this... same soil, seeds are from same plant, same LST fashion..and look how differently they are progressing:

This one is slightly larger, and has produced several shoots that took right off and are now popping out buds at the top.. several little towers on this one:


And this one seems to be taking more of a 'stairway to heaven' approach...several smaller buds have formed along the stem, but they are not taking off into tall shoots of their own...so far:


And I know we shouldnt be too specific on here.. but I thought I'd throw in a picture of where i live.. dont send the feds..

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Definitely clip all the sucker growth down more than say 4-6 inches from the lights. That's all the leaf and bud growing down there. Depends on your light penetration.

When you cut that growth off the plant focuses on the remaining buds.



I don't see leaves dying from being pressed against the container. I see a different problem than that. Don't know what it is though.


Looks badass

 

[clay]

Definitely clip all the sucker growth down more than say 4-6 inches from the lights. That's all the leaf and bud growing down there. Depends on your light penetration.

When you cut that growth off the plant focuses on the remaining buds.



I don't see leaves dying from being pressed against the container. I see a different problem than that. Don't know what it is though.


Looks badass

This of course leads me to another question that I'm sure runs thru every new grower's brain at some point....

say I cut this 'sucker growth' at the bottom.. how old must a plant be for it to have reached enough maturity that drying and smoking these sucker buds might actually get you high?

Some of these plants have little buds popping out all over.. how much should be cut? Since my plants are LST'ed down pretty low at the moment, i'm not even sure the top of the SOIL in the pots is more than 6 inches from the lights


WHERE IS "QUAZI'S CANNABIS PRUNING GUIDE" WHEN I NEED IT!?!?! Hurry Quazi, get on that!

 

[clay]

** Please note that this is sort of a duplicated post. I started a thread in the infirmary, I'm just putting this here because there are some ppl who are not active in this community, who I know are following my thread. I hope no one minds too much.


I have problems on 2 of my 4 plants.

Issue 1:
Most leaves appear to be ok, but as you can see in the pic they are browning/yellowing but from the middle out it seems.. this plant had blood meal, bone meal, lime (pelletized not powdered im afraid) and worm castings added to soil.



Issue 2:
Lower leaves only are getting turning a very pale yellow, almost white, in places. This plant is is a different type of soil. It is just stuff I dug up outside, to see what would happen (it's mostly sand). It did not get any of the orgranic goodies that the other one has.


When watering I use rain water (6.8ish), molasses, and a drop or two of SuperThrive and a squirt of Shultz 10-15-10 per gallon. I normally go 3-4 days between watering..it gets to dry out pretty well because of my lighting vs work schedule, I can't always get to them when the lights are on.


As a third question, since I'm in here already, is about pruning of "sucker growth" per my last couple of posts in here.

Here is a pic of my biggest/oldest (by 2 wks) sativa-ish plant. The angle plus the LST'ing makes the picture kind of deceiving... so its not as big or tall as it looks (I should have put something in for scale) but figure that from the lowest point of bulb, to the soil, is about 9inches right now..


so do you folks think I should clip out any of that growth towards the bottom? If so, at what plant age will drying/smoking a premature bud actually start to get me high?

 

[clay]

nothing? no one?

 

[BL4ZE20]

Looking good clay. My first grow ever was started in some rubbermaids under cfl's, i only had one plant but it was also sativa and a bunch of the hairs turned pink for a while it was pretty cool.
Your gonna end up with some nice smoke. Like someone else said it's a great feeling to be able to smoke the herb that you've grown yourself.
As far as the leaves turning colors and stuff i'll leave that to the infirmary guys since they're a lot more knowledgable on that subject.

And about trimming the lower bud sites... i've never done it myself i've always left all the undergrowth but it normally ends up getting chopped sometime during the last week or two of flowering. I use the small sites as some test smoke or just to have some to smoke on the harvest day.
If you were to chop the sites now and dry them out to smoke i'd doubt they'd be very potent at all. It's up to you with what you wanna do though.


BL4ZE ON!

 

[totaln00b]

I would say wait until at least 6 weeks to try any samples. Hardly any strain is really gonna be ready before that point even in optimal conditions.

As for sucker growth I am currently deciding the same thing myself. I'm leaning towards just letting it do its thing so I can compare the top and bottom pieces at the end.

Feels great to see those trichomes, huh?

 

[clay]

I got ahold of the good camera so I thought I'd throw up a couple of quick pic updates:





and if anyone remembers the "neighbor" who started out in the box with these gals..

well its beginning to flower now too...

 

[clay]

Well, according to my previous posts, today puts me at my 4th complete week of flower! So I'm halfway (ish) done!! Plus hopefully now my girls will just start to bulk up their existing buds, instead of trying to make new little ones all over like they have been.

Momma bud watching over baby-buds:




Frost (you might notice some leaf-issues in this pic..I'm having some problems with her.. this is the sativa-y one.. if you can help me, please go to my thread here about this plant)


One of the girl's underbelly:



All together...how many problems do you spot?: