4 * Sticky Beast auto, LED (first grow)

Today I worked hard to improve my grow environment. Well, actually the environment where the growtent is located. It’s in our attic. About two and a half years ago we moved here and we couldn’t put our stuff behind the wooden wall on the sides of our pitched roof (no idea how that space is called in English), since the concrete floor of our newly build house was still moist, hence it needs to ventilate for at least 6 months. During the 2,5 years the attic became some sort of end station for stuff we couldn’t place anywhere else. It’s a large and high attic, heated by two radiators and with the concrete floor basically another living room; but we filled it with endless amounts of unopened movingboxes with all kinds of trash and also loads and loads of tools, machines and other equipment. Dust and hair from our dog accumulated and the spaces became narrow. It was not a convenient working place, it was a trashhole. We bought the laminate flooring 2,5 years ago and it’s still in the packaging. With the attic cleaned and the laminate flooring installed, we’ll have a really nice and clean room, the flooring will isolate a bit (since the concrete is very cold), reduce possible vibrations from the growtent and I’ll end up with a huge space to work in. So today I cleaned the attic out, opened all boxes, putted a lot of stuff in a organized way behind the wooden walls on the sides and got rid of a lot trash. Tomorrow I still have to clean out a bit, put in the underfloor and then install the laminate flooring. I can’t wait to work with my plants in my new, clean and spacy room! THIS WEEK On day 8 I filled four 25L fabric pots with Canna Terra Professional soil, to which I added around 30% perlite. It became a very airy mix. In every pot, I was able to throw around 5 liters of pH’ed (to around pH 6,5) water before I saw some drain. Then I mixed de pots again, to make it an airy, moist, but not soaking wet, mix. The girls were growing rapidly and I felt they might be another day, maybe two days away from transplant. Since that didn’t fit very well in my schedule, I decided to transplant right away. I was surprised to see the roots from the 3 bigger girls running around the bottom and sides of the pot. They were already close to being root-bound in those small 0,2L pots. The 25L fabric pots turned out to be too big to arrange nicely in my growtent. I did some math, but apparently the pots are a little bigger than the seller noted in his description. I tossed Dana, since she was the slowest and smallest. However, Elin is also a lot behind on her 3 sisters and if space gets a problem in the growtent, I’ll toss her too and just focus on my 3 stars, Anna, Benthe and Ceylin. As for why I have these huge pots: around new years I won’t be able to take care of them for 4, maybe 5 whole days, because I leave for a short holiday. I’m pretty sure these pots are big enough to keep enough moist during those days. Next time, I’ll use bigger pots (maybe 1L instead of 0,2L) for the first two weeks or so, to grow after germination and then transfer to 18L pots to finish in. But for now, we’ll have to do with the huge pots. After transplantation, growth was definitely stunted. The day after, there was barely any grow visible. I also knew I didn’t have to water for a while. During the next couple of days I did nothing, except checking on them. Since the exhaust had to run to get rid of all the moist damping of the pots and the soil (humidity got up to 75% without exhaust running), temperature was a little on the cool side, around 20 degree C. But around 36 hours after transplantation, growth slowly started to accelerate and the top layer of the soil started to dry out. Yesterday, on day 13, they were clearly growing fast and strong again. The soil was completely dry for the first 2 centimeters or so and only very lightly moist below that. Also, little Eline was looking droopy, but the 3 stars were looking very good. On the bag of the soil, instructions said the soil is lightly fertilized and feeding should start after the first dry-out. I decided to give them all 1L of water with a very light dose of nutes, to see if it would boost their growth. I mixed 0,6 ml/l GHE micro and gro and 0,2 ml/l of GHE bloom. I gave them all 1L of the mix, except Eline, she only got around 0,7L since she is so small. Also, I intensified the lights and it’s now pulling around 175 watts and hanging around 25 inch above the top of the plants. If my calculations are correct, it should measure around 500 par, which is perfect for rapid vegetative growth. And boy oh boy did they like it! Elin was looking happy within an hour, she was definitely dried out and therefor looking droopy. Probably, her roots don’t reach as far as those from her 3 big sisters. They probably could reach the moist in the lower area’s of the pot, but for Eline, the water was apparently out of reach. Today, new growth developing everywhere and the nodes are stacking up fast. In the armpits (is this the correct name??) new sidebranches are developing and I’m pretty sure I’m now in a phase of rapid vegetative growth. Also, because the light gets a bit warmer, it is now a comfortable 22 degrees C in the growtent. I think a bit higher would be even better, but it’s the best I can get right now and it’s not that bad. I’m really looking forward to the next few days, with hopefully a lot of new green stuff growing in the tent and a finished, clean and spacy attic to work in. I’ll start LST when the fourth node is in development and the internode with the third node is big enough to bend them over to the sides. That will probably be tomorrow or the day after. I decided not to top them, since it’s my first grow and I’m supper worried I will cause stunted grow once again and end up with small plants and small harvest. Next grow, I’ll definitely grow photoperiods, so I can really dive into all kinds of plant training. In the next update, I’ll show the results of the LST and also show some of the safety measures and other preparations I took for my five days of forsaking the girls. I wish you all a happy Christmas and a lot of big harvests in 2020!