First Grow

Started with soaking rockwool in 5.5ph RO water for 2 hours and then rinsing in fresh 5.5ph water. Watered about 8oz 2 days later but shouldn't have. Kept in dark at 85% humidity. The first sprouts, 3 of each strain, appeared on 3rd day, and they looked sickly and yellow. The rockwool was still soaking wet. Shook out the rockwool and turned lights on. Brought humidity down to 75%. 2 days later another 3 sprouts appeared and the earlier ones started looking better. Moved the lights from 12 inches to 10 inches off tallest sprout. The next day the last 3 seeds sprouted. Moved light closer, to only 6 inch distance. Got humidity stable at 64%-66%. Watered 6oz total on day-6 and another 9oz on day-7. Everything seems to be looking pretty good, at least to a total novice. 👍

Only the second week of my first grow, and I've already spun off the road. I got some bad advice on how to water seedlings in rockwool, and I think I'm drowning my babies. Note that the order of the strains in the pics is reversed from Week-1. Zombies is now on the left and GWW on the right. Most of the Zombie seedlings still appear to be doing very well, but most of the GWW are looking very droopy, with some leaves very curved, signs of yellow setting in, and even brown spots on one specimen. 😢 I have not watered today. I intend to let the cubes dry out some and see if I can get the roots to stretch for some water and perk up the plants. 🙏 I'm also contemplating transplantation. I've read that once the roots start protruding from the rockwool cubes, it's time to transplant. That's obviously happening, so . . . The problem is, once they're transplanted, they're going to get even more water. The roots will then have room to move, but what about the overwatering? I feel like I've gotten myself into a pickle. I am seeking advice, but unless I hear otherwise, I plan to let things dry for a day or two and then transplant. NOTE: GrowDiaries doesn't allow accurate watering volume input at this stage of growth. During Week-1 I watered at a rate of .001 gallons per plant per day. Through Week-2, I increased that schedule to .005.gal/plant/day. GrowDiaries rounds both input values to .01.

The theme for the week is "I suck at watering." I add too much water one day, and the girls droop. I let them dry, and they perk up, but I wait too long to water, so they droop, and then I add too much water again. Aye-aye-aye! The result is lots of yellowing of the older leaves and differing shades of green in the new. I got some advice to cover the outer edges of the cubes to allow roots to grow, so I added another row of cubes around the outside. That seems to have helped root growth, which appears to be very strong. I used the same 25% nute mix this week but added some CalMag. Judging from all advice I've received, I've waited too long to transplant, but life sometimes gets in the way. I'm back in town and ready to roll, so today is the day. I'll be transplanting into a top-drip DWC environment. The girls will hopefully survive my brown thumb as seedlings, enjoy their new homes, and begin to thrive.

I'm a little late on this post, as the 4th week actually concluded last Thursday, and today is Monday (new pics were taken yesterday). We actually got the transplant finally done late Tuesday, so almost a week ago. Everything went fairly well, except I wasn't aware that the recipes provided by the nutrient companies give you such a hot mix. We followed Advanced recipe for a 10-gal reservoir, adding only the Cal-Mag outside of their specs, and our first TDS reading was 2270 ppm. Yikes! We diluted and got the mix down to 1030 before introducing the little ladies. I guess we also screwed up by adding the Cal-Mag last . . . another unknown. We'll add first per directions next time, but since the girls appear to be doing okay, I'm not going to stress and instead just wait until nute swap. I'm a total newbie, so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but everything looks pretty good to me. I am checking the reservoir every other day, and I've already had to top it of and dilute the mix. The ph had climbed to 6.6,and the TDS to over 1100 ppm. I just added ph'd water and got the ppm down to 900.I then had to add more PH-down to get that in range. Temps were running rel high at first. I had the 4-inch exhaust pumping back into the room through a carbon filter, and it just wasn't getting the temp down at all. With the room at 77, the tent was 86-87. Over the weekend, I added venting to get the exhaust out through a roof jack. That enabled me to close the grow room door (otherwise humidity climbed way too high). I also adjusted the registers for my central air to up the flow into the grow room. I can now set the house to 77-78, and the grow room will run 73-75. This keeps the vege tent at around 83. I'm now shopping for a mini-split . . . My other problem I'm trying to address is the humidity. It's been unusually dry around here lately, the house running at 45-46%. The vege tent is running even lower by 2-3 degrees. I ordered a humidifier and will hopefully receive that and get it installed today before I have to hit the road for a coupled days. Anyway, the theme for my week is "vege is much easier than propagation." Onward!

The girls are starting to really take off. Ran into slight troubles with temps but got them back in range. Also had low humidity but added a humidifier, and after some messing around got stable humidity. An added bonus of the humidifier is that it also managed to help lower air temp another couple degrees. The good news is that all new growth is coming in nice and green. My biggest problems this time around are in actually determining my TDS. Seriously WTF is up with the available test gear? I have been using a Pancellent TDS meter which is evidently full of crud. It just happens to be the reason my nute mix has been coming up so seemingly hot . . . it's not. I installed a CWP wet meter, and it consistently shows ppm at half to 60% of what the Pancellent device says. I also have a little inline in/out TDS meter that was used with my RO system. It seems to agree much closer with the CWP device. I will be getting some calibration solution and probably a new device that isn't "automatically" calibrated.

Another week, another 7 inches of growth. Everything seems to be progressing according to Hoyle. There's some brown and yellow, but it's mostly on older leaves,many of which are low and somewhat light deprived. I'm watering 4 gallons every other day, and the water I'm adding is a full strength mix. That said, the mix is also much lower than Advanced Nutrients recommendations. I was using their phone app to provide the mix proportions, and the program never stated a changing ratio for older plants. The result is that I've been mixing as if it was the second week of vegetation. I will correct this next week when I mix more nutes. On the topic of watering and nutes, there are a couple areas where I've chosen not to follow conventional wisdom. First, I have not swapped out the solution; I've simply added to what's in the reservoir at each watering. Second, the water that I'm adding each time contains a nute mix that's only slightly more potent than the water remaining in the reservoir. Lastly, with regard to watering and nute mix, I did break down and buy a new TDS meter. The new unit, a pen-style device by HM Digital, comes close to agreeing with my other options, a CWP 24/7 unit, and an inline unit, also by HM Digital. I can still have a 100ppm difference between the highest and lowest readings, but that's a vast improvement over the several hundred that appeared regularly using the Pancellent device. At least the new devices can be calibrated manually.

Well, this appears to be what happens to a neglectful father when he leaves his girls to their own devices for too long. This is actually a 9-day period since my last post. I've been travelling a lot and was unable to do anything but water the crop. To make matters worse, my period of neglect seems to have occurred in sync with a rapid growth spurt. The girls pretty much doubled their size in a long week. As you can see from the photos, the girls have outgrown their habitat. The tallest specimens are within 4 inches of the lights, and the leaves in that region are starting to curl up. There's also some instances of brown spots as well as yellow leaf tips. The roots still look white and healthy. I've called my oldest son with an emergency help request. He'll be over tomorrow to help me move the young ladies out of the vege tent and into the flower tent. The vege tent is only 62 inches tall and equipped with a ViparSpectra PAR600 light. The flower tent is a Gorilla, with the 1 foot extension installed, bringing it to 95 inches tall. It has a ViparSpectra PAR1200, which is dimmable. There should be sufficient room in the new tent, provided I'm able to relocate successfully. The flower tent does have a scrog screen, and given that the girls are several inches taller than planned, this relocate will be interesting to say the least. Stay tuned to see what happens . . .

Moved the girls into their flower tent. The vege tent is only 5' 2" where the flower tent is 6' 11". I now have far more headroom under the lights, though it is still limited and will likely present a problem due to the overly long period in vegetation. Fabricated and installed a ScROG screen at the end of the week, but of course, the girls had already grown so much that not only was installation difficult, but so was canopy control. Several branches were damaged during installation and mended with duct tape. Increased the balance of nutrients and stopped adding a root builder. Overall TDS has still remained relatively constant. The temperature has increased under the new light while the humidity has dropped due to the absence of a humidifier in the flower tent. Defoliated most of the growth under the screen. Tied off and tucked branches as much as possible in an attempt to form and control the canopy shape and height.

Well, it looks like I'll be paying the price for my naivete in the vegetation period all the way through the end of my harvest. I wound up with six plants in a 3x3 tent intended for only three, because I used a bin in vege, and I was unable to transplant due to intermingled root systems. And to add to it, I held the girls in vege through 8 weeks from seed, which allowed them to grow too damn tall for my flower tent. Now I have 6 reasonably healthy plants that are set into three layers of ScROG net and are already 44 inches tall. That height places them only 24 inches from the lights. My tent is a Gorilla with the 1-foot extension installed, bringing it to 7 foot, 11 inches in height. I may be able to move the lights 6 inches higher by removing the suspension system and using hard attachments, but even then the situation is precarious. I need these babies to stop vegetative growth and turn to buds only.

Note to self: NEVER wait so long to move from vegetation to flower! I am being killed by the stretch. The girls are 51 inches to the tallest top, and that's with a good 16-18 inches of horizontal growth forced at the first two screen levels. The Gorilla tent does have an extension that I was able to install and move the lid to 7' 11", but the door still only opens to about 6'. This enables you to have lights and filters tucked above the door, which is excellent, but it still leaves the canopy relatively unreachable as it grows to the top of the door. The girls are still unfortunately growing inches each day. With only 17 inches to the lights, my next priority will be to move the PAR1200 up and away from the canopy. Because I'm running 2 4-inch carbon filters, I will have to drop them to a vertical orientation in order to move the light closer to the lid. This will cause some shadowing, but given the situation, I don't really have a choice. My second priority will be to do some serious pruning before I get too far into flower. The entire lower area needs to be cleared of foliage, and the next level up, that between the lower two screens, needs pruning as well.

Fortunately, the stretch has concluded, so I'm not losing inches of breathing space every day. Still, my tent just isn't tall enough for these long legged ladies, which are nearly 5-foot tall, even with a good 16 to 18 inches of horizontal grow on the lower ScROG screen. I've pretty much done all I can to maximize headroom in the tent, so I guess the game now is to keep them fed and hope for the best. The tallest tops are only a foot away from the main LED fixture, with the shortest being around 18 inches. The majority of the tops are still green but the number yellowing, browning, and/or curling up are increasing. The lesson is learned, but that's of little help this time around.

I continue to pay the price for my excessive vegetation time. The ladies have completely overgrown my flower tent. Luckily, the vegetative growth has pretty much stopped completely, so the ladies aren't getting any closer to the light. I tied down everything possible and gained a bit of clearance to the lights, but at this point forward, it is what it is. I also managed to defoliate completely below both the rigid ScrOG grid and lower net, but that's about as far as I can go, as the tops are about at the height of the door. There's no access for trimming anything around the canopy. The yellowing and curling of leaves is getting worse and worse. I've had people suggest my problem might be nutrient burn, which is a possibility as both the Ph and TDS are getting increasingly difficult to manage. The hydrobin is pretty much filled with root mass and untrimable, so the actual volume of solution is far less than it should be. The Ph keeps dropping and the TDS climbing, so I'm regularly added slightly high Ph RO water. Whether or not the yellowing/curling is from nutrient of proximity to the light is uncertain, but since the problem seems concentrated at the canopy and all clear lower down, I'm guessing it's a lighting problem.

The race rages on. Out of tent space, the ladies continue to be scorched. The buds are thickening though, and there are lots of plush white pistils. The volume of root mass is another problem leading to what seems to be the hydro equivalent to root binding. The ratio of root mass to solution value makes the usual fluctuating Ph / climbing TDS issue even worse. While there's not much I can do to resolve the plant-height/distance-to-lamp issue, I'm going to look into adding some solution capacity. Other than that, it's a game of tend and wait and see.

I was able to add a secondary reservoir to augment the volume of water. It's only about 4-5 gallons, but it's definitely helping. There's no way I can plumb a water leveling connection between the reservoirs, so I'm having to rely on using the same pump in each with a inline valve to control flow from the reserve to the hydrobin. This seems to be working fairly well, and it's also nice to have a tank outside the tent to use for topping and treating. Another improvement is with the air temperature. I added a mini-split to the grow room a couple weeks ago, and I finally got it humming along this week. It enabled me to get the flower tent down from the low 80s into the mid 70s.

Another week and more yellowing but also more bud ripening. As noticed last week, the Sweet Zombie is doing far better under the overighting situation than is the Gorilla Glue/White Widow. The Zombie leaves continue to yellow around the edge and curl but at nowhere near the rate of the GG/WW. This week I decided to try and do something about all the little buds below the canopy. It's impossible to trim the canopy and free light to penetrate lower because the canopy top is above the door opening. With such a thick canopy, I thought I'd try setting a light some lighting from below. I wound up just setting a PAR-300 LED on the ScrOG grid pointing upward. While it's early, it seems the light is helping, and those lower baby buds are responding. I drained both the hydrobin and outside reservoir this week. This is my first drain and refill. Wound up with Ph on the low edge at 5.5 and a fairly potent TDS at 1570ppm. The only other info of interest is that we had a power outage that lasted hours. I wound up running around, having to fetch gas, and finally got a generator setup. Overall, everything was totally down for about 20 minutes, but I got the generator up and running for the other 4 hours the power was off.

It's all a game of wait and see at this point. More and more pistils are turning orange, and I'm starting to see lots of trichomes get more milky looking. There's nothing much more I can do at this point to improve the harvest. The buds present a case of they-are-what-they-are. I've learned a lot about through the experience, so my next crop will hopefully go much smoother. For this crop, and for better or worse, it looks like flush and harvest next week. Onward!

This was my first crop, and I learned a lot. My biggest takeaways were: 1) don't fret stuff in vegge; they're going to be alright. 2) it's easy to over-water seedlings; allow to dry some before adding water. 3) making your plant bush-out begins in propagation; apply sufficient light so seedlings don't stretch between nodes. 4) size does matter; when the plants really begin to grow, they GROW! If you're growing in tents or for whatever reason will transplant between vegge and flower, transplant while there's room to double in size.

I've left a more informative comment on the other half of the harvest, that for the Sweet Zombie. The GG/WW strain proved to be a little more susceptible to issues I had stemming from lack of room and proximity to the light fixtures. The GG/WW couldn't handle the adverse elements as well as the Zombie did, and as a result produced smaller buds in an overall smaller harvest.