Indoor Multi-strain Madness!

So I got a lot going on here for a complete newb but I've always been one to jump right in! Nutes all lined up GH series Micro, Grow and Bloom, Promix BX for a medium, which I may supplement with a quality soil for the 5 gallon final pots, but we will see! Oct 6 Hash Plant Seedling emerges! Oct 7 Blue Dream and Toronto Cookies germinated Oct 9 Blue Drean and 2x Toronto Cookie Seedlings emerge! All 4 are now in small pots with a mixture of 1 part Promix seedling starter mix and 3 parts promix HP w/ Mycorrhizae. I didn't trust the blurple 600w light I had going as it was a lot dimmer so all 4 are now under the bright COB style 300w LED. Light has slowly been lowered from 30" to 12" as I don't know the lights very well and couldn't find any specs on them. I got them off kijii with the whole setup, they are no name Chinese. I've been watering small amounts 1 to 2 times daily to keep things moist for the seedlings. I've also been adding 1/4 strenght B52 - B vitamins. DUring transplant I added in some pebbles of whatever it is the hydro shop guy gave me for encouraging root growth. Today I will let them all dry out to start a good wet/dry cycle to encourgae the roots to seek water and grow.

Oct 17 - Everyone is bumping along nicely. Hash plant is definitely leader of the pack now working on its 3rd set of leaves! Temp has been dropping down to 17 Celsius during the 4 hours the lights are off from 12 to 4pm. I'm going to be turning my furnace on soon so hopefully that will be corrected. Humidity has been from 45 to 60 RH with the odd 70 spike for a short period after watering. I think I've been over watering anyway classic newb move and will be dialing back to encourage root exploration and expansion! I added in both lights now, the 300w Cob and the 600w blurple and they've made their way down to 10" above the seedlings. I havnt detected any issues there yet. Also have a 6" fan on low blowing in fresh air at the bottom and helping to strengthen the stems via a little wind on them. I've been feeding the hash plant with a pretty low dose of nutes and will add the other 3 into the feeding cycle this week. Oct 18 - Fed all plants with week 2 dose of nutrients. I think they are a little slow growing due to the temp dropping to 16 Celsius when the lights go out. Getting my furnace replaced on Monday so that should help its cold in here and the pots feel cool. An HPS light would've bee handy here lol

Fixed a few newbie mistakes coming into this week! I believe the leaves, especially the blue dream, were curling down because the lights were too close. I was too concerned with keeping the heat up. I slowly raised them up to the 18" they are at now and the leaves immediately stopped curling down. I also added a space heater set to 20 degrees to keep the lights out temperatures from dropping down to 16. Lastly moved to week 2 nutrients for all of them, I should've been adding nutrients sooner I believe. I also started watering less to establish a good wet dry cycle. I'll be watering once a day at most days and once every 36 to 48hrs now and then. They are looking smaller than they should but since these adjustments have grown what I think to be quite a bit! Transplanted into 5g fabric pots on day 21. They all had a good looking root ball and everything went smooth.

Transplanted them all into 5g air pots in Promix HP. Watered medium fully. They took awhile to settle in. At this point I started to suspect my lighting was insufficient for my ambitions of 4 plants. One of the LEDs started wigging out on me as well, the fan only running in cycles and half the LEDs popping out occasionally. I started eyeing up the MARS Hydro new TSW 1000. I was in for a rocky month of learning between watering techniques with small plants in big pots to nutrient deficiencies! Stay tuned!

The failing LED light let go on me this week! Half the LEDs blinked out of existence - which gave me the kick I needed to get a higher quality light. Welcome MARS HYdro TS 1000W quantum board. Well packaged and presented - easily hooked up - great covered 5x5 in veg. WHat I didn't know what more light = more dialing things in. The plants started to grow fast here but I didn't keep up with them. The learning curve became even steeper with a high powered light in a soil less mixture for a newbie! As you can see growth has been slow for me. Here are some things I suspected: Low night temps dropping to 16 celsius when lights went out (canadian basement) Insufficient lighting Poor watering techniques Overaggressive training too close to the main stem knuckle causing stem breakages No added CalMag supplement in soil less medium Light too close to plants Insufficienct fresh air movement - I had my exhaust fan off thinking it was only for smell. No air flow in the tent paired with overwatering led to the pots staying wet far too long.

You can see through this week me battling over watering by seeing the droop. This is where it started on the TO Cookie plants. I also experienced calmag deficiency combined with some nutrient burn. I dropped the B52 and flushed them at the end of the week followed by half dose nutrients. I took on some intensive training through this week to bush them out as well and ended with some light defoliation of about 6 to 10 big fans each. You can see where I've had to tape up some stems and wrap garden ties around others to support them after partial breaks. TO Cookies #2 was topped above the 5th node and stretched a good between 4 and 5 so instead of quadlining her I bent the main stem over. Come week 7 it looks like it's paying off with shoots flying up left right and center off the main. I'm also learning the new light and starting to think it is too close.

I'm having trouble diagnosing the light brown almost beige spots showing up on the plants. I gave my friend the hash plant head of lettuce looking plant this week so I could focus more on the 3 plants. I am down to 2x Toronto Cookie plants which are growing the best and one Sativa Blue Dream which I've struggled with from the start. She grows thin wispier leaves and seems to be a lot more sensitive. She is showing classic calcium deficiency right now even though I've added the Cali Magic. I started adjusting my PH down to 5.8 in hopes to correct it. Blue Dream and TO # 1 have been trained with a sort of quadline method even though I kept the 2nd node along with the 3rd and 4th. So they essentially both have 6 shoots growing their own offshoots which I've trained to be equally spaced around the plants. On the TO # 2 plant I topped it later so it has more nodes. I bent the main stem right over to spread the auxin on her and she is doing well. Kind of just shooting by the hip with her training and learning as I go but it seems to be going very well. Both TO Cookie plants were trained extensively at the end of this week and likely for the last time as all their shoots are out past the edges of the pots now and canopy is looking fairly level. I will let them go vertical now for a week or two and then flip to flower. Blue Dream as usual is giving me a run for my money but really started to pick up last week. Her nodes are intensley tight and bushy. I measured 3 nodes in 3.5" on most shoots making it very hard to train. I think I will defoliate a bit to open them all up next week. Here are some changes made that seemed to have helped the slower growth and issues I;ve been facing, I've certainly learned a lot on this first indoor grow! Low night temps dropping to 16 celsius when lights went out (canadian basement) - switched lights to 24/0 schedule to maintain 24-26degrees Insufficient lighting - upgraded to a MARS Hydro TSW 1000 quantum board Poor watering techniques - watered no more than every 4 days. Lightly top watered if bottoms of pot werent dry. Overaggressive training too close to the main stem knuckle causing stem breakages - Learned to start bending further down at newer bendier growth No added CalMag supplement in soil less medium - Added Cali Magic, lowered PH to 5.8 to correct lockout if it was present Light too close to plants - Raised light to 28" Insufficient fresh air movement - Added 2 interior circ fans, 1 4", 1 6" and turned on 4" inline exhaust fan. Added a 12" fan outside the tent on low pushing air into the intake. Nutrient Burn - I started noticing the tops turning yellow and clawing downwards - next week I will reduce to 1/2 strength nutrients.

Monday - droopy girls looked even drooper instead of better as the pots have gotten drier so I'm assuming they are thirsty. I fed only half a Fallon to the two Cookies plants as a test. Maybe they'll respond better to more frequent but less volume waterings. Here's hoping I come back from work and they are happy! I also readjusted some ties again and took off a few fans from each plant to open them up to light and air. The Blue Dream especially was turning into a thicket! Node spacing is incredibly tight on her. Included a pic of the new watering system I'm working on. 5g jug on a shelf with a valve and 1/2 line coming from the bottom. It should save a ton of time and last me about 2 weeks per refill no more spilling and mixing and hauling 1 gallon jugs. Flipped the light back to a 20/4 schedule as well. After a day they seem to have improved a bit. Cookie plants are yellowing a bit - next feed will be at higher strength. Tuesday - I was greatly relieved this morning to find the droop significantly improved. I believe the 4hr dark period yesterday and the raised lights to be the solution to the droop. Tonight I will flush with RO water followed by a full strength gallon of nutrients to try to reset the medium and feed them properly. I believe the yellowing to be a nitrogen deficiency now. I am still very hesitant to resort to uprooting them especially now that I think I've pinpointed the drooping posture to being light related. If the flush doesn't work and they are still deteriorating after a week I will uproot and refill the medium. Thanks so much to everyone who has weighed in so far to help out! It's funny how attached you can get when you grow something from a little seed and put in so much time to growing. Wednesday - No flush needed! The droop is all but gone after a day or two of 20/4, turns out Torontonian Cookies needs rest! I foliar fed b52 to one of them to test run it to reduce stress and sneak some nitrogen in. It didn't kill it do I'll do the others tomorrow. I fed them each a gallon of mid strength nutes, up a touch from my low end feeding. Next one will be a little higher as well later this week when they are drier. Thursday - released the mains to catch up to the shoots flying up from the stems to even out the canopy. I foliar fed a 300ppm solution of b52 and a couple drops of bloom and micro to get them some phosphorous and nitrogen fast. I've never foliar fed before so well see if it does anything. I'm running out of space so after another week or two tops of letting them get some LST free vertical growth I'll be flipping to flower.

Busy week this week, still battling some kind of deficiency or issue causing some yellowing leaves. They grew about 4" and I didnt raise the light so I had to bring it up again as I saw yellow tips on all the top smaller growth. The older bigger leaves are still going yellow here and there but not dying or falling off, just a colour change so I'm not sure whats going on. I upped the nutrients to 700ppm and started feeding more often instead of letting them dry out to encourage root growth. Near the end of the week I believe it started to improve. The Blue Dream has no issues other than slow growth, TO #1 is only showing some yellowing but TO # 2 started to get a little worrying. I will continue to slowly increase the ppm per week from here on through flower to see how they react. I did a good defoliation at the start of the week to open them up and get some more growth tips and bud sites into the light in anticipation for flowering and they took it pretty well. I salvaged 4 lower shoots from Blue Dream and put them into solo cups to try cloning out. After 4 or 5 days under home made humidity domes and lots of spraying they still look pretty good. I'll slowly start to wean them off the domes and into a second tent I'm going to setup for vegging my next crop. I also added a small fan heater blowing into the tent during lights out as it is getting colder over here in winter and I wanted to keep the temps up above 20 degrees at all times. Hopefully these adjustments help. Yesterday (Sunday) I switched to 12/12 so onward into flower!

Lots happened this week! I got a new tent for free from a friend he had never even opened! He didn't remember the size - getting it out of the bag it was 5x5!!! After a tough setup squeezing it in my furnace room corner on my own I got it rocking and the girls are now VERY comfortable. I gave them all a decent haircut right before switching last Sunday to 12/12 and took 4 clones off of the blue dream for fun. They have since gone into the previously used 3x3 under my old 300w blurple. 2 of them are looking pretty good with 2 sadder looking ones. We'll see how they do, I'm thinking of dropping a few more seeds to join them and veg in the 3x3 until the 5x5 girls are harvested. Any and all problems have been sorted out! The leaves are all now a vibrant green, the odd little spot lower down but overall they look great. They are all still quite short with not a whole lot of vertical growth yet so I've only slowly lowered my light, now sitting at 22-24" from the canopy in hopes to encourage some good flowering stretch through next week. The runty blue dream is still under 10" tall, very strange plant. Feedings have moved up to every other day, the odd every third day if I;m busy but they are pretty dry by then. I've increased the PPM by 100 over the week and transitioned the grow down and the bloom up. Environment is getting a little tough to manage now that they are in a big space but I think they are fine as is, humidity is a little low but it has been their whole life. I'm buying a whole house humidifier as I hate the dry winter anyway so once I get that unit installed it should come up 5-10% everywhere. I'm 19 celsius lights off, 22 lights on and a steady 40% RH give or take a few points either way this week. I noticed a couple tiny bugs scooting around so I added some sticky traps on the top of the medium and a 12" fan oscillating over the tops of the pots to keep them from laying any eggs and getting any ideas about setting up shop! I tossed in a few close ups after a week of 12/12, the pistils are starting to emerge from the nodes and stretch out and the top of the growth sites seem to be concentrating and stacking up very tight growth. Hopefully see some flower development next week! Thanks to everyone who has helped me thus far!

Week 2 of flower almost down..I am still eagerly awaiting some stretch, hoping for 4-6" of height would be nice. So far they've only gained about 2 inches each. Its hard to tell though as I check on them everyday so I dont notice the changes so much, maybe I need to leave them be and look after a couple days! I am itching to get a good defoliation, they are getting pretty bushy but I don't want to interrupt the stretch. Maybe after next week I should be safe to get in there and thin them out to expose all the bud sites. Otherwise no issues to report...it has gotten pretty cold this week here so I had to add a little humidifier as my furnace has been working overtime and the humidity dropped down to 35%. The humidifier got it back to 45% where I like it. I also turned off the 12" fan for now. I bought a furnace whole house humidifier Ill be installing this weekend as the whole house is too dry in the winter, it should help! Pistils are starting to emerge from every bud site and the tops are really closing in. I've never grown before except a couple plants I tossed in the ground and looked out one day to see buds forming so thi is exciting! They seem pretty happy at the current nutrient dosage, a couple clawed tips here and there but I think they may be from awhile ago so I'm going to hold at this dose until next week where Ill lower the nitrogen and increase the bloom.