First Indoor Grow - Six Shooter

**3RD UPDATE** looks like my work pairs off a little. My babies have grown tremendously. Day 12 and I feel pretty good about how things are going **2ND UPDATE** I ordered smart plug for my outlet where my grow tent is pulling power from. I have my lights automatically turning off for 4 hours everyday from 12-4, while is still in vegatative mode **UPDATE** so, my grow is coming along fine, but I think it could be better. I’m noticing a lot of week 2s from journals of the same strain, and mine looks either a little behind or a lot behind, depending on soil/soilless. I think my light distance has a lot to play with it. I had my light relatively high, almost 2 and a half feet above my plants. I dropped it down to about about 18 inches, as low as possible, while still covering my grow area. If anyone can provide any advice or opinions, it’d be greatly appreciated. I hope this week will be a lot of growth, fingers crossed.** So, it’s officially week 2 of my grow. I’m pretty excited! I have 3 Six Shooters growing....all 3 germinated,,,2 are growing and reaching, 1 is a little behind, though I’m not too concerned about her. They all are growing their 2nd pair of leaves, and I don’t expect much activity this week, although I will still try to update daily. I had a great Saturday, wake n bake sesh...then I took some of you guys advice and went to my local hydroponics/garden store....and realized quickly how much I was spending online vs shopping local. On top of that, I got a nice 30 minute lecture from one of the staff about everything. To my surprise, they start seedlings and small plants there too, aside from basil and your other herbs, if you know what I mean. So they have everything a gardener would need! I was told to transport gradual sizes....basically....like I’m planning to use 3 gallon pots right? But, I can’t go from my seedling container to a 3 pot gallon straight like that. It’s bad for the plant and extremely risky. You’ll have to water that whole pot, but with the seedling or small plant only having so many roots, it would end up basically flooding the plant out. So you move up gradually. I’ll get back to that later. The soil I was using was extremely basic; Lowe’s soil, and vermiculite mix that I blended 2 parts to 1, respectively. It was a good enough medium to sprout my seedlings and get them started, but I knew I needed more. So the guy helping me hooked me up with a 2 cubic feet/15 gallon bag of Fox Farm Happy Frog Potting Soil. I told him I was on a site (ours) where the community is pretty interactive/helpful and how I was concerned about transplanting because of the risks...He shows me this stuff called Myko, which is a root enhancer. He then transplanted a basil seedling to a larger container. Before placing it in the pre-made hole he created, he sprinkled some Myko on the roots AND in the transplanting hole (? I might have made that term up). It promotes root growth and enhances root strength as well, which not only counters transplant shock, but pretty much puts your roots on steroids. I bought a bag of that. When it’s time for flowering, I’ll be using Strawberry Fields potting soil. I went ahead and purchased other containers as well, up to the 3 gallon fabric pots which will be the plants’ final destination. I told him my water feeding schedule, water every day, water/notes on alternating days. He was a fan of it, and suggested that I go a little further and do my days like this: FEED, FEED, WATER, and so on. I purchased Cali-Mag to make sure I have enough calcium going on. I went ahead and got a PH kit as well, to make sure my water and nute days are both within 5.5-6.5 pH. I slick felt like I was in high school science/chemistry all over again lol. I went ahead and bought coated metal flower support wires for LST. He did mention doing “supertopping”, but forgot to show me on a plant. Basically, it’s gently bending the main cola back and forth until you can have it bent in a ways to where you can maneuver it under netting/lattice to allow other cola to get equal/adequate energy and/or growth. I’m paraphrasing this shit, so by all means, correct me. I’m just hoping I can help someone else. I transplanted my plants to GroPro Square 4 x 4 x 3.5 plastic potting containers, and used the Mykos on the roots and soil. I then watered my plants with the water/CaliMag solution, and placed them under the grow lights again. I’ll add pix and vids to my entry shortly.