I49 Green Crack - First Grow

Seeing as this was my first grow mistakes were made, nothing crazy but I did have the grow light far to high up causing some excess stretch. Seeds were placed in water for 24 hours, after successfully passing the sink test proceeded to place them inside wet paper towels for 18 more hours, 1 CM taproot emerged. Could have left in paper towel for longer to get more of a taproot but I proceeded to place them into solo cups, day 2 they sprouted about an inch, by day 4-5 they stretched to 3 inch (light height error). Light was upgraded in week 2 from a 1000W to a 2000W and also switched out my exhaust fan and stalk fan as both were very loud. One plant fell behind and took 5 whole days to sprout vs the 1.5 days for all the others.

Not many pictures this week, made more small errors, over-watering would be the big take back from this week. I was watering daily (very small amounts) instead I should have been watering more less often. Upgraded my 1000W LED Light to a 2000W LED Light. Up to this point I did not have a way to test PH, however I feel using PH Perfect made up for this a little.

This week I transplanted from a solo cup straight into a 10 Gallon Basket, is this a bad idea, possibly, I will update (Realistically I should slowly work up from smaller sizes to larger however, I'm lazy and if this is a possible skip I may keep doing it). In the future I would actually transplant slightly earlier as the roots were very developed and I'm thinking it may have slowed down growth a tiny bit.

So this week was again filled with small mistakes that stunted growth a little. First off I made an additional error in my previous week during transplant, it was my first transplant so this was expected. I did not add enough soil on top of my root ball, in the future will add another additional inch. Also I did not saturate my transplants enough after placing them in their new containers causing a stunted growth period due to what I believe was an air-gap between the root ball and the new soil, after a heavy watering these areas caved in, I added more soil and suddenly we are back in business growing. Lowered my light to possibly assist in faster growing (which adds additional heat to my setup) Slowly adding more PPM most of the week I was giving at 450 PPM raising up to ~550 PPM now. Due to these errors you will not see explosive growth this week but I Anticipate a very nice week following this one.

So I went through a lot of issues this week but in the end i feel I have a much better setup due to it, My plants decided to stop growing for the entire week, I thought perhaps I had bad soil initially (Which I did) so I added in a ton of fox farm ocean, No Change, Then I decided perhaps my temps were to hot as in day time I was consistently hitting 87-89, I upgraded my exhaust to a 6" line and added a 4" intake so it was no longer passive intake, this brought my temps down to an even 80 with wiggle room (fans are only on 40%). No Change. I decided to water them again after a couple days, mixed in nutes and also added seaweed. No Change, I was left frustrated and unsure what to do, then I came across a post mentioning if you had to much light it could slow growth, could this be it? (i did have a 2000W equivalent (404W draw) light only 24" above my plants using both bloom and veg mode at once) I bought myself a lux meter, it was showing 99k lux (lux meter topped out). Done some research and determined I should be at 50k, I modified my light setup turning on only the veg light and raising my light to get my lux to reach 50k. It Worked, guys I literally had to much light as a problem....... Anyway due to this I learned a lot and upgraded a lot so in the end it was an informative week, but very little growth, I did top my plants but due to problems there was no progress to show other than topping pictures themselves (I think I did it right?)

This week was redemption week (more or less) plants are getting hungrier than ever and vegetation is really taking off, Initially I had 2 plants lagging behind but by the end of the week they are catching up as I have not trimmed my larger plants as I am hoping letting the bigger plants focus on their entirety while trimming the smaller plants I will end up with 4 plants close to the same progress level (It seems to be working at this point) I did have one major flaw this week however, due to my circumstance of waiting on 2 plants I do not believe it will be catastrophic however it was unfortunate. One of my larger plants I had topped once and its main kola split into 2, while scrogging for the first time I somehow managed to damage both of these kolas to a point that they died (the joints simply cracked while lst, i expected them to be stronger than they were, my bad. Since then the rest of the plant is getting super thick. If anything this will be a learning experience and that plant in particular still has many flower sites, I will update at the end if I feel this reduced my overall yield, currently I have no idea.