From Seed to Weed Very Low Budget

So, this is my very first growing experience...or at least, growing cannabis. I don't have much money and neither do any of my friends that I started this with. We are growing it in a garden house at the edge of the city, so I can't be there all the time, I can visit once a day to make sure everything is going ok. That kinda limits me. Also, the shortage of money is a real pain in the ass. We can't afford the fancy equipment like LED bulbs, humidifiers, fertilizers for cannabis, pH meters etc. so it's kind of a shot in the dark, but I am trying to do my best with the limited equipment I have. The strain we chose, Lemon Skunk by DNA Genetics, was the only one our local growing shop had in stock, everything else was sold out, but the strain actually looks good, so I am certainly not disappointed. We bought a pack of 3 seeds that came to around 23€. I chose Jiffy Coco tablets as a germinating medium...or at least the local supermarket generic brand that my mom had at home. I left the seedlings in for the whole week. I am using CFL bulbs as lighting, colder ones in veg and warmer ones for flower. I didn't buy the warmer ones yet, just the colder ones, they came to around 20€. I am using a timing wall adapter with my bulbs. I bought it for about 8€. We made our own lighting wires, we bought 3 sockets, 3 wall plugs and 6m of wire and just wired it together, that cost us about 9€. Since it's fall here rn, we are using a heater that we got for free cuz my friend's dad found it somewhere. It's kinda shit, the fan already stopped working and we had some problems with the heater core not working, but we fixed it. The fan is still not working so it's not blowing the warm air in but sort of radiating it into the room, but it's better than nothing and it was free. I am using a thermostat wall adapter that cost us about 15€, however, since it's the cheapest one that I found, you can't program the temperature based on the time of the day, so the day and night temps have to be the same. I bought three 10l bags of potting soil for herbs and spices, the closest one to cannabis soil I found. Together with a 10l bag of horse and cow manure mix and a 2,5l bag of perlite, it came to around 17€. As you can see in the Day 1 photo, I am using a transparent dome to keep the humidity high. We found it in the garden house I don't know what it is, it looks like a plastic wine glass with the leg cut off, idk who would do that but it serves it's purpose very well. The pots we will be using later were also for free since we found them in the garden house. So if you count everything up, the starting cost of this grow was around 90€ or 100$. As I said earlier, I am growing it with my friends, so we split the price with 5 people. So it was about 18€ or 20$ per person. I am liking the progress so far.

This week was much more interesting than the last one. I have transferred all of the plants to their first pot. Two of them are growing at a nice pace, but the third one is a bit slower, but that is probably just because that seed germinated a few days later than the other two. Overall, the growth is going well, but I have noticed some weird discolouration on the leaves today as seen on the last photo. I wasn't able to recognize what is the problem, I'll have to ask an expert. I have increased the daylight schedule to 18-6 from 16-8. However, one of our bulbs broke after just a few hours of use so I am using a lower wattage incandescent bulb on one of the plants until I can get the broken one replaced. It's starting to stretch for light, I hope I can get it fast enough.

So first of all, the replacement bulb still hasn't arrived. The third plant is waaay behind the rest two, it looks like it's been stuck in day 9 ever since and it's begging for light. I am afraid that it will not make it. The rest two are doing just fine. I had to buy a pH and TDS meter so I can work on the leaf issue that I had last week. I have pH balanced the water and the problem went away. I have used fertilizer for the first time. I accidentally went a bit over and did a 1200ppm instead of 800ppm, I know it's too much, but this house doesn't have a water pipe installed, so that means I have to bring water with me in bottles. I used up all of the water and brought it at least to 1200ppm instead of 1900ppm. I am using citric acid and baking soda to balance the pH, but I will be using vinegar instead of citric acid, because the citric acid is way too strong and it makes balancing the pH too hard, first time I did it, I added just a tiny little bit of citric acid and it jumped from 7.1 to 4.2. I also added a little bit of sugar into the mix to support mycorrhizae and bacterial growth. The plants are starting to grow really fast and I like that.

So, I finally transplanted to a bigger pot, one plant is in an 8l and another one in a 15l, I couldn't find two of the same size, so I will have to deal with that. The replacement bulb finally arrived and even though I sent just 1 bulb for replacement, they returned 3 of them. That's great, I'll have some bulbs as back up if some more fail...or so I thought. It turns out that it wasn't just a bad bulb, the bulb was probably just fine, but the replacement bulb exploded just hours after installing, same as the first one. I tried tinkering with the socket because it has a crack in it and I thought that it might be the cause of the trouble. I wrapped it in duct tape (very bad idea, turns out that the heat of the socket is more than enough to turn the duct tape into a liquid) and put another bulb in there. I haven't even left yet and I hear an explosion and see sparks flying from the bulb. Just another few more pops and the bulb is dead. So we had to replace the whole socket, put the last bulb in and...voila, finally works...or not, the next day, we returned and the bulb is dead again. All three of them. I obviously can't return them again. I have no idea what's wrong. All the other bulbs are doing just fine. I am afraid that the third plant is a goner. But the other two are doing just fine. After transplanting I topped both of them, once they grow the two top branches I will start LST them. Hoping to get a nice spider shape from that.

First of all, I have decided that I will include photos of both (all three) plants from now. I was using photos of the one I found prettier at the moment (usually plant 2) but I thought that it's a good idea to show you guys all of my plants. I really like how the plants (especially plant 2) have been exploding in size recently. Plant 1 had some kind of nutrient deficiency again, it seems like I have fixed it but it stunted the growth quite a bit. Plant 3 is a goner, we were really unlucky and it's a pity, but there's nothing we can do. The plant itself still lives, but it really struggles with light and I don't think that we will get some kind of yield from it. The topped stem grows really well and I think that I am probably going to start the LST process next week. PS: Does anyone know what kind of a bug is that? I have been looking all over and I can't find anything :D

Finally, after about 3 weeks, we got a light for the third plant that works. I hope that I can get at least some buds from that...better than nothing. We didn't need to water once this week, that's why much of the data is blank. I still didn't start the LST process yet, the plants just aren't big enough and I don't want to do it just yet.

I finally started the LST process, I used a soft cannabis wire to bend the top 2 branches, I created by topping the plant few weeks earlier. I secured the wire by duct taping it to the side of the pot, I hope it holds, I really don't want to drill holes into the pot. I hope I did everything well and that I don't cause more harm than good. All in all, the plants look ok, they started to develop some tiny brown spots on the leaves and some of them started to turn yellow, I hope everything is ok.

First of all, I haven't had much time to check on the plants, with Christmas and everything going on, I came to take a look just once per the whole week. Unfortunately, the duct tape holding the LST wires in place unstuck so I ended up with a crooked plant that was growing in all directions, just not the ones I want. I hope it fixes itself or at least doesn't cause some trouble in the future. I hope that I can return to the regular checking routine that I had so nothing like that happens again.

So, I am starting to be worried, my plants don't really look good. I really don't know what is happening, I think it could be overwatering so I didn't water once this week. That's why I will be opening a question. We have decided that there is no hope for the third plant so we will be buying an automatic instead of that, I will be creating a new diary for that.

So I think it was overwatering, I haven't watered since and the plant is doing just fine, I will not water until I see the drooping from underwatering. We have bought a new seed to replace the third plant that had stopped growing. It's an automatic, so I hope it will finish at the same time as these two. I will be starting a new diary for that, so check that out if you want to.

I still haven't watered since the overwatering problem and the plants seem fine, I think I just constantly overwatered them. I've read that overwatering is like a number one beginner mistake so I tried not to overwater, but that's harder than it looks if you don't have any experience with it. Also, we have noticed that the stalk of plant 1 has split in half due to the stress from LST, I don't know for how long has it been that way, but I think that the plant doesn't really matter for the plant since I don't see any leaves dying (other than regular) or a significantly stunted growth.

I have removed the dyi reflectors because I found out that they overheat the bulbs and that causes them to fail so frequently...yes, I have lost another 2 bulbs. I had to replace them with the ones I had for flowering. I'm seeing a fuller, healthier and faster new growth since I've stopped watering. I've also noticed a few new stems coming from the bent main stems.

The growth slowed a bit, and I might be finally watering the plants after, I think, about 4 weeks. I'm surprised that the plants made it without any significant signs of overwatering.

I have watered for the first time after about a month. I have already ordered the stuff I'll need for the flowering, I know that the plant is really small, but I don't see any reason to prolong it even more, the plant is f*cked and I want to finish it, I need to get money for a better equipment, the plants are suffering at this point so let's get this over with. The next week is still going to be veg, but after that, I'm going to switch to flo. I hope I'll grow at least 5g...

I have finally switched to 12-12 for the next week, the manufacturer says that the flowering period should take about 6-8 weeks so I hope it will be over fast. As I said in the last week diary, I've bought Biobizz Bio-Grow and Bio-Bloom fertilizers, I will buy the rest of the lineup for the next growth. I don't have the money to buy them now and I think that it's just a waste of money to spend more than necessary on these plants, they are totally screwed. I also bought their Lightmix soil and I instantly realised how amazingly shit the soil I've been using is. It's probably just my lack of experience but this is the best soil I've ever seen. It feels amazing and I couldn't resist sticking my hand repeatedly into the bag, it's soooo satisfying :D I forgot to switch one of the bulbs to the warmer one so I'll have to do it later, I've also lowered the temp to 23°C.

I'm seeing a huge improvement in the plants. They started growing really fast, they have a nice green colour, no more yellowing. They have nice large leaves, overall, they are doing pretty good. I don't know if it's the new nutes or the new soil that I used for the transplant. I had to tie the plant down again because it was too tall for the lights. I would show you how much has the plant improved, but I forgot to take photos...twice. So I have just these two photos. You'll see them next week if I don't forget again.