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This is my first ever grow. In my 7th decade, never have I had a successful garden. It's been so frustrating that I put my heart and soul and loving care at least a dozen times into a garden that either yields nothing due to a catastrophic failure of my doing, or a sad, sad crop. I even have issues with trees and shrubs outside. I'm lucky if 50-60% of them survive more than a few months.
So, I decided to give myself another chance at a cannabis garden. "After all, it's a weed, it can't be that hard, right? " says I (Man proposes, G-d disposes, we laugh now!).
I bought my seeds after I got my mmj growing permit and used the paper towel germination technique. I had 6 feminized seeds with 100% germination rate. I will be using Happy Frog soil and the hydroponics store said that I wouldn't need to fertilize anything until I put the girls into flower. Flower...hmmm...what's that? Oh, that's what marijuana is called, okay (idiot, shaking my head here).
I was thrilled! The package said (what I interpreted) that they would flower for 60-70 days. Wow, I can be partaking of my own weed in two months! That's how little I knew about marijuana cultivation. Almost 5 months later (when starting this diary), I've made the first harvest of a multi-stage crop. Still growing...all I knew about vegetative stages was some of my patients were there (I'm a nurse-bad joke, but gallows humor reigns).
I had a lifetime of cannabis cultivation knowledge to assimilate in just a few short month-thank you to all of the multiple forums and blogs!
Germinated seeds put into Jiffy pots in Happy Frog Foxfarm soil. The seedlings are put in sunny window during the day and under the blurple 46watt light for 12 hours, totalling 19 hrs/day. The grow is in the bathrrom tub.
Seedlings are still in the Jiffy pots, growing well. a couple have fallen over, so I attached them to a toothpick with plant tape. Still getting sun during the day and then an additional 12 hours with blurple light. No nutes, just the Happy Frog soil still.
Finally transplanted into the bigger pots' I waited until roots were coming out the bottom of the Jiffy pots. They have been named. I name my vehicles, kayaks, bicycles so I had to give the girls names. It does make it easy to talk about the particular plants. Poor Hubby is already tired of hearing about them. It's fun having girls name since my kids are all boys.
Before i put them into the new soil, I cut lengthwise on the Jiffy pot and partially cut away the bottoms, leaving the roots there, but holes so they can escape the remains of the Jiffy pots. No nutes at all yet.
Girls are looking good. Just for the heck of it, I added used coffee grinds to the top of the soil. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Otherwise, just watered with filtered (Brita) water.
This week I experienced my first unhappy plants! There was some brown tipped leaves (probably nitrogen burn from the coffee grinds. I guess that wasn't the best idea. Also have some likely light burn on the two left plants, Georgina and Jewel. I raised the lights on that side to about 15" above canopy.
On 3/29, I flushed the plants with tap water until water ran out of the plants. Then I flushed each plant with 2 gallons of ph adjusted and filtered water. Hopefully that will fix it!
The girls seem happier since I flushed all the extra nutes out. But I also got rid of some of the inherent nutes in the Happy Frog soil. Before I supercropped everything, I started foliar spray of liquid kelp. I also saturated the top of the soil with diluted liquid kelp for the heck of it.
This week I untied all the supercropping. I did it to strengthen the branches and to hopefully increase the auxins to produce more THC. I don't know if I'm doing this at the right, but every time I read about a new technique, I try it. After I was done, I gave the plants about 1/2 gallon with a couple of cc's of liquid kelp. It had been three days since the last watering and they seemed a little thirsty after their abuse.
After I untied the girls, I decided to hurt them more by trimming the large, shading fan leaves. I was a little aggressive (no surprise!). Queenie, the largest plant is now 12" high. I'll flip them into flower when they are all about 15" high.
Yay! I flipped the girls into 12/12 on 4/22. On 4/21, I fertilized the girls with Dutch Master nutes, along with the Floranova Bloom. I give less than 1/4 recommended nutes. I'm a nurse and drug companies have a vested interest in giving consumers much higher dose than needed and I assume the nutrient companies practice the same. I'm underfeeding them on purpose and will evaluate my practice after the grow is done. Since the girls were in flower, I gave them a foliar neem oil spray (with detergent) to prophylactically keep any pests at bay. This was moning after foliar spray of liquid kelp with saturator.
No buds yet. I've neem oiled foliar spray and soil drenched along with the regular watering . I give the plants filtered, ph adjusted, with nutes. I put in about 1-2 ml of each nutrient in each 2 gallon watering can.
SWdesertTed
