4 Northern Light - 1st Grow

I'm going to start from the beginning (GERM). PREP Notes: My city water is about the same ppm and pH as my bottled water. ~ 100ppm & ~8.0pH I have a 3’x3’ grow tent with the following light: * VIPARSPECTRA 900W LED Week 1: Germ & Seedling Feb 7, 2019 * 2000: Soaked seeds in pH 5.8 water. I don’t have any pH down yet. Used a drop of white vinegar to lower the pH. Feb 8, 2019 * 1400: Prepped the soil in 3gal fabric pots. The soil is a Pete moss blend with nute ratios that are pretty off. N is 1/2 the percentage of K. Mixed the soil with ~20% perlite. Flushed the soil with standard city water real good. Let the pots drain then fluffed the soil up. * Run-off water from one of the pots sampled had a pH of 6.9 * 2000: moved the seeds to wet paper towels in an open zip lock bag and put them in a drawer. Feb 9, 2019 * 1800: all 4 seeds have a taproot. They’re tiny though so I’ll transplant them into big pots early in the morning - possibly later tonight. * 2300: put all 4 seeds in 3 gallon fabric pots. Watered lightly with mist. The taproots were significantly longer than they were at 1800. * Set the lights on a 20-4 schedule. * My small fan for inside the tent is busted. Gotta get a new one tomorrow. The big fan that sits at the entrance to the tent is fine… just fine. * Temp 73deg. & humidity 53% * Light set to veg. Feb 10, 2019 * Lightly spray the soil Feb 11, 2019 * Continued to lightly spray in the AM, in the evening, and before bed. * 3 of the sprouts have pushed through. * I can see the 4th sprout. It’s close to pushing through. Feb 12, 2019 * Lightly spray in the AM, evening, and before bed. * All 4 seeds have sprouted and are looking fine. Feb 13, 2019 * All are coming along fine. No sign of stress at all. * I just keep spraying them a little day by day. I might do a proper watering with minimal nutes on Friday. * Today is the final day of week 1. See you all next week! I'll update week 1 toward the end to include pics. According to my current schedule week 2 will begin on Valentine's day. :-) Ahhh... love.

2/14 First feeding on day 1 of week 2. Seedlings. Decided to go with half of the GH recommended doses. Got the pH down to 6.2 and the TDS were only 210ppm. My water by itself is around 100ppm. The recommended ppm on the GH table was something like 200-400ppm. Does that include the base ppm of the water? Lemme know how I can do better. 2/20 Today is the last day of week 2! I took a few pictures and showed a side view to see the droop. The pots aren't terribly light yet but they're due for a good feeding. I'll probably do the recommended nutes tomorrow.

Nothing spectacular this week. My leaves were conoeing with the light about 18" from the top of the plants. Raised the light up to 24" and it corrected itself. Some of the leaves are starting to get spotty and odd but the plants are looking healthy otherwise. They're growing strong. I only have 4 plants at the moment but for some reason I took 6 pictures. :-) This really is a lot of fun.

3/3: We're a few days into the week. The leaves are getting more and more odd. A few of the tips are kinda twisty curling (not clawing). Gonna keep an eye on it. Just LST'd the girls. I'll post updated pics/stats later in the week. 3/6: So - the girls are looking fine and we started flowering. The LST is working out great and I have some lessons learned from that for the next grow. No updated pics at the moment.

This week they're looking pretty good! They've taken well to the LST treatment. It's almost a daily task to keep the canopies even. That little gal in the middle is a photo-period plant that I'm going to be trying something different with. I haven't started a grow diary on it - is it too late? For Nutes... I've just followed the GH feeding schedule for drain to waste (Floragrow Series). I cut the ppm down. This was the first week of flowering as far as nutes are concerned and I kept it around 500ppm. So my water bucket is ~4 gallons and I put enough nutes in there for 2 gallons according to the chart. They're doing really well. I can adjust the LST and they look like sick plants when I'm done and the next day I don't even recognize them. They're growing so fast and strong! The humidity ranges from 39-58%. When I checked it for this diary entry it was at 40%. Any specific questions or comments?

Changes for this week. 1. LST: I've removed almost all LST restraints. The plants are pretty solid and I felt like I had so many restraints that they were just increasing the clutter. Now the only restraints that I have are the nylon string I'm using just to keep the canopies even. 2. Ventilation: I've installed a filter system. Now I can finally close the tent and none of that dank smell gets out. It makes a HUGE difference and it seems like my plants are digging it. My only gripe - I'm growing these in a 3x3. I wish they were in a 4x4. That would allow me to keep the whole filter system in the tent and give more room for fans. I have 2 oscillating pole-mount fans that are fine but the thin box fan really doesn't have much room and I feel like it's too close to the plants. I'm gonna go ahead and order that 4x4 I think. 3. I watered in accordance with GH's week 2 flower schedule. The only difference is that I treated my 5 gallon bucket as though it only had 2 gallons of water in it. That set my PPM right at 700 this week. Then I ph'd the water to about 6.2. 4. I don't want to defoliate because they're autos. However, there were some leaves on the bottom of the plants that were dead or dying. I did go ahead and prune those off and that helped with the undergrowth and that made them a LOT easier to water. Any questions/comments?

**HELP** I'll be watering these tomorrow. One of them has been acting strange. All 4 plants are fine but the tallest plant starts drooping mid-afternoon a few hours before the lights go off. Other than the drooping she looks fine. When I peek in on her in the mornings she isn't drooping at all... nice n' perky. It doesn't matter where I put her in the tent - it's still the same. I'm considering doing a flush tomorrow instead of feeding nutes. Thoughts? I've mostly been just working on keeping the canopies even this week. Also, I'm not defoliating (they are autos) but I have removed some troubled leaves from the underside. ***UPDATE - 3/29 *** I just watered them. Only a flush. Water 'em real good tho. Next week we'll get some nutes back in there and see how they do!

On 4/2 I watered them good with nutes. GH week 8 feeding but treated my 4 gallon bucket as though it had 2 gallons to keep the ppm around 600. The flush from before really did a number on these girls. They're all turning yellow. Super yellow - although the pics don't shot it. Gonna keep feeding them hard for 2-3 more weeks (might increase the ppm a bit) then flush again before harvest. When I watered I also moved them from the 3x3 to a 4x4 tent. They like the extra room! Next grow I'll do a few more plants in there. I'm also crafting fan mounting ideas in my head that I'll share. Oh yeah, the droopy girl from last week doesn't appear to be droopy anymore! :)