PandemicProject #6

Day 15: OK, It's freakin' hot in that tent with the lights on. Even with the exhaust fan turned up and good airflow, its 87F down by the plant. Also gonna get dry here as the fall stretches into winter, and I don't have great humidity control in my immediate environment. GZ is looking stressed, what with the heat, change in humidity and transplant, I'm not surprised. Jacked the light up from it's recommended 24" to whatever the max is I could get- looks like 30-32". Also changing the timer so "night" is from 9AM to 3PM - hottest part of the day here. Day 16: One of the first leaves has a brown spot near the tip. Eep. Can't get the light any higher, so set up a little sunshade for the baby- plastic container lid on three bamboo skewers. Lid is light blue, seems to cut the light down a little bit. Leaves picked up by end of day. Doing a little foliar misting to cool things off, but can't keep that up on a regular enough basis to make a difference. Wondering about a mini ultasonic humidifier in the tent... winter might really suck otherwise (figuring conservatively we're looking at a Jan 15 harvest). Day 17: She seems to be showing some growth again- maybe I'm underwatering? Classic symptom of a former orchid grower... I haven't added nutrients to any watering yet either- seems like I heard the soil is good for a while as is. Just not sure when's the right time to get started with that stuff. Will ease it in either way. Just realized I haven't pH'd my water yet during this grow. Crap. After checking... it needed a tiny bump down. Probably not enough to be tragic, but want to get all the variables dialed in here. Big question now is, I'm working with Chicago common tap (yeah, probably not the best stuff in the world)- I know the water is just a bit hard (we fight limescale in our plumbing all the time), but for a hobbyist level grow, is it adequate without any special treatment or RO? Day 21: The youngster seems to like the "sunshade", increased watering and regular misting. Growth has picked up (including secondary), no further brown spots. Gonna pull the sunshade off and see what happens. (Getting really annoyed by the stripe artifacting in my digital pix caused by the LED grow light's phasing or PWMing. Need to find a low/zero budget way to get better images...) And now for something completely different: The BKs are limping along. They are going so slow, no roots poking out of the cubes yet. I don't have enough experience to say what's going on, but if they're both behaving the same then I would have to assume its based on a common trait like genetics or age of seed... or an inexperienced caretaker... maybe BK is one of those ponderously slow growers? ...so unless they really get going, they'll just hang out in the background- I'm going to focus the diary energy on the GZ girl. I'm behind on this enough as it is.