Hydro with Homebuild LED

Ok... I KNOW I never had a green thumb... But maybe this grow will survive ;) Still this is a risky grow since I NEED to employ the same sitter (for 2 weeks, summer vacation is comm) who forgot to water my seedling for the last grow (which of course died). I am growing a "Royal Gorilla" from RQS. They were so kind and supplied me with some free seeds from this strain. So you can consider this a sponsored grow. The new addition to my tent is a "gravity based drip system". I just put the and bucket with the res outside of the tent on a higher ground. The drip rate is quite low and I will see how long it takes to empty the outside res. The dripping will be stopped once the roots have properly reached the water level of the res. The green tube is for air. The Buckets I got were a bit "thin" 06/24 - The seed broke free and will be put into his new rock wool home today. 06/29 - I finally moved her into the tent. Setup: Growroom: I got a nice 80X80X180 tent. This tent was picked for its height. My basement is only 1,90 high. Light: I have 2 light sources. 1 X Mars Hydro 300, which served my well during my 1st grow (~130W) (This will be my side light) 1 X Home made COB with 2 LEDs (Vero 29 @3000K CRI 80, driven @ 1750 mA, ~160Lm/W) each running at 65W for also about 130 W and it is INSANELY bright (both are over10K lm - for 20-22 K lm total )

Week 2:She is slowly showing her first leaves. She is now in the tent under dual lightning (LED-Cob and the Mars Hydro 300) Right now she is leaning to the side where the MARS is located... Lets see how it will develop.I added some nutes to feed her and the dripper works fairly well without any pump. 07/03 _ My res. grows some nice Algae... I need some buckets that are a LOT more light proof if I put them under those lamps... Lets see what I can do against thatI am curious how she develops... 07/05 My reservoir is looking like green gunk... I prepared a 2nd bucket with some duct tape on the outside and it will replace the current one is I am replacing the reservoir. Right now the roots are not yet extending past the netcup, so I see no need to replace it right now. I am adding a picture to show how BAD the bucket was ;) I am shining a small 5 W CREE LED Flashlight against the outside of the bucket so you can see how good the light was able to penetrate it. The Plant itself is coming along fine and seems to enjoy it in there. The leaves look fine to me.I also added 2 pictures of my setup... One shows my "outside" reservoir that is used to feed the dripper. There is no pump or anything involved, just a small hight difference so gravity can do the work for me. 07/07 last day for this week... She is looking quite nice and it is currently quite hot here. The tent reaches about 32°C @ an ambient of 36 outside the tent. I uploaded the last shot for this week. I will setup a new mixture for the reservoir tomorrow... I just emptied the green gunk into the garden. yuck ;) The new bucket is not yet in use and will be brought in tomorrow.

Week 3 is all about keeping my reservoir "in the dark". The first thing I did was to replace my "see through" bucket with another one that I covered in 2 layers of duct tape, which will block most of the light. After that I cut myself some mylar to cover the top of my bucket. So the only place the light can get in now is from the bottom. I prepared another 10 l of solution to feed the plants. I filtered tap water through a carbon filter and mixed it with root complex and hydro grow from hesi... After I soaked the rockwool with an initial soaking from it I setup my dripper, so my plant can develop some roots now. Once the roots will touch the main reservoir, I will slowly think about removing the top feeding of nutes via the dripper. Besides that, she is growing very bushy already. 0710: Guess I overwatered her a bit... The extra drips might have been too much. Added the roots photo and some other shots 0711: The leaves are starting to turn upwards now... So I will give it another day without dripping... Besides that I decided to see how bright my growlight actually is... I don't have a dedicated lux meter, so I used my phone for it... 07/14: Almost end of week 3... I removed the top drip system since the roots seem to get sufficient water from the Res. now... Roots are starting to develop nicely and I filled the res. up with a good amount of water. I added some root pictures and some side/top shots again.

0717: The plant is still recovering from my failed top feed trial. It looks like I drowned her pretty hard. The roots and the plant itself are growing slowly. I was told to kill the plant off to restart it, but since I am heading to my vacation I will give it the time to either recover or simply die. 0719: Adding some more pictures. The roots start to look much better now and the new leaves are not curling up anymore. I think the plant started to recover ;) 0721: Good morning... I think she is on the right track now. I checked her progress this morning and she looks way better. And the roots... I will make a compare shot of them so you can see the progress... I will even try to top her today (leaving tomorrow for 2 weeks) Added the 0722: Ok Vacation, here I come... I replaced the water in the Res with a new solution for my plant... Left some spare water to fill it up and instructed the sitter again... Why cant I take her with me?? *sigh* Hope I get no problem pictures during the vacation 0717 3 pictures 0719 4 pictures

Excuse the quality of the pictures for this week, they are provided by my plant sitter.. Anyway... While I enjoy the sea, my plant seems to enjoy her tent... Some more uploads... I asked for a root picture also.

Still on vacation... Plant is growing nicely. I asked for better / different shots, but this is all I got from him... At least the plant looks ok :D She has till Sunday (06/Aug) to keep vegging. I think I will defoliate her a bit once I get home so I can see how I can train her if possible... I have no clue right now what kind of branches she has, but that will be a nice surprise I think. I asked for some pictures from the stems, so I can see how they developed... Here they are... And another root-shot The plant is growing fast... I am stunned how much it exploded during my vacation. Uploaded some more images.

I am finally back from my vacation, and I will be switching her to flower today. The lady got a few leaved that were quite close to the light and curled up, but besides that she survived my trip and exploded in growth. I will be trimming her a bit today so I can see the best way to arrange her stems and reduce the chaos a bit. Also I will be lowering her quite a bit so she is not right inside the light. Overall I am more than pleased with her development in the last 2 weeks while I was away... There is one point to gripe about bout though... My sitter didn't take proper care about my outdoor tomato setup, and my pump ran almost dry. So guess I rather take that loss. More pictures are coming soon... [Edit are here now] I was planning to move her into a bigger bucket later... now I realized I cant get her out or into the new lid :( Ahhh well... I build something to rest her on with her old lid I adjusted the distance to the light so I get no more burned tips. High tech LST using some cups... And also a nice look at the stems I setup the flowering Juce for her... The Box said I should aim for an EC between 1.6 - 2.2 mS got 1,95 mS Update Aug. 9: For all those that want to look at some virgin lady parts... The 1st sex pictures has been uploaded ;) Besides that, I think she is flower stretching right, since she gained 4 cm since yesterday... 48 cm vs 44 Update Aug 10: Ok... She keeps growing... This morning she was another 3 cm (at least) higher than yesterday... Bringing her to 51+ cm (I finally started to measure the hight this week instead of estimating it) PH was at 6.3 so I added a bit of "sour tea" which should bring the PH to 5.5 to 6 (Due to the roots the water does not mix that well, so so I have a hard time telling the right number after adding PH down) Update Aug 12: Sa is the final day of the week... So some more shots to show her off ;) One shot measuring her, one full and one from the top.

Start of Week 2 flowering. I stopped giving Hesi-bost and added some Acti-Vera. Lets see how this works out. She grew quite nicely but yesterday evening she had a few hanging heads. I checked the water and the PPM was quite high. So I replaced the water today with the new mix above. Besides that I liked how she took off after the vacation. Ok... I light proofed my res finally while waiting on new buckets :P 0816: The light proof buckets for the next grow arrived... Cant transplant her into them right now cause she is to big... She seems to do a bit better now, and there is no more hanging heads. Lets see how she does. 0817: Ok... SHIT :D I managed to set my growroom a bit under water ;) I managed to spill 10l of tea. To easily access my res water i had a permanent syphon in the bucket... To check the PH i just had to lower the end into a container and draw some water. Measure PH and then raise the container a bit to get the water sucked back... Today the outside end fell to the floor outside, spilling exactly 10L of water into my basement... Sigh :D I just refilled her 0818: Since I was not forced to do any more cleanup today, i was able to took some more pictures... She was not quite as fast as in her 1st week of flowering stretch, but she still managed to reach up a bit. Also I think she didnt like the water issues (light leak & algae) i had this week, but i think that is under control now. The next grow will have a lot better res and will hopefully be much smoother.

Week 3 of flowering... She is back to her good growth (2 cm/day) so i guess she recovered from the bad water. I checked the PH today and it was 6.7 so i dropped it back to 6. Also I took some scissors down to the basement today to give my lady a nice haircut. I still feel kinda uneasy when i cut stuff of her... but i removed a buch of larger fan leaves. Now most bud sites get way better light. I hope i did not overdo it. 08/22 She reached 70 cm today. The water is fine right now and the PH was ok... I didnt need to supply any more up or down since it was at a nice 5.7 She still looks so "naked" after i trimmed her... Lets hope she puts her energy into the buds now ;) I decided to turn on my Mars 300 that was on so many pictures. I got a cheap lux meter today, and the back of the plant was a bit dark. So i decided to add it to my cobs. The main "growing level" got about 30K-55K lux. The 2 main coalas are a good deal higher, one directly under the cob with almost 200K lux (Watching it for light burn stress) and the other one in the 100K lux range. Might be thinking about lowering the plant down another level... 08/23 Checked her this morning to see if everything is fine... And it sure is. She keeps growing and now reached 72cm (steady 2 cm a day), which means i need to find a way to lower her a bit. The mars is covering the backside just fine right now. I gave her another round of trimming today, which removed another 10 leaves. I tried to make sure all bud sites now get some direct light. We still have a very "green" canopy with no spots were you can see through it. Added some more shots 08/24 The PH today was a bit to high. I dropped it a bit only. Also i tried to make some closeup shots... See above for them ;D 08/26 This is the final update for the week... She grew up to 75cm and i still feel that i kinda raped her when i removed all those leaves... Lets see if the buds will appreciate it. Added some more closeup shots and i must say i love the diary cover shot :D

Its Sunday the 27th of So a new week starts ;) She didnt drink all the juice i gave her last week, but she got another 10L mixed up for the current week. She still looks a bit raped from my trimmings, but all leaves have a healthy color. Only the top leaves on the top colas has slightly rolled up leaves, but they are way to close to the light. Besides that, i am waiting to see her buds fattening up :D No Photos today though, but i uploaded my favorite one for this week :D Ok... i went down to take some shots for this week, and here they are ;) 0829 - trimmed her a bit more... Some of the leaves were real sticky... Here is why :D

The plant looks very healthy... The only issue i saw was the light burned top leaf, but thats expected. Besides that no discoloration or curling or anything else. I love the way she looks. I removed a lot of leaves last week, and the light can get everywhere quite good. She was quite thirsty so I made her another 10l of tea. I changed the food mix a bit this week and increased the P/K to 1 ml / l and i added some "Boost" to the mix also. I think i will keep this mixture for 2-3 weeks and then flush her. Its only 15 minutes till her bedtime, so ill try to get some shots ;) Ok folks... I caught her right before bedtime... She was a bit frosty to me, but i hope you dont mind ;) 09/07: I admit it... I am a monster... I cut off one of the lowest branches since i wanted to try my vape... So at least i get some trich shots in for you. This was one of the lowest branches with the least amount of light... So enjoy the pictures... She still has a month to go 09/09: Final days of this week... The last 2 pictures for this week. Taken with my phone. I love how well she develops. No signs of trouble anywhere (But the top most right bud, has a little light burn bleeching) I am very happy with her an watching her like a hawk.

Today is 09-12 and I just took some more pictures. She is fattening up slowly. Not like those monster buds i see on the other journals, but she is so frosty... She is covered with trichs and she smells good ;) My wife complains about it every time i go down into the basement, and i cant understand why :P Nothing new on the feeding front though. I gave her another 10l of water on Sunday and she is using about 1-2 l a day. Anyway... Here are some new pictures for you folks... 09/13 Found something that scared me... I hope my plant did not go hermie :( - edit - removed the picture since ppls told me not to worry. I also fed her another 10l of juice. I upped the P/K to the maximum of 1.5 ml / l and also running 2 ml/l boost... Hope she grows a lot :D

Week 7 of flowering... She is comming along nicely and i see no issues with her currently ;) Enjoy some nice close up shots.. Feeding her the same as the last week. No change there. (I Upped the P/K mix to the maximum dosage last week) Besides that... She just looks so frosty and she is sticky as hell if i touch her... 09/22 I cleaned her up a bit more today. Removed some more tiny popcorn buds that wont even form anything that resembles a bud. My fingers are almost like glued together :D I can understand where this strain got the name from....

Ok... Week 14... I am getting the first sick leaves so i guess she is in the final sprint now... Will start lowering the nutes to 50% on next feed and after that will start to flush her. The annoying issue is.. I found "ONE" bud that looks ripe :D But i have no clue which one since i mostly did macro bud shots :D Anyway... Enjoy the snow... 0929 - I fed her a slightly diluted solution yesterday. The leaves already started to wither a bit. Check the 5 new pictures were i tried to capture it a bit. I dont think its much longer now

My wife is getting so pissed about the smell... I am almost barred from going downstairs ;) The shots still look a bit clear for my taste, with mainly non-cloudy trichs i think. Currently she is still drinking the last serving of slightly lowered tea (~50% strength) and when i goes low i will refill put pure PH-water to finally flush her But i must admit i love her looks :D

Was very happy with the grow. Some issues but it was easy finding some help here... So thanks a lot everyone. I am more than happy with the outcome. I never had a ounce of weed... For me this looks like an endless supply... Side note: my wife checked yesterday... she was supprised how big the plant got (She wasn't looking at all before) :D Some more shots will come tomorrow... My trim got TONS of popcorn buds in it. Interesting to see what it will turn into. I took a mini bud at random up for some extreme macro shots ;) Enjoy00 Ok update... I left the plant to dry yesterday and turned on the light so the temp is stable as during the grow. Only issue was with no plant in there, there was a higher temp raise. So the buds are already fairly dry. (Still to wet on the inside though) Ok... The dry phase seems to be over. buds are snapping off the stem nicely and so i put everything into 3 jars. Total weight now, after removal of stems is 112g dry, which is WAY more then i expected. And now for the sad part. I found some seeds so far. Only single ones, but they are here... So i guess i have to do a decent tent clean up in order to remove those pollen... Could also caused by "Nature" since i am living close to what i would consider possible grow spots. 0000